January 12, 2007

Happy New Year everyone! This is Mason.

We’re settling in to our new house and new town and are starting to get a little busier. Clavo (the dog) is gaining weight and growing up so fast. He already knows how to sit, but doesn’t care to come when we call him. We talk to him in both English and Spanish, generally choosing the word with the fewest syllables for what we want to say (sit (1) vs. sientate (4) was an easy one). He has numerous chew toys and as you may expect, he prefers the random things he’s found in the yard to the 2 toys we have bought him. He also is getting old enough to finally have a small pair of huevos (balls) which we will get taken care of soon. If we contribute nothing else to this country, at least we’ll know that we haven’t added to the huge canine population surplus.

Speaking of animals and the new house, so far we have found 3 scorpions (1 dead, 2 alive), 1 mouse (dead), 1 snake (alive, I think it was a Boa baby) and 2 tarantulas (1 dead, the other we thought was dead, but maybe it was just stunned… It’s definitely dead now though.) in the house. And we’ve only been here 9 days! If only we had a cat to take care of all of these things for us... I think we may have one in a few weeks, as the lone survivor from the savage dog attacks is still hanging on to life and is now old enough that it has opened its eyes.

The funny thing about those dog attacks (see our previous post if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Not the attack on Brenna.) is that the dogs who did the attacking are about the size of your average house cat in the States. The only macho (male) in the group is named Pinky and he has a terrible case of short-man-complex. They’re all ugly as sin too. One of them, misleadingly named Princesa (Princess), has an underbite and barks like an old rusty truck trying to start up on a frigid winter morning. The other one, also incorrectly named Bella (beautiful) is small enough that I could take it out in one swift kick if I were wearing the proper footwear. I have had cats in the past (remember Boyfriend?) that could easily take out these dogs.

So, party season is starting to wrap up. It all started in November with the elections (school was out for 8 days to signify the importance of that event), followed by promociones (graduations) from pre-school, 6^th grade and colegio (high school), then Purisima, a holiday celebrating La virgen Maria (The virgin Mary) that is most similar to Halloween, on Dec. 7. Then we had Christmas and New Years. In the first weekend of January are the fiestas patronales (celebrations of our patron saint) in our town. There are various events such as concerts, dances, horse races, venders selling a bunch of crap like in the US, rides, booths where you can win a stuffed animal. It was a lot like a carnival or county fair at home. A couple of nights ago our town had a huge concert to celebrate the New Year and inauguration of the new president. I think this concert also marked the end of the party season. Also, school starts soon.

In a couple of weeks, all of the volunteers in our department (like a state) of Leon will start traveling to each others sites to give teacher talleres (workshops) for two days every other week. We will be presenting 4 different topics:

1. Teaching about VIH - SIDA (HIV – AIDS)

2. How to work with parents / parent groups

3. How to use huertos (vegetable gardens) as a multidisciplinary teaching tool

4. Starting and maintaining community banks

Hopefully we will reach about 400 teachers in all. I think that these talleres will be a lot of fun and also one of the ways that we are promoting sustainability in our projects. If theses turn out to be a good thing, which I’m sure they will, I may look into doing some just for the teachers in my schools on a regular basis in the future.

Also, since the students return to class on the 29^th of Enero, (January) we will soon be busy observing in the schools and starting to prepare our own charlas (lessons) to give to the students. The overall process of our work in the schools is that we observe for a while, then start teaching a few lessons about the environment here and there, using interactive and participatory teaching techniques. Ideally, the teacher will be watching us teach our lessons and after a while of this we will start co-planning and co-teaching with them in an attempt to pass on our knowledge of different teaching techniques and theories. After all of that we spend a good amount of time observing them and coaching them on their teaching. Within all of this, we can also take time to teach them strategies for classroom management, learning styles, etc. Also, keep in mind that we will be working with kids from 3^rd to 6^th grade, so our environmental lessons could be as simple as the parts of a tree, or the water cycle. It’s not like were teaching conservation biology here.

In addition to that, two local non-profit groups have asked for our help. We may or may not be starting to build a vivero (tree nursery) with one of them. We are now trying to do a compost project with them so that we will have good soil for the vivero. It’s moving slowly. The other non-profit is trying to get a lot of projects going and initially sought us out looking for monetary support. After we told them that’s not what we do, we’ve decided to help them organize and have started planning to help them with an after-school project for kids. As I’ve mentioned in the past, things move slowly here, so we’ll see what happens with these projects. Also, we’ve met a handful of people who speak English fairly well, so I’m thinking about having a weekly English conversation hour at the house. Brenna also will likely do some sort of reading to kids group at the library. We are now trying to not always do everything together, so people will see us more as individuals and so my Spanish will improve.

I keep hearing about the huge storms dropping the fluffy stuff on Colorado and am definitely jealous of all of you who are enjoying frequent turns in the nieve (snow). Also, I recently received a CD of pictures from Zac that had pics of hiking in the CO fall, canyoneering in Utah, and Grand Lake. Looking at those, I found myself tearing up a bit. I really miss all of you and the mountains and wilderness. I’m not at the point of homesickness, and I’m definitely enjoying life here, but I do miss the old life. It’ll still be there when I come home. I really hope there are storms like this next season, when we are planning to come home for a visit.

If you want to read about a great trip we took just before leaving home, click here to read my friend Dave’s narrative and see his great pictures.

I promise more pictures are on the way… Thanks for your thoughts, e-mails and care packages.

Que les vayan bien.