''Puta'' y Natilla

School has started after the summer break here, and the girls at Casa Luz are in an accelerated program so that they will complete 7th grade in four months and 8th grade in another four. Given their ages 16-18, they are a bit behind in the colegio, but it works out.

Yesterday the oldest little girl turned 5 years old, and Isaac called her ''puta'' because she tried to help him put his socks back on. She would have been more offended and I would have reprimanded him more if it hadn't been so funny and misplaced.

At the Rancho Espanol, the spanish school, they held a cooking class. A large group of teenage girls came in to town, and they made tortillas while the older people and I made picadillo de papas y vegetales. I've enjoyed participating in the different classes and activities with the older people, who are usually retirees vacationing and learning basic Spanish. The other day one of the women said very sweetly, ''We learned about pregnancy today'', and I couldn't help laughing.

The past two days I have gotten up at 4:40am to go walking with Johana, the eldest daughter in the house, and Lady, her cousin who lives with her husband in the aparment above the car park out back. We walk for about a full hour while it's still dark and there are less cars, but buses picking up morning commuters still whistle by and there are no sidewalks, so you have to jump to the side of the road.

Something I have noticed as strange here is the great consumption of Natilla, which is a condiment like thing that comes in a little bag and looks like mayonaisse but isn't. My host family puts it on EVERYthing. Rice, beans, meat, bread, plantains, eggs, hot dogs, tortillas...the youngest daughter offered me ice cream the other day and the two flavors were either Coconut, or Natilla. I can best equate it to sour cream though it's a little different, and am not a huge fan.

Tonight is another meeting of the all-women religious group, Tierra Fertil. I better think of something to thank Senor Jesus for...