I made it a week! We started the day off with class again talking about identities and then jumped to the economic status of Ecuador. It was interesting to research more about the exports of fish and shrimp and how much money Ecuador makes from the US alone. Ecuador is the number two shrimp exported behind Thailand. After class we walked to our last museum. It was hard to understand the interpreter, but there were a lot of religious artifacts there.
After the museum, Thresa and I went to a frozen yogurt place. It reminded me a lot like a Cherry Berry. I got mora and mango mixed. Mora is a type of berry that is not found in the US. It is kind of like a mix between a strawberry and blackberry. It was delicious. We then headed back to school to work on our group presentation for a couple hours.
Next on the agenda was a lecture on immigration and education and how if negatively and positively affects families. It was very interesting. The lady spoke a lot about how children deal with their family members migrating to the US poorly and how it negatively affects them in school. She said that many many husbands will migrate to other countries for work and may never see their families again. I also thought it was interesting that she mentioned some towns in Ecuador become ghosts towns filled only with women because all the men have left to work in other countries. It’s too bad that the wages here are so poor that it forces people to leave their own country for the sole purpose to make money to help their families survive.
Our last activity for the day was dance lessons. We were going to learn how to meringue. This is a solo dance with a lot of arm movement and hip action. Our teacher kept telling us to “shake your hips and get your arms moving!” It was a good time and she was a fun teacher. Tonight we are planning on meeting up with the whole group and may make a stop at a discotecha and show off our new moves! We don’t have class tomorrow so six of us are going to a place called el banos, which are hot spring pools. I’m looking forward to a relaxing day.
