My job at the after school program has been really great these past 2 months. The second of February was the first day back with the kids after their summer break. And for the new school year (which started in February) I was moved into a different classroom so that now I am working with the youngest group of kids in the morning and in the afternoon. I have 7 first graders in the morning and 7 first graders in my afternoon class. I really enjoy working with both groups and I find that I have more ideas and more experience with this group of kids then I did when working with the older kids because of my studies in Early Childhood Education and also my experience teaching Kindergarten for 3 years. I also enjoy helping the younger kids with their homework because it is more working with learning and writing letters, words, and numbers and less of long division and searching in textbooks for vocabulary words. I have also gotten to know some of the parents of the kids that I am working with this year because we had an Open House night for parents to come and visit the After School program and meet the teachers and we also have been doing some home visits during the past couple of months. It has been really great to work with the younger kids and also to get to know the parents. However, the only downside is that now that I really enjoy my job and my time spent in the classroom, the days pass by quickly and the weeks are gone in a flash. I cannot believe that we are now into April and that my time here in Bolivia is rapidly winding down.
Some highlights from February
- A trip to Santiago de Chiquitos with the group of SALTers to visit Karla who is working in Santiago. We spent 4 days hiking, seeing her school, visiting caves, and enjoying the mountains around Santiago. We also rode on the train of death to get out to Santiago. It is called the train of death not because it is dangerous, but because it goes so slowly that it feels like the death march. I think it took us 10 hours by train to get out to Santiago. Overall it was a really great trip and I enjoyed the chance to get out of the city for a weekend and to see another part of Bolivia.
- I took a kitten on the public busses here! One of my friends found a kitten on his roof and everyone told him to throw it out in the street. But I told him to wait and we would find it a home. So he kept it in his bedroom. I was able to find a family that would take it, but I had to be the one to transport the kitten to its new home and so I took it with me on the bus. I was really nervous about getting on one of these crazy, crowded public busses with a kitten that had never ridden on a bus. I had visions of the kitten freaking out and scratching me or of the people around me freaking out and kicking me off the bus. However, everything went well. I was able to get a seat and I held the kitten in my lap until he fell asleep. We had a 45 minute bus ride and then we got off at the end. We named him Boomerang and he is doing great with his new family. They told me that he loves to hunt cockroaches.
- February was kind of a crazy month because transportation was not reliable in the city. The bus drivers wanted to raise the price to ride the busses, but the mayor and people of Santa Cruz wanted it to stay at the same price. So several of the bus drivers held marches and went on strike. I spent a lot of time waiting for my bus to take me to work. Instead of waiting 15 minutes for the bus, I would end up waiting a half hour or more. And when the bus would finally come, it would be packed full of people. One day I ended up takng a different bus to a marketplace and then I got off to take another bus to my job (someone told me that this would be faster)...however there were tons of people trying to get busses at the same place that I was now waiting and when a bus would pull up, hordes of people would run and push and scramble on, and I was never aggressive enough to get into the bus. Finally I was able to get on one of the busses after some older lady got on and I ended up hanging outside the door until some people got off the buss and there was room for me inside!
- Like I stated earlier, in February I started working in the classroom with the youngest group of kids and I really am enjoying that. Also February was a fun month in working with the other teachers. They are all college kids and many did not start classes until March. So in February they had more time to do things in the evenings and we planned some meals together and also had a sleepover with the girls that work at the After School Program.
- The first weekend in March was Carnaval weekend. This is a crazy time in Santa Cruz when there is a lot of partying and celebrating and people throw paint and water and the city is basically a giant party. A lot of the churches hold church camps out in the country during this time and so I went to the Bolivian Mennonite Church camp that was held for the 4 days of Carnaval. I had a really great time at the camp. It was at the same spot that the youth camp that I went to in September was, and once again there were frogs in the bathrooms and under the toilet seats. There were also many crazy games that we played in groups and there was a talent night the last night where each group had to have a song and a drama. There was also a little store by the camp that sold empanadas...these fried cheese bread pastries that I absolutely love....and in the 4 days of camp, I bought and ate 16!
- One reason that March was extra busy for me was because I had some visitors from the States!!!! Joyce and Leroy Bontrager from church came to visit for 3 weeks and my friend Jess Penner also came to visit for a week. It was so much fun to show them around and to have them see where I work and meet my host family and get to see Santa Cruz. I got to show them some of my favorite spots and we also got to eat at some of my favorite restaurants here.
- Another big highlight was that the last weekend in March I got to go on a trip out to Samaipata. The SALT group and the Radical Journey group went to visit this beautiful spot. It is about 3 hours away from the city and is out in the mountains. There were 10 of us that went and we were able to all stay at a hostel. On Saturday we went to some waterfalls and then hiking in the mountains. We had a map, but ended up getting lost and never really found the right trail. We could see the road from on top of the mountain and so we just decided to go straight down and end up on the road. However, we ended up in this mess of thorns, vines, brush, bushes, and trees, and most of us got pretty dirty and scratched up, but we blazed our own trail and made it back to civilization!
