Another Good Day at La Sisla

Sometimes I absolutely love my job.

The students at the Sisla are astonishingly excited when we have class together, sometimes cheering as I enter the room if they didn't know I would be with them that day, or asking if I will return next year and making a pouty face when I answer. Today one class asked me to bring my parents back with me and move to Sonseca.

As I walk through swarming and swirling adolescent currents pouring down the hallways they call my name and ask how I am even though they don't understand the answer past my smile. If I leave one building to walk to another they poke their heads out of windows and yell to me in spite of the inevitable reprimand that follows from their teachers. I am slightly embarrassed when I am talking to another professor and the students interrupt us to greet me excitedly. . .and say nothing to the other teacher (who I happen to assist in teaching these exact students).

One day I was taking over a class for a sick teacher and needed to begin by going over a full page of homework. I was going to have each student answer one question to give them all a chance to practice, and this would have taken up much of the period. Instead a girl stood up and read the entire sheet as the rest of the class hurriedly checked answers and scribbled over incorrect ones. She finished in record time, sat down, and said, "Let's talk." They asked me questions for the rest of the period, and we all laughed very much.

The victory of the day came when Maria made a joke and referred to the act of urination as going "whiz whiz."

Yes, things are looking up.