Month in Review

Living with 8 other gringos makes it a little difficult to learn Spanish. Who would have thought? This fact resonates in my mind during pretty much every Children's English class or natural science class when I blurt out phrases like "pueden usar half past eight ou eight fifteen por el tiempo 8:15" hit my hand to my head and get a sideways look from some kids. Luckily starting in January we'll be starting home stays in our community and I will hopefully be staying with a predominantly agricultural-based family who lives class to the library. I'm very excited to jump into this opportunity after a winter break of virtually no Spanish (except for my sister Jen non-stop quizzing me).

Besides trying to get in as much Spanish as possible in the next month, I've been focussed on solid waste issues in Rumiloma, specifically the installation of public trash cans and discouragement of litter and trash incineration. Erik and I spent a couple of weeks surveying residents and businesses about their trash removal behaviors, concluding that many incentives for trash incineration stem from people not wanting to put their trash bags on the curb for dogs to rummage through. Unlike in the states, there aren't residential trash bins and trash collection is done very rapidly: trucks swerve down the streets blasting what sounds like ice cream truck music as collectors sprint grabbing any trash bag in sight. To remedy this, we're looking to install some large dumpster-like bins in centralized locations as well as smaller bins on each block.

I've also taken over Dana's children's English class on Mondays and Wednesday and teaching a natural science class, a once a week program we've extended to our children's English students. on Mondays and Wednesdays the English class is broken up into younger kids (taught by Sarah) and older kids (taught by me); Friday is the fun-loving day where they all come together and Krysta and I try and keep the peace while instilling environmental awareness.

Though I have been a terrible personal blogger, I feel I've done a decent job of highlighting our progress on the MPIE blog. Here are some images to illustrate the lessons we've done so far:

Our finished paper-making product from science, fully autographed

Apprenticing English class before Dana's departure

Volcanoes, yeah!

Teaching science vocabulary in both English and Spanish

Next Friday I'll be heading off to Venezuela with Krysta for a week of adventure and some relaxation. Four days after that my dear friend Amy McGovern will be visiting until she escorts me home on December 15th. I am beyond excited to show one of my very closest friends what my life has been like here!

I promise to write at least a couple of times between now and December, but hopefully you feel relatively caught up, and if not, please visit our MPIE blog of which I write mas o menos every other day.

Cheers,

Jackie