Back in Ambato

Well Im back in Ambato after a nice week away in warm Tumbaco.  I was super excited to get back to work and start some of the new things that I have in mind for the University and start my secondary project!! When I first arrived back at UTA I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to be doing...but as always those perspectives change....Turns out there is a student here from another Univ. in Riobamba doing an internship helping us implement the program of Educación Sexual (Sex education).  They had a very successful program started in their University and the Director wanted to implement something similiar here at the UTA.  So we will be doing yet another survey and then from there create and program and start trainings.  Im really excited to work with this girl because, one, she is my age, young and smart, lol and two, I can count on the fact that she is actually going to follow through with what she needs to do..

I brought back some material to work with the parents of the kids of the Day Care Center here on campus too! So my counterpart, the clinical psychologist sat down and made up a project to talk to the parents once a month on a different topic.  Im excited to be a part of that too!  The other project that is kinda in the making is working on nutrition with the kids in the Day Care Center...I still have to do some planning for that because I was really given no guidance on what is needed or anything, haha but we´ll see what I can do there...

Now onto the secondary project!  Sharon (the TEFL volunteer here in Ambato) and I are starting a girls group at one of the schools in Ambato.  I am very impressed with how fast we have put it all together.  In a week we were able to talk to the girls (we are doing seventh level), talk to the parents, and get a list of interested parents/girls...Now the only problem is that we have wayyy too many for the amount that we want to work with...we are trying to figure out exactly how to address this issue...It´s obvious that a lot want to do it but all won´t be able to.  We might end up picking half and leaving the other half for the next semester.

The goup is going to be working on self-esteem and leadership skills through art and theatre.  After mid service we were able to get several ideas of arts and crafts to do with the girls and I hope we can have some of those volunteers come and actually show the girls how to do it!

Im really excited about this project because it is something completely apart from the University, which is exactly what a secondary project should be.  We´ve already put a lot of work into it and I hope that we get some positive results with the girls!!