More Robots and Cities!

Posted on February 21, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I had a nightmare a few nights ago. I don’t remember a lot of the details, but I do remember being in a car with my mom, driving up a very steep road. When I say steep, I’m talking probably an 80-degree incline. We were halfway up when these massive spools of wire started flying down the hill towards us, and we avoided every one of them until the very last which left a foot-long gash in our back left tire. What does this dream mean? Who knows? But if we’re taking guesses, I’m going to say that those giant spools were probably filled with solder wire, and I’m officially having robot-inspired nightmares.

Explaining/demonstrating the soldering process

It’s amazing how wrong you can be when you take a guess at how long something is going to take. These robots are one of those times. Our time estimate: 3 classes. The actual: hahahahahahahaha. TBD. We got the kids as involved as possible in the assembly process, but some things, like the soldering, are not in the scope of things we’re comfortable letting the kids do. If we had only three kids in the class and could fully supervise and give them some training, maybe it would be a different story. With these circumstances, though, Debbie and I are doing all of the soldering. That led to a late night on Friday and another late night yesterday as we tried to get the C4 kids’ robots ready for their shells to be glued on today. We also had to do some jerry rigging to get the antennae to stay in place (it involves a complex system of dental floss – the strongest thread known to man – and hot glue), and the method we came up with was way too precise for most of the kids to handle (a lot of them are still at the age where detail work is a challenge. As architect and engineer, Debbie and I are trained in painstaking detail work).

Aside from the extra hours yesterday, things went very well! We only have 2 classes with each older group this week, and we need to assemble our cities!… while also finishing the robots… Yesterday, we reviewed the city project, did some city planning by deciding where we wanted to put each building, and split into teams to paint/name streets, make stop signs, traffic signals, trees, and street lights, and glue the buildings into position. Everything is starting to look really cool! We had the C4 kids again today, and their city is almost completely finished. The trees, street signs, and other details got installed today. I’m excited about the work the kids have done!! I think they have a couple things left to finish, and hopefully Ingrid will give them some time before Friday to wrap everything up.

The last robot steps are to glue on the shells that the kids decorated and test to make sure everything is functioning correctly. It was a lot of fun to see the kids play with their robots for the first time and how excited they got when the robots ran into walls and turned around like they’re supposed to (I was also excited because it seems almost inevitable that someone’s robot out of the 29 we made shouldn’t work… but fingers crossed because at this point, we’re still doing okay). At the risk of sounding like all I ever say is that everything is “great!”/“awesome!”/“so cool!”… the robot shells that the kids made are all of the above. I’ll work on some new adjectives, but for now, I’m going to back up my claims with photo evidence so that you can all agree with me.

The C3 kids have one more class on Thursday, and they still need to finish up the details of their city. They’ve done some awesome (yeah, I know) work so far, though. Even the kids who seemed completely disengaged produced great buildings! Debbie and I also have to finish up their robot soldering and antennae installations before class so that they can glue on their caps. Thank goodness for class-less Wednesdays!

One of the girls working on her “stores”, complete with window displays, a swingset, and little puffball people with sequin eyes.

Finally, this afternoon was our last class with each of the younger classes. Julie deserves a round of applause (and a paid vacation) for helping me out every week. We started in her class (2-3 year olds) and decided to do another lego day because our creativity was wearing thin, and we had to mentally prepare ourselves for what we were doing in the C2 (4-6 year olds) class. No matter though… the kids loved it and stayed engaged for an entire hour. You count it as a win when you have seven 2-3 year olds doing ANYTHING (besides freaking out and trying to escape) for more than 20 minutes.

