Abriendo Mentes Update

During our time in Playa Potrero we were able to take video and finally, months later we have finished work on the Abriendo Mentes – An Introduction video.  Watching the footage made me miss Potrero and the kids so much.  Todd and I are both hoping that a trip back is in the star but until this video will have to do.  We hope you enjoy it!

 

And don’t forget, since we’ve left Meradith and Drew have continued their work helping to educate the young minds of Potrero.  They’re down there making a difference and you can keep up with all of their amazing accomplishments at their website and blog.  Miss you guys!

 

 

Animal Week

Monday we started classes again at Abriendo Mentes. Meradith and Drew have been on a well deserved trip back to the U.S. to visit family so there haven’t been classes for the last two weeks – a mini summer vacation for everyone. Since we’re back in Potrero we decided that we’d fill in this week. Since it’s just a bonus week, we decided it would be fun to do an animal theme all week – “Animal Week”, if you will.

First Day Back

We decided to start off slow and just work on pets: dog, cat, turtle, rabbit and fish. It took all of five seconds to realize that the kids had long ago mastered these animals. Thankfully, we were able to fill up the time with some worksheets and an art project.

Nayelli Making her Turtle

Tuesday we decided to take things to the next level with farm animals. We were pleased to find out that the farm held some new creatures for them when it came to English. The hardest part was distinguishing between the birds, we’re happy to report that all of the kids think that a goose, turkey or duck are all just ducks and, even better, that one thinks that “pato” in English is just called a “quack-quack!”. We had a fun day and finished it up with a very energetic round of Duck, Duck, Goose…errrr, Pato, Pato, Ganso.

Today we’re moving on to the jungle and I’m quite excited to help them make elephant masks.

Some Bonus Animals in Potrero

¡Adiós Potrero!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been here a month, it went by so fast!  Last Wednesday, June 30 was our last day in Potrero volunteering with Abriendo Mentes.  We were sad to leave the town, our casita, the kids we’ve worked with and the friends we’ve made there.  Our month with Abriendo Mentes was wonderful, everything we were hoping for when we decided to come to Costa Rica.  The organization is doing a great job with their English classes and you can tell that the students and their families are invested in the learning process.  Even more, Meradith and Drew are a real part of the Potrero community.  We really felt like they are making a difference and it was good to know that our presence there helped too.

Nayelli and I

In honor of our last day in Potrero, we threw a Fourth of July themed carnival for the kids.  Todd started out with a mini American History lesson and then we really got things started with a water balloon toss.  The rest of the afternoon the kids played Fishing for Candy, face painting, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, basketball, bowling, Ring Toss and even made their own glitter fireworks.  Oh, and did I mention that there was a Cake Walk?  Pretty sweet.  I brought “Rice Krispie Treats” for the Cake Walk – there are no Rice Krispies or anything remotely similar available in Costa Rica and the marshmallows wouldn’t melt but they were still quite good if I do say so myself.  The carnival went over really well and we were glad that our last day with the kids was such a fun one.

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To see more of my favorite shots from our time at Abriendo Mentes, check this out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateclairephotos/sets/72157624285508901/

Leaving Potrero and Abriendo Mentes was bittersweet.  We really came to love the town and people but now it’s off to San José!  We’re both nervous excited to see what awaits us at La Escuelita de Esperanza.  I guess we’ll find out tomorrow…

P.S. I can’t stress enough that Abriendo Mentes is a really cool organization.  Here’s their website again, so you can keep up with what they’re doing even though we’ve left. http://www.abriendomentes.org

A Facelift for the Salón

One of the biggest and most fun projects that we worked on at Abriendo Mentes was painting the Salón Comunal.  So many people came together to get the job done in just one day.  Drew had the great idea of taping the process and putting together a time lapse video.  So, Todd and I edited down the 2+ hours of footage and came up with this video that we’re pretty proud of.

Also, check out more about our painting day at Abriendo Mentes’ blog, here.

The Latest and Greatest

I’m afraid that every blog post from now on will be a letdown since the last two were so exciting. It’s been a week since our engagement so far and it has been a pretty crazy and fun week. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

• Wedding Planning – Oh my goodness, there is A LOT to think about. There are so many options and I could definitely make it my full-time job to sift through all of the information that’s out there. Just putting together a guest list seems like an enormous task! At least it’s an exciting “job” to have to do; I’m enjoying every minute of it.
• Painting – On Thursday we helped paint the Salon Comunal. A group of volunteers came to Potrero to help Abriendo Mentes spruce up the Salon. When I commented to one volunteer that the rain poncho she was wearing was a great idea, she told me that she hadn’t brought painting clothes. I thought to myself, “Well, isn’t that silly.” But then she went on to tell me that she had assumed that painting meant painting pictures with the children. Turns out she wasn’t the only one, somewhere in the long line of middle men between Abriendo Mentes and the volunteers, someone forgot to mention that they were painting a large community room with an organization that teaches children. Even though it was a surprise they were great sports and we got the job done quite quickly.
• Pam and Kevin – Perhaps the most fun and exciting news of the week is that Pam and Kevin have arrived! They got to Potrero on Wednesday afternoon and we’ve been having a great time showing them around town. They rented a car which has been great, we can easily go to the surrounding towns and beaches without having to plan ahead for the bus or taking an hour to walk there. We’ve been to Playa Penca, Playa Conchal, enjoyed some great meals around the area and tried to improve our Spades, Euchre and Hearts skills. It’s been so nice to have friends from back home in Potrero with us, we’re so glad they’re here!

