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Archive for August, 2007

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Our six month anniversary

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

Just a quick hello since its six months today since we left rainy old Heathrow for the brightlights, sandy beaches and indisciminate muggins of Rio That seems like such a long time ago already, time is really starting to fly by here and before we know it we´ll be back to work. Real work that is, not the random “teaching” we are attempting here!! Although routine here really is making time pass quickly, we are already over half way through our Galapagos experience.

We have the party of the century tomorrow when the little girl we live with (practically) turns three. There are over 70 guests coming apparently and the cost of the thing is rediculous given that they all keep bitching they have no money (whilst plugging in the new computer and checking various cell phones!).

I got back from Santa Cruz last weekend a little more refreshed after a nights break and stocked up with Nutella and granola to break up the rice – although not to be served with the rice you understand.

We have taken on some extra classes this week too, we are doing an extra hour a nigt for the dive school here in exchange for dives and wetsuit rental etc (at a cost of $125 per dive we had all but written it off). We´ll see how it goes, they were supposed to start last night but no-one turned up so we are not expecting it to be that consistent or taxing.

I am looking forward to a getting on the move again and heading to Peru, only six weeks to go now and I really must get into Inca training, I am pretty sure my folks will be much fitter than me by then – so embarrassing. We have been watching the news about Peru since the earthquake just south of Lima, Ica and I think we might have to take it off our itinerary now, it is a disaster area with very little aid or water getting through from what we understand here, although the news does tend to me a little sensationalist and as far as we can tell there are no newspapers here!!

We have scrounged old copies of Newsweek from the peacecore volunteers here and between that and the BBC website we are just about keeping in touch with the real world. Although I was so pleased today to not understand a word about the latest Big Brother star making the Yahoo headlines!

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One month in Paradise

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Well time seems to being going by pretty quickly now that we are in a working routine. After keeping a few kids late after class and sending a few out of lessons we seem to have established some order with our pubils, although we still haven´t heard anything from the charity (New Era) by way of support or assistance or even a “how are you doing?”. Still, the weather seems to be getting better already, even though August is supposed to be the worst month – we’re still managing several days on the beach a week and the guara – galapagos sea mist rain stuff is light and infrequent.

I am off to Santa Cruz (one of the bigger islands) this weekend because we need to go and get some more cash and there are no cash machines or banks here. I was planning just to go for the day (at a cost of $60! round trip) but fortunately last weekend I met a really nice Canadian a girl who is working in Santa Cruz for six months and she invited me to stay with her so I am going to make a weekend of it. I might as well for the money and Paul doesn’t mind since he might be going away to one of the other islands on a sporting trip with the Provincial government team.

So you can see that we are settling in well now into the community, we seem to know plently of people and it is nice to walk down the street and be treated like a local. That said, sometimes it is a bit like a fish bowl and I think three months will be enough for me. For example last weekend we went for a seven hour hike and when we got back, before 5pm, the family were about to call the coast guard because they thought we had been lost or stranded becasue they didn´t know where we were all day!! The family are also having some domestic problems at the moment and it is really tense in the house with a lot of argument which is a bit awkward for us. I am also struggling to keep my mouth shut on some rather agressive child rearing tactics, but we´ll see how that develops. Its not my place to interfere and attitudes to things like that are different here than inthe UK.

It was Ecuadorian independence day her on Saturday too so we went along to the celebrations and watched all of the traditional dancing and played traditional Bingo – naturally! At one point we thought we had won and I sent Paul up to collect our prize (a colour TV) but turns out I had misheard on of the numbers and he had to shamefully retreat too much heckling from the crowd! You can imagine what our students had to say about that on Monday morning!

Despite promises of broad band the internet connection here is still pretty slow so I´m afraid no photos just yet. Its a shame though cos it is beautiful here and I would love to show you the photos.

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