Dana's Semester in Ecuador: Papallacta

I have had an exhausting week!! I had my first two exams and I started my job. Out of my 5 classes, only 1 of them is actually hard. It is about Ecuadorian society and there are about 40 ecuadorians, and 5 americans (or gringos as they call us here). We had to read a 200 page philosophy book (all in spanish) and then we had an exam on the book. We (us americans) got together to study and we all assumed it would just be a general essay exam over the book. We were very wrong. We got to class and the professor just started talking. Apparently he was saying the four essay questions. Luckily, right after that he left the room so i could copy the essay questions from the ecuadorian guy sitting next to me. Then for the next 2 hours I had to write 4 essays about spanish philosophy (in spanish). I really hope my professor understands at least a little of what I was trying to say! My other exam was for my spanish grammar class and it was very easy.

One of my classes is called Service Learning. We have 20 hours of classroom time and then we have to either get an internship or volunteer somewhere for 90 hours throughout the semester. I am teaching english at a school here. I work from 9am till 2pm every tuesday and thursday. I also have class from 5-7pm those days so it's pretty tiring to leave home at 8am and return at 8pm. The school is only a 10 minute bus ride from my house which is really nice and it's an alternative school so the students have to pay a little bit of money which means they are all middle and upper class. I thought that would make them a little more behaved and polite but I was very wrong. They are crazy! None of them have any desire to learn and the teachers can't control them. I work with 6, 7, and 8 year olds, attempting to help their teachers teach them english. The teachers that i work with are all really nice and very young. My favorite one is only 24 and this is her first year teaching. She invited me to play on a soccer team with her and her friends. Besides the crazy kids, the school is really interesting. There are 3 llamas that hang out in the playground and ducks that just walk around. The school is mostly outside because its perfect weather all year round. They have snack time at 10 and for a half hour everyday the kids just get to run around and eat and then they have fruit time at 12 and for another half hour, they get to run around and eat fruit. Whenever the kids don't like the food for snack, they just feed it to the llamas.

Even though my weeks have begun to be very tiring, I still have 3 day weekends every week which is awesome! We decided to take a weekend off of traveling and just hang out and relax. It was also my friend Zach's 21st birthday on Saturday. So friday afternoon my friend carrie and liz and i went to zach's house and we baked blackberry pies and made shish-kabobs to grill. A few hour later the rest of our friends came and we had a big party on his terrace (that overlooks the entire city of Quito). It was tons of fun! Then, around 10pm we decided to go out. My friend Agnes has tons of ecuadorian friends and one of them was having a party at his house. He lives in a very nice part of the city in a gated community so we figured it was safe. Some of our friends decided to go to a bar but agnes, addie, erin, zach, and I went to the ecuadorian party to see what ecuadorian house parties were like. It was very different from American parties but it was very fun! The entire family was there (siblings, parents, and grandparents) and all his friends. There was a DJ and it was someone's birthday and they had a lot of interesting ecuadorian birthday traditions.

On saturday we all woke up bright and early to take a bus to Papallacta. Papallacta is a very small town with natural hot springs in the mountains. It is beautiful. It is an hour and a half bus ride from Quito. There are 25 different natural hot springs, all different temperatures. We had to pay $7 to get in and then we got to go in all of the hot springs all day. It was so much fun! By the time we got home, we were too tired to go out so erin, carrie, and zach came over and we cooked pasta and watched a movie at my house. Today, we are all spending the day doing homework, and relaxing then were all meeting up later this afternoon to go see a movie.