Animal Skins

6-5-09

The coordinator of PREA invited me to come back today because the American school from Asunción is coming. I was here to pick up a bunch of saplings with an eleventh grade class last week so they could plant them in their school yard. Animal skins--crocodiles, birds, some sort of jungle cats, sheep, maybe the shell of an armadillo--hung all around me in the open air dining room while I waited. PREA is a private organization that stands for Parque Recreativo Educativo Ambiental (Ambiental means Environmental...I hope you can figure out the rest). They have animals that you can rent for animal husbandry, but most of the farm environment is for show. They teach kids how to milk cows, teach them about the crocodiles they have in their swamp, have them feed a bunch of animals, show them how to compost, and all sorts of other stuff.

And my small world experiences keep happening. Out of the two teachers from the American School who came to PREA with the 45 students, one is from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and went to Gettysburg College for a year before transferring. The American School is a prestigious private school consisting of a lot of Embassy kids and rich Paraguayan kids. It was interesting going from PREA with them to my seventh grade class where they can`t afford books or any other suplies. I did a leadership charla with them where we talked about good vs bad qualities of a leader. The teacher stayed in the room, which I appreciated, but also answered a HANDFUL of questions aimed at the kids, which was obnoxious. The kids also elected a class government but didn`t talk about the responsibilities of each official and none could tell me why they wanted a government. It basically became a popularity/boy vs. girl contest. Odd but not surprising.