The laughing sweaty children of El Trapiche reminded me every day since arrival in Managua, Nicaragua why I quit soccer when I was seven. Before I could even think about scoring a goal, I felt a warm familiar body wrap tightly around my leg. I looked down, saw Mario tugging at my trousers and reaching for the ukulele I carried on my back. He officially cracked the code of my weak defense. Forget soccer; I should have stuck to playing music in the first place.
My daily trips to the school to the school were rewarded with greetings of fourteen gleaming students, dancing and playing air guitar. Sprinting uphill to meet them, I replied with my best Hendrix impression. After the children mastered a few basic chords, we assembled our band rapidly. …show more content…
The students huddled around me, wrestling over the pen and searching for a good space on the dark mahogany to scribble their names. The autograph signing left my ukulele painted with the names, drawings, and loving words of the El Trapiche community.
Six-year-old Mario made his way to the front of the crowd with a wistful, yet anxious look to his face. He had never learned to write his name, I reached out my arm and asked him to spell out his name for me. I used the black marker to write the five letters in large script across my forearm, and asked him if he could copy the shapes onto my ukulele exactly as I had drawn them.
Mario drafted his letters beautifully and quickly kissed my cheek out of excitement. From that day forth, Mario and I worked together practicing the specific “letter shapes” that made up his name. It struck me that Mario was “crushing” on his new language teacher. Pushing our “romantic relationship” at an impressive rate, he explained that every married couple must have a “ring” and that he was going to give me mine. I returned to my youth hostel that evening flaunting my eight freshly drawn askewed “gatos del amor” (love cats) racing up my arms and legs that Mario had bestowed upon me. I was unsure of how my mother was going to respond to my returning home as a
My daily trips to the school to the school were rewarded with greetings of fourteen gleaming students, dancing and playing air guitar. Sprinting uphill to meet them, I replied with my best Hendrix impression. After the children mastered a few basic chords, we assembled our band rapidly. …show more content…
The students huddled around me, wrestling over the pen and searching for a good space on the dark mahogany to scribble their names. The autograph signing left my ukulele painted with the names, drawings, and loving words of the El Trapiche community.
Six-year-old Mario made his way to the front of the crowd with a wistful, yet anxious look to his face. He had never learned to write his name, I reached out my arm and asked him to spell out his name for me. I used the black marker to write the five letters in large script across my forearm, and asked him if he could copy the shapes onto my ukulele exactly as I had drawn them.
Mario drafted his letters beautifully and quickly kissed my cheek out of excitement. From that day forth, Mario and I worked together practicing the specific “letter shapes” that made up his name. It struck me that Mario was “crushing” on his new language teacher. Pushing our “romantic relationship” at an impressive rate, he explained that every married couple must have a “ring” and that he was going to give me mine. I returned to my youth hostel that evening flaunting my eight freshly drawn askewed “gatos del amor” (love cats) racing up my arms and legs that Mario had bestowed upon me. I was unsure of how my mother was going to respond to my returning home as a