Classes and Baños

I am officially done with more than one week of classes! It feels really good, but I definitely have obstacles to overcome in both classes. In my second class of the day, there are way too many kids that want to only speak Spanish and talk to each other the whole time. There were girls putting on makeup during class yesterday and it´s a constant battle to get some of their attention. Granted, not all of the students are like that, and I do enjoy doing fun activities with them. However, I am just having to be more creative when it comes to partnering them up and doing group work. Almost all of them are friends, so it makes it slightly more difficult. But I´m getting the hang of it and all should be well soon. My first class has some of the same problems (which I know you find in every classroom across the world), but for the most part they want to learn and are willing to participate in the activities that I assign. However, in my first class I have encountered my first bit of "Crush on Gringa Teacher Syndrome." It is very interesting, and he´s a nice guy, but I am constantly having to be on my guard and make sure that he is aware of the line that is drawn. All of my students know that I have a boyfriend, so hopefully he´ll get the hint that I´m not interested eventually.

This weekend some of the volunteers went to Baños (a small town not too far away from Riobamba). It was so much fun! There were nine of us and we got there early Saturday morning because we all have Friday night classes (the one flaw with our travel plans). On Saturday we had lunch, got checked into our hostal, and wandered the city. We made reservations for a Monkey tour on Sunday as well. We didn´t want to pay half of the amount ahead of time, so Tyler told her that his ITIC (International Teacher Identification Card) was extremely important and she could use that as a deposit. Little did she know that our ITIC cards are not widely needed unless you want discounts at some places. Some people went to get massages and spa treatments that afternoon and we had a great day of food, taffy (HUGE in Baños), and talking.

Sunday we were going to go to the thermal baths early, but it was raining so we skipped on that for the time being. We went to the tour place at 9:00 and got into our shuttle bus to go to see the monkeys. On the way there we stopped at a lot of waterfalls and rode a little cable car thing across the cliffs and a waterfall. It was incredible! We finally got to the monkey refuge site, where they help get abandoned monkeys back into the wild. It was not very touristy, but the monkeys climbed ALL over us! It has always been one of my lifelong dreams to play with monkeys, so I was completely in heaven. They are some incredibly smart animals, too. They knew how to open zippers and take things out of bags, so we had to watch our stuff all the time. However, they were adorable and would also lead us by the hand to show us things of theirs. They absolutely loved playing with my hair, too. Anyone who had long hair got their hair messed with. The monkeys loved trying to find things in the hair, and thankfully, were unsuccessful. I have TONS of pictures of them playing with us, and will put them up asap, but this computer is being a pain in terms of getting my pictures off the camera, so I´ll try to do it tomorrow.

After the monkeys we got a little lunch and did end up going to the thermal baths. The water comes out of the volcano at 136 degrees Fareinheight, and was not much cooler when we got in. It was a lot of fun and definitely worth the experience. We had a great dinner at Casa Hood and I actually ended up getting Pad Thai (just for you, Joanna). It was phenomenal and great to get away from rice and potatoes for a nice.

All in all, things are going well here and I can´t wait for my next weekend adventure! It will dfinitely be an interesting experience spending 4th of July in Ecuador, but we will make it truly American. I will put pictures up as soon as I can!!