The Table Game

Last Thursday, in between Apoyo and Children's Art, Eliah and Jeremy were tasked with re-arranging the tables. Jeremy decided that a far better idea would be to hide under the table while Eliah moved it, effectively evading the job tasked to him and amusing himself thoroughly. It was too cute to stop.

Happy Monday!

Lucky

(Today's guest blog is from Serena Zhou, MPIE's tri-lingual, pre-med rockstar. Enjoy!)

This is my lucky year: the year of the Ox (牛), my birth year.
一九八六年, 一月十九日.
I am lucky to have three homes: one in Ecuador, another in the United States, and the last in China. No matter which home I'm in, the other two eventually venture their way to my front door.

I am lucky to have my beloved Manna family along with a handful of chevere ("cool", "sweet") Ecuadorian friends celebrate my 23rd birthday with me, and to have a successful joint bbq birthday bash with Mark, packing the Manna house with colorful bilingual nationalities, sinfully delicious pork loin, carrot cake, chocolate cookie cake, and Mississippi mud cake (thanks girls).

I am lucky to receive presents that every kid dreams about: A KIDDIE POOL + sour patched kids (thanks Holly) + a stuffed duckling named "Patita" as in "little foot" (thanks Seth). (Given the fact that I accidentally failed to properly care for the real duckling(s) we had for less than 24 hours). Monday morning meetings have now been officially moved up to the roof, rain or shine.

I am lucky to have Andres ("the only male belly-dancer in Ecuador") perform for me and the girls plus Dunquito a jaw-dropping private show. And, might I add, I am lucky to have gone on a heavenly trip to Maui, my birthday present from mi amor Ryan, which I still daydream about and wonder if it really did happen...

I am lucky to have a local Chinese family take me in on New Years day, invite me to their home in Caracunga, personally expense my trip, and feed me the most amazing home-made, authentic Chinese food I've craved ever since landing in Ecuador. I am lucky to witness a modest Ecuadorian apartment miraculously transform into the hottest Asian techno nightclub in town, forgetting for a moment that I was actually in a Latin American country.

I am lucky to be accepted into my respective communities, and to not only having three homes, but also three inter-being families as well.

2009 Year of the Ox. It's going to be a lucky year...

Pictures of the New Space

Today Jos and I stopped in to visit our new space after Children's English to snap a view pictures for this little site, since I was too uncoordinated to get them up in time for Seth's post last week. Video to come soon (as soon as I can find an internet signal strong enough to survive the upload!). It will be fun to look back on these bare little photographs once we have furniture, book cases, paintings and the teen center set up!

(main room, as seen from the entrance)

(check out the trophies that come with the space! winners!)

(main room; the door on the left opens out to the porch)


(Jos looks out at the soccer field from the porch)

(view from the main room looking back)

(back room)

(back room view, different angle)

Movin' on up to the east side!

(Today's guest blog is from Seth Harlan, who's currently team Ecuador's country director, as Mark has once again left the country for some important leadership summit...we all know he just wants to hang out with Chris Taylor.)

"There could be nothing more gratifying than signing the lease and pickup the freshly made keys to our brand new 2009 Manna Office. On second thought, if the keys had belonged to a brand new 2009 Manna Mobile it may have been a little more exciting, but none the less this has been a highly anticipated development for us!

In hopes of establishing a stronger presence in the community, we have decided to rent a program space accessible to all of the communities we work with. Fully equipped with an Ecuadorian washer and dryer (aka a large outdoor sink and clothes line), his and hers bathrooms, hardwood floors, ample storage space, and a balcony with a full view of the surrounding mountains, this elegant one-floor studio has certain Manna PDs considering moving in permanently (Eliah, cough cough). As you may already know we have huge plans for this new space.

In March we hope to officially open it up to the public as our new office, the first public library in the valley, and a center for youth leadership development. We are working closely with our friends at the cooperative Esperanza y Progreso del Valle, the community board for educational development, and several other community leaders to get this project off the ground- a realty that makes this project much more exciting as we see this as not just Manna Project International, but a collective effort from the community as a whole. Currently we are in the process of furnishing the space, organizations book drives, and planning a free concert to announce our official grand opening in March. Mark even convinced a decorator to volunteer this past Sunday and give us suggestions for setting up the office and dividing up the space… Mrs. Hand, you should be proud!

On behalf of all of us, I would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their contributions to this specific project:

Campus Chapters at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt
HealtheChildren
Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas
MoneyGram International
The Robertson Program at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill
Claudia Diaz
The Geller Family
The Hand Family
Jens Haerter
Linda Roby
Linda Smith
The Ward Family
Jordan Wolf
Alejandra Gomez

We are off to a great start to 2009 and thrilled about the potential for this next year. If you would like to support this project, organize a book drive, or give Mark suggestions for building books shelves please contact Seth at seth.w.harlan@gmail.com or visit our wish list at http://mannaproject.org/ecuadorwishlist.asp

Best Wishes,
Seth

Drawing Neruda

As I mentioned at the start of the week, Tuesday was our first day of the new Children's Art class. This class has been one of my dreams ever since I applied to Manna Project, which was about this time last year if I think about it. It's wild to think back on that time of life when Ecuador was still a far-away day dream.

After finishing up the last of their homework problems (and trying to fit a few pieces into the new puzzle Jocelyn's mom sent back with her), Dana, Eliah and I convinced them to help us push 4 big tables together into the middle of the Casa Barrial, maneuver the heavy benches around the edges, plug in my ipod and speakers, and find a seat.

As I see it, the main objectives of the Children's Art class is twofold: in the short term, I hope to provide the students with a creative outlet and to expand their artistic experiences from those of markers, stickers, and construction paper to collages, portraits, painter studies, poetry, splatter painting, and public art instillations. In the long term, I can only hope that the experiences they have in our 45 minutes together will inspire a shift in their way of thinking and approaching problems (be it homework or life related) that encourages independent thinking and a creative outlook, as opposed to the overwhelming status quo of copying and memorizing any and everything.

To that end, for our first lesson Seth loaned me his comprehensive anthology of poetry by Pablo Neruda. As we passed the two poems I had chosen (Ode to Criticism and IV from 100 Love Sonnets) around the table, everyone took a turn reading a stanza aloud. After brainstorming a list of images we found in each poem, we took the next 30 minutes to translate the words of the poem into our own crayon, colored-pencil and marker-rich images. And while there was a good deal of overlap (read: copying), there were also a few creative surprises Neruda himself would have been proud of.

Holly

(first class's finished products: see if you can find 1. Eliah's, 2. two that are exactly the same, 3. the snow bird)