The Precarious Adventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer: Clausura, Independencia, y Mucho Trabajo

July 11^th, 2013. I be bloggin’ like it’s goin’ out of style. Just realized my blog has added up to 70 Microsoft Word pages in 6 months. I’m on page 71 on 7-11-2013. Weird.

Haven’t updated in a while and instead of the reason being that I have nothing to talk about, this time, for a much better reason, I’m actually really busy. It’s kind of awesome.

I’ll start from today and move backwards and then to the future. It was our last English class today and we had a big “clausura” which is like a closing ceremony. I was just going to say thank you and give the students a big hug, but my host mom informed me that we needed a clausura and proceeded to plan everything, gracias a dios, because I had no idea what this entailed. She told me to make a convocacion (invitation) for the students to give to their parents and she came to class and told them that they had better show up to the last class dressed nice and looking pretty. She solicited goods from the community and they generously donated 50 chicken salad sandwiches, a few 3 liters of Coke, and candy. My host mom got the town councilman to come and the reporter of the town newspaper! What the famous! My super nice program manager from the Peace Corps gave me some cute little certificates to fill out for the kids and we had such a lovely little program for them. I had 25 little graduates of the first session of my English course. One of the fathers gave a beautiful speech in which he said (in Spanish) “I want to extend a formal welcome to a town which is already yours. In just these few months, you have made an impact which will live on in these walls and in the hearts of these children just as Pujili will be a part of you”. I don’t know how much the kids will remember me, but I couldn’t agree with that last part more.

In our second to last class, I planned a few games to review everything we had covered in the last couple months and I was SO proud and happy that the kids really retained a lot! I asked them to memorize a short welcome in English to say to their parents for the clausura and as they recited, “Good afternoon. We are students. We are intelligent. We love English! Thank you for coming.” I almost cried.

We’ve got a biiiiig project to do for Peace Corps that I’ve been working on too. I’ve known about it since I got to my site 3 months ago but of course, put it off until now and I’m getting down to the wire. We have to interview students, teachers and administration at the high school as well as members of the general community in order to assess their needs and desires and then report our findings to the Peace Corps at a conference in August. To be honest, I started out thinking this was just a BS project that the org was giving us to keep us busy and hold us accountable for our work for the first few months on our own. But after being here for a couple months, I’m realizing just how useful this project can be. First of all, although the people here are very nice and extremely generous, because it’s a very small town, they tend to be very closed off to “desconocidos” or strangers. Although my host mom knows a lot of people in the community, I’m realizing that it is a specific population, and it’s very difficult to get to know anyone outside of that circle. These interviews could help me in getting to know more people as I’ll be conducting the interviews alongside my English teachers, which will make the community (and me) feel a lot more comfortable. Also, I love being a part of the school community, but I’d also really like to feel like a productive part of the larger community. If I could start some more projects and reach out a little, I think I can make that happen. So that’s what I’ll be working on in the next couple weeks.

We had a 4^th of July BBQ at the park near my house and I invited some volunteer friends and Ecuadorian friends as well as my host family. We had grilled hot dogs, potato chips with ranch dip, watermelon, chocolate chip cookies, soda, and a little beer. We explained our Independence Day traditions and then taught them how to play Ultimate Frisbee. It was pretty fun but it started raining and we had to go home early.

This weekend I’m heading back to Cumbaya to attend a graduation party for the daughter of the really nice family with the gorgeous house that we visited a couple months ago. Then on Monday and Tuesday I’ve got a training in Tumbaco (15 minutes away) so I’ll be staying in the area for 4 days! I’m hoping to visit Sonia and family on Sunday and get me some good eats. The training in Tumbaco is for a summer camp in August that the Embassy is organizing in a city called Santo Domingo. Although I feel like I’m too busy to be volunteering for more projects, I just couldn’t pass this opportunity up. A chance to see a new city (on the government’s dime), make new friends, teach some kids, get out of town for a couple days, and … if I’m working for the Embassy, don’t I get to call myself a diplomat? That’s pretty rad.

AND I am working hard on organizing a summer camp for “my kids”, (the kids from my English class) and lots of other kids in town. It has definitely been a struggle but I think it’s finally coming together. If all goes as planned, we’re going to have a 2 week summer camp at the beginning of August for 60 kids with art class, music, English classes, sports, a program on self-esteem and values, and even juggling! If this works, I might just retire and consider my professional life a success. (Just kidding.)

Finally, the best part. Trying to make sure I have enough time to tag along on my volunteer friend, Todd’s trip to the beach. He’s got visitors coming from the US and they’ll be heading to the coast for 3 days. I GOTTA GO. I miss the ocean so much.

Speaking of missing stuff… I miss YOU! Yeah, you! You, reading this, with the hair.

Here are a couple pictures of the ceremony. Yeah, I was wearing a cardigan AND nylons. Almost like a real teacher.