Melissa's New Groove

Barcelona, Spain

A few snapshots of a quick trip to Barcelona this past November to celebrate my friend Carla’s birthday. It was so great to escape the London cold and grey weather for a few days! 

--

As part of my role as a Chevening Social Media Ambassador, I was assigned the “spotlight” during the month of October and I decided to try doing a one-second-a-day video! This was the result:

A post shared by Melissa Guadalupe (@melissamarzo) on Nov 1, 2017 at 8:14am PDT

Video made using the “Leap Second” free app

It turned out to be a really fun challenge and it was great to see all the seconds put together like that at the end. I’ll try to keep it up for every month of my remaining time in the U.K. but I’m afraid a lot of the moments will start to be more of books and library bookshelves :D

Also, I wrote a quick post reflecting on my spotlight month for the official Chevening blog, and you can find it here:

http://www.chevening.org/scholars/blog/2017/my-chevening-month-october-in-london

Cheers!

Uni life:

I’m a big nerd and I came to study my masters so of course one of the highlights of the past week was my very first class at the Institute of Education! This term I’m taking two modules: “Gender, Education and Development” and “Education and International Development, Concepts, Theories and Issues”. I had my first GED class and it was even more than I was expecting, my professors kept the conversations and exchange of ideas alive in class while also reviewing the theories and content we had assigned for that class (which we had to read in advance, there’s looooots of required readings before class involved). Even at the end of class the professors would stay around further discussing the topic with any student that approached them. But uni life isn’t only class, at UCL there’s literally hundreds of student-led societies that go from sports clubs to a Harry Potter club. I joined the welcome event to the Vegetarian and Vegan Society (because well, I’m a vegetarian) and got to meet many people from different faculties around UCL! All of the societies are having free events called “tasters” where you can join and learn and experience the different activities they offer before you buy a membership to join them, which is brilliant!

To finish the work week, Cheveners at UCL received the visit of our Program Officer, Marzana. She gave us our Chevening ID cards which we’ll use for the upcoming welcome event this October where ALL of the Chevening scholars studying around the U.K. will meet for a day, that’s over 1000 of us!  

UCL Chevening scholars and our PO, Marzana

London Chevening scholars having a picninc at Hyde Park

Reunions:

London’s turning out to be the place where I’m reuniting with lots of wonderful friends I hadn’t seen in a while! On Monday I met up with my friends Jossie and Ale (SWY27), I hadn’t seen Ale in over 2 years and after not seeing her for months I met up with Jossie the first week I arrived to London. On Sunday, I met my friend Shelby (VivePerú 2014) and her sister who were spending a few days traveling in London before heading back to the U.S. Not only have I been meeting up with old friends, but I’ve met with some of the wonderful ladies from the “girlsLOVEtravel” community in person after many online interactions through FB and made new friends this way! Really just seems like everyone’s coming to London!  

London Markets:

I didn’t know markets were such a big thing here and now I’m on a hunt to visit as many road markets as I can in the city! Honestly, there’s nothing quite like walking around Borough Market and smelling the delicious food offered in the different kiosks, food from all over the world served right next to each other! Portobello Road Market is surrounded by cute colorful houses and is full of chatty vendors that sell anything you can think off: vintage records, beautifully decorated mirrors, hats of all colours and sizes, you name it! Of course not all of these are budget-friendly so you really have to control the temptation! My favorite so far though has been Camden Stables Market, it gets its name because it used to be a labyrinth of (you guessed it) horse stables which even included a horse hospital. Now it’s the home of many colorful stores, food stalls and a bronze statue of Amy Winehouse.

Borough Market

Portobello Road Market

Camden Stables Market

Bonus:

I WENT TO SEE THE “HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD” AND IT WAS AMAZING! Ok, that’s it for today then, carry on.

Cheers!

Neal’s Yard, London

When I decided to move to a little island in Panama in 2015 to work for a nonprofit my family was terrified.

“Don’t worry, I have a plan”, I told them, “I’ll work abroad for a couple of years while I discover my true passion and in 2017 I’ll start my masters”

“How are you gonna afford that if you’re gonna be living like a hippie and not making any money?”

“Well I’ll search for and apply for a great scholarship! You’ll see”

It’s crazy to think that over 2 years after this conversation took place that’s exactly what happened: I’m in the U.K. about to start my MA in Education, Gender and International Development at University College London supported by a Chevening Scholarship.

Chevening Farewell ceremony with the U.K.’s ambassador in Lima

How did I get here?! Well, as 2015 was coming to a close I remember spending hours every other day researching different master programs I was interested in. I grabbed a notebook and wrote the ideal case scenario I wanted for my masters study: scholarship, big city with lots of museums and rock concerts available, prestigious university, etc. and then I made a list of all the fields I was interested in exploring: education, development, gender studies, international cooperation, languages, cross-cultural communication. I started narrowing everything down as I kept working on the field in Panama and I learned about the Chevening Scholarship because mentioned in a lot of the websites of U.K. universities I kept coming across.

