January 23, 2009

This past week I spent the majority of my days working with my counterpart. On Monday we gave a small business charla to ten mothers in the community. We proposed that they think of a product that they could make and try selling it around the community. I have a Peace Corps small business manuals that has the recipes to products that can be made to sell such as shampoo, conditioner, disinfectant, soap, etc. One interesting thing about Ecuador is that it is extremely easy to buy all sorts of chemicals over the counter. (My brother is determined to buy a big chunk of potassium to blow things up when he comes to visit me.) The mothers chose to try making disinfectant. We then agreed to meet again on Friday (this afternoon) to further discuss the development of a small business.

That day two other volunteers and I also gave a charla to the librarians in Machala about animación de la lectura (literally translates to animation of the reading, a.k.a. “How to make reading exciting”). We talked about informal education, games, how to read to children, and finally ideas of follow-up activities to do after reading. Overall, I think it went pretty well.

On Tuesday, my counterpart and I invited children to my swimming class that starts in February. And yes, I did get to see the inauguration. Five of us PC volunteers and one World Teach volunteer met up at a pizza restaurant and watched Obama be sworn in. Unfortunately, his speech was really hard to understand because there was a voice over in Spanish and I kept switching between listening to him speak and the Spanish translator.

I spent Wednesday prepping for a presentation that I have to give when I go to Quito and teaching English in the afternoon.

On Thursday I finished inviting children to my swimming class. Then my counterpart and I discussed the second small business charla that we are to give this afternoon. Since Monday my counterpart’s parents priced the ingredients for the disinfectant. The total came out to be about $10. Yesterday, my counterpart and I went to each house and requested $1. We then went to buy the ingredients and today we are going to try making it with mothers. Hopefully it will work out!