Working on a handwriting lesson and Sandra leading a classroom management workshop.
Making the classroom a little more fun with some play activities for center time.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Teacher Training
These may be the first photos that we've ever posted of us doing our 'real' job-teacher training. Some of these are from last year, and some are from this year. They show us doing small training 'workshops' for the teachers at our school. About half of our 9 teachers have gone to the Teachers' College and received their teaching certificates. The others are volunteer teachers from the community.
Working on a handwriting lesson and Sandra leading a classroom management workshop.
Making the classroom a little more fun with some play activities for center time.
Working on a handwriting lesson and Sandra leading a classroom management workshop.
Making the classroom a little more fun with some play activities for center time.
Some pictures of Sandra's art classes
Mosaics using old newsweek magazines and tissue paper flowers.
Pentecost
During the two week school break in May we traveled to Pentecost to see the Nagol. Nagol is the local language name for land diving - Jumping off huge wooden towers held together by vines. It's like bungee jumping except that you tie vines around your feet and they are not very elastic. Oh, that and the goal in land diving is to actually hit the ground.
Why do people do this, you may ask. Well, as far as we could find out, it's a lot like the reason why people do bungee jumping. The materials are there, the young men are bored, and they want to show how tough they are. That's pretty much it. There's no deeper spiritual meaning or custom meaning, no matter how much visitors want to assign one. Regardless, it's an intense experience and it was great to be able to experience it in person.
Why do people do this, you may ask. Well, as far as we could find out, it's a lot like the reason why people do bungee jumping. The materials are there, the young men are bored, and they want to show how tough they are. That's pretty much it. There's no deeper spiritual meaning or custom meaning, no matter how much visitors want to assign one. Regardless, it's an intense experience and it was great to be able to experience it in person.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Updates from Vanuatu
It's July. Dennis is now 31. Sandra will soon be 30. And Vanuatu will soon be 29. In less than four months we will be completing our Peace Corps service and will begin our trip back to California.
This year has been busy so far. Visits from family and friends. Visits to other islands. And lots of work at our school and in our community. Our dog had puppies, we got a cat, and now our dog is pregnant again. Sandra's been busy teaching sewing and jewelry classes to women in the village. We've also been attending a 'custom school' that just started in our village where we've learned to do some weaving, carving, and a bit of dancing.
At school we've been working on organizing the new school library. We just received a large shipment of books from a couple who came through on their yacht a few years ago. Those, combined with the books we already had, have made our library start to fill up.
We've also been involved in some other random projects like monitoring measles vaccinations. We took a trip around our island and surveyed all of the families with children between 1 and 5 to make sure that they had been vaccinated by the Measles Eradication Team. The WHO and the Vanuatu Ministry of Health are working towards 100% coverage to eradicate the disease. Our trip turned out to be a great way to see parts of the island that we hadn't visited before and to do some work at the same time.
We've been in Vila for a week now running errands and going to meetings. We head back north in about two hours. This trip, like most others, began with us receiving shopping lists and money from lots of people in our village who don't get the chance to travel to Vila. It took about 5 days to complete all the shopping, but we did it. Shoes, knife files, t-shirts, school supplies, underwear, plastic fuel pump, jewelry making kit and supplies, soccer cleats, candy, stickers, flash lights, electrical tape and more.
We'll be back in the village for about 6 weeks before coming back into town for our close of service conference. After that we'll go back to the village for four weeks and say goodbye. We'll be back in Vila the last time in November before heading home. We'll probably leave Vanuatu around November 7th and then begin our trip home via Australia, South East Asia and India. I think the last few months here will go by pretty quickly.
Thanks for all the emails, letters and care packages. We'll try to put up some more pictures and videos on this site. If you get a chance, send us an email and let us know how things are going at home.
This year has been busy so far. Visits from family and friends. Visits to other islands. And lots of work at our school and in our community. Our dog had puppies, we got a cat, and now our dog is pregnant again. Sandra's been busy teaching sewing and jewelry classes to women in the village. We've also been attending a 'custom school' that just started in our village where we've learned to do some weaving, carving, and a bit of dancing.
At school we've been working on organizing the new school library. We just received a large shipment of books from a couple who came through on their yacht a few years ago. Those, combined with the books we already had, have made our library start to fill up.
We've also been involved in some other random projects like monitoring measles vaccinations. We took a trip around our island and surveyed all of the families with children between 1 and 5 to make sure that they had been vaccinated by the Measles Eradication Team. The WHO and the Vanuatu Ministry of Health are working towards 100% coverage to eradicate the disease. Our trip turned out to be a great way to see parts of the island that we hadn't visited before and to do some work at the same time.
We've been in Vila for a week now running errands and going to meetings. We head back north in about two hours. This trip, like most others, began with us receiving shopping lists and money from lots of people in our village who don't get the chance to travel to Vila. It took about 5 days to complete all the shopping, but we did it. Shoes, knife files, t-shirts, school supplies, underwear, plastic fuel pump, jewelry making kit and supplies, soccer cleats, candy, stickers, flash lights, electrical tape and more.
We'll be back in the village for about 6 weeks before coming back into town for our close of service conference. After that we'll go back to the village for four weeks and say goodbye. We'll be back in Vila the last time in November before heading home. We'll probably leave Vanuatu around November 7th and then begin our trip home via Australia, South East Asia and India. I think the last few months here will go by pretty quickly.
Thanks for all the emails, letters and care packages. We'll try to put up some more pictures and videos on this site. If you get a chance, send us an email and let us know how things are going at home.
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