MINDO!!!

So this one will be long, I am just warning everyone but it is worth the read!!

Last Friday after teaching we were off to Mindo, which turns out to be about 2 hours of windy roads on the side of a mountain, my stomach did not like the ride too much but the scenery made up for the windy ride. There was also a dvd player in the van we took so we watched a movie on the way as well!

When we got to Mindo it was already about 630 so just in time for dinner, the humidity in Mindo is a lot stronger than in Quito, so that took some adjusting to as well! We walked down the main road of Quito and found a nice little restaurant to have dinner at. Steak for $10 and a 750ml beer for $1.50..my kind of meal!! After dinner some of the group went out to enjoy the nightlife but I was very tired from the week so just headed back to the hotel!

Saturday morning is when all the fun began, and all my fears and boundaries flew out the window! We walked to a local adventure information shop to find out prices on a few different activities! All of us were thinking of only doing one or two activities but we ended up signing up for 3 different adventures!!

The first up was ziplining! Man was I scared! I have never done anything that crazy filled with adventure but I was looking forward to taking a risk! So we all get our harnesses and our short instructional session and then we were off! So we climb to the dock where the guide clips us on to the cable and then we fly across the jungle! I was so nervous for my first go, the tour guide only spoke Spanish and after telling him I was nervous, he laughed and told me I'll have fun and then pushed me and I was flying! I had no time at all to change my mind or get more scared! After the first zipline I was all shaky but I was ready for the next 12! After a few more lines the guides gave us an option to do a more risky stunt with them on the line. Being in Mindo already taking a risk, I couldn't say no! So I did the "superwoman" one and was cliped in on my back and was free flying across the jungle, it was so fun!! Lots of walking through the jungle and 13 ziplines later we were done our first of 3 adventures!!

Next up was tubing..which turned out to not be as calming as we thought it would be. We were told that the rapid season was over we were all still excited to have a calming ride down the river. We got to the site and look at the river and it did not look calm at all! We suit up and hop in the tubes! After about 3 seconds in the tubes it felt like we were white water rafting with tubes, our two guides were just kneeling on the edge of the tubes and not even worried, here are the four of us gripping on for our lives because if we didn't we would have flew off the tube! I took a couple pictures but I was too worried about flying off that I couldn't take anymore! I screamed a lot on this ride and was laughing the whole time so after the 15 minutes of fun I was happy to be on land again!!!

Last adventure for the day was canyoning! It is different than some places, here is it repelling down waterfalls. Interesting story to go with this one! We were driving with three tour guides and literally in the middle of no where on a gravel road the van stops and they say that we are here, even though all of us are looking at each other thinking something isn't right, we get out. We are now standing in the middle of no where with our guides and they tell us that we need to walk for 20 minutes to get to the site, so we start walking! A few of us are thinking this seems similar to scenes from scary movies but we keep going! So 20 minutes of basically climbing right up a mountain we arrive at the top of a waterfall! I was quite nervous to do this and I wasn't even sure if I knew how to repel down the waterfall! So again our instruction session was about 3 minutes long with the tour guide saying "this is how you stop, this is how you go and keep your legs straight" So a few people go and then it is my turn, it is very scary but I manage to get down the first of three waterfalls and I am so happy! I got down all three and then we had a few minutes to enjoy the view and take some photos by the waterfall.

We are now done our adventures for the day and head back to the hotel. We walked to a place to go watch a "frog concert" and it was quite cool. There are many different kinds of frogs and vegetation at this place and as you walk through the path all you can hear is many different sounds of the frogs which was very cool! We also had an english speaking tour guide with us that made the walk much better! As we were walking back he told us he does bird watching in the mornings and told us if we wanted to go we could meet up with him.

We all enjoyed some pizza later and some of the group went out for the night, I stayed back because I was falling asleep at the pizza place!

The next morning we were up bright and early for bird watching, this is not usually my kind of thing but I figured since I am in Mindo I will not get this opportunity again. We went on a 4 hour walk and did not see that many birds but our guide gave us a very detailed tour of the jungle we were walking through! We climbed straight down the mountain and learned a lot about the vegetation and animals that live in the jungle!

