We had an explosive start to the school year today!  The day started with Tom working on  class prep and me washing laundry.  Then I headed over to the Guarderia at 8:30am to help for the second day in the baby room (6 months to walking basically).  Today we had 8!  We only have 5 cribs, a bed and one full-time worker so that’s pretty overwhelming for us.  There was never a time when a baby wasn’t screaming.  We just rotated through giving bottles, rocking babies to sleep and changing diapers -many of which contained explosive diarrhea, which meant a bath and clothes change too.  And, 24 hrs after changing my first diarrhea diaper yesterday I too have that pleasure.  At 12:00 Tom showed up ready to eat lunch but I stayed with the babies until 12:30 as I was trying to get the diarrhea-baths under control (what can I say, I feel their pain).  Tom had a frustrating morning and so he took our food back and ate lunch.  Turns out, he found out the day classes start that he’s teaching 2 sections of his class!  Which means 2 more hours a day he can’t be writing course material so he was understandably perturbed.  Depending upon enrollment sections may be merged however, the bigger point is just that that is so Bolivia to not bother to tell him that there were two sections scheduled…TIB.

After lunch Tom got ready to teach his first section and I headed over to the chaos that is the first day at a 250-student Kindergarten!  Oh buddy.  I started by rushing around helping the teachers with last minute preparations when the group of girls from the Hogar flagged me down.  Three older girls had brought over the 10 children attending Kinder from the Hogar this year and asked me to stay with the girls because they needed to run an errand.  I agreed, not really thinking it through but they seemed in a hurry to leave.   Now I was in charge of 9 girls, 1 boy and I didn’t even know all of their names.  I herded them around with all the other parents with their scanty 1 or 2 children- humph!  But when the teachers started calling names to sort the children into classrooms things went south.  They were calling names last-name first and I didn’t know any of the girl’s last names and they were not forth-coming with providing them, particularly the 4 year olds.   So as I was attempting to listen to the names and remember in my head 10 different new names to listen for, 2 girls wander off (and then there were 8).  A lady comes and tells me that one of the girls went to the bathroom.  I find Saray (4) hiding behind a flowerpot and she’s had an explosive diarrhea event all over her dress!   Well I have no choice but to leave the flock to care for the one, so I tell the other 7 to stay together and take Saray and Sandra D. with me to the Guarderia next door.  There I shower-off Saray and Madre Inez rummages around and finds some new clothes  for her to wear.   With clean clothes we go back over (names still being called) hoping to find the group of 7 still intact.  They are, plus the other wanderer so I have 10 again when two go to the bathroom, and I have 8.   I recognize a few names and so I take one girl at a time up to try to match her with her teacher, leaving the others.  It was a losing battle though.  We ended up calling in the Prof. from the Hogar who has a list of the girls’ last names (and is furious about the other girls not staying, as is Madre Clara and I’m kind of caught in the middle).   We finally did get them all sorted out, the girls who left got yelled at and everything ended okay.

I got home in time to eat grilled cheese with Tom before he headed off to teach his second section.  We have cheddar cheese right now which is very exciting and we managed to find some sliced bread also!  It’s the little things….   We’re both home now and happy to have lived this day but also happy to put it behind us.