What's Going On With You???

My Spanish teacher is Angela (pronounced An Hel a).  She is very friendly and speaks to the class in Spanish with a few English words peppered in here and there.  Angela is a phenomenal teacher...she makes learning Spanish fun.

Angela has the blue (Maximo Nivel) shirt on.  Charlotte is my classmate; she is from Australia.  Charlotte quit her job and decided to take time off to travel the world.  Wow!

It was a very interesting day with the kids.  Although there are a number of children in the orphanage...not all of them are interested in learning English.  There are a couple of young boys to whom it was apparent had not seen Black people before.  It should be noted that in the area that these children live...there are no Blacks (at least I didn't see any).  I wasn't surprised when the young boy used the word, "marron" (which means brown) -- I had to ask Angela what this meant.  People who don't know your name, will sometimes call you by description in Costa  Rica.   While this use of the word marron didn't bother me, what did bother me was the fact that the young boy showed me what looked to be a real cell phone.  It wasn't.  It was a cell phone with a picture of a half-gorilla, half-human.   He then looked at me...and pointed at the picture...saying, "esta es" (this is you)...laughing.  Although I wanted to say, esto es....I didn't.  I grabbed the play phone and took it to Don Jose.  Don Jose looked at the picture and apologized to me and demanded that the young boy do the same.  Because the youngster knew that if he didn't apologize, he would no longer be able to come to the orphanage to eat and play.  He begrudgingly said, "lo siento" (I'm sorry) and ran off.

One of the other youngsters (Jeffrey) ran after him.  I noticed that Jeffrey grabbed a pink piece of paper and a pencil.  A few minutes later,  the youngster came back with a picture of me that he drew (see below) as an addendum to his apology.

Jeffrey (the 14 year old) who give the youngster below the pink paper 

The youngster who had drew a picture of me on the paper.  After this incident, Jorge and I became friends.

This is the picture that Jorge drew of me...as an apology.  Jorge does not speak English well...he also doesn't seem to have a desire to learn.