Mucho sorpresa!

When I said Enrique was full of surprises, I wasn't kidding and I will never go somewhere with him unprepared again! On Sunday, we thought we were going to the principal's (of the school that we danced at but we're not helping at) house for lunch. I was thinking we would be inside the principal's house the entire time and lunch would be no more than an hour and everything would be prepared when we got there. Boooooy were we wrong! The principal welcomes us to her house, which is at the top of this amazing huge, lush valley! Enrique starts taking us on a tour down the steep slope that was her backyard. As we're going down he points out a little pond with fish in it, and then there was another one a little ways down and another one. Meghan translates for us that they farm they're own fish so it looked to me like the first one was the little little fish and then when they get bigger they move to the next pond, etc. So we get a ways down this steep hill, which I was unprepared for wearing flip flops, and we stop at this bigger pond. Enrique can't speak English but he motions for Chris to jump in the pond with a strainer looking thing. Chris says his typical "when in rome" comment and jumps in the pond, which was up to his knees. He holds the strainer looking thing and tries to catch the fish, which are actually about the size of a small walleye. Turns out we had to catch our own lunch! I can't even tell you how hilarious it was to see us trying to catch fish. We spent probably an hour down there trying to catch our lunch, which could mean we aren't very good at Ecuadorian life. Everyone took a turn, and most people caught a fish. I did not, but I blame it on the fact we had already caught 9 by the time I got in so I think there weren't many left, although I wasn't trying tooooo hard. The principal was laying on her stomach beside the pond and caught a couple with her bare hands! So then Justin C lays down and tries and actually caught two with his bare hands. Turns out he really is a bear! Papa Oso! After catching the fish, we hiked back up the steep hillside to the area where they descale and fillet the fish. Everyone also got a turn in working with the fish and filleting them, although I wasn't feeling well so I just watched. They don't actually cut out the fillets, they just cut out the guts and cook the rest of the fish as in. We then followed the fish to this huge outdoor stove that I can only explain as a massive upside down bowl on a table of bricks with a little door. Once everything was cooked, they served us potatoes, fish, chicken, and cooked plantains. The fish and chicken were probably the best I've ever had! Seriously, just unbelievable. Not even a hit of fishy flavour in them and soooo tender. So we learned to be prepared for anything when going out with Enrique! Who knew we'd be involved in the whole process of making our own lunch! After we got back to the hotel, I still wasn't feeling well so I slept for quite a while and then did a bit of prep work for going to the schools and then went straight back to bed. Luckily today, I'm feeling a bit better but unfortunately my stomach isn't allowing me to eat all the delicious food I want! So onto the events of today. It was the first day going to the schools by ourselves to meet the students and observe classes. We were all soooo nervous and I kept asking myself "did I really agree to do this? Can I actually do this?" but I'm here so I'm doing it. It did turn out to be a challenging day but as time goes on, we're hoping the teachers and students open up to us a lot more. We were up by 5:30am and heading out to the schools by 6:30. Classes started at 7:00am so Justin L and I introduced ourselves to our first class. My Spanish is still terrible and extremely broken but they seemed to accept what we said. We observed all day, which we found difficult as the teachers don't speak any English (except the English teacher whose only there on Wednesdays) and we don't really speak Spanish. Chemistry was the first class we sat through and we were both lost since neither of us took chemistry in high school. The teacher tried her best to include us and gave us a warm welcome. After chemistry we sat through anatomy, which we were able to pick up more of luckily. They have a half hour break at 10:00am so Justin and I brought out the volleyball and basketball we brought along. One young girl, in grade 9, came up to me and I asked her to play (jugar) and she agreed so her and I just practiced throwing the basketball. Some other kids were playing volleyball with a soccer ball but Justin joined them and brought them a real volleyball. By the end, we had about 4 girls and 1 guy playing a little basketball game with us so that was fun. I tried to get others to join but the kids are extremely shy. Like extremely extremely shy. It was still nice to have a couple of them play so hopefully tomorrow more of the kids feel more comfortable around us and will play. In the afternoon we sat in on a computer class with the grade 9's. They were creating a webpage using html formatting! A thing of the past in Canada I would say. I found it interesting that the html formatting was all still in English, so they still used font= background color=, etc. We then sat through what we think was a natural sciences class where they were creating a powerpoint presentation on the ecosystem and climate (clima) in Quito. We weren't much help in either of the classes and I think both the professors were very shy so they didn't talk to us much. We then moved onto observing a biology class with grade 11 students. I actually understood a lot! They were doing genetics and punnet squares and that a parent with AA genes + a parent with bb genes = children with Ab. It was nice to finally understand something! School ends at about 1:30pm so Justin and I were to head to a school where Dana and Andrew were teaching because they have an accelerated school program for students that have had to drop out for one reason or another and then have come back that starts at 2:00pm. We were waiting outside the school for a while waiting for our driver but he wasn't showing up. At 2:30 a taxi pulls up to us and we're saying no, gracias! thinking he was trying to give us a ride. Turns out he was our drivers son since our driver was unable to make it to pick us up, but we couldn't understand why. We helped with the English class for the accelerated program, which was interesting. They weren't as shy and were very interested in us. The teacher made them ask questions in English, since they're very behind, so we got asked questions like are you married, how old are you, what is your favourite color, etc. They were very happy to have us and very interested so I will be excited to go to that class every week. They probably need our motivation the most, and we can already tell a few of them are very bright, but there's some reason that made them quit school so we need to make sure they stay in school! So we finally got to head home around 5:00pm where we were met by a very excited Meghan! She explained to us the reason our driver couldn't come pick us up was because there was a landslide inbetween Quito and Zambiza (Zambiza is like a suburb of Quito and that's the small town Justin and I are teaching in) so Meghan didn't know if we had been picked up and spent most of the afternoon trying to contact people to let us know what was going on. She was definitely glad to see we were okay! For that hour Justin and I sat outside waiting to be picked up, we definitely felt like those kids whose parents for got to pick them up after school. haha but it all turned out alright! (A landslide! Really! No big deal. just a landslide! Still blows my mind). So after that long day, we're back in the hotel and preparing for tomorrow. Meghan definitely had to give us all a pep talk after the challenging day we had and reassured us the teachers and students will warm up to us. We are the guinea pigs so the teachers don't know what to expect of us or what the program is really about so we just need to give it time. We'll see what tomorrow brings.. We never seem to know on this trip! What an adventure!