Las Palmas

This blog is in date order, with the earliest postings at the top. For the latest posting scroll down.

We are counting the weeks to our trip to Mexico this year. We are leaving November 1^st. And hope to be there about November 10^th. We will stay until the last week of March. Part of our organizing is deciding how many school supplies we can pack into our car. We will probably buy a car top carrier as we never seem to have enough room for everything.

As most of you know last year I was working with a school about an hour away from our home in Chacala, teaching art to thirty children. I had such a good time with them. I have written about this school on my Teaching blog on this web page. This year we would like to expand both mine and Rick’s involvement with the school. Here are some of the things we would like to do:

1: Provide each student with a pencil case filled with all the necessary pieces, pens, pencils, erasers, glues sticks, felts, rulers, and paint brushes etc... as well as paper and notebooks. Currently the only thing they possess is one pen and one text book each.

2: Put together a lunch room – this would include, tiling the floor, building picnic style benches, a counter and sink, and hopefully a microwave. They eat at the school every day, the food is provided by the mothers in the town.

3: It would be great if we could give them a small food fund to provide more nutrition on at least a weekly basis.

I have told many of you of the extremely poor conditions in this town and several of you have offered to help. I would love to hear your ideas on how this would look for you. I have several suggestions:

Those of you who are coming down this year could bring contributions to the pencil case.

A contribution of even $10.00 would go a long way towards bringing these improvements about. If you would like to contribute more and specify what it is for we will make sure your contribution is followed up by the teacher (Isaak) and a specific child in the school.

If you speak and write Spanish I can find you a pen-pal, several of the children are eager to speak English, this would be a great way to mentor a child. Unfortunately the mail system in our part of Mexico is none existent so this would have to be done by email.

Any ideas are welcome, these children are so appreciative and interested in what else the world has to offer them but unfortunately they have few opportunities to grow beyond their small world.

Comments & Ideas

Please post comments, including ideas at the bottom of this post. We are eager to hear new thoughts and impressions.

Thanks, Margaret

Las Palmas Lunch Room Project

It is hard to know where to start; we have had such a wonderful and rich experience here building the lunchroom for Las Palmas.

On first visit to the school two weeks ago November 29^th. 2008 we gave out pencil cases to Isaak’s class it was a whirlwind of trading and exchanging. One of our friends had given us two big boxes of pencil crayons, felts and assorted pens and pencils and they were trading for different colours. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so you will need to imagine 30 children with very high energy laughing and talking with big smiles on their faces. The following week we bought extra boxes and gave out 16 more to the primary class in this school. They were shyer in this class, but later in the playground several from that class came to sit with us and show us their boxes and to give us a drawing they had made for us. Other friends donated a laser printer and were followed around the school by excited students as they set it up for them. (See photo Gallery on the right).

On our first visit we also had a meeting with the mothers. They were a little reserved at first but soon they were giving us their ideas, laughing and kidding one another and volunteering to help in anyway. This atmosphere carried on throughout the whole project.

On the first day of tiling about twenty mothers showed up to work. Ten of them tackled the painting of the windows - see the before and after photos - and the others volunteered to learn tiling. Pretty soon they were able to take over, laughing and chattering all the time. The next day we had a similar experience, this time we were joined by two more men who wanted to help out. By now our work party was down to about five dedicated tilers. By mid afternoon of the second day they work working on their own, basically they sent us home. They were back the next morning to finish it all off. All of them took such pride in their work, talking about now being able to tile their own homes and those of their families. Two women especially worked hard all day, both days, and Rick told them next time we needed tiling work we would hire them. They are now building a counter for the sink we bought and will install the rest themselves. Next week we will tile the counter, install the sink and buy Tables and chairs. We have high hopes that it will be finished for Christmas.

It is hard to describe the atmosphere there; there were children of all ages running in and out, at recess time the older children wanted in on the action with several becoming dedicated assistants. Dogs were also part the scene, and of course food kept appearing and we would stop for a taco or a piece of chicken with great drinks made of rice or wheat.

Next week we will visit the school for their Christmas Pasada – a play done throughout Mexico that the children act out Jesus and Mary going from house to house asking for lodgings. We will have more photographs a progress report for you.