tidbits

Today, a crazy man on a bench told Prima that she needs to watch out for the "communists" because they´re watching her, and that they´re everywhere in our department of Piura.

Around the same time that happened, I immersed myself into the Peruvian ocean for the FIRST TIME. I can´t believe it took me half a year! It was "rico," as Peruvians would say. Fish were jumping around me everywhere at every moment. Cactus got really burnt.

I am sitting in on an ornithology research seminar to pick up more ideas on what I can do with kids about birds. As we went through equations and calculations, I was reminded of how nice it is to be OUT of school.

Speaking of which, school has officially started in my District. Unfortunately, this is the closed season for fishing, so the fishermen can´t send their kids to school until mid-April, when they start to make money again. So only some schools are actually functioning right now.

This morning I went to a teachers´ planning workshop at an elementary school in one of the caseríos. As the director introduced me, he asked me to join him in front of all the teachers. And then he sat down. I was totally unaware that they wanted me to lead an environmental curriculum development workshop. I had just been planning on seeing what they wanted me to do in the future. So I babbled a lot about my proposal and environmental education. After some comments by the teachers, we decided to choose the themes they wanted to discuss during the school year. I´m going back to the school 3 times in the next two weeks. I will meet first with 1st and 2nd grade teachers, then 3rd and 4th grade and then 5th and 6th grade. Whew, that was a sticky situation turned better. I´m excited to work there! The teachers seemed very laid-back and eager to incorporate the environment in their lesson plans. They understood and were passionate about the importance of enviro ed, which will make my mission a lot smoother.

Now I don´t know if I should continue working with each of the TWELVE schools in my district individually like that or form a committee of all teachers of certain grades within the District. I will probably do the latter. However, it´s a lot of coordination!! I am super busy now. Too bad Peace Corps is pulling us away from site two days next week for a training. Awful timing.