Classes

This week Spanish classes began. I wake up at about 6:45 and catch the bus right outside my house at 7:30. I'm starting to get the hang of the bus systems, confusing as they can be. To get into Quito, I have to take a green bus which either stops outside my house or if I just miss that one, I can walk down the street to catch one of many more on the main road. Once in Quito, I use the ECOVIA which is one of three bus systems in the city. Luckily, I only need the one and don't have to bother with the blue and green buses in the city as well. The hard part is getting home. I have to take the RIGHT green bus or else I could end up in another small Ecuadorian town that is not Tumbaco. And there's also not really an official bus stop near my house so I have to pay attention and tell the bus driver when to stop. Learning to recognize the right run-down house that indicates my stop can be a bit difficult.

Once I finally get to Spanish classes (it's about an hour and a half away), we start with grammar for the first hour and a half or so. Right now, we're reviewing the past tenses which are the hardest and soooo confusing. It can be a bit difficult because the teacher only speaks Spanish and doesn't do much translating into English. Already, there have been lots of occasions where we just have no idea what she just said. I'm in the intermediate level, so I can't even imagine how hard it must be for the basic level class! After grammar and a short break, our intermediate class has a discussion while the basic class learns more vocab and grammar. So far, we've talked about marriage and health, discussing the differences between Ecuador and our own countries. Today, because we were talking about health, our teacher took us to a market that sells tons of fruits and herbs. A huge difference in Ecuadorian health is that many people use "natural medicines" (i.e. plants, herbs, teas, etc. to cure all sorts of stomach pains and headaches). So at the market, our teacher showed us the different herbs and plants that Ecuadorians use to cure their various ailments. Already, I'm in love with this tea called "cedron" that tastes lemon-y and supposedly helps with stomach pains.

After class, all of us volunteers go to lunch around the area. A typical lunch for Ecuadorians includes a soup, then a meat and rice dish, then dessert, and usually juice. And all of that for only $2.25. But it's quite a lot of food since lunch is the biggest meal of the day. Then after lunch, we've been just walking around--sometimes getting ice cream, other times shopping for shampoo, other times just looking around--but we always end up at el Parque El Ejido (a very large park only about 10 minutes away from our classes). Mostly we just sit and talk for a bit but today our New Zealand volunteer taught us how to play touch rugby! And then the German volunteers taught us some German which was super entertaining. We were absolutely horrible with both the rugby and the German but it was great fun. This coming weekend, we are also planning on a game of Ultimate Frisbee in the park and are inviting the other ICYE volunteers who have been here since August. Should be fun =]

I generally end up taking the bus back home at around 16:00 or 16:30 (they use the 24 hours system which is taking some getting used to) which means I'm home at about 18:00 or 19:00. Generally when I get home, only my brother, Ernesto, is home so we sit around, watch TV, do our homework, and talk. I'm always so tired after the day that I go to bed pretty early.

I forgot to mention this in my last entry, but when we went to the Centro Historico, there was actually this huge demonstration going on. The central plaza was filled with people and banners and chants and also TONS of police. The police and some military folks all lined up in front of the government building to stop the protesters from coming any closer. It wasn't violent at all, just a peaceful protest of the government. There's actually a lot of political unrest right now in Ecuador which I will try my best to explain. First off, Ecuador has had so many presidents it's unbelievable. I think they said that in the course of nine years, they've had nine presidents. The people keep kicking them out because the presidents have either been very corrupt or because the people were unhappy with a president's policy. For example, Ecuador's currency used to be the sucre but when the president changed the currency to the dollar due to some super intense inflation, lots of people lost tons of money. Hence, the president got the boot. Right now, the president is Correa. Many people were happy with him for awhile--he changed the constitution in hope that it would better protect the people and he promised lots of other really great things--but now people are saying he's not holding true to his promises. Lots of the people are now calling for a guy named Lucio (who was the president a few years ago) to come back and replace Correa. However, the people actually kicked out Lucio a few years ago because I believe they said that he was "mentally unstable." (I'm having trouble keeping track of which president did what but I think that's correct.) But now they want crazy Lucio back and are talking about kicking out Correa. It's all really kinda crazy but that's Ecuador for you.