Markers, Blokus, and Picture Books

Yesterday was the first official day of programs for Summer Session Two (ss2 from here on out).

The day started early; 7:30am found half the group prepping for language school at the house and the other half out at Christian's with Eliah working on the community garden project. After lunch we split again; Priya, Tim, Mari, Michael, Taylor and Sarah headed out to the library to teach English class, play ping-pong in the teen center, and read with the 35+ kids who showed up, while Meghan, Scott, Ryan and Fiona joined Jocelyn in kicking off another 3-week English class in San Juan, our neighboring community. Follow that with women's exercise, family dinner, board games at the dining room table, and Spanish homework, once we actually took a breath, stretched our bones and realized how exhausted we were, it was already 11:30pm... summer around here is anything but dull!

(Michael reads with Issac Suntaxi Suntaxi (seriously that's his name, amazing))

(Priya and Selena put some important details on their cat drawing)

(Mari and Priscilla contemplate their next moves in Blokus)

(Selena and Wendy crack me and Michael up)

(Sarah and Taylor lead English class)

(Tim and Sarah excite the kids with an English memory game)

Los Muchachos Dulces

(Today's guest blog comes from Jocelyn, who as I type is most likely flying through the rainforest with all the summer volunteers on the ziplines out in Mindo!)

"After hosting such amazing volunteer groups during spring break season, all of us here at MPIE have been eagerly awaiting our newest arrivals- volunteers from all across the U.S. (and one from Canada!) who will participate in a variety of programs and projects over the course of a month this summer. It is without hesitation that I inform our readers of the fact that we have a pretty sweet group of volunteers here right now, and so far they have done a fantastic job with the tasks they’ve been handed. One of the summer volunteer projects is the planning and teaching of a 3-week intensive English language class for middle-school aged kids in a barrio close to our house. The group in charge of this project have aptly, and enthusiastically, named themselves “Los Muchachos Dulces” (The Sweet Kids), and consequently named me, their fearless leader, “Capitan Dulce”, a title I hold with pride.

We are only 4 days into the program, and “Los Muchachos” are already rocking each class like seasoned professionals. For Rebekah, Priya, Patrick, Maria, and Jeremy, their days look a little something like this:

8am- breakfast (hovering over the flapjack-flipping PD for a second helping or trying to get Perry to poach another egg)

8:30- 11:30am- Spanish class with professors from Quito

11:30- 1:45- lunch, go into town, print worksheets and make copies

1:45pm- toss around the pigskin, head to the bus

2:30-5:30pm- teach English class

6pm- go for a jog as the sun sets (they are hard core)

7:30pm- family style dinner with all the volunteers and PD’s

8:30- 10pm- lesson plan

10pm- read/hang out by the fire on the roof/climb over to the apartment

As you can see, they’ve got a lot on their plate and are handling it beautifully. The first day of class, “Los Muchachos” got their feet wet when 14 kids from the barrio registered in the class, but it was on day two, as 30 children showed up with their notebooks, grinning and ready for 3 hours of English instruction, that they really realized what they had gotten themselves into.

Today’s lesson was one of adjective vocabulary, and since Los Muchachos Dulces had everything completely under control, I sat back and watched as 30 Ecuadorian children in small groups fervently hung onto every word that came out of their Profe’s mouths. The individual teaching styles range from Rebekah acting out adjectives like “tall”, “short”, “fat”, and “skinny” in exaggerated motions, to Patrick rewarding his students with exploding handshakes every time they got a word right. With so many students, the ability levels span a wide spectrum; so personal attention and games are key to keeping each child interested in the daily lesson. Then there are the students who can’t help but stand out among the crowd. For example, my favorite kid, Erick, is a cheeky smart-alec who bugs me constantly for new English vocabulary that he uses to show off for the girls in his group (demonstrating his all encompassing foreign language knowledge).

With two weeks left of the San Juan English class, I can’t wait to see what fun and creative activities Los Muchachos Dulces will think of next. Whatever they are, I know the students will love them, and cherish the time spent with the volunteers to whom they already look up as role models and new friends. It will be a sad day for teachers and students alike when summer ends and we all part ways, but until then, let the exploding handshakes and impromptu vocabulary lessons live on!

~Jocelyn"

(The students break up into their various groups in the Casa Barrial)

(Patrick gets an excited response to a vocab question)

(Rebekah uses flashcards to quiz her group)

(Maria plays a memory game with her posse of girls)

In Use

As promised, some pictures of the new space in action. Taken by the wonderful Jocelyn Lancaster; thanks girl!

(Rules of the kid's corner, and the hand prints of my art students)

(the shelves and work desk in our office)

(color-filled stacks, and a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains)

(Mark mans the front desk...can you spot Dana?)


(hard at work)

(Puzzles and books and homework, oh my)


(English class in the light-filled studio)

How do you say...fork?

It's late, I have Christian's in the early morning (6am wake up call is coming all too soon), and the creative writing juices have all but dried out for today...but, that said, I couldn't NOT post a little something to shout out to our darling newbie (she'll always be our newbie, even 5 months in) Dana, for successfully kicking-off our 4th program of 2009: Children's English!

