Alcito at school

Los alumnos uruguayos, todos divinos. :)

The food is delicious at Escuela Nº 14 and it's all 

homemade by Nelly at the school. ¡Nelly es una artista!

Chicken rolled up, like the pamplona that Ana's sister

made for my Welcome dinner.

After cooking the pamplona, it's sliced and ready to eat. Super delicious!

Salads made by Nelly. 

Flan for dessert, made by Nelly, of course!

Escuela N° 14

On Monday I went to Ana's school, Escuela N° 14, in Solís. She is the principal and she also teaches 7th grade math in the afternoons.

There are two sessions in the schools, one from about 8-12 and the other from 1-5. Escuela N° 14 is small, one class per grade level or in some cases, combined age groups together in one room.

The students and staff are so welcoming and there is an obvious climate of caring. 

Every classroom was decorated for me as well as the main entry. A super warm welcome!

I took this photo from the bus stop. (Most students and staff use public buses)

The school is on the right.

Playing a game I brought from home.

Finally, Pan de Azúcar

Arrived in Pan de Azúcar on Sunday, after a week in Montevideo. Ana's family is awesome! Her brother  prepared an asado, like a barbeque, and it was delicious. Ana's sister made homemade chorizo, a pamplona, an incredible chicken with cheese, tomato, olives, salad, tomatoes, and more. The grill was filled with meats. This is the land of meat!

Ana's sons were there, her Mom, sister-in-law, and dogs and cats. It was a wonderful welcome dinner.

I don't have many photos of Pan de Azúcar yet because it has been really cold, rainy and gray.

Photo from bus, entering Piriápolis, near Pan de Azúcar. This is the Río de la Plata.

El asado, at Ana's house

Saturday trip to Colonia

Alcito has been very busy enjoying Uruguay so there's been little time to blog. On Saturday our Uruguayan colleagues treated us to a whole day in Colonia. We took the bus from Montevideo and the we walked around the old part of Colonia, climbed up the lighthouse, had a delicious Uruguayan dinner, stopped by an art exhibit, had a quick merienda, then returned to Montevideo.

We could see Buenos Aires, Argentina, off in the distance when we climbed the lighthouse. It looks like an ocean in the photo but it's a river, the Río de la Plata.

Colonia

Dinner ( lunch time for us) in Colonia

   

Chivito, a popular dish. It's usually served as a sandwich but we asked for it 

without the bread. This dish is for 2 people. Lots of food!

Near the old train Colonia train station. There are no trains in all of Uruguay now.

Colonia street

A lighthouse in Colonia

Buenos Aires is off in the distance, on the other side of Río de la Plata, from top of lighthouse.

Alcito saw a big whale skeleton when walking to the port.

El carpincho!!

Today, Thursday, I saw a carpincho! So excited because I remember when Maestra Ana talked about the Uruguayan carpinchos and now I've seen a real, live one. The carpincho is a symbol of Uruguay and it's even on some of their peso coins.

It was happy just munching on the grass and it let me get quite close. It did grunt at one point and looked a bit angry so Sra. Dana grabbed me from the ground just in case it wanted to eat me. Do you know how to say 'carpincho' in English? 

Ans: a carpincho is a capybara, the largest rodent in the world.

Wednesday, July 17 @ Winter English Camp

We spent the day with some amazing Uruguayan English teachers at the Granja San Francisco. It was a Winter English Camp, a professional development day for them. We shared ideas and participated in group activities, ate breakfast, lunch and merienda together. Also the U.S. teachers presented three different sessions about language learning.

Alcito shared his first mate today. Yerba mate is the traditional Uruguayan beverage, a tea made with the leaves of the mate shrub. You put the dried Yerba leaves in a mate container, traditionally a dried gourd, cover them with hot water, then sip the yerba through the bombilla. The bombilla is a straw-like spoon, with a strainer at one end. The Uruguayans carry their thermos of hot water with them all day and fill up the mate when they want to drink more yerba. They add the water over the same leaves.

Sharing mate with some Uruguayan teachers

Tuesday with Fulbright

Today, July 16, was our second official day as part of the Fulbright Educator Exchange program. We had an overview of the educational system, Uruguayan culture, and the Plan Ceibal, the laptop program for all public school students. We then had lunch at Costa Azul to eat typical Uruguayan food.

I'll mention just a few of the many things we learned today. Every day is too intensive to describe in detail on this blog.

1. When greeting people, you always hug and give an "air" kiss on the cheek. It's the way to greet one another, whether teachers and students, colleagues at work, people at social gatherings, or Other social situations. If you arrive late for a meeting, the cultural expectation is that you'll still greet everyone. It's more rude to enter quietly and slip into a seat without greeting colleagues as opposed to interrupting the meeting to greet everyone. 

2. Plan Ceibal - http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/Paginas/Inicio.aspx

This 2007 national initiative is amazing! The Plan Ceibal goal is to give every public student and teacher a laptop, grades K-12. Today we visited the national offices of Plan Ceibal and met with two of the administrators for informational sessions. 

This is the X-O laptop that Ceibal distributes. There are different colors depending on the age level.

All schools and communities have internet access, even in rural areas that sometimes don't have electricity but rely on solar power. You will see Ceibal Wifi hotspot signs in public parks and community areas so all citizens have access to internet.

