3rd Post and Prob last till next week!! Hope you enjoy!

Labor Day!!

I hope you all are having a very relaxing time at the beach. Right now I am working on my plan de trabajo for my tutoring sessions of Math and English, I start this week. This morning I was up at about 6 to get ready for my presentation at 7. It didn’t start till 7:30 so that was nice; I did have time for coffee. Though not enough for food, which maybe for the best because as I put on my pants this morning, they were a bit snug…thank goodness my exercise class begins today at 5!

At the ceremony, we said some decades of the rosary jk just a few prayers then did their national hymn and their national anthem. I do know the words to the latter so that was fun to be singing. But probably the coolest part was that I got to raise the bandera (flag)! No, I didn’t get a pic because my sister ended up not coming. Something went wrong with the tractor that she had to take of. After, I was given the honor of giving a speech to everyone…yeh that was awful. The kids were laughing; I was so unprepared for that, though thank God I had a copy of an old speech I gave already. I did meet the Math teacher and tomorrow I will meet the English teacher, then on Wednesday I am going to present them with my planes de trabajos.
After this I went to the Municipalidad to talk with the Alcalde and the Regidores. I basically finally explained clearly the importance of completing my CDA (Community Diagnostic Analysis) before I begin any real workshops that they want. (Like cuye farms… I think I might not do that out of principle ha, and cheese making) Now I have 3 months to interview as many people as possible about the town and do my FODA and other processes of evaluation. Though I am presenting the ideas I have for right now in a plan de trabajo on Wednesday to the Alcalde and we’ll have a meeting next Monday to discuss them. We also ended up discussing the artisan group that’s in my community. I ended up having the time and opportunity to meet the Secretary of the group today. I got to ask her some general questions to get an idea of their more or less position. They still are not formalized and don’t have books, personal or for the association. The lady I spoke with is going to set up a meeting for me to meet the other 70 artisanas with the president of the group as well. They seem really nice and tranquilo, therefore I am looking forward to working with them. In training we did receive a lot of insight and materials on how to formalize an association and create books. Also, there is something about starting from scratch with a group that somehow makes it easier to mold them into the format that is more or less how it should be, regarding books and keeping them, so on and so forth. At least this is what I think.

When I came home, I sat down to start finishing my own informal excel plan de trabajo and write my formalized ones for the Math and English teacher, as well as the Alcalde. I also had the time to write out all my notes that I had regarding the Associations and I know what I’ve written earlier, but I think I can handle this a lot easier now, especially with all my notes in front of my face on the computer screne. I was able to write out goals I had, ideas for products and of course all the facts that I know about the association. I was thinking about presenting this to my socio-comunitario to see if I understand correctly the association itself and how it works.
Oh forgot to mention, this past weekend in Piura I was able to buy freshly ground coffee from the sierras, actually from another volunteers house mom who grows the beans, as well as a nice French press. No more instant Nescafe for me!! I think what motivated me was the beautiful blue tulip mug Aunt Ba sent me… I think it would have been insulted if I put that awful coffee inside it.

Okay well I must go make some afiches (posters) for my exercise class!! Some serious work there!

Peace! ekh <333

Just an update: 15 people atended my class!! Yes you heard right 15!! That’s awesome well I don’t know I consider that a perfect success considering that not many people knew about it, talk about pasa la voz as a way of communication. Well, I guess it shouldn’t count that 6 were my friends and felt guilty if they didn’t, but I am counting them so there! And I taught a class of Yoga, who’d of thunk it? Okay well I’m beat and I have to get up again really early to go to the school to meet the Ingles teacher. Grrr…Oh and ps everyone was on time 5 en punto…go figure.