Exito!!

Success!!

I can breathe a huge sigh of relief now that we’ve given the workshop for the English teachers in my municipality. I’ve been planning this workshop (or in Spanish: Taller) with two other volunteers for a couple months now but it kicked into high gear towards the end of April/beginning of May as I started talking with the principals and the Ministry of Education folks and set a tentative date of June 9th that I wasn’t really sure would happen. Plans changed a little bit from what I had been envisioning and so I made a last minute attempt to get money from the mayor’s office (alcaldia) to cover the transportation for the teacher participants and the volunteers who would be presenting, a snack, and some materials. This can be a long, arduous process as you chase down the mayor and hope that he’s feeling generous, and since I’d heard mixed reviews of our new mayor’s willingness to give money, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Luckily a friend advised me to make an appointment which I never would have thought to do because usually you just have to go to the alcaldia and hope the mayor’s there and that there isn’t a huge line of people waiting to speak to him.

I went to the alcaldia in mid-May in hopes of seeing the mayor but ended up making an appointment for the 29th and left a letter of request for 725 cordobas (roughly $36). I went back on the 27th to confirm my appointment and the secretary told me that my request had been authorized!! I was shocked, and kind of didn’t believe her at first. She made some copies of stuff and told me the money would be ready the following week. I did go back that Friday for the appointment but the mayor wasn’t in the office, but my check was all ready by June 3rd and I went to the bank this past Saturday and stood in line for an hour and a half to cash it. But not without documenting it first:



With my money in hand, I only had to organize a few last details such as the snacks and, oh yeah, planning almost my entire presentation on materials development on Sunday morning! But I got everything in line, a good location, thank you notes for the mayor and MINED folks, food for the other two volunteers, and small change to use to reimburse the travel expenses. Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of rain and figured that my good karma was ending because no one does anything when it’s raining out and they certainly don’t travel anywhere from one to 20 kilometers to go to a workshop they may not even want to attend. To beat, I got a call from my volunteer friends that they had been waiting for the bus for a very long time and none had passed.

I kind of nervously made my way up to the school around 7:15 (morning classes start at 7am) and there were a few kids and fewer teachers around. I waited calmly and eventually the rain let up, the teacher with the keys to our space showed up and around 7:45 so did my volunteer friends. Slowly the English teachers started rolling in and by 8:30 all of the six teachers I expected had arrived (we told everyone 8am but planned for an 8:30 start time, it worked out perfectly). Needless to say, I was relieved and amazed to have everyone there, the presentations went really well and I think the teachers really learned something – one woman gave us all hugs which was nice! The afternoon wasn’t quite as smooth, I expected four teachers and we only got two, but it was still a good session.

I wish I could accurately convey just how proud and happy I am that things went so well. Doing a taller seemed like something so far above my level when I started my service and I never expected to do one before my second year (more experienced volunteers are expected to do talleres their first year and those of us with less teaching experience are expected to start them the second year – of the three of us who were working together, one was more experienced and two of us were newbies). My work can be really frustrating at times and I have trouble getting projects off the ground, so this comes as a huge personal and professional accomplishment for me, and what’s more I feel like I built up some good relationships with people in the community who helped me draft letters and thank you notes, set up the appointments, and just generally gave me advice.

Here are the six teachers working hard in the morning session (the two guys on the right are my counterparts I work with every week):



On Monday and Tuesday we’re doing the same taller in the other volunteers’ sites and Wednesday I fly for Minnesota! Unbelievable.