HOLA!! The past few days at our friendship camp have been action packed!!! Our crew is learning just how tiring yet fulfilling it can be to work with little kiddos...especially if there is a language barrier as well! These 11 students are up to the challenge! Yesterday campers enjoyed making nature art collages, playing games and singing songs in English, playing soccer and basketball...and the Music/Dance department even started choreographing a dance to "Thriller" that will be performed tomorrow for all the kids' parents! How fun!
Everyday after camp we've been heading to the same restaurant for lunch and planning for the next day. The meals have been great---fried chicken, lasagna, pork...always with some rice and a spicy sauce we've all come to love called "Aji". Yesterday after lunch, the head chef at the restaurant gave us a cooking demonstration and we tried our hand at making empanadas!! Making them look pretty is harder than we thought, but it was fun to sample our creations fresh out of the oven!! We've also been playing some card games with our Ecuadorian friends in the afternoons...the card game "spoons" has been an especially big hit! Later that afternoon, everyone went their separate ways and headed to their homestays. Last night at home, students reported to us that they enjoyed making pizza, playing scrabble, and even going to the movies with their various families! Students seem to really be enjoying this experience and are getting a lot out of seeing what life is like for an Ecuadorian family!
Today at camp, Niall, Mickey and Isaac dominated the sports department and even set up an obstacle course for kids to race through---complete with sack races and egg on a spoon relays. Clare, Julia, Faith, Emily and Emma found themselves in the Art department today, and helped dozens of little ones create their very own masks. Rachel continued to dominate the English department ... she successfully taught all kids "Brother John" in both English and Spanish! Marlie is working hard to make sure all the kids have their steps down for the "Thriller" dance that we'll be performing tomorrow! Today, Alyssa filled up about 100 water balloons in preparation for our all-camp activity: water balloon toss! The local kids had a blast today, and will certainly not be excited that tomorrow is our final day of Friendship camp!
After lunch and more planning for our final camp day, we were treated to a visit and tour of a local rose plantation, partly run by the dad of one of our Liceo de Valle students. Here, we learned that Ecuador is the largest exporter of roses in the world, and we could see why---they were beautiful!! At the end of the tour, we each got to take home a perfect, long stem red rose. What a great end to any day!
It's hard to believe we've got just a handful of days left in this amazing country we've called home for the past couple weeks! Ecuador has really been treating us well with it's delicious food, amazing bio-diversity, astounding landscapes and wonderfully kind people. Tomorrow students will bid goodbye to their homestay families and we'll be all back together again to start the last part of our journey. We'll be heading 2 hours north of Quito to explore Ibarra, Salinas and Otavalo! Students are especially looking forward to shopping in the largest handicraft market in all of South America---We have a feeling those backpacks will be hard to zip shut after that shopping expedition!
Until next time---we all wish you well from Quito, and send our love and many hugs your way!!
Ciao!
-Team Ecuador 2012
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