Hola everyone, I hope you are enjoying summer vacation as much as I am. It certainly doesn't feel like summer in Cuenca, though for about an hour each day it gets pretty warm :)
I have decided that I won't make any more excuses for not updating, other than I've been really busy. Ok, that's the last one...I really do promise this time to write more often! Ok. I am going to try to sum up the last month as briefly as possible because, well, a lot has happened.
After the school year ended I went with my friend Maria and her family to the beach. The town is called Playas (which means beaches in Spanish) but I had fun pretending the name was actually Playas as in, what a playa! (If you don't get it, that's ok.) The waves were the biggest I have ever seen, and I guess those beaches are one of the best surf spots on the west coast of S. America. I had a lot of fun and got a LOT closer to the family. Literally, 14 of us shared the beach house! They've been really great to me.
I enjoyed the next week hanging around Cuenca with no obligations! It was nice to actually be on vacation in the city and hang around town. My new favorite activity is going to the central park and watching people. I mean not creepily, it's just really interesting the mix of people who come to Cuenca. Whether its tourists from other countries, people from the campo, or people from the coast or the amazon (who you can pretty much pick out by their accents and stature)...it's a really cool mix of people.
The next week was pretty much a wash because somehow I picked up a bacterial infection in my stomache. (This is not uncommon here, in fact, you're not TRULY an ecuadorian adventurer if you don't get some sort of stomache infection: bacterial or parasites) I have really great roomates (all 8 of them!) and they kept me company because being sick in foreign lands is no fun!!
By the following week I was getting pretty sick of being on vacation...mainly because I was broke! :) So I started work in the CEDEI office with the directors. I mainly do document translation for my school but I have also started working on "Special Projects" which pretty much means I do anything they want me to do :) It's actually pretty interesting. I am making a mock internet course on Moodle to train one of the directors, and giving proposals on a study abroad plan we hope to pilot in October. So I am definately keeping busy. I am also starting an English tutorial starting tomorrow for some girls who are attending one of the best private schools in Cuenca, no pressure...
I plan on taking one short trip to Quito to visit my friend Allison who is coming down to study for the semester at the end of the month. I am going up with my friend/new cousin :) and am glad I don't have to make the 10 hour bus ride alone! I can't wait!
I start school (teacher training) on the 31st of this month and will be teaching pre-K ALL DAY! (I am no longer the GYM teacher, boo. That's the way things work around here, changing all the time!) I am their primary English, Math and Reading teacher and the nice thing is that I will be working less hours but still teaching the same amount of classes each week. The plan is to still ride the buseta (school bus) with them because, well, it's free and it's fun to get to know the kids.
I think that suffices for now. I will continue with hilarious commentary on my life at a later date ;) I miss all of you! Remember you always have an open invitation to come down! Cuidense.
Oh by the way (in reference to the title of this post): I went to this festival for the patron saint of a church near my house on Friday night and there's this fake cow that a person dances around with to music. There were probably like 100 people outside of this church gathered in a huge circle and my friends and I were on the inner ring of the circle. Anyway the dude with the cow came up to me and hit me in the chest with the cow's nose. It was supposed to be funny but he only hit me and not one other person of the hundred that were there...so, weird. I guess you had to be there.
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