Matt said a lot in the last post, he actually said most of it.

Everyday we face many new challenges and for every down there are many ups.

Yesterday, we learned an important lesson. To get the best response, you need to reach out to the people at a personal level if they don't know you. My Host Mom and I were talking about the project (as we do everyday) and in general, she is very excited about it. I had shared my worries about the project about getting a good response from the parents. To that, she suggested we go door-to-door to invite each family and introduce ourselves. Once we did that, it was a resounding sucess and got over 30 people to come to our first meeting. All in all it was a good day, and as Matt said, we went from having too little, to having too much.

With the current schedule, we are giving computer classes to around 80 students (algo asi) in Villa Maria. Then in the afternoons, we return to Cieneguilla to give classes to the students on M, W, Thr, to the parents W, Thr at night, and then we're giving classes to the Mothers in the town who are partially illiterate 3 times a week. We are reaching out to people in the community at every level, and that is amazing.

The last week had taught us some important lessons. We did not realize what level the majority of the town are starting from. They are starting at the level most of us started at when we first got our computers, as in, learning how to use a mouse or learning the correct way to type. This was not something Matt and I thought about on our thousands of hours of Skype calls.

I am (I can't speak for Matt on this one) realizing as well that we need to lead many programs at the beginning, and then throughout the next few months we need to continually look for someone to hand the programs over to. We also keep stressing that although we are leading the programs now, in August, we are leaving and for the computer centre to continue beyond August, the parents need to step up and organize themselves. We will see what happens.

On the up side, I got to put my feet in the Pacific Ocean today.... it has been awhile.

Katie