Week 4

February 27, 2006

A Case of the Paraguayan Mondays?
Things are all wrong some days. It{s actually cool here, which is strange and I shouldn{t be complaining, but I miss the sun. On Saturday night we all gathered at Carole{s house and had some wine and played cards and it was a really fun, normal time. Had a lazy Sunday yesterday, we watched a movie and I can{t really recall what else I did. Tried to charge my computer and got distracted and instead tried to change the language on my computer to Spanish b-c I thought that{d be fun. But I forget how to change it back and don{t feel like dealing with it now, which is why you see {s instead of apostrophes that I can{t find on this now-Spanish keyboard. And I think while I tried to charge my computer I didn{t turn the light on in my room so the outlet didn{t work so it didn{t charge after all. And I had decided since I was feeling grouchy I{d take out the ol{ laptop and watch some Seinfeld dvds tonight, but I need to plug in the computer to do that, which means I can{t have the fan on, and while it{s cool today, that{s still registering as 85 degrees and it{s a little too hot to not have the fan. Rrrrggg. The fun news is I told my host mom I have a headache so I was going to bed early, so I can pretend at least that I{m living on my own and can do what I want. I wonder at what point the bugs on my screen that are attracted by the light will start to freak me out…

This Week
We have all sorts of fun things planned for this week, or at least what isn{t fun is keeping us busy. Tomorrow is a training with the whole group about Cooking in Paraguay. I{m in a group that gets to make vegetable soup and bean salad!! For lunch we all get together and share what we made, and I{m REALLY excited about all this yummy healthy food!! On Wednesday is another central day of training, which I generally enjoy. And Friday is our first Dia de Practica, a workshop with the local teachers. Everyone else was scared so I said I{d do the introduction to the workshop, tho I don{t know what I[ll say and especially how to say it in Spanish. But then on Saturday after training we{ll go to Asuncion. We got the scoop on a cheap hotel with a pool and breakfast included for 30mil (about 5 dollars), and it{s near the Mexican restaurant and good ice cream place. Yum!

One Gone
The first trainee to leave went home on Saturday. Laura was super sweet, and while I didn{t know her really well, I thought she{d make a great volunteer. She decided to go home b-c she had a complicated family situation back home and felt the timing wasn{t right to be here, which is a difficult decision that I respect. But I just didn{t think she{d be the first one of us to quit!! Some estimates go as high as a third in terms of the number of volunteers who quit (they call it “early terminating”) before their 27 months of service ends. That{d be 12 of our 37, right, and it{s kind of spooky to think about who amongst us won{t make it.

March 1, 2006

Expectations
There are some things that we have expectations and prejudices about as Americans that you never even realize. One of these, I’ve just discovered, is crayons. I bought a box of crayons last week in Asuncion b/c they were cheaper than markers and I wanted to color in a photocopy of a children’s book to use next week. I just sat down to color in a page of my cute book La Oruga Hambriente (the hungry caterpillar), but when I opened the box of crayons I was shocked. First of all, they weren’t wrapped in paper. I thought all crayons came with a little wrapper on them, but these didn’t and so when I use them my hands get a little gross. Plus, I had no idea what the color was called!! Then, worst of all, when I started coloring with the crayons, the colors were ALL WRONG. That is, the blue didn’t look like the blue should look. The blue was different from the blue I’ve known for nearly 30 years. And I’m fairly certain that you, reading this, also know how the blue “should” look. The power of the Crayola corporation to shape our minds is just incredible!!

Dias de Practica
Maybe I just need to chill out, but I’m really stressed about our big workshop on Friday. I feel like it’s totally unorganized and will end up a disaster, but maybe that’s just b/c I’m a control freak and used to doing things my way. Other people are not worried at all, but I really am dreading it. We keep talking about how we need to write out our objectives for the day, the things we want the teachers to come away with, but we somehow just never end up talking about it – and how can you have a lesson planned w/o knowing what you want people to take away from it?? And I don’t like the way the schedule worked out, and the way we all agreed to the schedule on Monday everyone suddenly decided to change today for some reason. Granted, all they did was shorten the break to 15 minutes, but I think that it’s an example of making changes at the last minute and … I sound ridiculous, I know, but I think it’s just that I don’t like how this whole thing is set up, and it’s pretty un-indicative (is that a word? My English is getting worse!) of the kind of service I’ll be doing. I’ll never again have to work with EIGHT other volunteers and our crazy trainer to plan anything. If the goal is for me to speak in Spanish in front of a group I’m happy to do that another way, without having to deal with all this. Perhaps I should just adopt a “sit back and watch” mentality and let whatever happens happen, but I can’t help but feel like this is going to be a super unprofessional presentation and a waste of everyone’s time. And I am not a perfectionist by any means but I really can’t just blow off something that’s so important and public. The worst part, perhaps, is that we have these workshops for the next three Fridays, so we’ll get through with this and have to jump right into planning for the next. I’d much rather do the whole thing myself than deal with planning it with everyone else!!

March 3, 2006

Our First Dia de Practica – a success
After all our worrying (and starting 20 minutes late b/c the principal of the school couldn’t find the keys to the classrooms we were using), the day went really well. I did a little introduction welcoming all the teachers (there were only 12 or 15), and then in a small group I explained and demonstrated Twenty Questions as a quiet game to play as a “sponge” activity, to soak up time when there’s just a few minutes before recess, for example. The teachers were really receptive to the games we showed them, and we talked a bit about when and why to use games (ie. not all day long) and I think they’re looking forward to next weeks’ workshop too, when we share content games. I, however, am more looking forward to this weekend!!! We leave tomorrow afternoon for three days of fun in the big city!