Name: Marielle Nichol
Project: Culture and Language Experience Ecuador / Ecuador Street Children Volunteer
It certainly feels like I've been in Quito for longer than a week- and I mean that in a good way. My home stay family have been very welcoming and I feel quite at home there. Spanish lessons are going well. Obviously after a week I'm practically fluent, just unfortunately not in a language that is generally understood here. My family call it Spanglish and are usually very helpful in correcting me once they have stopped laughing!
The daily 4-hour one-on-one lessons are pretty intense and my head is usually swimming with vocab and verbs by the time we finish, but we have taken two trips out; once to the old town and once to the food market which made a nice change and was very informative.
The school is pretty small so all the students are friendly and I have met a nice bunch of people already. They all happen to be English at the moment but I think new people will arrive every week. Some of the girls are also working at the voluntary project that I'm going to.
There is loads to do in and around Quito and I'm getting very excited about all the walking and cycling trips that are possible from here. Last weekend I went to Banos with 4 other students from the school. On Saturday we did a good walk to a viewpoint and then a long bike ride along a valley full of waterfalls on Sunday which was beautiful. So all in all quite an active weekend which is good.
I also need to work off the huge meals which Guadelupe is preparing for me, the food is generally delicious but am not used to eating potatoes, rice, grains every meal time and in such quantities.
I'm still in the polite phase of eating most of it but learning how to courteously refuse was top of my list of phrases to learn this week. Since I arrived I have been asking Guadelupe if we can cook some traditional Ecuadorian dishes together. Being very accommodating, she chose Saturday morning as a good time to teach us how to make prawn ceviche- a delicious cold soup with lime, coriander, tomatoes and onions.
Unfortunately this coincided with my humungous hangover from a very funny and random Friday night out. Peeling prawns was a serious struggle as was eating the results of our efforts. Whoops.
I also found time to go to a football match between the two Quito teams, Liga and Nacional. It was muy divertido and we learnt a few choice new Spanish phrases too! Whilst buying our tickets I got interviewed by a roving reporter from the local sports channel who got very excited when I said I was from England; was I Beckham's cousin was the next question!
The volunteer project I worked on is for street children but is more of a care-home rather than a drop-in centre. In true British teacherly fashion I immediately wanted to impose some structured activities but it's very hard when you don't speak the language very well and there are absolutely no resources to speak of.
I needn't have worried as the children are so bored that they are receptive to any activity.
When I made some play-dough on Friday you'd have thought I'd given them $100 each and they were engrossed for the next 2 and a half hours. They obviously don't get much opportunity to work creatively as they had no idea what to make or how to make it. So we had great fun and when we packed up one girl who is 13 was literally begging me to carry on. At least that made me think that volunteering is serving some kind of purpose here.
