Math, Fiestas, and American Football

Last weekend, and really all the way from Friday to Monday, was one of my best of the trip so far. And it was much needed. Many of us (including me) were feeling a little homesick the week before. Finally settling down after travel, no work yet, idle time to sit on your thoughts. New family that you barely know, new home that surely doesn’t feel like home, the daunting premise of 7 long months here. It’s a perfectly normal feeling, and I knew that, but that doesn’t make homesickness any more fun. Luckily, I am settling in pretty well, and my homesickness is fading away. Many of my group mates are having a similar experience. Starting work was definitely a big help for everyone.
That brings me to last Friday, my third day at work but the first time I got to lead math activities in a classroom. I started out sitting in the back of a room of twelve 5th graders (give or take a grade) as their teacher Henry guided them through multiplication and division of fractions. Henry is fantastic with the kids, letting them lead the way and only jumping in when needed. However, after a while the kids got bored and started to act out. (I admit I was getting bored, too; it had been a long time on this subject.) Henry knew that more multiplication by the reciprocal would probably be counterproductive at this point, so he asked me if I had any math games I could share, and I was eager to jump in.  

I showed the kids two games, “Knockout” and “21,” both staples from my Afton Elementary math education. In “Knockout” you are given four integers from 1-20, and using those numbers and the four basic arithmetic operations you try to reach (or “knock out”) all of the integers from 1-20. In “21” two people count to 21 together, taking turns with each person saying one, two, or three numbers at a time. The person who is forced to say 21 loses.

It went better than I could have dreamt it. Immediately almost every single bored student perked up and got engaged trying to “knock out” numbers. They got most of them on their own, and I gave some hints at the end. Then they got super competitive over 21 and figured out the strategy very quickly. Students who minutes earlier were having trouble with 2/3 x 5/4 were able to figure out that 20, 16, 12, 8, and 4 were “good numbers,” and they ultimately concluded that going second would ensure victory in 21. It sounds unbelievable, but I wasn’t all that surprised. These are really two different kinds of math, and although they are both necessary, the discovery/problem solving method just seems more natural. Logic and creativity hold up really well in any educational environment. They don’t have to be taught formally like dividing fractions, but rather discovered and developed from within. I can see how a lack of resources may set students back in a curriculum, but this lack can hardly reach inside them to attack their natural intelligence and critical thinking skills.

Anyway, between last Friday and now I have continued teaching math mostly through games and activities but sometimes through more traditional methods. Things are going pretty well, but I don’t have any stories better than that first teaching experience. I now have a fixed schedule and will work with students of all ages, although slightly less often with those under 8 years old. They also gave me an English class once a week with the high-schoolers. That should be a fun challenge.

I was trying to structure this post around my four great days from last Friday to Monday, but I started to stray from the plan. Now I’ll get back on track. Saturday morning we threw a big good-bye party for our instructor Aaron, who was leaving us after the first six (chaotic) weeks of the program. This was the plan all along, but we had kind of let ourselves pretend that he wasn’t going to leave. We even joked about burning his passport to make sure he couldn’t go back. Aaron’s constant source of positive energy and support will be missed, but the timing was definitely right. By now we are settling in and can deal with a little less guidance and supervision.

For the party, Peter and Rachel made an apple pie (definitely the highlight), Emma made delicious chocolate chip cookies, Aaron himself made lemonade, and I made the only thing I could: French toast. (Thanks Dad!) We also bought fruit for a fruit salad, vanilla ice cream, and salteñas (sort of like empanadas but better). All of this for consumption at 10:30 AM. It was fantastic. Here is a picture of all of us, Aaron, and the spread.

  
After an emotional goodbye to Aaron, we all went back home to our families for the afternoon because that weekend was the biggest festival of the year in Tiquipaya, the Festival de San Miguel. For six hours I sat with my family and watched the parade pass by. All of the participants were dressed in exquisite costumes and energetically repeated traditional dances for hours on end, urged on by the powerful music of marching bands. I never got bored. Hunger was a much bigger issue than boredom, but my excessive “brunch” held me over for a while, and street vendors with popcorn and peanuts handled the rest. Emma’s homestay mom was in one of the dancing groups, and she got Emma to practice and participate in the parade. When she passed by, I jumped in quickly and tried (feebly) to learn the dance with her. Here are a few pictures featuring Emma and some other dance groups.

   

   
 
On Sunday the festival continued on a slightly smaller scale. We went and watched again in the evening, and many performers danced for hours straight for the second day in a row.

