¡hola todingos! hello everyone!
espero que todos esten bien y que esten muy sanos. i hope that you are all doing well and that you are very healthy. primero quiero decirles que yo estoy muy bien, muy contenta, y no estoy enferma. first i just want to tell you all that i am very well, very happy, and i am NOT sick.
next, i just want to answer a common question. many of you are wondering why i always include a lot of spanish at the beginning of my emails. it is not because i have forgotten english, it is because i also send these email updates to the cousins in argentina. i like to give them something that they can easily read without having to decipher the meaning of my words using a translation program.
well, i bet you all are excited to see another edition of "news from the pook" as i fondly refer to these updates as. so, here we go!
right now i am in the town of concepcion. some of you may recognize the name "concepcion" from previous emails. this is the town where my training class and i put on a teacher workshop during our technical training trip back in july. today i am here because i am visiting my friend laura, this is her site. concepcion is part of the jesuit mission circuit, which means it has a lot of tourism to see the big church. concepcion is also home to a community of mennonites...and we know what that means...doughnuts! yes, the mennonites make wonderful doughnuts. concepcion is very different from my site, el puquio. concepcion has over 10 schools, 24 hour electricity, safe drinking water (no boiling or filtering required), restaurants, hot showers, and best of all...ice cream! compared to my living conditions, concepcion is like a 5 star hotel, complete with continental breakfast and pool.....and ice cream.
i arrived here yesterday with my boss, wendy. wendy had driven out with her assistant, katie, to visit me at my site in order to sign some paperwork and meet with my work partners and i. then she kindly offered to give me a ride into concepcion, where she was headed to visit my friend laura in order to have a meeting with laura´s work partner. i of course accepted the offer...which means i got to ride in the peace corps owned SUV. that´s right, a fancy SUV with air conditioning and everything! it even has a CD player. i got spoiled indeed. the air conditioning felt like the north pole compared to the weather i have been experiencing in el puquio. for the past few weeks it has hit the mid 90´s almost every day....but its ok, i am getting used to sweating profusely at all times and sleeping almost naked hahaha.
so let me give you all a summary of what has been going on down here in the southern hemisphere. since you last heard from me i have not left my site until yesterday. i have been spending my time in a variety of activities, including the usual english teaching.
i have also been starting to work with the kindergarten class. let me tell you about those little crazy dudes...
so kindergarten in el puquio is very different from kindergarten in the states. in the pook it is a 2 year program for 4 and 5 year olds. there is one teacher, profesora lorenza, and about 30 energetic little kids. the classroom basically empty. there are only a few tables and chairs...no pretty colors, no toys, no games, no crayons, no puzzles, no books...nothing. the children are expected to bring a pencil and notebook everyday to class and to sit in chairs and copy things from the blackboard. of course, that is not what happens. they are out of their seats all the time, running around, crying, screaming, hitting, kicking, name calling, and nose picking. the teacher has her hands full. the truth is that there are really only 20 children officially inscribed in the class, but then there is a group of younger children (between 2-4 years old), who show up for class with their older siblings. the parents of these children are not around, they go work in the mines or in the fields all day. so these little ones have no where else to go but to school. it puts an extra burden on the teacher, and really disturbs the learning of the other children. the teacher is aware of the school´s lack of ability to provide materials and experiences for young children, and trys her best to implement dynamic learning activties and games, but she has trouble keeping their attention. she has asked me to help her find ways to keep the childrens attention, help them learn, and create materials for the children to work with while they are at school. so i have been working on this problem. i have been preparing stories, animal cut outs, and songs to share with them. i spend a couple hours with them a few afternoons a week. the teacher basically has me take over the class for her so that she can observe the attention keeping techniques i use and so that she can get ideas for how to read stories better and how to create learning activities at low cost and with locally available materials. this summer we plan on getting together and working on producing more lesson plans, materials and activities to use next year, because this school year is over the first week of november and there is not much time to get anything big started. i am looking forward to working with her, because i feel like she is really interested in learning new things and implementing new ideas in her classroom. the children in her class who are supposed to be moving to the first grade are very far behind where bolivian curriculum says they should be. they do not even know the basics very well, like numbers, shapes and colors. it really makes me sad to see that, so that motivates me even more to continue to work with them. since i studied early childhood education this is an area that i am extremely passionate about.
