Sunday, December 19, 2010

los tiempos!

Los tiempos is what people say here to say- it's been forever since i've seen you! so.. felt like it was fitting here since it's been about 2 months, if not more, since i've posted.
sorry about that.
so. to catch you up on my life in one post.. this is gonna be hard, but here we go..

last cycle of teaching ended really well. all of my students passed, thank goodness, and i miss them terribly. sometimes they see me in the hall and tell me they want to repeat level 2 so they can be in my class again. and of course i LOVE hearing that :)
performed the play i was in 5 times in two days, and then once again the other day, with about a weeks notice, thankfully I hadn't forgotten my lines.  audra filmed the first little bit for me (my camera ran out of memory after the first scene) so here it is if you want to see it. it's pretty funny. HOWEVER this was the first performance we did, so it was a little rough.. but here you go..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPUr28RB1w





after that cycle finished, i had a two week break from work. which was awesome. except for the fact that my roommate was in the states for those exact same two weeks.  BUT i still had a lot of fun. I got to go on 2 trips.

the first was with a missionary couple from Quito, who I absolutely love, a journeyman from Zamora, and a team from texas.  we went to a little town called Cahuaji Alto, WAY up in the mountains (12,000 feet). the men worked on a water filtration system and the women (3 of us) did VBS in the afternoons with the kids, and spent a lot of time with a woman who Mark and Sherry (the missionaries from Quito) have gotten really close to.  - it's really exciting actually. her and her family are getting SO close to accepting/understanding the gospel. it's so neat to hear. Marta, that's the woman's name, told us about her son Donni, who is just learning to read, but is DYING to read the Bible. he keeps asking his mom to read it to him.  and as we left on the last day, the family asked if they could pray with us, and if we would pray that they would grow in their faith. it was really cool, and i CANNOT wait to go back.



tunguraha, the volcano near us that is erupting right now. (thankfully it wasn't while we were THIS close to it)


lunch. that's a rabbit in case you couldn't tell. she killed it right in front of us





the next trip I took was to Salinas, a city on the beach.  A family from my church with a son about my age, knew I would be alone for most of the two weeks, and so they invited me to go with them on their family vacation.  which was so nice of them and it was SUCH a great experience. first of all.. no one in this family speaks english. so it was 2, 6 hour drives and 3 full days on the beach where I couldn't speak a lick of english. it was exhausting after a while but very good for me.
I also LOVED getting to know them.  I hadn't spent a ton of time with this family before, and so it was really great to get to hear their story.  I stayed in a room with Tanya, the mom, and each night we stayed up forever talking about just about everything.  She told me all about how her and her husband became christians later in life.  It was such a neat story.  I feel like Godly wisdom just came pouring out of her with everything she said.
anyways, i'm so thankful to have had the opportunity to go on this trip, and make some new friends.



she'd kill me if she knew i put this up here, but i think it's just too funny! she hates boats and evidently i took this just at the right time



ok so... after that.. i started a new cycle of teaching. all new classes, except for my kids class, they last longer.  this cycle's been going pretty well.. my 7-9 class is way better than last cycle. last time there were only 4 students and they wouldn't get excited about anything.. it was a little hard to fill 2 hours of class time.  BUT this time i have 11 adults and they're so fun! they work really hard and also love to have fun in class. i never have to worry about the games i bring, that they'll think they're too old for it or something. they love games.
my 5-7 class is a little bit more challenging this time. last time i had mostly older teenagers/ college students, and only a few younger ones. this time it's all high school age students. who are a little hard to deal with sometimes.. but i've made it work. I had to learn to be a lot more strict this semester, and i think i did pretty good..   these pictures are from the country fair, everyone had to present on a different country







i took a week off of work for thanksgiving and spent the week in Cuenca and Zamora with other missionaries.  it was really refreshing to be with other missionaries/americans for the week. we had a very american thanksgiving (ha as if there were another type of thanksgiving you could have), same food, played games, hiked in the jungle, felt a lot like being at home (minus the hiking in the jungle part)
but of course i did really miss my family, but i got to skype with them on thanksgiving day, so that was really good.








