Sunday, September 5, 2010

Papallacta

Hola,

So on Friday my Spanish class and I headed to a market to learn some market related vocab. It was pretty cool and I'd like to go back sometime. There are stalls for fruits and veggies, herbs, random crap, flowers, etc... Then we checked out a local cheese and chocolate place and I tried some chocolate con aji. Delicious! After that we had a session on giving directions while teaching English. I understand that it's hard to give directions in English because the students don't understand the English, but it's super hard! They basically had us cut out every word we were saying and strip it down to the bare minimum. Unfortunately, I had to teach right after this lesson. The directions giving lesson didn't jive well with how I teach so I wasn't quite on my game. I think it will take some time to fit that into my "teacher-mode." But at the end of the day the students learned what I taught them and that's all I can ask.

Saturday we headed to Papallacta. It is about 2 hours from Quito (to the east) and is super high up. As we started to ascend up the mountain the vegetation became pretty harsh. Papallacta is about 12,000 feet. Once we got there we headed to lunch and I had some fresh Papallacta trout (yum!). Then we hit the hot springs (more like swimming pools with hot water brought in). It was a lot of fun because the pools were different temperatures. So we would go from the hot to the cold the the medium to the hot, etc... Pictures to come.

After we got back from Papallacta we headed to our director's house (Kate) because her sister-in-law owns a chocolate business. She had us taste her chocolates and give her feedback. I really loved the passion fruit and nutella chocolates. Then as people were doing the focus groups we drank wine and played games in the kitchen. Wine and chocolate for free... pretty perfect.

We also went out after the wine and chocolate to the Mariscal because it was a girl's birthday. Fun!

Now I'm just hanging out on my day off. Next week is my last week in Quito and on Saturday Shari and I head to Ibarra!!!

Ecua-ism:
- Laundry is an ordeal here. They seem to not believe that washing machines actually wash clothes. So they hand wash them first and then put them in the washing machines. I'm pretty sure they are clean after the intense hand washing they get. But because laundry machines are "cool" the clothes also have to go in there. It's pretty funny and a slight waste of water.

3 comments:

  1. lol i was going to say the same thing as your sister -- the wine and chocolate sound awesome!!! also, definitely want to see those pictures!! -- Megan

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  2. HEY MINNIE MOMMY!!!!
    AUNTIE MUMMY HAS NOT HAD A COMPUTER FOR OVER A MONTH,THAT'S WHY I HAVEN'T YIP YIP. SHE JUST RED ALL YOUR POSTS AND WE ARE BOTH SO EXCITED FOR YOU. I BET I WOULD BE A HIT THERE! AUNTIE MUMMY IS IN PGH. FOR GRANDMA'S B-DAY. SHE FLEW SO I COULDN'T GO. I LUV ALL YOUR POSTS. I FEEL LIKE I AM THERE TOO. LOTS OF YIPS AND BARKS FROM ME!!!

    BRADY

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