Today began in the Batey called Los Robles. I have yet to visit this village, and I believe it to my second favorite! No Batey I have visited yet can compare to Altagrassia. I could easily spend all day everyday just visiting the children to play and talk with them. I believe my Spanish is improving! I am trying my best to speak in Spanish whenever I can! The reasoning behind our visit to Los Robles this morning was to conduct surveys with the children. It was the first Batey where I met older teenagers, which was excellent for my surveys because they drew a great comparison between the children in Don Bosco, whom I surveyed the day before. I just have to say that right now our house kitten is making herself a bed on my belly! It kind of hurts but she is so adorable and I believe her to be the first cat that actually likes me! I love her! Her name is Bebe, and she is very small! Anyways back to my journaling. We handed out the surveys and we went through them as a group. I spoke most of the questions in English, as I had my translator Vanessa with me, who is amazing!! J She is 19 years old and she speaks excellent English. The teens were very excited and enthusiastic about the surveys, which excited me. Many people came and gathered at the windows to listen. It took us quite a while to go through the surveys but the information that they provided me was excellent. On some questions we would talk about the details and I would ask of their opinion. It seems that children here either go to school in the morning or in the afternoon, because there are so little schools and so many children. One very interesting fact that I received from the older teens was that they did not feel safe in school, which was the complete opposite to the answers of the younger children from Don Bosco the day prior. I don’t know whether this has anything to do with it being a different Batey or whether it is because they have a better understanding of the world around them and the dangers being that much older. At the end of the survey I collected them and talked to them about my work with COTN. They were very interested in what I do, and I showed them some of my work. It seems that wherever I have visited the children, being older or younger are very interested to see my work. I hope it gives them some inspiration for wanting to push their careers forward wherever that may be. I left with these teens though an activity that I asked if they would do for me and I would collect upon my return. This was to draw site plans of what they would want a camp to hold and look like, and where they would want it to be. We will see if I succeeded in my explanation when I return on Friday! Running low on time before our lunch break, but we moved quickly to Altagrassia, where my most favorite future engineer lives! His name is Manuel Emilio! He is passionate and is learning his English very well. I had a task for him, and also I had a gift for him. It strikes me as difficult to understand that the children here have no books to read about whatever they may choose. As I wrote yesterday, I asked future engineers and architects who were their inspirations and they did not know. I know that on my next trip here, architecture books will be an absolute necessity. Even simple picture books of famous buildings that give us inspiration would be amazing for these kids. So my task for Manuel was the Camera activity as I explained yesterday, but I expect he will do a much more detailed analysis of his Batey and home. Also I gave him a box of crayons and a pack of paper, to organize the children around to draw pictures of their houses. I think it is amazing to see how they draw their houses and it interests me greatly. I will be back to collect those from Manuel on Friday also. As for my gift to him, I had brought with me two great articles on sustainable architecture and sustainable building materials. I thought they would be interesting for Manuel being as this is something entirely new to the people of Barahona, and I thought they would be an excellent teaching tool for him to learn English and to also to learn about architecture. I will see if he has enjoyed what he will have read by Friday, it will be a working process for him, but I hope I have left him something he can learn a lot from.
My afternoon was spent at the office, I had promised the construction manager to teach him about our programs we use for architectural drawings. But I also wanted him to show me how he draws now without these programs. For all my architecture people who are reading this you will be amazed. He draws everything, being elevations and plans in the simple program we all know “paint”. It is amazing to me how he draws what he does in this program and all the floor plans for the office of COTN are in this program. No measurements necessary because Julio has them all in his head!! He told me some of his drawings esta loco (crazy!), but he loves to draw on the computer. I have added one of Julio's drawings in my pictures for today’s journal entry. They do not have AutoCAD, so upon my return on my next trip I am determined to bring AutoCAD with me and to teach Julio how to use this. It would also cut out the cost of using a separate person just to draw up blueprints, which they do now. He is very excited to learn and enjoyed my short introduction lesson into CAD and Revit! J yay! Whilst we were in the office, I saw a roll of paper. It is very hard sometimes to communicate what I need to, as how they operate in the architecture world is very different from our operating ways. Everything I say had to be translated and sometimes important information gets lost. So as I opened the paper, I saw that I had finally found a set of drawings for some classrooms! Yay! I was very excited as this was something I needed, because I wanted to be able to see how the communicate in their architectural drawings. So coming home with me is a very nice set of plans, which I am very excited about.
Well that’s about all for today, except I just finished watching a movie with Estefani and Alberto. The movie was Tarzan, but in Spanish! It was very fun to watch! Alberto found the gorillas quite funny, even though he has watched it ten times. Oh and before that we went swimming and held competitions in the pool! The pool that had tadpoles in it! Haha! I am the last to bed tonight so I better hurry along!
Until tomorrow! Hasta Luego!
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