Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Everybody Clap Your Hands


After a cross-dressed and wobble-filled evening of Cam and Emily’s despedida festivities in Santa Cruz, this week has been packed with mini-camp on top of our usual schedule! Mini-camp is an after school program we hold at the Cooperativa school in Chaquijyá that’s a kind of spin off of our summer camp program. For Monday-Wednesday we get the opportunity to teach the kids English in fun new ways. We split into three groups and are holding music, arts/crafts, and dance/PE classes. Karianne is leading the music class with her famous guitar/singing (look her up on iTunes: Karianne Larson), and of course the vocal stylings of Justin Bieber while Rebecca and Juliana instruct the children in the ancient arts of origami and egg-carton insects. Michelle and I are dazzling the niños with our bumpin’ Cha Cha Slide moves. Today we followed up our boogieing with some cut throat games of Gato y Ratón (essentially a land version of Sharks and Minnows). Afterwards, we mosied across the street to Central, the other neighborhood of Chaquijyá in which we work. Once there we partook in yet another little goodbye party for Cam at which several children and teachers stood up to say a few kind words of thanks to him for his service year here and a banana/cream/sugar dessert mixed by hand was served (surprisingly delish!), followed by a friendly game of Guatemalan vs. Gringo basketball. Tonight we had the pleasure of engorging ourselves with some homemade Kung Pao chicken and of welcoming Dana’s friend from across the pond, Helen, who we’ll be hosting for the rest of the week!

With Cam leaving this week too, I’m taking over the middle school classes for the rest of the Summer! He’s left big shoes to fill and I’m definitely nervous for the madness that the 40-kid class of 7th graders can bring, but hopefully I’ll gain my bearings soon enough.

That’s all for now, folks!
Christina

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