Peruvian Chevening scholars (and flatmates!) at UCL

Applying for a Chevening Scholarship was a long, intense and rewarding process. I started working on my application last August 2016 after I had narrowed down the MA programs I wanted to apply to. I completed the online application, wrote and reviewed the essays requested (with the help of my dear friend Naomi, who provided invaluable feedback!), and by the time I submitted everything it was already October! In February 2017 I received the long-awaited notification that invited me for an interview at the U.K. Embassy in Lima and that I had to upload two letters of recommendation before the interview. My wonderful former bosses Rachel and Emily wrote amazing letters (4 in total! One for each of the universities I applied to and one for Chevening) and I had to fly to Lima for my interview because by then I was working in Ecuador. The interview took place in March and it wasn’t until June that I was able to call my sister crying tears of joy because I had just received the email confirming that it was happening, I had been selected to become a Chevening scholar!

Chevening scholars from Latinamerica and Africa at Russel Square

So as you see, loooooong process! But now (after lots of other additional processes such as getting my visa, finding a place to live and enrolling at uni) I’m finally here, prepping all my readings before classes start, exploring London and getting to know other Chevening scholars from all over the world!

I’m incredibly excited to have this opportunity and so ready to make the most of this year! If you have any recommendations on places to see and things to do around the U.K., do let me know! And if you’re interested in applying for a Chevening scholarship, you can find all the info here: www.chevening.org/apply

Cheers!

Baños de Agua Santa

Baños is a lovely little town located right at the entrance of the rainforest region of Ecuador on the east. The team and I visited Baños a couple of times before taking all of our delegations of students on a day trip there as well. Even though it’s little, Baños is full of tourists seeking adventure in the area! You can visit waterfalls, zipline, swing at the edge of a cliff and get prime views of the Tungurahua volcano on a clear day.

---

Ayampe y Puerto López

The Tica girls and I took advantage of a long weekend to explore the coast of Ecuador! It was a looong trip to get there from Riobamba (7 hours on a bus to Guayaquil, then night at the bus station to take a 6am bus to Montañita an then another bus to Ayampe) but it was absolutely worth it! I didn’t get to surf as I originally wanted, but Ana and I rented a kayak and saw what was possible a baby shark/dolphin/turtle...we’re still not sure!

---

Quito, Ecuador

One of the nicest cities I’ve ever been to: great public transportation systems, lots of nature surrounding the city, dramatic landscapes, nice people and lots of things to do in any given day.

So about a month ago I relocated again, this time to a city in the middle of the Andes of Ecuador: Riobamba!

Tungurahua volcano, one of a bunch of volcanoes you can see from the city.

This time again I was lucky enough to find another awesome organization I could join so I’m working as a Program Coordinator for Global Glimpse, a non-profit that for the past 10 years has been providing cultural immersion and leadership development trips for underprivileged high school students from the US. Why do I love working for this organization? Cus they really believe that by exposing the younger generation of Americans to inspiring leaders and educational opportunities abroad they can promote long-lasting social change, and they’re also deeply committed to making these trips accessible through merit and need-based scholarships for the students. So global citizenship, access to opportunities, and Latin America love, you know I dig all of these!

My time here started with a few days enjoying Quito and the surrounding (and touristy) areas and I gotta say I like that city a whole lot! Traffic is pretty mellow for a capital city, all bathrooms are insanely clean, people are super friendly, and food is delicious and cheap, actually those last things apply to all of the cities I’ve seen here so far.

Then it was time to move to Riobamba and start work! My fellow team mates and I spent an intense week of training, living in a hotel while looking for a house/flat/room we could rent for the next 6 months, and getting to know this city. It’s been pretty awesome meeting all the partners that Global Glimpse has established in the 3 years it’s been working in Riobamba, everyone was always super happy to meet us and to know that we were gonna continue working here this year. We were welcomed everywhere we went and in this short month we’ve been able to see and experience so much of the region, we’ve met inspiring community members and we’ve grown to be a super close team. I can’t believe how much we enjoy spending time together at work and just hanging out after office hours. For the next two months we’ll continue building the itineraries for the trips and in June we’ll be receiving our first group of students!

I honestly didn’t expect to like Ecuador as much as I do. It’s been tricky to adapt to the high altitude and really cold weather (especially after living in hot & humid Panama) and I miss being close to the ocean, but this country has so much to offer! Everywhere you go you’re surrounded by green landscapes or volcanoes, there’s a lot of opportunities for adventure sports and traveling within the country is so cheap! This past weekend, we all went to check out Baños which is pretty much tourist central. It was pretty mellow though because Ecuador’s holding the second round of its presidential elections today so since Friday the usual “ley seca” killed the country’s nightlife. Nonetheless, we had a blast!