whew. this exhausting. if anyone's made it this far, i'm surprised.
anyways, since then, just been finishing up the cycle. i've been really busy, but life has been good.  i've decided i'm taking the next cycle off from work (jan-feb). i'll teach a little at the english school where audra works to make some money but this will let me be a lot more flexible. BECAUSE... i potentially have the opportunity to do some traveling. when i was in Zamora, i learned about a couple working with the Shuar people, an indigenous group of people living deep in the jungle. this couple helped out with translating the Shuar Bible, which was JUST finished.
- for those of you who don't know i'm looking at working with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the future, so to hear about this ( and look through the actual Shuar Bible) was just really exciting for me

when i asked the journeyman who was telling me about them for their e-mail, just to ask them things and hear their story, he said "you know i bet they'd let you come stay with them if you wanted". now that was blowing my mind. that sounded like the coolest opportunity to me. to actually go live with missionaries/translators out in the jungle and see what their life was like on a day to day basis and learn from them! i was so pumped. so i e-mailed them right away, but didn't mention anything about coming to stay with them, figured i couldn't ask that in the first email. but i recently sent them an email asking if i could come stay with them for a few weeks, or even a few days.  right now i'm waiting on the reply (they don't have really reliable internet down there so it takes a while) BUT because of this potential opportunity i decided to leave my schedule relatively open (if i were teaching, there'd be no way i could go and do this), didn't think this was an opportunity i should pass up, and since they leave in april for good, i don't have much time to waste.

in other news.. my visa is up in February, and i am definitely not ready to leave in 2 months. so.. i've been working on a way to extend my visa. i found out, the only way to do this is to get a student visa. SO i have to enroll in a class at the university here. looked through the language classes they offer, and decided to take Quichua. it's the main indigenous language in Ecuador. evidently it's very hard to learn, but i'm soo excited!

last bit of news.. my parents come this wednesday, and i can't wait! they'll be here, in Riobamba, for christmas, and then we'll go to Mindo, a really cool town in the jungle that i haven't been to yet, where there's zip lines, waterfalls, hiking, all that jazz, and then to Quito. so.. i'm sure that'll be the next thing i blog about. i promise next time i wont go 2 months with out posting.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

rafting in Banos

this weekend, I FINALLY got to go to Banos!  Banos is a city in the jungle about two hours away from where I live.  Audra and I have been trying to go for about 6 weeks and EVERY weekend something gets in the way - school, being sick, coup to overthrow the president (more on this later). but finally, this weekend I was able to go with some of my friends from work and their other climbing friends.  There was a rafting competition for beginners and it was SO much fun! granted, there was a lot of waiting and a lot of driving for 15 minutes of rafting, but it was definitely worth it.  I loved getting to hang out with new friends and I LOVED being out in the jungle! it is so stinkin pretty out there! unfortunately, i didn't get a ton of pictures that show just how awesome it was.  but here are a few of my rafting adventure..


this is only some of the people at the competition.  earlier, we were ALL under that little blue roof to get out of the rain while hearing the instructions.

waiting out the rain

it was a great weekend, but now.. back to work.  this will be an incredibly crazy week!
here's what i have this week:
- midterm for my kids class
-final for my other classes
-halloween final program (play and song) for my kids class
-2 dress rehearsals and 5 performances for the play i'm in
-parent/teacher conferences for my kids class
-and final grades due friday

so, if and when i make it through this week, i'll be posting again with pictures and videos of all the craziness

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

work or play?

ok i know that's a cheesy title, but couldn't think of anything better :)

well, it's been forever since i've posted, sorry about that. my life has been consumed by work and.. play practice. yes that's right, play practice.  evidently the english teachers at the school I work at put on a play (in spanish) at the end of each cycle.  this cycle the play is based off of "El Chavo del Ocho".  It's this comedy that pretty much all of latin america grew up watching and loves.  I had never seen it before, but apparently I look like one of the characters- Popis.  so lucky me, I get to be in the play.  i was so not excited at first, BUT i'm actually starting to really like it. who knew? not me.

