Pen Pals - Round 1

The following note is a message to the MS224 Mott Haven students who were kind and energetic enough to strike up a pen pal program with students from Limon 2000.  Scroll down to see a video of our first session:

¡Saludos Nueva Yorkers!

Primero me gustaría agradecerles el montón de cartas recibimos de Uds.  A los estudiantes les encantó aprender de sus vidas y gustos, además de responder a sus preguntas.

Igual que Señor Johnson, yo hice una presentación pequeña sobre The Bronx, enseñándoles donde queda en la ciudad de Nueva York y en el país.  Además, vieron fotos de su barrio que Señor Johnson me había mandado.  Les gustó ver una foto del número de casa escrito en vitrales encima de la puerta de un apartamento.  Aquí en Costa Rica la mayoría de las casas y edificios no tiene dirección.  Para recibir un correo hay que dar direcciones y descripciones (por ejemplo, del Banco Nacional, 100m al norte, 25m al este, casa amarilla con verjas verdes).  Otro dato interesante:  ¡hay bastantes costarricenses que viven alrededor de Nueva York!  Muchas aquí en el país me han contado de su familia en Brooklyn, en Boston y en Nueva Jersey.

Bueno chicos, espero que las cartas lleguen salvas y sanas y que Uds nos puedan escribir pronto.  Casi termina el año escolar en Costa Rica, y los estudiantes están esperando su respuesta antes de que se vayan.  ¡Les quieren escribir de nuevo!

Atentamente,
Kevin

 

Connect: Reconnect

It's amazing how time flies when you're speaking Spanish!

Though I'm still in the same spot, a lot has changed with my correspondences back in the States. First off, I'd like to welcome a trio of new groups of readers to this page: Mrs. Stonecipher's 4th graders at Clark Elementary (near Indianapolis), Ms. Hoglund's new batch of 8th graders from Howe in Chicago, and the Mr. Johnson's 6th-8th graders from Mott Haven in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to hearing your questions and learning about all of you.

To Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hoglund: feel free to supplement any correspondences with my more advanced writing on my Guineagogy blog. I'll also post some links to some of the blogs of my favorite co-volunteer writers in my 'For the Bored' section.

For now, let me tell you all a little more about Limón 2000:

It's amazing how time flies when you're speaking Spanish!

Though I'm still in the same spot, a lot has changed with my correspondences back in the States. First off, I'd like to welcome a trio of new groups of readers to this page: Mrs. Stonecipher's 4th graders at Clark Elementary (near Indianapolis), Ms. Hoglund's new batch of 8th graders from Howe in Chicago, and the Mr. Johnson's 6th-8th graders from Mott Haven in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to hearing your questions and learning about all of you.

To Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hoglund: feel free to supplement any correspondences with my more advanced writing on my Guineagogy blog. I'll also post some links to some of the blogs of my favorite co-volunteer writers in my 'For the Bored' section.

For now, let me tell you all a little more about Limón 2000:
-The neighborhood is about three hours from the San José (the capital of Costa Rica) and a half hour by bus from Limón (the capital of Limón province). Limón is right on the Atlantic Ocean and houses the country’s largest port on the Atlantic side.
-Roughly 3,000 people live in Limón 2000
-The neighborhood turned 20-years-old this year. Beforehand it was private property.
-Some common jobs people have are truck drivers, house workers, office workers or retail sales in Limón, and construction workers.
-The grade school and high school take place in the same building. There are plans to build a new high school, but construction has not yet started.
-I work closely with the equipo interdisciplinario, which is a lot like a counselor’s office in the U.S.
-For being the most diverse province in Costa Rica, Limón is often called el cresol de cultura, or the melting pot of culture. There are strong populations of people of Costa Rican, Afro-Caribbean, Nicaraguan, indigenous, and Chinese descent. In the beach communities on the coast you can even find large groups of Americans who years ago escaped the U.S. for the slow Caribbean life. The most celebrated of these cultures is Afro-Caribbean. To date there are festivals and parades celebrating the region’s African roots. Still, there is a healthy mix, and it’s not uncommon to see a person with a mix of any/all of these cultures in her blood.
-Like in Guinea, I sleep with a mosquito net to protect against critters.  Mosquitos here carry malaria and dengue fever, two tropical diseases that can be quite nasty.  The malaria here isn't as bad as in Guinea (nor as common), but it's better to be safe than sorry! 

