The children´s library

On saturday there was a special half-day reading session held at the flat for various members of the community (mainly El Porvenir students) and their families. The idea is to encourage reading amongst the children and also their parents so they are invited over to Ambato to make use of the many children´s books that Maria Teresa and Gonzalo have here. On this occasion with christmas approaching, there was also a christmas card making session, with cards based on some models we had made earlier, but with about 10 times as much glitter on them. Once the cards were made we moved onto reading, with the littlest ones being read to, the older children reading (picture) books by themselves, and the parents (when I say parents, I mean mothers) reading magazines and newspapers. Some of my favourite pupils from the school were present and fun was had by all! More pictures on the flickr site.

A standard day´s teaching.

7.00: Get up.
7.15: Breakfast. Fruit, yoghurt, coffee, bread, marmalade.
7.45: Leave house.
9.00: Arrive at school. 4th grade (8 year olds) english class. 1 girl and 8 boys, programmed to stay in their seats for a maximum of 30 seconds at a time. Play bingo, with prepared cards as drawing 8 squares was too complicated in previous lesson. Shouts of "bingo" at everything number I say despite insistence they only say it when have all the numbers, also despite them not understanding half of the numbers I am saying. Half an hour easily filled.
9.30: 5th grade english class. Play bingo again this time slightly more civilised, though I have to promise to bring about 30 bingo cards for the next class.
10.00: Playtime. Football reigns supreme and breaktime snacks of maize and popcorn.
10.30: 6th grade english. Smallest year group in school with only 4 students. Struggle through asking each other "how old are you".
11.00: 7th grade english. Bit of boring grammar work followed by wordsearch which goes down a storm.
12.30: Lunchtime. Rice and lentils which bizarrely has all the children queueing up for seconds. None of your turkey twizzler rubbish here.
13.00: Home time... back to the buzzing metropolis that is Ambato for a latte and leisurely afternoon.

Links

Here is a link to a video from one of the classes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_eplA5oXLg Also photos as usual at www.flickr.com/photos/lizporter
Bye!

Finally some photos!

Here we have the playground of the school in El Porvenir. There is a space reserved for me to paint a nice bright mural like the ones in the picture.
The fantastic clear blue skies you see in the pictures are not actually that common, it is cloudy most of the time! We were lucky on this day!
The 4th grade (8 year olds) watching a video in the computer room.
Playing a point to the object game with the 5th grade! I just love the little stripey poncho!!

Another day, another school...

Today I had classes at another primary school in a village called Quinchicoto which is at around 3300m and a 20 minute steep walk uphill from the main road. This school is a little larger than the other one, a little more organised, I was told, and the children are better behaved. Definitely not the case though I realised during the first class as soon as Maria Teresa got her camera out and 15 kids all jumped onto their desks in what was almost a human pyramid in order to pose... Once the camera was put away they calmed down a bit but each class (4 in total) got progressively more out of control. It didn´t help that half the children either didn´t have textbooks or had left them at home, conveniently leaving them free to run around the classroom, play with yo-yos, marbles and spinning tops and do NO WORK whatsoever. Fortunately I was not officially in charge, only there for help with pronunciation (it was brilliant hearing them repeat whatever I said with spot-on intonation and british accent - shame they didn´t know what they were saying) and foreigner comedy value. There was entertainment at breaktime courtesy of the school band, made up of probably about 80% of the school, who demonstrated varied talents in drums, trumpet, flute, xylophone and a strange wind-keyboard which actually we didn´t get to hear as one of the musicians failed obviously some crucial moment so all you heard was 5 kids berating the other for ruining their slot. Apparently today was their first practice and the headmaster was their slightly reluctant conductor, they have plenty of time to practice before their first gig at some town procession in November!

First day of classes!

Monday should have been my first day but classes were cancelled province-wide due to a transport strike! So today was my first day... and it didn´t go too bad! I had been worried about having enough things to do, and not stalling to a halt... however that seems unlikely as the main problem is going to be controlling the kids. I had an easy start with the 8 year olds, and only about 10 of them. We managed "good morning" once they had mastered my strange handwriting, but bingo was a bit too complicated. Then I had four 10 year olds, then an uncontrollable NINETEEN 11 year olds... I was just trying to get them into groups for a fun game when a couple of doctors pulled up outside and everyone went MAD. Turns out they were due to have some vaccinations... cue mild hysteria and a fair bit of crying. I don´t think it helped that nearly the whole school (about 50 of them) had their jabs all in the same room, at the same time, with everyone watching! Anyway more of the same classes tomorrow so I am going to try and prepare some good activities that involve everyone, that and some crowd control.

Picture a big volcano...

Seem to have some problems uploading photos, so please imagine there is a nice picture of volcano Cotopaxi here!! Which I took on the bus from Quito down to Ambato on my second day here! The route is sometimes known as the Avenue of the Volcanoes due to the number of them that line both sides of the route. Unfortunately though it is often cloudy here, or at least over the higher land, so they are not always visible... I was lucky to have this view. Down near Ambato we have Tungurahua which is one of the most active volcanoes at the moment.. only on orange alert though not red as I had thought. Like Cotopaxi it is a fairly perfect symmetrical cone but sadly even more elusive. It is maybe about 20km from Ambato and right next to the little spa town of Baños which I visited last sunday. The tourist office give you an evacuation map of the town along with the normal map, which is good to know.
I have not yet started my classes yet, i.e. the reason I am here... this week I have just been preparing the classes, and meeting the schools. The main one that I will be working at is a tiny primary school in a village called El Porvenir de Mocha, which is about 15km from Ambato. There are a maximum of 16 students per class and only 6 year groups. English will be taught by year group and focusing on the final year (11 year olds) as they need a certain level for when they go to secondary school. For now they seem to know colours... numbers... and not a whole lot more! I will also be teaching art & craft classes on a Monday but for that they will be 2 year groups at a time. Also will be helping with english classes one or two days a week in a (slightly larger and more organised) school in a village called Quinchicoto. The organisation by the way is http://www.voluntariosdeoccidente.org/
As for where I am staying... in Ambato, a town of about 300,000, with delightful hosts Maria Teresa and Gonzalo who run the organisation. They are originally from Colombia and have been in Ecuador since maybe 1990 or so. VDO has been around for 10 years now. Maria Teresa and I went to Quito on thursday to pick some things up (some clothes donations for the schoolchildren, documents, and a copy of The Big Lebowski on my reccommendation after watching Fargo the other night). Did some touristy stuff like visiting er the touristy area of El Mariscal, the botanical gardens which were beautiful, and listening to Maria Teresa go on about how dangerous all of Quito is. Didn´t even touch the historical centre which will have to do on another visit! And try not to get mugged or kidnapped!

Welcome!!

And thank you for visiting the first entry of the blog of my exciting trip to Ecuador!
This is my first blogging experience so apologies if it is unprofessional or worse still unexciting... I will try and get some photos up soon and on the flickr site too (the 1-person facebook boycott begins here!)