What a Thanksgiving! We awoke at 6 AM, knowing we had to be on the road early. That meant no coffee! We got to Boca de Tolmatlan before 8:00 and carried two libraries down to the dock. The plan was to hop on a water taxi to get to two villages that were not accessible by car, Quimixto and Yelapa. The boat was almost ready to leave when we arrived, except the pilot was waiting for…. the teacher! She would be on the same boat. What luck. When she arrived and boarded, I introduced myself. She said, ‘I know who you are. I was the teacher at the school in Corrales last year when you came.”
Berenice was her name, and she had been transferred this year to Quimixto, because it was closer to her home in Puerto Vallarta. We talked on the boat trip about the schools and the village, and then I asked how big her school was. I expected it to be a small school with a couple of dozen students. Surprise, she had 51 students and 3 teachers. Cool. Except that meant that one library wasn’t enough, which was OK because we had two with us.
When we arrived at Quimixto, a beautiful fishing village, Berenice found a local fellow to bring a wheelbarrow and tote the books. The kids were just arriving when we came, so we all sat in the courtyard in front of the school and talked about the books. Meanwhile, Berenice, Juan and Juanila, the three teachers huddled to talk about plans for using the books. By the time I was done talking to the kids, they had already figured out how much reading to expect, how to assess the children’s comprehension and how to hold them accountable for their reading. During this entire visit, I’ve been impressed with the excitement of the teachers during my visits. It reminds me again that teachers love when their kids get it, and what usually stands in their way is lack of materials.
We had to leave in order to make it to the next town. Of course, we had used both of our libraries in Quimixto, so we had to take the boat back to the car, pick up two more libraries (the next school had about 75 kids) and catch another water taxi to Yelapa. The school at Yelapa was almost a kilometer from the beach where we unloaded, but on this trip, we met the owner of a local restaurant who was bringing beef back from PV to serve in his restaurant. He asked one of his workers, Ramon, to wheel the libraries for us. We went down a charming footpath that we shared with an occasional man on horseback.
The school at Yelapa had five teachers. We caught them during recess, so we used their courtyard, too. The kids were very particular about picking their books. I realized that they were worried that this would be their only chance to pick a book, so I had to keep reminding them that all the books were staying and that they could read them all. The little ones got themselves into a tizzy, trading, reading a page, trading, talking to their friends, trading again. The fifth grade girls wanted to know about all the Judy Moody books, especially what order they should read them. One of the girls brought me a stack of books and asked which one she should start with. I picked Charlotte’s Web. That will get her hooked!
The oldest girls were less interested in the books than they were in my handsome son. They asked me how to say “casada” in English. I told them, “married.” They went over to Patrick and asked if he would marry all of them!
We took the last boat back to Boca de Tolmatlan to get the car, drove to El Tuito and found out that Ignacio Palomera planned for us to stay at his house Thursday night. He gave us a small wing of his rustic ranch, where we passed a wonderful evening.
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