Half way, kind of.

We are a little over half way through, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect a little about our experience here. What do we miss about "home"? What have we learned? Is it what we expected?

1. Hot showers, we will probably never take those for granted anymore.

2. Being able to drink water from the sink (even writing about it is a little strange).

3. After living in 8 different places (ranging from people's private homes to hostels) over the span of 2 months, we have a deeper appreciation of the idea of home.

4. We still might be crazy, but we havent killed each other yet...on the contrary, our time here has strengthened our relationship as a whole.

5. Waking up at 5:30 AM to teach crazy teenagers all day is one million times more rewarding than could ever be imagined.

6. Salad, I miss a good big fresh salad...yummm..

7. We have met, lived with, worked with, and gotten to know so many different types of people. We now have a new respect for humanity.

8. When a learns person about their body it gives them a new and different sense of ownership and responsibility for it. Too often young people are not given the information they need in order to make healthy decisions for themselves.

9. Teaching sex education in a language that is not your first changes the way you look at the subject. For me, I find that I look at it much more objectively and it actually easier for me to teach sex ed in Spanish than in English.

10. Lastly, with only 2 more months here we are faced with the next phase of our lives....and with a lot of thought and deliberation, well, we still aren't quite sure were we are headed. So we are learning all kinds of new and creative answers to tell people when they ask us that dreaded question "So, what are you going to do when you get back to the US, you must have REAL jobs....right?"

I know more than a few people who would enjoy this pic

WEEK 9

Last Friday we moved from Isla Mujeres to Mérida. I have been involved in the work that Brazos Abiertos does in Mérida for the past two and a half years so it is kind of like a second home for me. It has been nice to be back and see everyone. It has been especially nice to be able to work with TEAMM YUC. I have known most of them since the beginning (almost 3 years now) and have formed a close relationship with them.

While I love Mérida, it is the pueblos around it that hold a special place in my heart. In particular a pueblo called Sierra Papacal. I first went there with Brazos to teach at a school sex education/HIV prevention workshop and completely fell in love with it. If you went there and took around you would probably think I was crazy. It is about an hour and half outside of Mérida and was the end of the road up until a couple of years ago until they extended the road to Chelem. There aren't any real tourist attractions there (no public ruins or cenotes, no restaurants, no gift shops, no hotels), its just a traditional Mayan pueblo outside of the city: small and rough around the edges, but to me is a magical place. Maybe I am so drawn to it because it is different than any place I have been before, maybe its the students I worked with and the bond I have with them, regardless of the reason(s) I find myself humbled by my experiences there.

We went to Sierra this Friday to meet with a few of the kids there and I was surprised to see how much it has changed in the past 6 months.  I started working in Sierra almost 2 years ago and I am used to it being a very quiet place with not very many people out and about, even in the evenings when it cools down a little bit. However, when we got off the bus the Zocolo was full of people.  Kids were playing kick ball, the comisaria had people going in and out, and the businesses around the zocolo seemed to be busy as well.  It was a much different place than the one I had last seen 6 months ago, a much healthier and seemingly stronger community. I have also heard that a large number of kids were now attending high school in Komchen (there is no high school in Sierra so the students have to go Komchen, 2 villages away), including a number of kids that I had been told would never go onto high school. If you know me, you know how happy it made me to hear this. And if you know these kids, you know how significant this is. There is a great man named Father Bill (Padre Guillermo) who has a scholarship program for students, and I wouldnt be surprised if his program had something to do with the number of kids who are now in school.

As we were sitting waiting for kids to show up I asked if we should go to their house and look for them since our cell phones didnt work there. The one student, Santiago, that was there asked me why my phone didnt work and showed me that his phone had full signal! WHAT! The cell phone tower that had been sitting without power for a quite some time (since the day it was erected), was finally doing something useful. However, I didnt get to make use of it because three students showed up right after and then, instead of calling their friend, walked to her house to go find her. I am glad to see some things haven't changed.

Pic from last summer

Who knows what could be driving the changes in the town, Father Bill's community programs, the new technology, or maybe a mixture of things. Regardless, I think it is a pretty incredible thing.

