Blog-Part 1
Escuela de Basket
(Basketball School)
I will start by saying I have done a really poor job of keeping this blog up to date. I am committing myself, as of today, to do a better job of sharing my experiences here in Bolivia with you all. I really do think its important to share and to allow others to have a glimpse into another experience, or as I feel at times, another world from our own. It has been an eventful 3 months since I arrived on my dad´s birthday March 1st and it will be impossible to try and recap all of it, so I will try and focus on some of the majors throughout the next few blogs.
Here are some pictures of day one. In the first picture the president/leader of the community is giving us some basketballs for our inauguration. We only had a few brave souls to start the day. Those three are still participating today! In the second photo, from left to right is Carol-medical volunteer, Roberto-principal of local school, Augustin-community leader, myself, and Hermana Juana-religious sister/volunteer who is passionate about mixing sports with teaching life lessons, values, and faith.
We had very humble beginnings, but it didn´t take long and word had spread that the escuela de basket was a fun place to be. We started doing some water balloon activities and other fun dynamic games in order to get more interest. Soon we were at a point where is was difficult to have a very productive ¨practice¨ because we were having 60 kids or so with one court and very limited resources.
This space right here is the reason I love blogging!
The next two pictures show me trying to say something coherent in spanish on the left to the group, and the picture on the right is a team building activitity/challenge with jump ropes with about 4 groups of 15 kids.
The next step in the process was to try and get a place/office where we could keep our materials and get ourselves organized for the task at hand.
We started off with the picture on the left as our basis for building this office space. The school had a spot inbetween the library and a kitchen where all we had to do was put up the last wall and put a roof on top. You can see the walls of the library on the left and kitchen on the right. The second picture is the principal getting dirty doing some work. The last picture is two of the three volunteers (students from the school) we had to help us get this project moving.
And Here too!
Here is the final product from the outside. Believe it or not, we are still finishing up some work on the inside. I`ll have to post a picture when it actually gets finished. I´m starting to think, only with some divine help will this thing actually get finished...I´m mostly joking:) Anyways, I`ll end with that and look forward to updating some of the next steps in the weeks to come.
I´m an expert with technology can´t you tell.
