Another month has passed and it is time to let you know what we’ve been up to at the Arajuno Road Project. July has been our busiest month ever, with 10 volunteers with us during one week (exceeding our normal capacity of 9) and the other weeks being fairly full too.
The house and the project take on a different feel with more people here. It’s much more lively, and the workload is spread out a lot more. Surprisingly the house still feels spacious so we are increasing capacity to 12. Making 2 trips everyday with the car was less than ideal but good old Julian is still up to the test. September and October are also shaping up to being busy, which means we should be able to make a bigger difference at the schools.
We finally managed to have our school trip with Km35, and there was hot weather and sun, which made the water park even more enjoyable. The local council lent us their bus for the day to help ferry everyone around (all the parents wanted to come too, there were as many adults as children), and it helped make the whole day run smoothly.
June saw the end of normal school and July ushered in the holidays and summer school. Last year was a big success and we were hoping to build on our achievements. With three summer schools on the go, we started working at the schools 5 days a week, with summer schools on Thursday morning and afternoon. It has been exhausting, but lots of fun (sometimes I think the volunteers enjoy playing more than the children!) As we have fewer volunteers in August we are dropping the Thursday afternoon class, but still keeping the five day format.
The new summer schools have been quite literally “amazing” (thank you Amy and Hannah for the occasional reminder of this words existence). We had 50 children and 10 people for the English class in our first week at El Triunfo, so we needed all the help we could get. We have made good use of the activity book made last year and the weeks have slowly developed into having specific themes, which have helped us come up with ideas and activities. We have just come to the end of sky/flying week, which has been our most fruitful (note I managed to avoid using the obvious pun about how the theme really ‘took off’).
The English classes at El Triunfo have been popular, I can’t imagine children back home asking for more grammar tests in a foreign language during their holidays. They have been useful for us too, and have helped fine tune the curriculum for next year.
It’s strange to think that we are already half-way through summer school, it’s definitely my favourite time of year.
I hope everyone is well and keep in touch!