Here are some photos that might do a better job of telling the tale:

My Limón host parents, Don Carlos (64) and Doña Ivonne (67)

Kindergarten students on their way to the cafeteria

In front of my host family's house

My bed and mosquito net

Until next time!  Pura Vida, Kevin

Hey again! It’s been over 2 months now, so I figure I’ve left you more than enough time to guess where I’m living now. Figure it out? I’m in Costa Rica, where the famous greeting is ‘Pura Vida!’, which means ‘Pure Life’ in English. Believe it or not, Costa Rica will be the 6th country I’ve had a chance to live in (U.S., Spain, France, Guinea, Peru, Costa Rica) and the 20th country I’ve visited! If you get a little time, do a little research about what Costa Rica’s all about. How many people live there? What U.S. state compares in size to Costa Rica? Is Costa Rica bigger or smaller than Indiana? In the meantime, I’d like to share a little about my experiences here.

I arrived on March 2nd, and boy was I surprised how different Costa Rica is from Guinea. It’s a very developed country (what does developed mean?). A lot of the activities that took a lot of time in Guinea are very easy here. For example, there is always electricity. In the town where I trained in Guinea, we only had electricity every other day; and in the site where I was to be living, there wasn’t any electricity, except when people ran electric generators. I used to have to go to a well to get water to take a bath or to flush the toilet. In Costa Rica, I find running water almost everywhere I go. In Guinea, only about 2 out of every 5 people can read. Here in Costa Rica, nearly everyone can read. If you lived in Guinea, you might expect to only live until you’re fifty years old. The typical person in Costa Rica, on the other hand, lives longer than a person in the United States (how old is that?)! Below are pictures of two families. The first one was my host family in Guinea. I lived with them for three months while I was in training. The next photo is a picture of my current host family. I’ll have lived with them for three months as well, here in a town called San Antonio. What differences do you see between the two families?





There are many similarities too. Rice is eaten at almost every meal; but instead of rice and sauce, Costa Ricans typically eat rice with black beans. It’s the national dish (dish is just a fancy word for meal), and it’s called ‘gallo pinto’, which actually means ‘painted rooster’. Strange, huh? There is also a ton of fruit here, and much of it is the same kind as all my favorites in Guinea. Mangoes and pineapples are very popular, and boy do I love mangoes and pineapples! Remember my presentation back in November when we were talking about seasons? What were the two seasons in Guinea? Rainy season and dry season. Here in Costa Rica, it’s exactly the same. What’s different is that dry season isn’t nearly as dry as it is in Guinea; it still rains a lot in places. Also, the dry season is from December to February, which is the wettest time of year in Peru.

My work here in Costa Rica is going to be very different. In Guinea I was going to be a physics teacher. Here, my job will be to work in an elementary school just like yours to work on projects with kids just like you! I’ll be living in a region of the country called Limón (it sounds like lemon, but it actually means lime) and can’t wait to get started with the kids. They’re in the middle of the school year right now, unlike you guys who are almost done with the 4th grade! I hope you’re enjoying your last few days at school and making big plans for the summer. I’ll keep posting in case you’re interested, so make sure you have the name of the website written down. That way you can check what I’m up to from your home. And remember, if you ever have any questions for me you can ask your teacher or leave a
comment for me on one of my blog entries, and I’ll answer it as soon as I see it.

Have a great summer!
Kevin

Alright! Guess what we get to see today? Another video!
You already know quite a bit about the Inca. Ready to see some more pictures of Inca ruins? Take a look at this one. In it you can see a kid about your age.



That’s a picture of a ruin called Saqsaywaman (pron. “Sak-SAY-wah-mahn”). Remember Pachacutec, whose dad took off and left him to defend the Incas by himself? Well after he began growing the Inca empire he decided to replan the capital Cuzco so it looked like a puma. Those jagged walls you see? Those are the puma’s teeth. They’re also part of what used to be a huge fort, where one of the largest battles between the Spanish and the Inca took place. Most of the stones are gone now. They were taken long ago down into the city and used by the Spanish for building homes and churches. But would you look at the size of them! Geologists say that some of them could weigh up to 50 tons! Apparently they were transferred from a quarry miles away to build the fort. How in the heck could someone move a rock that big into place without using a forklift?



Here’s another photo of some ruins named Pisac. I don’t remember exactly how these buildings were used, but I wanted to show you how high above the valley they were. There were even more ruins higher up! What are those step–like platforms called? They’re called terraces. The Inca were a mountainous people. Often times there wasn’t enough flat land for them to grow all their crops, so they would cut terraces into the mountain to give them more area for food. Because the elevation changed so quickly, they could grow different types of foods. For example, high up potatoes would be grown, and lower on the mountain you could find corn. The terraces also made it easier to defend themselves.



