So much to do, So little time

Here, in Mexico, we’re always busy. On Monday, we woke up at four in the morning to return to Tuxtla. We took a bus and arrived in Tuxtla at 7:30. We didn’t have enough time to return to the Fiesta Inn, so we took a combi straight to Casa Telmex.

It was the first day of the week, so we started with POWs and WOWs (the best and the worst part of the past week). For Lauren, the best part of last week was her birthday party during Friday’s session and the other things that she did for her birthday. One student, Patricia, told us that the worst part of her last week was that she was only able to attend three of the sessions last week.

The next activity was “Assassin,” a game of observation. During this activity there was an assassin that could assassinate the other people with winks and the goal of the game was that other people had to guess who the assassin was. The first time, Rocio was the assassin, but Rocio seemed so innocent that none of the students could guess that she was the assassin.

After, Pedro led a serious discussion about controversial topics like abortion, energy reform, the death penalty, and others. First, we were talking in little groups of each topic and then we discussed in a large group. All of the students and the facilitators expressed their thoughts and their reasons very well. For example, in my group, Adrian said that energy reform in Mexico is good for some people, like politicians, but the reforms are not going to help everyone. And because of this (and other reasons), he did not agree with the energy reforms.

After a good discussion, we filled out surveys about last week’s activities. The surveys showed us many interesting and useful things. For example, one of the most popular activities was Electricity (the first game of Thursday’s session). I hope that we are going to play this game again. We ended the session with a new game, The Elephant Game. This game was kind of a mix between Zoo and Splat and is a game of concentration and quick reactions. We had a lot of fun and after the students leave, we met with the Casa Telmex facilitators.

We talked about the Facilitator of Day activities and also about the next session with the students. During the session tomorrow, we are going to have only Casa Telmex facilitators leading the activities. We want the facilitators to have the opportunity to practice leading a session without the MIT mentors. After the meeting, Magali presented us with some gifts from Chiapas so that we would remember them. I received a top, Kyle got a stationary station (with a notepad and two pens), and Taylor and Lauren each got a coin purse and a toy Jacob’s ladder. We thanked Magali and told her that we would remember this experience in Mexico forever.

Tonight (Monday) we want to go watch a Mexican movie called “Volverte a Ver.” And after, we will go to the Park of the Juventud for dinner. We still have lots of work and other things that we want to do during this week and we are going to be very busy, but I hope that we are going to do everything.

Tortilla count:

David: Too many to count
Kyle: Man...iunno
Lauren: More than you
Taylor: Still more than YeSeul
YeSeul: 29