Anyway, it's been an interesting week. Last weekend I spend the whole weekend with the volunteer group Un Techo Para Mi Pais. It's a group similar to Habitat for humanity, but the houses they build are generally much more basic. The weekend was the biggest project of the year, aiming to build 150 emergency dwellings throughout Uruguay. The meet-up in Montevideo included thousands of volunteers, which split up into groups to go to different neighborhoods on the outskirts of Montevideo, where there are poor settlements of rough houses. I went with a large group to a neighborhood called Maracaná, the largest of the settlements with about 5000 families. We were split into groups of about 7 people to work on each house, a small kind of cabin of plywood, without running water or electricity. My group went to the home of a woman named Fabiana and her family. They lived in a small, rough house of cinder blocks, at least 15 people, including her 9 children and a second family. We built the emergency house on a bit of land next to the existing house, on a giant pile of mud... It had been raining all week (Santa Rosa!!) and into Saturday, making the job very difficult and dirty. It rained all day on Saturday as we dug holes in the mud for the "pilotes" (wood stumps to make a level surface for the house's floor). The rain stopped in the late afternoon and we worked until dark. On Sunday the weather was much better (I got a bit of a sunburn actually) and we worked all day until about 9 pm, but still didn't finish the house, as we had waited about 3 hours in the afternoon for missing supplies. On Friday and Saturday nights we slept in a school/church altogether on the floor, less than 5 hours per night. The plan is for some of the volunteers to return this Sunday to finish the houses with the continued help of the families. Overall this was a very interesting experience, the closest I have been to the kinds of slums you see on TV, read about, or drive by when visiting another country. There really is nothing comparable to this kind of life in the United States. Still I felt somewhat like I was watching from a distance as I couldn't communicate very effectively with the family or even the other volunteers in the group. It makes me wonder how this happens, and even much worse in other parts of the world.
So after the weekend I was very tired and dirty and got home at around midnight on Sunday night. Then I had to wake up at 5 am to go to Punta Ballena on Monday morning. So after 3 nights with less than 5 hours of sleep, I was exhausted to say the least. But luckily my time in Punta Ballena is very tranquil and restful. As for the teaching, here is what I wrote for the school's blog:
Now I have had my second week of teaching English. The schedule still is not very sure. This week the teacher of first, second, and third years was not be able to attend the classes. Therefore, the younger students did not attend classes and I had classes only with fourth, fifth, and sixth years, for more time. I taught the parts of the body and the imperative to the students, and I played Simon Says with them. On Wednesday, I met the music teacher and I watched her classes. Next week, we are going to work on the World Cup song, something that the students already have interest in and the music teacher already began to teach the older students. On Wednesday I also had a class with some of the youngest students, I taught them the alphabet in English. (¿¡There’s ñ!?) Also, I received some materials from the previous English teacher on Wednesday. I am going to study them and I expect that I can use them in classes next week.
On Monday, after classes, I went to the beach with some of the little ones and Memo (one of the fathers, whose house I stayed in on my first visit), and played a bit of some unnamed game similar to simplified American football. Then I spent a bit of time there alone, walking the beach and finding a tiny sea turtle! So cute! After which Martin came to meet me and watch the sunset with some mate. So beautiful. The weather has been absolutely beautiful this week.Then we drove out the actual "point" of Punta Ballena and saw the stars come out. I saw a bit of Casa Pueblo, but I'll have to go back in the daytime and go inside to see the museum. More on that when I see it. Later on in the night Martin took me out to the Arboteum Lussich, a huge forest just next to his house. There are a couple horses that hang out there, which I got to pet, and I saw the Milky Way for the first time! I'm really loving being in the city for half the week and in nature the other half. It's perfect.
On Wednesday night I went out to the Prado. Every year there is a big exposition of livestock for 10 days, and each night entertainment and temporary bars set up in a park in the neighborhood called Prado. I saw another spectacle of Uruguayan carnaval music, and I actually understood some of it this time! It helped that there was an Uruguayan explaining some of it to the foreign ones of us. Last night I went to a folklore show, which included some kind of theater (I had no idea what was happening, but I think it was partly because we missed a good part of it), traditional dance, I think of gauchos (cowboys), and an improvised guitar performance by two musicians (also dressed as gauchos). The dancing and guitar were quite good and I wound up going out after until about 4 am, even though I had class today. Speaking of which, I'm now taking 2-4 hours of classes of Thursdays and Fridays. And I won't be moving out of the school residence. Apparently the possibility of moving into an apartment was never that realistic. Good to know now I guess?
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