Last week was super busy. That's going to be my excuse for why I haven't updated in a little while. I had three workshops, traveled to three new places, and visited my largest school (23 teachers, 770 students). But everything went pretty well.
Before I get to updates about my life, I am just going to go off on a mini tangent and talk about something that has been part of my life for thirteen years now, more than half of my life. That would be Harry Potter. I remember reading the first book in sixth grade after my science teacher recommended it. I loved it. I don't even remember my first reaction to it other than pure fascination with this whole new world of magic. I loved fantasy and magic-The Hobbit was probably my favorite book at that point in my life, or perhaps the Redwall books, or maybe Tamora Pierce books. But Harry Potter totally gripped me in a way a book had never done before. I can't claim that it made me love reading-I was already in love with books. But it made me think about things, discuss details, learn more about an imaginary world. In high school, after The Half-Blood Prince came out, my friends and I met to discuss it. What were the other horcruxes? Was Dumbledore really dead? Was Snape good or evil? The final book came out the summer before my junior year of college and I got the book the day it came out in the mail from Amazon and devoured it within ten hours or so. That kind of ended it for me. There were still movies to come out, but the movies never meant much to me. I would read the books over and over again while I would watch the movie once or twice and be done with it. I did see the first half of the final movie here in Guatemala, dubbed in Spanish unfortunately, and it was pretty good. So I guess I was looking forward to the final movie, mainly just to see the screen representation of something that I really loved. I didn't think I would love the movie, but I did. Maybe it was my emotions running away with me, maybe it was reliving the satisfying end to this incredible series, maybe it really was a good movie. The movie really brought it all to a close of sorts for me. I will continue reading the books and there's always the hope that J.K. Rowling will write more books based around this world, but I have to accept that this might be all there is. I laughed, I cried, I called a good friend long distance to talk about it after it was all over. And then I went on with my life. The bus broke down on the way home so I got home late and walked up the giant hill in the dark. Then I had dishes to do, a house to tidy up, a different book to work on. It's been a great thirteen years and I'm looking forward to the day when I can introduce Harry Potter to my kids. That's all I really have to say on this subject. Yes, I know I'm 24 now, long past the years of adolescent fandom and obsession over silly things, but I really feel like I grew up with Harry. So humor me a little and don't judge me for gushing one more time about this. I won't mention it again in this post.
So on with the real world. A super pilas NGO works out of the center of my town and we've been working together on trash management stuff and on writing a new environmental education manual for middle school teachers. They asked us to help with a workshop focused on trash management, water and forests on Monday and Friday with teachers from three different school districts in my department. It was the second in a series of four, and the first taller (workshop-sometimes I just write the Spanish word because it sounds better to me, so sorry if it gets confusing) had been run by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN-Ministerio de Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) and apparently it, like most other workshops teachers attend throughout the year, was very boring. So Helvetas/Probosques, the NGO, asked us to prepare an activity for trash management. We had a few activities that we used in a workshop for our teachers in June so we did a trash timeline with the teachers. The first part of the workshop involved touring the local river to see what condition it was in. I wasn't surprised to find trash everywhere, inside the river and along the riverbank. Parts of the river were orange due to chemical runoff from the fields-farmers often receive free fertilizers at the beginning of planting season. Despite the obviously poor conditions of the river, women were washing their clothes in it, children were playing in it, cows and sheep were drinking from it. So we talked about how the river used to be, how it is now, and how people want to see it in the future. Then we had the timeline activity where teachers used trash they had collected from the river and had to guess how long it takes certain types of trash to decompose. Then lunch and two pretty boring powerpoint presentations by people from MARN and some other place. Friday was the same except the people from the government didn't show up, even though they were the ones in charge of the workshop, so I got to do more stuff with the group. And there was no electricity, so the people with powerpoint presentations had to improvise and actually gave a much better presentation.
Overall my experience with this workshop has shown me both good and bad ways about going about teaching other people. Sometimes the most educated people don't really get it. It was super frustrating when the two women who planned everything out didn't even show up for the second day of workshops. The NGO we're working with is fantastic at thinking about sustainability. They work with a municipality that will sustain an office focusing on environment and only stay with this office for a few years before pulling out their support. They know that they can't use their resources forever to support offices that the mayor should be paying to support, so they don't. However, they were paying for pretty much everything with this workshop-snack, lunch, supplies, diplomas. And they supplied most of the personnel on the second day. What will happen when they're gone? I'm not sure. Our 'Oficina Forestal' seems pretty set up with two people working there and their own office space. We'll see if they continue functioning once Helvetas pulls out next year.
The people with degrees who were from the ministry presented all this technical information to teachers of first and second graders. With an educational system that emphasizes regurgitating what you're taught, these teachers are not going to take this information and create a new lesson with it, especially since many of them slept through the presentation. So what we included, kind of without telling the ministry people, is for teachers to think a little more critically and come up with their own activities to do with trash, water and forests. We'll see what they come up with at the next workshop next week.
I also traveled to a neighboring town and helped a fellow volunteer give an HIV/AIDS taller to some middle schoolers. Peace Corps Guatemala receives some money for these workshops and they're a fun way to talk about sex with kids who really have nowhere else to ask questions. The curriculum has some space set aside for talking about the body and puberty, but most teachers are too uncomfortable with the subject to talk much about it. However, the workshop really needs to include a component talking about body parts and puberty, something that I will probably work on with some other volunteers during vacation from school. I also don't really understand why we get so much money for HIV/AIDS education here when the incidence is really quite minuscule. Other STIs are much more prevalent and more of a problem, as is teenage pregnancy. I just think we need to change our focus in this area.
And then I also traveled up to another volunteer's site in the mountains. We have this big grant we're applying for through the Ronald McDonald Foundation and it's been quite a process. Volunteers with Healthy Schools had the opportunity to choose schools that needed water projects and fill out applications with the principals of the schools, which they turned into the four of us who are on the Project Advisory Committee for Healthy Schools. I received fourteen applications, all of which I had to go through and make sure we had all of the correct information, photos, maps, contracts, etc. I've been working on this since May-ish when we visited some of my schools for a trial run about how the application process would work and just now sent the last batch of photos to the people who are the mediators between us and Ronald McDonald. Now we'll see whether or not they want to help fund 60 water projects in Guatemala. Five of my schools are in the running so it would be fantastic to get these funds and at least leave these projects for the next generation of volunteers.
So that was last week. The exhaustion didn't hit me until around 2:00 today. This week isn't going to be nearly as busy-just school visits and possibly an activity with one of my favorite schools on Friday.
Today was one of those days when the rain comes early and soaks clothes that were just about dry. That's the disadvantage to working in the morning-you often get home too late to take down clothes that were drying. So since I had no visit today, just work from home, I hung everything up and the rain managed to sneak in and catch me by surprise. I don't really know how my clothes will dry because I have school visits the rest of the week and hanging stuff up inside doesn't work because it's too damp inside my house. I guess I'll just hope that there is one sunny afternoon coming up soon.
I think that's it. I'll probably think of something I forgot to mention in an hour or so. Thanks for reading and have a great afternoon/evening!
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