Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Trinity East meets Albania

So….the Peace Corps has this really cool program called WORLD WISE SCHOOLS. It’s a correspondence program between Volunteers and Classrooms in the United States. Essentially, volunteers link with a teacher in the States and share our experiences. And our lives can relate back to classroom curriculum such as different cultures, geography, foreign languages and so on. Its pretty exciting to share your story with a room full of eager and interested students!

I’m lucky this year to have recently connected with Ms. Shaw at Trinity East (Windsor for those of us who remember the good ol’ days.) Ms. Shaw is the teacher of a 4th grade classroom in Washington PA... my hometown. And my very favorite part of all this….Auggie Towers, my very smart, very thoughtful, very funny and all-around very awesome Godson. His sister, Lucie and brother, Danny are pretty fantastic too! I love you guys! And miss you everyday!

Here we all are together, just goofing around a few days before I was leavin’ on a jetplane


The link included is the "Introduction video" I sent, along with a letter to Ms. Shaw's the class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH3_ZsjnAyA. (I'm so annoyed b/c I can't figure out how to include this link without YOU needing to copy/paste. 20-somethings and unders everywhere are laughing at me. Whatever. Go to the site. Its cute. I promise.)

And throughout the rest of the school year, I’ll have the chance to answer their questions about learning how to speak Shqip, buying my groceries, Albanian history, Albanian landscape and most importantly… how I survive without a TV!

If you know a teacher in the States who’d be interested in this program, please let me know. I'm loving this opportunity for cultural exchange. And well…..after living for 8 months in Albania, I certainly have stories to tell!

Peace, Love and 4th Grade

1 comment:

  1. Good morning how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this I would ask you one small favour:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Albania? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Albania in order to complete my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and a original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Calle Valencia, 39
    28903 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com, where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    ReplyDelete