One week down

One week down…I survived. Read a whole book, got my house together, and visited all my schools. I'm slowly learning the lay of the land…no friends yet, though. I've been hanging around Olga's shop downstairs a lot…she's fun to talk to. Otherwise, poco a poco. I'm just gonna have to be patient. And get used to some quality Hannah time.

This afternoon I went to observe again at the main institute in my aldea, and upon walking through the gates, saw 2 dozen or so students laying, covered in fake blood, on the basketball court, while other groups of students acted as rescue paramedics, issuing toilet-paper bandages and water-bottle IV drips. The rest of the student body huddled on the sidelines, uttering sobs of anguish. This was an earthquake drill. Where I come from, fire drills happened a handful of times a year, the alarm would sound, we would line up, file out, wait 10 minutes, return to class and resume the lesson. Not here. The earthquake drill was pre-planned for 3:05 pm, and the students had ample time to prepare costumes, fake blood…they even somehow had real firemen's vests and stretchers. The drill then lasted an entire hour, while the mourners mourned and the victims bled, and the paramedics assessed the damage. After an hour of this, the director of the school gathered everybody together and spoke for 20 minutes about how, being on a faultline, a major earthquake is always a risk. And that, shockingly enough, it wouldn't really happen like this drill. I guess that's one way to make kids pay attention to emergency drills.

After the drill, I went to observe Profe. Ronald's Tercero class. This was the third class I'd observed at this particular school, and so far I'm incredibly impressed. Not only have the teachers implemented our Youth Development curriculum into their schedule as a class period, but the teachers are teaching the curriculum themselves, without help from a volunteer. In Ronald's class today he taught a lesson on ways to say no to sexual pressure. He even incorporated me into the lesson, asking me to act as a judge for an activity they did. It was really incredibly inspiring to see a Guatemalan teacher take the reigns of the lesson and encourage an open dialogue about something as taboo as premarital sex, sexual pressure, gender roles, etc. It also made me start to worry about my role here. I'm second generation, so I'm supposed to be working more with the teachers and parents. But at this particular school, the teachers are already teaching our material, and doing so well, and parents, well, that will be a challenge. I guess I just need to take it one step at a time. I know my role will develop with time, and that the community needs to warm up to me first. But at the same time I'm anxious to get started and find some kind of purpose for being here. Otherwise I'm just on a really strange vacation.