The Weekend that the “Chicas” Officially Became Tourists
FYI: Given the unreliable internet situation, Lila and I have decided to split up blogging responsibilities so that our entries do not overlap. To read about our experience in its entirety, visit ecuador.blogs.rice.edu. Thanks for reading!
Lila and I on our carriage ride though Quito
After arriving back in the much warmer city of Quito, we spent our weekend being the ultimate tourists. On Saturday we accompanied Maria Alicia to the Historic District of Quito. While she had a business workshop to lead, we had a few hours to explore all that the city had to offer. We began by taking a tour of the most ornate cathedral in the whole country of Ecuador. It took 160 years and over 100 pounds of gold to complete it. We then took a 20 minute carriage ride (with the horse and all!) around the Historic District and scoped out some more places to visit. We bought guanabana-flavored ice cream and visited a few of the shops that are in the plaza. We bought movies, sweets, souvenirs, handicrafts, and a new digital thermometer for the CHO pack, since the one that was in it initially was inaccurate by a few degrees. We also found a few pharmacies in this area that could possibly have the items needed to restock the backpacks when the time comes.
On Sunday, Maria Alicia and her adventurous mom Marta took us to La Mitad del Mundo: The Middle of the World. There is a large monument in the small town of San Antonio where the latitude is 0*0’0”. At this spot, the equator is perfectly perpendicular to the solstice line, the path that the sun takes on the longest day of the year. After taking an endless amount of pictures, we could not resist the urge to shop some more, especially since there were so many of our favorite cute, bargain-priced shops selling local handicrafts. We finished the day off with a delicious lunch, a mound of chocolate ice cream, and a quick glide on the mini-zipline in the kid’s park. It took some convincing but we finally got Maria Alicia to give it a try; and she had a blast.
Lila and I at La Mitad del Mundo
Of course being back in Quito didn’t mean all fun and no work. On Monday and Tuesday we went back to the Fundacion office and started working on some more education materials for the lessons that we’ve been doing at the schools in Planchaloma. In our ‘charlita’ on handwashing and recycling, we decided to add another topic: nutrition. Many of the kids, and even parents, here are not getting all the vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy and prevent sickness, especially in these conditions (such as non-potable water). In our lesson we will talk about what kinds of vitamins and minerals we need to stay healthy. We will talk about the kinds of foods that our bodies need and how much of each kind of food we should be eating per day. We also decided that the kids would get more out of the lesson if it were interactive; so we made it a sort of game. We made a large poster of a colored food pyramid, minus the food items. We printed and laminated pictures of various food items and, after our lesson, the kids have to place the food items in the right category. During our lesson at the next escuelita, we are hoping to incorporate our nutrition lesson into our talk and see what kind of response we get.