Some fun facts for all you readers:

- butterfly's fly at different levels of the atmosphere to protect themselves and that all butterflies are poisonous

-lizards cannot run and breath at the same time so that is why you seem them run a little bit and then stop quickly

-giraffes horns are fused to their skull, unlike other animals that have horns

-there are a few more but they are escaping me at the moment!

After this we headed back to Quito to relax before our last week of school!!!

thanks for reading!

We're good at surprises!

So I have not blogged in quite sometime, sorry for everyone who has been checking and there has been nothing new!
So I have quite a few posts coming in the next few days but I will try to keep them relatively short!

So Meghan who is our program facilitator could not stay for the whole length of the program becuase of work in Winnipeg. Since the second week the group decided that we would have a nice dinner for Meghan on her final night in Quito. Then we decided that it would be fun to make it a surprise! We we're going to Mindo for her final weekend here so we had to plan it for Thursday!

So we talked to the hotel staff to get them in on the surprise, and still Meghan had no idea... we went shopping on Wednesday night to buy tons of food for the BBQ that we were going to have on our rooftop!

Thursday rolled around, and Blair's job was to keep Meghan occupied until 6pm and then bring her up to the roof. We started prepping around 3 and as the afternoon went on we kept coming up with neat ideas, including putting the flowers we bought her in 10 empty beer bottles, compliments of the boys! Also we have all been making the fortune teller crafts with our students so we made those as centerpieces and inside we put memorable quotes from our trip.

So we all headed up to the roof and we waiting for her to walk through the door right at 6, but they must have been on Quito time becuase they were late!!

Around 625 I get a call from Meghan asking where we all were, me panicing thinking we're busted I respond with "uummm we are on the roof having drinks, you should come" Meghan sounding extremely confused says she will be right up...

So now Carlos has arrived and has to make up a reason why he has randomly showed up on a Thursday night, but he did well bluffing!!

So 630 Meghan walks through the door of the rooftop and we all scream SUPPLIES (inside joke) and instantly she has a smile on her face and we are all in an amazing mood because all of our work and planning has paid off.

We shared some tears of happiness and laughs of all our planning and mishaps and then enjoyed an incredibly delicious dinner!

It was sad that that was our last full night at the hotel with Meghan but it was a great time to show our thanks for all of her work that she has put into this trip, also I think this dinner wins the most toasts in history!

Next up MINDO where I pushed many boundaries and had a day filled with tons of adventure activities!!

Thanks for reading :)

Market Madness and the Middle of the World!!

So my title basically sums up my weekend, but naturally I am choosing to give you lovely readers the extended version!!

So we'll start with Friday, in celebration of finishing a week at the schools we went to a Taco place for dinner. It was very good, but unfortunately one of our group members got sick afterwards and was unable to come to the markets the next day.. :(

Saturday morning we got to sleep in, meaning wake up at 7!! We were off to the markets with our driver Oswaldo and his son Andreas. We made a couple stops along the way and saw some very pretty sights!
We arrived in Otavalo which is a small town about 2 hours outside of Quito! There were little shops everywhere and so much to take in!! For the first little bit we just walked around looking at what all the markets had to offer, then the shopping started! I had a couple things in mind that I really wanted and some prices I was willing to pay. One thing was an alpaca wool sweater, they are really awesome! So we stop at one market stand and a few of us were wanting to get one so I sent one of the guys on a wild goose chase to get me my size and the colours I wanted and he asked $17 for it and Oswaldo starting talking to him in spanish and was like no no no too much you are getting a lot of business, so I ended up getting it for $13!! which was a great deal in my mind! I also got some smaller things all for a great deal, and spent a lot less in the markets than I thought!! THEN we went to the leather market, I am not usually a girl who loves leather but I have been wanting a good leather jacket for a while now, so we walked into a few shops before I found this one I loved, it was $75 which apparently is super inexpensive for real genuine leather, so I splurged and got it!! and then we continued to walk around before heading back to Quito.
That was not the last stop though!! Oswaldo and his son had a surprise in mind!! We stop and Andreas says we are at the MIDDLE OF THE WORLD!!! they took us to the Equator!!! This is the official equator, as there is one near Quito but on GPS the reading at this spot is 0,0,0! So here we are all standing on this line on both the northern hemisphere and southern. And Oswaldo tells us about all these gravity tricks that we can do on either side and it was literally mind blowing!! I can't explain the tricks on here but when I get back I will explain what they were!!
The drive home was filled with us all singing because there was no radio, we all enjoyed it, I feel a little bad for what Oswaldo and Andreas were thinking!

