Wednesday, December 1, 2010
So yesterday was world aids day and we had a little event here in San Isidro in the high school. It actually went a lot better than I thought it was going to go. The few things I had seen before hand preparing for the event with the subcentro were a little sketchy and the group of kids we were working with and the doctors didn’t listen to all of my suggestions but it actually went fairly well (for example we were practicing a skit and I thought it would be better a different way and they didn’t want to change it also they made a pamphlet and some of the statistics were a little off or unnecessary and some of the wording wasn’t quite right----however at least they listened to me and took off the ‘disadvantages of using a condom’ thank god for that.) even though everything was exactly perfect it was better than doing nothing and at least the kids got a chance to hear a little bit about hiv/aids and other stds and got to talk about it a little bit. We gave out condoms and information on usage and hiv. They cancelled class (it was during the school day) so all of the school was present which was good. The principle is the other volunteers host dad so if (when) we want to have any sort of even with the hs I’m pretty sure we can just tell him and hell cancel class and we’ll have the entire school present. What was also cool was that each grade (or class-I’m not sure) put together a poster on HIV/Aids … again there was a lot of mis-information it was good that they did some stuff and it was more than I thought they would do.
To me, my first Ecuadorian world aids say was a success. And next year it will be way better.
I also have started aerobicos with my women’s group. We have classes Mondays and Thursdays and we still meet Wednesdays to have discussions or activities (we met this wed to talk about hiv/aids which was a success as well). I led the first aerobics class on Monday. It went well, we had music and everything. The women are at different levels however so some thought it was a little easy and others struggled. This can only get better as well, I will figure out ways to make it more difficult for those who need it while still including the others. We had all ages from 8 year olds to 50 years olds. It was hard teaching the class, speaking in Spanish, remembering/figuring out which moves I should do, counting (counts of what—8 or 10, 11? 15? Tres? Que?) but each time I will get more comfortable and it will get easier to teach.
Leyla also approached me about wanting to build a park next to the house where the local kids can play. We did that this past weekend, it was super cool, fun, a great use of recycled materials and we got a chance to hang out there the fam and friends for a while. Shantonu and I are going to do a ‘world map’ project with it now where we break the wall up into sections (squares) and different groups of people fill in different sections of the world map and afterwards it’s a complete map with contributions from many people. It will be super cool and then there will be a map on the wall so that the kids can play and learn geography at the same time! I also might paint the toys? (we have swings, a spinny thing, a see saw, and something that will soon be monkey bars (its ½ of monkey bars but I saw some kids playing volleyball with it which is cool too) and do some hop-scotch or something on the ground. :)
all of the students for the event
And last, the little angel Adriano!!!
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