Two weeks already. Yikes!

Wow I've been busy. There's so much to cover now. Classes have been going quite well. I'm keeping very busy. Wake up. School. Lunch. Spanish class. 1.5 hours of free time. Dinner. Dance Class. Necessary prep for school tomorrow. Crash. AND AGAIN.

But today is Friday :D

So the events of the last two weeks...

School
I'm working with the sixth and seventh graders on a dance for Día de la Familia. It is sort of a combination of tap and swing and charleston set to the Entr'acte from the Hot Mikado. It is pretty short but pretty tricky and they're doing a great job. The partner bit was tough for a while but it is getting better. I told them that anyone who didn't want to do it didn't have to and that would be totally fine with me... but when their parents came to see the show and asked them why they were standing around in the back for half the dance they would have to tell them that they were too little to dance with a girl/boy without crying about it. This little pride blow worked shockingly well on the boys. The girls weren't buying it so much but enough of them fell in line that I've now got five couples.
Meanwhile I'm teaching Skinamarinkydinkydink to the 2nd graders. They are SO cute. Especially when singing that ridiculous song. Then the fourth and fifth graders both have songs about oceans and trees and flowers and butterflies and taking care of the Earth. Those songs are sweet but the kids don't like them so much because they are wordier and harder. The little ones however are really into their song, especially the arm motions that go along with it.
Día de la Familia isn't a real holiday but it is the school's way of celebrating Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Child's Day (which I think we could use in the U.S.) all at once. Apparently they used to celebrate them each separately in school but some kids' parents would have to work and couldn't make it and the kids would cry etc. So this is on a Saturday (a week from tomorrow) and there will be performances by students, parents and teachers alike. It should be a great event. I'm excited.

Primero de Octubre
Primero de Octubre is a little public school up in the mountains just east of Bahía. From where I'm living it's a 40-minute bus ride and a 2.5 mile walk over hill and dale in the Ecuadorian sun. It is really and truly out in the middle of nowhere. The only way you know to tell the bus driver to let you off is when you see a patch of mountainside that turns from greenish to brownish for about two seconds. Then if there is a sign across the road made out of a tire on a pole you know you're in the right place and you can begin your hike up the mountain. It's an adventure just getting there.
Before the Genesis Foundation and Children of Ecuador Organization started funding it, it consisted of one classroom and some holes for toilets. Now it has a bathroom, a kitchen, and three classrooms divided roughly by age. The oldest seventh graders are 16 and17 years old. Most of the kids walk to school from two or more miles away and some ride in on horses and donkeys. It's quite a change from Genesis. I'm not teaching there regularly but Paul goes to Primero twice a week. I went last Friday with Paul, Sandra (Vladir's wife and Director of Genesis School), and Francisco who is an education evaluator employed by the municipal government. He's a really great guy and a very charismatic teacher but he did NOT enjoy the hike at all. He all but fainted when we finally got to the school. I observed some classes and then they served us a delicious, classic, Ecuadorian lunch of rice, beans, chicken, and fried plantains. I'll be going back to Primero de Octubre a couple of times over the next two weeks to help build and paint one of the unfinished classrooms.

San Clemente
The day after we went to Primero, Vladir took Paul and me to San Clemente, a little beach town about an hour away by bus. The beach in San Clemente is much bigger and better for swimming in than the beach here. We left Bahía around 10AM and spent most of the day on the beach swimming and playing frisbee and getting burnt (nope that was just me). Around 3:00 we went to a little restaurant/bar owned by a friend of Vladir's. The bar-owner is a German guy named Meyer but he has been living in Ecuador for years and has an Ecuadorian wife. At the bar we met up with a few more of Vladir's friends, had lunch and hung out until about 9PM. Everyone but me drank a lot of beer. I stuck with my orange soda and water for the most part but eventually Vladir made me try some of Meyer's homemade aguardiente. It's a type of hard alcohol, similar to rum, made from sugar cane and flavored with fruit. Actually in theory it sounds kind of nice and as straight alcoholic drinks go it wasn't too bad, but to me it still tasted more like vomit than anything else.
Oh and also at the bar I got stung by a really evil-looking little caterpillar guy. It was on the leg of the table where we were sitting and when I brushed it with my ankle it poisoned me with its little spines. It isn't dangerous though. Just hurts like a bee sting for a little while. Bummer. So from San Clemente I brought back a renewed dislike of alcoholic beverages, a little bit of gusanito poison and a massive sunburn. But all-in-all it was a very very fun day.

In Other News
Life is seeming pretty normal. I've been feeling really well and really happy but I'm still missing home from time to time. I saw a rare gringo wearing a Cal Golden Bears tshirt when I was walking with my Spanish professor one day. It turns out he's from Berkeley so it was cool to meet someone from home. I've been very readily nostalgic everytime I see signs of California or the U.S. Even things I never particularly liked like the final song in Grease become very endearing when they unexpectedly show up down here. Oh yeah I also went to see a group of 5 guitarists from Quito play at the museum last week. I went with Paul, Yajaira(my Spanish teacher), Mariuxi (Paul´s Spanish teacher), and Diego (the Genesis English teacher). Tomorrow night I´m going out with the same group to Palma Morena, the only nightclub still open in Bahía. They've all closed as people here have less and less money to spend on going out. Bahía isn't doing too well these days. There are more taxis than there are people almost and everything is pretty easily accessible by foot or bus anyway. If people aren't taxi drivers they are probably selling ice cream, jewelry, or little pastries on the street. Which other people still generally can't afford and don't really need. All of the big apartment buildings that you can see in photos of the city are owned by rich people from Quito (the capital) who only use them in July and August for vacation. So they are abandoned for most of the year. This town needs some major booster shots to its industry and infrastructure if it wants to reverse this downward spiral into obscurity. And speaking of that I heard the other side of the story about the ban on the New Year Parade that I mentioned in my previous post. Apparently it didn't have so much to do with complaining tourists as the public health hazard of having a massive street party with no public restrooms, lifeguards on the beach, or other safety measures that the city doesn't have the resources to provide. That all makes more sense now. But like I said, it is a downward spiral because the more Bahía loses its nightclubs and street parties, the less attractive it is to tourists and rich vacationers and this town can't afford to be losing any sources of income.
But on the other hand education is improving and there are a lot of energetic people like Vladir and the Planet Drum guys who have ideas for getting this city back on its feet. The Genesis Foundation's next project is to build a professional institute to educate and train Bahía's citizens for jobs more lucrative and fulfilling than streetvending. So there is hope for this little city that I'm growing to love more and more everyday.

Oh and we have two new volunteers coming in tomorrow. One is from the US and she is roughly my age. And the other is from Canada and she is roughly Paul's age. So that's exciting. But I must be off now. People to see. Things to do. 'Til Later.

Tía Kelsey