Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Day 24: Science Fair!!!

Day 24
Sep. 14. 2011
Wednesday
Science Fair Day!
>Arrived at the school district at 7:20am. Helped with last minute details and organizing certificates as they were being printed in the copy shop across the street. Helped load things in the truck. Crammed into the school district's truck with 8 other people in it. Seriously... not exaggerating with that number 8.
>Rolled into Sausal shortly after piling into the truck. It's true what they say about that place being the land of eternal sun. Met the other judges and began working on the judging. I took my time and was very careful about my task. After reading through the projects and giving them points based on the written reports, we were lead around to each group for the presentations. This was really really cool. The kids memorized speeches and some of them were natural speakers. The winners had an awesome booth with tons of pictures and graphics. They even brought their dog to show us that animals like the food that they made from organic wastes. Awesome. Another group presented on malva, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out what malva is. Word reference and dictionary.com failed me. Anyway, they had malva in a glass of what I think was just water. At the end of the presentation, they poured each judge a cup of malva water? I don't know what it was, but I couldn't not drink it. There were tons of people watching and these little kids staring up at me....I just chugged. It tasted like grass. I haven't noticed ay weird side effects... yet. As far as selecting the winners, I went for the kids who obviously did work. Not the research and report kind of projects, but things that required field work and visible reporting with logged evidence. I'm nerdy enough to appreciate that sort of thing ;) So the winners we ended up with were as follows: 1) Animal Food from Organic Waste 2.) Hydroponics to Improve Your Quality of Life 3.) Solar House to Dehydrate Vegetables. First place made their own animal food from food scraps and animal fat/ fish gills/ egg shells. This required collection of materials, cooking, forming balls from the cooked food, leaving the shaped food in the sun for 15 days and monitoring progress, then packaging the food. Also, their presentation was awesome and obviously took some time to put together. And like I said, they had a dog. They were a clear stand-out winner. 2nd place used hydroponics, which is cool. They built a planter with tarps to diffract light and a tub underneath with the water. They aerate the plants twice a day and monitor plant growth. They had plants from 7 days to 15 days to 30 days to show progress. Again, a lot of work obviously went into that project. Awesome. The third place was a little harder to choose, but was also chosen on the basis of work being done. The kids built a solar box and dehydrated food in it. They had to monitor the food and rate of dehydration. I appreciate the time they put into that. Even though my selling point was work realized, my counterpart seemed to be sold on the idea of a project helping the community. That was her talking point: how the project could benefit the community and be reproduced or marketed. I like that. I think we were a nice compliment to each other.
>Other: This event was fabulous for networking and getting my face out there a little more. I scored 2 more TV interviews and met some new people. I also ran into a lot of people saying they know my friends all over La Libertad. It's great to see the we, as Peace Corps volunteers, have such an impact and a presence here. Nice. While I ended up on stage twice, I was never handed the microphone, apart from my TV interviews. Win! While judging. I got a free lunch, free snack, and plenty of Inca Cola, of course. Not a bad way to spend a Wednesday.
>Came home on a school bus... weird. Called Bridgie from a locutorio and learned that mom's knee surgery went well. So relieved to hear that everything went alright.
Side Note- the mosquitoes here are starting to get the best of me... ):


Malva drinking... once again, my face betrays me...

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