Added photos to the past 5 or so entries... starting with Día de la Bandera. Also Baños, Cotapaxi, and some school ones. Finally! Enjoy...... read more

This past week I taught science instead of just math and syllables! Maya and I did body parts together with the first and second graders on Wednesday. For one of the activities we had them color body parts on paper, cut them out, and then they had to tape them on the parts of their bodies that matched. So we had a bunch of kids running around with bits of paper taped all over them. It was really cute!!! Thursday I did the circle of life, which for second graders consists of birth, growing, reproduction, and death. Each kid made a Book of Life with one stage on each page. I brought up a stapler to put the books together. It was the first time any of them had seen a stapler so it was like ... read more

I'm working with the second graders now instead of first. A little more challenging, and I actually have to have more stuff planned because I can't just take them outside to play a game to fill up time. They actually have to study. I do try to include fun stuff too though. This week was my first week. Lucila only gave me reading (syllables) and math to teach. For the whole week. No science or social studies or anything. Maya (who's teaching the first graders) and I decided we would put our kids together and add in our own sciences: one morning of natural science and one of social science a week. Wednesday we talked about families and communities and made family flowers with the names of the kids' parents, grandparents, and siblings on the petals ... read more

So one day when we got to school the kids had a fire going in a cardboard box off to the side of the school. It was a cold cloudy drizzly day so it made sense to warm up but still, it's school so we weren't sure it was allowed. Only in Ecuador would we even consider that maybe it's allowed. We checked with Lucila and she said it was definitely not allowed. So we had to go break up the party. Nicole stomped on it to put it out but then the kids all ran away with it. It wasn't completely out and it quickly reignited. Of course after that they wouldn't let us get close enough to put it out so we ended up chasing them before cornering them and disposing of the box. ... read more

This past weekend Elysia, Katie, Kelsey, and I went to Baños, 6 hours south of Otavalo. Friday night we went out in Otavalo to say goodbye to Matt, Lalita, and Kate who left Saturday morning. We left at 7:30 Saturday morning (February 27) and got to Baños around 1:30. We switched buses in Quito, but there are so many buses going all the time to Baños that we didn't have to wait at all. At the ticket booths in Quito everyone was competing for our business. Even while we were in the process of buying tickets at one window, the people at the next window were telling us we should buy from them instead. When we got to Baños we found our hostel, talked to some tourist information people, and found lunch. Baños is definitely a ... read more

So it's Carnaval here (February 23-24), which in Ecuador basically means that it's a nation-wide massive water/foam/flour fight constantly. Seriously, before there was some danger of getting sprayed, but now if you leave your house you're going to get foamed or wet. Ecuador is supposedly the only country that celebrates in this way and I definitely think we need to come up with some holiday in the States that involves the same activities. Not even joking. It's so much fun! Monday (23) Nicole, Elysia, George, Kate, Avive, and I went to Peguche waterfall, the center of the fun in Otavalo. The walk there was half the excitement. Constant battles with other pedestrians and occasional truck-fulls of teenagers with buckets of water and water ballons. We went armed with foam so we were able to retaliate. By ... read more