If you’re not following Jose and Omar’s trip throughout Egypt, you should be. The incomparable Silvia Tolisano ( of langwitches fame) and Mrs. Menger are traveling through Egypt and are blogging their journey. Jose is a bear and Omar is a camel, and they are the best of friends.

But we need their help!

My students found this note under our classroom door today and we don’t know what it means. Please, Jose and Omar, find someone in Egypt to tell us what it means!

(click for larger size)

We’re anxiously waiting and keeping track of you! Thanks for the great blogging and pictures, and say hello to Mrs. Tolisano and Mrs. Menger!

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I got to tour one of the country’s best universities today, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. It is commonly referred to around here as simply “la catolica”. (not sure how to add accents on a mac, must learn).

I had a great time touring the campus and seeing and hearing about some of the great work they are doing. One impressive area of work is in the college of engineering where they have an earthquake simulator. They work on designing buildings and structures that can withstand the earth’s potentially deadly movements. Since earthquakes are such a threat here (for the record, it never rains to any significance, hardly EVER more than a light drizzle) this is an important work. I didn’t get a photo since we just managed a drive-by.

This would be a cool exhibit to see…

I fly back a week from tomorrow, what will the final week bring? Stay tuned…

Update: Here is the link to the rest of the pictures of my tour today, see Flickr.

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I had an amazing time with some incredible educators and other folks yesterday at the San Jorge School in Miraflores, Peru. (spanish version here)

We are working on a pretty great new collaborative project that is taking a design-based approach, so lots of great brainstorming on essential questions. Look for updates on that here soon.

I wanted to publically thank the folks at San Jorge for such a fun time together chatting, sharing, and tell them how much I love their enthusiasm for learning!

Something else that blew my mind was meeting with some of the students. They have a blog about pencils.

Yup, pencils.

They design pencils and make great little toppers, and then sell them for somewhere around 7 to 8 nuevo soles (exchange rate right now is $1 USD to 3.15 PEN so that works out to a bit less than $2.25 on the lower end). The proceeds go to support their involvement in Junior Achievement Peru. They are super excited about the pencils and the opportunities they provide. I think my students and I might help them out a bit, we’ll see.

I asked the kids to figure out how much it would be to ship pencils to the United States, and they need to consider blogging in English (since they all speak it!) to expand the boundaries.

The conversation turned really fun when Lucy offered up this salient comment which I can only paraphrase by saying, “there just are no borders any more”.

I probably don’t do the comment justice, but the profundity stands on it’s own. Maybe a good title for the project we’re developing would be “Learning without Borders”. Just a thought.

Thanks for everything, San Jorge! Here’s to developing new relationships in the days/weeks/months/years to come.

Update: Here are all my pictures from San Jorge on flickr.

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Hey Jeff, you’re not the only one who’s been to a country famous for knock-off’s.

There’s a saying here in Peru that Peruvians are expert copiers. Everywhere you go there are pirated CD’s, DVD’s, clothes, appliances, and the like. My favorite is this cheap imitation of a certain bottle blond we all know. She’s been around for a lot of years, as I understand. This is the “screen” from a toy cell phone that someone gave to my daughter. Tragically, they do now know what benign means, so the irony is lost on them. They wondered why I was laughing so hard. Enjoy the chuckle…

Click the picture for the flickr page. Ahh, Peru.

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This is the story of the trip down to Peru.

Arriving at the airport in Charlotte, NC we anticipated an easy flight to Peru with a short connection in Miami.

Boy were we wrong.

As we waited at the departure gate my wife and I met a man named Carlos. He was also traveling to Peru, the country of his birth. He makes his home in Charlotte now and works in sales. I didn’t catch the company name. We made small talk about the differences between American and Peruvian culture as the time wore on.

The first delay announcement came roughly an hour before the flight was to depart. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 9:35, arriving in Miami a short time later. Our flight from Miami to Peru was scheduled for 1:35 AM, which would have left us a short layover in Miami, which was bearable.

The first announcement said the flight would be delayed one hour. It would be close, but we could still make it.

We huddled together and tried to plan our plane exit strategy. Carlos would help with our carry-on bags since we were traveling with two small children and a bit too much in the way of luggage. We thanked him repeatedly for offering to help, and took him up on his offer. Peruvians are known to be helpful folks, and he was no exception.

A short time later the announcement came that the flight was further delayed due to in-climate weather. There was nothing they could do, sorry. Carlos pounced on the check-in gate to find out what we could do about our ticket to Lima since it was clear we were going to miss the flight.

There is no other flight to Lima for three days.

As tears began to fall Carlos pressed on at the gate, wasn’t there something that could be done?

