I am still wrestling with both Facebook and the Blog and periodically I forget what I have told friends and followers on one site while forgetting the other. Anyway – today I realized that I had never posted anything on our blog about our summer vacation activities.
In actuality we really only have two seasons here in San Clemente, Ecuador. Rainy season (which generally stretches from late December through March) and dry season. The length of days, average high and low temperatures, and beach and gardening activity stays the same all year long. But, the school children do get a break from school from about mid-January through the beginning of April. Since we are a few small degrees south of the equator here, I guess that makes this school break the equivalent of summer vacation in the U.S.
About three months ago our neighbor, Melina Garcia came over to the house with her friend, Guillermo. Guillermo lives in San Jacinto and heads up a school break program at the Casa Del Artista. That program has been in place for a few years where volunteers from the community come to teach classes to the young people during their break time on painting, guitar, dancing, percussion, and theater. The students can enroll for a nominal fee or work off their “tuition” in community service (like beach clean up) to learn a new talent.
I am sorry not to have photos of the percussion class as that is one wild experience to see and hear! The kids learn to play and march together and participate in local parades and festivals. Here is a picture of Sol Garcia marching with last year’s group and the drummers getting ready to perform at San Clemente’s festival.
This year the group wanted to expand to include voice or singing lessons and Guillermo wanted to know if I would volunteer to teach a class on that subject. I agreed, but advised that I might run out of things to teach quickly as I had never actually had any formal training in singing myself. I did what we all do now when we need help and turned to the all knowing, “Google” (pronounced “Goo-Gley” here) and found lots of beginning voice class pointers.
This week marks the fourth week of our eight week class and I could not be any more thrilled to be teaching my little group of youth!
Just to give you an idea of the thrill I get from this… the young girl you can barely see above (blocked substantially by my over-sized body) is named Ashley. Ashley came to class the first week with her mother. Throughout the first two classes she snuggled up closely to her mother and only reluctantly would respond when I tried to coax her into participation. By the second week she came to class alone and participated more and more until now she sings out and helps other students in our regular exercises!
As you can see, the class varies in size from eight to ten students and we have class for about two hours twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also have a wide range of ages represented from grade school up to high school seniors.
A few nights ago I had a dream of the group singing together at a performance. We were singing, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and everyone was participating singing different parts. Even my most reluctant fifteen year old boy (Jean Carlos) was singing out! So, I downloaded the song to my tablet, copied the words and printed them out, and introduced the song to the group today.
Oh my goodness! Apparently even old men can get inspiration every now and again. It was a hit. I will not promise it, but hopefully in a week or two we will be ready to video our class singing together all of the different parts of the Disney version of that song.
I am so excited and that is (in part) how I have been spending my “summer vacation” here where…
Life is good in Ecuador!
A wonderful way to give back! Excellent.
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As so often happens when you try to give back, you receive so much more.
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Great story
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