In the afternoon...

Hi!

I'm back. Only one week has passed since the last time I updated my blog but for me is like it has been years ago. In this week I was going through so different and intense experiences that it seems to be to have lived one whole year.

Let's start from the beginning. My day is basically divided in two parts: in the morning I help the math and the physics teachers to give their classes. The students are so different that in one class you can have one that is solving equation with no problem whereas the other one is having problem to calculate 3x8 or 200:20...so we split the class in small groups and I answer questions and try to make them think and not just try (as they tend to do). Apart from the fact that they still don't trust me (for some reason they think that Mathematics in Switzerland is different from the one in Uruguay) the rest is fine :-) Basically, when I correct them, most of the time they don't believe me and ask the other teacher and they typically end exclaiming: "Ah, entonces el Suizo tenía razon!". Just a remark: here I'm "el Suizo", "el Italiano", "el Sueco", "el Ruso" and sometimes "el Español". The children have some very general idea of Europe :-)
In the morning I also have a second task...try to cover as many classes as possible, when teachers don't come to school, which happens quite often. Today for instance 3 of 5 teachers were missing...so I give some English, Informatics,...I hope the day I will be giving Spanish won't come soon, it might be a little difficult :)
The students we have, have been kicked off or quitted the public high school for several reasons. So it's quite a difficult job to make them work. There are two different faces about the experience I'm doing. On one, there is the class, the things we are doing together at school. On the other, there is the reality in which they are living. You can't be working with them without having a knowledge of the second one. You won't understand anything.

That's why I started going out  in the afternoon to see where they live and what they do. Well, it was something...So I cross the bridge and landed in a different world. I was where they are living...my students were still at school, so we organise a theatre with their younger siblings and play with them:

Theatre

Let's play chocolate, they love it!

Playing is obviously not enough, so every Thursday some of the moms of the kids organise a market where they sell clothes. We bring them the clothes we get from donations and they sell them for a very low price. Customers are poor people who live in the surroundings or mid class people who can get clothes for a good price...With the money, the mothers of our students can buy food and other small things for them and their children.

Now, so that you can make yourself an idea about the reality my students live in, just have a look about their poor houses and surroundings...

House

As you can see, I don't risk to get bored. There is plenty of things I/we can do. Next time I will show you what I'm doing in the school, where I'm actually working most of the time! So keep following the blog!

Well, I let you sleep in peace now and I go to cook a warm meal.

See you soon!

Bye!

My first 3 days at La Casilla

Hola! I begin this post wishing all my students from M4e, M5g and N6n a successful year! I hope you all had a good start!

Finally, I got to the place where I'll be living during the next 4 months: La Casilla in Montevideo. On Monday morning I reached the place and started to know the people who are involved in the project. I was very well welcomed from all the nuns and the teachers working in the "centro juvenil". From the first moment I realised that things here won't be easy...

Basically, we are working with 60 kids between 12 and 18. They got here for several reasons but most of them for they were not accepted in neither public or private school due to their poorness, aggressiveness, or due to their bad school achievement caused by their outrageous life conditions. 

They are divided in two groups: in the morning the one who would like to get back to a public high-school, who are taught typical subject like Spanish, Maths, English, History...the one who, on the contrary, would like to learn a job, come in the afternoon for learning the basics of some manual jobs.

So far so good...the problems start now...these kids don't know the meaning of the word "House", sometimes they don't even know the meaning of "Family", "Mother"...some of them simply live on the road. Others sleep in barracks with no doors or windows, with their 6-7 brothers in a place which is smaller than the half of our classrooms. The don't have a floor...so they basically sleep on the soil which becomes mud as soon as it starts raining. Their toilet is "cup", which can be empty besides the house when full. So they survive there in the night and come to school in the morning...but the rules they bring and respect in the school are mostly the rules they need to respect "en la calle", as they always say. And these rules don't get on very well with the education we would like to give them. So it becomes normal for a teacher to see that from the 10 students in your group, 1 is sleeping on the table, 3 are just chatting about their private lives, 2 have no idea what they are doing there...2 are disturbing the...only 2 who are trying to do something, just for the sake of it. During these days I'm only attending class to observe and understand. Then I'll have to try to find my way to help them as far as I can...let's see...it will be challenging...

