Updates

I had a pretty successful past week. On Tuesday, I had a meeting with all the teachers and my school director which was fantastic. I was able to sit down with all the teachers to discuss my role in the community and my desire to begin work in the school. All of them seemed very receptive to my eagerness to get everyone together and brainstorm. As a result of this meeting, a few things are going to begin. First of all, I'm going to begin holding weekly English and computer classes for the teachers; the idea being that they will be able to teach or at minimum assist their students with these skills. Another outcome of the meeting is my involvement in the monthly escuela de padres meetings. I'm going to begin giving health charlas (short lectures) to the parents of the students during these meetings, to help promote better health in the community. I also expressed a desire to assist in mathematics and science courses or whereever the teachers may need assistance and again expressed my openness for suggestions or necesities they might have. Hopefully we can all continue the open communication.

In other good news, I finally started attending the computer classes and taught my first one (I'm helping out until the teachers get the hang of things). I taught the fifth graders on Thursday. We did a math lesson and then I let them play some science games. It was pretty fun, but those 10-year-olds are a handful. Luckily, I had there teacher there for moral support. She's nice, her name is Marlen and she's here for the next two months while our permanent teacher is in the states.

On Friday morning, after a failed attempt on Thursday to meet the director of Santa Rosa's hospital, the school's English teacher, Don Rodolfo, took me to meet him. Instead of speaking with the director I ended up speaking with the head of education for the hospital, Lic. Bonilla, who was awesome. He does what I want to do on a big scale, for the pueblo. He is a health educator for all of Santa Rosa. He collaborates with the high school there and the community at large. He's now one of my greatest resources. We talked about what work he does, what health problems are plaguing our area, and what I can teach my community. He's got tons of resources in his office and is excited for me to come check out his work in order to get inspiration for mine. He's even willing to come out to La Chorrera to help me out!

On the usual down side, Silvia stole my shirt and I finally told her she couldn't come in my house because "someone" had been stealing from me. My community members are telling me not to confront her directly because this is the MOST indirect culture EVER, but I'm trying to make her realize that what she's doing is not going to continue. It's complicated and I don't want to ruin any relationships, so I'm trying to be careful what I say for now. My next step is to fill the owner of the house in, to see what he thinks.

Anyway, a few funny run-ins this week. Sandra brought her little, diaper-less girl over and she peed on my hammock, hence my floor.

Jordan came over and we hung a hammock...Success! I didn't fall out of it and now I have two hammocks in my house (one for a friend), but one still got peed on...

The old lady next door came over and asked me to explain to her how to use her hemmeroid cream because the package was in English. I made Jordan take that one; I said her Spanish is better...which it is, but truthfully I was laughing too much to deal with it.

This week I will hopefully secure my general assembly date for July 28th, print invitations, finish my posters which display my census results, continue attending the computer classes at the school, complete my first English/Computer class with the teachers, and take off for the beach on Friday. Jordan's parents are in town and rented a beach house. A bunch of us are going to stay for the weekend.