Making a hand-wall to keep the robot from falling onto the floor

Laughing about their three robots getting stuck together

With the C2 class, we were making robots! Nothing to the extent of the ones we did with the two oldest classes, but it was complicated enough. Debbie found these kits online (https://www.teachersource.com/product/scooterbots/electricity-magnetism?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=bots) which are nice and basic. In hindsight, it would be easy to get the parts for these on your own and make them for a lot cheaper, but it was nice to have something that we didn’t have to think about. Forty minutes and a lot of troubleshooting later, we had 10 working scooter bots! The kids loved them! I thought they were kind of dumb because they just vibrate and wiggle around, but even I have to admit that they’re fun. If I was 6, I would be pumped about them. After finishing the construction, they spent the rest of class running around and finding different places to play with their robots.
I may be exhausted, but I feel really good about the last couple days! Everything is coming together, and I think I understand why people keep teaching. There are some tough days, but when you get to see your kids grow and show them something new and exciting, it’s super rewarding.

You know what else? This is my favorite thing: Irma said that a ton of the kids are saying they want to be engineers now. How cool is that?!

Another Day of Capturing Escaping Toddlers

Posted on January 31, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I think Tuesdays might be the most exhausting day of the week. I have 4 hours of classes on Tuesdays, which is also the case on Mondays and Fridays, but Tuesday afternoon includes the two little kid classes (C1 2-3 years and C2 4-6 years). I’m wiped and really need to get to bed, so I’m going to keep this short(er) and put in a few more pictures.

The morning class was with C4, Ingrid’s kids. We had them do the same activity as the C3 kids yesterday, making their own city “maps” and including a bunch of different building types and other things that make up a city (roads, rivers, bridges, walls, etc). The kids have been so awesome with all of the activities we’ve done so far. They’re being creative and producing some really cool stuff. I’m excited to see what they create in the coming weeks, once we start building models and doing more interesting projects.

This was one of the more detailed ones in the class. How cool is that??

Lunch today was one of my favorites so far, Ají de Gallina. Debbie and I met once in the States when she was home for the holidays to talk about our class, and she made a Peruvian dinner… yup, you guessed it – Ají de Gallina. That was my first exposure to Peruvian cuisine, and I think it might have a special place in my heart because of that (and also because it’s good). Here’s an attempt at an explanation… I’m going to try to get this right. There’s a bed of rice and lettuce, a thick sauce on top that is made up of chicken that has been boiled and shredded plus some ground yellow pepper and other things, a hard-boiled egg, and potatoes. I don’t know how to describe it beyond that, so the picture is just going to have to be enough.

The sauce looks a little weird, but just trust me when I say it’s good!

After lunch, Julie and I attempted to wrangle the little kids. We decided to do an activity with crayon rubbings of different objects to explore texture. Yes, I know… not the most “engineering” like, but it’s hard to find stuff that will entertain the kids in this age group. For the youngest group, we just showed them what to do, dropped a bunch of objects on the table, and helped them scribble all over their papers. For the older kids, we drew shapes on the papers, had them do the different rubbings inside the shapes, and then cut them out and made a picture. Shockingly, this managed to amuse them for a full hour, and some of the kids got really excited about it, running around trying to find other objects in the room that they could use for cool textures. Nice! Today was definitely busy, but at least it was a busy day with lots of successes.

The fact that this many of them are at the table is a miracle.

I couldn’t get over how well they were doing! Very engaged and attentive!

More Bricks and Maps

Posted on January 30, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I can’t believe it’s only Monday. The whole “work every day” thing is starting to mess with my head to the point where I have no idea what day of the week it is anymore. It’s like I’m back in college again, and that’s an experience I vowed to never repeat. When we finally get to a day when I have nothing scheduled, I’m going to need to do some hardcore vegetating (preferably on a couch with a blanket and snacks) to make up for all of this go go going.

The winning tower. It was exactly my height 5′-7″ (170 cm), and I was terrified that it was going to fall on me when I was measuring it.

The kids doing a team building activity where the ground is lava and you can only stand on the bricks to get from the start to the finish.

