Teaching in Ecuador: 2nd Weekend/Monday at Zambiza

Another great weekend here in Ecuador. Friday night we went for Mexican food which was delicious. After that I was very happy to see Detroit get a big win thanks to Winnipeg boy Darren Helm. Saturday we headed out to Otavalo Ecuador, a city with a huge Saturday market. At the market we were all able to make a few purchases and barter with the shop owners. I bought a really cool chess set, which depicts the Inca tribe vs. the Spanish settlers. We also saw a large number of people begging for money. Poverty is a part of the world everywhere you go, and is very common in Ecuador. On our way home from Otavalo our driver (Oswaldo) and his son (Andreas) had a surprise planned for us. We stopped the van at the centre of the world (the equator!). This spot was determined using GPS and shows up as (0, 0, 0) on a GPS. At the equator we posed with different body parts on either side of the world and walked along the equator to feel the effect of gravity on each hemisphere. Oswaldo also showed us a gravity trick which makes it easy to resist force on one side of the equator but difficult to resist force on the other side (due to a decreased force of gravity). This was really neat and had us all disbelieving until we tried it ourselves. On the van ride home our group sang a lot of songs, from "Hey Jude" to "Afternoon Delight" and almost every song in between. You know it is a special group when every member is singing along to "Hakunah Matata". Sunday was a nice, refreshing day. We played sports outside, did yoga on the rooftop, and relaxed. In the evening we all worked on some lesson plans and I was also able to enjoy another Detroit win. The weekend left me feeling prepared and excited for the upcoming week in the schools.

Monday is a day without English or Physical Education at Zambiza. For this reason I have come to expect Mondays to be a tough day. This Monday (May 9th) however was a very inspiring day. In math Sara and I were able to assist the students as they worked through problems. They were working on factoring equations and using the quadratic formula to solve for a variable. Next period was biology and this was purely observation. Before lunch Sara and I took a prep period to eat lunch and prep lessons. At lunch we taught the kids how to play handball. Sara and I played with the students and they all seemed to have a great time. All of the students have a positive attitude and for the most part they all participate and have fun. This has made teaching at Zambiza a great experience. After lunch Sara and I observed a computer programming class. The students were working on a Mother's Day website. We walked around the class talking to students about our weekends, our mothers, presents we gave to our mothers and our weekend at Otavalo. When the class was over most of the students left to head to their next class. Two students stayed behind and called Sara and I over to their computer. They wanted to show us a separate web page they had made. It said "To Sara and Justin because we love them", and it had a picture of roses and a heart. Sara and I were very happy to see this and we hugged the students then headed up to our next class. During this class their was a test, which half 0f the students wrote while half of the students studied in the hallway. We sat out in the hallway and the students asked us a lot of questions. They asked us about our money, politics, dating situations and favourite foods. We were able to talk and joke around with the students for quite awhile which was really great for us to get to know all of the students better, as well as for the students getting to know us better.

After our day at Zambiza finished Sara and I met up with Dana and Andrew at Inca campus. Here we helped teach the accelerated English class (for students who previously dropped out of school). We made paper fortune tellers with the students. We instructed the students to write in questions for each flap and use these fortune tellers to practice English. This class is more rowdy and off task, but also would seem to need us for motivation more than the regular classes do. We finished the day off by playing volleyball with a couple of these students. Our day finally was over at 4:30 pm (making it about a 10 hour day for us in the schools). The time spent is definitely worth it, and I am enjoying meeting and interacting with all of the students here in Quito.