the house is a rockin'

After spending a wonderful week in the states surprising my mom for Mother's Day, I was welcomed back into the Manna house on Tuesday night with open arms... plus hungry mouths excited about the candy in my luggage and frantic limbs running around to make sure everything was in order for our first wave of summer volunteers. Approximately two days later I'm almost caught up with everything I missed and somehow summer session one has started to arrive today! We had dinner with our first four arrivals and we're eager for the next two waves to arrive late tonight and late Saturday night.

It has been really exciting to think about what projects we want to work with them on and what we hope to accomplish with ten more energetic minds. We'll be sure to do introduce you properly to summer session one once they all arrive and get settled. Here are some highlights of what we'll be working on with the summer volunteers:
  • training women to help lead women's exercise class (following up the fantastic workshop that Haley held last Saturday)
  • running a summer English program in San Juan
  • painting a local school, Aliñambi
  • running a summer reading club and literacy classes in the library
  • conducting micro-finance surveys
  • organizing and promoting hands-on charlas about sustainable agriculture
  • attending teen center field-trips and helping increase teen center attendance
  • shadowing and lesson planning for our English, art, cooking, and exercise classes
This weekend we'll be showing them around the valley, touring the centro historico, riding bikes down Amazonas in Quito, going to markets in Sangloqui, and of course, talking about Manna-related stuff via what we like to call 'programmatic speed dating.' Somewhere in between all of that, some of the girls will be competing in a soccer tournament with their Rumiñahui team while Chet and Mike attempt to summit Cotopaxi. We certainly can't say that things are boring around here (nor can we say that we'll be sleeping much in the few days).

Half the table at our double Manna meal (April + May = a baller meal of $14 per person) last night

Cheers,
Jackie