full of energetic kids. The first period is math. After yesterday's
brief initial contact, today was our first full day together. I was both
anxious and excited. Anxious because my Spanish is very limited. Excited
because I was imagining all the cool math tricks I can teach them. In
reality, I was struggling to follow what was going on in the class,
desperately trying to hold on to the few Spanish words I know and filling in
the rest with a high level of speculation. Figure 1 was taken after the
teacher asked a question and the class would circle up in front of the
white board, eager to give the solution. This is the picture of hope.
Surrounded by poverty, dealt a bad hand by life, these kids will overcome
things that are unimaginable to me because of the basic human drive to know
(a.k.a. curiosity). Their enthusiasm reminded me the reason why I wanted
to be an engineer. I saw my younger self in them. The first period ended
with me feeling a strong desire to learn more Spanish so I can communicate
with them more effectively.
After recess, we started the second period. The teacher was running
late, and another volunteer and I had the opportunity to lead the class.
Because of my cultural background (Chinese), the kids wanted to know how to
write simple words in Chinese. Keep in mind this communication was done
under their limited English, our limited Spanish, and a lot of drawing and
hand gesturing. This experience left me hopeful that maybe we can still
understand each other despite the language barrier. The class continued
when the teacher finally arrived with a visual memory exercise, a dance
lesson, and a lot of questions about where we are from. We ended our
morning eager to return tomorrow.
We had our lunch back at the hostel. After lunch, we went to Los Hijos del Rey
to paint their buildings. In preparation for this event, we bought the
materials the day before. We spit into two groups; one group was
responsible for scraping off the old paint, and another group was
responsible for painting the new layer. We were there for two and a half
hours. A picture is worth a thousand words, so we will let the readers
decide how we did.
By: Kun Lin
No comments:
Post a Comment