Week 3

This week we stayed with Allison and Jeff. They run an organization called Isla Animals and are dedicated to improving the lives of animals on the island. They organize free spay and neuter clinics and rescue dogs and puppies and adopt them out to families in Mexico, The United States and Canada.



We are finishing up at the secundaria this week and have started meeting with the students outside of school to form a group that will carry on with workshops and other events after we leave Isla. Right now we are working on building the group so we can start planning for a community fair for the end of February. Our first meeting was on Tuesday and 4 students showed up, we are hoping this is because it was also a school holiday and not because we bore them to tears. We have been looking for a meeting space because there was some kind of mix up with the place we had reserved and it is no longer available, so we had our meeting by the water instead. Luckily, on Thursday about eight kids showed up and more kids started asking us about the program at school. So far it is a really awesome group of kids and we are so happy we get to continue working with them after we finish our class at the school this Friday.




Our box is beginning to fall apart...please help us!



We were given the opportunity to do two 40 minute sessions at one of the elementary schools on the island. The first one we did was with the parents of the 4th and 5th grade students and the second was with the 4th and 5th grade students. With the parents we went over how to talk with your children about sex and by what ages children should be aware of different aspects of sexuality and health. For the kids we decided to focus on anatomy and puberty. This is the first time that either one of us had taught a sex education class to elementary age kids, so we didnt really know what to expect. We brought our materials that we use with the older kids but had done some research on other activities to do for elementary age kids...once we got there we decided to scrap our giant posters of penises and vaginas and go with the simpler and more relevant activities, specially since we could not separate them due to the time and space constraints. Over all the sessions went really well and we are looking forward to doing more like them. These last couple of pictures are from the basketball court at the school. Can you imagine going to an elementary school that over looked the ocean this like?!?

Week 2

This week we stayed with Zina in her guest house. If you ever visit Isla Mujeres and need a place to stay, we suggest getting in contact with Zina!

This week we started working in the secondaria (middle school) teaching a 2 week long sex education course. We went to Cancun on Sunday to get copies made since we needed over 1000 copies and probably would have used up all the ink on the island. We went to the office depot to get our copies and the people working in the copy center were so incredibly helpful, even after making over 100 copies of reproductive organs. They even gave us a free cardboard box to put everything in.

Now that we have all of our supplies and materials, Zina's guest house has now been transformed into a fully functioning teacher workroom and materials library for sex educators. We have giant pictures of reproductive anatomy spread out on the floor as well as posters detailing the cause and effects of sexually transmitted diseases and infections, AND we have are using the cardboard box office depot gave us to hold all of our information packets, condoms, and carrots (for the condom demonstration). There is even a nice papeleria across from us that is open late, hurray!

The wonderful civics and ethics teacher, Cristina, has allowed us to take over her classes for the next two weeks and has been teaching with us a lot. She is AMAZING!! She is extremely knowledgeable about sexual and reproductive health and it is obvious that the students really trust her. I hope we get this lucky at every school we work at...

The kids are really full of energy and the classes we are teaching are HUGE, there are a couple with 40 students in them at least. The classrooms seem to amplify the kids voices, but drown ours out. We need a megaphone or something. However, they do seem very engaged and interested in what we are teaching them and are very willing to participate.

I think the word is starting to spread around school about who we are and what we are doing there because everytime we walk through the courtyard of the school with our cardboard box, kids start following us asking for "condones" (condoms) and wondering when we are going to come and visit there class. Every once in a while a condón will disappear from our box and we will se it floating over the school with writing all over it, or being launched across the courtyard like a water balloon.

Week 1

We are finally in Isla Mujeres! The past couple of months it has seemed unreal that we would soon be working and living in Mexico, sharing this experience together. There are a lot of things running through my mind right now about the experience. Along with feeling very excited and anxious to start working and to meet all the students and people we will be working with, there are a lot of questions in the back of my mind.....Have we lost our minds? Will we want to kill each other after spending 24/7 together? What if the kids don't like us? Or what if we fail miserably? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Anna, the directora of PEACE, met us when we got off the ferry and took us to our first "home" on the Island. There are some very wonderful people on this island who have donated housing to us, and many other wonderful people who have donated and supported the program in many different other ways. This has cut down on the cost of the project significantly, and surely would not be possible without them. We are going to be in Isla Mujeres for about 2 months and during that time will be moving every week to a new house or apartment. We have just arrived and haven't heard very much about the other places we will be staying, but we are eternally grateful for a roof over our head. This first place is sooo cute (Que Barbara), so we will be sad to leave it. It was donated by a wonderful couple, Bonnie and Ariel, who also own a dive shop called Sea Hawk Divers. We haven't met them yet but we love this place.


This first week it looks like we will be spending a lot of time meeting with city officials, the health director, and local teachers to work out some more details of our project. It looks like it will be a very busy week.

We had our first day of work on Saturday, the after we arrived. Some how we got our clocks set wrong, so we showed up an hour early. It took us almost the full hour sitting out in the drizzle to realize that this had happened and that we hadn't fallen victim to "mexico time".

Also, it seems as though we have arrived here during the coldest days Isla Mujeres has seen in a very long time. I am wishing I brought more warm clothes and less bathing suits.