We had Ingrid’s group, the oldest kids, for class this morning. Debbie had to bail on me to work on a time-sensitive project, so it was just me and Ingrid trying to manage the class. That’s great, except that Ingrid and I have some communication issues (aka she only speaks Spanish, and she speaks really quickly which makes it even harder for me to comprehend). Debbie explained some things to Ingrid ahead of time, but we still had to work out a few kinks during class. That consisted of Ingrid asking me things in Spanish, me squinting at her like I was brainless, her repeating herself, me responding with something that may or may not actually be relevant, her giving me a weird look, and me resorting to miming and charades (luckily, I’m a master of charades). To say that things went smoothly would be an outright lie, but I think I can honestly say that things went okay. The kids finished all of the challenges way more quickly than anticipated which left us with a bunch of extra time at the end, and we just gave them some free time to play until lunch.

Working on his map… Check out those road lines!

After lunch, we were back with Vanessa’s kids. Thankfully, Debbie was back. We talked about what kinds of things there are in cities (building types, roads/parks/plazas, rivers/hills/mountains, etc), looked at some examples of cities around the world (in video and photo formats… never have I ever before watched so many drone videos), and had the kids draw their own “maps”, including some of the building types we talked about, plus roads and a city border. Some of them took a little coaxing to get involved in the activity, but for the most part, they did a great job and came up with some cool drawings. One kid drew his dream beach house on one side of the paper and his city on the other, with a road connecting the two. Another kid got so detailed that he even put yellow lines in the middle of the roads.

I was feeling pretty wiped after classes, but instead of having the usual free time before dinner, we had a meeting (Tony Kay, Jim, Julie, Debbie, and I) to talk about the service team that’s coming down next week. Esperanza de Ana, like many other international ministries, gets teams coming in from the US for weeklong service trips. I really appreciate the way those trips are approached by the team here. Often, weeklong trips are not very successful at utilizing the skills of the team members and filling a real need of the ministry. Here, everyone puts a lot of thought into how the team members will spend their time. They take an inventory of skills before making a plan and then try to come up with projects that are necessary and utilize people’s talents.
That’s all beside the point though. The point is, we all have a lot of extra things to do this week and weekend, plus next week, in order to make the whole process go smoothly. My biggest responsibility is cooking for the team. Luckily, since Delia (the chef) is here during the week, that only consists of one dinner and making scrambled eggs in the morning. I can definitely handle that.

For now though, I need to get to bed. If I’m going to survive the next two weeks, I have to take advantage of every opportunity to rest.

Sunday Work Day

Posted on January 29, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

It’s starting to seem like we have a seven-day work week here. I don’t think there’s been a single day since the very first day that I didn’t do something work related. I’m happy to feel like I have plenty of things to do here and am being useful, but at some point, I’m going to need a day off. For now though, everything is good!

It is somewhat of our own doing because our work on Sundays has been class prep for the week, but there’s just too much to do the other days. I am definitely understanding the first-year teacher struggle of having to plan your curriculum for the first time and start from scratch. Thank goodness I have a co-teacher! It makes a HUGE difference to have someone to bounce ideas off and to know that you don’t have to come up with everything yourself.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Today wasn’t a work day from the very beginning, at least. We started out the day by going to a new church in Lima that Debbie wanted to check out. It’s a Christian and Missionary Alliance church, which is the same alliance that my church at home (Citylight) is a part of. I liked it there, but I did have a WAYYY harder time understanding what the pastor was saying. He spoke much more quickly than the pastor last week, and I’d have to put my comprehension at 50% at best.

One of the breaches we drive by on the way to and from Lima. I love the big rocks out in the water.

By the time we got back from church and grocery shopping, it was about 2:30, and Debbie and I took a little time to pull ourselves together before sitting down to figure out our classes for the week. We came up with a general plan for the week first and then made a detailed outline for the class we have tomorrow. We’re talking about urban planning and building massing this week, and the kids are going to use all of their newfound knowledge of maps and cities to create a kid city for their first big project.
It took us about four hours to come up with a plan and gather the materials that we’re going to need. Totally exhausting. Fingers crossed all this planning means that things will go smoothly in class!

