Life at Latitude 3

Guagua – quechua word for Baby. Much more commonly used (and much more fun to say) here than the spanish word, bebé. sounds like wha-wha (like WHAT without the T).

Quechua was the language of the incas, and is still spoken by many of the indigenous people in the Andes. If you listen carefully, you can hear it spoken around the market places, and most of the volcanoes, and many of the towns or provinces, take their names from quechua words. Words like Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, Tunguruaha – all fine examples of quechua.

My co-teacher and I decided she´d help our kids make mother´s day presents, and I´d help them make the cards. The presents involved sand dollars, so I thot the cards should follow the same oceanic theme. I exhausted my creative efforts to incorporate fish into a mothers day card that made all the national teachers say, OH, que preciosa! On the inside I pasted an outline of a fish, and the kids added bright pieces of scrap paper for the scales. The message said, in English and in Spanish, “There are many fish in the sea, but no one is as wonderful or as beautiful as you. Thank you for being my mommy – happy mother´s day!” On the outside I´d pasted ocean waves, and I decided the kids could add cute fish stickers.

Great plan – now, I just needed to find fish stickers. Living in Ecuador for so long, I knew that if I wanted stickers, I needed to go to a papeleria (literally, paper store, but they also sell general office supplies). I told the woman what I wanted, and her response: I´m sorry, it´s not sticker season. WHAT?!?! Um, when exactly is sticker season? does it by chance coordinate with the rainy season, which seems will never ever end? No, it´s in July, when school starts. You need to wait a couple of months. I thanked her and walked out, not quite ready to give up my fish hunt. 2 papelerias later, I discovered that in fact fish stickers can be found outside of sticker season.

As I mentioned before, every month we (the entire school) focus on a different country. One day the students wear the country´s traditional dress, one day they make a traditional recipe, they learn to identify the country´s flag, anthem (Egypt has a very pretty anthem, btw), where it is located in the world, the name of the capital, and the resources of the country. Last month we studied Senegal, and we were lucky enough to have a senagelese man who is living in Ecuador volunteer to come in and work with the kids several times. One day, I reminded the kids that Bamba would be coming, and asked them where Bamba is from. To my great shock, little Martín got up, ran to the world map, and with great precision touched the small senegalese flag that we had posted on Senegal. I thot that was incredibly cool. God knows when I was 2 I had no idea that Senegal even existed, let alone show someone where it was on the map!

We have finally gotten a practicante (student helper) which we desperately needed. We now have a total of 12 children, and every Friday we get a special needs student to help him integrate into the class. 12-13 2-3 yr olds is a lot, esp. when one is diagnosed with ADHD, one is a confirmed slugger, one is the most oppositional child I have ever known, and another is blind. I come home on Fridays absolutely spent. I like these little guys, but I will be grateful when the year comes to an end, and I can go back to teaching adults again.

I have been sick for what seems like forever, and it´s no wonder – I spend my mornings wiping snot out of little people´s noses. I wash my hands as much as possible, but I am sure that I will be sick until the year´s end.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.