Learning in the Rain

Wednesday, June 7th

   Our day began at 7:00, just waking up. We ate breakfast at 7:30, and then we left the retreat house at 8:10 to zone 3. Ten people went to the Francisco Coll School to help teach and tutor, while six people went to the nursery to help the teachers with the kids.
   At the school, our four best Spanish speakers helped tutor kids one-on-one. The other six were divided into three pairs and each pair taught English to a class for 45 minutes. The tasks were difficult at first because of the language barrier, but silliness is universal. The fourth and fifth graders learned the name of body parts in English, from their heads, to their shoulders, to their knees, and to their toes. Sixth graders learned classroom objects, and the boys raced against the girls to see which team could write the English names of school supplies on the whiteboard faster. After that they witnessed a funny skit where an eraser was being sold for 500 Quetzales ($70), but was bargained down to 10 Quetzales ($1) using English skills.
   While some guys had free time from their teaching, they made different designs on paper for the kids to draw on. Once we were done with teaching and tutoring, we had lunch at 12:15. Then we started  getting prepared to paint and work on construction. However, we could not do construction due to the pouring rain and thunder that occurred right when we were about to get started. We were able to paint though, so we painted the ceilings and the red parts of the walls. By 3:00 we were done, and then we went back to the retreat house to get prepared to go to zone 15, which is the nicer part of Guatemala City in contrast to zone 3.
    We left the retreat house by 4:30, and it took us an hour to get to the restaurant Pollo Campero. Everybody on the bus was shouting the restaurant name because it supposedly sounds funny. Arriving at 5:30, we all entered the fast food restaurant hungry and tired; good thing it was fast food! After we ate a bunch of chicken, we walked around the shopping district for a little bit to see more of the beauty of zone 15. Then we left to go back to the retreat house, where a lot of the kids had to go to the bathroom because of the amount of chicken they ate. Finally, we ended the day not only with reflection, but also with an exciting game of Mafia (don't worry everyone is fine).

By Noah Gebremariam

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