WEEK 8

We had a great time getting to travel a little bit, hopefully we will get to a little more while we are here. In fact, when we got back we saw an add for a VW bus that some travelers are selling...it is looking very tempting. It is $2000 USD and comes with a tent, drinking water pump, all kinds of camping supplies, seats 7...seriously, anyone interested? We just found out we are only going to be working until the end of April and were originally planning on working until the end of June, so we got a couple months to kill... even though we should probably get jobs and be responsible...traveling around Mexico in a VW bus sounds so much more fun.

But back to reality....This is our last week in Isla Mujeres and we are wishing we had more time here. We have finally managed to get a good group of kids together that are interested in staying involved with Brazos and forming a TEAMM here in the future. We had a really good meeting yesterday evening and the four girls from last week all came again and they brought two more girls with them as well. The girls that came last week filled in the new girls about what the purpose of TEAMM is and how the organization works.

I wrote about TEAMM a little bit in previous posts but I feel like I should elaborate a little bit more. TEAMM is a part of Brazos Abiertos and is composed of young people ranging in age anywhere from 16-27. These young people are volunteer youth educators who's mission is to educate other young people about sexual and reproductive health. This education takes place through peer to peer education, in other words: young people educating young people. The members of TEAMM organize and carry out workshops, community fairs, and other types of health campaigns that focus on reproductive and sexual health, such as prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, family planning and birth control, and sexual and reproductive rights. Right now there are TEAMM members in the United States(these members are called TEAMM US), and TEAMM members in the state of Yucatan in Mexico (these members are called TEAMM YUC). In the beginning of TEAMM the only members were from the United States and the idea was that these members would educate and train youth in the Yucatan peninsula to become members of TEAMM as well and that both factions of TEAMM could collaborate and work together to train more members in  both the US and Mexico. Over the past two years these two factions of TEAMM have grown and developed together and are fulfilling the original goal. They continue to spread information working together as well as independently of one another. The goal is that in the future there will be more TEAMM's (i.e. TEAMM Isla Mujeres) and all the TEAMMS will continue to develop and be sustained over time.  I hope it is all beginning to make more sense if you were unfamiliar with the idea before.

Back to the meeting. We talked with them about when TEAMM US is coming and whether or not those dates would work for them, where the best place for the workshop was, how much time they would be willing to commit and what times would work best, and what they wanted to learn during the workshop. After talking abotu the scheduling we talked about the different options for the workshop content and they decided that they wanted to learn about the different types of events they could coordinate and the planning processes.

After talking a little bit we moved on to doing activities. We did one that highlighted the importance of communication in group work as well as one that demonstrated how, as people, we are all connected.

Activity #1
This is a Kody and Lena original, it is originally a "parlour" game that we modified into a communication activity. The girls split up into two groups of three and each group was given a piece of paper that was folded into three parts. Each person chose a part of the body to draw (head, torso or legs). The head was drawn in the top section of the paper, the torso in the middle section, and the legs in the bottom section. Each person was unable to look at the other sections of the body (the paper should remain folded during the drawing process so conceal the other drawings) or talk about what the other sections looked like until everyone was done drawing. When everyone was finished drawing, the piece of paper is unfolded to reveal the "creature" that everyone created.

The point of the activity is to show that it important to communicate your ideas with the group as well as listen to the ideas of others in order for the final outcome to be complete. We explained that even though all three people had really good ideas the person they created was unorganized (i.e. It's head and legs weren't connected to it's body). We then put it into the context of TEAMM, when planning an event or workshop it is important to communicate your ideas to your group so that the event will go smoothly and will have organization.

Activity #2
We played the string game again. Since none of these girls had been at the first couple of meetings and it is always a favorite, we decided to redo it.

After the girls left we were packing up our materials and Jessica and Mercedes came back and gave us tickets to their dance performance the the next night (tonight). Normally we would be going to Yoga since it is Wednesday but 1) We can't pass up a dance performance, specially when the theme is 80's music 2) How could we turn down a gift from our students? As a teacher, its always such a proud moment to see your students enjoying, excelling, and taking pride in something. I have been to a few dance performances of Brazos students over the past couple of years (dance performances are a big deal and very common at the schools here) and I always end up crying (very fat proud tears), let's see if I can hold it together this time.