I saved the best for last. The most famous ruins in Peru are also the most famous in all of South America. They’re called Macchu Picchu. Every year thousands of people travel to visit the ruins. Some very lucky ones get the chance to hike to them on a road called the Inca Trail. It’s 33km long (about 20 miles), which doesn’t sound that long, but it took us more than three days. The hard part is the trail goes over three mountain passes, one of them almost 14,000ft high! It’s rainy season now, so most of the time it was misty and foggy, but when it did get clear the views were beautiful. In fact, the photo from my last entry with the rainbow is a picture from the Inca trail.

Remember how I said it was rainy season? Well, sometimes the rain gets a little out of hand. By the time I got to Macchu Picchu, we were told we had to leave as fast as possible because the nearest river was flooding so badly. We arrived in a nearby town called Aguas Calientes (which means “Hot Water”). Normally we would return to Cuzco on a train from this town, but the rains had caused mudslides that destroyed the train tracks. We were stuck! For four days I waited with almost 3,000 others for a way out of town. Finally, on the last day we were evacuated. I’ll let the video show you how we got out.



Pretty crazy, huh? I got to see Macchu Picchu from a helicopter! Luckily I got out of Aguas Calientes in time to catch my flight in Lima. The plane flew me to Boston so I could visit my sister and some of my best friends. After that, my mom and dad welcomed me at O’Hare airport in Chicago, and we went immediately to my favorite pizza place of all time. I sure missed good pizza when I was in Peru.
All in all, Peru was a pretty amazing adventure. It appears you guys are on your own new adventure: a new teacher! I hope you are having fun together and still enjoying our correspondence :) Remember that anytime you have a question, you can ask the teacher to send an email to me, and I’ll try and answer it as soon as possible.

So where in the world am I now? Well, I’ll give you a few clues to see if you can figure it out before my next blog entry. Last Tuesday I left for a new country to again serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It’s more similar to Peru than it is to Guinea (though still quite different from both). They speak Spanish here, and the most famous expression is pura vida, which means “pure life”. Two words make up this Central American country’s name. See if you can find Central America on the map and start making guesses.

Pura Vida,
Kevin

The Inca

Hi again,

I remember giving you a little bit of homework.

What did you find out about the Inca people? Anything interesting? How long ago did they live? Where did they live? What sort of things were important to them, and what happened to them? Let’s start with a picture of a beautiful valley.



This view overlooks part of El Valle Segrado. That means “Sacred Valley” in Spanish. It was here that the Inca people lived for many years. There were many other types of people who lived in other parts of Peru, but this valley was where the Inca called home. Quite beautiful, I’d say.

One day another group of people came to try to conquer the Inca and steal the valley. The ruler of the Inca people grew so afraid that he ran away, leaving his son to defend the entire empire (who knows what the word “empire” means?). I couldn’t imagine one of my neighbors trying to break into my house, and then my parents running away and leaving me there to defend it, crazy! Nor could I imagine successfully defending my house and then taking over every house in the whole neighborhood! You know what? That’s exactly what happened. The son’s name was Pachacutec, and he not only fought off the invaders, he took their land. Then he started taking conquering more groups and growing his empire. One hundred years later, the Inca empire was wider than the United States! Take a look at a map of South America. The empire stretched from the south of Columbia all the way down past Santiago, Chile. That’s over 2,500 miles, and not once did they have the luxury of a car--or even a horse—-to travel over those great distances. Its capital was a city named Cuzco. The Inca actually thought that this city was the center of the entire universe. Cuzco is high up in the Andes mountains—-over 10,000ft high, actually. Up there the air’s a lot thinner, so it was tougher to breathe. I was sometimes out of breath just walking up a flight of stairs!



The legend goes that the stones rose up from the ground to help Pachacutec and the Inca people defend themselves against the invaders. For that reason stones were very important to the Inca. There were different types of stonework. Some types were used for homes and warehouses. Another style, called the “imperial style” was used to construct royal palaces and sacred temples. Here’s a picture of two different styles of stone. Both are made of granite. My tour guide Henry is explaining how the building on the left was where a regular worker may have lived, while the imperial style stones on the right were where the royalty lived.



Here’s another photo of the imperial style. Look how well the stones fit together. You want to know what they used to cut these stones so fine? Other stones! The stones used for cutting were just made of a different kind of material, one that was harder than granite.



