So it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I posted anything on here.. Sorry. To be fair, I checked on here a few times and no one had commented about my absence, so I figured maybe no one was reading it anyway. Also, I’ve been journaling by hand every couple days, so that makes me feel like I don’t want to post on here… But alas, I’m back to talk about what I’ve been up to the last… 3 months :)
Soooo since February, I had a stressful time off work, in which I was bored, thinking about home, and getting increasingly frustrated with things here. But since I started back to work in April I’ve been feeling pretty good.
So, catch you up on work really quick. I’m doing 2 afterschool English courses, one with the kids from last year and one with new kids. The new kids are in their last year or 2 of high school (so juniors/seniors) and this year they’re from a very diverse range of classes. I have kids from all of the specialties (chemistry, mechanics, accounting, social sciences, etc.) and they were selected based on their interest in learning English (hopefully making the class more stable as far as week to week attendance). Then my Tuesday students are the same from last year, which I combined into 1 class since we only had 18ish that consistently showed last year (plus the seniors who graduated already). And I’ve allowed about 5 of them to bring friends to join the class. They seem like a pretty good group. They did fairly well on the pre-test (an English exam that will be re-administered at the end of the year), so I guess they learned something last year haha.
And in the colegio we’re doing another set of Cuanto Sabes de VIH y SIDA, the HIV education program. This year two of the previous participants (who entered the course as problem youth) are helping us run the course as youth educators since two of last year’s youth educators didn’t have time for the program this year.
Also on Saturday mornings I’m working with the group of “problem” youth from last year, who participated in Cuanto Sabes. We’re doing a youth group, and I selected each of them to help me plan activities for one meeting, and themes for each meeting, such as “leadership” “teamwork” “sexual education” “family planning” “communication” etc. I think we’re going to go to the town’s pool one day too, as that was their request. I guess I’ll find a way to work that into our curriculum :) And since there’s only about 10 of them in the group, they’re supposed to invite one other participant to come to our meeting on Saturday, so we’ll see how that goes! I’m looking forward to working with them – they’re a really fun group.
Other than that, I’m trying to get a couple more programs running in the colegio. One is a escuela para padres (school for parents) in which I’d do workshops with groups of parents to help improve communication with their youth, or educate them on various themes. I’m hoping to have that up and going in June. The psychologists also asked me to help them work with “problem” students during classtime, so I’m not sure what exactly I’m gonna do with that. After seeing the progress and positive change in the youth I worked with last year, they apparently think I can fix any problematic student ha. Also, after doing a big event for Earth Day (see below), one of the teachers presented a project idea to me about doing an environmental education program. After discussing it, I think we’re going to train youth on environmental education and use them as peer educators within the school. And if that goes well, we are planning to expand the program to the other schools in town. In addition to workshops, we’re gonna paint murals and make materials for future workshops. So funding of course is always a question, but after talking to my program manager last week, it looks like that won’t be much of an issue :) So in the next couple days I need to sit down with the teacher and we can start making real plans and apply for the funding.
So the Earth Day event in April was something I thought of on a whim, then wrote it up and went to the high school to talk to them about it. Then of course everything fell into place, more or less ha. It was all art-related, with different activities. First, we went around and announced that we were having a school wide art competition and that the 5 winning designs would be used in a mural, matted and hung in the rectors office, and the winners would receive a secret surprise (yes, it was a secret even to me until the week of the event ha!). So the Wednesday before Earth Day I had to prime the wall so we could do the mural Thursday, then went to collect the designs and we ended up with 264, which was a huge surprise. Granted, there are nearly 2000 students, so statistically it wasn’t a huge percentage, but I was just hoping for 100! That night I stayed up until 3am going through the designs and finally selected the 5 winners. Then I and created a unified design incorporating the 5 designs. The next day was the planned assembly, where we would talk about the meaning behind Earth Day, explain what Global Youth Service Day is, and present the 5 winning designs. Buuut as is my luck, it rained the whole night and whole morning. So we postponed that. But by 10 the sun was up so we started doing the mural. I and the art teacher drew the design on the wall and started getting kids out of her class in small groups to paint. We painted all the way through 5pm that day, and some of the kids wanted to come back the next day, so we headed back Friday morning at 8am to start again (the school was on holiday that day for something). After another full day, we had more or less finished. The only thing left was doing some outlining and touching up the details (which I decided I was just gonna do myself to ensure good results…). I planned on going in on Saturday or Sunday, but after working the whole morning Saturday in the Cuanto Sabes and youth group programs, decided to rest and instead went in Monday. Finally, it was clear skies in the morning so we had the assembly and presented the winners. It was cool because the winners ended up being from different grades, so we had a diverse group. We gave them certificates and took photos with their matted designs, and planned when to have the pizza party (what I had finally decided would be the prize!). Finally, Thursday we had the pizza party. I made another huuuuuge pizza – enough for 20-25 people (had it cooked in a bakery), a big pan of brownies, soft drinks, chips, etc. We invited the English department (since they’d helped me with so much), the teachers and psychologists that were involved in the planning, the secretaries, and the rector of the colegio. And finally, after nearly 2 weeks of nothing but doing the project, the Earth Day event was over :) I still have to paint on the protective varnish though – oops :) I really enjoyed the event and seeing so many youth involved in the design and painting process, and received a lot of requests from the students for another art competition/mural painting. I told them “ya mismo” ha