We were all beat and after hearing all about Blair's trip to Nepal last year, we all headed to bed!

Sunday was a very relaxing day, Sara, Jen and I went for a 2 hour walk and then we all just took it easy for the night!!

Today was a good day at school! This coming weekend we are going to Mindo which will be full of fun so stay tuned!!

Much love,
Dana

ps: Pictures will be posted this week I promise!!

Primero Semana en las escuelas!!

First week in the schools!!!

I would say a success!!! I was very nervous on Sunday night preparing for school on Monday and didn't get the best sleep but Monday morning at 530am rolled around rather quickly and my nerves were pumping! We got the the school and upon arrival the reality of how big the language barriers were going to effect me set in. The principal at my school cannot speak any English so that is a challenge in itself. We observed a few classes and then had our 30 min break. we brought a volleyball and the some students got involved in playing keep up. I had English class in the afternoon and the teacher asked us to lead the class, shockingly I wasn't even nervous at all, even though I had 40 high school Spanish students staring at me! I helped with their sentence structure and pronunciation and that hour and a half flew by. I came home after what seemed like a very long day, and part of me was frustrated. Parts of the day went a lot better than I anticipated but other parts were incredibly frustrating, but I took everything and knew I would learn from it. I took the night to relax and reflect on the day!
Tuesday was a better day, again just some observing and trying to help the students as much as I could and then in English I lead the class again reading a small paragraph and picking out students for potential mentors and also some that need a bit of extra help!
Wednesday was a good break out day for the students, at the end of class they came up to me and wanted to ask me a bunch of questions, I felt really good that this happened because they were very shy the first couple of days! After the first 2 classes my teaching partner and I went to a soccer competition at a local park. We rode the bus for the first time, which is free (you just leave the bus driver a tip at the front) and very packed! It was fun to watch some students play soccer, especially to see the girls getting out there and playing. And then I joined in a recreational game with some students and one teacher! We cabbed back to our hotel and just had another relaxing evening!
Thursday was a very eventful day! English was in the morning so the class was broken into small groups and it was a lot better to work in smaller groups helping the students review for an upcoming quiz. Then we had gym and since the area in the school is too small to do anything we walked to a park about 15 minutes away, we played some handball with the students and then some volleyball. Then we walked back for lunch where we all scarfed down a lunch and then it was gym again! So we walked back to the park and played volleyball, freeze tag and handball. I love seeing these kids being so active because they have such limited gym time and from what I observed they aren't that active in their usual gym classes. We walked back and then I went to observe the Geography class, which turned into Sara and I teaching a class on Canadian Geo...they seemed to like it and the teacher said she would like us to do more things on Canada with them in the next couple weeks we are here! I got a little too much sun this day but after drinking lots of water and sleep I was feeling much better!
anndd today... the greatest day yet, a bit hard but very rewarding! We had Gym, where we played dodgeball which was tons of fun and then had English, where we did another small group set up and helped the kids with their pronunciation! Then we had a 2 class spare so the 4 of us that were at this school today just spoke with the English teacher and she had a lot of questions about universities in Canada along with the country itself. It was really nice to be able to talk to the teacher and bond with her! At break we played more volleyball and the kids didn't want to go back to class they were having so much fun! After break the teachers all had a staff meeting for all four of us teach one class so it was a bit nerve racking but it went great! The last period we tried to teach the kids the boot scoot n' boogie and it went over decently, some kids caught on, other didn't but they all had a good time! We got off at noon and came back to have some relaxing time on the rooftop!!
Tonight we are going out for dinner as a group which should be a lot of fun!!
Tomorrow we are heading to Otavalo which is 2 hours away and full of markets, I can't wait!!