The Inca actually prayed to many gods. One of them was “Pachamama”, or Mother Earth. They also believed there was a god of the moon, of thunder, of corn, and many more. Can you guess the most sacred god of the Inca? I’ll give you a hint: you see it every day. Need another hint? The Inca built a temple to this god in Cuzco and lined it with the material they thought represented their god: gold. What’s a gold colored object that you see every day? I bet you already have the answer…the sun! Yes, every Inca city and palace had a temple to the sun, which probably had a bunch of gold objects in it. Not Here are a couple pictures from just a small section of Qorikancha, the temple of the sun in Cuzco. Imagine the walls of this temple lined with gold!



So what happened to the Inca? Well, the Inca empire was growing in the 1400’s, about the same time as the Spanish empire was growing. Remember what year Christopher Columbus discovered the New World? Well, about 35 years later a man named Fernando Pissaro landed his ship on the coast of Peru. There he saw much gold and silver, so he decided to go back to Spain and ask the king if he had permission to conquer Peru. The king said yes. So Pissaro came back with an army, and they captured Pachacutec’s grandson Atahualpa (pron. “Ah-ta-WAL-pa”) who was the emperor at the time. Eventually, Spain began taking all of the Inca’s sacred gold and silver objects and sending them home to Spain to turn them into money. The Inca were tortured and punished for not worshiping the same god as the Spanish, and they were also forced to work in fields and gold mines without being paid. They fought back for their freedom but never won the war. Eventually, their religion, history, and traditions began to fade away.

Walking around Peru, you can still hear the Inca language quechua (pron. “KECH-wa”) being spoken, but we still know very little about the Inca because quechua is an oral language. That means they spoke, but never wrote, their language.

Alright, I know this is a lot of information to take in, so I’ll wrap it up here. I didn’t get to the exciting video I wanted to show you, but I promise I will next time.

Comida Comida

¡Hola todos!

Isn’t it strange that in Spanish a sentence that ends with an exclamation point starts with an upside-down exclamation point? The same is true for the question mark. ¿Did any of you know that already?

Peru was a pretty incredible experience. Yes, I’m home now, but not for long! And I made you a promise that I’d talk a little about the food. Who knows where potatoes are originally from? Any ideas? Many of us read about the potato blight in Ireland in the 1800’s and about “french fries”, but potatoes are actually from South America. The Spanish arrived in Peru in the 1520’s and found this strange thing growing high up in the Andes mountains that looked like nothing they’d ever seen. In fact, French explorers called it a “pomme de terre”—that means ground apple—and still do today. Anyway, you might guess that the feature vegetable in a lot of our traditional meals was the potato. Perhaps my favorite food that I ate in all my time in Peru was called puka picante. The name is actually a mix of two languages: “puka” is a quechua (what the Incas speak) word that means red; and “picante” means spicy in Spanish. The dish is made of a red spicy sauce served over potatoes and seared pork. ¡Delicioso! If you’re eating at a restaurant, puka picante, like all meals, is served with a ruby red juice that looks and tastes kinda like Kool-Aid with a little bit of cinnamon in it, called chicha morada. It’s actually made with the juice of boiled corn; later they add cinnamon and sugar to sweeten it up a bit. Corn is really popular down here, and it’s eaten in many different ways. The corn kernels are huge, a lot bigger than the stuff we drive by every day in Indiana.

Were there any words in the last paragraph you didn’t understand? How about Inca? See if you can do a little research with your teacher on the Inca people, and we’ll talk a little about it in the next entry. It’s an exciting one, I promise.
OK, back to food. Let’s talk about some of the other traditional foods in Peru. One food used in a lot of different ways is called quinua. It’s actually a cereal, but not in the way like you guys know. Usually we ate it on a cold morning, like a porridge. I know, the word “porridge” sounds disgusting, but it was actually pretty tasty—warms you right up. A cereal is a grain, just like rice. And although rice isn’t originally from South America, it sure is used a lot with food. Most of the time we would eat some type of meat, usually chicken, with a vegetable sauce, all served over white rice. Some other meats that were used were “trucha” (trout), “cerdo” (pork), “pavo” (turkey), and “alpaca” (alpaca).
…wait a minute…¿alpaca? Yeah, there’s no English translation for alpaca. In English, “alpaca” is alpaca. Know why there’s no translation? Take a guess, then scroll down, past the picture.



