Hola todos!

It has been a while since my last post. My deepest apologies! At this point, I now have two weeks of teaching experience under my belt. A typical day for me goes as follows:

I wake up around 8:30 or 9am. My beautiful morning personality and bead-head wanders out towards the kitchen where I make coffee and eat breakfast with my family. Around 9:30 or 10 I look through my lesson plan for that day and make sure I have all the materials I need, or have at least saved them to my flash drive. Around noon or 12:30 I leave the house and head towards the bus stop. Forty minutes to an hour later I arrive at work. I teach two classes per day, one at 2pm and the second at 4pm. Both classes are the same level: Intermediate I. Half the class is present at around 5 after the hour, and most of the class is there by 10 after. The few stragglers who show up after this are marked absent. Sorry, Charlie. What I hadn't anticipated was having to teach high school students. Most of my students are between 15 and 17. "Was I like that when I was 15?!" I wonder silently to myself. "Of course not!" comes the automatic reply. When I finish my last class at 6, I usually wander down to the teacher's office and either grade homework or start planning for the next day(s). This is because at 6pm traffic is horrible and it would take me over an hour to get home if I left then. I like to think I'm saving time by staying. This also gives me the chance to chat it up with other teachers. One particular evening, I met a guy named Scott whose grandmother is from the same town that my grandmother is from! Thats right...the Freeport Pretzels! Small world...who doesn't love those connections?! Finally, after getting home in the evening, I eat dinner, plan a bit more, maybe watch a movie or Skype it up a bit...then I'm off to bed around midnight or 1am.

Pretty sweet schedule, huh? I'm not complaining!

The reason I have time to update my blog at this particular moment is because we have a 4 day weekend this weekend. While Halloween is tomorrow, the real reason for this extra time off is a Latin American holiday called Dia de los Difuntos. Those who participated in Spanish Club in high school may be more familiar with the phrasology, Dia de lost Muertos. As for myself, I will be watching Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local indy theatre here in Quito, then after the show heading to a "suburb" of Quito called Cumbaya (pronouced exactly like Kumbaya, the song). My costume this year, you might ask? Well, you'll just have to wait for the pictures....I will say, however, that I'm not a bird, nor a plane...



pic: Iguana Park in Guayaquil. Just a bunch of iguanas hanging out. In a park.