Week 7

We finished up with the high school students on Monday and talked with them about the possibility of working with US volunteers in the summer and the possibility of forming a team of youth educators/volunteers here as well.

A lot of kids signed up to come to the meetings to get more information about the program but we were a little apprehensive about whether or not kids would show up..we thought we might be sitting alone at the red cross again. We went on Tuesday prepared and hoping for some kids would show. Four girls came from the high school and we talked a lot about the team of US volunteers (called TEAMM USA, Teenagers Educating about AIDS in Merida, Mexico) and the team in Komchen (TEAMM YUC) and if they would be interested in doing more activities with Brazos Abiertos in the future. They all seemed excited about going foreward and we talked about how to keep in touch with them to let them know when TEAMM US was going to be coming in June and what the plans are. After talking a little bit about the mission of Brazos Abiertos and TEAMM we did name game and a condom game. We didn't have a lot of time left in the meeting so I told them they could choose one game and save the other for next week or we could do both if they wanted. We ended up staying an extra half hour with them because they wanted to hang out and do more activities. Hopefully we will see them next week!

On Wednesday morning we woke up at 5am and took the first ferry over to Cancun in order to catch the 7:30 bus to Mahahual. The bus was ride was about 5.5 hours long, but it was a direct route so we didn't have to change buses and we could rest a little without worrying about missing a stop. Our trip ended up being about 6 hours because our bus kept dying and we would have to stop in the middle of the road for a while to let it rejuvenate. We finally got there around 1:45 and started our search for Marie and Diane. We walked up and down the beach for about an hour asking the waiters if they had seen one woman with very long blond hair and another one with very big red hair, Diane has extremely long blond hair and Marie said she was going to wear it down so we could see her big red hair from far away. After about an our of no luck we got a phone call from Fabian, who worked at the jewelery store at the cruise ship dock, telling us to meet the ladies at the Hard Rock cafe to receive our "fake ID's" for the cruise dock.  As it turns out we were 3 KM away from where they were and even if we had found the right place, we couldn't have gotten in because we weren't apart of the cruise. Thankfully, Fabian coordinated a plan to get us in a Diane's long time friends Faith and Jim lent us their badges so we could get in.

We we were able to spend a couple hours with Marie and Diane and hear about the cruise and everything that was going on at home. Marie even brought my rain jacket that I have been sorely missing. Eventually they had to get back on the ship and continue on, but it was so good to see them and I still am amazed that it worked out.

We had originally planned on staying at this place on the beach that has palapas that you can stay in for around $25 a night, so after dinner we found a taxi to take us there. Even though the place was only about 6km away it took us almost half an hour to get there because the road was so bad and the darker it got the harder it was for the taxi driver to maneuver the car around the giant potholes in the gravel road. When we left the sun had just begun to set and by the time we reached the camping place it was pitch dark. Even though the ride was long and bumpy the driver told us all about the town and its history.

The actual town of Mahahual is not actually on the beach but when the cruise ship dock was built, restaurants and shops began popping up on beach that is close to Mahahual (there is still a lot of undeveloped land in between the pueblo and where the cruise ships dock). On the days when there are no cruise ships most of these places are closed because they are mostly staffed and run by people who live farther away and only come in when there are cruise ships. When there are no cruise ships the town and the beach is very quiet. He said that normally there are only about 500 people in and around Mahahual but on days when there are cruise ships the number of people jumps to 15-20 thousand people because there are so many tourists and there are a large number of people who come from other towns to work in the restaurants and shops. The set up of the town is a little strange because there is so much land in between the port and the the original pueblo and the beach and port are completely closed on days when there are no ships coming in. In fact most people on cruises do not know they are even in Mahahual because it is commonly referred to as "Costa Maya".