With 14 little students (none of whom could remember the word "fork" in today's placement test...it's a tricky one), she has her work cut out for her, and yet we all know the class couldn't be in more capable hands. They have all already bonded to her and Jos in the first 45 minutes class...they're going to have quite the following of English speaking 10 year olds come March :)

And coming tomorrow: Children's Art!

Goodnight.
Holly

(Carlos Eduardo and Cynthia take turns reading Harry Potter while listening to the High School Musical soundtracks in the cave...life is good.)

You just never know.

This is the third month we've been partnering with Christian, an up and coming community leader, on conversational classes with his English students. His courses consist of two parts: theoretical instruction and conversation, but as he is a native Ecuadorian, he initially described his conversational classes as problematically "reinforcing poor English pronunciation". Enter Manna Project, which just so happens to be chalk full of native English speakers whose only pronunciation issues surface when certain Texans insist on calling "Jalapeños" "Jaal-op-in-yos" or "Quesadillas" "Ques-a-dillll-ahhs"...ahem Duncan Fulton.

Three times a week, 2 of us head over to Christian's home and attempt to hold purely English conversations with his slightly bewildered students. It is pretty comical hearing one another speaking as articulately and slowly as possible, only to be greeted by the big eyes and partially open mouths of our students. They're all pretty driven to learn, though, and have made some impressive progress since we first met them in November.

This morning marked our first class post-December break, and Jocelyn and I slumped around the kitchen at 6:30am in a daze (we're the lucky ones blessed with the Tuesday 8-10am slot), talking ourselves into the first bus ride of 2009. When we arrived at Christians, there were no students, but there were 4 little piglets to check up on, one mama pig who, according to Christian, "needs a man pig soon", a new type of Ecuadorian beer to try (at 8:30am), to which Christian would not take "no thank you" as an aswer, and English dialogues to write and record onto his computer. Eventually a "man pig" did show up, and a conjugal visit between pigs...happened...while Jos and I tried our best to focus on the dialogue we were writing about Christmas vacation. It was not easy to do.

And just think, all this happened before 10 in the morning. It's going to be a good Tuesday.
Oh Ecuador, how we've missed you.

Holly

(four little piglets!)


(our working table)

Where are the keys?

Monday: the abrupt start to every working person's week. Granted, I live in the Ecuadorian Andes and get to call playing with kids, painting stars, teaching English and working out for an hour 'work', but I digress. Today's Monday began abruptly at 7:50am with Mark banging on my bedroom door as a reminder that our weekly meeting starts at 8, and would I please actually wake up this time instead of sleep-sitting through the meeting? Right. Check. Cold water on the face.

After our morning meeting I sat down to the task of finishing the monthly update for November. And yes, I know that it's being sent out later and later every month, I'm WORKING ON IT, OK. After wrestling with the google group for about an hour (it still won't let me add everyone onto the list, something about "spamming 700 people" and "am I sure they're all my contacts" and "requests pending"...if one of my best friends in the whole world didn't work for Google I would be using a few choice words about now), I finally got the update sent out and posted on our blogger site (found here). At this point it was closing in on 1 o'clock; time for a quick bite of leftovers before bussing out to Apoyo Escolar to get down to some homework...only to find out that half of our kids have Monday through Thursday off from school. As Santiago said "No tengo debers, profe!! QUIERO JUGAR!!" (I don't have homework, professor! I WANT TO PLAY!!")...great.

After Apoyo it was time for a few minutes chillin' in 'la cueva' and then off to English and Exercise class. Upon arriving at the church where we host these programs, however, we found out that the doors were locked and no one knew where the keys were. No one seemed too worried about finding them either. As everyone milled around the gravel and dirt street in front of the church gates (did i mention it's gated with spiked fencing?) and did their best to convince everyone else they were trying to think of where the keys might be, Eliah disappeared, only to suddenly be seen walking out of the church into the gated courtyard. Apparently he had spotted an open window (think second story window) in the church, maneuvered his way up and over an enormous wall, wiggled through the window, used the speaker stand as a step, jumped down from the window ledge, walked out the front door and opened the church from the inside. Everyone was in awe (and a little freaked out that he had just successfully broken in to the community church), and classes were able to continue as planned, albeit a little late.

Pictures of tonight's break-in to come tomorrow, as soon as I get them off of Serena's camera.

Happy Monday!
Holly

The Long Trek Home

Today marked the end of Jocelyn’s 2 week English refresher course for students in the San Franciscan community, and I got to tag along with her to host an ‘art hour’ to break up the dry (but direly needed) grammatical review. Considering Jos also baked sugar cookies and saved the last 30 minutes for a lively game of twister, I clearly chose the right morning to join her in the classroom. Her students were seriously hyped up even before we fed them cooked sugar and butter, but Jos handled it like a pro, not getting frustrated or discouraged but encouraging them to ‘escucha con dos orejas, por favor” (listen with two ears, please) and trucking right on through those conjunctions. She is definitely well prepared for the start of our Apoyo Escolar program, an after school homework help class that starts on Monday.