Last week I was in Quito for our Close of Service conference, where Peace Corps starts to prepare us for closing our service, finishing projects, telling people goodbye, as well as the possibility very difficult transition back to the states. Back to the high cost of living, back to not having jobs, back to the real life. Most of us will undergo “reverse” culture shock trying to readjust to what used to be our normal lives. It was interesting thinking through all of it and trying to mentally prepare ourselves. However, for me and several of my fellow 102ers (102 was our training group number, so I refer to ourselves as 102ers), that transition will be delayed. I received official news last week that I received my request for an extension of service, meaning I will be staying in Ecuador until December 21, 2011! I will be using that extra time to continue my work with the schools and transition the new volunteer that will be arriving to replace me in August. I see is almost as a second opportunity to do everything I’ve thought about, or wanted to do during my time in Ecuador. For example, I haven’t really done a lot with environmental education and this project idea fell into my lap in April, but that wouldn’t have been a possibility with my extension. It will also make my time back home a little shorter before grad school (hopefully going August 2012). So my new plan is this: get home in December, spend about a month at home getting reacclimated, then start traveling. I want to go see my brother and sister-in-law in Tennessee, spend some time with my sister in Lexington, visit old college friends anywhere from Maine to Baltimore, and spend a month or so in Texas visiting my brother who is moving out there for grad school. And that’s just in the U.S…. I realized recently that my dream to go to India may never happen if I don’t do it before I go to grad school. Sooo, I’m thinking India in April of 2012. Anyone want to join me??? I’m hoping to find some sort of short-term work (volunteer or whatever) so I have some structure, but still able to travel around the country and see the culture, eat the food, who know whatever else. And another volunteer will be in Bangladesh next year, so I may head there to visit her too. I know what you’re thinking. 1, I haven’t even gotten back to the states yet why am I planning to leave already! And 2, isn’t Ecuador enough as far as adventure and exotic life. Well, number one, I’ll likely be spending the rest of my life back in the states. And number two, my answer is that I don’t want to put off this dream and I guess I’m trying to check this off my bucket list. And I figure if I go to grad school, I’m either gonna get funding (crossing my fingers for that one!) or will be tens of thousands of dollars in debt, which I’ll spend the next 5-10 years paying off… so why not go blow my money traveling to Asia and just go MORE into debt when I go to grad school, because let’s be honest, what’s another few thousand dollars of debt to pay back… anyway, I guess my mind can change any moment, but I really feel like this is what I want to do. Ask me in a year and we’ll see ha. Oh, also at the conference we did another oral language proficiency test (like the same we did during training) and I received Advanced High level of Spanish, which I’m very happy with :)
During our trip to Quito we also got to attend the event for the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps (and 49 years in Ecuador). It was a very classy event, and I was glad I brought back my little black cocktail dress when I went home for Christmas! And the highlight of the event for me was that 2 weeks before the event I received a call from the PTO at the office asking me to speak at the event! They wanted me to talk about Ecuadorian youth and touch on some of my experiences working in my site. It was a great honor to be selected, and honestly a huge surprise to me. I told her that had she asked me 2 years ago my answer would have been “definitely not” but after 2 years working and growing in Ecuador, I was happy to do it. And after she had my interest she said “oh, it’s in Spanish in front of approximately 270 guests” – YIKES! But I knew I’d be upset with myself if I turned it down, so I wrote the speech, sent it in, had it edited, etc, and “practiced” (yeah, I only read through it maybe 10 times…). I was really nervous once we got to the event and couldn’t really focus on what everyone before me was saying (I was at the end of the event), but finally it was my turn. I was so nervous I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk up to the podium. When I got up there I was shaking but I put my speech in front of me, grabbed ahold of the podium with both hands, and started. I apparently spoke really fast at the beginning, but at some point I looked at my fellow 102ers, and just relaxed. And once I reached the part where I talked about a funny experience working with the “problem” youth in the Cuanto Sabes program, I stopped reading the speech and started telling the story. I’m not sure how Peace Corps felt about me going off of the written speech, but I jumped back in a couple of times to throw in the phrases they had made better from my original speech. And then I finished. It was over before I knew it, and I walked away happy with how it had gone. I’m completely satisfied with it and so glad I put myself out there and accepted the invitation. Then of course we had free wine, so I celebrated :) My host brother Joao also was invited to the event and came up for the evening, so we walked around greeting people and presenting him to the Peace Corps staff. I also was interviewed by a radio program, but she just asked more personal questions (what’s your favorite thing about Ecuador, what brought you here, what foods do you like, what work do you love doing, do you have an Ecuadorian boyfriend, do you want one, etc). Overall the event was really really nice (sushi for appetizer!) and it was so nice that Peace Corps invited my group to attend as part of our Close of Service Conference.
Alright, I’m gonna sign out, but I’ll try to keep this stuff updated more frequently… and if not I’ll be back to the states in June for a week so maybe then!