Anyway, back to the taxi ride...When we arrived at the place we wanted to stay the taxi driver rolled down the window and yelled out "Jorge! Jorge! ¿Tienes palapas esta noche?" (Jorge, do you have palapas tonight?) and Jorge yelled back to us from his house "Lo siento, no tengo nada" (I am sorry I don't have anything). So, the taxi driver turned around and took us to the first place that had a vacancy sign, Balam Ku. Luckily we were catching the owners as they were going out for dinner. Also, if i remember correctly from their website they have a 3 night minimum stay but they had no problem with us just staying one night.

Balam Ku was a good place to stay for the first night we were there because we definitely needed a warm shower and comfy bed after the crazy day of travel, but it was a little out of our price range to we moved on the Travel In' for our second night in Mahahual. It was a little more rustic and more our style, plus they have a yummy restaurant. The restaurant is their main business and they do not really even advertise that they have 2 rooms in a palapa for rent, they are just there for the weary and "in the know" travelers..Honestly though, we would go back to Mahahual just to stay at the Travel In' and eat at their restaurant. They were so welcoming and the atmosphere was great.

While we stayed at the Travel in' we were able to spend some time relaxing on the beach and do some snorkeling as well. The Reef is really close to the shore and Justa and Albert, the owners of the Travel in', let us use there kayak to paddle out and go snorkeling.

After snorkeling we took a long walk down the road to check out the beaches and jungle area. After the walk we sat on the beach and read, snacked on some pretzels, and worked on our sun burns a little bit.

The highlight of our stay at the Travel in' was definitely the food! We had the best meal since we have been in Mexico. We wished we had known about it the night before so we could have taken advantage of the Wednesday Tapas Night...Just means we will have to visit again.

We talked with Justa about getting back into town the next day and she told us there was a bus that comes around 5:45 or 6:00 am that would take us to Limones where we could then catch a bus to Tulum, our next destination.

So, we woke up very early to catch the bus and watched the sunrise over the ocean while we waited for the bus.

I am all computered out for today and do not have any more energy to write about Tulum but here are some pictures for you to drool over.

The two pictures are stolen from the internet! Unfortunately we do not have pictures from our favorite day of being in Tulum...we went snorkeling in Casa Cenote, it is surrounded by mangroves and is right on the ocean. We saw a lot of fish, including barracudas!! We swam through the mangrove channel and then climbed out on some rocks to take a rest for a little...it was so hard to get back in the cold water once we got out, but during our swim back through the mangroves the sun was shining right into the cenote and we were able to see a lot more.

Tulum Ruins:

Week 6

Another busy week..Valentines Day, Mardi Gras, and teaching.

Valentines Day

As you know, there was a fire at Guadalupana last Friday. Anna has been working with the La Gloria English School and the some of the women from Guadalupana to organize and get the families what they need. We had plans of going to the english school to drop off a donation of groceries and supplies and then go eat a valentines lunch on the beach. First, we went to the school to see what was most needed before we went to pick stuff up. Once we got there we talked with the women and Maggie, the director of the school, and made a list and headed off to the Super to get the supplies. When we got back to the school Anna was there and Kody and I still had money that could be used for donations so I went back to the store with her to pick up more groceries as well as meat and bread to make sandwiches and Kody stayed back at the school to help organize the food that had been donated already.

At the store Anna waited in line for 800 years at the deli and I proceeded to find 40 good apples to hand out along with the sandwiches. It is an extremely difficult task to find 40 good apples at a tiny Super on an island, and it took me about as long to find the apples as it took for the Deli to cut all the meat we needed for sandwiches. By the time we were finished with the shopping we had two giant grocery carts filled with food. A few of mine and Kody's students work as baggers at the grocery store and when they saw how much we had they let us go through the express lane because the other lanes were packed with people and it would have taken forever...great kiddo's.

Once we got back to the school with a jeep full of supplies, Kody and I decided to postpone our valentines lunch and stay to help make the sandwiches and eat some lentils. We worked with Ray, one of the teachers at the school, to make around 60-70 ham, cheese, and jalapeño sandwiches. While we were doing that the women from Guadalupana were organizing the food and making bags for each family to make sure every family got the right amount of food for the number of people. These women knew every family, the extent of what they lost, and what their specific immediate needs were. Because we were able to work with the community members, every family was able to receive individual and specialized attention and the donations were used in the most effective way given the time and resources available. We really enjoyed getting to work with these women as well as getting to know them a little.

