Tomorrow for community service the children have invited the BEST boys on a mountain hike to see a hidden waterfall. We will all go together with community leaders and representatives from the Spanish Academy Sevilla.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Manual labor
For our community service today we were not with the children. The boys had to experience... Let's call it 3rd world manual labor.... Real man's work. Their assignment today was to clean the overgrown trees and bushes from a hillside in preparation for the towns Easter festival. They worked hard pulling and cutting weeds. The neighborhood representative was very grateful for the hardwork these kids did today.
Meeting students from Colegio Boston
As part of our morning Spanish classes we visited our penpals at Colegio Boston. While there we received a warm greeting from the high school English department chair Mr Downes. He gave us a tour of the middle school and high school and we had a chance to meet students from both. Our interaction was very much how we do un Spanish class at BEST, introduce yourself to someone talk for a five minutes than switch to a new conversation partner. This way all students had a way to meet each other without so much pressure. During their conversations they talked about everything. Once the convo went to music, it then went to dances and they started to show each other how to merengue and nae-nae.
They exchanged FaceBook and Instagram contact info. Mr Downes was so pleased with our boys and their interaction that we will attempt another get together next week and we talked about a possible student exchange. Dr. Jones I hope you are reading this as a heads up for a future student exchange program. Enjoy the video!
Last night's Mayan corn ceremony
Here's a video of the corn demonstration presented to us by the teachers. Corn is a central part of Mayan culture and they believe that after trying to make man first or mud and water, then wood, god finally made man of corn and water.
We also got to eat corn in the many different forms. Afterward Cortez had a hot chilli and cracker eating contest with Jesus, one on the school staff members. He almost won and those jalapeños were SUPER spicy. Here's that video!
Tuk-tuk ride with Amadou Dem
Right after getting his face painted Amadou Dem started to look sick. By the time we got to the stadium he looked pale and weak and asked tongonhome to rest. He had a stomach and head ache. Since he didn't look like he'd be able to take the 25 minute walk back I hired a tuk-tuk to take us to his host family.
I talked to his host mom while he went straight to bed they the drive Ivan zoomed me back to the stadium to join the other students and chaperones. Her is a short video of that very bumpy ride.
Futbol video
The stadium was not packed but it was definitely all the way live. The boys were happy to learn all the Spanish curse words from the yelling heckling crowd. I hope they forget them all before we get back to Atlanta, LOL! It started raining halfway through the game but that didn't stop a thing.
This next video clip is especially for ms stiggers, if you are reading this before she sees it please text or call her and tell her to take a look. For the game Stigg painted his face, and bought the soccer teams top hat, them he did this crazy walk down the street for about 20 minutes. I like to think this means he's happy here.
Futbol pix
After lunch yesterday we (my students and other students at the school) met up at the school, painted our faces, and walked over to the stadium. It was a 25 minute walk, but it have us an opportunity to see more of this beautiful colonial city.
When we arrived at the stadium most of us bought jerseys for Antigua's soccer team they were playing against a very good team, Guastatoya, but were undefeated at home. Antigua won 2-1 it was a great game.
Enjoy the pix while I get the videos together for later posts.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Futbol, penpals, and flowers
Most of us just had a massage demonstration. These boys are coming home sooo spoiled!!!
We will see our penpals tomorrow at 10am. We will also invite them to our movie night, I hope they join us.
Here is yet another video, this time of the beautiful flowers that surround us at the school.
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