Camp2016: Day 2

This photo doesn't have so much to do with camp but we thought we should memorialize this moment of Camila and Cailin, las dos primos, washing the lunch time dishes. We can't seem to get our kids to do any chores at home but here the kids aren't in any position to argue about it so Tanya gave them all chores to do - feed the dogs, feed the chickens, sweep the patio , etc. We figure once they see how rewarding it is to help out they'll just volunteer to do so when they're back home right? As they say in the DR: Ja Ja Ja. 

In any event... I need not have worried yesterday because camp was back to its good old self today with a well planned lesson along with some nice surprises. A balance of organization and spontaneity and it felt just right. We got to the camp and the door to one of the rooms was locked. I went to find the assistant to the principal of the school where the camp takes place and he told me that someone locked the door by accident and no one had the key. Just that one little event let me know that it was going to be a good day. The assistant added that he already set up in a different room for us so we were good to go. 

Also, the lesson we planned last night at about 10 pm went really well. The theme we are working with this year is renewable energy - a very relevant topic for a country in which, as I've reported in the past, the electricity isn't so consistently and universally available. So today we began our explorations talking about movement and what force or energy makes different things move. To start the day we had the kids do a drawing about anything that moved and then explain what force or energy caused their object to move. I thought this might be a stretch for them but with some pulling on my part I got them to state that wind, gravity, and gasoline were the energy sources behind the movements of a flower, a skateboard going downhill, and a car respectively. Then we did a 20 question type game in which we wrote down various objects that moved and the students had to guess the objects by asking yes/no questions. It went amazingly well and we even threw in some hard ones like waves, a leaf, a swing, and the Earth itself.

So, it was all good. One quick note about this afternoon's ever-changing plans. We were going to work on cleaning up the local community center, this summer's service learning project, but they recently had elections here and now Doña Yolanda, Tanya's mother, has to get permission from the new government to fix the community center even though she already had that from the old government. Beaurocracy everywhere. More about that later.