It seems obvious to say it, but here it is: time is passing unbelievably quickly. I only have five weeks left in the country, and of those weeks only three more will run with the normal class schedule. The winter break begins July 28 and runs for two weeks--almost exactly the time left at that point. Because Villa Maria is so helpful and because the kids at Cieneguilla are always around, we can still get together once or twice in the break to finalize anything necessary, but there are only three weeks left in the activity program.

Seeing the end date so close forces me to accept exactly how far things will reach: now I can't say "Yeah, we'll start a blog with them at some point" or "We're going to look for someone to take over the adult classes". Everything needs to find a concrete answer, and soon. At the beginning of the project, two months of classes sounds like a lot of time...then comes the realization that each kid is only in class for an hour per week. That means that two months is actually eight hours. I wouldn't have believed it before, but in five hours of classes so far we've helped 250 kids advance from "How do I click?" to formatting text before we even ask. It's very easy to take for granted certain skills that we had to actually teach: how to hold the mouse and move it, click and right click, how to open documents and switch between two open windows. So considering where they started, it's very positive for me to know that they can use Word to type and then change color, size, font as well as insert clip art or copy/paste photos of their own from a folder. Now they're also doing the same things in Powerpoint, with the addition of multipage documents, animations, and page design. This is a huge leap. I had very modest expectations after my first year's difficult experiences in Peru, but I'm also a designer and therefore a dreamer by nature. So if dreams of getting to teach web design to our 11-year-olds haven't been met, I'm not disappointed. Rather I'm blown away to see results that far exceed my expectations. We reached a lot more kids than I would have predicted, and the classes themselves are an absolute joy.

Now I realize that there's a full month left, so it's not that the project is over, either. But I'm already in plans with Isaac and the rest of Wasiymi Wasiki about our third project and the future expansion of Conectados...so for me, these projects don't end anyway. My time on the ground has an expiration date, but the projects will continue for years and next summer when I'm back for school number three (or four by then!) I'll also be able to see how one and two have progressed.

Huzzah!

Matt