The Fine Art of the Forro (and other happenings)

Back in the U.S., on the first day of school the teacher would say, "you need a binder," or perhaps, "you need a notebook." That would be it. But here, things get really specific. Example: for physics, I need a light blue folder with 50 sheets of graph paper and a 100 sheet graph paper notebook with a light blue paper cover (forro) and a plastic covering over that. School supplies are serious business and there are special stores (papelerías) that cater to your super specific needs.

My host mom's a master at paper covers.

Also, people here don't seem to just write their name on notebooks. I guess that would be too disorderly. They sell special labels for all your supplies and you write your name, grade, subject, and school. There is to be no confusion about who that notebook belongs to. Perhaps this is so important because everyone has to have the same color stuff. Everything gets a label. I've seen students with clear-barreled ballpoint pens and inside the pen is a little slip of paper with their name. Wouldn't want to lose your ballpoint pen!

Color coding is no joke.

Other things that have been going on:

• I think I'm in the process of making some friends. I went to a classmate's birthday celebration on Thursday and there was delicious cake, which I was of course happy about.
• Friday, Ecuador and Colombia had a soccer game. Ecuador lost, a big disappointment to my host father and brother. My sister had friends over and they seemed to not mind the loss because the game gave them an opportunity to paint faces and popcorn. I was more in the latter group.
• Today was the second anniversary of my host dad's father's death. It sounds like it might be a grim occasion, but it wasn't. The whole family went to church, then visited the cemetery. Afterwards we went out to lunch at a family style restaurant and got ice cream. There's a flavor of ice cream (which is often sold in a popsicle form) here called taxo (a fruit) and I am all about it. So about it that I burned my entire tongue from prolonged contact with the cold.
• I taught my host sister to make friendship bracelets. I was worried it would be difficult to explain, but she got it right away and was really excited.
• I think at some point I should make a plan to limit my exposure to English. I'll give myself another week, but then I need to set specific times to avoid non-essential internet and books.
• After two days of gloriously sleeping in, not really looking forward to tomorrow morning.