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7-1-11

These last few days have been busy, as there are more volunteers here and 12 more to come tomorrow!  Wednesday night my host mom and sister stayed up late to welcome a new “host sister”/volunteer who will be living with us for about 4-5 days before she leaves to go to Tonsupa for a few months.  I had a great time drinking tea and laughing about previous volunteers/experiences that the family has had.

Thursday morning we met up with the other volunteers who arrived on Wednesday to show them around Lumbisí and all that FEVI is apart of (community garden, day care, cafeteria for the elderly) and also to visit my host family’s chanchos (pigs).  After the “tour”, we played with the little kids (they are sooo cute!) until we left to go to the comedor to help serve the elderly.  What a difference it makes to have more volunteers to help pass out food!!  It was crazy how fast we could deliver the hot soups and what not.

After eating lunch separately in our host family’s houses , we all took a trip to Cumbaya to get a few things done.  One of the things included buying Jiff Peanut Butter (which is extremely expensive here—around $6.00 for a small one), cocoa for baking, and butter.  My plan is to make no-bake cookies (since desserts are lacking here) for my family sometime soon.   

 Later in the afternoon, we had about 5 kids (ages 7-16) for the English class.  Another volunteer (who lives in Quito, but is originally from the US) helped four girls with past tense verbs, while I worked one-on-one with a student who is 16 years old.  This gentleman needed help with the verb “to be” in English because he is struggling with his English class in school and has a huge test on Monday that he absolutely needs to pass in order to move on to a higher level class.  This was very rewarding because I was able to give him the attention he needed to work on examples of the verb and also to explain pronouns and similarities in Spanish.  After the laid-back class session, I gave him a mini-quiz that he did extremely well with different examples.  There was also an adorable little boy (age 6) who needed more attention learning his colors in English, so I used the strategy of repetition by holding up colored pencils and having him repeat after me which colors were which.  I thought it would be a little intimidating to say all 12 colors (in the colored pencil box), so we worked on only 4 colors; next time we’ll review and learn new ones!  After working most of the day, we were all very tired, so we all decided to go to Zack’s apt. to make batidos de mora!  Of course, we also added chocolate ice cream to make them a little more indulgent… :-)

This morning (Friday) for breakfast we ate fake-omelets (tasted really good with fresh tomatoes, green peppers and onions), coffee for me, hot oatmeal “juice”, and of course, bread (with honey!)  We were all able to be with the kids again for a couple hours; then worked our way to the community center where the elderly do arts and crafts/things to stimulate their brains before they come to the comedor to eat lunch at noon.  Except, we didn’t have much luck because I guess Fridays are movie-mornings, so we weren’t able to interact with them as I had hoped.  After serving, we came home to a delicious lunch of Llapingachos, salad, beets, beef, and freshly squeezed orange juice.  Llapingachos are definitely my favorite food here ;-)