In any event, the rain put a bit of a damper (Ja Ja Ja) on our plans but, as you know, we're pretty accustomed to making adjustments so we just went with the flow. In fact the whole day was very loosely planned from the get go because we had a speaker coming and I didn't really know what he was going to talk about. His name is Licensiado Modesto Garces and he is a Phys Ed teacher at a local school. Last night Tanya told me that he was getting his Doctorate in that field and was going to talk about something related to his studies; something about personal responsibility and community. So I figured I would talk to my students about community leaders, hear Modesto speak and then do something related to what he had to say. Worked out pretty well. He spoke about various competencies ("competencias" that I at first thought were "competitions" until I understood what he was talking about) that students needed to demonstrate such as science and technology, communication, critical and logical reasoning, problem solving and personal and spiritual growth. Sounds a lot like what we talk about at school back home with a slightly religious underpinning. (There's always some sort of religious bent to everything educational here. Makes me value even more the separation of church and state that we have in the US.) It was a very progressive and well thought out presentation.
Didn't really fit into the "community" theme that I had spoke of though so I brought my students back to the room and tasked them with drawing a picture that was related somehow to one of the competencies. Seemed to go pretty well. We then had to have indoor recreation and cancelled los talleres because the students couldn't even move between classes without getting soaked and, by the way, the electricity was out which would have made the art taller especially challenging. But we managed to find some reindeer games for the kids to burn off their built up energy. Definitely praying for sun for tomorrow (I even did a little sun dance, much to the delight - or more
Ikely embarrassment - of my children).
The other issue was that today was supposed to be laundry day but it's hard to get clothes to dry in the sun while it's pouring out. So, the kids will have to wear some dirty clothes until tomorrow (assuming my little sun dance does the trick). In the mean time we set up an art activity to do with them. When we were away this weekend (at our super secret hideaway) Tanya spotted an Higuero tree. The fruit of this tree is a large cantaloupe sized oval with a hard shell and a soft, pliable flesh. Tanya told me that her parents used to scoop out the flesh and use the gourds as bowls and storage containers. In fact, this practice dates back to the Tainos, the local indigenous people that were basically wiped out by the Spaniards, who used to decorate the gourds as well by creating a design on the exterior with a sharp stick. So, we bought a bunch of the Higuero fruits, brought them home with us, and had the kids make their own gourds. Most of the kids got into it, though I think many of them were wishing that they could take a selfie with their gourd and post it on Facebook, for all their virtual friends to see.
