This Past Week

Planning session in the library. Fleming College.

     As the first day of school nears my planning is intensifying.  This week I turned in my year plan, scope and sequence, and 1st nine weeks inquiry based learning units to my department heads for English and science. I still have weekly plans to due, but they can wait until Monday. I am quite thankful for all the time I spent lesson planning during my internship in Mrs. Thackston's 5th grade class; and for my exposure to inquiry based learning at UNCW. Both of these experiences have helped me, and will continue to help me, as the year progresses. 

     This year, Fleming has purchased SIMS (Student Information Management System) to keep track of everyone at school and I have been asked, along with a handful of other teachers, to learn the software and teach it to the rest of the faculty. Today we attended a tutorial on SIMS in the computer lab that was facilitated by one of their representatives in the UK via Skype. Although SIMS is widely used in the UK and US, Fleming is, only, the 3rd school in South America and the 1st in Peru to use the program. It will be a big adjustment for the school, but everyone in the meeting today got a good grasp of what it offers; and I believe it will be of great benefit in the long run.

     I have been a faculty member of Fleming College for almost a month now and, boy, has time flown.  It seems like yesterday that I was meeting my new co-workers and beginning my plans. Now, with the beginning of the school year less than a week away, I am getting excited/nervous/antsy because this will be my first year with classes of my very own. At the moment, I am planning for the first two days of classes (luckily the students start on a Thursday) and it is very overwhelming. I am constantly picking the brains of veteran teachers as to what I need to cover in terms of class changes, assigning lockers, and student breaks. I want to be sure that I get everything right, but I know there will be items that I miss. Another reassuring aspect that teachers have relayed to me is that many students will not show up for the first few days of class since many of them are traveling abroad. I guess if I do not get all the information covered the first few days I will have another chance to do it the following Monday. Regardless of how much support I have from fellow teachers, the first day jitters have already struck me and they will only increase. I plan on being as ready as I can be, but I am still worried that I will stand up in front of the class for the first time and draw a complete blank. Wow, I really hope that does not happen! Of course I will let you know how it goes.

     Last Sunday, some of the volunteers from Otra Cosa Network and I hiked up a mountain outside of Trujilllo called Cerro Campana (Bell Hill). It was more than a hill, with a summit around 2,000ft above sea level. We left Haunchaco at 9:30am so we could be walking before the day got too hot. We took a bus into Trujillo and another bus north up the Pan American Highway through the neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Light skinned people, such as myself, often get stared at by the locals because we are so different, but we really got gawked at as we walked through Buenos Aires asking people if they knew where the trailhead was. We received one of two responses from the locals when we told them what we wanted to do. The first was, "yeah, just walk over there (as they waved a hand north) and you will see it." And the other was, "why do you want to do that?" I had heard of people from Huanchaco hiking to the top of Cerro Campana, but it seemed as if the people who lived the closest to the mountain had never put a thought into climbing it. *I will write more about the residents of Buenos Aires later* After about twenty minutes of wandering down the Pan American Highway we found what we thought would be the road that would take us to the trailhead. We happened to be right, just as the day was really heating up. It was 11am. 

     The coastal desert in northern Peru looks to be a foreboding and unwelcoming place. The sun bakes you from all angles and what little vegetation there is barely reaches past your knee.  The flora is mostly cacti and pitiful looking grasses, and the fauna are various insects, snakes, and lizards. At first glance I wondered how anything could survive in such harsh condition, but I knew that there was a thriving ecosystem all around me. I just needed to look harder.

     It took most of the morning, and some of the afternoon, to get near the top and the hike became very steep and slippery with nothing but loose sand and rocks under our feet as we scrambled upwards. The best part about the hike up was stopping to take a breath and turing around to see all that was below us. The higher we walked the more of the desert and Pacific Ocean we could see. Ninety percent of the way up most of us stopped. The remaining four hundred feet or so became too steep for many of us, me included. I do not think getting up would have been too bad, but the down climb could have been treacherous. One wrong step or slight balancing foe pa would have resulted in a head over heal tumble down into a deep ravine a thousand feet below. If you did not already know, the city of Trujillo does not have that great of a mountain rescue team, or a sufficient EMS for that matter. Two guys in our group made it to the top and back down and said it was pretty impressive. As for myself and a few others, we had a nice rock outcropping that gave us an awesome view and a wonderful breeze. 

     By the time we walked down and back to the highway everyone was covered in dirt and had loads of sand in their shoes. We went over to a bodega to buy water and Sportade (Peruvian Gatorade?) and the locals looked like they did not know what to make of us. I am pretty sure that when we left they had a good laugh at how pitiful us gringos looked. 

     Since life in Huanchaco revolves around the ocean and beaches, most people never think about going up into the desert and finding things to do. I guess it goes to show you that if you go looking for something different and fun you have a good chance of finding it. It was great to see my home for the next couple of years from a different angle. In the future, I hope to see many different angles.

Heading up Cerro Campana.

The view from the top, almost. 

My morning view at the bus stop.
This can either get you totally stoked or completely bummed out.

*I wanted to write a bit more about the residents of Buenos Aires.

As I said before, it was quite evident that the people we spoke to had never thought about hiking up that mountain. It makes me think that recreational ventures, such as hiking up a mountain in your backyard, is left for those with disposable income, not for those who work seven days a week to scrape up enough money just to feed their families and put a thin tin roof over their heads. Maybe they do not think about such frivolous activities because they are too busy foraging for glass and plastic at the dump behind their house or lugging buckets of water home because they lack indoor plumbing and have to get water from the neighborhood water tank(which, I am told, frequently runs out). The more time I spend here the more I see how rich I really am. And I am not talking about the whole, 'I am rich with love' thing. I am talk about how much money I have. I think about this quite often and I am constantly trying to figure out how I feel about having so much here, as a foreigner, while others, Peruvians, have so little. My feelings, often, jump from one end of the spectrum to the other. Sometimes I feel ashamed for what I have and other times I feel thankful for what I have. I, honestly, am not sure how I feel about my situation, but I know I am going to have plenty of time to figure it out. 

Fact- 50% of all Peruvian citizens live in a house with a dirt floor.