Written by Mr. Rucker

Day Three – Knowledge of Self and Others

OK, so I’m admittedly not el rey de salsa fuego!  In fact, for me the closest thing to fuego in my salsa experience is that blistering sense of brimstone and eternity.  With that said, amigos y amigas, you can imagine Mr. Robot Rucker’s level of anxiety as dinner wound down and the salsa satan showed up (on time).  Should I slip out of the hotel to buy some bottled water?  Could I pretend to get locked in el banyo?  Plead heat stroke from our day of service work in La Carpio? 

Wait…La Carpiol …

The students were amazing all day.  No complaints.  Nada.  I watched “my” junior students work harder for that community than I even imagined possible, let alone likely.   The graduated seniors were right there too, sweating and shoveling, befriending the children and using all the Spanish they had.  The students were like worker ants lifting many times their own body weight at the end of a shovel, in a bucket of gravel, or a wheelbarrow of fresh cement.  The only thing teachers had to force them to do was hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

… Certainly, I could grace them with my graceless salsa fuego. “Chicky, chicky,” Charter High students and graduates.  You awed me with your enthusiasm and other-worldly work!  Let’s do it again tomorrow (without the salsa).