Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

March 15 – March 21

     Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Éirinn go Brách! Celebrating on Tuesday was so much fun, even though it was, of course, nothing like in the United States. I wore green and a makeshift shamrock necklace to school, which brought some questions, explanations, and cultural exploration. After school, we had a very small Peace Corps potluck with great friends, way too much food, and just a whole lot of potatoes.

     One of the first grade teachers had the genius idea to label the whole school in English, which I think is great. It’s such a short, easy project, too – I really hope we can make it happen!

I went to a teacher training on Friday and helped with curriculum design on Saturday. I learned about initiatives like Todos a aprender, task-based learning, and the EGRA and EGMA tests that we’ll be using for reading and math.

     That evening, I went to Stations of the Cross, which was led by children and teens in the church’s youth groups. The youngest, a little boy, played Jesus and carried around a cross that was just barely small and light enough for him to hold on his back through the stations. I was excited, too, that I was able to understand the children who read even better than I understood the adults, making walking from station to station even more beautiful.

- Peace Corps Goal 2 is to share American culture with your host culture – in my case, with Colombians. Saint Patrick’s Day was an excellent opportunity to do that, especially since I am of primarily Irish decent. Even just wearing green and a makeshift shamrock necklace made great conversation starters and talking about your own culture is fun and eye opening. I got to explain what tréboles (shamrocks) have to do with St. Patrick’s Day and tell the Trinity story in very slow, grammatically mediocre Spanish, so I was pretty proud of that, too.

- You will likely be invited to a lot of teacher meetings and trainings. Unless someone tells you that you don’t need to be there, try to go. You’ll definitely learn something at the trainings and you never know what sort of important news (like academic calendar changes) you’ll hear at meetings.