Monday I had off of work because of the festival, and I went into Cochabamba to explore. It’s an easy 25 minute trufi ride that costs 5 bolivianos round trip (7 B = $1). I walked around for a while, got a newspaper and read it in a plaza, and ultimately ended up in a café that was very reasonably priced and had free wifi, which is a pretty big deal. I’ll end up back there.

Monday night was a treat. Basically the only channels from the U.S. that we get down here are CNN and ESPN, so I was able to watch my first Giants game of the season when they played the Eagles on Monday Night Football. I figured that regardless of the result, getting to watch a Giants game would leave me in a good mood. I was wrong. That was ugly. I turned it off early. But the season is long, and I maintain that they have a higher upside than the Eagles. I dare you Eagles fans to challenge me on that in the comments section. The Giants play one more Monday Night Football game this season, so I’ll get to see them play two more times this season. (I’m assuming that we’ll get the Super Bowl down here.)

So those were my four great days. This week was back to work in the mornings with Spanish class in the afternoons. All is good. I’m learning a lot of new names at school and a lot of vocabulary in Spanish class. I’ll keep you posted on how my teaching goes and will share any cool stories that come up.

Abrazos,

Jacob

My New Home

September was full of travel, excitement, and new experiences every day. It was a fantastic month and made for some great blog material- maybe the best of the trip (hopefully not).
But packing, unpacking, squeezing into trufis, leaving places just when you got used to them, meeting new people and saying goodbye a week later, having no major responsibilities- it would have all gotten old fast if it went on past September. I am happy to be writing this in what will be “my room” for the next 7+ months. My home is in Tiquipaya, a suburb of the major city of Cochabamba. Tiquipaya is tucked up against the mountains at 8,700 feet, but I barely notice the altitude because we came from so much higher. The climate here is very nice- high around 80 every day with bright sunshine. The rainy season will come in a couple months, and then it might cool down a little. When we arrived in the Cochabamba, we were excited to see an abundance of green plants (including some palm trees) after spending a month in places generally too high for much wildlife to survive.  Here is a picture of the plaza in Tiquipaya.

 

Let me tell you a little bit about my homestay family. The parents are Ana and Dennis (both 30ish). They have two kids, Fabiola (4) and Lupe (1). Ana’s mother María also lives with us. The family runs a restaurant out of the house and lives on the second floor. These types of family-owned restaurants are a very common phenomenon here; they are informal, homey, and cheap. You don’t have any choice over your meal, but for the equivalent of one or two dollars you get a hardy lunch of soup and a main course with some sort of meat. The restaurant is really packed at lunchtime, and I am starting to figure out how I can help in the kitchen.  Here is a mediocre picture of the restaurant.

  
Ana is currently studying law at a public university in Cochabamba, and Dennis works as a taxi driver when he isn’t helping with the restaurant. This is a middle class family; they work very hard and long hours but live comfortably. The house is relatively big, there is always enough food to eat, the bathroom has a hot shower, and they have TV, cable, and a computer (but no Internet). There are fewer conveniences than back home, but I won’t have any problems living here for several months.  

Fabiola is, as her family likes to say, “muy fregada” (energetic/rambunctious/naughty). She calls me “tío” (uncle), which is very cute. We play Jenga and watch cartoons together. Sometimes she gets a little tiring.

  
Lupe is 14 months and already walks pretty well. She does what 14-month-olds do. Nap, cry, eat, poop. Her family calls her “gordita” (little fatty), which sounds kinda mean when I translate it, but here it is a term of endearment. If I didn’t know what gordita meant, there is a pretty good chance I would think that was her name.

María is of Quechua descent and speaks Spanish second but well enough for me to understand her most of the time. I don’t know whether I should consider her my grandma or my mom. I think I’m gonna go with grandma even though Ana is too young to be my mom. María just seems like an abuela; she takes the most interest in my well-being. She told me she was sad when I was under the weather, she always tells me to “eat, eat!” when I’m not sure whether to take more food, and she is working with me to get more veggies into my diet. Actually, maybe she’s like a mom. I don’t know. I’ll just call her María. Nonetheless, I am very happy she is in the house to care for me.

The events of the the last 10 days were not particularly exciting. A lot of errands for the long-term visa application process and visits to potential service work sites. Ultimately, I was placed in what seems to be the perfect work for me- teaching math! I will be working in an alternative school called Kusikuna, which has students age 4-18 and emphasizes discovery and instilling a love of learning. The alternative environment will make teaching math quite a challenge, but the potential for discovery and enrichment is sky high. If everything goes well, I really think this type of environment is the best possible for learning math. I’ll keep you updated on all the challenges and triumphs. At first, it will probably be mostly challenges as I work my way into the environment, meet new people, and feel out how everything works at Kusikuna. But I’m ready for the challenge.