I’m so excited to keep discovering more of Ecuador and its people in the months to come!

Cheers from Riobamba!

Final day of the workshop arrived!

In total there were 15 parents who came to at least four of the six sessions plus 4 other participants who showed up a couple of times.

For this last session I had planned to start off with a quick ice breaker as per usual, but when they arrived they got so excited to see the gift baskets we had arranged for them that Vaneza and I decided to just start right away with the wrap-up dynamics.

I started by asking them to think of all the topics we had discussed and the new things they had learned. Then we handed out five pieces of folded paper to five random participants and asked a question related to the topic of the first workshop. I asked them to unfold the paper and whoever found an “X” written on it had to answer to the question. We kept going like that for two more rounds of questions and then changed the dynamic to a classic one of “throwing the ball” where they chose the next person to answer the question.

After having reviewed and talked again about the workshop topics it was awesome to see how easily they remembered and talked about things such as nutrition, hygiene, school support, but it was interesting to see that they still struggled when discussing the topics of communication and talking about sexuality with their children.

Then Vaneza and I presented each one with a “super mom/dad” certificate for which we called one by one to come to the front and receive the applause of their peers. It was such a nice moment seeing them cheer for each other! And then of course came the moment to present them with their well-deserved gift baskets that contained some hygiene products, healthy food, school supplies and a little bit of chocolate too. They loved them! I had only prepared 15 baskets for the participants who fulfilled the required 4-sessions attendance, but this day a mom who had only been there once before also showed up so I had to run to the escuelita and put together a little backpack of school supplies for her not to go empty-handed (she approached me at the end of the workshop to say that she wasn’t aware it was the last one and she hadn’t been able to attend before because it conflicted with her work schedule).

We took some pictures together and then asked them if they had any final thoughts they’d like to share. Some expressed their gratitude for the workshops and said they hope they’re done again in the future, some others talked about how much they had learned and how they had realized there are still many things they need to know about, Rutilio finished this part asking the parents to please keep their indigenous heritage alive by teaching their kids the Ngobere language to which one of the participants responded by asking everybody to say a phrase in Ngobere before we finished the workshop. One by one they went and it was lovely, they were kind enough to translate what they had said in Spanish right after so I could understand too and they all talked about the things they were gonna do as soon as they got back home after this: clean the house, wash their clothes, sleep, eat their chocolate, talk to their kids.

This new session was focused on personal and domestic hygiene practices to prevent common diseases.

We started off with a fun icebreaker activity where the participants had to get in groups according to the number of body parts I would call out (for example: 4 feet or 3 heads), making it more difficult or sillier every time (like 30 eyelashes, for example). The first three participants who didn’t get into a group had to sit down and the other participants at the end of the game gave them a funny punishment: they had to do pushups or ran around the table, which made for a great laugh from everybody.

The topic of the session was introduced by showing them pictures of different diseases (diarrhea, skin infections, colds, dengue) and asking them what they thought these had in common. It was hard for them to make the connection beyond the fact that they were all diseases that their children easily got, so once we told them that personal and domestic hygiene played a big role in preventing these diseases they showed a lot of interest.

Then we showed pictures of a single person and of a house, we asked the participants what they thought were the main aspects to take care of in terms of personal and domestic hygiene. We wrote down their ideas under the corresponding picture and grouped them into main areas: for personal hygiene – handwashing, teeth brushing and showers; for domestic hygiene – clean water, clean food, clean floors and clean bathrooms. Previously I had considered that maybe most of the families had latrines in their houses, but most of them said they barely used those anymore and had actual bathrooms.

Then I asked if there were any volunteers that wanted to demonstrate their personal hygiene techniques and nobody offered, so I went on to the attendance list and asked one of the moms to give me a random number and called the corresponding person from the list. First, one of the moms demonstrated her handwashing technique, and while she was doing so the other parents provided their own comments as well. I asked them why they thought handwashing could be important in their daily lives and I told them how it can help them prevent the spread of diseases such as diarrhea and the common cold and flu, this was pretty new information for most of them who said they thought it was only so that their hands would be clean for when they ate. Then three participants brushed their teeth in front of the class and it was really funny for everybody, some of them even took out their cellphones and started recording videos of their friends and making jokes. At the end again, we reflected on why dental hygiene was important and one of the moms commented that for her it meant not going to the dentist and spending money there which a lot of the moms agreed with. Finally, we talked about how hard it was for some parents to get their kids to actually wash off the dirt when they took a shower and the areas which had to be cleaned with more care (behind the ears, the neck, intimate parts, etc.).

