Monday April 8, 2019

Greenbank-Seagrave Mission Team

Monday April 8, 2019

Up with the sun again this morning and ready for breakfast at 7:30.  Linda arrived late in the night (the founder of Loving Arms) and joined us for breakfast.  Carmen made us pancakes, beans, fruit and delicious coffee…which makes Doug extremely happy!  Doug is our appointed Banker for the week.  He is holding the teams spending Qs and they are buying from him.  $1US is 7.5Qs here, and $1CAN is 5.5Qs…so the math and making exact change is a funny process.

We had an 8am pick up by Enrique, and we had such an incredibly warm welcome from the students at The School of Hope. They all lined up and we hugged each and high-fived as we went down the line.  It was such a great start to the day!  The teachers each introduced themselves and we too expressed our excitement to be with them for the week.  Shortly after, we began to separate into our morning activities – it was a busy day and we had much to accomplish.  Be warned…your head might spin as you read about our day!  We are all so tired as we write this, we have the giddies like a bunch of 5 years olds!  Brian and Stephanie anchored down at the school and the rest of the team ventured to a community school in Corrales.

English Classes with Brian

It has been twenty years since Brian taught k-3, but it was like riding a bicycle and Brian was back in his element. Brian was teamed up with the Carlos, the English teacher. His English was very good, but has a business background, with no educational background. He seem to enjoy watching Brian demonstrate instructional strategies.
8:30-9:30 Grade 3
9:30-10:30 Grade 2
10:30-11:30 Grade 1
11:30-12:15 Pre school
12:15-1:00 Kindergarten
Teacher salary is $400 a month for 10 months. Which is considered a high paying job when many trades and labourers make $7 per day. Many teachers will travel to another school to teach at a Grade 4-8 school from 1:30 to 6:00pm to double their salary or take afternoon courses to advance their skills.
Brian demonstrated for Carlos an English lesson design format that involved: a mind-set, word vocabulary, shared reading, guided reading, individual reading, spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. Using rhythmic songs and music to formulate phrases made learning enjoyable for the students. Brian spent the afternoon preparing English lessons for tomorrow with help of eight year old Julio cutting, pasting, drawing, printing out poem charts and creating word banks. Brian is completely exhausted and was reminded of how much pre work needs to go into a successful lesson.

Barbering with Stephanie

At the School of Hope this morning, Monica, a member of the woman’s co-op along with a family member received some barbering training from Stephanie. Both ladies were naturally inclined and were very quick learners. They showed their compassion and love of children especially when Fernando, a six year old revealed that his ear had been cut by his last barber. Fernando was very tense and frightened. Stephanie and the two women were able to calm him down and make today’s experience pleasant and positive.  They were able to complete six boys haircuts. Stephanie especially was pleased to learn that the School of Hope is very respectful of the Indigenous culture and traditions of the children and will ask for parental consent before cutting the girls hair. 

Corrales School Visit

Dianne organized the soccer (Futbol) at the school. The students were divided into two teams by the teacher followed with the handing out of grey and blue soccer jerseys for visibility.  They love to get the shirts to start the game.  Then off they go! Lots of talent and competitive play erupted. The students played soccer on the road which as you can imagine comes with challenges. We stopped for motorcycles, a chicken bus, Mom’s walking with children, trucks and a horse carrying large bundles of corn stalks strapped on both sides of him.  

Needless to say Dianne stayed alert watching for traffic calling out “auto” on a regular basis to stop play and clear the road. This is the first time the ball was not lost over a neighbors fence!  It is always an activity they love to play. No score was kept it was all about the fun. 

It was our  first morning of science, the topic was structures. Cathy and Stan had the students rotate through 3 different centers, building a bridge using foam triangles; building a tall tower with cups, sticks and blocks and building a structure using Lego. It was amazing that these children had never seen LEGO before!  We had to show them how to click and brace and build – they fell in love instantly with it!  

