Contrasts

HEY! How’ve you been? We haven’t talked in forever! …So homework kind of caught up to me last week, and I was out of town again over the weekend, but I’m finally getting back into the swing of things.

I think my last post introduced the ICRP concept. Well. This one is going to be about how that’s going.

And by “how that’s going” I mean “how much I love it.”

Today was my third day working at el Proyecto. By now, the chicos (kids) are starting to recognize me. There were a lot fewer kids today than there were last week, but one of the directors said that was because of the weather. I guess the kids don’t like to walk there when it’s nasty and rainy outside. That was fine though, it meant I spent more time helping the older kids with their homework and goofing around with the chicos that live at the project. I helped one kid with a math problem one of the other volunteers couldn’t figure out, and helped two other kids with their English homework. Which was actually kind of difficult. It seems like the kids aren’t really learning much English, just doing exercises and not absorbing anything. They didn’t seem to know any of the words I was trying to help them with and just looked at me blankly and wanted me to do their exercises for them. Granted, they do that even when I’m helping them with other homework, but it was especially pronounced with the English homework. One girl had to write about what she did over the weekend, so I helped her translate everything, but she didn’t seem to know ANY of the words she needed to say in order to write it out. And I have no idea what they have learned because they don’t tell me, so I had a really hard time trying to help her and keep the words I was using within her range. Also, English is a crazy language. Just in case you didn’t already realize that.

The kids who live there never seem to have any homework. They just kind of run around causing trouble and doing things they shouldn’t. Today some of them were drawing pictures of what they wanted to be in the future, but they had a hard time sitting still long enough to complete the drawing. Once they had, they were off to play. One of the boys pulled out from somewhere some juggling balls. Turns out, most of the kids can juggle, at least a little. A few of them juggle better than me. That really isn’t saying much, since I can’t actually juggle very well, but I was still impressed. Most of these kids are pretty young. We went outside and juggled for a while, then one of the littlest boys and I played on the playground equipment for a while. He kept asking me to show him more circus-y tricks on the equipment, which I enjoyed immensely. It was such a different experience teaching him circus tricks than the experiences I have had in the past. First off, the language barrier: It’s really hard to say, “put the bar in your armpit” when you don’t know the words for bar or armpit. Second of all, this playground is over cement. Which normally would make me super nervous about injuries from falling, but I just didn’t think about it and taught the kid anyway. He plays on that playground every day, flipping himself over and who knows what else. I think he knows not to let go.

This project is actually a really great thing here in Quito. They aren’t big enough to serve a large number of street kids, but I think they do a really wonderful job of helping the ones that they do manage to reach. I was helping a kid last Thursday who might have had some learning disabilities, but might just as well have lacked so much schooling and attention that he was just super behind. I think he was probably about 14 or 15 and I was helping him fill in the big and small letters of the alphabet and read short and simple Spanish words. The nice thing about this project is that he can come to the project and learn how to read and do math and whatever else without having to go to a school and sit in class with a bunch of younger kids feeling embarrassed. That means more kids like him will be willing to learn here than they would in the schools.

It feels great to be able to help the kids and interact with them in a positive way. They have a lot of problems and difficulties and their stories are sad, but I think this project really helps them out and I’m starting to really enjoy being a part of that. Originally, I wasn’t so sure, but after today, I’m really glad that I’m working there for my ICRP.

Just thinking about what I am doing now, writing all of this out, in English, and putting in online. There isn’t a kid in the project that could do this. Not a single one. Most of them couldn’t even do it in Spanish. But they are learning how to function in their world, learning the skills that they need, and that’s a start.

My weekend was totally in contrast to all of that. Putting the two next to each other actually seems kind of absurd. I spent the weekend doing touristy fun stuff in a small city called Baños, about four hours from Quito and into the jungle. It’s strange how here, I can do something with people who have no resources and nowhere to get them, then go to the university where nearly everyone has a lot of money, then go off and do something touristy for a price I consider to be cheap, but that would totally break the bank for many of the people I see in the bus stations and on the streets every day. Contrasts like that are everywhere, and they are not that evident in the moment, but whenever I step back and actually think about them, they are rather mind-blowing.

And now, so I can blow your minds, I shall tell you about my weekend.

Baños. It is named for the hot-spring baths in the city. (Not because they have a lot of bathrooms, which is just not true of any Ecuadorian city.) The city is basically IN the jungle. Crazy awesome plants and forest all around. I had actually passed through there on my way to Arajuno when I was working on that project for my lit class. Almost all of the people in the Kzoo program went on this trip, 25 of the 28 of us. We all left after classes on Friday and got in to Baños pretty late. Though, of course, no late enough to spend the night in. We went out and found some good dancing before crashing at the hotel. The next morning, nearly all of us went white-water rafting. The rapids weren’t that intense, but it was still fun. I also went biking around the outskirts of town with Emily, taking pictures (which I WILL post later) of the scenery and picking up avocados we found fallen in the street. The next morning, a much smaller group of us went “canyoning.” Canyoning apparently actually means “rappelling down waterfalls.” We put on wetsuits and rode out to a beautiful waterfall, where we hooked ourselves into the ropes in the rocks and decended the rock in the middle of the water. It. Was. Awesome. The whole thing ended with us lowering ourselves off the edge of a 45 meter cliff with the water falling past. Just hanging in mid-air, looking out over the water. Definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done.

I spent the rest of the day warming up and walking around Baños with Katie, looking at the waterfall in town, talking with the enthusiastic guy at the costume shop, buying ice-cream off the back of a truck, playing on the giant public playground, and generally having a blast for our last few ours of vacation.

And that’s all for now, since I need to read about some rocks. (Geology class) Take care!!