The neighbors are blasting music AGAIN tonight. Debbie said that last night’s party went until 5AM! The only thing making tonight slightly better is that it’s Peruvian music rather than the party/rage/electronic dance mix playlist they were using last night. I think I’ll be able to convince myself to fall asleep relatively quickly even with the extra sound (my eyes are trying to close already, so I think we should be good).

Dominoes

Posted on January 27, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I made it through my first week!! I’ll admit I was a little worried when I already felt like I needed a break after Tuesday. The weather today was, again, hot and sunny, and Debbie and I spent both the morning session and the afternoon session outside. It’s amazing how much the sun can wipe out your energy. We tried to stick to the shade as much as possible, but there’s only so much you can do.

A couple kids getting impressions of the dedication plaque in the plaza.

The morning was another trip into Chilca with the C4 kids (the oldest group). They got really creative with the rubbings which was fun to watch. They got the textures of columns, signs, trees, decorative benches, and one kid even did one of the Volvo symbol on someone’s car. During the walk, they did a good job of following along on the map, reading street signs, and trying to understand where we were.

I think we might be cursed though. Yesterday, a kid’s flip flop broke about halfway through the walk. I had no way of fixing it and didn’t know what to do about it, so I just stayed back with him while he shuffled along the sidewalk. This morning, I considered putting some extra supplies in my backpack, just in case anyone had a footwear malfunction and thought, “nah, it’s not like that’s going to happen again”… Today, a kid’s flip flop broke about halfway through the walk. Yes, seriously. Eddy came by and picked him up so he didn’t have to keep walking like that, but I was shaking my head at myself. From now on if we go anywhere with the kids, I’m packing tape, rubber bands, and safety pins (those are the supplies that I’ve decided you can fix almost anything with). Maybe I’ll see if I can get some crazy glue too. Is this what being a mom feels like?

After lunch, we were with Vanessa’s C3 class again. She wanted us to do something outside if we could, so Debbie found this 100 Brick Challenge and we pulled some activities from there. Instead of 100 bricks, each team got 25 brick-like rectangular pavers that Esperanza de Ana had on hand. First, we did another “tallest tower” challenge, then they had to make a perfect circle without talking that the whole team could fit in, and they had build a pyramid. The one challenge that they got REALLY excited about was making a domino run. Who knew? The one team made a line first, then made a curvy line, then a circle, a heart, and other crazy shapes. That occupied them for probably 40 minutes, which is amazing. Maybe it’s a stretch say it’s an engineering challenge, but they did have to be creative, work as a team, and think about where to put each “domino” so that their creation would function. Nope I just convinced myself. That’s engineering.

For dinner, Debbie, Julie, and I went to this place along the side of the highway that used to make pizza, but now they’ve switched to “pan de queso” (aka cheese bread). Each one is a 8”x2” mini-calzone and is filled with cheese/ham and cheese/some other things/etc. Debbie said there’s another place that does the same thing and has gotten really popular because it’s on the way to the beach and is a quick and easy thing to grab and go. Well, all I can say is that bread and cheese are a couple of my favorite things (understatement), and I don’t think there’s a bad way to put them together. They were so good… I don’t know what kind of cheese they used, but it seemed like fresh mozzarella and was a little salty and awesome.

We went to the gas station to get snacks for the night (because apparently that’s the thing to do), and it was an interesting experience. I’ve never been to a gas station that has product representatives trying to sell you their stuff, but there’s a first time for everything, right? There was a woman pushing Lay’s potato chips and a man trying to sell pisco (a Peruvian brandy). I’m sure they made some very convincing arguments in Spanish about why I should buy their stuff, but I was 1. caught totally off guard, 2. not interested, and 3. incapable of understanding anything they said. Debbie said that isn’t a thing that normally happens there, but at this point it’s my sole impression of Peruvian gas station stores.

