Chevere

hello everyone! ecuador´s great, I like it alot! the socond or third day in town I went up into the mountains to a town called guisagweña (not sure how to spell it) with my host mom Piedad, coordinator, Aida and Kristin along with another family, whose kids go to my school. there was a big festival up in the mountains with people and music and fireworks and food and clothing, we went to a church that was packed full of people and candles. we walked around and watched a gaint firework show with spinning sparks and music. the girls were very nice and explained everything to us twice. the younger one pointed to everything and names it "se llama zapatos" and "se llama chocolate". it was a lot of fun.
a few days later kristin got her hosty family, who she loves. and the day after that we got mesured for our uniforms. the girl´s uniforms are all white dresses with white socks and black shoes. I think all the girls look like nurses and all the boys like cub scouts (brown uniforms)
Aida works at my school and took me to two classes to introduce me. then some girls fromt he class invited me to go to a pizzaria with them and then play basketball. they are all SO nice.
I play basketball with them every evening in the weekdays.

I like the town a lot because everyone knows eachother.

On saturday the whole afs group from Piñas, plus Piedad, Aida and an afs counselor, went to Cuenca. An old, colonial town with beautiful buildings and cold weather, since it´s high up above sea level. we had to get up at 2 in the morning to catch a bus there, but it was difinetly worth it. we went to market, where the quecuan people sold coats and bags and scarfs and goods. we all baught Piedad a flower because Aida told us it was "la dia de la Rosa", being santa rosa and piedad´s first name is Rosa.

They have AMAZING pineapples, oranges and bananas here.

yesterday we started school. the other students there are already halfway through the year, so we´ll have a break in the middle of our exchange year. the first day, we all put on our uniforms and lined up for the Ecuadorian Pledge Of Alligence (they sing it every Monday at the start of the day). the the School´s director made anouncements andcalled us up to introduce ourselves. All seven of us stood infront of the whole school and said our names, where we were from and whatever else we wanted to say. my spanish isn´t great, so I used pretty bad grammar.
I actually like school very much, though its probably because I don´t really have to do too much bacause I can´t understand much of what the theachers say. all the students were very welcoming and yesterday my friends taught me all the names for Fruts. papaya, limon, piña, etc.

Everyone calls me "Sarita" here :)

I think I am catching onto spanish pretty quickly, atleast I know a lot more than I did the first day. I´m exited to get to the point where I can speak AND understand everything. right not I don´t really understand too much. but I´ve been studying!

My host mother is very nice. at night we always watch a show called "una novela" on television. we talk and I take my diccionary and look up words I don´t understand. she´s so sweet. in a week I think I understood that we are going to Loja to Meet with her Family that lives there.

well I should get going now..
¡hasta luego!
Sarita

¡Somos en Ecuador!

Hola! Im in Ecuador! before leaving for ecuador, we first had an orientation with all the exchange students going to Central America and Ecuador. Then I left on a flight to ecuador with 15 other students. We landed in Quito, Ecuador at around 12 am and drove up to a sort of camp where we stayed in cabins. The next day we played games and everyone (there were about 60 students from all over the world, mostly Europe and one from Japan) introduced their home countries. the day after that, at 6 in teh morning, we flew out top our host towns. There are 7 AFS students in Piñas. We all took a very small plane out to Machala, where we were picked up by our host families. I was picked up by my host mom and my coodinator (they are best friends). my host mother is very nice. she is patient too, which is good for speaking to her, since I don´t speak much Spanish. there is a girl, Kristen, from Germany living with my coodinator for the moment until she gets her host family. we´re hanging out together which my mother, Piedad, is at work. Piñas is very interesting and beautiful, it is tucked nint eh middle of mountains, you can see it on the picture at the top of my blog. we start school on september 1st. I´m exited!

Preparing For Ecuador

Hi it's Sarah! in 27 days I'll be flying out to start my exchange year in Ecuador! I'm so exited! :) The town I'll be staying in is called Piñas (which means pineapple!) it's in the southern end of the country in the El Oro providence.

My host mom is a woman named Piedad. She sounds like she's very nice! I actually just sent her a letter (in my broken Spanish, haha), I hope she has enough time to write me back before I arrive :) the mail will take about 10 days to get there.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Chicago to get all my student visa information set!

if I had to come up with some goals for my year they'd be: To experience life in a different culture and be more aware of the outside world. To learn Spanish - hopefully I'll be pretty fluent by the end of my exchange! I'd like to make a lot of new friends from all over the world (from Ecuador and other exchange students from different countries). I want to be really, really confident and soak up everything while I'm there! And to have an amazing year living in Ecuador!

ah! I'm so psyched! :)