Last Weeks in Queretaro

I'm not even sure where to start this blog as much has happened since I last posted.  The biggest thing would have to be that I am no longer living in Queretaro.  Last week I finished training, officially swore in as a volunteer May 31st, and the next day I packed up all my stuff and headed to my new home for the next two years…Ciudad Guzman.  More on this later, for this post I'm going to try and catch you up on my very busy last month in Queretaro leading up to my big move.  I tried to include some of the highlights and more important parts which were hard to select as much happened (I know, my fault for not updating my blog more…that will change I promise), but here's my attempt:

So all the Environment Education volunteers (there were 11 of the 26 of us are EE volunteers…the other are either natural resource management or technology transfer volunteers) got to go on a weeklong field trip to Huizquilucan, a small town outside of Mexico City the first week of May.  The purpose of this trip was to learn about building ecotecnias (i.e. biointensive gardens, efficient wood burning ovens, compost piles, solar dehydrators…) I could go on and on, but the general idea of ecotecnias is that they are inexpensive, environmentally friendly technologies that families can use to make their lives a little easier while also being eco-friendly.  During our time here we were able to go into people's homes in the community and install these to get an idea of how it's done and how they work as some of us may be able to implement some of these technologies at our sites.

                 

                                Teamwork…assembly line passing bricks for the wood efficient stove up the stairs

The EE group and the family we installed the stove for…the completed stove is in the background

Hard at work watering the bio-intensive garden we made

Besides learning about ecotecnias, the other important thing we were able to do on this trip was to plan an Ecoferia at a local school in Huizquilucan.  Because we are Environmental Education volunteers, they thought it would be good for us to get some experience learning how to teach kids about the environment…Peace Corps is thinking ahead here!  So you may be thinking what is an Ecoferia? The best way I can explain it is think of a field day at a school where kids rotate through a variety of activities, but the difference here is the activities the kids participate in are environment related. 

The Logistics

Numbers: Grades 1-6 with around 15-20 students per grade.

Activities:  Our group split into pairs (with one group of 3) and we each planned an activity related to an environmental topic. The topics were water, outdoor recreation, biodiversity/traditional knowledge, deforestation, and animal adaptations.  My partner, Jesi, and I were tasked with teaching the kids about animal adaptations/what they are/why they're important etc.  We had to prepare a 20 minute activity for the kids as that's how long each of the stations were, but really we ended up planning 3 different activities.  We had to account for the fact that 6th graders may not get the same thrill from singing a song we wrote as much as 1st graders would so we adjusted our lesson plans accordingly.  We had a great time planning these activities for the kids and even more fun putting them into action and seeing the kids have a good time while either singing our song, (while Jesi played her ukulele and I showed them the dance we made up to go with it) putting on costumes, coloring masks, or building clay animals depending what grade they were. 

My Ecoferia partner, Jesi, and I in front of the poster we made with the lyrics to the song we wrote…we're quite proud of this song if you haven't noticed…occasionally the song will still get stuck in my head!

Costume activity…where we highlighted the various adaptations animals have by dressing up the kids in different animal costumes

All of us at the school assembly after our successful ecoferia

That about wraps up our week in Huizquilucan…it was an amazing week and we all had a great time getting away from the office a bit, getting our hands dirty, playing with the kids, and just overall getting to hang out with each other. Oh, and I also learned how to play Euchre and am now obsessed (who knew I'd be getting in touch with my midwestern roots in Mexico!).  Overall, this was one of my favorite weeks in Mexico by far!

At the top of a hike we went on while in Huizquilucan…Mexico City is right behind me

After we got back from this weeklong trip we had less than a month left of training.  This led to a crazy few weeks (hence no blog posts!) where we had final assignments and presentations to complete, meetings with the staff, continued Spanish classes, final events with our host families. My host family took me to a BBQ ribs place as I had mentioned many times during my time in Queretaro that I love BBQ so it was a very nice surprise for them to remember this and take me there for my final family event.  There was even country music playing and deer heads on the wall and the ribs were not so bad either…it felt like I was in the south again!  Oh, and I can't forget that they also had root beer, which was quite exciting!!! 

During our last month, we also spent a lot of time just hanging out together as a group as we knew our time together was coming to a close.  I immensely enjoyed my time in Queretaro and meeting all of the amazing people that make up PCM group 16, it certainly made for a bittersweet goodbye when I left as I was excited to get to my new home and begin my work, but sad to say goodbye (for now) to everyone I had gotten to know over the past 11 weeks…I can't wait until we are all back together again!

To close I will include a few photos from our swearing in ceremony where I became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.  The ceremony itself was simple, yet nice.  Our host families, counterparts, and Peace Corps Mexico staff were all there to see us swear in.  We listened to a few short speeches…including one given by a member of our group…which happened to be Jesi...who was selected by us to say some words about our group.  All the speeches were really well done and made you feel warm and fuzzy inside and ready to go tackle the challenges and take on the adventures that we are about to face at our sites.  

My host family all dressed up for the ceremony, Cecilia & Ricardo

Some of us after the swearing in ceremony…our final day in Queretaro