Camp!

So the week before school started, my sitemate and I collaborated with other Rio San Juan PCVs to put on an afternoon day camp for kids in San Miguelito, with the aim of helping them prepare for school and think about their futures. Over the course of a week, we were able to give 25 8-12 year olds classes and talks about a lot of topics, including English, basic financial education, health, life goals, self esteem, nutrition, oral health, protecting the environment, and crafts!

The kids had tons of energy and we were completely worn out at the end of each day, but overall it was a really great experience, from meeting new people in town, to seeing the kids get so excited about different topics to watching my PCV friends shine at what we all do best.

A big thanks is due to my Aunt Annette who donated a ton of school supplies that we used for the camp for various activities. Un abrazo gigante!

 Playing "Run to the board" to practice colors in English

 

"No es una caja" "It's not a box," an activity to practice creativity

 Having fun in a warm up activity 

 Christina talks about saving for necessary expenses 

 Natalie does a warm up in the self esteem charla

 Leah looks on as the kids brainstorm colorful foods in a nutrition charla

 Recycled plastic bottle piggy banks

 Chanchitos! Saving cordobas

 Jessica shows the consequences of poor oral hygiene

Making masks to practice "How are you?"

 Field games

The full group on the last day

Luddite

I am not doing well with the beginning of school. I knew it would be chaotic and disorganized, but the fact that I don´t have a schedule yet is making me very stressed. Even though I knew this would happen.

To help ease my desire to do something, I´ve been hanging out at school in San Miguel this week. I was trying to teach everyone how to use scheduling software so they wouldn´t have to make the schedule by hand. Because obviously technology is better, right?

WRONG. Today, I finally got enough data to make a schedule, and lo and behold, it did not work. No matter how I sliced or diced it, there are still 30 classes that can´t be placed.

Guess we should have just used a blackboard and chalk.