Im here!

I know, I know. The preschool opened and then I go M.I.A. for six months. Give me the Worst Blogger Award, and I’ll gladly accept it.

What started out at first as something unintentional… “I’ll get around to it, sooner or later,” turned into the decision not to write, because quite honestly- the opening of the preschool turned my world upside down. The significance of it opening left me with such a mix of personal emotions, personal in a way that I didn’t know how to/or even want share with the general public i.e.: blog world. When I have wanted to share pieces of my life and experiences with all of you during this time period, I haven’t always had the words to articulate the emotions, realizations, insights that have come to me through this Peace Corps experience.
The sense of pride and the realization of everything that had been accomplished was something that took me a while to process. Meanwhile, the initial success of the school opened a different bag of issues to be dealt with: how the teacher and I would work together, parent participation, the day-to-day management of the school, etc.

So, here I am in March, six months since my last blog entry and six months until I’m back in American soil- It’s hard to believe that this journey is almost over. I suppose now would be a great time to start filling you in on everything Ive done/been doing/going to do … better late than never, so they say.


Preschool
Overall the preschool is good. “Good” is such a vague term, but I suppose it’s the most honest word I have for it. It isn’t the dream school that I imagined, but overall it is running smoothly, is increasing in enrollment, and the children are LEARNING! While talking with my Peace Corps program supervisor about the ups and downs of the preschool, he gave the perfect name to call these fluctuations: growing pains.

A large amount of my time has been used to define, re-define, explain, and re-explain my role with the preschool with the teacher, school staff, and especially the parents. The main objective for Education Volunteers in Belize is to “train and work in partnership with teachers to build their knowledge in education…” but I feel as though that role has been uncomfortable and confusing to most everyone involved with the project. How do you train an individual who’s interest isn’t in preschool? How do you explain that you aren’t a glorified secretary? What do you say to parents who complain when you aren’t in the classroom all day cleaning/taking students to the bathroom, and more importantly- you aren’t teaching their children? I often feel like everyone is looking at me and thinking to themselves… “You’re the one who wanted this preschool so badly Ms. Elisha… why aren’t you the one still doing all of the work for it?”

As much as I have wanted to work with the teacher in a more personal, skills-transfer kind of way, my role has mostly been as a go-to person for last minute lesson planning, picking up classroom supplies in town, writing weekly parent letters, and keeping track of administrative information. Although we have a friendly working relationship, there has been little room for teacher training. It was never the intention that I would be the head teacher, and although that was explained many times to the parents and community, there has still been a great deal of hostility and confusion as to why I am not teaching their children, why I am not at school with the same weekly hours as teachers, and why I don’t have the answers to all of their preschool-related questions.

On the brighter side of things, I love to walk into the classroom and see all of the learning that is taking place. One recent accomplishment was working together (the teacher and me) to implement calendar and weather lessons into the daily class schedule. The children are learning more and more English, and it puts a smile on my face when they try their hardest to speak to me in their new language. What has been most exciting and surprising to me is the retention of early literacy with the children. I am amazed that they are still recognizing letters and sounds that we learned back in October! Reading… HERE WE COME!

Club GLOW
Club GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) tends to be by far the highlight of my work week. Our club has been meeting regularly after school throughout the year, and consists of about fifteen 11-13 year old sweet, stubborn, curious, adolescent girls. Sometimes we have “learning topics”- H1N1, (when it was big news) HIV/AIDS, and most recently- Our Bodies. Other weeks we play sports, do arts and crafts, or have a weekend community-based activity. The girls earn money for our activities by selling cheap snacks- usually Tang and chicharon (fried pig skin chips) at the school snack shop during recess. They are currently saving their snack shop earnings in hopes of having Club GLOW t-shirts printed by the end of the school year.

I tend to feel nostalgic when I am around the girls- I look at the ring leaders, the shy ones, the awkwardness of everything about being an adolescent, and I think back to the time I was their age. I feel like a large part of the reason the woman I am today is because of the positive mentors I had at that time. Teachers and coaches made me feel important, smart, and continuously reminded me that I could do anything that I dreamed of. Regardless of what was going on at home in my personal life, I knew that school was a place to shine, learn, and feel good about myself. I dream that club will be as significant to the girls as my school environment was for me.

