Visita a Quito

Ahhh how nice to sleep in my bed in Quito! I missed it a lot especially since my bed is a rock in La Calera. Oh well, it´s good for my back right? The trip home was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. I left around 12:30 and got into Quito at 2:30 which is two hours and what it usually takes but it seemed a lot shorter. I immediately went to CIMAS to work on my research. I read some other monographs of girls who did their internships at Jose Vasconcelos as well. It was really helpful for figuring out how I would structure everything. Something I found very interesting about both of them is that neither mentioned what role they had in the bilingual school other than teaching. There was no discussion of what kind of ramifications or implications it had in terms of bilingual education especially bilingual intercultural education based in Kichwa and Spanish. I will most definitely be making it a point to discuss my role and ask the teachers when I do interviews how they feel about English taking up their class time. Speaking of interviews, I bought a recorder for $68 at Radio Shack while I was in Quito. I am very happy. It has great HQ micing which is great because I am going to have to type up what the teachers say. Unfortunately it doesn´t have a cable to plug into the computer but I don´t really need that. I just need it to play back what I recorded. I am good at typing fast. :)

I got home around 5:30 and talked to my mom for about 2 hours about my internship and everything I have been doing. It was really nice to chat with her. I definitely missed the fam. I then spent the rest of the night hanging out with my neice and nephew playing cards and going to bed early. I am so freakin exhausted after school especially at the end of the week.

On Saturday morning I woke up around 9:30 and proceeded to the corner store to buy a phone card. It is surprising how fast I am going through them here but I have been talking to David a lot. I hopped a Rio Amazonas bus and took it to Mall el Jardin where I bought my recorder, a baseball cap, groceries, and a few other things for people back home. I bought myself a shirt of the road to Santo Domingo which is absolutely ridiculous. I don´t know if I talked about it before. When we went to Santo Domingo for Carnaval I had been up until 5am the night before so I slept through the entire trip which is amazing since the road is soooo curvy and dangerous. I found that out on the way home. Like I have said before, lines on the road are definitely just a guideline. You are either in the middle or moving out of the way of someone who is in the middle. Anyway, the t-shirt is great and has all sorts of people, cyclists, trucks, police, etc. on it.

When I got back to the house I worked on my take home exam for a little while and talked to Dad (in the US via Skype). It was a nice relaxing afternoon other than the work. In the evening I went out to a movie with David. We saw 10,000 BC which I liked a lot even if the English was made to sound ¨primitive¨. Haha oh well. The story was good. We came back and hung out with my bro and his girlfriend. Man, I wish I could spend more time with my bro here. Going home made me miss him and the rest of everyone that much more.

On Sunday morning I got my stuff together and Lindsay came over. Fernando hooked us up by dropping us off on the norroccidente road instead of us having to go to Cumanda, the bus terminal in the middle of Quito. We got a bus right away and proceeded to watch White Chicks dubbed in Spanish. Terrible movie but I will admit it is pretty funny at points. The Wayans brothers dressed up as white girls is bound to have some laughs.

When I got back to La Calera I waited for almost 2 hours for Ines to come home. I probably should have called her before I got back to let her know I was on my way so it was partially my fault. I also didn´t realize that the keys to my bedroom also include a key to the front door. I didn´t have them on me at the time but now I do so I will never be locked out of the house again. I came back to find that Ines had bought an ice cream freezer with a ton of ice cream for the internet cafe. Oh man, just what I need, more sweets and things to fatten me up even more. :P Oh well.

I am currently in Cotacachi. I decided to walk here today because it was raining and biking in the rain is not fun/dangerous. I really like walking here anyway. Dar un paseo they say. I came into town because I wanted to buy some posterboard, tape, and a Spanish diccionary. I have two Spanish English diccionarys but not one that is just Spanish which I really need now. I feel like I know enough Spanish now that synonyms would be the most helpful for improving my skills and vocabulary. I also picked up some colored pencils which I plan on giving to the school. A pack of 10 was only a $1.50. I find it ridiculous that it is at least $6 or $7 in the US for the same pack of pencils. I will for sure miss the prices here, even if the prices of commodities are rising (it´s been all over the news that prices of things like eggs and flour are going up and people aren´t happy about it of course). I think I might pick up some bread before I go home. We don´t have it very often so it is a treat to get fresh bread while in town.

School has been going well. I have been having some difficulty with the lack of resources but the kids are energetic and willing to go with what I have been doing and hopefully this posterboard whille be helpful. I have plans for some activities to do with them that include using the posterboard and the colored pencils. I don´t mind spending money on them either because they deserve to use things like colored pencils and access to resources. I also don´t know a teacher that hasn´t spent money out of pocket for their classes. It´s kind of sad that it is that way but our country and this country as well does not put enough money into public primary education. I have also been enjoying all the reading I have done on intercultural bilingual education. I am not a big fan of research but it is true that when you are really interested in something, you don´t mind doing the work for it. Even though I have some issues with the way that CIMAS is run and organized, I am really happy that I am able to do exactly what I wanted to do when I decided to do the MSID program.

The housing lottery for Denison is tonight for rising seniors (yikes I am going to be a senior in the fall!) and I got the highest number for special interest out of the four of us that want to room together which is number 9 so we are pretty much garanteed a sunset apartment which is a quiet apartment building. We wanted to live in Upper Elm because the brownstones are nicer but there are only 4 apartments (aka 16 women in total) that can live there. I am all for the sunset apt though. I hope everything goes well. I will definitely be updating with where I will be living next fall when I find out. I am super excited and anxious about it.

That´s all for now! Back to the books I go!