If anyone wants to buy a child a book for Christmas, let me know! Every day we have a study hall for kids in the school who had a problem with getting their homework done for class last year. In reality, these kids just don't have a good environment at home to do their work - it's not a problem of intelligence. They are all really smart and finish their homework sometimes within 15 minutes. I help at this study hall as often as I can - two days a week - and what we really need for this study hall [View Full Entry]

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MONDAY: Today I had my first parent-teacher conference. I never thought I’d be able to do it in Spanish, at least this soon, but I did and I definitely got my point across exactly how I wanted to. This girl missed three homeworks last week and three homeworks the week before. I really don’t understand how this is possible when she is coming to study hour every single night. Then, she didn’t come to our study hour last Thursday, so all of this combined led to the mandatory parent-teacher conference. She wasn’t allowed to come to school on Friday until our [View Full Entry]

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Today I had a huge struggle with the girl I work with in special education/tutoring. She ALWAYS says ‘no puedo, no puedo, no puedo’ (I can’t) over and over again every single class. She rarely ever wants to work. It takes all of my energy and patience to get her to work. It’s easier to get her to work for math, but when it comes to Spanish and learning how to read, she just shuts down. I was giving her a spelling bee today, and these were words that she definitely knows how to spell. We reviewed them first and then [View Full Entry]

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Today I went to a mini-retreat, a day of discernment, with 56 colegio (middle school grades, but ages 14-20) kids as well as some young leaders of the Center, meaning they graduated and now work there or help out. 56! I couldn’t believe it! This was an optional day of discernment - and it’s their only free day a week (because everyone works on Saturday)! One thing that struck me during the ice breaker was that one of the basic questions you ask people here in colegio is “what is your profession?” During their first year of colegio (SEVENTH GRADE), they [View Full Entry]

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My primary job here is to love these kids (and their parents) unconditionally. Yes, I also am here to teach English and computers and whatever else, but first and foremost, I am here to love. And this is what Padre and Madre have kind of told us, in a sort of sneaky way. Every year, the Center has a new group of volunteers, sometimes they have a few volunteers stay for two years, and every year, they trust this group of recent graduates from college to teach when most of them have never taught before. Madre and Padre don’t expect us [View Full Entry]

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Today for some reason (well, the Ecuadorian teachers were having some kind of seminario) there was no school, but we still were supposed to have English so we had to be at both schools like normal. Well, I commuted to the school downtown in the morning, and for English with the girls, I joined two other classes to watch Lilo and Stitch in Spanish. Then, we were supposed to have girls program, but we had a huge Halloween party with all the kids. There was music, one piñata for each kids, face painting… It was so refreshing to sing and dance [View Full Entry]

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Tonight I had a mother tell me straight to my face that she was going to hit her child because of her performance in school. This colegio (7th grade) girl is doing really poorly - she missed 3 homeworks this week and last week, which is ridiculous - BUT hitting isn’t going to solve anything. I just don’t know how to react to this. I told her to please not hit her kid - it’s not going to help her, but I am 99% sure that she is going to. After the mom left, the girl told me that her mom [View Full Entry]

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I have been out of the country for 2 ½ months, and I have been teaching for a month and a half…CRAZY! This has been such a long week. It has been really tough for all the volunteers, though I’m not exactly sure why. I feel like there was a lot of drama with my students this week (I had to kick 5 students out of one of my classes before I even got to class) and then with that one family Thursday night, and I’m not sleeping as much as I need to, but there really isn’t time at night. [View Full Entry]

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Tonight was so surreal. I was playing soccer with some boys before I went to my hora de estudios (study hour) with colegio, and then I saw this woman stumble out of the Comodor (dining area), and I saw that it was the mother of the family that I know the best. She was sobbing hysterically and looked like she was in a lot of pain, so I asked her what was wrong. I didn’t really understand her answer, but she had fallen to the ground at this point, so I ran to get the doctor, who thankfully had not left [View Full Entry]

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This weekend, all 14 volunteers traveled to Baños. It was the celebration of Guayaquil (a major city in Ecuador) on Friday, so we had a 3 day weekend. I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty nice that even Quito gets to celebrate the founding of Guayaquil. I actually almost didn’t go this weekend because I was extremely sick all last week with a cold, but I taught through it so I wasn’t getting any better. I had gone to the doctor’s twice for different medications so I could only hope that the last batch of meds would work and I could enjoy [View Full Entry]

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