All Around the World

Show me Japan? Silence. Uncomfortable stares. How about Russia? It was as if I could read the kids' minds; "Stop asking us questions we don't know the answers to. Please stop." I love maps; I could stare at a map for hours.  So, when there is down time with the kids at the village, I ask them about other countries.  It became clear to me that their geographic literacy was pretty low.  

The World Map Project is really popular with PCVs all over the world.  It's fun, simple and relatively cheap.  Last Friday we started painting the ocean, then finished the basic map on Sunday.  I got lucky and had the whole thing sponsored by Boysen Paint, JCI Daraga and my friend's construction company.  On top of it all, we had a professional photographer there for documentation (everything in the Philippines has to have documentation).  It was the right time to do the map because we are working on making the room into a library.  We'll use the wall in the future for educational activities.  

It ended up being such a fun day.  The kids worked all day, even without food incentives! One girl, Angel, who was in my first computer class and is usually painfully shy, was the first one to pick up a paint brush.  She got out of her PT session and came right in, jumped up on a table and went to town on the ocean.  I was so proud of her for doing something on her own with confidence.  

Of course, it was not without challenges.  Someone bumped the projector in the beginning, so we had to re-do all of our tracing. Europe is definitely missing a few small countries.  Plus, one boy decided that Egypt should take over Yemen, the Mediterranean, Sicily and Spain; the other kids chastised him so badly, but it was an easy fix.

The best part of the day was when we finished, the kids sat down and proudly looked at the map for at least five minutes.  Here's their work: