Carlos and Juanita's House

For those of you who remember Carlos and Juanita, we stopped by to see them today. They weren't home, but it was cool to see flowers. We always consider that where flowers are growing, pride is too. The Conexions team helped them build their house on a previous trip, and we have really enjoyed this family. Tim and Ron, I had wheelbarrow flashbacks walking up the trail.

On a cool note, there was a crew digging in sewer lines there today, all the way from Carlos' house area to the paved alley. We assume this means that Carlos and Juanita will have sewer connections in the near future, which is a great step forward. One of the crew (obviously the real estate agent) tried to sell us a vacant lot.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Sign Language

We were developing photos at a shop today (carnaval photos for the school), and met two deaf ladies. It made their day when Zane was showing them his sign language signs for thank-you, please, water, more, etc. They must have taken a dozen photos with him.

And not surprisingly, the photo shop guy turned out to be the nephew of our tuc-tuc driver friend Abel, who seems to be related to everyone in town.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Green Eggs and Ham

They read this simultaneously to each other - several times. We are going to continue to find other good books, at the library and at bookstores. Used children's books in Spanish are almost impossible to find here, since all the language students snap them up for practice.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Artists!

This is Mario and Jose, showing us their drawings in their sketchbooks. It is exceptionally good. Jose was drawing a scene with his father working in the cornfield, in typical Guatemalan style.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Numbers!

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Green Eggs and Ham

Reading "Green Eggs and Ham" is just as fun in another language. Since reading for "fun" is not a tradition in the local culture, introducing books like this opens a world for kids. Dr. Seuss was a new name for them, and for their teacher too.

It's been a couple of interesting days...the dogs attacked a student yesterday (he's OK), and this morning the power lines were sparking outside of the house. Just regular stuff here.

Cartas (Letters)

The fourth-grade teacher, Joel, is really on top of things. He had the whole class write out letters by hand earlier this week, and they each arrived with a letter to type. We had planned to introduce them to the Internet, but quickly switched to help them type their letters. Some letters were to cousins and uncles in the US and Canada. One was to a brother who is a taxi driver in Canada. You have to think that these are the first letters they have ever typed.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Words and Numbers

We have been experimenting with methods for teaching English. Some of the kids are absolutely riveted.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Zane loves Tuc-Tucs

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Fuego-Zorro (Firefox)

Firefox is the web browser we use on the computers, and Dave is explaining it here.

Learning Numbers

Eight, Nine, and Zane

Zane is enjoying the English classes as much as the others.

Day 2 with internet!

Today was such an exciting class! Yesterday we had not planned on having internet, because Dave was going to experiment to see if it would work. Today we knew it would work, and we made a plan in advance. It was so fun to explain it and give them time to explore. Dave carefully explained that the internet is good for searching all things. He explained firefox (fuego zorro), and Google. It was so fun to watch the boys get the hang of it and search for their favorite things: The Incredible Hulk, Rambo, soccer, and Spiderman. :-) I guess boys are boys in every country, regardless of how remote their village is.

The red stool is propping up the transmitter for better reception. Surprisingly the connection is very good and quite fast, even with 10 computers using it at one time.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Two boys just beginning to figure out how to search for something. It is funny to go back to basics and teach kids how to click on links, how to scroll up and down, how to look for the curser to turn into a hand with a pointed finger, how to return to the previous page, etc. Wow, these things have become second nature to us in Canada!

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This is Vicente who is one of our regular and fantastic helpers with teaching. He is very dependable. In this picture he is covering the boys hands during typing practice. How many of you remember that?!?! We always begin every class with 20-30 minutes of typing practice before we do the activity/lesson for the day.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

More English lessons

We were practicing English again today with the group waiting for their turn at the computers. They were doing great. Zane was enjoying it as well!

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Waiting for the key

We now carry our English flashcard with us in the computer bin for moments like this. We were all waiting for Vicente to show up with the key, and so we gathered the students for a quick lesson. They are all very interested in learning English words.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Dirty Face!

The picture doesn't show it very well, but Zane was filthy today! We had our Spanish lessons this afternoon, and our teacher owns the school and lives on the property. Her little sons were around, so Zane had a few playmates and he was loving it! He was covered in dirt and dust from head to toe.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Google Maps!

You should have seen the excitement when we showed them Google Maps...and zoomed in all the way to Tierra Linda. Imagine seeing an aerial view of your remote village, zoomed in so that you can see the school playground. You can see it here: www.handup.ca, and click on the "village" tab.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Photos!

Danaya is helping this girl get a picture off the internet.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Internet!

This young man is enjoying Guatefutbol.com, a site about Guatemalan soccer. And more importantly, he is practicing reading and computers at the same time.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

On the Internet For The First Time!

We looked up pictures of "carnaval", and had the students insert them into their writeups about their school carnaval.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Isn't he so cute?!? Zane is getting used to being around all the students during class times, and is entertaining himself much better. He still won't say hi to the students, but he'll play with them for small periods of time. He played for two hours this morning, which is a new record, and only came to me for attention occasionally. We've developed a routine that when Zane has had enough of being around the class, I put him in the backpack and we go to the library where there is a section of children's puzzles, or we go to the market and do a few errands.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Tigo Internet!

Tigo is a local cellphone company, and they sell this little USB modem. It gets you on wireless internet using the 3G cellphone network, and the speed is actually pretty good. We shared the internet for the first time in class today, with Danaya's laptop sharing its connection to the other 10. It worked great!

Finding a good internet solution has been very hard. This works well in Panajachel, but the speed isn't fast enough in Tierra Linda. We are going to look into a booster there. Since there are no phone lines or cable lines in Tierra Linda, it makes it tough. Satellite internet appears to be slow, unfortunately.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

More Canada Puzzle Success!

The third group (sixth-graders) enjoyed the puzzle today too. It's cool to tell them where we live in Canada, and try to explain the relative size of our countries. Canada is 92 times the size of Guatemala, which means that Guatemala is about the size of 3 Vancouver Islands.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

A Busy Day - But No Photos!

Our apologies - no photos today. We figured out out where and how to pay our electric bill today, and it was quick and easy. Sometimes things like that can get very complicated here, very quickly.

We did have to spend some time at the local Claro cellphone store, replacing
Dave's cellphone which was stolen on Saturday. Oh well. At least phones here are "pay-as-you-go", so if you lose one or have it stolen, you just write it off and start over with a new one. A sort-of-decent new phone here starts at about $40, including some minutes.

We found a Tierra Linda lady who sells vegetables in the market, which was a highlight. Her name is Santa, and her husband's name is Santo. We're not joking. No, we didn't make any North Pole jokes either. She's a friend of our friend Adele, and Adele told us approximately where to find her in the market. Of course, that required Dave to go up to a random Mayan lady in the market, and ask "Where is Santa?". Somehow that struck us funny.

She's wonderful, and so we're going to shop at her stall regularly. She has a son in our computer class, and her older son who was at the market was eager to learn too.

Zane has discovered a new game - putting all his magnetic letters and numbers into the empty 5-gallon water jug, one by one. He loves it.Tomorrow morning we have class again with the sixth-graders, and hope to have the internet connection working for the computers for the
first time!

On The Way UP To Tierra Linda

This is a serious hike up, and we know the pictures just don't do it justice or capture the steepness of the climb. And our friends from Tierra Linda do this all day, every day. It's humbling to consider how lazy our ordinary lives are in Abbotsford (drive to work, sit in office, drive to store, drive home). Compare that to walk down mountain, farm onions, walk to market to buy food, walk up mountain again.

We're learning that the people of Tierra Linda are virtually all farmers, who look after the fields below the village. Very few are involved in the local fabric industry, tourism, or other related occupations. Some are involved in construction, but many of them work in the onion fields or dig gravel in the riverbed.

Hiking up to Tierra Linda

This morning, after we said good-bye to Dave's parents and sent them on their way home, we had a fantastic adventure. Our friend Adele said she would show us the trail up the mountain to Tierra Linda. We hiked for 3 hours, and it was hard mountain hiking, but it was so fun. I felt like I was on a stair climber for a good hour. It was really tough! The views were so beautiful. It was absolutely amazing to see that the people have used as much of the mountainside as possible to farm. We saw terraces and fields of onions, beans, swiss chard, herbs, and I'm sure other things that I don't know about. We tried to capture it for you, but the camera just doesn't do it justice. It is really quite steep.

In this picture you can see down into the gravel river bed where we began our hike, all the onion fields alongside the river, and then the terraced and steep fields on the mountain side.

If we can find a way to secure the computers up in the village, we will potentially do this hike a couple times a week to teach in the village. The kids only take 30 minutes to climb up, and 15-20 to come down. We're planning to try the Grouse Grind when we come home to compare the difficulty!

Posted via Pixelpipe.