Scavenger Hunt in Chilca

Posted on January 26, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Every day since I arrived, the weather has been beautiful here. The sky has been overcast which blocks the hot sun, and as a result, the temperature has been easily bearable. It’s around the mid-70s, so perfect for summer without being miserable. Every day, everyone tells me that the weather isn’t usually like this during the summer. The sky is usually clear and the sun is hot, and it NEVER rains even though it’s rained twice since I’ve been here. When it does, it’s NEVER actual raindrops, it’s always just a mist… but it’s been actual raindrops both times. Well, I savored those days, and it’s a good thing I did because today was the end (though I have my fingers crossed for it being just a temporary break).

Today, the sky was clear, and the sun was brutal. It was okay in the shade, but as soon as you stepped out into the sun, you felt like melting into a puddle. Of course, today was field trip day (with the C3 kids, Vanessa’s 7-9 year olds. Tomorrow we’re doing it again with Ingrid’s C4 class of 10-12 year olds) which meant walking around Chilca in the middle of the day.

We packed the 13 kids plus 4 teachers into the Esperanza de Ana van (which is the exact same type of van as a Ghanaian tro tro… I thought that was kind of funny. They also use those same vans here for “buses” which seem like they’re basically the same as tro tros… overpacked, hot, and an interesting experience), and we were off!

Our “scavenger hunt” started in the main square in town. We had the kids do three rubbings (where you put a paper down on a textured surface and rub a sideways crayon on the paper to get an imprint of the texture) and a sketch of one of the surrounding buildings before we started our walk. I had some ‘fun’ attempting to talk to the kids when they needed help. Sometimes they looked at me with massively confused faces after I said something, and I called in Debbie or Vanessa for reinforcements. Vanessa is one of the only local staff members who speaks some English. She’s still learning, but her English is for sure better than my Spanish.

After the square, we trekked through the city, making stops at the police station, market, sweet shop, and school before heading to our end point, the park. For this class, all of the landmarks were already marked on the map, and we had them just draw our route and answer some questions as we went (for example, what color is the police station? It’s green, in case you were wondering).
By the time we finished, I was melting. There was no time to waste though, and right when we got back to EA, I had to run to the cafeteria to help set up for lunch. I was a machine when putting out the plastic chairs and silverware. I mostly have the locations of the double chairs and spoons memorized, and now I have a cheat sheet with the kids’ ages to help me when I’m putting out the meals. We were actually ready on time today! See? I knew we just needed a little more practice.

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful, just planning for classes for the rest of the week. After dinner, we played a game of Bananagrams (similar to Scrabble, but each person makes their own personal board and tries to use up all of their letters). In English, I’m pretty good at Bananagrams. In Spanish, as I found out tonight, I am horrible. Part of the problem is that the game is made to be played in English, so all of the tile quantities are based on that. There’s only so much I can blame on that though, considering everyone else was playing with the same tiles as I was (to be fair though, everyone was going pretty slowly). Anyway, in conclusion, Bananagrams in Spanish is not easy, especially if your Spanish isn’t exceptional. Shocking revelation, I know.

Prep Day and Churros!

Posted on January 25, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I had a much-needed break from teaching classes today. Wednesdays are fun/play days (as if every other day isn’t also all fun and playing) which means beach trips/movies/free time to play outside. I luckily didn’t get recruited to help out at the beach, so I had some time to work with Debbie on our next activity for class.

We’re doing a scavenger hunt-type quest through Chilca, and I had to edit/simplify a Google map a bit to get it to look how we wanted. We came up with some things for them to do as we walk through the city. The older class will have to label a bunch of buildings and put the symbols into their map legends (because that’s what we talked about last class). The younger class has the symbols already printed on their maps, but they still need to trace our route and answer some questions as we go. I think it’s going to be cool! They have to do some sketching, talk about what sounds they hear, describe their surroundings, etc. Plus, it’s out of the classroom, so that automatically gives it an extra fun factor.

