100 Kids, 100% Chaos

Ryan tried to start this blog yesterday but couldn’t find the words to describe this past week. Now I am trying and am also at a loss of words. …..But I guess hear it goes…… So we started school at San Igancio on Tuesday morning. When we arrived at the school at 9:00 am there was 40+ kids already playing in and around the school yard. We quickly started arranging and setting up 3 of the 6 rooms in the school (the other 3 are still being worked on by the builders, whom have still been on the school premise this whole week). Once we got the rooms settled we kicked all the kids outside the school gates and attempted a semi-organized roll call.

First day of school all the kids waiting at the gate

The first problem with this was that when the names were written down at registration not all were completely legible and therefore the final official registration list definitely had miss spelled names. So with what we had we started calling out the names of the kids on the list and letting them in the school one-by-one to their assigned volunteer. Sounds like a good and easy process BUT it wasn’t. There was 100ish kids to go through, the names were misspelled and kids no-showed. What was planned to take 30 minutes took an hour and half.

After all the kids were finally in the school and supposedly assigned to a volunteer we ended up having a chaotic day of cashing our kids around, trying to figure out who they were, if they real did belong to us and keeping them from destroying the school, themselves and us!! By noon one of the classrooms looked like a tornado ripped through it with paper, paint, crayon, chalk, glue, etc. scattered all over the place; on the desks, on the tables, on the floor, on the walls and on the kids. The only and most successful part of the day was lunch. We got all the kids lined up in two lines one boys, one girls then handed them a plate of rice and beans.

Lunch time....Rice and beans

Lining up for lunch

After that it was back to the chaos till 1:30 pm when the kids go home. By the end of day one we were all SUPER exhausted and doubting if we could pull this whole summer break thing off.

Anna keeping order to the limited water

Lunch time the first day

Ryan and his boys at lunch

That night we went home and completely rethought our plan. With some idea of the names and number of kids enrolled we came up with a simpler schedule for roll call and the days’ activities. The second day of school proved to be 100% better. First we lined up the kids outside the school gates then let them in one-by-one to go to their assigned volunteer from the day before. Once each volunteer had all their kids the group went to the scheduled activity for the kids’ age: either arts & crafts, education or sports. Each activity is scheduled for an hour then the groups rotate.

The older kids Dog Piling at sports

The younger kids playing baseball

Ryan's boys in Arts and Crafts class

Two activities then lunch & free time play then one more activity. Like I said day 2 was 100% better. And day 3 today even better. We are keeping this same set schedule for the rest of the summer break.

Originally I had signed up for the older age group 10-12 years old kids. Ryan had signed up for the youngest age group 5-6 years old. On the first day when we got our groups (in all the ruckus) I ended up with 4 boys and he had 3 little princesses all dressed in pink fluffy dresses. Immediately I decided I wanted to switch with him which ended up for the better. He now has 6 boys and I have 6 girls. I actually have 5 five years old and 1 10 year old girl who wanted to stay with her little sister cause she looks after and helps her out a lot. This works out great for me cause when I can’t explain thing clearly in Spanish to the little ones she helps me. The little sister doesn’t speak much, can’t really write and doesn’t know how to read. I also have another little girl who can’t write or read either. When it comes to education or drawing I make sure to help these girls out a little more. Though they are all really sweet and help each other. Today we did collages in arts and crafts which all the girls loved and did really well at. We also had 30 minutes of computers (a separate activity each group does once to twice a week) which they also were very interested in. In the computer class we first taught the kids how to handle the mouse and click the select button. Once they got that down they played kids’ educational games on the computers. It was so cute seeing these dirt faced, sometimes shoeless, clueless, poor kids learn how to use a computer. I have already started forming a bond with the girls.

3 of Debb's Girls learning how to use a computer

Celia 5 years old learning the computer

One of my girls and her brother

Two of my girls on the swings

One of my girls playing on the Titter-Totter

**The next blog Ryan is going to write some stories about his boys.***

Anyways, tomorrow, Friday, the San Igancio school is having a graduation for the kids from the regular school year so we don’t have summer school. Monday and Tuesday are holidays so we don’t have school then either. When I told my girls this today they were all sad. One girl even asked me if we would have school on Saturday. Ooohhh..“No sorry, school starts again on Wednesday”.

Well since it is a long weekend, of course, Ryan wants to go back to the beach. Here we go again back to San Juan del Sur. Our plan is to camp out on the beach and sleep in the van. This will be our first really Vagabond experience.

written by

ryan & debbrial on December 3, 2009 from Granada, Nicaragua

from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas

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