Blogs from Otavalo, North, Ecuador, South America - page 11

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

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

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

If you read down my blog, you would have seen that I attended a Spanish language school in Cuenca Ecuador last year (2008). I continued my lessons this year at the Otavalo Spanish Institute (OSI) in, well, Otavalo. Choosing the school was not done with much investigation on my part, my goal was to find a school close to Ibarra where I wanted to fly gliders (see my “Gliding in Ecuador” blogs). My internet search did not find any schools in Ibarra, so I settled on Otavalo, which is about 15 kilometers down the road. I should add that there are schools in Ibarra, it is just that they don't have an internet presence (driving around Ibarra, I saw one with an interesting name “Center Canadiense de Idiomas”). My internet search for Otavalo came up with ... read more

In February 2009, our family, two adults and two children, ages 12 and 9, headed to Ecuador for a week of hiking, biking, and riding in the Andes. We planned to spend six nights north of Quito near Ottavalo at Hacienda Cusin, a 500 year old estate, for six nights, and then spend one night south of Quito in Cotopaxi National Park at Hacienda Hato Verde, a family owned Inn. In Cotopaxi, our plan is to mountain bike down the tallest active volcano in the world. We plan to finish the trip with a day in the old city of Quito and a visit to the Mitad del Mundo ("Middle of the World") or Equatorial monument. We are writing this report as we go. We arrived in Quito early afternoon and were promptly picked up by ... read more