Maestracita

Hello Everyone,

I had some unexpected surprises yesterday - I was able to use my teaching abilities!

To start, we had a tour of the university library and had a story hour with 5 year-old children. The amazing thing about these five year-olds is that they climb the mountain just to visit the only library in the Sololá area. Last year, a hurricane hit this area and left the roads muddy and susceptible to mudslides. The librarian said that in the height of the storm, they still had ten children show up for story hour. He said that he cried because he never knew the profound effect he had on these children.

As for demographics, the majority of the children only speak the indigenous languages, so story hour serves to teach them Spanish. This is a very important skill in Guatemala because they are so linguistically diverse. In fact, 75% of the country is bilingual or multilingual. I would love to see that in the United States!

Later in the afternoon, I was speaking English with a couple of Guatemalan students. I had this idea to go to my room and grab my laptop so that I could show them some pictures of the United States. Suddenly, my group grew from two students to seven and we were practicing English, learning about each other's culture and (most importantly) laughing! My friend Elle said she had to take this photo of me because she said "I look like such a teacher." That is one of the best compliments I could have received in that moment.

Here I am catching some rays! It was nice to have a breeze and a hot sun after two afternoons of rain. All of us girls were sunbathing and found out later that the university guys were snapping photos of us!! How embarrassing!! Apparently no one here deliberately sun bathes?
This is a sample of one of the books that a story hour student created. She was a regular attendee and eventually learned to read and write in Spanish. Que padre!

I was really touched by working with these kids and am looking forward to extending my literacy knowledge!

Love,

C