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!