Today Was What Yesterday Was Supposed to Be

As the title says, so it is.  Since Ken and I were under the weather yesterday, we made our way out to El Camino boys home, but first we had the opportunity to tour a school down the street from where we are living.  We have the opportunity because the father of the Principal is staying in the same place as we are and he arranged for us to go for a visit this morning.

A few things really stand out as being different from Canadian schools.
1. The level of respect that the students have for the teaching staff is light years beyond what we have in Canada.  When the principal comes into the classroom, all the students immediately stand up and say "Buenos Dias Director".  This is something they instill from grade 1 on through grade 12.
2. The classrooms are very basic.  Chalkboard, desks, paper, pencils.  No posters on the walls, no cubby holes etc for the kids things.  Its basic and straight forward learning.
3. Any time the kids speak to an adult, regardless of being a teacher or not, they stand very straight and speak very clearly.
4.  Discipline is handed out when necessary.  Yes I mean that type of discipline.
5.  Everyone has a school uniform.  We asked about this and it was for a few reasons.  First, it instills the idea that we are all on the same team here and the goal is to learn.  Second, some students are very poor, some are very rich, but the clothes they wear to school are all equal.  School is an environment for learning here, not a popularity contest or fashion show.
6. School starts at 7:30 in the morning and goes till 12:00, then a whole other set of students start at 1:00 and go till 5:30.

The schools don't have much in the way of budget, and we noticed that the phys ed class going on in their open air roofed gymnasium was using a couple of soccer balls that were barely holding together, so we provided them with a couple of new ones from the items donated.  They were most appreciative and the grade 12 class even sang us a song in English before we left.

After leaving the school, we headed out to El Camino to teach the boys how to use Powerpoint.  The morning class had a couple of boys about Lukas' age in it who really wanted to learn, but could not read or write, so Lukas helped them out where he could, and we helped them spell the words they wanted to have in their powerpoint.  I had downloaded a bunch of soccer pictures from the internet for them to use in their presentations and everyone finished the class with a powerpoint about their favorite soccer team.  After the first class, broke for lunch.  As you can imagine, lunch at a boys home is not always the greatest.  Today was one of those days.  Lunch today was a boiled potato, rice and a mixture of some kind of fish (half bones) with onions and tomatoes.  It is a healthy lunch but not the most tasty.

It was a bit of a sad day at El Camino unfortunately today.  As I had mentioned in a previous post, El Camino raises rabbits and chickens to assist in their food supply.  Sometime last night, a poisonous snake got into the rabbit pen and killed 28 rabbits.  The remaining 10 had been bitten but had not died as of yet.  Mike (one of the workers at El Camino), put the remaining 10 rabbits down.  None of the 38 rabbits could be used for food due to being killed by poison. That is a large loss for the home.   It just so happened that today was also axe day for all their chickens as well.  Every so often, they slaughter their chickens and freeze them.  This just happened to be that day.

The afternoon class with the older boys also went well.  They have remembered most of the things they have learned in Word from before, so they whizzed through what we had planned to teach them in Powerpoint, and we were able to teach them extra things that the younger boys didn't get to.  By the end of class, all the older boys had nice presentations with animations and sounds all over the place.

We finished up class, and waited for Logan to finish his chess lesson with Mike.  Mike is the resident chess expert at El Camino, and he teaches all the boys how to play chess.  They find that it teaches the boys patience and planning.  Both of those things have been missing in their lives up until now.

On the drive back into Santa Cruz from El Camino, we stopped at the school that some of the El Camino boys attend to see it is like.  Just like the one in the morning, the respect level was amazing, and everybody was in uniform.  The kids all think its funny to see 3 "gringo" kids at their school so they all gather around.

I am pretty sure that Melody wanted to bring the one in the picture with her home to Canada.

We finished the day off with a quick trip to the grocery store, where I picked up some meat that I re-butcher when I get home for supper and Melody baked some brownies for her class to eat tomorrow.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day.  After Melody's class tomorrow, we are going to the maternity ward at the hospital where we will deliver the knitted toques that were donated, and have a quick tour.  Tomorrow is also one of the Ken's boys birthday and its Bolivian Fathers Day as well.  Lucky me, two fathers day this year for me!!!  I'm just glad we are leaving before Bolivian Mothers Day.