How beautiful is this handout?? Vanessa told us we still have some grammatical issues, but I’m not too worried about that.

One of my other daily duties is helping to get the cafeteria set up for lunch. The kids all have assigned seats, so I’m responsible for putting out plastic chairs for the kids who are in school (and the little kids use two chairs stacked on each other, so I have to put those in the right places), setting out forks (spoons for the little ones), and distributing meals and juice. This all supposedly happens in a half hour, but we have yet to get it done on time. I’m starting to get into a groove with the chairs and forks, so we just need to work on the food and juice distribution. Getting the food put out for everyone just takes a while because Delia, the chef, basically handcrafts each meal for each kid based on how old and big they are and how much food they need. It’s kind of amazing, but as you might imagine, it also takes forever. Then, I need to search the seating chart to find where that kid goes because I obviously haven’t memorized the names and seats of all the 50ish kids yet. It’s just the first week though! I’m sure it’ll all be under control after a couple more attempts.

Debbie and I finished up our handout in the afternoon, and I spent the rest of the school day helping with Julie’s class. She has 7 kids, ages 1-3, so as you might imagine, things can get interesting. She’s great with them, but sometimes it’s nice to have an extra set of arms and legs to capture the ones who are trying to escape (which is always at least one of them). I spent about 20 minutes playing with Mr. Potato Head, 30 playing with blocks, and the rest attempting to communicate with the kids. Between the fact that my Spanish is a work-in-progress and that they’re a bunch of 2 year olds who are on their own quests to master the language, I’m sure you can understand where some communication issues might come into play. Two-year-olds speaking English are hard enough to understand.

Once school ended, Debbie and I walked to the town across the highway, Benjamin, (much closer than going into Chilca) and made copies of our maps. I bought a churro on the way back from a man with a churro cart under the pedestrian bridge. It was 1 Sol (so about 30 cents) and was, no contest, the best churro I’ve ever eaten (don’t ask how many churros I’ve ever eaten because it’s probably less than 10… but that’s just because I didn’t have access to THESE churros. Expect that number to skyrocket). It was so fluffy and donut-y, and inside there was a caramel-like filling. Plus it was obviously covered in sugar. I love sugar.

Anyway, we’ll see how the trip to Chilca goes tomorrow. Pray that we don’t lose any kids!

Is It the Weekend Yet?

Posted on January 24, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m exhausted. So far, one of the main things I’m getting out of this year is a massive appreciation for actual teachers. My feet hurt from standing, and I only had 4 hours of class today. My head hurts from thinking and trying to come up with ways to entertain the kids. I’m seriously ready to pass out. Like I said yesterday, the kids are so well behaved though… I can’t even imagine how I would be feeling right now if they were out of control. Some issues come up, of course, but they’re manageable. It’s a beautiful thing.

The morning class today was C4, the oldest group. They’re 10-12 years old, and after meeting them and seeing them work today, I can’t wait to see what they come up with for the projects we’re going to do later on. We did mostly the same thing as yesterday’s class. The paper tower challenge was definitely… well, a challenge… but I was happy because the reason some groups had trouble was because they had big dreams that just weren’t quite realistic. Even though they didn’t “succeed” if you’re just measuring how tall their towers were, they were trying to problem solve and be creative and make their ambitious designs work. The winning team used their scissors as a weight in the base of their tower. Technically, we never said you couldn’t, so it was legal. YAY for kids thinking outside the box!

Coloring their maps and making symbol legends for them.

They also did the same coloring/map legend/giving directions activity as the group yesterday, and everyone caught on really quickly. We had them do another activity outside with a map of the Esperanza de Ana compound. We had some numbers written on the map, and they had to walk from number to number, proving that they understood what the map was showing, and drawing their routes as they went. It’s such a relief when you make up an activity, have no idea how it’s going to go, and everything turns out well! I feel like the kids learned something and weren’t miserable doing it, so it’s getting counted as a win. High standards for success, right?

