Vamanos a Agua Prieta Mexico!

Hola! Today I had one of the more incredible days of my adult life! As part of my job at Make Way for Books (www.makewayforbooks.org), we do trainings for preschool teachers about early literacy and reading readiness in the preschools where we have set up a library. Over the past few months, they have been working with their first Mexican preschool in the border town of Agua Prieta, and today we visited the school to meet the teachers and do the training!

The day started with my first trip on a "private jet." The foundation that provided the funding for this particular program is run by a family that owns a company that has done very well here in Arizona. When we scheduled the training, they offered to fly us all down on their plane! So, the day started in Tucson meeting the plane to take us down to Douglass, AZ, where we would cross the border.




Here I am flying on the plane. It was very exciting!!




So, the story of Agua Prieta is: The Armstrong Foundation (the one that funded us and shuttled us down there) has been working on a project called Rancho Feliz. This is essentially a housing project in Agua Prieta that is very strictly run, and very well built. Mission groups and college volunteer groups come throughout the year to help with construction. As part of this vecino (neighborhood), they also created a state of the art day care center which is where we did our training today. One of the coolest things about the training is that initially we were only training the teachers from this one center, but about a week ago one of the other centers in Agua Prieta found out we were coming down and decided to send their teachers. Then another center found out and sent their teachers. When we arrived today, we found out we would be training 75 teachers!! That is basically all the preschool teachers in the entire town!

This is the preschool where we were:

While we were there, the teachers were all very enthusiastic and full of questions. We could tell they were very dedicated to helping the kids and very interested in learning more about what we had to say. We showed them how to read stories, sing songs, do puppet shows, and basically have a good time with the kiddos! When the presentation was over, they were asking when we could come back for the next training. SUCCESS! :-D

Other highlights of my day:

*being able to actually use my Spanish for something more worthwhile than just helping me travel. AWESOME!

*the guacamole at lunch...YUM!

*meeting Alejandro, our driver and a high school teacher in Agua Prieta, who had amazing stories of crossing the border at the age of 16 by swimming the Rio Grande, and making enough money to put himself through school! Gives you a whole new perspective on illegal immigrants and why they do what they do.





*the sunset on the way home






*waiting less than an hour to get back across the border (apparently this is a very rare occurence on the weekends).

*being able to watch out the cockpit when we landed in Tucson...AMAZING!!!

Here are some more photos from the day:

JoAnn, our "sponsor" and the MWFB crew standing in front of the neighborhood

the fence between the U.S. and Mexican border


the old "barrios" that remain near the Rancho Feliz homes

me in front of a Rancho Feliz home

If you want to see more about the Rancho Feliz project, check it out here: www.ranchofeliz.com

Days like today make me very sure that I did the right thing in dedicating my next year to service in the Tucson area. Already I am learning and seeing so much about the world surrounding me, and I have only been working a month! Wow!