Then the class was divided in four groups and each received a poster paper with one of the areas of domestic hygiene as a title and two columns where they had to write a) aspects of the reality they faced and problems associated with this area, and b) solutions they would suggest to solve these problems and keep a clean environment. I asked them to think about the dirtiest or least well-kept houses they had ever seen in the community so that they didn’t feel shy or self-conscious describing their own reality and problems maybe, and instead make it look like they were thinking of someone else’s. I walked around the groups, helping them shape their ideas and afterwards they presented their work. It was nice to see at this point in the fifth session how much easier and with more confidence most of them could comment on the other participants’ work and give their own ideas and opinions. This was also quite a very simple topic for them to talk about (as opposed to sexuality) and they felt more comfortable talking about their own house environments.

We finished by asking for volunteers to share one new thing they had learned in this session and the most mentioned one was how important handwashing was for maintaining a good health in this environment. It’s one of those seemingly easy and routine things that one simply overlooks a lot of times, people in the cities are constantly exposed to campaigns repeating over and over why it’s important to wash your hands especially during certain times of the year when diseases are commonly spread (like the flu) but here for quite a few of them it was nothing more than just one of the routine things you do just because you’re supposed to and it felt really good to be able to spread knowledge on that area.

((Session 1)) ((Session 2)) ((Session 3))

This new session focused on school support, exploring different ideas on intelligence and learning habits.

We started with a quick game of “Team Rock-Paper-Scissors”. I thought RPS was kind of a universal game, but half of the participants didn’t know how to play it so they got a kick out of learning and then playing the Team version: players stand up to play, every player that loses the game gets behind the winner and then go challenge another person/team until there are only two teams left.

After that we started with the presentation of the day. I showed them pictures of a kid, a teacher and a couple of parents and asked them who they thought was or were responsible of a kid’s performance in school. They all said “the teacher”, and when asked why they said because he/she is the head of the school. I told them I disagreed and that I thought all of them were responsible. With the help of Vaneza, we brought out an empty chart with three columns: current situation, expectations and actions. We asked what their expectations were when they sent their kids to school and wrote their ideas in the chart; some of their answers were: that they behave well, that they listen to their teacher, that they do their homework. Then we asked them what observations they could make regarding the current state of the school, what things they liked and what things they wished were different; answers: there’s a good teacher, they need to learn how to be more polite, there’s too many children in one classroom, a lot of children are disruptive. Finally we asked them if they thought they from their homes could do anything to help their children achieve those expectations while taking into account the current state of their school. They all agreed that they had to talk to their children so that they can behave better in school, one of the participants observed that kids spend more time in the house therefore parents can influence in their behavior a lot, others mentioned it was important to motivate them and help them with homework.

I showed them the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” and asked them to think about it and see how the chart we just completed reflects this saying, how a kids education is not only in the hands of the teacher, but also it’s a big responsibility of the parents and of the children themselves.

We then presented the question “why do kids have difficulties at school?”, wrote down all the answers they could think of and grouped them in four major reasons: kids aren’t interested in what they’re being taught, kids don’t have a proper place to study at home, kids don’t manage their time well, kids don’t know good learning habits. Different participants shared the challenges they had encountered when helping their kids study at home, from having kids fall asleep because they were studying in bed, kids leaving to play because they were doing homework at their dock and got bored, kids putting off homework until parents were back from work and having to deal with that on top of being tired from work, kids not liking what they’re learning, etc. It was awesome to see how they connected with each other’s struggles and gave each other advice.

To connect with the “kids aren’t interested in some subjects”, Vaneza and I presented a chart showing the multiple intelligences theory and discussed what parents thought of when they thought a kid was intelligent. It was great for me to hear how they didn’t really connect intelligence with getting good grades but rather with a child being curious and responsive about their environment. When going over the types of intelligences we would ask participants if they knew a kid who showed those kinds of traits and some of them even connected the types of intelligences to their own experiences.

We divided the participants into three groups and gave them each a poster paper with the other groups of problems as heading and asked them to brainstorm ideas that could help them to face these situations. Each group presented their ideas at the end and they all agreed that they should stop letting their children study in bed, they should give them a more set schedule to play and do their homework and that they should take time to see the different ways their children could learn better.

To end this session I took some minutes to tell this group of parents what a crazy wonderful job they were doing raising their children and working and leading their own personal lives. I told them too that the fact they were coming to these workshops spoke highly of how much they cared about their kids and that deserved an applause; that it was ok to feel overwhelmed and to remember that this was a safe space where they could share their experiences, ask questions and find support. I taught them a quick relaxation technique through breathing and they all got really into it, except for the dads who kept teasing each other and one mom who could not stop looking back at her cellphone every minute.

We sent them home with a summary chart and an inspirational poem they could share at home with other family members, and that was the end of this session!