Saturday, June 28, 2008

Puppets!

I´ve have become rather lazy when it comes to updating this blog. I did promise to update every week. As I kinda expected, the longer I´ve been here the busier I´ve become. Somedays I´m lucky if I can spare 30 mins to sit in an internet cafe. And even then, thats not enough time to write my family and post a blog. So there is your reason. However, when I have had a crazy experience or there is important information to pass along, I always ¨make¨ the time to update.

Last Sunday I preformed my first real puppet show. It was a crazy time getting it all put together. I spent a lot of time shopping (sorry, no hobby lobby here folks), spent time writing a puppet script and finding a place I could print it out, and creating the puppet stage and props. And I am glad to report that all that time I invested made a for a very sucessful puppet show! One of my good bolivian friends helped me to perform the story of Noah and the Ark. I wrote the script in a way that it was a Grandmother telling her granddaughter the story. I also worked it so that my bolivian friend had the majority of the speaking parts as my pronuciation and speaking speed still need a lot of work. I also found a Noahs Ark childrens song in Spanish and we sang along with the CD as part of the show.


The children loved it! We had their complete attention the whole show (which, granted, wasn´t THAT long). A friend did a practical application afterwards and then I gave out coloring sheets related to the story.




This week coming up is pretty much the same for me. My team is planning a VBS for our orphanage kids and I have written a 3 part puppet performance. The theme is Obedience. I´ve almost completed the shopping portion and now I am working on creating the props and other helps.

I´ve been despartely looking for something I can make props out of instead of posterboard. Posterboard is rather ¨floppy¨ and can´t stand on its own. I decided that I needed styrofoam. And then I saw someone carrying a huge sheet of it in La Cancha. If the man hadn´t been a soldier I would have asked him where he bought it. I described in spanish the best I could to my house mom but she wasn´t understanding. Then I was talking to my teams interns and one guy said ¨You mean the stuff they sit on at futbol (soccer) games?¨ I was like, you´ve got to be kidding me, could it be that easy? That what I told my house mom and she´s like ¨of course! We call that ´plastoformo´¨ and she told me where I could find it. Well, that turned into an adventure all its own... and in the end, I did find my styrofoam! And its soooo cheap too. Now to make the props out of it, hahaha. So thank God for plastoformo!

I´ll update up the VBS as soon as its completed :)

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