Music and Sports at School in Santa Maria

I spent all Sunday preparing for the school week. A bit nervous on the first day, I found the kids were supportive and forgiving of my limited Spanish, and eager to get on with their schoolwork. As long as I kept with the patterns that Seno Emily (prior teacher) had established, they were able to complete the exercises with very little extra instruction. Nonetheless, my Spanish is improving through the effort and interest in talking with the kids!

Construction has begin at the school in Santa Maria. A new large classroom will be built over holiday break for three more classes, so more kids can attend school next year! To accommodate the construction, my private little classroom has been taken over and I've moved my class into the larger room shared by two other classes. The kids have more distractions, but after a few days we all learned to adapt.


Thursday after fruit break Doreen (GVI schoolmistress) led the kids in a fun song and dance session. We put away the tables and set up chairs concert style, and the kids took turns in groups singing some of their favorite songs. "Soy una pizza" ("I am a pizza") was very popular, as was a song about a sardine eaten by an little octopus eaten by a tuna eaten by a shark. They all followed Doreen's choreography and the volunteers just stood by taking pictures. It was all very cute.

Friday was sports day. At the school building the boys were divided into teams and given either blue or white jerseys (for two Guatemalan soccer teams, I believe). All of the kids were lined up holding onto a long rope for a 20 minute procession through town to a playing field some distance away. The walk had amazing with views of Antigua in the valley several miles away, but more interesting was my first real look at the rest of the very
large town of Santa Maria de Jesus. Before this, I'd only seen a tiny bit of the town through the window of our shuttle van, and the few streets directly adjacent to the school. On the way to the playing field we walked past a few communal wells, a large communal laundry/washing structure, and a surprising number of active construction and civic improvement projects. The town is poor, but busy and full of pride.

At the playing field Doreen led the kids in some stretches, then everyone participated in a series of relay races for about half an hour. For the rest of the session, the boys took over the soccer field and the girls entertained themselves on the grassy hills. Many of the girls brought little parcels with food or toys to play with, and some raced around through the trees. The volunteers either played soccer with the boys (I did in the morning), or helped to keep the girls out of trouble. In the afternoon I introduced jump-roping to some of the older girls and I was amazed to see what rules and games they came up with in just a few hours. Clever kids.

At the end of the day we were all filthy and exhausted, but it was nice to see the kids out enjoying themselves. I look forward to sports day next week!