My answers to both questions were changed today.
My day started with a 12 year-old girl surprising me by stating that she was a big fan of a Korean pop group “Super Junior”. We were at the Children Rights Workshop in the Public Library held by four participants, who taught children about the Children Rights Charter.
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| Children Rights Workshop |
On the bus from the library to the school where we hold most of the activities, two participants volunteered to teach me to pronounce the Spanish “rr”, which was one of the things that I had been struggling with since my first Spanish lesson despite all the practice. It was especially frustrating when some classmates seemed to have been born with the ability to do so, and the teachers kept saying that practicing is the only key. Like a lot of people, I was not entirely convinced.
After 20 minutes of diagram drawing, practicing and tips sharing, I was about to give up when the two girls screamed and hugged the ecstatic me despite all the stares and glares on the bus at the moment when I finally felt the vibration of my tongue for the very first time in my life. I still cannot pronounce every word with “rr” perfectly, but this was a step big enough to make my day. I spent all my free time in the rest of the day attempting to say words like “perro” and “ferrocarril”.
At the Radio-making Creative Workshop, the six participants were practically on “autopilot” after all our talking in the last 3 days. They had decided the theme of the radio programme to be “Diversity” and had their working plans ready. In fact, I was amazed and proud to be told earlier this morning that the group got up before 5am to meet and discuss about the radio programme. All I had to do was to set up my computer for them to do research on the Internet, follow them to interviews, answer questions when I was needed and read my book when I was not. The schedule is still tight and I am not sure as to whether we could finish the work by the last Creative Workshop on Saturday, but I am optimistic that the product will be impressive.
We finished the day with “fun but slightly violent games”, according to another facilitator, which ended just as thunder and heavy rain broke out. We went into “familias”, sharing thoughts and comments about out experiences today and “dulce de leche” made by one of the facilitators in a Mexican Candy-Making Workshop in the community service session in the morning.
When we walked out of the classroom and towards the bus, I found that everyone was looking at the sky.
Here I must recount a seemingly unrelated fact: a scene in a movie titled "Echoes of the Rainbow" (2010, Hong Kong) showed one of the lead characters telling his girlfriend there are times when “double rainbows” appear in the sky. I thought it was either a made-up fact to “wow” the girlfriend in the movie, or the directors´ creative imagination.
But that was precisely what I saw in the sky today. Two almost-perfect arcs with one having reversed colours, an “arcoíris doble”.
Amazed and awestruck, I could only gape and listen to a Mexican facilitator who calmly told me that it is perfectly normal in New Mexico—in fact, it is a norm rather than an exception. Five minutes on Wikipedia showed that rainbows always appear in pairs everywhere, though it is not always possible to see the second one. Immediately it seemed so stupid to have even doubted the existence of the phenomenon.
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| Double rainbow |
I did not believe in double rainbows, but today one appeared. I was not convinced that I would ever manage to do pronounce “rr”, but this evening I surprised myself by managing to pronounce “perro” perfectly once at dinner, according to a Mexican facilitator.
I wonder what other amazing things await in the next two weeks?
Sonia Hoi Ching Cheung (Hong Kong, AC 10-12)
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