There’s no English word for alpaca because it’s not an animal from Europe that people had known about for a long time. So since it was this new animal that the local people were already calling alpaca we, just decided to start using their word for it. As you already know by now, we don’t have many alpaca in
America, so let me explain a little about them. They’re actually a lot like sheep here in the U.S. Clothes were very important to the Inca, so they used a lot of wool. And because they didn’t have sheep in Peru, they used alpaca wool to make beautiful textiles. Psst, “textiles” is just a fancy word for cloth. We adults sometimes say fancy words to sound civilized. Psst, “civilized” is just a fancy word for fancy. Anyway, because Peruvians didn’t know about chickens or pigs until the Spanish arrived, they often used alpaca for their steak meat as well as wool. Here's a photo of a man dressed in traditional Inca clothing weaving a textile from wool yarn.



Oh jeez, now I’ve done it…all this food talk has got me eyeing the fridge in the other room. I’ll sign off here and let you guys get back to the books. But don’t forget your homework! Next time we’re going to talk a little more about the Inca.

Hasta entonces, Kevin

Ayacucho

Hi all,

Who ate entirely too much for the Holidays?? I did!! Oh well, that's what New Year's Resolutions are for. I hope you all had a wonderful break and are now refreshed and ready for the second half of the year.

It's tough to believe that I've been in Ayacucho now for almost six weeks. Sadly, my time here is drawing to a close. It sure has been fun, though. I work at La Casa Hogar de Los Gorriones (this means, "The Home of the Sparrows") five days a week, and we often have a lot to do on our days off given all of the holiday celebration. In the Casa Hogar are 27 children, from ages 3 to 22. It can get pretty rowdy at times, but we're always having a lot of fun!

There are three groups of kids: the Lupes, the Pequeños, and the Grandes. Each day I work with one of these groups. The Lupes require a lot of time and attention. These children all have mental and physical disabilities, so they need a lot of help just to do many of the activities we take for granted (like walking and eating). But the Lupes like to have fun just like any old kid! Some of our favorite activities are putting together simple puzzles, playing hide-and-seek, and playing on the merry-go-round.

Pequeños are between the ages of 3 and 6, and all are boys. As you might expect, the pequeños can also get quite rowdy! They actually share a set of bedrooms with all the girls in the casa. Imagine being six years old and having to share a room with your fifteen-year-old sister, sheesh. Now imagine having to share a room with seven other brothers and sisters! It can sure get crammed sometimes. Anyway, the pequeños love to play with their cars. They also enjoy when I chase them around like a zombie or, before bedtime, playing "This little piggy went to the market...."

The last group is the Grandes, who are between 8 and 22 years old, though most of the kids are 8-12 years old, the same age as you guys! When we´re not goofing around in the Casa, we loooooove to go outside and play volleyball. And, I´m proud to mention a new favorite activity: frisbee! We haven´t quite gotten to the point where we can play an actual game, but some of the kids can throw really well. They enjoy running as far away as possible to see if I can reach them on my furthest throw. That can be risky, because we play on a pretty narrow street, and the frisbee can go over a wall into one of the neighbors yards. Then we have to bang on the door to ask for it back.

I live in a hostel, which is a lot like a hotel. Many of the other volunteers rent rooms in a house not far away. In the morning we eat breakfast together. Usually, it´s just bread & butter, bananas, and tea, but I often can´t resist buying a mango, because they are so delicious here. For lunch we eat at the Casa, usually rice and a veggie-type sauce with a little bit of chicken or fish. I´ll talk more about traditional Peruvian food in my next post. For dinner, we take turns cooking at the volunteer house. It´s fun but, for me, stressful, because I´m a terrible cook. Last time I had to cook we made an "American Breakfast", scrambled eggs with pancakes. Most of the volunteers here are from France and Belgium, so they´ve never had pancakes before! Because you can´t buy maple syrup in Ayacucho, they ended up putting sugar and lime juice on the pancakes and rolling them up like a crêpe. It´s actually quite tasty this way. Do you know what a crêpe is?

New Years was a blast! We had a party at the volunteer house for all the kids, complete with balloons, dancing, and plenty of french fries. After the party, we walked to a lookout about 15 minutes away and watched all of the fireworks over Ayacucho as 2009 came to a close. It was pretty cool to have such a good view of the entire city.

OK, gotta run and get my shoes fixed before my big hike to Macchu Picchu. See if you can find a little information about Macchu Picchu; it´s one of the 7 Wonders of the World!

Hasta Pronto,
Kevin