Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Jovenes are the future

You remember that episode of The Simpsons where Springfield is competing for the Olympics, and Lisa’s class is on the bleachers singing “Children! Children! Future! Future! Children are the future!”  ?  That was playing through my head this morning while I was trying to plan activities for my Escojo mi Vida youth group.  I’m mostly terrified of this group.  So many 14/15/16 year olds, so few of me.  All the charlas (chats/lectures) just sound like mush to me when I’m planning… It’s like the first episode of Daria, where Daria meets Jane in self-esteem class; “Today, lets talk about SELF ESTEEM! When we’re talking about self esteem, we’re talking about….US!” 

Today, our topic was…. self esteem!  In the previous class, I had gotten a muchacha to prepare something for this week, and she gave a pretty great charla today.  Participation was actually pretty good, and lots of kids who just happened to be in the CTC sat down and listened.  Pretty soon, we had about 20 kids, and some CTC workers came out and started talking too, which was awesome.  I ended up just sitting in the back and directing who could talk, and moving them along to the next topic.  My lesson plan was left unloved in my pack, which was probably for the best. 

I pulled together a dinamica on the spot, and had them break into three groups to do mini-dramas related to self esteem.  Then, everyone in the center came outside and watched the groups perform, which in hindsight may not have been good for those with low self esteem. We had visitors from the national HIV/AIDS organization (my town is kicking off a massive HIV/AIDS initiative, we had a parade yesterday), and they had their cameraman take pictures, which the kids thought was awesome.  I’m going to work with them to organize charlas and activities, and they promised to give me all the materials and resources possible. They dropped off a box of about two thousand pamphlets.. wooooo!  I got bonus points, because the CTC’s supervisor group was also meeting, and they saw me doing something other than working on my laptop. 

So, I think I can do this whole youth group thing, maybe, without it blowing up in my face.  As long as I stay away from activities that use dynamite.  Or cake. You should see them with cake…

Just to make the day even more productive, I worked it out with a woman from the Ministry of Education to pick up literacy books and materials.  Now, I just have to find a time to… do that. 

Pictures from the HIV/AIDS kickoff parade and speeches:

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Sugeidy with the kids. We all had hats!

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This was before it downpoured.

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My kids are cuter than your kids.

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They discovered HIV! It was behind this pink sheet the whole time!

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Words that begin with H! Heteros are smiley, and homos are shirtless and in large groups.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Yooth

I filled out a Vacation Request Form, took a picture of it, and emailed it to my program coordinator.  If it gets approved, I’ll be back in the States from December 8th to the 28th.  That will more than wipe out all my accrued vacation days… Also, I’m really happy to have a job where I have vacation days, and health care, and the ability to stay in my house reading David Sedaris books all day if I feel like it.  I’m also really happy when the ice cream truck (literally, a truck with a cooler in the back that plays Chinese jingles over a loudspeaker taped to the cabin roof) comes around. They have this cake-flavored popsicle that has little flecks of cake in it, and as soon as you finish it (which is fast, since you’re on the surface of the sun) you start thinking about what your neighbors would think if you chased the truck down the street with cakesicle smeared across your face and down your shirt. Better to take off the shirt first. It would even be possible to calmly walk out to the main street, and pay a motorcycle taxi to drive you down the street and drop you off in front of the ice cream truck.  However, then your 10 peso treat has turned into a 70 peso sugar-fueled brainfreeze binge and weekly meetings in the capital.  Which… is covered by health care!

The CTC has been hosting about a dozen volunteers from a local private high school every Wednesday (and any other day they decide to come), and it has been pretty interesting.  I suggested something similar to my project partner about a month ago, and presto, she made it happen.  There are kids working in the radio room, in the office, in the library, and with adult literacy classes.  They all come in their school uniforms, and look like professional bumble bees.  They’re polite, smile, and dance bachata with each other when they get bored.

I also had the second meeting of my Escojo mi Vida/Brigada Verde/Encargados del Futuro youth group.  10 kids showed up, which is about right, and we talked for a bit about the environment before playing a few rounds of Mafia.  We had to keep starting over because everyone kept cheating on every turn.  It isn’t suspicious AT ALL when every single person points at the killer immediately after the first round.  Come on, kids.  Besides being finely-tuned game-cheating machines, they seem like a good group of kids, and are excited about picking up trash and planting trees.  Actually, I suppose they were only interested in those things after I mentioned that we should think about designs for T-shirts. 

