Adventures into the Great Unknown

This was so long ago.. aii....

duracell — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:19:00 GMT

Many many many apologies for taking so long to write the second (and probably what will be third) part(s) of this blog. THat's not to say I haven't been near the internet, just been so busy with other things that I haven't really had the time!

Anyways, that first Friday night we went for al ittle tour around the main touristy area - the Mariscal, and stopped off at a bar/restaurant, where towards the end of the evening they had some live salsa music! It was amazing to hear live salsa music and even have a go at dancing to it!

On Saturday we went to Otavalo which is a famous market in Ecuador. It's also absolutely huge and there's so much choice! I got to try out my haggling skills - got an alpaca blanket down to $15 from $18 which I was pretty proud of! It was actually quite overwhelming being there, fortunately I had only brought so much money so couldn't spend it all in the first weekend! We got back late afternoon and just relaxed a bit s it had been quite an early start to get there that morning. In the evening I went with Caroline, my housemate, to her friend Steffy's house to hang out with all of Steffy's friends. It was quite hard work having to concentrate the whole time to understand all the Spanish but good fun nonetheless.

Sunday was much more of a lazy day - slept in quite a lot, topped up my phone and then in the afternoon Caroline showed me where she works, so we did quite a bit of walking along some of the main streets in Quito. After dinner we went around to Steffy's to just hang out, taught some of her siblings English tongue twisters and they taught us some Spanish ones! It was overall a great first weekend, we did so much while still relaxing and acclimatising to being in Quito.

Monday was quite a quiet day at work, but in the afternoon I had slight adventure by going shopping with some work friends, and then realising I didn't have a map on me to work out how to get home! After a bit of asking and wandering around I just got a taxi, which in itself was a bit daunting as the driver didn't recognise the address at first...I got home ok though in the end. On Wednesday I had my afternoon off so had resolved to go and change my travellers cheques - unfortunately I had been slightly misinformed by my i-to-i co-ordinator and went to a bank where it wasn´t possible to change them, but by the time I got to the right bank it would have been too late to change them! That was ever so slightly annoying as I technically didn't have quite enough cash to last me a week - but I managed somehow! We went to the cinema on Wednesday night - what I thought was going to be a film in Spanish but actually turned out to be in English with Spanish subtitles. I obviously found this a bit easier... but I was reading the subtitles as well to get a feel for the Spanish! On Thursday I was back on the market I was meant to be working on, and in the evening I went to a crepe party at one of the girl's house, as a sort of farewell to her and two others who were leaving the next day. It was a lot of fun, and we had both sweet and savoury!

I know all this happened a long time ago, but I will do the following two weeks very soon, possibly in one post, but at least you have some idea as to what I've been up to!

Hasta luego!

xxx

Gallery: Ecuador Part 1!

duracell — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:35:00 GMT

Photos from the first couple of weeks...

What a first week!

duracell — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:31:00 GMT

First of all apologies that this has taken me so long to get around to... the first week as you could probably all imagine has been extremely intense and hectic!

My first day basically consisted of flying (eurgh) and didn't arrive into Quito til about 7pm (which is 12 midnight in the UK). Arrived at my accommodation alright and had some dinner, speaking of which, the food here is really good, and we get so much of it. Although due to my working hours I keep getting really hungry during the day! For breakfast we generally have some kind of fruit (pineapple, banana, papaya) followed by something hot (omelette, pancake, egg). For lunch I have packed lunch which is pretty much the same as any packed lunch. For dinner we have soup for starters and we´ve had a variety of things for main course: camaron (which are either prawns or shrimps I don't quite know which!), risotto, pasta etc... And dessert, when we have it, has been jelly or ice cream!

Anyway, so I met my hostess, Maria, who´s really kind and helps us with our Spanish a lot! I also met two other volunteers, who are now in Santa Lucia (a cloud forest) doing conservation work, was shown to my room and slept pretty well =)

The next day we met our co-ordinator, Gaby, who lives in Quito and is our first port of call if anything goes wrong. We visited El Mitad Del Mundo (the line of the Equator as calculated by GPS) which was amazing - especially when we were shown a sink of water draining straight down on the equator, and draining anti-clockwise and clockwise 2m either side! For the rest of the day we were given a load of really useful information about Quito and our projects, and I met the other volunteer, Caroline, who is staying with Maria as well.

On Wednesday I went to my project to meet all the people I´m working with and to see where I´m working, as well as finding out how to get there! Unfortunately it does take about an hour each way, leaving at 8am and getting back at 5pm... luckily I have Wednesday afternoons off! I also met Caroline´s friend Steffy who lives in Quito.

Thursday I started work and so it was quite a big day. At the moment there are a lot of German volunteers at Cenit but they´ve been in conferences of some sort this week (last Thursday to this Thursday). Because of this I´ve been working in a different, much bigger, market to the one I´ll be working in for the rest of the time. It´s definitely challenging, trying to understand the little Ecuadorian kids who speak better Spanish than I do! It´s really rewarding though seeing how happy they are during the sessions we have with them. Generally what happens is we´ll pick them up from their parents´ stalls, wash their hands, get them to brush their teeth and then take them back to a small classroom Cenit owns. There we´ll sing a few songs and then do something fun with them (colouring, card games, etc) before taking them back to their parents.

In the afternoon we help the kids who have been to school in the morning with their homework. This is also quite challenging due to the language, as well as the different ways of long division etc they have! I finish around 4pm each day (normally in time to get caught in the afternoon thunderstorm) and get home around 5ish.

Friday was pretty similar to Thursday, although at the market in the morning we had 22 kids, and at the homework help the kids got ice cream (although us volunteers didn´t find it so tasty!)

Will update with news about the first weekend and photos etc soon, but for now I´m off to see a film - in Spanish of course which will certainly be a challenge!

Hasta luego!

xxx