Yes, I know I have been EXTREMELY neglectful, but I must say that as people have been nagging me and telling me that I have fallin’ behind, it actually makes me quite happy…because that means at least someone is reading it! At least someone loves you little blog, even if it is not our own creator!
Now to the excuses as I attempt to justify my absence…or maybe I should just simply ask for forgiveness and beg you all to come back to me!!!!!
So about two weeks ago, the Service Learning Tour from Stanford University arrived here in La Plata, my new charges under my job as coordinator with FSD. There are 15 of them, and this trip is the last leg in a class that some of the graduating students designed about Argentina and the development challanges there. They came to do community service projects and workshops in two different comedores in La Plata, one named Tierra Nueva (New Earth) and the other Cielo Azul (Blue Sky) in two of the poorer neighborhoods outside the city. They arrived on the 17th, most of them VERY green (first time out of the US, many with no knowledge of spanish what so ever), but very enthusiastic and ready to work!
The first three days of the program are an intensive orientation, including a city tour, a short introduction to Argentine Spanish (vos, che, boludo) and Argentine culture (eating late, asado, pasionate men, and MATE!). Specifically for this group we had planned a activity with a woman (who I knew through Educaser, look at me utilizing my connections already!) to teach the Stanford kids how to create and run workshops with children, how to approach this alternate form of teaching and learning. We had ALSO planned to take them to the school where Silvia worked to show the workshops in action, but here began our FIRST of many, problems with Swine Flu. The school did not give us permission to come and take a look at their workshops because we were American, and had recently come from the (then) hot bed of the swine flu epidemic. It was really too bad and the Stanford kids were really disappointed, but as all the Argentines call the swine flu, it is the disease of the rich, of the people who can afford to travel back and forth to the US. And it is true, all the cases that came here where brought by wealthy travelers going to the US, and the people that the swine flu is killing are the poor people who could never even had dreamed of a vacation in North America….gotta love globalization!
So the student had there three day whirlwind orientation, getting to know the city, the culture, the language, and their organizations and then were shipped off to live with their host families. Phew, that was over whelming and fast, and to follow up their first few intense days in La Plata, we quickly put them to work doing a one day community service project at one of our other comdores, Estrategia de Caracol (it is actually where I did MY one day service project when I arrived!).
We worked in the garden (well sort of, many of them just pawed at the dirt some)
We broke branches to make fire wood for their wood oven
Sorted donated cloths to be sold (at one peso per peice of clothing) to raise money for the comedor
Helped make lunch (can you figure out where Jen was the whole time….)
And all of that in just the morning. Alot can be done with 15 people (even if half of them are only slightly motivated, it is still a lot of hands!). We then took a quick break, and started in the on the afternoons activities, which consisted mostly of painting play ground equipment to be installed in a near by park.
Over all they are a good group of kids, who came ready and willing to put their backs into the some community service work down here. It has been rough at times because many don’t speak spanish very well, and so you end up being a translator, and most have never traveled before and so it is helping them to not feel lost, scared, vunerable and to respect the culture and the people they are around. They tend to talk in loud american voices, find every little thing extremely facinating (and I may be a little jaded!), and have about a million and one questions. It can get over whelming, but it is also great to watch them coming into their own and learning their own way and how to manuver in foreign situations. There is a first time for everything, and they are learning to take it in stride.
More of their ups and down and stuggles will come out at the journey continues.