I can't believe a week has gone by already, I am still livin' up every moment and lovin' Quito!!

Skype and Facebook have been saviors for keeping in contact with loved ones!! I miss you all!!

Adios asta pronto!!
:)

The Weekend Continues...

So before I start on Saturdays adventures, I left out one thing that happened on Friday night...more you may ask..it surprises me too ;) So after we come home from all of the adventures we run up to our rooftop (8 flights in this altitude is not easy) to see the last 3 songs of the Miley Cyrus concert, as I mentioned in my first post, I am not the biggest fan but it was pretty epic to be able to see a Miley Cyrus concert, from a rooftop, in Quito. Ok now all of Fridays events have been shared!

SATURDAY:
So today was our visit to the old city. It is downtown Quito, and it's full of old buildings and cathedrals. The first stop was the Basillica which is an old, beautiful cathedral right in the middle of the city. It is really big, and looks waayy bigger when you are beside it compared to pictures or from other parts of this city. So we have our tourist time taking photos on the outside of it and then buy our $2 ticket and head in! We walk up to the first section where it over looks the inside of the cathedral..very pretty. **keep in mind that walking up stairs in Quito is tough, I would compare walking up 4 flights of stairs here to running up 5 flights of stairs at home** then we walked up more stairs to the part of the Basicilla where you can go on the outside of its towers. but first we need to cross this wooden bridge that seems like it goes on forever. Of course we send the guys out first..just in case...crossing it was incredibly scary for me, as I do not like unstable structures..but I got across safely, as did everyone else. But then its not over, we need to climb up this mesh set of stairs which is so steep and awkward..again, I was very scared. after getting to the top it is very rewarding to see the view and the outside structure of the building, worth the pounding heart for 10 minutes. Going down and back wasn't as bad but still not my favourite feeling. Then we climbed more to the clock tower which was cool to be inside of the clock. and then finally to the bell tower, I couldn't reach the bell but seeing it was super amazing!! Then we got to go all the way back down, which is much much easier!
We kept walking around all of downtown and seeing different shops and the culture and then ate at a small patio restaurant which had delicious food! Then came the ever expected rain..but did I bring my rain jacket, of course not. So I bought a $3 umbrella, which has proven to be my best purchase thus far! By the time late afternoon rolled around we were beat and realized that we had been walking for about 6 hours...it did not feel like that but I am sure my legs disagree!
We went to a restaurant called La Boca del Lobo, which translates to "the wolfs mouth". Inside of the restaurant there is a tree which makes it super cool! This was my day to try different foods it seemed! I tried cuy (which is guinea pig..sorry if this grosses people out!!) it tasted like taco meat in pastry (again sorry if I just ruined tacos for anyone), then I tried mussels and salmon and bought a dish that I would never even think to buy in Canada. The drinks here are also amazing! The pina colada was made with real coconut and pineapple and my daiquiri was made with real strawberries, definitely something that we don't get at most restaurants in Winnipeg!
Then off to bed!

