blue ribbon

was the name of the color we painted the school today. it was the blue you'd expect, with a name like that, the blue of plastic detergent buckets, old station wagons, superman's bodysuit. ironically, we were painting over a mural left by a group of high school students from san francisco, who came with heart but no plan, apparently. the result was a mess of sloppily painted names circling a picture of the golden gate bridge. i sound heartless, but even this tiny school in the poorest outskirts of granada wanted it gone. so we painted over it, one blue ribbon brush stroke at a time.

i painted with oliver, adrian and blake. adrian and blake are students at the casa xalteva, a language school where a friend of mine named jose luis is director and spanish instructor. oliver was a student and is now, a year later, kind of a volunteer/employee/hanger-on. it's a non-profit and they do trips around granada and run programs for the gaggle of kids that hang out there all day. i'm looking over at oliver right now, simply covered in children pulling on him, begging for a game of catch, a piggy back ride, a pillow fight.

this place makes its money on spanish classes for travelers. people come for a week at a time and can opt to take trips and dance classes in addition to the spanish. there are eight instructors, young and energetic. "thank goodness you're here!" they laughed. "you can tell us what everyone is saying about us in english!"

i borrowed a bike today, a 75-pound green schwinn that would be the envy of any san francisco hipster, and rode it out to the school, over a rutted little camino that stretched into a neighborhood of tin covered shacks, hogs and goats and skin-and-bones horses sharing space with trickles of sewage and barefoot kids. we painted the school with four little boys looking over our shoulders, ringing the school bell through the broken window.

i looked inside the school and found bare, clean classrooms. thirty desks and a white board, a few handwritten posters.

VALORES A PRACTICAR: Amor Respeto Paciencia Responsabilidad.

i'd like the challenge of that classroom. clean slate. how to teach with nothing but creativity and words. it must be so hard, for the kids and the teachers.


oliver is now reading "in cold blood" to the pile of kids. they're listening raptly.

casa xalteva