Saturday, November 21

I am finished with my first week of volunteer teaching for GVI.  It was a fun, but tough week as I also had Spanish classes two days, a get together with the other volunteers and had to get started with lesson planning. In addition to the busy-ness, there was also the accepting of the living conditions of the children and knowing that all I can do is help educate the children and make sure they are getting plenty to eat at the school.

Tracey did the lessons for the first two days, and then I did for the remaining three days.  However, I was to teach cultura fisica (PE) on Thursday, but the lunch-recess time was pretty long and the teacher skipped it and said we would do it on Friday.  Well, we didn´t cause we did other fun stuff!  My other lessons went well, and we made people out of pipecleaners and glued puff balls onto paper in the shape of the number 1 and glitter on the shape of number 2.  We also all used the stamps I brought to stamp out our names on paper which they really liked. 

Tracey came to school on Friday and brought with her, at the teacher´s request, the ingridients for making a traditional cake, kimberlita (sp?), that is steamed in banana leaves.  The whole school, including Jaime the bus driver, was involved in mixing the batter and stuffing the leaves.  We made a huge batch and each student got two at school and then more to take home. There were other visitors to the school as well, and they all got to have some too.  I had one and thought it was quite good.

My success at school this week as getting the kids to recognize where to start writting on a page and when forming letters :   ¨¿Donde comienzo?" Arriba la ezquierda!"  With one of the students, this was quite the task, as she kept turning her page around and being stubborn about where she wanted to start.

Other volunteers went to Baños this weekend, but three of us also stayed back.  I wanted to use the weekend to get caught up on little things such as shopping, calling family, becoming more familiar with Otavalo, studying Spanish and getting some lesson plans going.  I will have Spanish lessons 3 days this coming week, plus we will have a ¨Thanksgiving" dinner at one of the local gringo restaurants on Wednesday night.   My Spanish didn´t progress much this week and I am afraid the little ones in my class are going to learn more English from me than anything else!  So, hopefully by focusing on this today and tomorrow, I will get a bit further.