School, Painting and Pasteles

So today half of school just didn’t show up. Why? Because it’s Monday. Oh how I wish things were that easy in the states.

“Hey James: Are you going to class today?”
“Sure, but I think I’m going to sleep in until 10:30.”
“Why?”
“Well, I made brownies and watched Mad Men last night and will probably want to sleep in a bit.”

Seriously: This is the culture. Minus the Mad Men. Here the show of choice is ‘Eva’: A telenovela about an undercover witness who is a man dressing as a woman. It’s incredibly popular and one of the funniest things I’ve watched in a long time. In the last episode someone walked in on Eva changing and realized she was wearing boxers. OOPS!

After hiking the waterfall this past weekend, we helped to paint the boys’ home. Apparently it was originally going to be a home for girls, and the colors were very girly. So we used a lot of blues, yellows and oranges. It’s beautiful! I helped with the orange if you can tell from the paint all over me.

Also Kate (my housemate) told our host family yesterday that she loved pasteles de pina. (Little fried pastries with pineapple-y sauce inside.) So naturally we had a whole bucket of them for dinner that night. A bucket. And that was dinner. Was I complaining? Not really. Will I balloon in size? I sure hope not. Soccer, anyone?