Remember, I am traveling with not only my wife and girls, but my parents as well, and mom is in a wheel chair.

As the stress levels rose exponentially Carlos announced that they would be able to reaccomodate us on a flight to Lima the following afternoon. We celebrated! But wait, where were we going to spend the night?

The airline informed us that there were no available hotel rooms in Miami due to a number of flight cancellations and delays. We would have to “rough it”. A one-year old baby doesn’t know how to “rough it”. Carlos never left our side, always offering to push the wheel chair, helping check to see if check in was open, always making sure we were ok.

Carlos took good care of us. All we did was buy him lunch the next day.

We landed in Miami in the wee hours of the morning. Once we collected ALL our baggage from baggage claim we nestled down to rest. None of us actually rested very well, the least of which was the baby. By now she was tired, cranky, hungry, and fussy.

We slept on the dirty carpeted floor of MIA, snacking on vending machine fare and stashed snacks in our luggage. Dad found his medicine and our attitudes were hovering around punchy.

At 4:30 that morning we got in line to check in, thinking that when the ticket counter opened up they would allow us to rid ourselves of our bags. At 5 and some change we were greeted sleepily by the ticket agent who promptly informed us that since our flight didn’t leave until 5:30 that afternoon the earliest we could check in was 1:30. That meant eight more hours with enough luggage to stop a train.

Sigh

We managed to get breakfast in shifts and napped through the morning, watching the people come and go and wishing the every-half-hour time announcement would go away.

After breakfast and a few cat naps and a cup of Starbucks a lady came by who worked for the airline. She told us we could check in. Eureka! We hurriedly got in line and she ushered us to the front and checked us all in, and even allowed a bag that was overweight to slip by. Whew!

With some relief we got lunch then decided to brave TSA security and hit the terminal. We got to the terminal to find our flight number happily greeting us in red LED lights.

That lasted ten minutes.

No sooner did I find a power outlet to charge my daughter’s portable DVD player did they decide to change gates.

To a gate clear across the airport.

Did I mention we were traveling with a wheel chair and two young kids?

We ended up walking for over half an hour to reach our destination gate.

And then they announced that the flight was delayed.

And again.

And delayed still.

All the while Carlos kept vigilant watch over our family and we over him. He kept an ear out for any announcement and we made sure he was kept in the loop.

We finally arrived in Peru in the wee hours of the morning. We made it through immigrations without too much hassle and headed for baggage claim. To no surprise, there was Carlos with a set of baggage carts looking for our luggage, which had become all too familiar for him.

He helped us load our bags onto the carts and then he quietly slipped out, a selfless man without desire for recognition.

I know he won’t read this, but in the off chance, let me say thank you Carlos. Wherever you are in this city of 10 million, thank you. You will forever be a part of our family. If we can ever return the favor, you need only ask.

How can you be someone’s Carlos today?

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This has been interesting to watch around here. There are loads of teachers on strike, and they have been since July 5. Remember, since we’re south of the equator, it’s cold here and school is not on summer break like it is in the states.

Here is a Forbes.com article that is worth the read.

I have seen the teachers (!) marching around the city. Here are some facts I have gathered by listening to the radio and reading the news online, as well as talking to loads of taxi drivers. These may not be right, but they are presented in good faith.

1. Some time recently, the government (under a new president since last summer) decided to give teachers competency tests to make sure they could perform basic math skills and reading comprehension in order to ensure a quality education was being given to students.

2. The teachers are rebelling against this new law, and their union, SUTEP, is supporting the strike.

A bit of background. The school system around here is not like it is in the USA. Here in Peru, the majority of schools are private and charge different prices to attend. Most kids attend private school. State-funded schools (estatales) are notoriously low-quality and are attended by the poor.

I do not know if the private school teachers are subject to this competency test or not.

It’s the public school teachers that are protesting the law, as well as they claim to not be paid enough.

So, as I understand it, they are claiming low salaries (heard that before?) and are complaining due to the comptency tests.

Most folks I’ve spoken with adamantly disagree with the teachers, saying that if they are to teach our kids, they must be properly prepared to do the job.

My question has always been in regards to the example presented by these teachers. There are rocks being thrown, tear gas discharged, riots in some of the outer reaches of the country, and cars being set on fire. It took me over 1.5 hours to get home last night when it should have taken at most 20 minutes. The teachers had a central throughfare blocked. I am sure the taxi driver lost money on that trip.

If I can get the nerve up, I may take my camera and try to get an interview, but it can be dangerous for me, as there is a large presence of piranhas wherever there is a riot or strike. I have to tread lightly.

I saw the teachers today as I headed for the airline office to check my flight back, in a few weeks.

Fun times in Peru! More updates to come…

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