You just can´t get away from your roots....

Of the ten or so new faces I met this weekend (of which the majority was spent in a realtively secluded village in the Andes) five were oddly connected to Michigan and or Middlebury.

One was a camp counselor at Camp Echo (the rival summer camp of the camp where I attended and worked, Camp Henry), another went to Calvin College located in good old Grand Rapids, Michigan, another (who owns a restaurant in Baños) is from Marquette, MI and has a whole wall of his restaurant decorated with Michigan memorablia (it´s a total gringo hangout, but still...),and another is a to-be Freshman feb at Middlebury.

One odd connection and game of name dropping after another and I had completely forgotten I was in Ecaudor.

Besides the odd connections that I came about this weekend I also made other connection: one with a fabulous, and rather enchanting actress from London and another with a Italian couple who invited Chris (my boyfriend) and I to stay at their flat in Roma! Not too shabby!

I met the majority of the aforementioned people/pairs this weekend when I stayed for two nights at the Black Sheep Inn, nestled in the Andes in a small, unknown town known as Chugchilan. The Inn is an eco-lodge that serves all vegetarian (gourmet) meails and specializes in day hikes around the area. As we only had one full day, Chris and I did the so-called most famous hike in Ecuador that begins at laguna Quilotoa (a lake formed in a crater many years ago after a volcanic eruption). We both decided it was the most beautiful natural formation we had ever seen. We had a guide who throughout the four hour hike (that passed around the rim of the lake, through a indigenous village that still speaks Quechua, up and down a huge canyon and back to the Black Sheep Inn) who showed up indigenous plants along the way and let us take rests when the altitude had us breathing more heavily than normal. Overall, it was a fabulous weekend and I reccommend the Inn to anyone looking for a fun, different getaway! (However, I would reccommend that if you do decide to make the trip and do so via the five hour bus that winds through the mountains to arrive to the small town of Chugchilan, to use the bathroom before you get on the bus because I, two hours in, had to bribe the bus drivers to stop the bus and let me use a bathroom...which ended up being a little canyon where an old indigenous woman motioned me over).

Enough about the weekend and bathroom troubles...now I am back in Baños and just finished a Monday at the escuela in El Triunfo. As for anyone interested in my teaching schedule, here it is:
Mondays and Tuesdays: English
Wednesdays and Thursdays: Cultura Física (Phys. Ed.)
Fridays: Computation (Although this Friday the escuela is doing a school wide four hour hike to another small elementary school up in the mountains...!)

I really like the school where I am working, although it is hard to not notice how far the Ecuadorian school system has to come and it is even more difficult to come up with ways to revive classes (such as the English classes) that have entailed nothing more than repeating the teacher and copying off the board for years (or rather, forever). Also a challenge is teaching Physical eduaction (a ¨subject¨in which I have no expertise in a country in which I have no idea what the kids are supposed to/normally do in such a class). Last week was my first official week as profesora de cultura física and all of the teachers were supposed to help me when it was time for their class to have physical education. To no surprise only one teacher helped me and one of the warm-ups she had the small second graders do was have three kids kneeling on the ground to see if the other students could jump over them (and let me tell you that most didn´t clear the jump...)

AKA feel free to email me with any brilliant physical education ideas...I will be sure to put them into practice!

besos!