"Is it Like a Parchute?" -life in our Preschool

I love preschool...love it.

TFABB (Teachers For A Better Belize) came back in town for a week to work just with our Preschools and principals. I got to go over to Santa Teresa's Preschool and see Amy's house while I was there. It was sinfully hot that day and watching Anne (the preschool specialist) excitedly do circle time and model lessons for outside playtime was awe inspiring. Amy's host sister Hilaria (who fittingly is hilarious) has been wanting to meet me and we hung out with her in the hammock for some time. She told Amy she found her a man, that she 'dashed away' her old boyfriend, and then we watched her play with my shades and kushtal. Amy has a ketchi dress (kaylyssa and I will be having ours made Wednesday) and her host mom said, "I like see when Amy wear her dress." Amy's preschool teacher just turned 18 and is super cute. She told us all about the upcoming 'Deer Dance' that the villagers have been practicing for all night, until the sun comes up, several times a week. It is a ceremonial dance to ensure a good planting and harvest. The men and one young boy (who also practices until the wee hours) do 4 days of dancing 3 times over about a year. They must do all three ceremonies or bad things will happen to them.

Amy's sweet thatch...she lives without electricity...hard core.

The next day Amy and Anne came out to my village. We were like a whirlwind coming through. In one day we:
Set up a library (with each book organized by color dots)
Rearranged the room completely
Made a circle/ calendar time area
Modeled a Circle time
Modeled small group instruction
Taught her 3 new songs/chants to use while teaching

When we went outside for playtime I heard the cutest song ever. All the kids stood in a circle holding hands. One kid steps inside, the teacher asks "boy or girl?" The kids respond accordingly and then they sing:
"There's a brown boy in the ring...Fa la la la la,
There's a brown boy in the ring...(higher) Fa la la la la la la
There's a brown boy in the ring,
He looks like sugar in the plum (higher) plum, plum

Practicing gross motor skills hitting down glue bottles....notice the back right corner, that is now the calendar time (below)

Calendar time and the new library in the preschool

There's also a song about the chariots of heaven where 'If the devil's in the road, we will roll right over him' complete with arms rolling and leaning forward to 'roll over the devil.'

Both preschool teachers were super responsive and willing to try any and all of our crazy ideas. March is Preschool Stimulation Month which kicked off with a parade of all the preschools in Toledo dressed in shirts of one color with banners and balloons and all the parents.

Our color was orange...many of the moms wore orange ketchi dresses to match

All month preschool has special activites and 'field trips' including family day where we went to 10 of the preschoolers houses and had a snack and drink at each one. My favorites were the houses that served the oat drink...kind of like oatmeal but tastier and thinner made with condensened milk. The kids were stopping every few yards to drop trough and 'piss' they don't say go to the bathroom or pee it's, 'Miss I need go piss' When they are given permission they just go outside the front door and 'use' right there. when we went over our bridge there were 4 boys in a row peeing. I liked talking to all the moms and seeing the houses (I stealthily sketched their locations onto my homemade map of the village I keep with me).

20 preschoolers going on a village field trip

Sheldon with his mom Saturnina and Grandma Ms Cecilia

Drinking oats

One afternoon while helping my preschool teacher plan some lessons on transportation she says, "what is this?" ash she turns a workbook and says the words hot air balloon very questionably. "is it like a parachute?" I proceed to launch into an explanation of a large 'parachute like' balloon that is filled with hot air by a torch and gas tank. How when the air is warmed it begins to rise, then cools with the surrounding air resulting in the balloon landing if it is not heated again. Ms. Consuela was staring at me, mouth open...silent for a few seconds. She then asked why we have those, and if people still use them. I mumbled some things about fairs and hobbies and drifted off into my own thoughs of these pointless, expensive air carriers.

Several of the preschoolers, including sheldon now call me keveen. I really like this and even Saturnina has started to call me x keveen (ish keveen...miss keveen).

Now time to get Kaylyssa from the airport!!!!!!!!!!

“This is my brother Greg”

6 Months Already??

It has been a good couple of weeks for Greg. He is getting excited about some projects at school. Namely, helping to write a grant for a projector, computer classes with standard 6 students, and trying to see if there can be a way for teachers to be exempt from duty on computers. Greg is a really great teacher of computers. He had the kids come over to all these different parts he pulled out of broken computers. Then he explained what they do and let the kids delve in to attempt to solve problems like, ‘a missing hard drive’ in another broken computer. The kids loved getting to touch all the parts (especially the boys).