The afternoon was a whole different adventure. I had an hour with each of the younger classes. Julie’s class has seven 2-3 year olds (C1), and Ligia’s has eleven 4-6 year olds (C2). Julie gets about 15 million gold stars for helping me (and by “helping” I mean basically carrying me because without her I’d be as useful as a broken rubber band – aka still capable of doing something, but only if there’s no other option). In her class, she explained some basics about what engineers do and then we had the kids build “houses” out of those big legos for an hour. That was probably my favorite part of the day because we just played with blocks, and the kids had a blast making crazy structures.

For the C2 class, Julie and Ligia switched places so that Julie could stay with me. We had the kids draw their dream houses after Julie explained that engineers make plans before they get to work actually building things. My two favorite drawings (which I realize now that I should have taken pictures of, but alas I didn’t) were one where the kid put his house on stilts and had a ladder to climb to the front door, and another one where the house was tiny and drawn in the corner, and the rest of the paper was filled by a drawing of a person riding a dinosaur that kind of looked like a llama.

Tomorrow we don’t have any engineering classes to teach because it’s a beach/movie/fun day (that’s the plan for every Wednesday). I’m not sure if I’ll get sent along on any beach trips as an extra chaperone, but I’m crossing my fingers for getting a recovery day and having some time to finish creating our activities for the rest of the week.

First Day of Summer School!

Posted on January 23, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Happy first day of summer school! This was my first day experiencing a schedule that’s more structured and closer to the school year schedule, though that still has some differences from what we’re doing now. The summer school is from 10AM – 4PM and involves two 2-hour class blocks each day, plus lunch and some free play time. It’s cool because one of the main goals of the summer program is to get the kids to think creatively, so the teachers are all doing interesting things with their classes. For example, the little kids had cooking class today and there are movies and beach trips and science experiments and crafts planned. Heck, if I was a kid, I think I would be all about this summer school.

Our classroom! I didn’t know that we got our own classroom and was beyond excited. How cool is this??

Our morning started at 6:30AM. Julie, Debbie, and I went for another run. I’m impressed that we made it to day 2! Everyone seems interested in keeping this going, so I think there’s a good chance of it happening regularly. The current plan is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and one day over the weekend. We’ll see! The run was miserable, but it was nice to have some wake up time and run through the neighborhood without many people around.
After we got back, we ate breakfast, showered, had some personal quiet time, and then did a mini staff worship time to get our heads into the right place before starting our days. Then, Debbie and I used the rest of the morning to finish pulling together our plans for our first Mini-Ingenieros class!

We decided that the best way to do the map lesson was to have a big version that everyone could see. I did my best without a straightedge to guide my lines.

We had lunch at 1, and at 2PM, it was time. Eek! Okay, deep breath. I know I keep saying this, but I think it requires repeating because it’s easy to forget when you’re not here. Our class is in Spanish. My Spanish experience is as follows: 5 years in middle/high school (which was almost 8 years ago), 2 weeks in college while contemplating a Spanish minor (the idea was clearly rejected), and about 9 months of semi-consistent Duolingo/reading my old textbooks/Spanish grammar internet searches after I decided that I wanted to come to Peru. In summary: my Spanish is kind of ehhh. Especially when it comes to speaking.

Debbie took the lead on a lot of the talking, which I appreciated. We started out having the kids introduce themselves, and then we talked about what an engineer is (“we” meaning mostly Debbie, but I did say a few words). When we got to our first activity, a paper tower competition, Debbie told me to explain it and she would translate. I felt kind of stupid doing it that way, so instead I decided that I was going to just try to explain it myself. Yes, I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s what my brain decided. The result was… well, not terrible at least. I didn’t provide a lot of details, but Debbie and the class’s teacher, Vanessa, were there to fill in the gaps. I felt pretty good about myself actually. I just have to keep pushing, and I know that, but knowing it doesn’t make doing it any easier.