Cathy explained, with a little Spanish translation help from Elvis, to each group that the structures were going to Support, Contain and Span a gap. To begin the workshop we had all the students standing tall and strong so we couldn't push them over, after this they had to stand on one foot and balance. They applied  this concept while building. All the students at Corrales school enthusiastically built their structures.

Kelly and Rod set up a play area in the school yard. They started with parachute play, then skipping, hop scotch and sidewalk chalk. Fun was had by all. Even the teachers got in on the fun!

Krista led the craft station.  The kids were confused at first about the project that we were working on, but once the older children started to make progress, the smaller children’s faces started lighting up in anticipation for making their own bracelets.  Even though most didn’t finish their bracelets, it was rewarding to see them carrying on during the rest of their morning and they eagerly took them home to finish.

It was tremendously gratifying to have such a great selection of donated shoes so we were able to fit all the children (80) attending Corrales School with a pair of properly fitting shoes and a new pair of socks! The excitement and gratitude was evident in their huge smiles and words of appreciation! 

This was truly a team effort to sort and locate size matches for each child! The most popular sizes are 3-6 so by the end of the kids coming through sometimes girls were getting boys and boys were getting girls and they were totally okay with that! They were in heaven with their new shoes!  After their shoe fitting, Rod and Krista handed out goody bags to shrieks of joy and laughter – they loved the dinky cars!

We all met back at the School of Hope for lunch and to do a quick re-group before heading back out for the afternoon activities.  Monica, our lunch time cook, prepared us egg salad, lettuce, corn tortillas, fruit, chips and guacamole and rice.  It was a hearty re-fill as we were all running on empty from a busy morning.  We quickly departed to our afternoon activities.

Construction on the home is moving along quickly. Miguel was on site with the
team again today, along with Stan, Rod, Dianne, Kelly, and Cathy.  Many hands on
deck allowed us to build three panel walls  simultaneously at one point,
completing 7 panels. We now have one half panel to finish along with 2 windows
and a door before the home can be assembled.

Doug and Judy continued with the maintenance painting project started yesterday and after locating the "dos escaleras" (ladders) needed to reach the windows they masterfully maneuvered their paintbrushes in and around the wrought iron.  Surprisingly no clothes were splattered in the completion of this project, just one earing lost!  Since Doug was assigned photography duty for the afternoon as well, it was a great excuse for a break from standing in one spot on their ladders, and they stretched their legs by checking in on the other team members! 

Krista spent the afternoon with Jhoseline (our translator and friend) and a group of 6 women in the Crochet Co-op.  The women were eager and friendly, ranging in age from 20-60.  They had a variety of skill levels and were excited to learn new projects.  They were happy to make a market bag and have asked to make a bigger project tomorrow. Krista is now brainstorming for tomorrows lesson.  The women have such a great sense of humor and lots of gesturing to communicate to include us in their conversation and jokes. Thank goodness for google translate… It was a fun afternoon!

Stephanie and Juli set up to work with 4 women from the Sewing Co-op.  We had decided to make the drawstring bags that Deb Ward and the team from home helped us make for the goody bags.  The women were eager and we were happy to find that their skills with cutting the fabric and thinking steps ahead with their creation has come a long way in the 10 years since we have been coming.  They each were able to make 2 drawstring backpacks to take home with them. Stephanie and Juli were excited to be making such great progress with the women, UNTIL Alicia informed them that these women came to learn how to make uniforms today, NOT backpacks…oops! So…tomorrow – we will be ready to start the uniform project!  It was a long day!

The team was picked up just after 4:30 to head back to Antigua – we are taking turns sitting in the front seat to have the full Guatemalan driving experience.  The views and the sights really are spectacular. Carmen made us a BBQ dinner, with potatoes and salad – again delicious!  We have spent the evening blogging…giggling…preparing craft kits for tomorrow…it is now 9:20 and we are headed to bed!  

Thank you for following along on our journey and for helping us get here!

GS Mission Team