SUNDAY:
So originally this day was set out to be a very relaxed day of lesson planning and prep for school on Monday. But knowing Enrique I should never think that! We were invited to a principals house for lunch for the same fish we ate at the school on Friday. So at 1230 we get picked up with Enrique and his wife in the van waiting! We go to this house and walk to the backyard. then Monica(Enrique's wife) says "time to work" we all start laughing thinking she is just joking..but nope, it was time to work! so we climb down this steep grassy hil over looking a very pretty view. Eventually we get pretty far down to a little pond type thing. Enrique says to Chris "ok take off your shoes and go catch fish" :o < is the expression I believe was on our faces! (side note, we all dressed fairly nice to go to this lunch) so he gets in with a strainer and tries to catch a fish, then we all take a turn and most were successful but I was not, but I still tried. "grande osso"(big bear) aka Justin C, caught 2 with his bare hands and 2 with the strainer!!! So we have 9 fish now and hike back up this hill, then we get to de-scale the fish, then clean them, then gut them, they season them with only salt. I tried all of these steps which was huge for me!!! Then they were cooked in this large clay oven outside and we all enjoyed a fantastic meal outside together!! THEN we went back to the hotel and tried to do lesson planning but we were all pretty beat.

Another long post, and I promise they will be shorter after this because our nights are relaxed during the week and I will blog about the schools as stuff happens..

Overall the first weekend in Quito was amazing and I look forward to the ones coming up. But first..first week of teaching comes. Stay tuned for how day 1 of teaching was!

(ps I am sorry for any spelling mistakes/grammar errors..I usually blog fairly late and my mind is already partially asleep)

beunas noches amigos!

First Weekend in Quito

So I never expected my first weekend in Quito to be like this!!! This will be quite a long post so bear through but it will be full of interesting stories, and I will do my best to explain all that happened!!

THURSDAY:
So in the morning we went up to the Panecillo, which is the highest point in Quito. There is a big statue of the virgin Mary and it is very beautiful. I learned that there is controvery about it because her back faces the south, and people of the south feel that she is "turning her back on them", just a little fun fact :). The view from this place was literally breath taking, I got a panoramic view of the entire city. For my first official views of the city it was so beautiful. It was a good site to see on the first day! After this we met Enrique and Carlos. Enrique is the minister of education in Quito and has proven to be an incredibly interesting character (read on for stories!) and Carlos is our translator for the month, he is very nice! We went to visit 2 of the 4 schools. At the first school, Calderon, they were having an open house which was very fun. The first surprise of the trip was seeing a 16 year old girl do an "interesting" dance to a Britney Spears mix..I will let you imagine what we saw! We then headed over to Bellavista, where we did not get a chance to meet the students but did meet the principal who was very nice. After that we went to the hotel and had our first dinner together, full of laughs as always. Then enjoyed a relaxing night of movie watching with my roomies.

FRIDAY:
This was the day that was FULL of surprises, holy ta moly!! So during the day we went to the final two schools to meet the teachers and principals. First was the school I will be at, Inca. Here there is a huge language barrier that I honestly did not expect it too be this bad, but luckily my spanish is gettting a lot better so in a few days I might be able to talk to most of the teachers! We also visited Zambiza, which has a lot of similar teachers and the same principal. Inca is a small school and they don't have a lot of resources or space, but we were lucky enough to get supplies donated so that will help them out a lot! After lunch we went to a school in the town of Cumbaya and it was a very pretty school. They have more resources at this school including a culinary program! We joined in a dance witht the class, it was so much fun! We were able to find the song and download it so look for our ESLE dance video, coming soon :p!! There was a journalist that wanted to ask us a few questions on the program for a local paper so we spent some time doing that. We then got served a meal by the students..so amazing; potato and cheese soup, yukka (similar to potato) and then fish from the jungle! I am not usually a huge fan of fish but this was so delicious!! We were then served a local drink called CanelaLaso; it has a whole bunch of fruit juice boiled with a bit of alcohol in it! The drive home was very fun, we took some detours to take some pictures with Enrique and then got to see a very fun side of him. He was hyper and was making us laugh so hard! He is also famous for his surprises and warned us that he had one waiting for the evening!! We ate quickly at the hotel then headed off to the ballet, which is actually just a cultural dance by Equadorians. It was fun to watch their style of dance. Then the spotlight shines on us and we get a special introduction, compliments of Enrique. We watch a bit more of the dancing and then all of a sudden here a street marching band play so we all turn our heads to see Enrique at the door waving us over, naturally we all get up and run to the door! This is a holy parade we are now basically in, filled with cucuruchos...google it to see a picture lol! So we are now walking down a street filled with purple versions of people that resemble a cult, perfect. Next thing we know, Enrique is stopping this holy parade, just for us to take pictures!!! The leader is not impressed at all, but that doesn't stop Enrique!!! After we walk beside the parade for a while he leads us to this big wooden door and does a secret knock and we get in, go up to the top of this building where we are surprised with the most amazing (and VIP) veiw of downtown Ecuador!! It was pretty and a very nice moment to be standing there looking at the nightlife of Ecuador culture. We then dead to a church called San Francisco. Seeing the inside of this church was so surreal. The inside was so amazing, pretty indescribable. (Pictures coming soon!) After this we walked the streets of downtown and went to this tiny little cafe where we had some more CanelaLaso, but this time it was mucho stronger so I only could drink a little becuase it was too much for me! The guys and a couple girls did a good job drinking the two pitchers we got. This night was filled with so many surprises but it just kept a huge smile on my face the whole time and made me fall more in love with the city.

