This is gonna be a doozy

Holy long time, Batman!!

 (left: JUICE! It´s a big deal here. I wish I had taken a pic of the menu...sigh)

Sorry, kids.  Life just swept me away down here on the equator.  I just finished up the orientation portion of this experience on Friday.  It has been a long, but fruitful month. Lots of info flying at me, lots of getting to know Quito and people and families.  The focus of the last two weeks has been practice teaching which was a great learning tool for what to expect in the next year.  We offered a free two-week English course at a local school in Quito.  The volunteers then worked in teaching groups of three.  The first and last days were group teaching days, then in between we each took a couple of individual teaching days.  I don´t know if that made any sense.  Long story short: I was responsible for three days of lesson planning and teaching for a 2 hour long class in Basic English.  It is strongly recommended that we don´t use any Spanish even for the beginning students.  This makes communication more......interesting.  And def. more fulfilling.  Lots of hand gestures, cognates, and encouragement so the students feel safe to test drive the language even if they make mistakes.

 So for those three days of individual teaching, I woke up at 5am, got ready, made sure I had time to eat breakfast (so that my host mom wouldn´t freak out...no literally, one day the other volunteer in my house rushed out bc she was late and that´s all I heard about that evening when I got home ¨oh, pobrecita! Christine didn´t eat breakfast this morning!! She didn´t even drink her juice OR coffee!! Que lastima! She should have taken some bread with her! Oh my little girl!¨ etc., etc.  Juice, by the way, is made fresh daily with allll sorts of fruits. It is a way of life.  A blender comes standard with every house, I´m pretty sure.) I then took the bus at 6 or 6:15, arrived at the school around 6:40 and started class at 7.   This schedule isn´t too terrible, but the kicker was then having orientation all day after class and then going out at night.  The latter might have been a bit more optional, but ya know...ya kinda gotta.  Bonding with everyone and all.

Entonces.... Ah yes!  There has been some maneuvering going on down here with my placement site.  After a somewhat awkward weekend trip to Portoviejo and the subsequent discussion with my site directors, I was offered the opportunity to stay in Quito for the rest of the year.  I jumped on this opportunity.  Porto wasn´t terrible, persay, but it wasn´t ideal for me.  The family claimed they didn´t know I was coming during my weekend visit.  Then they didn´t really offer me dinner the first night.  The father was away ¨on business¨and when he returned there may or may not have been some tension with the wife.  All I know is that they didn´t sleep in the same room and I´m not really sure he stayed at all.  However, their kids were adorable.  Two 6 year old twin boys who loved playing soccer with me and taking pictures with my digital camera.  The decision to stay in Quito wasn´t the easiest, but at the end of the day, I´m really glad I´m staying.  There is so much more diversity and things to do here.

So now that Quito is my reality, I´ve moved into my permanent host family for the year.  They are amazing! Their names are Daniel and Diego. They have been together for six years and share the apartment with their dog, Teddy.  I have my own room, my own bathroom and the internet! (hence this long ass post) There are a handful of other volunteers within a five minute drive from my place and I´ll have about a 20-30 minute commute to work in the mornings.  

Since I won´t start teaching until October 20th, here is my list of things to do:

Buy a guitar

Day trip to Otavalo, the biggest open air artisan market in Latin America

Go to a DVD store where you can score movies for about a buck and buy the crap out of it

Check out Banos for a weekend,  a really fun town that offers a plethora of outdoor adventure-type activities like horseback riding, canopy gliding (?), hiking, etc.

Go shopping.  Since I packed for coastal weather, I think I might need to purchase different attire.

Oh and plan a Halloween party.  Apparently on Oct. 31st there is going to be a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local theatre.  This should clearly be followed by a costume party. I´m stoked.

Ah I´m sure there´s more but I can´t type any more and I´m sure your eyes are tired.

Peace and Love,

C