It is sort of hard to think about leading this group, because I don’t think I would join it myself.  I’m not really a joiner.  I don’t know what I can really offer them… all the charlas I can think of are sort of lame, and I don’t have the crazy energy necessary to keep a dozen kids focused and interested.  I’m more apt to just stop mid-speech and say “Yeah, ok, you got me--this is lame.  Do you want to go play cards, or go online or something? I’ll teach you English if you promise to stay awake!”  I think there is a reason that I am not a Youth & Families volunteer. I like teaching, but this is different. Maybe I can just put on a movie or entertain them with YouTube videos of pets doing funny things. Fake it till you make it?

Friday, September 17, 2010

Eating Guacamole

Avocados are EVERYWHERE right now. I would eat them in my house, I would eat them with a mouse. In my pueblo, they go for 5 to 10 pesos, which is about $0.13 to $0.26 each. I eat a lot of avocado.
My basic recipe for guacamole is avocado, olive oil, garlic, and salt. You can add tomato, onion, or ginger too. You can add it to scrambled eggs (makes green eggs, ham is extra), pasta, eggplant, fried plantains, rice and beans… almost anything you can buy at a colmado.
I promised one of the women in literacy class that I’d make her guacamole the next time I bought avocados (which was later that night, but I ended up eating all of it while standing in the kitchen), so I mixed some up last night and brought it over with some bread. She inhaled the whole tub while standing next to the table (that’s how you know she’s good people), and pulled out an article on the Dominican political system. Then, she proceeded to read the first paragraph out loud. She struggled with a few words, but had no problems with “legislativo,” “ejecutivo,” and “judicial.” Which is crazy, and so far from the “la, le, li, la, lu” and “ra, re, ri, ro, ru” exercises from class. She was actually reading, not just guessing the sounds; I was blown away. I should have brought more guacamole.
We talked about cooking, which Dominican foods I like, and how hard she has worked to learn to read and write, and how many years it has taken me to speak Spanish like a third grader. She tried to explain the perfect way to cook rice using measurements on her index finger, but it was lost on me. Her house is identical to mine, but feels worn-in and lived in, instead of a mostly-empty shell with piles of clothes on top of duffle bags and a small table with one chair in the corner. She even had a picture of Leonel Fernandez, the presidente, on the wall in true Dominican fashion.

I was in a really good mood when I got home, so I filled all my water buckets and mopped my house for the second time ever, and immediately regretted buying the baby-scented floor soap. Why would you want to mop your house with a baby? Do they also make baby-flavored toothpaste? I went to sleep that night with the overpowering scent of nurseries and nursing homes wafting not-quickly-enough out the window, and had a bizarre recurring dream where it’s 5 minutes before my first-year economics class, and I just realized I didn’t write the term paper due that day. Right when the TA who didn’t know my name was about to ask for it, I was awoken by a neighbor blasting Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, and the woman next door yelling at a goat that wandered onto my front lawn. The babies were still in full force.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Class

The computer teachers are in the capital for training, so Sugeidy has been covering some of their classes.  She doesn’t know much about computers, but has no shame in throwing herself out there.  Which is probably more important than knowing much about computers.

Today, she brought me into the classroom, about 20 minutes after the class was supposed to start, and told me that I was going to teach it because she didn’t know anything about Excel.  So, I taught it.  With no materials or preparation or knowledge of the words I needed to use in Spanish.  Actually, I taught two of these classes, for a total of 4hrs, and they went really well.

I had the students make a list of things to buy for a sancocho, a type of scalding hot soup that has… just everything in it.  Then, we put prices and quantities, and used formulas to get totals per item and per person.  Then, we added and subtracted items to see how the totals automatically change with the formulas, and how that’s way easier to do than manually entering everything. 

I have a computer repair class at 6, which will round out 6hrs streight of teaching in Spanish. 

This wasn’t how I was planning the day.  Natasha came in from the capital, and I wanted her to see the CTC’s literacy classes. I didn’t plan on throwing her in to co-teach the class while I taught a different one, but she did amazingly.  The women loved her, and the literacy facilitator pulled me aside and told me to bring her back every week.  I really wish I had been there, but crazy happens and you just have to go with it.

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Also, I finally put up a bunch of the pictures I brought from home:

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