Our ‘Relaxing’ Weekend Away in Mindo:

This weekend we visited the town of Mindo, and not to sound like a broken record, it was AMAZING!  Mindo is a small, quiet, jungle town that is a two hour /$2.50 bus ride away.  We arrived in Mindo on Saturday morning checked into our lovely cabin-hostel in the jungle (that cost only $10 a night, hearty breakfast included) spent some relaxing time in the hammocks and then began our adventures!

Ynez and I went zip-lining and it was exhilarating, breathtaking and incredible!  The zip-line course is located right in the foot-hills of the jungle, the course is 13 lines, takes an hour to complete and costs only $15!  The zip-lines are super-high up across lush, tree-covered valleys and the views are just spectacular.  I did two of the zip-lines up-side down and one super-man styles.  We found out too late that you could bring your camera on the zip-lines, so we have no action shots, but we plan to go again-so next time we shall get some sweet snaps!

We went to a frog lagoon in the evening and went for a night walk to look at some really neat (really tiny) frogs, the tour is called a frog concert because you can hear so many frogs ribbitting.  We were in our cabin in bed under our mosquito nets reading National Geographics from the 1970’s by 10pm and were awoken only briefly twice during the night, first by the Spaniards staying on the floor below us playing guitar and second by the damned noisy rooster outside.

In the morning we went for a hike to a beautiful waterfall and I jumped off a 20 meter cliff! As Blair Hunter will attest to, I am not brave at all when it comes to cliff jumping, at the cabin it takes me 20 minutes to psych myself up to jump off the 4 meter cliff and I often chicken out entirely when it comes to the 9 meter cliff. But I did the 20 meter jump today after only one brief hesitation and it was hella scary, amazing but scary.

All in all another amazing weekend travelling in Ecuador (although it was probably pretty easy to tell this from my excessive use of exclamation points)!

Me in front of our cabin-hostel

View from our hostel

The ladies in our cabin

Ynez and I loving life after completing the zip-line course!

Some guy on one of the zip-lines we did.

Jen of the jungle

Ynez takes the plunge!

Ahhh!

Peaks and Valleys

By some unwritten rule the normal highs and lows of day -to -day life seem to be greatly amplified when travelling or living abroad and this last week was no exception. 

High:

Last weekend we went to Banos and it was beyond incredible; Banos is a small, touristy town that offers a plethora of adventure sports.  It was our first weekend out of Quito in the month or so that we have been in Ecuador and it was a breath of fresh air both literally and figuratively.  Banos is a 4 hour bus ride away and the bus costs only $3.50 each direction, and we were able to find lodging in a great hostel for only $6 a night.  So needless to say we plan to head back to Banos at least once a month.  On Saturday we spent the evening relaxing in the volcano-heated hot springs and then on Sunday morning we went white water rafting!!!  Despite the fact that a large portion of my life has been spent participating in water sports I have never been white water rafting.  The course that we were taken on was a level 4, we spent an hour and a half rafting, we were in 4 person boat and it was just my friends and I and the surrounding wild life was breathtaking!  It was too incredible for words, I loved every minute and I am DEFINILTELY hooked on white water rafting now.  Overall just a marvelous, fantastic weekend!

Low:

On Tuesday I got the gnarly case of the 24 hour stomach flu and barfed my guts out for 24 hours.  Needless to say it is never fun to be sick, but it makes you a very specific type of homesick to be sick away from home.  Luckily my mother not only taught me how to be a big brave dog but also how to combat most common illnesses and with my supplies of; pepto, Gatorade, lots of water, lots of sleep, bananas and a puke bucket I was feeling like a champ and back at school within one day!

High:

I went to my first football match (soccer in North America) this week and it was too much fun.  It was a league game and unfortunately our team lost but nonetheless there was excessive chanting and shouting of curse words, flaming newspaper torches, fireworks, banners, and general revelry.  It was a was a great was to $6.50 on a Wednesday night and I will certainly be attending more games in the future.