Next up for Saturday, touring the old city...stay tuned!!!

-d

Let's Do This

So I have decided to create a blog of my experiences while I am in Ecuador. I was not going to but after being here for two days I have realized it will be a great way to keep in touch with everyone back home and document my experiences.

I am here in Quito, Ecuador working with a school to help teach English and Phys Ed. along with assisting the teachers with other subject areas they may need a hand in.

I will try to update this as big events happen and eventually maybe post some photos but I am a newbie at this so it migh take a few posts to get good at this!

We arrived in Quito late on Wednesday night after a very long, but interesting day of flying and airport "down" time.
Wednesday's Adventures:
This was by far the most interesting day of travelling that I have ever had! I arrived at the airport, nice and early, at 330am. By 4am all of our group was here excpet one who had a late taxi but still made it on time. Everyone had two bags to check except me, meaning that we had 17 bags in total to check. The rep at WestJet tells Sara that it is a $21 charge for each second bag..we said we were told that we could have two so by the time he talked to other WJ reps and American Airlines and after 2o minutes they said it was ok to check two bags. My suitcase was 48lbs so I was cutting it very close to having to pay overweight fees but a lot of stuff in my suitcase is supplies I will be donating so coming home should be a breeze. One volunteer, Chris, was having a hard time with one of the reps and eventually made it on to the plane only a few minutes late. Once we arrive in the Toronto airport we find out that WJ did not transfer our bags for us so we have to go get our bags from luggage pick up and then wait in a security line for 45 minutes and then head to our gate where we had about 15 minutes left to eat some food. $13 for breakfast, not my ideal budget but I was starving! This flight went by super fast and we arrived in Miami where it was +31!!! We went to check if our luggage had been dropped off, only 4 bags were so we had to go across the whole airport to re-check these 4 bags. During this time we got to walk outside which was awesome! Some of us already had boarding passes but to no shock WJ screwed up and a few people did not have theirs. The security lady told us to just get them from the automatic thing so everyone did that. Chris, who was having problems earlier that day got promted to go talk to a service rep. The lady told him that WJ released his ticket and he had a reservation but no seat...how that makes sense is beyond me! after 30 minutes of phone calls and waiting he got a boarding pass giving us just enough time to grab a bite and board the plane. So our 6 hours of down time in the airport that our itenary inteded for turned out to be only about 45-60min !!! On our plane to Quito we found out that Miley Cyrus was right at the front in first class! As I am doubting this news the girls sitting beside me inform me that they are part of her dance and singing crew and she is going on tour through South America..although I am not a huge fan of her, what are the odds that this would happen!?


After 17 hours of plane rides and airports we arrived in beautiful Quito. Our hotel is absolutely amazing, it is more similar to a mini apartment than a hotel...I am glad that this is what I have to call home for the next month!

I will end this post here, sorry for the length!

I will post Thursday, Friday and Saturday's events soon!

So much has already happened for me to fall in love with this city, I can't wait for the next three and a half weeks!!


over and out -d