Woke up Saturday morning, made myself some oatmeal, packed up my backpack, and headed down to the health post. Natalia and I had decided to try and get a bunch of surveys done. I surveyed one of the store owners, and then we got a bunch of women who had dropped off their milk at the cheese house to come down to the health post. Before we headed back, the President of the RONDA for Iraca Central walked by and yelled to Natalia that his daughter had a fever and he needed someone to see her. I was so excited! I had been hoping to meet this guy for ages. The RONDA is basically the town council, and he’s the President. It’s incredibly important that I create a working relationship with them, because if done right, they could be a great resource and support for me, and I’m undoubtedly going to need their help executing projects. Natalia and I headed back to the health post, and while Natalia saw to another patient before him, I chatted with him about my work, what I was doing here and hoped to do, and also that I wanted to speak with the authorities in the community to introduce myself and to begin working together. He seemed like a really nice guy, though that doesn’t mean that things won’t go sour for a lot of reasons. He could be completely unaccountable, he could be really lazy, or he could suddenly decide to hit on me and make our work relationship impossible. So, my new way of approaching situations like this is to not get to excited about potential, be a bit pessimistic, and then, hopefully, be pleasantly surprised.
He told me that the ronderos, or authorities in town, get together on the 15th every month at 9pm. I asked if I could come. He was very welcoming. It is an incredible opportunity to introduce myself and get to know the authorities in town, establish myself as a professional, begin a working relationship, and check something off my to-do list. I have heard from Barbara that they are all worthless when it comes to helping out, but I’ve always been someone that gives a million chances for others to prove themselves. I’m excited about working with them, and hope the meeting goes well. It will be well outside my comfort zone but it’s important and I’ve got to do it.
I ended up getting 8 encuestas (surveys) done, and only have 4 left before I’m finished and have met my goal and my boss, Emilia’s, goal for me. Really excited about that because I have to have my community diagnostic done by the end of the month before Dahlia comes.
Walked home in the pouring rain and got ready to do one of my ab videos. I put on the shorts I usually wear, and then left my computer to charge for a minute while I checked my email outside on my Kindle. What I didn’t realize was that one of my students, and Mishel’s cousin, Hames, was at my house. Usually no one walks by where I sit to check my email, and I hadn’t thought about the little shorts I was wearing. When Hames said hello to me, I felt like he’d just seen me in my underwear. He kept looking at my legs and I sat there, frozen, trying to decide what to do. I finally got up and went into my room to put pants on. I will never leave my room in those shorts again.
Tried to do my ab video but I’m still so sore from the last time I decided to wait another day. I made myself some hot cocoa with the packets my mom sent, 3/4 a cup of hot water, and some evaporated milk (their regular milk is disgusting, expensive, and goes bad if it isn’t refrigerated). It was actually pretty good!
Curled up in my bed and got to writing blog updates to put up tomorrow when I’m in town.
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