Apure!

6-24-11

This was one of the few days I woke up to it raining, with clouds pretty much right above my head.  Once again, it was a very cold morning.  At the guardaría this morning, one of the girls brought a huge smile to my face.  Usually when the kids arrive, there is a short learning lesson for the day in the classroom.  This is where my English teaching usually comes in (colors, numbers, etc).  Except, today was different.  After one of the teachers went through the colors in Spanish, it was my turn to go through them in English.  As I held up the color yellow, and before I could even say the word for them to repeat, one girl shouts out, “Yellooowwww”.  I was amazed.  But that wasn’t all.  I moved onto the next color and the same girl shouts out, “Blueee”, which was correct.  The other two teachers in the room with me were extremely impressed, as was I.  That pretty much made my morning.  I’ve found with the two schools that I’ve been working at (Muñequitos in Lumbisí and the other in Tonsupa), that most of the kids already know the color “yellow” in English, but not much more than that, so the “Blue” was a first.  Later in the afternoon, Zack and Estevan were at the community garden, cutting the tops of trees with machetes so that the garden could get more sunlight, so I decided to join in on the fun.  We all took turns climbing up a ladder to get to the tops of the trees.  It’s hard work cutting branches with a machete!  But it was so worth the adventure…

Other things I’ve been noticing while living in Ecuador is that people just don’t use other “machines” that would make their lives so much easier.   What I mean by this is that wheel barrels for one thing would be a huge help.  I’ve noticed that the women carry 50+ pounds of weight on their backs, using sheets wrapped as slings (like a baby carrier).  This would put so much stress on the body!