After sandwich making and grocery shopping we walked to a place called Playa Loncheros near the south end of the island for our "lunch" on the beach (it was closer to dinner by this time). The staff at the english school were very generous and shared their yummy lentils and soup with us so we weren't really hungry when we got to the restaurant so we just sat on the beach for a while and relaxed. We had been looking forward to this meal for a couple of days because Dawn and Fran and suggested that we go to this place and have the fish. We had tried to go but somehow ended up at the wrong restaurant and paid almost three times as much for the same meal...RIP OFF! Anyway, we sat on the beach for a while waiting for out tummies to start rumbling and then when the fish came out it was BEAUTIFUL! They grill it over a wood fire and it is called Tikin Xic. 

We had told Dawn and Fran about the mishap with the other restaurant and while we were sitting there eating I was hoping they hadnt left yet (it was their last day) so we could tell them that we found the right place and it was delicious. When we got back home they had already left but they left us a note with their contact info and some "presents" at our door.

I hope everyone had a very wonderful valentines day!

Mardi Gras!!!!

The final day of Mardi Gras was this Tuesday (Fat Tuesday) and PEACE had their annual fundraiser in the evening before the major festivities in the square. We volunteered at the event selling tickets, selling PEACE  merchandise, and talking to people about PEACE and the different projects that are affiliated with the organization. All of the different organizations that PEACE collaborates with were there to give information about their projects as well. The Red Cross guys showed up and when they saw us they gave us a nod and a little chuckle..probably because they were thinking "haha there are those guys that show up every week to use our meeting room and nobody ever shows up...poor guys". But in all seriousness, they are very nice guys and we are thankful that they let us use their meeting room every week despite the fact that we have "low" attendence.

There was some fabulous artists at the party as well who were going around painting faces for donations. Kody and I both got our faces painted and when we went out to the zocolo after the fundraiser we ran into one of our students and she told us how "padre" we looked.

After walking around for a little bit and getting some food we caught the best dance of Mardi Gras, in my opinion. A few weeks ago we saw some of our students practicing their dance for Mardi Gras and ever since then we have been trying to see them do it with all of their costumes and on the big stage, with this being very late on the last night I assumed we had missed it. We didn't have a camera with us so we weren't able to get any pictures of videos, but we do have the video from the practice that we will put up once we get it uploaded.


Work Stuff

On Wednesday we moved to Laura and Alan's house and started working in the high school again. Sugeuy from the IQM was there to help us and make sure we were able to get enough time with all the students. The students in the high school have a lot more knowledge about sexual and reproductive health so we were able to focus more in depth on the subject instead of having to spend all of our time making sure they knew the basics. Our friend Alison, who is a teacher at La Gloria English School, is going to come by and observe/help out during one of our classes this week so we are looking forward to that. She also has a strong interest i
n public health so it will be fun to have her join us for a little bit. She has been living and teaching on the Island for around 6 months now and has been looking to get involved in something like this.

Siempre con mi utero....

Weekend Adventure

We have been working a lot and haven't taken the time to see any of the "touristy" things so we decided to take a long walk around the island to see the turtle farm (Tortugranja) and the "Island Floating on Plastic Bottles".  First, we went to Tortugranja and on our walk there we ran into Alison who had just finished visiting the turtles for the first time as well. The turtle farm is a cute little place but it doesnt have a lot of information..plenty of turtles and sea horses to look at thought. They have turtles at all stages of the rehabilitation and release process and the tinnnnniest sea horses you have ever seen, as well as the biggest turtle I have ever seen. 

you can't really tell how huge this guy is but he was about twice my size

 They had the "pregnant" papa sea horses who were getting ready to release the baby sea horses in a different tank. There were about four papa sea horses that looked like their bellies were about to explode and hundreds of tiny (almost microscopic) baby sea horses darting around. They also had a large aqaurium with a few different types of sea horses which were cool to observe as well.

