Independence Day

This year, July 4^th has a new meaning.  True, it has always been Independence Day in my mind, but it is especially important to me this year.  Although it won’t be celebrated here in Ecuador, July 4, 2012 marks exactly 3 months since I swore in as a volunteer and I will be allowed to have a few more “PCV freedoms”.  In the first three months, you can’t have visitors (like from the US), you can’t take vacation days even though they are accumulating, can’t leave the country, and a lot of other random things.  Peace Corps has arbitrarily set the 3 month mark as the end of your settling-in period, an end to the days where you can sit around and do nothing all day and legitimately say “But PC wants me to be adjusting! I don’t have to be doing anything except acclimating!”  And while I am happy for a little extra freedom (and knowing that maybe PC won’t be keeping such a close eye on me!) I guess this also means I have to start doing some real work!  Although I finished my 18^th book yesterday (only my 11^th since I arrived in site.. looking to finish at least 1 more before the 3 month mark!), I also am itching to get some projects started.

I have been going to the colegio here in Galera three times a week to help with English classes, but this hardly constitutes a full schedule.  Classes end at 12:30 every day, so I still have most of the day to myself to read, watch movies, hunt octopus with my host mom at the beach, or take an “internet day” in Atacames.  When I am at the colegio, I mostly just sit in on English classes until the teacher (who speaks very little English herself) asks me to pronounce something, or I have the kids repeat the alphabet or phrases like “What is your name?”   Lately, I have been trying to do more with the kids.  On Monday, I played 7 very successful rounds of hangman with the octavo (eighth grade) class.  Tomorrow, I am planning some sort of team competition with the decimo (tenth grade) class that involves reviewing the body parts… Simon says, perhaps?  The colegio here only has octavo, noveno, and decimo grades which is equivalent to seventh, eighth, and ninth grades in the US.  It’s technically more like a junior high school, but the kids’ ages range so much that there are 11-14 year olds in octavo, and 13-16 year olds in decimo.  The highest grade has the fewest number of students and the highest male to female ratio- only 4 girls and 14 boys!  These are things to keep in mind when planning activities, as the boys in decimo are too old (and therefore, too cool) to participate in many games.

Fighting with barbed wire to release some trash!

Machete-ing the weeds

The Brigada de Medioambiente

My other regular activity has been going to the colegio in Tonchigue with a fellow PCV to help out with their Brigada de Medioambiente, which is their eco-club.  These kids are in their last three years of high school (called bachillerato), or like 11^th-13^th grades.  Most of them are in it to get their required community service hours to graduate from high school, but I’d like to think a few of them actually enjoy it too.  So far, they have worked very hard to clean up the area behind their school- weeding the yard by hand or machete, cleaning up trash, etc.  The hope is to eventually plant some trees and possibly a garden back there.  Last week, we took a survey to see what other activities the kids would be interested in doing and after running a quick rank-sum test (thanks, grad stats!) it appears that cleaning the beach and planting trees are a priority.  They also want to learn about water conservation, deforestation, and pollution among other things.  Hopefully, even when things become “busy” for me here (whatever that looks like!) I will still have time to come to the Brigada every week.  My ultimate goal is to start a similar club at the colegio here in Galera.