Tuesday, 3 December 2024: Learning about the petroleum industry and oil spills.
Week of November 4: When I was first assigned to the science lab at the beginning of my second week at the School of Hope, the teacher, Eunice (pronounced A-OO- NEES -A in Spanish), asked if I could come up with a simple lab exercise related to work I had done professionally. I thought it over and told her I could tell the students about where gasoline comes from and how oil spills are cleaned up. She liked the idea, so I put together a short PowerPoint presentation with photos from the internet showing oil wells, storage tanks, an oil tanker truck, and a refinery. This was followed by some photos of a bird covered in oil, a stream choked with oil from a spill, and guys in hazmat suits cleaning up oily messes at a well site and a gas station. I wrote out the 5-10 minute presentation and went over it with my Spanish teacher, Oscar, when we had our weekly lesson at a café. As usual, I had made a few grammatical errors which I fixed with his help. ...