Central Market and Physical Contact

So, I owe you guys a couple of posts. I've been pretty wiped out with a sinus infection which devolved into a nasty cold, so I've been being lazy. Anyway, here we go!

On Friday, Mom and I set off on a little morning adventure to the central market downtown. We jumped on our bus, number 14. I had a seat for a block or so, but then a mom got on with her little child, so young and healthy (relatively) me jumped up because I'm good at standing! As the bus got stuffed full, I was quickly surrounded by people on all sides. Here, the bus doesn't really ever get "full." They can always fit more. So, you get to be real close to a lot of people. Here, that space bubble doesn't really exist. In the US, if someone is touching your arm on public transit, you scoot over a little, but here people are touching you all over and that's just how it is! (Probably didn't help with the whole sick thing I have going on). My arm got a little tingly from reaching up to the bar to hold onto, but other than that, no problem. We wiggled our way out at our stop and made our way to the main square! From there, we walked to the grocery store to buy me more cookies and then we went onto the central market. Here's a picture of me sitting outside of the market (I look grungy because I didn't feel good, so there)

The central market is generally less touristy than the artisan market that we went to last weekend. This place sells everything- produce, bread, meats, prepared food, clothes, shoes, fabric, and all of the good touristy scarves and key chains and woven things. It's pretty crazy. We got some bread for later, and then hung out in the touristy area, looking at all of the cool things. I really hate when people try to make me buy things, and even when I want to buy things, I hate having to haggle about the price. But, luckily, mom is good at it. So, we got a few fun things! Here's a picture of the market right when you walk in the front entrance

Then, back on the bus, on which we got seats for the whole time, and up to Carmen Alto! We made it to the school around noon, made a quick potato lunch, and then got ready for kidlets. Friday is fun day, so we did a cool art project where they all drew self-portraits with the theme of self-esteem. It was so fun watching them work, but they are so much more worried about drawing than are kids in the US! If you give a kid in the US some colored pencils and some paper, they will typically just draw (unless they were a weird perfectionist sort of kid like me, and then they hate to draw because it never looks like real life...). The kids here though are all perfectionists. With handwriting and drawing, they use the eraser more than they use their pencils! So, it took work to convince some of the little sweeties that we wanted to see their own work, not a perfect drawing. Poor kids, drawing shouldn't be stressful. Here's me trying to council a few kids into starting their drawings and not erasing each time...

After that, we played some, and I got mobbed by my new best friends (see below). At the end of the day, all of the kids are called up one-by-one, and they hug GeGe, get their sandwich and their fruit, and then we get goodbye kisses! Like a lot of the world, they do kiss hello and kiss goodbye here, so I get a good 50+ kisses a day. It's the best. Between that and the lack of physical bubble, I'm meeting my quota for physical contact. The US is bad at that. Being close to people is nice sometimes. Especially when they're as sweet as all of these little pumpkins!