i continue to work with the high school english teacher, who is my work partner, profesor pedro. since there is less than a month left before school gets out we have decided to not prepare any new lessons. i explained that i think it is more important that we make sure that all of the students have actually learned the material and vocabulary we have introduced in the past few months. plus, the end of the school year means that the school exposition is coming up. at the end of the school year the teachers have to prepare the students for a final exposition of all that they learned during the school year. the local fathers are invited to the school and given lists of the curriculum used in every grade. the fathers then have the opportunity to quiz each group of students on anything they should have learned during the past school year. that means that the students must be on top of their game and ready for anything. the students must also prepare individual projects and presenations in math, science, or language. i guess this exposition is the community´s way of evaluating the quality of education their children are recieving and their way of judging the teachers. so it is a pretty big deal and the teachers all get nervous. profesor pedro wants me to help the students prepare a skit in to demonstrate the students knowledge of english. i am really not too worried about the students performance, if they mess up i am going to be the only one who knows anyways...since the local fathers do not speak english haha. i am sure they will do fine anyways, most of the kids are pretty interested in english and have actually learned quite a bit in the past few months.
other than working in the school i am currently trying to find a way to start working on nutrition and cooking. i am hoping to find a group of women to work with me on the planning so that it can be the community´s project, not just a "peace corps" project. that way they will be able to feel proud of themselves and be more apt to attend events, meetings, and workshops. my friend, doña maria, is very interested in working with me. she has even offered to let me use her kitchen to hold cooking classes if i would like. i think i have talked about doña maria before, she owns a small store from which she sells the basic goods, like rice, toilet paper, crackers, and sometimes tomatoes and onions. well, speaking of doña maria and her tomatoes...let me tell you a funny little story.
for several weeks in el puquio there was not much food in general, no eggs, no flour...not to mention no tomatoes. the trucks that are supposed to bring in the goods for the few little stores did not come in because there was a storage of diesel to fill up the trucks with in order to make the trip out to the jungle. needless to say, the people were getting a little bit angry... and hungry. so, one afternoon i was sitting at doña maria´s store with her talking. she was getting worried because she had very little left in her store to sell. i felt really bad, because i did not have any way of helping her resolve her problem. just then, the micro bus pulls into town. i watch it go by and notice there is a crate of tomatoes and a few boxes on top of micro. i say to doña maria, "hey, did you ask someone to bring in tomatoes from santa cruz?". she says, "yes, i did send money with the driver to bring me me some vegetables and soda". and i say, "well i think they are here" and pointed to the bus. she got very excited. then, because her son was off working at the mine, i offered to go get her goods from the bus stop for her. doña maria is in a wheel chair and unable to leave her house with out a lot of assistance, let alone push a wheel barrow full of goods. so i take the wheel barrow and walk across town to the bus stop. and i ask for doña maria´s goods. first i got the tomatoes...and i pushed them across town to doña maria´s house. then i went back and brought 4 cases of soda. and then...i went back...and picked up 4 cases of beer! haha. that´s right. imagine beth meray pushing a wheel barrow full of beer across town. what could be more hilarious than the crazy white gringa girl pushing a wheel barrow? why a crazy white gringa girl pushing a wheel barrow full of beer of course! so for those of you who know me quite well, i am sure that you can appreciate the image of me pushing a big old rusty wheel barrow full of beer across the plaza in the middle of the day. sadly, there are no photos to document it. but i am sure it was a sight to see. and of course doña maria was very appreciative of my services, and offered me a nice dusty can of warm beer...which i declined politely. and then she offered me some tomatoes and a can of warm soda, which i ethusiastically accepted. i figured a can of soda would taste good, even if it was warm. but oh was i severely mistaken. the soda tasted like warm liquified rotten corn mixed with stomach acid. imagine that, yum. i choked it down anyways, to be polite...but i will never again drink the bolivian soda that comes in a green can. i have learned my lesson. and to end on a happy note, the tomatoes were delicious.