The paper tower challenge went so well! It’s only of those things that I’ve done a million times, generally for some engineering-related team-building activity. Each team gets a few sheets of paper, a 2-ish foot piece of tape, scissors, and 20 minutes to build the tallest tower that can stand on its own. The kids all participated and even seemed like they might be having fun! They clearly put thought into their towers, and I was proud of what they came up with.

The rest of class was spent attempting to teach the kids about maps. We used the map I made on Saturday and talked about what it was showing, colored it in, and then created a key. We also tried to explain how to give directions, and it seemed like the kids were getting it by the end, but who really knows? All in all, I was very happy with how everything went. The kids are, for the most part, well behaved and engaged. I know it’s only day 1, but I’m thinking that this is going to be the case for the rest of the time as well. These are some well-trained kids. Like all kids, I’m sure they’ll have their moments, but they know the expectations and how they’re supposed to act.

Tomorrow is the first day of trying to teach the little ones, so keep me in your thoughts and prayers. I hope that it’s as painless as today was.

Work on a Sunday

Posted on January 22, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

For the last two days technically being “off” days over the weekend, we certainly did a lot of work. I think that’s the teacher life though. You work whenever you need to in order to be ready for class. Good work, teachers of the world. I don’t know how you do it.

This is the inside of church. Check out that hip LED lighting!

The morning started off with a trip into Lima for church. The church (Camino de Vida) that the team goes to is pretty cool. It was celebrating its 28th anniversary this week! The mood was relaxed and welcoming, the people were passionate, and the music was great. We sang some songs that I know in English which was nice because then I had a much easier time mentally translating while singing (not the easiest thing to do, as you might imagine). Also, the pastor is originally from the US which meant that his Spanish during the sermon was easier for me to understand than if he was a native Spanish speaker (that’s a generalization, I know, but he talks more slowly than a lot of people here and says things in ways that make sense to me). I’d put my overall church comprehension at about 80%, and that’s being completely honest. That was also with me focusing extremely hard and not letting myself get distracted for even a second. If I had lost his train of thought, it would have been game over I think. I’m happy with that though!

We went grocery shopping after church but had to keep an eye on the time because the southbound side of the main highway is closed at 2PM on Sundays during the summer to accommodate beach traffic. People in Lima go south on the weekends to go to the beach which means that the northbound traffic on Sundays is horrible. To try to help with that, for part of the way the southbound lanes are closed to southbound traffic and are used for northbound traffic. That’s crazy! I mean, it certainly makes some sense, but it would have been a big inconvenience for us to have to find an alternate route home if we hadn’t made it in time. I can’t even imagine how much people would freak out at home if anyone even SUGGESTED doing something like that. At 2:05, we drove past all of the police officers who were just about ready to start redirecting traffic. Phew!

During the afternoon, Debbie and I went into Chilca to get the materials prepared for class tomorrow. We’re only teaching one class in the afternoon to allow time for the students to settle in during the morning (after this week, we will have a morning and an afternoon class on Mondays) which is a relief because we’ll have some time tomorrow to do some final planning. We got our maps printed out and then drove around and planned some stops and a route for the scavenger hunt we want to do in Chilca during our second class.

The town of Chilca is behind us in this picture. I’ll never get sick of the mountains in this place!

I’m getting excited about this class! I think it has the potential to be really cool, and I hope that we can pull it off. By “we”, I mostly mean “I”. I’m not worried about Debbie. She is going to take the lead on the explanations since obviously the class is going to be in Spanish, but I’m determined to help out. Hmm you know what? This could be perfect… Probably the best people I can talk to are kids because they’re the closest to my level of Spanish (probably like a 2-year-old kid, that is… they can mostly understand but don’t necessarily talk that much).

Keep us in your prayers (my Spanish skills especially)… I’ll let you know how things go tomorrow!