Escuelitas, Baños, y Enfermedades

Hola mis lovelies,

I have once again failed at being a loyal blog updater. Maybe every 10ish days is a more feasible goal for me...bah, I´m trying!! :o) I have lots to write about, but I´ll try not to make this too much of a novel.



Last Wednesday and Thursday, the education students went on a trip to visit a couple of rural schools. First, we visited a school in Cangahua that went up to the first year of bachillerato (that´s like the second year of high school for us) and had 440 students. They gave us the most awesome welcome. About 10 of the students dressed in traditional indigenous dress and sang a couple of songs. It was a very humbling experience to see how excited all of the children were to see us there. We returned their welcome by singing them ¨Do Re Mi¨ from The Sound of Music, which we had practiced, full with motions, the entire busride there. Unfortunately, we did not get to spend a lot of time with the kids, but we had a very interesting discussion with the faculty about the challenges of bilingual education.





From there we travelled to a small indigenous community called San Clemente where we stayed the night with indigenous families. This was the part of the trip that I was most nervous about, but turned out to be one of the experiences that I am most thankful for. The community is absolutely breathtaking. Beyond that, the 135 families of the community work together to be completely self sufficient. They have built all of their own homes, raise their own animals (including CUY = guinea pig...a delicacy...so they say), grow corn, potatoes, herbs, grains...everything. We had the opportunity to sit and talk with the dad of the family about life in the community and also helped to prepare the meals (which were by far the best meals I`ve had here). I also experienced some natural medicine! The mom noticed that I was coughing so she warmed about some eucalyptus leaves by the fire and handed them to me to breathe the ¨fumes.¨ Who needs Vick´s Vapor Rub?? :o)

We also visited the school in San Clemente which went from kindergarten to 8th grade and had only 4 classrooms and 4 teachers. It claimed to be a bilingual school (spanish and kichwa) but did not have any bilingual teachers. We definetly did not have to look hard to see the challenges that the face. Despite the challenges, the kids all seemed to be genuinely happy and were very welcoming. Wonderful :o)

I returned to Quito on Thursday to sleep, then travelled to Baños for the weekend with some chicas...photos??

...up before sunrise to go to a mineral bath at the bottom of a waterfall

...at the top of Bella Vista...beautiful hike :o)

Oh AND...I bungee jumped off of a bridge!...I have a video to prove it...but that will have to wait until next time..haha...

After my fabulous weekend, I returned home to be horribly sick on Sunday and could not leave my bed. So I´ve spent the week regaining my energy and working on some pretty intense school stuff...I´ll admit that I may have gotten a LITTLE bit homesick. I feel like that´s an immediate consequence to being sick though :o)

I hope that you all are doing well and enjoying life, I´m thinking of you and sending hugs!

Ciao!

Jessica