Completed World Map

Early last week my students and I completed our world map! It took us some weeks and we had to adapt our plan several times as we went, but when all's said and done it was well worth our blood (blood was, in fact, shed, notably by my vice school director while helping me pry open a tub of paint with my pocket knife...), sweat, and tears (thanks to my dear, patient friend Diana for tolerating my increasingly frantic phone calls as my intended plans went awry). All of the hard work has paid off now that there's a tangible result on the wall, though, where before there was nothing but peeling yellow paint. I'm so proud of my students and the work they put into this project. Here are a few snapshots of how the process went.

After we drew the grid on the wall we started penciling in the countries.

We used "cheat sheets" with countries already drawn and labeled to complete sections of the map. Each sheet had a certain number of boxes over which countries were spread, so transferring them to the map was fairly straight-forward since we just blew the dimensions up a bit to fit our grid.

When we'd sketched all the countries with pencil, we started filling them in with paint. I remember how gratifying it felt to see a little color on the map after days of pencil grey gridlines on a bare blue background.

Then we outlined and labeled the countries with black marker. A few curious country names were beget such as "Irag" and "Myannar" but mostly the students labeled everything correctly and fastidiously, putting their routines of fussy notebook management (protractor to underline important words, different colored pens for organizational purposes, correction pens for every misplaced dot of an "i") to work.

Ongka khnyom! My organization :)

And of course, when all was said and done, we left our mark.

My four most dedicated volunteers in front of the completed map

A few things have changed since these final pictures were taken: the plastic covering we nailed to the wall to protect the map is no longer there. This location is very windy (something I didn't foresee being a problem when we first started) so the covering came off as wind billowed under the plastic and pried the nails off the wall. We applied a sealant instead, which gives the map a nice sheen and emboldens the colors.

... And that's that! We're now working on the inside of the library and are in the midst of painting: a bright shade of green my helpers picked out at a home supply store near my market. The four girls pictured above are my most resolute right-hand women, faithfully showing up every day, morning and afternoon, even after weeks of hard work. I would not be nearly as far as I am on this project if it weren't for their help. That's the news for now! Stay tuned for pictures of the inside as soon as things are in a lesser state of chaos. :)