Thursday, May 6, 2010

First days

Today was my first day back at my site. Well I got here yesterday but slept all day to recover from the trip… and the past 3 weeks with the group. I’m living with my new host family now- my host mom Esperanza, her mother, her son Alfredo, her daughter Monica (34), and Monica’s kids Kevin (12) and Melany (5). We live in a 2 story house, on the first floor there’s a living space, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom and on the second floor there are 3 bedrooms including mine. The house is about a block from the beach. We have electricity but no running water.

Esperanza took me to meet a couple neighbors and store owners and introduced me as her new daughter. Then I helped her cook lunch. In the evening I went for a run down the beach and discovered that in one direction there are mostly flat rocks with tide pools. I ran back towards town into a beautiful pink sunset and then Kevin met with me and we ran passed town the other way. After dinner my mom and sister decided that since there wasn’t much water in the tanks we should go bathe in the river. I knew from my site visit that it’s common to bathe in the river here but this was my first time. So I walked down with them in the dark and we stripped down to our underwear and waded in. It occurred to me that it’s a good thing I’m not an overly modest person, but then what kind of PCV would I be if I was?
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Today Monica took me around town to meet people- the doctor, the people at the health center, the woman who works at the Tenencia Politica, and the directors and teachers at the colegio and escuela. My counterpart, the president of the Junta Parroquial, came with us to the schools too. Everyone was interested in what I’m doing here and had suggestions, which is great. At the schools they want me to teach English, which I have no experience in so for now I’m going to try to sit in on the classes taught by the current English teacher and see what he does. But today the director came over and said the English teacher isn’t here today, can you go talk to the class? So I went in there and Kevin was in the class and I knew from him that they’d learned animals and fruits, so I had them tell me what they know and went over how to pronounce the words. I think it went okay for a surprise teaching session. In the afternoon, following my policy of doing whatever comes along, I went with Monica to a funeral in another town. It was very different from funerals I’ve been to in the US since it mostly took place outside and everyone walked behind the pallbearers from town up to the cemetery. They stopped along the way at a bench on the beach and the futbol field and other places that the man had liked to visit.
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Tuesday I went back to the escuela and talked to the director some more and sat in on the English teacher’s class where she had me help with pronunciation. Wednesday I went to the escuela and sat in on English class and then went to the colegio for the teachers’ meeting. First I talked to them about what I could do at the colegio- help with environmental education and English, but just observe classes at first, and start a school garden. Then I stayed for the rest of the meeting, most the which I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about except that an analyst had come that day and said they needed to fire one of the 3 contract teachers, which they did by drawing names. I’m not sure what would have happened if the English teacher got fired but it wasn’t him. In the afternoon I went with my mom to wash clothes in the river, another first. On Thursday I went back to the colegio and went with the science teacher to her classes since it was the day she teaches environmental ed. She is very nice and I think I will enjoy working with her. So those are the main points of what I’ve done this week, I’m still finding my way with almost everything but it’s nice to know that I have a starting point with the schools.

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