After the Tortugranja we continued our walk and stopped at the plastic island bottle. There is a european guy (We are pretty sure he is European...) that built a floating island using plastic bottles to make it float and other recycled materials to build his house and garden.

If you want, he will bring you over on his boat and give you a tour but he looked like he was enjoying the sunny day and taking the time to fix a few things, so we didnt disturb him. From what we can tell, he lives there with a woman (girlfriend, wife, friend?) and his dog. It would be cool to go back and meet him some time and take a tour of his home. 

Next week we are going on VACATION!!! WOOHOO!!!! My aunts, Diane and Marie are on a cruise and we will be going to meet them in Mahahual, where there cruise ship is docking for the day, to hang out with them. It will be so nice to see some family, relax on the beach, and go on some snorkeling adventures.

Also, I started taking a yoga class this week and RODE ON A MOPED to my first class. Even though we are only here for two more weeks it will be nice to get back into the habit of yoga a few times a week. The class is only me, Anna, and Chris so it is really relaxed and the teacher, Andrea, is wonderful as well.

Week 5

OOPS! we havent updated for about two weeks. Sorry everyone...we have just been so busy and have been sucked into the "island" time warp. So while Kody is teaching his family how to set up video chat I am going to take some time to write a little.

I will start with week 5:

This week we stayed with Steve at the wonderful Casa Sirena and were lucky enough to be able to enjoy every single breakfast that is served there. Seriously, the breakfast was amazing. We usually live in houses or small apartments, this is the first hotel we have stayed at and it was the perfect week to stay there because we had some free time this week. We were in between schools and so we were working in the office everyday instead of teaching and so we had a little more flexibility in our schedule and were able to enjoy our time in the hotel and relax a little bit. Also, Steve hosts happy hour on his roof top bar every evening. Every evening around 6 all of the guests would go upstairs to hang out and enjoy some alcoholic beverages before going to dinner. The hotel is pretty small so everyone gets to know each other pretty quickly, so that was pretty fun. After a few days of living there we felt like we had known everyone for years. Everyone we met was so incredibly nice and supportive of what we were doing, if any of you guys are reading this THANK YOU SO MUCH! Special thanks to Dawn and Fran for feeding us and leaving us presents at our door before you left!


2/15/2010

Carnaval started this week so Centro was transformed into a magical wonderland. The theme of Carnaval is Aves de Paraiso so there is a flock of enormous flamingos in stationary flight all around the main stage where the festivities will take place. People are running around in elaborate costumes ready to dance at any moment. People are riding around in giant trucks in their costumes with music blaring and every couple of blocks they will stop the truck and do a couple dances. A lot of our students were participating in the festivities so it was fun to see them all dressed up and having fun outside of school. They had a performance at the middle school early in the week that we were able to go see and we got some good videos that we will post. The middle school teachers even did a performance dressed as giant flamingos...only in Mexico. In all honesty though, they were pretty awesome. I am not sure about Kody, but the dancing has been my favorite part of Mardi Gras.



We mostly did office work this week and then had three classes on Friday at the public high school (Colegio Bachilleres). The students at this school are much different than at the middle school in that they are pretty knowledgeable about sexual and reproductive health. So far we have only worked with three groups, but they all seem like really awesome kids. There is even a girl who lived in houston for a year and did one year of high school there.

The after school meetings with the kids are still not going very well. Only one kid showed up this week and it was worse than no kids showing up at all, it was extremely depressing. Poor guy, I dont think he is ever going to come back. So we left the Cruz Roja, yet again, looking defeated and with a bunch of unopened snacks. I thought about telling them that at least one kid showed up this time but decided not to. The one kid that showed up told us that nobody would come to any meetings until after Carnaval was over so we canceled the second meeting for the week and the Tuesday meeting for the following week. Better luck next time I guess...



On Saturday morning we woke up to devastating news about Guadalupana (the squatter's settlement on the Island, we wrote about it during Week 4). There was a fire that burned down 18 houses and 9 families lost everything. Luckily nobody was seriously injured, but there is nothing left of the houses. PEACE, the organization we are partnering with, is working with La Gloria English School and the women in the Guadalupana community to help the families get what they need over the next few days.

