Back to Reflection #1 - How I Spend my Time. The last couple of months I've been working at the escuela basica (elementary school) in my community a couple days a week. They really want me to teach the kids English, so I've been working at this with the 5th and 6th graders. I enjoy teaching the kids because they're so forgiving and helpful with my language barriers and most of them think I'm pretty funny, which eases any tension I may have. However, I feel like teaching them English is not the most relevant thing I could be doing with them, especially when I realized recently that a lot of them cannot read. Can't read at all! The Paraguayan school system loves having the teachers write things on the board that the students copy down into their notebooks. And that's it. So these kids can copy words like no other, but they have no idea what they mean. It's very sad. So, I humor them for a while with the English and then try to get them outside by working in the school garden or planting trees.
June 20 was Dia del Arbol here in Paraguay and there was a big campaign to plant thousands and thousands of trees across the country. I jumped on board and had the 5th graders plant some trees with me at the school. There's a community vivero (tree nursery) down the road from the school so the students and I walked down there, picked out our trees and carried them back to be planted. There were only 6 kids there that day (it rained the day before so nobody showed up, very typical here) so there was a lot of interaction between all of us and I think (hope) they got a sense of ownership for their little arbolitos. They loved getting out of the boring classroom and actually doing something, as you can see from the pictures. I had them all working at once, hoeing, shoveling, planting, watering, whatever. I, at least, had fun and am planning on doing this more often with other grades. At the end of the morning, I even got them all to pose in a picture with and for me!
In addition to the work at the school, I also spend large fraction of my time in my kick ass garden. As I've written before, I'm sharing the garden space with the family next door (I pretty much consider them MY family here in Paraguay) so Cristino (the dad, who is the only one of the family who has any interest in actually gardening) and I hang out there quite a bit, exchanging ideas, experimenting, weeding, watering, etc. It is by far the best garden in town and we get compliments all the time. Cristino loves this, as do I, but what I love even more is that their family is eating more vegetables than they ever have. We're also providing an example to others in the community that this type of family garden is possible and can provide a substantial amount of the family's diet for very little cost. I am also growing some vegetables that no one's ever heard of or that no one knows how to eat (like spinach, arugula, broccoli, and zuchinni) but my willingness to grow and eat them is piquing some interest around town. As for my personal benefit, I no longer have to haul loads of vegetables back from
the city with me or sustain on beef and pasta for weeks on end. I frequently make salads with at least 5 different greens in them. I have carrots, radishes and beets ready to be pulled whenever I want them. My peas are just about ready to pick. There are a lot of green tomatoes that I'm hoping will ripen before the threat of a frost heads our way. I have so much cilantro I don't know what to do with it. And I managed to pick one huge, delicious zuchinni already (pictured below, along with a giant radish) and there are more on the way. I am absolutely loving this part of my life here.
