holaaaaa

It has been a while since I last blogged…so I will try to give some good updates.

This past Tuesday, the official day of carnaval, I went with a group of people to Puyo (a town about an hour away that is in the jungle) to go swimming and (of course) play carnaval. We ended up going to a park that had numerous lagoons and lakes to swim in (and even saw a little monkey playing in the trees). Everyone went swimming and some little boys were effortlessly trying to get me to swim them across the deep-water on my back…which was really tiring. After a packed lunch of, take a guess, chicken and rice, we all climbed back into the two trucks and headed back to El Triunfo. A group of about twelve of us were in the back of the truck, aka we were prime targets for those playing carnaval…throwing buckets of water on us from roof tops, water balloons from the streets, even other trucks were throwing things at us. We of course were prepared as well and every time we crossed a river we stopped to refill our buckets and bottles with water. Once we even stopped to buy cane liquor (pure alcohol from the cane plant that they mix with a variety of fruity flavors)…it is pretty strong stuff to say the least. I was absolutely soaked the entire return trip and will admit I am feeling the effects with a nasty cold.

On Thursday I did a painting activity with the second and fourth graders. I started by asking each class to think about something that represents their daily life here in El Triunfo. Immediately the students were shouting out ideas: trucha (trout), milking cows, picking mora (blackberry), riding horses, the volcano, el monte (the mountains up the hill from the center of town), etc. I tried to have each student focus on a simple idea for the actual painting, something they could really focus in on. Although the actual hour or so I spent with each class painting was a bit stressful (picture me alone with a class of about 25 students who had never painted before), and none of the teachers were too helpful, the majority of the paintings turned out great. You can look forward to seeing a selected few of the painting on stationary for sale in the local Cascade and Ada area (and by contacting the lovely Shelley Mishler) in the near future. Hint, hint fundraiser for the elementary school here in El Triunfo…my goal is to start a library here with children’s books as there are currently 180 students and less than 10 books in the school. With 100% certainty I would say that the students spend a larger part of the school day playing fútbol (soccer) than reading. Although it may be more accurate to say that they don’t read at all.

As of last week I am spending Fridays helping to teach English in the high school, right up the hill from the elementary school. There are actually only about 50 students in the high school because the majority of high school-age students in the area either attend high school in Baños (the bigger town about an hour down the mountain) or only attend school on Saturdays in order to help out with farming and household chores. It is fun to work with an older age group and they certainly propose a entirely different set of challenges than the students in the elementary school. For example a student in ninth year spent the entire class hour making kissy faces at me. I have been in contact with a couple of my favorite Spanish teachers from high school and we are planning to Skype in the coming week, allowing the US students to practice Spanish and my students to practice English, an intercambio/exchange of sorts.

Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies, however as I discovered there is no cookie sheet in all of El Triunfo I had to opt for chocolate chip bars…which ended up rather gooey and misshaped.

Well, I think that is all I can think of for now…I will try to post again later this week!