Week 4

2/6/2010

We had a week full of ups and downs, to say the least. Poor Kody has been sick all week, I was sick before and must have passed it along to him. He ended up getting a cough so I made him go to the doctor after the 5th day thinking it would help but it just made things worse. Really, I feel terrible about it. He had a horrible reaction to the antibiotics, muscle aches, cold sweats, and barf everywhere. On top of the reaction, the whole ordeal cost about 700 pesos. The doctor was very nice and only charged us half because we told him about the project we are working on, but the antibiotics were really expensive. Anyway, he stopped taking the medicine and has returned from the dead.


We worked in the private middle school this week, there is a big contrast between the private and public school. There were 8-12 kids per class instead of 30-40 and the classrooms were much more conducive to learning and teaching as well. We had a little bit more flexibility with time and only had 3 groups instead of 5. I think the highlight of the week was when we were doing the condom activity with the oldest group and one kid whipped a giant carrot out of his pocket that he had brought to school with him to use instead of the carrots we were going to hand out to them, he was even nice enough to let us use it for the initial condom demo.

This is picture of Kody giving a demonstration of how female condom works. It is really interesting to see how the teenage girls and boys react to seeing a guy explain how to use a female condom. In the past I have usually done this part of the class but we decided to switch it up this week and I think it was a really positive experience for the students. Also, it probably helps that all the little girls have huge crushes on him and pay more attention to him anyway.


We were supposed to work with 4th and 5th graders as well but even though the school was in complete support of the program, there were parents who were not comfortable with their children learning the material and so we were unable to finish working with them. The teachers and director of the school all feel that it is very important for the students to finish the program and going to talk more with the parents and hopefully we will be able to come back. Unfortunately, in many places in the world not just Mexico, there is a belief that children are to young to learn about sexuality and their bodies and then when they are entering adolescence or adulthood it is time to cram all that information into their brain. Sexuality is not something a person can learn or began to understand through one hour of sex ed class, it is something that a person has to build on their entire life through age appropriate education and information. The more a person understands about their body and how it works, the more respect they will have for it.

We got a new meeting space at the Cruz Roja (Red Cross), however, no kids showed up to our after school meetings. At first we thought there was some drama going on, but as it turns out our meetings just conflict with dance practice for Carnival festivities. We are going to work with the kids to see if we can figure out a different time for the meetings until after Carnival and hopefully things will pick up again after February 13th or so. We have also been working with Anna to work out a long term plan for the group and what the different options are.

Also, Thanks to Daniel and Manuel, some very generous humans who are also teachers at the private middle school, we had a place to stay this week. Thanks Guys!! We have had a great time with you! And Rubi, thank you for being so excited to see us everyday when we get home from school.


-Lena

2/1/2010

Today was a school holiday, so we didn't have any classes to teach and spent the late morning and early afternoon in the office getting ready for the rest of the week.

It has been raining the past couple of days but after we left the office it cleared up for a little bit and so we walked down to the beach.


This week we are staying in a part of Isla known as La Gloria. Just down the road from us is a new community called La Guadalupana. Right now La Guadalupana is a squatter community. In Mexico there is a law that if you live on government land for a certain number of years, meaning you spend every night there for X amount of time, you gain ownership of the land. As of now, this community is not recognized as a colonia and there is no running water (and maybe no electricity).

The people on the island seem to have mixed feelings about this community. Some could care less, while others would rather it not exist, which is why it has also been called La Invasión. While working in La Secundaria we saw an incident where some kids were making fun of one of the students because they lived in La Guadalupana.


While walking along the beach we came across some interesting creatures in some tide pools. We encountered snails, sea urchins, hermit crabs, and something neither of us had ever seen before. We still aren't sure what they are, perhaps some type of echinoderm. They were all different colors, their bodies are extremely rigid, and they crawl along the rocks. Of course I tried to flip one over, but no dice, these creatures aren't going anywhere they don't want to unless you have a jackhammer on hand. We couldn't find any information about them, so if anyone knows what they are, let us know.



-Kody