January 15, 2009 You Can Experience All 4 Seasons In Just 1 Day

Today was the best day I have had at school so far. The other days I have felt like I’ve been more of an inconvenience to my collaborating teacher.
It was really cold this morning and I did not want to get out of bed. I swear I got ready in like 20 minutes. We had to leave the apartment a little early bc we had to stop at the ATM to get money out bc the cable guy was meeting us at Colegio Menor to put down a deposit. So we left the apartment around 6:50 and headed to the ATM. We got to the ATM but for some reason it wouldn’t let us take any money out…maybe bc it was so early in the morning. These ATMs can be a little tedious sometimes. So we went ahead and went to our bus stop. We weren’t sure what we were going to do about the money, but we didn’t have time to walk around Quito looking for am ATM.
Once we got to the school we had to go talk to Ruben about our water situation. Yesterday, we were told that we had hot water in our apartment, but Melissa, Jackie, and I did not have any in our rooms so we wanted to get that figured out. We ended up staying in Rubens office for at least an hour trying to get everything sorted out. He told us we would need to go to an ATM to get cash out to pay the cable man when he came. Melissa and I decided to go to Banco Pinchincha in Cumbaya during lunch break to get the money. We also went and talked to Cindy, the lady who is heading up the spring break trip to the Galapagos Islands, about getting signed up for that. She wasn’t there, but we ended up talking to her assistant who assured us we would be able to go…I cannot wait!!! Cindy had pictures up all over her office and they were gorgeous.
After talking to Ruben and Cindy, I finally I got to go to my classroom. The students were just getting back from Spanish and were getting ready to go on break. It was gorgeous outside today! It was really hot this afternoon though. In Ecuador, they say that you can experience all 4 seasons in just one day. That’s definitely how today has been.
We set up our cable, internet, and telephone after the students left. That was kind of a long process bc the cable guy didn’t speak any English…thank goodness Ruben was there to translate! Anyways, once we got that squared away, we had to go catch our bus.
Now we’re back at our apartment relaxing. Some of the faculty from our school are meeting to play Frisbee in the park by our house so we might stop by and play for a while…depending on the weather.
Anyways, hope everyone is going well! I really love it here!