On the teachers side, there are 12 Uruguayan teachers for the different subjects, 4 very active and modern nuns ready to help with other projects like theatre, or "informatica"..., 2 excellent cooks and...and a still-a-little-bit lost Italian volunteer :-)

The infrastructure is not that bad:

Classroom

The two directors for the two groups

Chair in the morning

Chair in the afternoon

Ah, just a last thing: the "barrio" where I'm living is not very dangerous, however, we took some precautions to avoid to receive guests during the night ;-)

Fence all around the house...

Letting all the difficulties apart, these first days have been very intense and full of interesting experiences, I'll tell you about them in the next post! Only three days are gone but for me is like 2 weeks...

So, it's getting late, in less then 9 hours my present students are getting back to school, so I might go to bed to recover and get ready for a new day!

Suerte!

         

Stage One: Buenos Aires

Hi! Here I am! After a 17 hour flight I got to Buenos Aires, which is my first stop. The city is so extended that even from the window of the plane I couldn't see the end of it. The first impact was quite "cold"...being winter and windy I was hit by the low temperature in the first place...not too bad though...I already got used to be back in winter, as in Zurich wasn´t much better until a couple of weeks ago :-)

Today I had my first intensive day visiting the city and discovering some dark part of the Argentinian history. I was surprised to discover that cemeteries are quite "popular" and very important here. Basically, the cemetery "La Recoleta" is the third most important in the world...guess where it is the most important one...I didn´t have a clue but I discoverd it to be in Italy! Well, I thought we, Italians, were famous for food and soccer, Venice and Rome, maybe for our fame of being "latin lovers" but surely not for having the most interesting cemetery in the world :-)...by the way, in this cemetery in Buenos Aires I visited the tumb of Miss Maria Eva Duarte, better known as: Evita Peron.

A very funny moment was when I met a Colombian guy during the guided tour in the cemetery who was convinced that I was speaking Latin...and when the guide started explaining him what Latin is, he corrected her saying that "Latino" is the language people speak in South America and therefore the words written on the tumbs, which came completely new to him, must be a common European language called...Italian... :-) That's why I've never thought about studying Latin in the school...I was already able to speak it :)

Then it was time to walk to the Plaza de Mayo, where I could assist to one of the most sad but strong event which takes place every Thursday in Buenos Aires since 1977: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, walk across the square in front of the President house calling the name of each person, who disapperaed during the dictatorship of the militaries, which took place from the 1976 to the 1983. During this period of time about 30'000 people were arrested or kidnapped from the militaries and literally disappeard. These people are known here as "Los desaparecidos". Las madres the plaza de mayo started to investigate and make noise to force the generals to say the truth about the destiny of their children. They are still going on with their fight.

Well, enough of history for today, I don´t want to become too boring now. 

I'll keep informed about what will happen!

Take care and, my students, keep studing Latin, so that you can then go to Italy and talk to people :)

Bye!

Where am I going?

It's a long night in Castel San Pietro. It's 1:30am and the temperature outside is around 30 degrees. Almost impossible to sleep, too hot...but not for long any more. Next week I'll fly away from warm Switzerland heading to Montevideo, Uruguay:

I'll spend some time there so I was thinking that it might be a good idea to know where I'm going and, on top of that, some of you asked me many times about the place where I'll be working once I'll be standing upside down. So after a quick search through the internet I found this article about the place I'm heading to! If you want to know more, just have a look at the following link:

http://municipioa.montevideo.gub.uy/comunicacion/noticias/la-casilla-de-cara-a-la-sociedad 

Oops, I forgot to tell you that the article is in Spanish...Well, it's a good exercise for you all, my students of the N6n, and for the other readers a good occasion to start familiarising with a new language ;)

See you soon!

Bye!