High/ Low:

I finally finished doing the placement testing of all of my students and was discouraged to see how wide the spread of speaking / English abilities are in most of my classes.  But in my classes that have been doing group projects students have been collaborating and cooperating to make it work. I had a group of four 9^th grade girls today who transformed a simple exercise where they had to present an English conversation into an elaborate production with carefully home-made props, dramatic characters and plot twist.  It was so great! 

Overall it was a good week and I remain very happy to be here! We are headed out of town again this weekend and I hope to have more fun stories to report!

Beautiful Banos

Babies playing in a tree in a park in Banos.

Jen, Ynez and Callum on the roof of our hostel.

Life is beautiful. (And so is Banos)

Guinea pig an Ecuadorian delicacy

So ready to do it.

"This is a British ship!" 

Given 'er

At the football match. What can I say? We have a good time.

Hooligans

The game behind massive flags brought and hung by fans.

Cheers!

Tales from the Gringo File

I have a few funny stories/ anecdotes from my last week and a half of teaching to share!

The Gringo File:
At the school (and in Ecuador in general) my fellow foreign teachers and I are referred to as 'gringos', which is a slang term that can mean, foreigners, Americans or white people.  This week we were in the office of the principal sorting out some administrative issues with our flights and visas and we noticed that the file that held all of our personal information was labelled 'GRINGOS'.  It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.

Children of the Blitz:
The transport home from the school for students is in 20 passenger vans, there are approximately 30 that leave from the school and deposit children home to various parts of Quito. Attempting to get 600 students into the right vans in a 15 minute window is nothing short of a chaotic/ heroic feat, made more impressive by the fact that about one third of the students are under the age 8.  The first few days were a kerfuffle of tiny vaguely confused/ upset looking children with names tags around their necks being frantically dragged around the pick up area by various adults.  One of the teachers equated this spectacle of child transportation to the children of England being evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz of London during World War II.  

Children of the Blitz.

"Habla Ingles":
During one of my first classes with my grade 6's I was asking my students what they thought some of the rules in the classroom should be and one girl raised her hand and said "habla ingles" which means speak in English in Spanish.  Ah the irony.

Whack- a- mole:
My students have been writing down interesting facts about themselves and then presenting another student to the class.  Overall this has been a useful exercise, but one issue has been getting the class to remain quiet when other students are speaking.  I have found that it is most helpful and least disruptive to go and stand beside the students who are talking, but this results in students on the other side of the class starting to talk resulting in a sort of whack- a - mole effect in my movement around the classroom.

Cultural Similarities and Differences:
I have been doing diagnostic testing with my students to test their English speaking abilities, to do this I have been doing short five question interviews with each of my students.  One of my questions is "what are you scared of?" and at least a dozen of my students have answered that they are afraid of butterflies, which I neither understand nor can I explain.  Another of my questions is "what are three things you love?" and many of my students have answered that one of the things they love is the band One Direction.  This has lead to a rule that I had to institute during summer kayak camps in Winnipeg and that is: no excessive discussion/ fact giving about the band One Direction.  One of the more memorable answers I got to the question name three things you love was "Justin Bieber, One Direction and Jesus".

In additional good news, I had my first Spanish lesson yesterday, my fellow teachers and I placed 3rd in a trivia contest at our local Irish pub and we are leaving for a weekend in Montanita on Friday night!

Ciao!

First Week Photos

All dressed up on our first day of school.

Vice Principal Callum at the welcome ceremony for the little kids.

The little ones singing the national anthem.

One of my 7th grade classes.

Lunch time football

Mad skills even with food in both hands.

Teacher Megan

Munchkins waiting for the bus.

This doesn't even begin to capture the chaos of bus pick up at the end of the day.

Sigh of Relief

Only good news to report here!  (Sorry I have been lagging in my updates our internet has been strange/ slow/ cutting in and out the last few days).  My first week of teaching has been just excellent, the students are really great (they are definitely going to keep me on my toes though) and I am really looking forward to all the fun things I am going to be able to do with them!

I teach fifth through ninth grade speaking classes and teach a total of 13 classes of kids.  So far I have met 9 of the groups of students that I will be teaching and only one has given me real problems.  The students are definitely very loud and you have to utilize crowd control tactics at all times to maintain order in the classroom but many of them are eager to learn and practice English so that is just great.

