As per the request of my mom, I think now is a good time to describe a little the layout of Vicco. I shall start from where you enter the town. The Carretera Central runs north-northwest through Junin to Cerro de Pasco, but shortly after a small little town (Shelby, which I may end up working in a little), a road breaks off to the southwest. This is my little stretch of road. After about a mile, you enter Vicco. The area is very wide open and flat, surrounded by ¨grassland¨ which is really very stubby, peat-like land. Vicco is mostly made of homes built from adobe, which is mud bricks, with metal sheeting as roofing. The main road takes you directly to the Central Comercial which houses my host mom´s restaurant on the first floor. The upper floors apparently have a hostal and offices, but I haven´t been up there. This Plaza directly connects to the Plaza de Armas on the left, which is a much bigger Plaza with a small green area in the center. The Church is on the corner of this Plaza and the one holding the Centro Comercial, I have a picture on Facebook with that and the Centro Comercial up. On the left side of the Plaza de Armas, from the persepective of the Church, is the Municipality, where I will have to submit lots of official paperwork to get stuff done. Heading right from the Church, or continuing Southwest past the Centro Comercial, you travel 4 blocks south to reach my home (one block east-ish if youre walking from the Centro). This walk is mostly on compact dirt and gravel road. The main streets are paved, but these back streets aren´t which I´m sure to regret the further we get into rainy season. Back at the Centro Comercial, if you head back northeast on the main road in two blocks before turning west, you will find the Escuela (Elementary school). This is a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall. One block further east is the Colegio (High School), which is also a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall although a part of it actually is brick and mortar. On the road between the Colegio and Escuela, heading north towards Cerro, you´ll find a pretty neat little technical school that teaches loom-weaving, knitting and other such crafts. Briana weaved a blanket there before leaving, and hopefully I´ll get a chance to learn too. Next door to this is my Posta Salud, a tiny little place that provides the only medical care in Vicco. Off further to the west near the Colegio is a stadium, but I´ve only seen this in passing. These are the only buildings I can think of that are of interest to mention. There are little shops all around Vicco, mostly run out of the living rooms of homes, that have an assortment of stationary, general cooking goods, and cleaning supplies. I still find it fascinating walking into these and gazing at the collection of stuff on the 3 walls. I always feel like I´m about to spot some amazing find among the mess that I didn´t know I could buy in Vicco, or didn´t know I needed.
That is my little slice of life right now. From my verbal map of the place, we can tell the most important places to me are the schools, my restaurant, my home, and the Municipality. It´s rather amusing actually, because doing one of these maps with my community is one of my tools to completing my ¨Community Diagnostic¨ that I have to complete in these first three months. I basically just used one of those tools on myself. We´re supposed to be able to learn what areas are important, what thing are missing, what things the locals would like to see improved, etc from this little tool.
The schools really are going to be the most important spots for me in these coming months. I´m currently writing and working on organizing my summer school classes. The paperwork is a big frustration, because nobody seems willing to actually sit down and do it with me or help me figure out how. The language and document style necessary is very formal and rather challenging for one who is falta (lacking) a computer, a template on the necessary paperwork, the language skills, or the understanding. On my numerous visits to both schools, the Director and professors have all been very helpful and nice, very encouraging and excited for my work, but nothings gotten done yet. It´s really starting to frustrate me, seeing as how this coming week is the last week of classes, and the students still haven´t signed up for my summer school yet. However, if and when I get to teach them, I´m very excited for what I´ve planned. I´m going to teach at the Elementary Mondays and Wednesdays, 2-5:30pm, and at the High School Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time block. In the first hour and a half, I´m going to teach a combination Art/Exercise class with very strong Environment themes. Basically, all the art will be either recycled or focused on nature, and the exercise will either reference animal forms or be a game focused on Environment. After a half hour break (maybe, we´ll see how things go), I´ll teach an English class for the remaining hour and a half. I´m going to try to focus this on Environment themes at times too, although initially it will be much more basic. I´m thinking the classes will likely be very similar between the two schools, although with the High school Art/Exercise, I´m planning on doing more hands-on Environmental stuff, like teaching composting, and recycling. The High School is building a green house to have a garden, so its more important for me to start teaching some of the students there how to run this. Hopefully, once the school year starts back up, these kids from my summer school class will help me spread the word and influence to the rest of the kids.
So while planning and carrying out these summer classes, I´ll also be doing that Community Diagnostic to learn about Vicco more specifically. That, in a nut-shell, is going to be the next two and a half months of my life. Of course, I´m still spending time adjusting and learning Spanish in between stressing/working on those. As well as freezing my butt off of course!
As always, please feel free to provide me feedback: comments, questions or advice!
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