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.