After shooing the little ones out of the Casa Barrial (the community ‘house’ in which we host our programs), Jos and I started our walk out of San Francisco to catch a bus back to home sweet Conocoto. Who knew we would still be at the bus stop 45 minutes later, having been snubbed/rejected/turned away from 3 buses. Maybe this doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but when you’re used to a quick ride home and you’re really hoping to beat the rest of your housemates to the leftovers from last night’s dinner, it becomes a huge deal. We’re talking about enchilladas and avocados here, people. I'm starting to get worked up as I type this.

Bus 1. Has a sign that says "To Conocoto" on it's front window. So why, then did the driver tell us “Ahhh...hoy no vamos a Conocoto” (Ahhh, today we’re not going to Conocoto). Ok, that makes no sense, but fine, off we hopped.
Bus 2. The driver encourages us to get on under the alluring promise of “Si, si, claro vamos a Conocoto, ya ya...” only to tell us 5 minutes into the ride that, oh, actually we’re heading over there AFTER we go to Quito. Considering we didn’t want to take an hour bus ride to get somewhere 10 minutes away, we obviously hopped off in the middle of the road. Which road it actually was turned out to be a little less obvious. If there’s one thing Jos and I love, it’s being stranded in the middle of nowhere, Ecuador. Have I mentioned that very few (read: probably 7) roads in the whole Valley have street signs? Great.
Bus 3. Doesn't even acknowledge us, despite Jocelyn’s excellent hand flagging motions.

Two seconds later the first bus we were on came screeching around the corner, the passengers inside chuckling to themselves at the idiotic gringas (read: us) who still haven’t found the right bus, covered in mud up to their shins (huge thunderstorm last night) standing next to a woman with a goat on a leash. Lovely.

Regardless, we made it home, stopping by the Panaderia for some much needed bread to lift our spirits. And guess what? We still beat everyone else to the leftovers. Sweet, sweet success.

Until Monday,
Holly

The Occasional Glitch

Hi. I know what you're thinking: Holly, the Daily Life blog has only been up and running for 2 days and you've already started slacking, ahh... where have you been for the last 5 days?! I'd like to take this opportunity to explain a little something we like to call "s.w" or Shifty Wireless. Ok no, we actually don't call it that, but I am putting in a concerted effort to help it catch on. Every once in a while, for reasons beyond our understanding, our internet signal up and leaves us in a manner reminiscent of the Keith Urban song "You'll Think of Me". Considering we've all spent the past few days dreaming about wireless internet, the similarities are quite strong.

In the most recent case, Friday morning rolls around, Jos and Dunc headed out to English class, and with them went our sweet and precious internet signal. We thought it was just another one of those random, inexplicable technological failings. Apparently we were wrong. Turns out (thanks to Dunc and Eliah's investigative skills and countless phone calls to the internet company) our connection was terminated because of confusion over a bill payment. Note: we paid the bill, it was the company who was confused.

Regardless, the signal is back, albeit currently limited to a single cord connection. Now begins the task of sharing between 10 of us one internet cord. I would propose a UFC wrestling match to determine priority, but considering Mark almost broke Dunc's rib the last time that happened, not sure that'd be the best idea.

Happy belated birthday wishes to Luke, and stay tuned for Mark Hand's first guest blog tomorrow!

Best, Holly

Morning Adventures

Starting this past Monday, Jocelyn and Dunc have been teaching an intensive English course for students in the San Franciscan community. Lasting two weeks, the course is designed to act as a refresher in order to prepare the students for the start of school come September 1st. They have five students enrolled, and come back each day a little exhausted, absolutely famished (first thing Jos does is get out the ketchup, regardless of what's on the lunch menu), but positive about the progress their students are making.

This morning, however, they came back in a frenzy. Eliah, Annie, Luke and I were all working on our respective computers (writing program proposals, researching for upcoming projects, emailing the Ecuador09 listserve an obnoxious amount of articles, the usual) when Jos and Dunc came bursting through the front door, each talking a mile a minute. Turns out this morning's class veered a little off course.

Apparently a pregnant cow had picked the grass right outside the Casa Barrial (building where we host our programs) to give birth at 8:30am, to the astonished horror of Jos and Dunc. The cow's labor noises, coupled with the early morning downpour of rain, flustered Jos so much that she used a little too much force in her attempt to open the lock to the Casa Barrial, snapping off the key head while leaving the body jammed in the lock's interior. Thus, the class trudged over to the Cooperative to search for help, managing to find someone with an enormous saw to effectively destroy the lock. After buying a second lock and key and tracking down the rest of the students who had dispersed in the rain-soaked chaos, the group was finally able to start class an hour later. The mother cow (now eating the umbilical cord) and her baby also joined them for a few hours of English grammar.

It speaks to Jos and Dunc's ability as teachers that they were able to run an effective class after all of the morning's excitement. There never is any way of predicting what exactly will happen on any given morning here in the Valley, but that's part of the adventure of it.

Until tomorrow,

Holly