In April my community and I were proud to host "Tech Week," in which 8 trainees came to live with families, shadow/observe projects, and facilitate their own non-formal educational workshops with youth here in Buenos Aires. In addition to the trainees my bosses and Peace Corps language teachers also spent the week here to observe the trainees interacting in the community and getting a feel for what type of communities would best suit them for their 2 years of service. Organizing the week was a pretty daunting task, however it all turned out successfully thanks to the coordination, patience, and flexibility of everyone involved.
The first day started off with a Sunday morning meeting at the high school, where 84 11th graders and I had been working for about 3 weeks to organize a "rally." A rally is basically a physcial team building competition which puts participants through a number of team challenges which they must complete in the shortest time possible. In this case we had 15 teams of 8 (4 males, 4 females), and 15 team challenges.
This was our final meeting before the big event, and there was a lot to do. You know you're in an active community when you can fill the high school with kids on a Sunday morning, and I was pleased to see that so many of the students showed up, even if that did mean the organization of the meeting would be more challenging. The group that had raised start-up funds allocated funds to the students who were in charge of purchasing items needed for the event, whike the administrative team worked to make name tags so that the rally participants cud be distinguished from students who needed to be in class. Another committee ran around the high school designating a place for each activity, and practicing each activity so that all of judges knew how to facilitate and score the challenge. I left feeling exhausted and a little unsure that we would be ready come the day of the rally, but I knew things always have a way or working themselves out in the end. Besides, when you have 84 teens working together with you it's pretty hard to feel down about anything.
After a long morning of battling the inevitable disorganization when you work with that many people, we headed to my friend Chamisa's site, Volcan, to spend the afternoon. She and her women's group have an amazing greenhouse, so we checked out their project and then played with some kids at their new playground. They've got a beautiful river there, so before leaving we all took a dip in the chilly water, and hopped back on the bus to my town, which is about 40 minutes away.
My group was already pretty tired after Day 1, and it didn't help that I had them going on a hike the very next morning. Several members of my community went with us to "the rancho," which is a mountain peak where a little beat up rancho used to exist, but doesn't anymore. We were a large group with lots of different ages/abilities, but eventually everyone made it to the top, and agreed that it was worth the early wake-up time and muscle power it took to get there. At the top we played some silly games and then everyone went home good and tired from the active morning. My boss, our volunteer leader (which is the position I'll have starting in June), and one of the Spanish teachers arrived just as we were returning from the hike. They would be joining us for the rest of the week observing and giving feedback as the trainees practiced giving workshops in my town and helped me to facilitate projects.
In the afternoon we hung out at the pool of one of my friend's while two of the trainees facilitated a workshop on communication skills with my favorite group of 12th graders. They didn't have school that day but did me the huge favor of showing up anyway so that the trainees could have participants for the session. That night we went to my friens Norma's house and had a fiesta with my English class. It was fun to see everyone interacting and practicing both languages, and my students did a little presentation about Tico culture in English. We ate traditional rice with chicken, danced and sang karaoke until everyone was about ready to collapse.
The third day was by far the longest and most tiring, but also extremely productive and enjoyable. It started early with my 7 a.m. Kindergarten classes. The trainees facilitated recreational activities with them while I taught English, and in spite of some bloody scraped up knees my little ones had a BLAST. It is so exciting for them to have new people in town, because that basically never happens. Afterwards two of the trainees prepared to teach a sports workshop to a group of 5th graders while I took the rest of the group to the other school to help me facilitate a recycling workshop with 1st graders.
One of the teachers and I are starting a recycling program at the school, so I recently created a very basic workshop that teaches kids (and teachers) about the 3R's of ecology (reduce, reuse, recycle) and the impact that recycling has on the environment. I haven't done a lot of environmental work during my service, and it is something that is extremely important to me so I figured I'd do my best to get a least a little something in before I leave. I am training all 137 students form first to sixth grade in order to hopefully leave the recycling program in the hands of students and teachers that have an understanding of the basics and a greater appreciation for the impact it can have on the community and the world.
After training two of the classes the trainees helped me to facilitate a session of "Hip Hop por la Paz" with my fifth graders. The project consists of 5 workshops with themes related to alternatives to violence, and and activity that uses one of the elements of hip hop (DJing, MCing, breakdance, graffiti) in order to get the message across. On this particular day we were talking about community violence and making graffiti walls that depicted what the kids envisioned when they thought of a community at peace. They then stood in front of a different group's work and were told to transform the peaceful community into a violent one. At the end, the returned to their original graffiti walls and needed to restore the peace by correcting the violence that had just been drawn by the other group. We used the activity to talk about how they felt drawing peace, how they felt drawing violence, and how it was for them to have to restore the peace once violence had entered their "community."
After the workshop I led dance auditions for the Arts Festival, which is a nation-wide performing arts competition starting at the local level in June. I had agreed to help the music teacher prepare a hip hop dance group, and today the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders had the opportunity to try-out. Some of the trainees participated in the auditions by dancing with the kids, and we recharged our batteries after a long day of facilitating sessions.
In the evening my boss, Carolina, gave a workshop on alternatives to corporal punishment and the importance of setting limits to parents from my school. I had been trying to publicize the event as much as possible but it was hard to with all of the other coordination that had to be done for this week. I started to get worried when no one had showed up and it was time to start but luckily around 12 parents/teachers came, so it ended up being a success. The highlight was definitely during a dramatization when one of the trainees was acting as the child and one of the parents was the father, and while acting out a scenario that involved corporal punishment the parent took his role a little too seriously and ended up spanking the be-jesus out of the poor trainee. You gotta be tough in this town.
The next day was the much-anticipated rally in the high school. After a hectic morning of getting the student organizers and participants in order, the event ended up being a huge success. We had 15 teams of 8, including the 8 trainees who were visiting me, and the 7 trainees who were visiting Chamisa, and Chamisa herself. In spite of them thinking I was a complete lunatic for having put them and the students through these ridiculous challenges, I think they had a good time. There were 15 challenges in total, including an upside-down rope climb, a soapy wet plastic slide, two different mud pits, an "electric" fence, a "lava" island, and many many more. You can see from the pics that these were not for the faint-hearted. The entire challenge took most teams about 3 hours to complete, they were total troopers! The first pic below is of me with my bosses, with whom I will be working to support volunteers in my third year. They are the primary reason I want to stick around for another year, and this pic pretty much sums up why! The second pic is special for me because it was taken with my very favorite group of high school students, all of whom I will miss so so so much!!!!! There are tons more pics on facebook so check them out.
In the afternoon after everyone had rushed back to their houses to eat and clean up (this was tricky because the water had been turned off in my town...bucket baths!), we returned to the high school where my other boss, Natalia, was giving a workshop to the 12th graders about educational opportunities after high school. The workshop went off without a hitch, and then we headed back to house of one of the host families for a party to celebrate the closing of tech week. It was nice to have some time with just the group of trainees and staff members, who really only get to see each other in a work setting during the training process and their service.
The final morning we had a meeting with my coutnerpart at PANI (child protective services) and then everyone loaded onto their bus to head back to San Jose. It was a lot of work but definitely worth it to have everyone here, especially since I'll be working with them in my third year of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. The week gave us a great opportunity to get to know each other, which will be really helpful as I attempt to support their work this year. I'm excited about this new group and VERY excited to move to San Jose and begin my new position. I've got lots to say about this transition so once I gather my thoughts (which hopefully won't take months this time around) I will post a little about what's going on in this full head of mine these days. PEACE!
