Education and Tid Bits

A quick recap of the last few weeks.

• The first retreat group of the year came down from Santa Clara University, California and they visited Mount Sinai on Saturday. I got to take a small group of them to a neighbor’s house (Jessica) to visit...by myself. One of the fluent retreatants did translate, which I am grateful for. HOWEVER, being there for an hour, I feel like I could have done fairly well translating for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she was there, but it was comforting and exciting to feel like I’ve made progressive in that regard.

•  We had our first power outage while cooking. My headlamp has not been useless (see bullet #5).

• Jim—a volunteer in Duran—just got Settlers of Catan sent to him. If you do not know what that is, it is a board game that looks like THIS. If you are familiar with it, you know how thrilled I am.

• I got my first Ecuadorian haircut. $1 at a neighbor’s barbershop for the best buzz-cut I’ve had in ages.

• I learned how to change a tire Thursday night. Probably should have done that years ago.

• Clubber’s nails won’t fit in the dog nail clipper. A problem I am in the midst of solving.

• Friday night we all went to the airport to pick up Darcy, the new In-Country Director. She will have a month of orientation with Megan, and then it’s a year with us volunteers. Welcome and best of luck, Darcy!

• I just started giving English lessons to Damien—the 19 year old leader of the youth group and head of the music ministry at the church—and I’m excited to continue. He’s very eager to learn, and with meeting up once a week I’m looking forward to getting to know him better. But I will not allow him to become better at English than I am at Spanish. Kidding. But seriously.

This last piece is not much of a bullet point, becuase it´s been a huge part of my recent day to day life. So three Jesuit Novitiates came from Quito to Guayaquil and are working in our office for one month as part of their novitiate work. Freddy, Wilo, and Fran—who all have a fantastic sense of humor and are extremely patient when my Spanish is terrible—were assigned to work with Proyecto Mision and since last week have made huge changes in how I’ll be spending my days this month. The three of them thought it best to go around to all the sectors and ask the committees what they need most from a group of volunteers (instead of just putting together workshops of things they are knowledgeable in), and almost across the board was help with the children’s school work. The education system of Ecuador, in general, has many struggles, yet many of the children of Mount Sinai are far behind where a typical child their age should be. The Novitiates, Coli, and myself, decided to make a schedule of tutoring workshops for the various sectors, allowing any child who needs help in a subject to come. There are now two a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, which means we visit each sector twice a week, hoping that gives any child an opportunity to attend if they need it.

 The Novitiates and I

(Fran, Freddy, myself, and Wílo)

Last week was the first week, and for the most part it went really well. Attendance is anywhere from 2 to 10 kids, depending on the day, but I really believe this is a project worthwhile provided we have one kid. Most of these children have English homework (with directions in English) without knowing their English alphabet or numbers past 20. Wilo was helping a 10 year-old girl with ordering 3 digit numbers (between 100 and 999) from smallest to largest while I was working with a 7 year old on how to spell her name. With this project, which I hope to continue after the novitiates return to Quito, the face of my job has changed immensely. However, I strongly believe it is still ingrained in the vision and mission of the office. Children are among the most vulnerable here in Mount Sinai, and if my time here can advance the education of some kids just a bit, I think it’s a job worthwhile. These children have no base for so many subjects, and yet they are graded on quizzes every week and held back for performing poorly. If our office aims to accompany the people of Mount Sinai in development and improvement, I think providing support for the children in school can and should be an aspect of our work. It is different and not the work I expected, but I have had a wonderful time with it so far. I’ll check back in with that in a future blog.

Overall, things are speeding up and with every day I wonder where the time has gone. We’re almost at 2 months and I can’t believe it, but I am finding comfort in so much of what I am able to do here. The homesickness comes and goes, but having a supportive base of volunteers and neighborhood community makes all the difference.

Time to continue working on the Clubber Nail Problem.