our only offer

Good morning, Ralph


The new site, marked out with plaster


Richard and Gilberto pour chicha in preparation for the offering


Richard offers chicha then moonshine to the ground before we can begin digging. All of us had to pour a little.


And...digging commences again

After a busy morning of prepping and digging at the new site, the eight dwarves headed home for lunch and then...lesson planning! Today was our first official day of teaching school. The schools here actually closed early for vacations because of the swine flu; however, the director said we could still use the classrooms to teach. We spent the afternoon pouring over posters, books, and colored pencils trying to figure out what would be the best way to start teaching English. Our classes would likely be the the only English lessons some of these people would ever get, so we were excited and a little stressed.

We arrived at the school at 5 pm and Maren, Parker and I ended up with a class of 11-15 year olds - mostly girls. The lesson began with us tossing a tennis ball to each other followed by "My name is". Once introduced, we sat in a circle and talked about what foods we like to eat. Everyone kept saying "pollo" chicken, and I had to keep saying "que mas? que comes con el pollo?" (what else? what do you eat with the chicken). We would up with a wild list ranging from rice to pumpkin.



The students loved copying from the white board, so while they copied, the "teachers" drew out things one might find in the kitchen or dining room - plates, forks, table, family, etc. - and then we reviewed these with the students. We were scratching our heads a bit at this point and discovered that the kids really, really wanted to sing. Luckily Parker knew a song about food, which we improvised to fit the foods we'd listed out earlier. The song went like this:

I like to eat, eat, eat chicken and beef
I like to eat, eat, eat apples and cheese
I like to eat, eat, eat rice and pumpkin
I like to eat, eat, eat turkey and duck
I like to eat, eat, eat pork and sausage
I like to eat, eat, eat sheep and guinea pig

The kids loved it. Richard was sitting in on our lesson and sang along, although he later told us he was trying not to howl with laughter. All in all the first day of classes went very well and since most of the kids lived near our house, they walked the long walk home with us and I got a free Spanish lesson. :0