All Uruguayan schools participate in Lego robotics programs and students start with Scratch programming to program their Legos. I asked about male vs. female participation and they said that both boys and girls are equally interested in the robotics program. I'd like to see our CE students work virtually with Ana's students to create Lego robotics together. We'll see...I have lots of ideas for cross-cultural lessons.

Photos from today - Plan Ceibal offices

Tech Dept. This photo is for our CE Tech people. Here they create the XO image, repair laptops, maintain the servers, and internet connections, and everything else to keep a national laptop program up and running.

Lego robotics kits that are given to students

Some articles about the Plan Ceibal program:

MIT, Negroponte, and the OLPC global initiative

One Laptop per Child

La Rambla de Montevideo

La Rambla is a 22 kilometer pedestrian boulevard / walkway along the Río de la Plata coast in Montevideo. There are lots of people biking, walking, running, and enjoying the outdoors along the Ramblas. Our hotel is one block from La Rambla and I've been jogging twice along the path. There are big tall markers every 500 meters to mark the distance so you know how far you've run.

Here's a photo looking towards a lighthouse along the route I jogged on Monday, our first day.

I

  

La Rambla reminds me of CE where we see lots of people participating in outdoor activities on the Shore Rd pathway, CELT trails, beaches, bike path and more.

Sunset along the Rambla route tonight. It sets a little after 6 p.m. which surprised me the first night because it seemed early for July but I forgot about season, winter! Our hotel is in the center of the buildings you can see in the distance.

Arrived in Montevideo this morning

Arrived in Montevideo at about 10 a.m. Monday morning. When the plane touched down after the nine hour flight from Miami, everyone on board broke into applause. I'd forgotten that it's often customary for Latin Americans to clap when the plane lands safely so we all joined in with the locals.

Approaching Montevideo. It was 37° F when we landed. During the day, it felt like an autumn day in Maine, about 50°.

Welcome to Uruguay, first stop is Immigrations area.

Goodbye Cape, we leave tomorrow

Today is a beautiful Maine summer day so we stopped by Fort Williams to walk around. Tomorrow we leave and winter clothes are packed, ready for the July Uruguayan winter. Given the warm Maine weather today, it's hard to think of July as a winter month.

Meet Alcito, a CE Swap Shop moose going to Uruguay

                                         

Meet Alcito, a CE Swap Shop original, who will accompany me to Uruguay. Alcito the moose will blog with CEMS students about his Uruguayan adventures. You'll notice a slight spot on his left antler and in spite of a trip through the washing machine and dryer, the spot remains. I think it's a permanent CE Swap Shop logo.

Alce is the Spanish word for moose, and -ito at the end of a word is a diminutive form and/or used as an affectionate term. So, Alcito is a "little moose" but also a "cute little moose friend."

The scientific classification for moose is Alces alces, so the Spanish word is traced back to Latin.

One more quick Spanish lesson, appropriate for Maine summers. The English word 'mosquito' is from the Spanish: 'mosca' means fly (noun, the insect) and with -ito at the end, a 'mosquito' is a 'little fly'.

Info about the program and Uruguay

A goal of the Educational Seminars program is to "enhance cooperation and strengthen mutual understanding among educators in Uruguay and the United States. It's designed to create strong linkages between participants and communities, to promote innovative ideas in teaching and programs..." (source)

Some people I've spoken with think I'm going to experience hot, tropical weather but Uruguay is quite far south of the equator. It is about the same distance from the equator as North Carolina, approx 2600 miles. I will be arriving in the middle of Uruguay's winter and although much milder than our winters, and no snow, I will not be in a balmy tropical area.

I hope to return to Cape Elizabeth with a better understanding of the Southern Cone of South America and to bring new ideas and lessons to our students and town. Unfortunately, the program is going to be discontinued after this year due to budget cuts so I'm lucky to be able to participate. Although Uruguay and other sites have been dropped, there will be future teacher exchange programs to Brazil, Portugal, and India. Spread the word.

So Amer map source

Less than one week until departure to Uruguay!

A week from today I leave for Uruguay.  I've just returned from an amazing CE service trip to Guatemala to volunteer at Safe Passage, and am switching gears to prepare for my Educational Seminars Teacher Exchange in Uruguay.

It is winter in Uruguay now and their school year is in full swing. It's been a bit of a challenge to think about warm clothing during our current hot spell here in Maine. The Uruguayan winter temperatures range from low 40s to high 50s so it should be similar to a Maine October, but with no central heating.

I will spend a week in Montevideo, the capital, where the ten U.S. Exchange teachers will attend seminars to learn about the Uruguayan culture and educational system.  On Wednesday we'll go to a ranch resort to work with Uruguayan elementary and secondary English teachers at an Educational Immersion Day Camp. I'll be presenting a session entitled, "Active Student Engagement: Strategies for Engaging Students in Foreign Language Education", along with other U.S. participants.

After the week in Montevideo, I'll spend two weeks with Ana Rodríguez in Pan de Azúcar and experience life in her town and school.  "Maestra Ana", Teacher Ana, as the CE students called her, stayed with me in February 2013, for two weeks  and experienced life in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and the U.S.


Ana Rodríguez and Susan Dana at CEMS, Feb. 2013. Maestra Ana wanted to build a snowman but we explained that she had to wait for good snow-packing conditions, in spite of the blizzard snowfall. Some 8th grade students helped her build this snowman, holding a thermos of yerba mate, the Uruguayan national tea.