"Licensed Economist," Alpacastry enthusiast...Art teacher?

Buenas Tardes Amigos, Familia, y Donors,

Today was day one of the kids (ages 5-12) summer camp. This is really the first thing that MPIE PD 0'10 is completely in charge of. This camp will run for two weeks, three hours a day (9-12)with three-one hour slots. Art, which you may remember I'm in charge of, is hour two on Monday and Friday. Today Profe Chester (or Profe Ché, depending on who you ask) taught our five campers about Jackson Pollock.

This was TERRIFYING to plan. Sure, I have done plenty of art in my life. I had art in school as a child and plenty of crafts to do around the house growing up. But it has been a while since I have made what you might refer to as "kids crafts" and my Spanish still isn't quite at "teaching a class" levels. I spent most of yesterday preparing. The local papelaria was closed, but luckily Krysta and Jackie were off to the MegaMaxi (read: Ecuadorian Walmart, also the large nice mall about 30 minutes away by bus) so I didn't have to go. They called and said they had found a 75 by 100 cm roll for only $0.36! I had them buy three, planning to cut them up into canvasses.

Did you know centimeters are a lot smaller than inches? Well, they are. I ended up with about half the paper I had expected, but only learned this about 10pm as I went to cut my rolls of paper into canvasses. In high school we had a phrase whenever we were building houses in Tijuana for Spring break that went something like "Mexico, Flexico." I have yet to find another Latin American county that rhymes as well, but the sentiment is basically the same. My "Ecuador Flexico" mentality simply meant that there would be less than five canvasses. Holly had taught an art lesson on Jackson Pollock earlier this semester, but also mentioned that I could probably repeat lessons without the kids remembering. She was right. In fact, two of our campers had been in Holly's art class but no one remembered Mr. Pollock. I spent some time reading the Jackson Pollock article on Wikipedia in Spanish (read: copy and pasting) to have something to read aloud as background information for the kids. I also spent time after dinner translating all the directions I would need into Spanish. Things like: "Put on a smock, its to protect your clothes," or "don't fight over brushes, each one will do a different thing." I then had Erik proof read everything to make sure it wasn't nonsensical or offensive (we actually had this problem with our Spanish translations for the cooking class last week).

I slept poorly last night, mostly due to nerves. I can also feel a slat in my hip. Some of my concerns included "How many kids will we have?" and "How is my lack of Spanish going to effect today's lesson" or "do we have the paint we need?" and "what if they don't like it?" I had to leave the house a little early to try and find plastic spoons for paint splattering.

We had five kids register this morning. They are young and adorable. I started prepping at 9:30, quite alone (most of the profes and all the kids were outside playing duck duck goose). Prepping involved putting on my incredible rainbow-collared shirt smock that I found in the donation corner of the Manna House (a gift from Mark), mixing purple paint (for those of you following along at home, I would suggest mixing blue and red paint together) and then watering down all the paint (green, red, blue, yellow, purple) to splatter consistency. After the paint was prepped, I had to throw together an example. I'm not sure if I have ever done splatter paint before, but it felt great. I was done prepping exactly at 10, which was perfect because the kids were marching up the stairs.

We had them sit in a circle and I read to them my instructions and about the first paragraph of Jackson Pollock's history before I got self conscious and handed the paper to Krysta. Sarah had been kind enough to read over my lecture and (majorly) pare it down, it was the right length at 4 paragraphs. It would have been way too long at 1.5 pages. Attention spans were lacking. But afterward, we passed out brushes (with no fighting), put on smocks, and marched to the roof to splatter paint. I think they loved it. They certainly looked like they were having fun. We did two canvasses as a group, with each kid doing one color, and then had each kid do one canvas on their own with all the colors. The most memorable thing was Yori, the youngest boy, using a lot of red and purple and then saying "I'm done!" totally neglecting the other colors. Some of the profes did paintings as well, and they had as much if not more fun then the kids.

Sadly, my painting blew away as it was drying on the roof. I know where it is; it blew into the crack in the roof and is sitting at the bottom of an atrium three stories down. Sadly, it is in a vacant apartment that Dana said she has only seen open twice the whole time she has been here. This is mildly traumatizing: when I was in Kindergarten I once colored a stegosaurus for my mom; but, walking to the bus it was storming and I remember it being blown out of my hand. Coming home distraught, my mom took me back to school to look for it and we found it! Some guy had found it in his yard and tacked it to a tree because it was quite obviously labeled "CHETTOMOM." Talk about luck.

I'd like this one back too.

The next art lesson is Friday, we will be making kaleidoscopes out of toilet paper rolls (you'd be surprised how quickly we are able to produce those) crayon shavings, wax paper, paint, and an iron. Is it as exciting as a real kaleidoscope? Probably not. Will the kids love it anyway? Well, if not, they only have to make it once.

Chao,

Chet

Song of the Blog: "Red Oyster Cult," by Guster