Campamento de julio

For the first two weeks of July students in Guanacaste have a break from school and CREAR holds its annual campamento de julio. CREAR will update its blog on the website and their Facebook shortly, but I decided to post about my first day because of the multitude of pictures I took. Currently, the newspaper La Voz de Guanacaste has an article in both Spanish and English about CREAR's camp that can be found here: http://www.vozdeguanacaste.com/en/articles/2013/06/30/crear-hosts-annual-camp-el-torito-and-samara

El horario, or the informal list of activities (with creative nicknames) for each day, made during an office meeting. The first four days of camp take place in El Torito, a town uphill and a few kilometers from Sámara; the last four days take place in Sámara.

The first week of camp takes place in El Torito, a community next to Sámara. The second week of camp takes place in Sámara.

El primer día de campamento:

My friend from Duke helped organize the event. After making name tags, the kids were given a set number of supplies including a couple of pipe cleaners, two sheets of foam, a piece of fabric cloth, scissors, tape, glue, a few popsicle sticks. We gave no instruction on how the kids are supposed to build the houses; the purpose was to allow for the kids to work together and think critically (and creatively) on building a house. The kids were given thirty minutes to construct houses out of these objects and then present their houses to the rest of the kids - the idea was that the kids gave their houses a story (location, price, amenities) and then the kids would bid with fictional money to buy a house. 

The process:

The end results:

In selling their fictional houses, a lot of kids made "For Sale"signs instead of "Se vende." When the kids asked questions about the houses, some of their questions were rather interesting - a few wanted to know if one of the farmhouses 'for sale' had elephants (which the house did not to the disappointment of a couple of kids.)

Yesterday's camp was planned to consist of a hike through Samara Trails but the tour guide canceled on us because of rain (it ended up not raining yesterday.) The four of us, two administrators and two volunteers, had to come up with a solution: after playing Sharks and Minnows for three rounds, I suggested having a mini-combate for the kids. The kids ended up loving the event! But after three rounds of the combate, we ended up playing games outside - many which I had never heard of. It was a tiring day! I wish we could have gone to Samara Trails and then used the booklets I made for the day.

I am excited for today because we are building bottle rockets and kites. I made sure to look up the Spanish vocabulary for both items because the words associated with both are not typically found in Spanish textbooks. 

I think the administrators are set on changing CREAR's services. The level of enthusiasm from the kids in El Torito is so much different than the kids in Samara. I do not know how to explain it since lessons used at El Torito are the same ones used in Samara; school is the same time in both towns; and the same people who volunteer/work in El Torito are the same in Samara. It looks like CREAR will be limiting its hours for Samara and instead focus on nearby communities that are more receptive to CREAR. (On Friday, a Samara day, we had three little girls from El Torito come to the CREAR office and we had zero kids from Samara. That's a far walk for these girls!)

¡Buen día!

* I am not pictured.