Career Day!

Hello excellent people,
    
     Today was our first "Career Day" event in Jalpa, and tomorrow we continue in La Palma. We had a great turnout, with the kids hearing presentations about banking, a dentistry, architecture, accounting, public relations and communications, beekeeping, and optometry. The students learned about these professions and what it takes to achieve them. We also spent the first part of the class taking about different careers and what the students would like to be when they grow up. We've got a few doctors, a few vets, several soldiers, a lot of FBI agents (?) one telenovela actress, and a future luchador named "El demonio en rojo".

     Tomorrow we have some different speakers coming out to La Palma, and hopefully we have as much success there. Catherine, Kiera and I will also be speaking. Kiera will be talking about health (her parents, who are both doctors, just visited and left a bunch of stethoscopes and mallets for the kids, which were a big hit). I'm going to be talking about working in a courthouse, and in an attempt to better explain what legal aid is I've written up very dramatic roles for each of the students, so we can do some mock interviews and they can see what kind of legal problems exist. I think I am going to give the incorrigibly fidgety Beni the role of a bank robber, or maybe of a senora with three kids. Catherine's presentation will probably be the most exciting, however - she is going to talk about working at the Toronto Zoo and show lots of amazing animal photos. I'm sure the kids will love it.

     Classes have been chugging along pretty well. We made some fake blood in Kiera's class on Tuesday and it was a little bit too exciting for the students, who were kind of off the wall that day. Full moon? In the secundaria we have continued to work on our ethical product commercials. One group is working on a made-in-Mexico clothing brand and the other on a massaging bed which also plays music and is made out of recycled materials in factories which pay their workers fair wages and give them - gasp! - lunch breaks. Honestly, sometimes I just nod and smile.

     The best news ever, though, is that not only have our new books arrived but also that Alderson Elementary school has raised almost a thousand dollars for our program! What an amazing bunch of kids and staff to have put all that together for us. We're going to use the money for new supplies like books, and maybe to help us pay for a field trip to Dolores Hidalgo with some of the primaria students. We are bringing the new books out to the sites tomorrow and I know the kids will be excited to read something fresh and not falling apart or with salsa stains all over it. 

     In other news, I've also been teaching yoga fairly often and I feel like I am maybe possibly starting to be able to tell my left from my right as a result! We also attended our first Mexican wedding on Saturday in La Palma. It was lovely and hilarious to see our grubby little monsters all dressed up in button-down shirts and the girls in sparkly dresses. My favourite part was when some students tried to set Catherine up with one of the mariachis...

Til next time,

Natalia

Recent photos/Fotos recientes

Kiera and Catherine in the Charco

Ana Yessenia, giving an impassioned speech about the rights of the workers

Learning about the skeleton in Jalpa

A day at the presa with Lisett and Brayan

The lovely Mariela

Jalpa

Adrian, as usual in a world of his own...

Updates and whatnot

It's been a while since I posted anything  - A lot has happened over the past month! In Jalpa, we have started a new secundaria class which is so far going very well. Despite the lack of internet and electricity, we have been watching, analyzing, and discussing movies and music videos. Right now we are talking about stereotypes surrounding love and romance, a theme which got off to a good start on Valentine's Day. I had them write their own similes, but without using any of the cliched comparisons, like "stars" "moon" "ocean" "flower" "springtime", etc. They wrote some pretty cute similes, including, "My love is like chocolate because it is sweet" and "My love is like cow's milk because it is natural". The primaria class in Jalpa is going well too; last week Kiera's three-legged races were a big hit and of enormous comedy value for us teachers. Today, the students took us for a walk to the lake after class and got very, very muddy.

In La Palma, things have been high-energy but relatively smooth. Kiera's afternoon class have been excitable as usual, but have been enjoying the unit on exercise and food groups. She did an activity where they had to guess how much sugar was in various pops and juices. I was surprised by the amounts. The kids were just like, "Whoa, two cups of sugar? AWESOME! I love sugar!" My morning class has been doing some more theatre activities, as well as a community mapping project in which they did a photo scabenger hunt for different important places and items in their community and worked in teams to make their own maps, complete with printed photos. We've also written some more letters to send to our B.C. penpals.

The secundaria class has also been pretty good - the chocolate trading game we played last week (exploring themes of globalization, fair trade, and exploitation) was actually a big success! Things got a little heated, with students attempting to take over the bank (me), one very greedy factory owner, and some pretty dramatic speeches at our mock union conference. The image of Angela, a quiet, studious 13-year-old, shaking her fist at the "trabajadores ingratas", and of Mariana, an eye-rolling ninth-grader, making a case for the rights of small cocoa farmers, was pretty fantastic. This week, we'll be continuing with these themes as students create and film their own commercials for invented fair-trade products. We also had several birthdays last week, so on Thursday we had a Valentine's/birthday party, which quickly degenerated into a cake-fight.

Otherwise, things have been pretty excellent - I spent a lovely few days in Guanajuato last weekend and will probably be going camping next weekend out near Jalpa, hopefully with Catherine and Kiera in tow this time. The kids asked us to take them along too... after exchanging looks of panic, we said, "NO."

Check out some recent photos, and thanks for reading!