Values, games, childcare... lot to do at the Community Programme at Playa del Carmen

 Voice from the field,  Jul 19, 2013 - Anna & Christie

My name is Anna and I am in my 3^rd out of 4 weeks in the GVI Childcare program and I'm Christie the intern!  It has been nice working with the children, creating games with them, communicating in “Spanglish” and engaging the kids in a variety of activities planned by the Ludotecarias. Especially now that the kids are on holidays from school, there's a whole new course planned out. In the past two weeks, we have been learning about values. 

So topics of respect, love, tolerance, fellowship, forgiveness and much more has been the centre of the games. The games however, are not the usual... We play a range of games from “put all your shoes on the other side of the building and race to put them back on and run back” to “tie a pencil on a string around your waist and try to put the pencil in the hole of the water bottle on the ground”. These games provide everyone with side-stitching laughter but they bring it back by having questions at the end to gain extra points. This is the best part as you can actually see and hear that the kids have learnt these wonderful lessons. We're also doing a “make-your-own” day once a week; and so far we've made Save the Children shirts and pencil cases with values stitched or painted on them!

We recently gained six new volunteers and it has been exciting to have more people around from a variety of countries. It's always funny sitting around the dinner table and getting to know one another and feeling like we all speak different languages! Even though we all come from English speaking countries like the US, UK and Australia, the slang and phrases we use to express the same thing makes us laugh with disbelief.  The weather has been very off and on due to the rainy season that we are currently in, but we try take advantage of every opportunity  we can to go to Mamita's beach or any beach  which is only about a 15 minute walk from the apartment.

Even though there are heavy, angry clouds that bring buckets and buckets of rain, there's always sunshine that follows straight after; which is then followed by incredible heat which helps to remind us we are still in the Caribbean after all!

Values, games, childcare... lot to do at the Community Programme at Playa del Carmen