After all of the worry and confusion of training and the lead up to teaching, it felt so refreshing to be back in front of a class and to remember how much I love teaching.  I am very excited to have my own class and to be in charge of their curriculum and testing.

My aunt Laura is a professor of education at the University of Winnipeg and she suggested to me that I bring in a camera for the first few days of classes and take a picture of each student with their name so that I am able to study their names at home.  I took her advice and have been studying my students faces and names.  I teach over 250 students and without this trick I know it would be next to impossible to get all the names down in the reasonable amount of time.

Additional good news; the other teachers and I have been going to the park together to run on the track for the last 3 nights and I signed up for my first Spanish class on Tuesday; look at me being all grown up and responsible.  I will report more about my first week later and I promise to include of me in my less than appealing uniform.  But for now I will leave you with a few pictures of my students!

Odalys

Paula

Kerim

Kamila

Sebastian

Joshua

Ariana 

Dylan

False Start (First Day Jitters Round 2):

Only half of the students began classes today and of those who began I only taught one class first thing in the morning and there was a welcome assembly for the first period so it turns out I will teach my first class tomorrow.  But being at the school and seeing the students and other teachers helped calm me down and made me realize that we are all in the same boat and that you just gotta fake it till you make it. 

Another positive is that we have had our zillionth session at the tailors tonight and my uniform is now as close to fitting me as it is going to get.  I will at least be wearing my own shirt tomorrow and not one belonging to someone much smaller than myself and can strike popping a blouse button off my list of concerns.

I'm ready to do this dang thing!

First Day Jitters

Tomorrow is our first day of teaching classes and I am feeling excited/ nervous, we have had about a week and a half of training at William Caxton College. The school is a modern, well maintained building and all of the teachers and administrators have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome and to help us in any way possible.

That being said we have been warned and warned again about the necessity for strict discipline within the classroom as the students are reported to be loud, overtly-rambunctious and frankly a tad wild.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little bit worried about this but in the words of my very wise Mother “I’m a big brave dog”.  All I can do is prepare as much as possible, treat my students with the respect I hope for in return and try my very hardest.  Either way it will be an adventure and a challenge.

Cotopaxi

Last Sunday we went on a day trip to Cotopaxi; which is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and it is the second highest summit in Ecuador, reaching a height of 5,897 m.  We were driven from Quito and part way up the volcano to the height of 4300m.  From there we did about an hour hike to the lodge in the side of the volcano which is at about 4800m and then were provided with mountain bikes to bike downhill about 15 kms.  It was an absolutely incredible day, the views from the volcano were stunning and like nothing else I have ever seen in my life. 

I must admit that the hike was a lot harder for harder for me than it should have been as I was still a little tuckered out from the festivities of Friday night.  It was colder than stink on the side of the mountain; luckily being Canadian I was properly prepared for the cold weather and had a toque, face warmer and lined mittens; my friends were not as prepared and certainly suffered for it. 

The out of this world views inspired me to make more than a few Lord of the Rings references during the hike up and decent down.  On the ride down the mountain nearest the top it was snowing/ sleeting/ freezing rain sideways and directly into my eyes to the extent that my visibility was almost 0%.  But the further down the volcano you rode visibility steadily increased and at one point when the sun came out and I was confronted with a particularly stunning view I experienced a moment of pure joy where I felt truly blessed that my life had lead me to this place and this moment in time. (I had the good sense not to tell my Mother that we were hiking up and biking down a volcano until after I had completed it safely as I know she wouldn’t have appreciated the stress of worrying about another child of hers having a bike crash)

My fellow teachers and I hope to rent gear and a guide and make the overnight trek to the summit of Cotopaxi at some point during our time in Ecuador.

The hike up Cotopaxi was one of my best adventures so far in Ecuador and I look forward to doing it again if and when any of my friends and family come and visit.  Here are some of my pictures from the day: 

Trek to Mordor (aka the top of Cotopaxi)

Everyone teases me for being "so Canadian" so I figure I might as well rep it.

In front of the lodge.

In front of Cotopaxi after the bike ride down.

Our sweet bikes.