                   
                                       
District Education Office
A few months back, I began working one-two days at the Orange Walk District Education Office. The office oversees all of the schools and teachers in the districts, holds workshops, makes classroom supervisions, etc. In January I worked with the preschool coordinator to write a grant proposal to an NGO with hopes of receiving funds to co-create/publish a preschool teacher’s resource manual that would be distributed to all preschools throughout Belize. The grant wasn’t given, unfortunately, because of miscommunication within the preschool unit headquarters, but the coordinator and I are still considering putting the manual together for teachers in the Orange Walk District, with hopes that it would eventually still be printed for all preschool teachers. My time is running out quickly though, and there will have to be serious effort put into it (more than just talking about it) in order to finish by the time I leave.


Community Computer Classes
Several months back I mentioned in my blog starting community computer classes with a local villager. Neeeveer happened. Once again, lots of talking about doing something takes place, but it’s the style for everyone to talk, not follow through with plans, forget about it, remember it, and then complain about it not starting. With the teacher running the preschool almost self-sufficiently, I’m going to use some of my extra time to start the classes. The computer course is going to be eleven weeks long, and will begin after our two week Easter Break. It looks like I will be having two classes, who will each meet two times a week, with a total of 8 women- most of who are either preschool moms or my personal good friends. We will start from the very beginning- simple tasks we take for granted, such as moving a mouse, turning on/off the computer… through Word, intro to internet, and hopefully some Power Point and Excel basics. All of the women tell me that they especially want to learn “email and chat.” I’m looking forward to doing something NEW.


New House
I moved into a different house in the village back in October, after some on-going disagreements about who was supposed to be chopping my yard with my previous landlords. (I tried explaining to them as kindly as possible that I couldn’t fit a lawnmower into my suitcase when I moved to this country.) I now live in a stick house, (one that even the wolf from the 3 little pigs would be impressed with) and really feel like a “village gyal” with my few[er] amenities. The house took an entire month to renovate with the help of the villagers before I could move in. Installing new doors, a paint job, patching holes, tearing down old boards, laying down LENOLIUM, and killing ant empires were just a few of the things necessary to put “La Casita Bonita” up to par.

I now have a friendly landlord that keeps my grass chopped, an outside shower in a small stick-made square with a cement floor, and a faucet connected to the wall in my kitchen with a make-shift sink of two plastic buckets. Brushing my teeth outside has been a strange new experience, but the most difficult change has been the bathroom. I know, I know. Bathroom talk is taboo, but folks, my adjustment to latrine life has been down-right ridiculous. I hate it. I loathe it.
Another addition to my new house has been all of the new animal friends I have. Sometimes goats pass through my lawn, and other days Mr. Horse is hanging out about 20 yards from my front door. (Who do you belong to?) The roosters don’t miss a beat in their 4 a.m. wake up calls, but best of all is my friendly mouse that comes out to play when all is quiet and the lights are out.

Village Life
Estoy contenta with my slow paced village life. The weather has been absolutely perfect since about mid- December. Seriously, last year gave me a completely wrong impression of Belize’s climate. I couldn’t have asked for better weather these past few months. So what do I do when Im not singing “The Wheels on the bus,” explaining the menstrual cycle to the GLOW girls, or contemplating what the future has in store for me? I read. I read and read, and read some more, sometimes in the hammock, sometimes with a cup of coffee by my side, sometimes in my bed in the dark with my headlamp, and it’s great. Never have I had so much free time to guiltlessly read for pleasure. *My top rated books will have to be saved for a completely separate blog of itself… coming soon. * I’ve also started back up at the gym… and love it! I really missed the stability of having a place to go, having that nagging reminder of “Well you’re paying for it, so you had better be using it.” Running around the village just wasn’t cutting it for me. One thing that I particularly adore about village life is hanging my clothes out to dry on a clothesline. Who needs a dryer and a high[er] electricity bill when you’ve got nature doing all the work for you? Seriously, even if I end up in the middle of NYC, Im going to have a clothesline when I go home!

Alright folks, enough is enough for now. Im exhausted.