here's a clip of the show the play is based off of. I'm the girl in the pink and green dress - Popis

El Chavo del 8 - clase de astronomia

the play is next wednesday and thursday, and don't worry, because so many people have already asked for it, audra will be filming it and i'll be putting the video on here.. it should be pretty funny even if you don't understand spanish

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

story time in spanish!

ok, this little boy is TOO precious.

while audra was helping his older brother study for an English test, he decided he'd entertain me by making up stories to go along with the pictures on my computer.

for some reason, i could NOT get the video to upload to the blog, so you have to click on this link, it's audra's vimeo account..

http://www.vimeo.com/15336091

Saturday, September 25, 2010

why i love doing laundry here

views from our laundry room (aka the roof)



Altar

Tungarahua

Chimborazo (there's more to it, but it was really cloudy the day i took this)



Sunday, September 19, 2010

Ay chay chay!


                                       

loosely translated from quichua that means - dang it's cold! i learned this phrase yesterday and got a LOT of use out of it.  I went with my friend Maria Isabelle (one of the other English teachers at my school) and her family to go climb Chimborazo.  This is the mountain that's closest to where we are and the peak of it is the furthest point from the center of the earth. SO that means crazy high and altitude and freezing cold! (and altitude sickness including headaches and insomnia) BUT it was way worth it. i love climbing! and even though there wasn't any snow that day, while me and Maria Isabelle rested at the second refuge, her brother climbed up further and brought us back a baby snowman!
once we finally made it back down to where we parked (which was a little difficult cause by the time we were heading down it had gotten REALLY cloudy and we couldn't see more than about 15 feet in front of us) her mom had chicken sandwiches and hot tea waiting for us in the car for the ride back.  then back at their house we had colada morada (DElicious!). which is basically this thick juice made from all different kinds of fruits- and had at least a 30 min conversation of all the foods i need to try before i leave. they decided i'm going to be fat when i go back to the states. they might be right. i'm certainly not starving to death here.
i love her family and they've already told me that i'm welcome at their house anytime!

the rest of the weekend was pretty exciting too.. we had a birthday party for my friend cris, complete with guitar hero and a food fight with cake icing. 






the rest of my life is pretty much consumed by classes and planning.  please pray that during the week i won't be too stressed with planning and classes that i don't have time to enjoy and get to know my students. thanks for all the prayers! and i promise i'll get better about this whole blogging thing. 

Saturday, September 11, 2010

i love teaching!


for those of you who don't know, i'll explain a little bit about what i'm doing here.. I have been in Riobamba, Ecuador for 2 weeks now, and i love it! I'm teaching English at the University of San Fransisco, yes that's right, San Fransisco. no idea why it's called that. anyways, i'm teaching from 3:00-9:00 monday through thursday (thankfully, my schedule just changed so that i have an hour break in there. the first couple days, i almost starved to death, seriously).  
All of my classes are level 2 - which is not at all what i was prepared for. before i came i was told i would be teaching all upper level classes, and i was given a completely different schedule.  that's Ecuador for ya. and a lesson in flexibility i guess.
actually, it has worked out way better than i could have imagined! i love my level 2 students! and because it's such a low level i get to use my spanish (and believe me, i need the practice)  Teaching hasn't been easy, by any means, but i'm surrounded by other teachers who are more than happy to help and who are full of good ideas! 
SPEAKING of other teachers..i love all of the people i work with! it's just such a cool environment. there are teachers from all over! ecuador, venezuela, the US, canada, germany, and new zealand.  i just love being around people from so many different cultures and places, but that get along so well. i'm so excited to be a part of this community and i can't wait to fill you in more about what's going on down here.  but for now, since it's my first blog post ever! (i hope all of my blogging friends are proud) i'll try to keep it short, but i'm sure i'll be updating a lot here in the next couple days since so much has happened in these first couple weeks

ps i hope you like the picture. audra insisted on getting an awkward first day of school pic