Too much to write about...

I haven't written all week and there's way more to talk about than I'll get a chance to.

Everyone is basically running out of time to do our projects and getting frustrated about it. The problem is that all the issues we're dealing with are so complicated that 3 weeks isn't even enough time to understand them, let alone work towards fixing them. It would be easy if we were in a small community where we could say, "ok, these people need a bridge or a well or a school, let's build it" and work towards completing that in 3 weeks. But when you say "public schools in Brazil are a joke because the government doesn't care, people are so poor that their kids need to work, and its accepted that anyone who has any money goes to private school" its hard to really come up with any kind of solution in 3 weeks.

We visited a public school the other day which was an interesting experience. We met with the principal first and there were kids in the hallway everywhere. She said that the teachers don't show up often so the kids just hang out in the hallway. Then we went to meet with the kids and they basically went crazy telling us everything that was wrong with the school, it felt like it was the first time anyone had asked them their opinion. The classroom was packed and there were more kids outside yelling in at us, and then when we tried to leave they gathered around us and kept yelling.

Our project now is to try and start a civic education program for these kids where they can learn about government and how they can use democracy to fight for better education. The problem is we only have a week now to write the program and get it implemented, and we were planning to use the principal at this school but it seems like the school is about to start a mutiny against her and she even admitted to us that she's getting fired soon. The problem is she is the only contact we have there, and we need to partner with someone for the program.