August 24, 2011

Wednesday August 24, 2011 2:22 p.m.

 

New experiences today. Pink eye plus earthquake equals an awesome Wednesday so far and it’s only 2:30 in the afternoon. I must say…it’s not a terrible pink eye…and it wasn’t a bad earthquake. It’s been a great day. All the connections made today have been positive ones. We first stopped at a couple schools. The first being an elementary and the second being a high school. We also stopped at an institute full of nice classrooms and decent technology but lacking students. I’m sure the excess of empty classrooms will come in handy pretty soon when the sessions and chats start. For now they are just mainly abandoned rooms; some filled with sewing machines, others with audio headsets and others with half torn apart computers that seemed to have been abandoned.

The earthquake happened when I was up on the fourth floor of the final school we visited this afternoon. I was actually kind of shadowing my community partner as she was part of the committee observing the classrooms as the children adorably presented the rooms to us. This consisted of the “magic words,” “classroom rules” and more. After cycling through the 10 or so classrooms we sat down and spoke with the director. The great part about this was that on Friday I’ll be judging some events at the school put on by the students. This cool little ditty will be going down on Friday so hopefully tomorrow I’ll figure out what it’s all about. My community partner and I were joking that my pink eye is good luck and I should have one every day. I don’t mind it so much now other than the nastiness of the nature of it but last night it was pretty strange when I woke up a few times with my eye glued shut. I also completed my mission of seeing all the ruins in Zaña today by stopping by la Merced which was located right by the Institute we visited. I think later today before dinner and my youth group at 8 I’ll visit the river once again…after this accidental nap I’m about to take her while listening to super chill Sigur Rós music.

Last night I was up chatting with the director of the musical group after their practice until about 1 a.m. He really wants to get me involved in one of the music group and wants me to get an electric guitar. I told him as much as I want to I’ll have to see how the decision pans out between dresser and desk versus electric guitar. The guitar very well may win…we shall see. I told him if I get involved I’ll have to do some teaching to the muchachos as well as far as putting a sombrero on their little mariachis goes and whatnot. He thought that was pretty funny…but seriously we can’t just be playing the whole time. J We did mill over the idea of doing 80s rock covers in the style of African/latino orchestra.

Other than that yesterday was pretty intense in the morning with meeting people and whatnot but more chill in the afternoon. I’m really hoping to get done with most of the introductory stuff this week. Tonight I have the youth group and tomorrow the previous volunteer, Nicole is coming over to help out the next couple days with “Parents’ School” sessions for this month. These consist of capacitating the parents with topics such as health, leadership and future careers for their children. So some of the actual work/progress is starting tonight and I plan on easing in. For now my main focus is (or will be) actually on the community diagnostic. I’m pretty sure I explained what this is and my eyes are falling shut so you may have to refer to the previous post to see.

My gringa sister Nicole is also going to stick around for the mega cultural event of Zaña that will take place this weekend. I’m glad I’ll be here. Sounds like a lot of dancing, eating and watching typical music and dance. I’ll be there. I’ll keep you all updated on this awesome adventure. Love!!!