Having been learning Spanish for a couple of months now I feel like I have a reasonable grasp of the basics and seem to be communicating quite well.

Yesterday however, pushed my knowledge of Spanish to the limit as I helped out a friend here in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, who organises group sessions with some local kids to help them with their English and school homework.

Firstly, I have never claimed to be an expert in the arts, language or grammar and am only now getting to grips with words like ‘preposition’ and ‘infinitive’ (damn the UK education system), so I’m not exactly well placed as a language teacher.

Secondly, my Spanish is of a level where even trying to explain simple things can be very challenging, but you have to give these things a go.

I spent most of my time with a boy called Victor, pictured above with me in mid confusing explanation, who is very bright but really quite shy, especially with the other kids in the group. We seemed to get on pretty well though and he bombarded me with questions in rapid machine gun like Spanish.

The main task was to try to help him correct mistakes in a presentation he has to give in English, in front of his class. It was a great experience!

I learned odd words such as ‘canicas’ (marbles) and a useful one in ‘juntar’ (to join), the latter being an effort to get him to connect sentences instead of saying really short ones, kind of like my Spanish.

The benefit beyond learning more Spanish and an ‘in the deep end’ lesson on how hard it is to teach, is as my friend put it; ’showing the kids that tourists are more than just people who turn up for a while, buy things and go home, but are people who care and can help the community’.

I advise anyone with even a basic grasp of another language to seek out these kinds of opportunities, either here in San Cristobal or wherever you travel to. How often will the word ‘marble’ come up in a normal class?

For information on helping here in San Cristobal check out the Chiapas Childrens Project.

Unfortunately, the 2007 Day of the Dead celebrations will be remembered as tragic by the Tabasquenos and some of the Chiapanecos.

The exodus is reaching enormous proportions and more than 100,000 people have been evacuated, saved from their homes and sent to temporary refuge shelters in Villahermosa.

It is real devastation, another disastrous effect of this global warming which still some people are refusing to ackowledge.

The newspaper El Universal published some emergency bank account numbers to help Tabasco, and this is the link to the Mexican Red Cross. I have not found any easy way to donate online yet, please add info on a comment if you know any.

Last week I have received the first After-Dean photos from some of the people we work with in Costa Maya, the southern part of Quintana Roo.
These are a few shots of Bacalar, near the beautiful lagoon.

Although the village of Mahahual has been hit pretty badly, Carolien - owner of Hotel Maya Luna - said they consider themselves lucky when compared to most people living in other villages just north of Mahahual, like El Placer, Limones, Bacalar, where entire families (mostly within poor indigenous communities) have lost everything.

These are a few images of Maya Luna after Dean
Carolien & Jan are already working to clean up the place and rebuild the thatched roofs.
I wish them the best of luck to get back to business asap.

Also 30% of the beachfront houses and resorts in Tulum suffered some damage. Hemingway lost 3 beachfront palapas and their restaurant. They will reopen the surviving palapas in about 10 days and plan to complete the restoration of the restaurant in about 45 days.

Most people who emailed me from Costa Maya shared the same concern about the government support; Dean has not been as strong as Wilma, but will the reaction and reconstruction be as quick when the affected areas are not ‘big tourism money machines’ like Cancun and Cozumel?

Well, it’s about time I sponsored a child; I’m not going to miss the money, 20-30 quid can go in an instant living in London, so why not put the money to good use? I received an email from World Vision recently and I have to say, Sierra Leone does sound like a shit hole. The kids there need some help, I can provide it, so I’m going for it.

I logged on to their site, which provides excellent options!, and found the perfect candidate. Fair enough, I had to reject 3 before I found him, but I finally got there, so I can’t complain. Consider the following; I blindly allowed World Vision to select candidates for me, but the first child was from the Dominican Republic! Do people not go there on holiday? This wouldn’t do, so I changed some of the search criteria so I would only receive kids from Africa. Things improved at this point, however, and I don’t want this to sound crude, the girl was just a little over weight. Now, can she really be in as much need as they say? I didn’t think so either, so I pressed on.

The next one was close, but no cigar. He was about right; clearly looked in need, but the name didn’t quite fit, I could hardly pronounce it, how could I possible speak about him if I couldn’t pronounce his name? Well, after a while, a gem of a kid came up, with a reasonably English sounding name, and I am now the proud sponsor of Jonathon! I even have a fridge magnet.

Obviously I am kidding, but this is exactly what went through my head when I went on to World Vision’s site. It almost stopped me from sponsoring as I found it hard to believe that anyone with a mind to try to help someone out would actually use search criteria to try to find the most needy, or more to the point the best fit for them. I did the random search with no criteria and sponsored the first kid that came up on the screen. The mere thought of skipping past him filled me with anger that the choice was even available!

It would be great to get some stats from World Vision to see how people go about finding their sponsor children and whether anyone seriously uses the search functionality provided to break the children down in to he/she, country, age etc…. I seriously hope, for my sanity alone, that most people do the same thing I did and just provide the money and let World Vision do the choosing.

Ignoring my rather cynical view of some people and their desire to ‘help’, I am making no joke about charity or World Vision, providing a little for those who have nothing is not hard, takes just a few minutes and makes a massive difference, do sponsor if you can: Worldvision