We’re getting ready now to go to Rincon de la Vieja National Park for the weekend. We’re hoping to get some tubing, rappelling and hiking in and spend some time in the hot springs there. It should be a great time, we’re really looking forward to it.

The other thing filling up our time has been reading all of the congratulatory notes, emails and wall posts (We’re so modern!) that we’ve been getting. There has been such an outpouring and it’s great to know that we have such supportive friends and family. Even though we’re in Costa Rica, it’s felt like everyone is much closer and that in a way, we’ve already been celebrating with you all. It’s been really, really great so THANK YOU! We appreciate all of it, very much.

The Latest at Abriendo Mentes

After working at Abriendo Mentes for two full weeks, I’ve made a few observations.

Counting Coins

1) The education the kids of Potrero are offered is not enough. The first day we were in Potrero we were walking around town and couldn’t figure out why there were so many kids running around.  Well, it’s because their school is too small to accommodate all of the students in Potrero.  Because of this, the kids only go to school for three hours a day so that they can fit in two shifts of classes and all of the students can go to school every day.

2) The kids don’t know their letters. This is especially worrisome to me.  After little success with spelling out words in English, the obvious alternative is to spell the words out for the kids in Spanish when they’re doing worksheets or other individual work.  It turns out that they don’t know the letters in Spanish either.  The most successful way to get words onto their papers is to write them on the whiteboard so the kids can copy them down.  Granted, the older kids do seem to have their letters down but kids up to 2^nd grade, more or less, just don’t know them at all.  We did an exercise the other day where the kids had to pick the letter we named from a set of magnetic letters, we went in alphabetical order and they were completely lost after A-B-C.  You could say “M” and a kid would had you a “Q” then another would had you an “H” and another would try with a “C” before they finally guessed it when we told them what color the “M” magnet was.  It is shocking to me that they could have made it as far as they have in school without a good grasp on letters and their phonetic sounds.  Even making the “P” sound, et cetera, doesn’t clue them in at all.  I’m not sure if the problem lies with the local school or with the national school system but there is definitely a deficit and I’m positive it has more to do with what or how students are being taught than the students’ abilities.

3) There are a lot of really smart kids who come to Abriendo Mentes’ classes. So many of the kids are really sharp.  What they lack in scholarly knowledge they make up for in enthusiasm.  What they’re being taught in class they are excited about learning.  There are a lot of kids who are presented with a concept and then know it and by the end of the lesson they can answer any question about it.  With the exception of a few very shy ones, all of the students love to be the first to shout out an answer.  There are even two boys who were considered for one of three scholarships to attend a private all-day (!) English school in another town, one was granted the scholarship and the other has a very good chance of getting it next year.  These kids have a lot of potential and it’s great to know we’re working with an organization that’s helping them tap into that.

We’re having a great time working with the kids.  They’ve really warmed up to us.  Of course we have some days that are easier than others and some students that are more challenging than others at times but that’s to be expected.  This week two new volunteers arrived, Mary and her daughter Serena from Florida and another volunteer arrives tomorrow.   Since Todd and I have been here awhile already and there are more hands on deck we’re going to split the biggest classes and Todd and I will lead one half and Meradith and Drew will continue to lead the other so that the kids can have longer classes for the next two weeks until we leave.  That should be a fun, new challenge for us and hopefully it will be good for the kids too.

Our First Day at School

Friday was our first day at Abriendo Mentes.  We arrived to the salon comunal (community room) where classes are held and were greeted by 3-4 men who were cutting and welding steel beams.  It really is a community room!  They stayed throughout class which, after a few modifications (putting up several whiteboards to block the view of the light from the welding torches from the kids’ eyes) it worked out just fine apart from a few bangs that were loud enough to make us all jump.

Todd at the Salon Comunal

Since it was Friday, the session was pretty light on teaching.  We started with informal introduction followed by a daily report type lesson: What day is it?  Today is sunny.  I feel happy, etc.  After that Paula, who is visiting her sister-in-law who lives in Potrero while sailing with her family from Baja California to Costa Rica and then back up and around the Caribbean, brought the activity for the day.  One of the stops on their trip was in Mexico and so she brought her two daughters, supplies to make Mexican tissues flowers and a piñata to share.  Needless to say it was a very fun day.  All of the kids made beautiful flower and were so excited to have a chance at cracking the piñata open.  After the piñata, the little kids headed home and the older kids stayed for a lesson in daily activities.  They were all pretty well behaved, especially the little ones made for an easy beginning for us.  All of the kids seemed comfortable with us being there which made it easier for us to jump in.

The Kids, Showing Off Their "Flores"

The amazing thing about Abriendo Mentes is that the kids even show up.  Their school day is only three hours long because the school is so small that they have to split the school day into two groups of students.  That means that the hour or so that the kids spend at Abriendo Mentes adds another 33% of instruction onto their day – which is a lot for anyone.

Cesar Takes a Swing at the Piñata

After our first day Todd and I both are really looking forward to this week.  It will be good to see how a whole regular week of class goes and to get to know the kids better.  Meradith and Drew are obviously very well known and liked in the community and I feel really good about our decision to volunteer here.  Well, we’re off to a baile in town tonight so I’m off to get ready for that, it should be fun!

¡Adiós!

P.S.  If you’re interested in hearing more about Paula, her family and what sounds like the coolest sailing trip ever, check out there website here: http://beemerfamily.yolasite.com .