The Feria Vocacional is coming along, we're about 2.5 weeks out (ahhhh!!!) and so far have 8 institutions confirmed for participating. This week we are starting to invite the secondary schools and figure out the transportation. I was figuring out food costs and it is going to be less than HALF of what we planned! yay! I also went to my municipality asking for help paying for the lunches since our grant won't pay for food, and to my great surprise they approved my solicitud and are going to help out! big yay! This weekend are the mayoral and regional president elections, so I have to go back next week to coordinate it all, since the person I need is not in the office since she is running for re-election. Still, VERY exciting. Still have to get posters and handouts made to publicize the Feria. I talked to one of the radios, and they are going to help us promote it and invite us to their talk show one day to blab about it for the better part of an hour. Who's excited?!?! We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The event is coinciding with my school's anniversary and is being included in their anniversary programing and the teachers are getting pretty excited about it. I think even if we only have those 8 institutions come, it will be a success.
Speaking of my school, I've been pretty busy with them these past weeks, and it shows in the way the teachers treat me. Since they see me twice a week (and this past week daily) they are getting used to me being there and have realized their job is not in jeopardy and have been very welcoming. When we were talking about the anniversary programing, they told me they want me to participate in or attend all the events, specifically, they want me to parade with the school because as one teacher told me "eres parte de la institucion"- you're part of the institution. I'm really happy at my school for the most part. The one tutoria teacher that was never supportive of me, has completely stopped coming to class and doesn't even say hi to me when he sees me in the school. In Peru, not saying hi to someone, especially someone you know, is a big offense. I'm not sure what his deal is, but I don't let it bother me. Whether this particular teacher likes me or not is not why I'm here. My kids are happy and are learning something, and that is what is important to me.
I don't remember if I mentioned it before or no, but the deWaal Foundation has a program called PreNatal that works in preventing babies being born with a disability. One of their strategies is preventing teenage pregnancies, since they carry more risk for a baby being born with a disability. They came to my school and did their program with the 4th and 5th graders. The leaders they trained were invited to a meeting in Chiclayo with the leaders from other schools and they had a poster contest. We didn't win, but the kids enjoyed meeting other kids and loved being in a fancy hotel with 6th floor views of the city. This past weekend, a group of 8 students participated in a sociodrama (social theater) contest. They only really had a week of practices and sometimes weren't always too focused and I wrote the script in about 2 hrs while falling asleep. They did a great job of fixing the script and changing parts as they felt necessary and in the end, did an AMAZING job. We didn't have money for transportation, so they were asked to put half of their transportation cost and I put the other half, and they made it money well spent. Because we didn't have money, we weren't able to bring students to cheer them on, which was kinda sad. My kids placed 2nd out of 4 schools... they were only beat by TWO POINTS. And the team that beat them stole their incubator that we spent 2 hours and half a roll of duct tape making. Grrrr. Let me just say that Ciudad Eten are a bunch of tramposos! hahah.
Maybe some pictures soon... until then, cuidense!
Maybe some pictures soon... until then, cuidense!
