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El Callejon

A day in the life of a student at Education El Callejon. Every day has a similar layout for the students starting with some worship songs whether it be Abre mis ojos O Christo (Open the eyes of my heart Lord) or a song that the wonderful Grace Euerle sings which changes day to day. Then we go and do a bible story. Next, we have an activity with the kids that is usually meant to help them in school. This ranges from teaching them some English to helping them write and know how to spell in the process, to just playing matching games and puzzles. Finally, the kids have recess in which we go out and play on the swings or the slide with them or play baseball with them. The people here love to play baseball every chance they get, even if they don’t have a bat. For the next few hours it’s just Harry, Grace, Leyla, Sarah (one of the interns here at Students International), Joel (pronounced Ho-el) (our site leader who even though he only speaks a little bit of English, is a great guy to be around and is pretty funny), and I. We usually play some games, share our testimonials, eat our lunches and around 2 pm head over to the public school to teach English to some of the students there.

At the school we usually split into two groups in which some of us are with Sarah teaching English and some are with Joel helping him with anything that the school is having him do. We also have added some fun learning techniques like hangman with random vocab words or the months of the year, or Bingo. Tomorrow we plan on bringing some treats into class and we’ll have the kids go to the “bakery”, the “market”, or the “ice cream” shop. With Joel we have made a sign saying what is happening for the month of January with the flag on it and talk about home life. These questions include who impacts them the most, positively and in general, are they closer with their mom or their dad, or do they see anything bad happening between their friends, at school, at home. I could also be completely wrong on what the questions are because I don’t speak fluent Spanish, let alone read it. But then Joel uses these papers to ask the students the questions and write down the answers and see what to work on whether it be a community problem or a personal one. Joel is doing all of this while he is also majoring in Psychology and uses his studies to improve the school environment and even the home environment for some of the students. All in all our day is filled with fun activities, kids, and sometimes work depending on the day.

One last thing, we had a surprise guy and girl night tonight. The guys stayed at the chapel and just talked about how to be a better man. Seth started the night with a recent Gillette commercial and talked about how it showed ‘boys being boys’ and how there are some good men out there and how their slogan is “The best a man can get” only rings true when guys choose the right thing, one decision at a time. We ended with talking about the movie Fearless in which it shows a guy trying to be a better fighter than his dad that even though he could have won a fight, he instead let his opponent live and then eventually lost the fight because of that one decision. Even though the kid thought his dad was bad at fighting, he was a better man for letting his opponent live to see another day. We become better people one decision at a time, one day at a time, a godly man or a godly woman is not made in one night, but in many years of practicing what the Bible tells how to act and how to be the better and bigger person.

That’s all from me on this trip, catch all of you parents, Joshua students, grandparents, and friends when I write the blog on the next trip, because at this rate that is when I will have the next opportunity to do it.

Gabriel Benson



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