Well its that time of year again and school is starting up, and that means: lots of little kids who dont really want to learn particularly, but come to school an hour early to have something to do, and teachers who have to be at school but dont want to jump start themselves for at least another week, preferably not until after easter. Time will tell what people actually want to do any whether the kids will have any desire to jump on the learning waggon.

More to come later

NEW PHOTOS ADDED! I completed my first design workshop!! Visit my flickr account by clicking on the link to the right. It took alot of planning, and the help of my good buddy hugo (the to-be-director of the high school) to pull it off, but I now have a clear direction to take with the design thanks to the hard work of the teachers and students who participated. It basically took a week of:

- writing formal invitations
- hand delivering the invitations
- inviting the students house by house (aprox. 1 mile radius, on bike in mud/rain)
- designing the activities
- writing out instructions for the activities
- buying supplies
- preping the materials
- correcting the intended message - goal/objs of workshop
- setting the adgenda/timetable
- organizing use of workshop space
- buying food and cooking
- drinking wine from a box

All this, in addition to guiding people through a process they'd never experienced before to arrive at a product that at the outset they didnt understand. Activities that occured on feb.8th:

- presentation of reasons for holding the workshop
- drawing of ideal colegio and presentations
- explanation of a spatial diagram, by way of the local brick factories
- spatial diagraming of the school environment and presentations
- site walk/exploration
- solar aspect/orientation map
- spatial maping example of brick factory
- create scaled plans of school and presentations
- choosing actual location for first classroom to be built within the month

SO anyway, i kinda ran myself down to the point of sickness and had to stay in bed for a day after the workshop ended. I guess not really sleeping well for 3 days and then pulling a quasi-all nighter at the end basically has the same effect that it would back in the states.

School starts back up here in about 2 weeks, and im presently trying to figure out how to get the teachers be motivated accomplish something with me before the year actually starts. Two things that I know ill be doing for sure is organizing the students-teaching-students program again through the society-environment class, and also running a workshop on proper project management for some of the teachers at the high school. Kinda alot, but itll be all i have for the first month or so and im not too worried about getting most of it done.

Other than that its really hot. Hot. And i have running water twice a week for a few hours a day, said hours typically happening when I happen to not be at home to fill up every bottle and bucket I have. This sucks a bit, and makes nearly every aspect of my life inconvenient, and slightly more dirty than I would like.
It could be worse and I could not have electricity.. life without a fan would be horrid and even more sweaty/dirty. Ha!

Valentines day is tomorrow.. have to make a valentine! he! Chau!