Abrazos,

Jacob 

Our Andes Excursion

When I wrote my last post, we were in a hostel in La Paz preparing for our 3-day trip into the mountains. Now I am back in the same hostel with that incredible experience behind me, and I have a lot of stories and pictures to share with you.
Much of our pre-excursion day in La Paz was spent buying food. The students were given a budget of about $150 to plan out all of our meals/snacks/trail mix for the trip. We would be provided a gas stove and some pots in order to prepare hot meals. For the shopping, we split into a supermarket group and a market group. I was in the market group, and I was really proud of how well we navigated through the chaos to get everything we needed. Here is a picture I took in the middle of the marketplace.

  

We headed out at 10:00 on Monday for Tuni, the small town at about 15,000 feet from which we would be able to hike to base camp. The drive was supposed to take two hours, but because of a bloqueo (a protest using rocks to block the road), we had to take a longer, more precarious, and much more scenic route through the mountains. Here is a picture of me taken at a stop alongside the road.

  
We arrived in Tuni around 2:00, ate cheese and avocado sandwiches for lunch, loaded much of our cargo onto mules, and set out for base camp. The hike was very scenic and not that difficult, which is good because this was just getting to base camp. We arrived at camp (15,400 feet) at around 4:00 and were greeted by this view.

  
We settled in to our large cabin and prepared dinner (chili), which was delicious. I’m grateful that we have some amazing cooks in the group. We went to bed excited for the day to come.

The next day we woke up at 6:30, prepared a hardy breakfast of oatmeal, and set out at 8:15 for the summit of El Pico Austria. This was proposed to us as an optional challenge, and six of us decided to take it on. Our guide Gregorio kept us at a smooth pace with plenty of short breaks, and we never felt pressure to hurry. The beginning of the hike was pretty steep, but we were fresh and not yet feeling the altitude. The middle part was definitely the hardest, up this seemingly never-ending, beautiful mountain pass with an endless field of stones beneath our feet. This is also the point when we got to the snowy part of the mountain. We were rewarded at the end of the pass (at just below 17,000 feet) with an amazing view of several high peaks. This photo won’t do it justice.

  
The last hour of the hike may have been a little less steep than the middle, but the altitude brought new challenges. I had to take short breaks to catch my breath every minute or so, and I started to feel a little tension in my lungs when I took deep breaths. Also, within sight of the summit I got a cramp in my right quad. I had to sit down, stretch out my leg, eat a banana, and drink some Emergen-C that I magically had in my bag (thanks Mom). After four hours of hard work, we hiked the last 100 meters in a staggered formation so we could walk in silence and appreciate the individual achievement. The view at the top was breathtaking (this time not so literally), as we finally got to see what was on the other side of the mountain from a cool 17,552 feet in elevation. Here are the highlights:
      

Crazy, right? By the way, you haven’t heard me mention the weather yet because it was a non-issue, at least until now. It was maybe 40 degrees at the summit when we got there (really comfortable), but right as we got out our bread, meat, and avocado for lunch, a storm rapidly moved in. The sun disappeared, the wind started whipping, and the temperature must have dropped 10 or 15 degrees in minutes. A couple of us got dangerously cold, and it was clear that we had to cut lunch short and descend right away. Five minutes into our descent the snow started to fall, and it only picked up in intensity with time. Here is a picture of the conditions.

  
We motored down that mountain in an hour and a half, way less than the allotted time. My instructor Aaron noted that it can be a good thing when the weather gets tough on a hike so that we are humbled and reminded of nature’s immense power over us. When we arrived back at base camp, we were greeted by a kettle of boiling water, tea bags arranged in a heart shape on the table, and a colorful sign saying “YOU DID IT!” Asia, the New Yorker with little hiking experience who decided to stay back, had set this all up for us and greeted us with big hugs. That was probably the best part of the day.

  
At night, we just chilled out and played cards. (Aaron cleaned up in poker. He’s 2 for 2 on the trip.) We ate a nice spaghetti dinner and went to bed content.

On Wednesday we did a shorter, easier hike to a nearby glacier. My instructor Gina told me that glaciers taste like lemon or coconut, but I thought it tasted just like ice. I’m pretty sure she was messing with me. Anyway, here is a picture at the glacier.

  
We got back to camp at noon, did everything in reverse, and now we’re are back at the hostel in La Paz. What a great excursion!  

Next we travel to our permanent home in Cochabamba. We will move into homestays in less than a week and begin working shortly after that. I’m ready to settle down, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how my life shakes out in what will be my home for nearly seven months.

Abrazos,

Jacob