Operation Integration update: Greg has made a Belizean best friend named George. His wife is the preschool teacher at Greg’s school. They’ve been hanging out a lot and seem to be frighteningly similar. Greg and George were comparing cuts and scars when George said, “that’s nothing, check this out” lifting up his right sleeve to reveal a nasty scar that wrapped around his bicep. Greg said nothing just lifted his right sleeve to reveal his own scar. Some other similarities; they have the exact same bottle opener key chain, same letter name, love of karaoke, and are both Jack of all trades and master of none. We were invited to his house for his oldest daughter’s 14^th birthday. They have 6 wonderfully behaved kids and one on the way. It was so much fun watching Greg and George as they belted out song after song as the kids quietly entertained themselves.

Greg also got invited to play football with the guys. Every evening around 5 until about 6:30 all the boys and young men come out to the school yard to play football. The kids make their own little field towards the school and the men play on the other half of the yard. Greg has often eyed the games, but they looked too good for him to comfortably ask to play. But, Peace Corps is all about pushing boundaries and comfort zones so Greg went out to play barefoot with the kids. As the guys started showing up and kicking around the PTA chairman’s son called out to Greg for him to join them!

Fajina (the monthly chopping of the village) happened again yesterday. Lynette ran to a neighbor’s house to get a machete for Greg (since we have yet to buy one for ourselves) and he set off with all the men to chop. Many people called out, ‘good morning Mr. Greg’ and those that didn’t know asked Andres who he was. Andres responded, “This is my brother Greg.” The villagers joked that he must be from another mother, which they proceeded to name a lady from another village that apparently ‘gets around.’ As they were all chopping the alcalde took the opportunity to inform the community that we should not be fishing at a certain spot anymore because it is protected. The villagers were yelling and Greg heard them say white a lot of times (he asked Andres if they were talking about him). Andres said no, and that they were angry because when white people come buy land in Belize they change the rules of the land that they’ve been using for years.

There is one Catholic Bishop for the entire country of Belize. That has made Confirmation pretty crazy with the Bishop going on a whirlwind tour of Belize doing 2 to 3 confirmations a day for an entire month. We have gone to two confirmation parties..one with BBQ and 2012 playing on a tv set up outside; and the other in the neighboring village. We saw many people from our village and rode back from that one with the Coh’s, each of us with a nane’(baby) in our arms.

I am so excited about my sister coming this weekend! All the kids will scream her name when she calls and I tell everyone I visit that my baby sister will be here next week. I even went and visited the lady who sews ketchi dresses so we could have some made when she's here. We had a fun time visiting that house, it is Virginia's in-laws. Rinelva (the seamstress) was born in Silver Creek and has lived here for 30 years. She said that up until about ten years ago there was only a bus out of Toledo every other day, and no buses into the village. Her husband used to go out and work for a month or more at a time before he could come home.

Sheldon was sitting in the hammock with me reading his book, he would reach behind him and pet my nose saying 'saq' which is white...that's life

I feel like I am getting behind in my posting...so much to talk about. I took the Std. V and VI kids on a 'village field trip' to their houses and all the important places and they will be writing up paragraphs on housing, vehicles, money, and our library which I will post for their pen pals back in the states (soon Lauren!)

Yup...23 std 5 and 6 kids and one white gyal traipsing around the village for 2 hours

You Can't Buy Pythons like These at the Pet Store

The Champs:
Myself and Coy

I was putting off writing up the events that took place at AVC (All Volunteer Conference) but Kevin put it so well... so I will just attach his blog:

Kevs
http://frasure7.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-volunteer-conference-arm-wrestling.html

I almost missed this event because we were watching lost at the Peace Corps office. We power walked back to the office answering phone calls and texts getting them to hold us off, delay the woman's matches until we got there. We walked up to the third floor to a full arm wrestling frenzy. The room was pack and hot and sweaty, much like the scene of a Peace Corps fight club. I will add that I thought I didn't stand a chance...there were some huge guns...last year's champ Katie being my biggest fear. So be sure to check out Kev's post :)