hmm...what else is new. i have been getting to know more of the local children. this is because i have introduced them to the jump rope. for the past week or so i have been jumping rope every afternoon, and sometimes in the morning, with the children i live with and their friends. it is a lot of fun. my clothesline has become the main attraction for the children of puquio. although i have no where to hang my wet clothes, the children of puquio now have a new game to play. they come from near and far to jump and listen to the crazy gringa sing silly songs in english. we have a lot of fun. i have been teaching them to count in english so that we can count their jumps. they really enjoy it. i have also been taking the opportunity to work on mathematics through jump roping. i let the children write down how many jumps they each did on a piece of paper, and then we add up how many jumps they did all together combined. it helps them learn to add and to work as a team to reach a goal. they have some much fun they do not even realize that they are learning. in the near future i plan to host a jump rope competition or a jump-a-thon. some of the kids are already getting really good. one little boy was able to do 97 jumps in a row without stopping, that is pretty impressive for a 7 year old.
big news, beth has a pet parrot! that´s right, a real live genuine green jungle parrot. well, ok it is not my parrot, it is a family pet. my 16 year old host brother noel climbed a tree and captured it. at first i felt really bad for the parrot, being swiped up out of his nest and all. but he seems to be adjusting well to living with people. his wings are clipped so he can not fly away, but at this point i am not sure if he would want to. he gets the royal treatment from me. i always talk to him and give him lots of food. his current diet has been apples and instant oatmeal. i am told that flocks of wild parrots eat and destroy corn fields, so i am going to try to get our parrot some corn when i go into the city. i have constructed him a little house wand perch using sticks, yarn, and a cardboard box. he seems to like it. having a parrot around makes me happy. i like that he already voluntarily climbs onto my finger and that he squawks back at me when i speak. it reminds me of the pet birds my grandma used to have and my old pet cockatail sunflower.
oh, and i am not sure if i mentioned my other pet before. well, okay...not exactly a pet. let me explain. there is currently a foot long lizard living in my room. i can not catch him, and i do not know how he got in...but he is there. and he is very fast. no worries though, he does not bite. he just eats bugs...which is a good thing. i have not seen a single tarantula in my room since he arrived. haha. i guess having 1 lizard in my room is better than having a nest full of baby tarantula spiders right?
more news, i think i have set the world record for least water used to bathe. we have been having a problem with our water system in el puquio. the problem is that the man who is supposed to run the motor to pump the water out of the river and up into the tank gets drunk alot...which means he forgets to do it. and for some reason, no one else seems to know how to do his job. and because of this, there have been several days when we did not have water. i had to use my water very sparingly, because i had no idea when there would be water in the tank again. so i decided to see how much water is really required to bathe. and the answer is.....less than 2 liters. i filled up a 2 liter pop bottle and was able to wash my hair and body without using it all up. i thought it was impressive. i am not sure how clean i really was...but you have to consider the fact that i am almost never really clean. i mean, how can i call myself clean if i bathe with water so dirty that i must boil and filter it in order to be able to drink it? i am a dirty smelly sweaty person, and i am ok with it haha. oh and for those of you wondering...nope...have not shaved the legs recently. all you ladies should give it a try...not shaving your legs is a liberating experience hahaha.
ok, well that is all i have for my update today. perhaps i will have a story or 2 more to write tomorow if i get a chance. if not, you will all hear from me again at the end of the month when i go into the city of santa cruz. i hope you have enjoyed this edition of "news from the pook".
know that i am always thinking about you guys. i love and miss you all. don´t worry about me, i am doing fine. i am truly "viviendo el sueño" ..."living the dream". so all of you up there in the northern hemisphere, take care and keep in touch. i love hearing from you guys. and thanks for reading my super long emails haha.
sending hugs and lots of love.
paz, love, and hugs, beth in the pook
keep rockin the free world
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment