World Map Project!

Well after a couple of weeks we have finally finished painting the world map on the outside wall of the school! It was a lot of work but ended up being really fun, and a good chance to get to know a lot of the learners who wanted to help. It's actually a pretty cool project that PCVs do around the world, and was created by a PCV in the Dominican Republic in 1988. Here's an article the Peace Corps recently released on the popularity of the project.

First step was to measure the space, paint a coat of primer, and the a coat of light blue for the ocean.










Then we drew the map section by section using a grid system. Each grid box was held up with string and sticky tack, and then moved over once the section was drawn.










Then came the painting!! With the help of a bunch of my 6th grade students, we took about 5 days to paint all of the countries. It was pretty fun and I think they learned a lot, namely in the geography and mixing colors departments. And I head about 80 comments on how huge Russia is, since it took forever to cover in yellow! The labelling was also a highlight, especially when they tried to pronounce some of the more difficult names...



















All the kids who helped with the painting...










South Africa!










All in all this was a really fun project. It was pretty cute there as we were finishing and the kids were finally able to see how it was coming together. They are even taking proud ownership over some of the countries they painted - I heard one of the girls talking to a younger kid bragging about how she was the one who painted China so nicely!!! It was also a nice change to finally be able to do something with my hands that people can actually see. Also special thanks to Hillary and Ryan, who helped with the tedious gridding and drawing portion!