back to work

Hi all,

Weekend spent at the beach in Canoa, very spontaneous as we didn´t have the desire to stay in Quito and all bus tickets were gone.. so without hostel and with what we could pack quickly, we headed with an 8 hour night bus to a small village of San antonia, where we arrived at 5 oclock in the morning very tired and had to change to another bus, after waiting for an hour in the village with a shop owner. The little villages however are not really dangerous, it was a fishing village so people get up very very early.
You can not wait alone anywhere with people starting conversation. One of my friends here from Ecuador as well remarked on how strange it feels for Ecuadorians when Europeans answer the questions of how are you, with a simple fine without explanation. Communication is very important here, and rarely can you walk past someone you know without conversing for a while. But its nice, something to get used to, but its a bit of a sacrifice of individuality as even if you don´t feel like talking it is considered very impolite not to do so. The village of San Antonio really contained people that never left and it is strange to imagine staying in such a small place for all your life without knowing anything else.
After a cold and very noisy (very loud music and open door which I think didn´t exist..) we took a small and very bumpy busride to Canoa. The view was beautiful as the sun rose and you could see families in very small beach shacks waking up and roasting breakfast around big open fires outside.

Canoa was very beautiful with a stunning beach, very small and modest. We had the choice of a very old hostel with lots of little animals we couldn´t identify and one which was a little more expensive but a little more reliable. My room however was without a window and I think freshly painted or stained with the mosquito oil in the canopy, extremely stuffy and hot so with the nightbus rides and that I haven´t slept almost at all. We knew a group of other voluntaries who were going as well so we had a nice new-years reunion with sunshine, a warm beach at night, great.
The waves were extremely high, but swimming was still great. We didn´t manage to visit the caves with thousands of bats though as you need a low tide to do that.
We took a jeep ride to the nearest village San Vicente which is a fishing town as well. It is extremely common to hitch here as you pay the drivers a modest amount and you get to sit on the back of a jeep or on our return stand in the back of a wooden truck which drove on gas..
The nightbus back was interesting as well as the bus was packed with people sleeping on the floor and I woke up a few times finding some stranger resting his or her head on my lap.. hmm.
Today, after arriving in Quito at 5 am, I went to work in the morning. We had a big discussion with the nuns as they remarked that they don´t want us to come anymore. I speak almost the same amount of Spanish as Dela, but as she is dark-skinned she gets treated a bit better by the nuns, who show little respect for me and make little comments about me not knowing the language at all etc. which is not true at all. Their problems with us are minute things we can put an effort in to change for them like giving them plans of exactly what we will do etc. our problems are more of the principles of them not communicating with us, their strategies with the children. I had a small dispute about the nuns hitting the children today, and I guess it is the best to get your opinion out there and we feel that there has been a little change both ways, us becoming a little more stern in a good way with the children as they need to be pressured into learning etc. as well and them becoming a little more relaxed with them.

Tomorrow we are getting started with the things we have planned.
I am having a little bit of problems with the food here, as one of the specialities is uncooked seafood soup kind of thing which might be a little hard with the cold water. They eat a lot of seafood here, alot of rice, corn, green bananas cooked, the food is very good.

Very tired and unfortunately a little sunburnt I will go to bead early today for a day of work tomorrow.

hugs,
Laura