Blog 1- Trenchtown and reading center

Going to Trenchtown yesterday has been one of the highlights of the trip for me so far, In class we discussed the bad reputation that Trenchtown has in Jamaica for being a violent place that many people avoid, but there is so much more there than the violence it is known for. Trenchtown is a vibrant artistic community where many artists began their careers, including Bob Marley. On each street corner there is a sign showing all the different types of artists who came from each street. We were also able to visit a beautiful pottery studio and learn how the potters create their work, this part of our Trenchtown tour was especially cool because I was able to purchase a beautiful vase with a great story behind it. After our tour we visited the reading center in Trenchtown, here I was able to read with a young girl named Sarah. Sarah was a very smart third grader who loved to read and sing. She told me that she started coming to the center after one of her friends invited her there. She in turn invited one of her friends and has now been coming to the center for a couple years. Sarah has a lot of family and friends that go to the center including her younger sister, I thought that was especially cool seeing the closeness of the students at the center. Sarah was especially excited about receiving new dictionaries for the center because we talked about what we like learning about and she loved learning new words by looking them up in a dictionary. She wants to be a teacher one day and I think she’ll make an excellent one, it was such a great gift to be able to talk to such a bright young student and I hope to see her when we return to the center on Friday.