Five things that I am going to miss about Cuenca and five things that I am looking forward to at the beach

     Today was our last day in cuenca.  Here are five things that I will miss:

1: going to school everyday 

2: going to get ice cream at a really good shop

3: the park with the long river running through it.

4: walking around the city everyday after school.

5: the weather which is always not too warm, but not too cold.

     Here are five things that I am looking forward to on the beach:

1: learning how to surf

2: trying all of the sea food

3: living on the beach

4: swimming in the ocean

5: the warm weather

Schools and playgrounds in Ecuador

     Imagine that you are in a fancy palace and the Queen of England and Barack Obama are eating a feast with you.  It's a lot different than where you live.  You live in a small, poor, town with a little bit to eat each day.  Then imagine switching places.  You are used to eating big feasts with important people.  But you live in a small town with little to eat. I am in Cuenca, Ecuador right now, and the way that the kids live aren't exactly what someone from the U.S would be used to. The way kids live in different places can differ a lot sometimes.

     The schools that children go to in Cuenca, Ecuador are different than the ones in New York.  Cuenca is a small city where education might not be the top priority.  New York is a place where a lot of schools have important resources. For instance, when I went to visit a school in Cuenca with my Spanish tutor, the school was nothing like Berkeley Carroll.  The school was a building with a giant courtyard and classrooms surrounding it.  The kids were all milling around or hanging out on the bleachers with their friends.  Some kids were buying treats from the school junk food shop with chips, candy and other snacks.  Some kids were running around and playing tag.  Some of the kids were learning, though.  But, the downside to that is that there are 40 to 50 kids in a classroom.  With that many people, no one ends up learning much at all.  Another thing that I noticed about this school was that it was not a very nice building.  The courtyard was covered with old wrappers and junk.  The classrooms had metal bars on the windows to keep the thieves out. Inside the classrooms, there were a bunch of desks and a dirty stone floor.  It seemed like the school classrooms were very run down.  In Berkeley Carroll and PS 321,the schools I have gone to, have nicer facilities.  The classrooms aren't as run down or as dirty. I wasn't sure if this was true in most schools, but later I asked my tutor, who used to be a teacher in Cuenca, and she told me that most schools looked that way.  This is because New York City spends more money on education than Cuenca.

     In Cuenca and Quito, the playgrounds I have been to are different than ones in New York.  In Ecuador, what kids might find interesting in a playground might be different than what a kid might think in the United States.  For example, in all the playgrounds that I have been to in Ecuador, there is a swing attached to a zip line.  I have never seen this in New York.  Most of the parks in Cuenca have seesaws.  They do have them in New York but not at most playgrounds I go to.  One isn't better than the other, but they are very different.

     In various places around the world, kids live in variety of ways.  Think about places you have gone in the world.  Do you think people's everyday lives are different?

   

     

     

Living in Cuenca, Ecuador

      Today was our second day in Cuenca.  It almost seems like we're living here.  We are staying at someone's house, so instead of going out for every meal, we get home cooked meals.  We always get cereal, eggs, hot chocolate or tea for breakfast.  We always get soup and some sort of main course with rice for lunch and dinner. Of course, the juices are incredible.  There is always some sort of juice with a fruit that we don't know.  Tree tomato, or some sort of kiwi tasting juice.  The house is really nice.  We each get our own room, and mine is the one with a view of the city.  The lady that we are staying with, (señora Elena) has a big, kind family.  She has five children and eight grandchildren.  On Sundays her family comes over for dinner and we eat with all of them.  On week days, since most schools get out around lunchtime, her grandchildren come over and do homework. 

      Now since we're in Cuenca, we also started going to school every day.  Spanish school of course. We walk there every morning at eight o' clock and get tutored one on one until twelve thirty.  The tutoring is really fun.  We all go to Mini classrooms.  Sometimes your teacher takes you outside.  Today I went with my tutor, Alejandra, to a cathedral, an art gallery and a flower market.  She had me ask people what time it was, ask people how much things cost, and say in Spanish if I liked a painting or not.  Tomorrow, I'm going to a school for some of the poor children in Cuenca.  

       The picture above is of the view from my room.

   

Going to the equator

Today we went to the equator.  The top picture is of the painted line of the equator.  The bottom one is of a monument at the equator.  We also went to a museum and saw a lot of interesting experiments.  We saw a whirlpool on each hemisphere going in different directions.  We also saw how you could balance an egg on a nail, right on the equator because of the gravity and rotation of the earth going faster than usual.

Wax museum in Quito

Today we went to a wax museum in Quito. Here I am next to a wax sculpture of a Spanish women from colonial Quito.

My first day in Ecuador

Today was our first day in Quito

We went to the park in the tourist part of Quito and ate pork and soup for lunch. We also saw a lot of what it was like to live here everyday. We saw kids going to school, people in the playground.  One way that Quito is different from New York is that all the kids wear uniforms.