It's friday!

We've been teaching for a whole week now!  And it's the weekend :)  We have added more kids to our class and if they all show up we have eleven.  It doesn't sound like that many, but they can be quite a handful.  Today we had nine kids and three teachers and it was just very interesting.  So much energy!  But we have a better idea of what works for the kids and how to use our time effectively.  Lectures don't go over very well with our class, so we split up into groups a lot.  Coloring time was the only section of time where there was complete silence today. Beautiful.  But their hugs and smiles just make my day.  At recess I played with the second graders a lot and they just hang on you and run up with the biggest grin.

We got home from school (Bri and I were commenting on how we feel like part of the community and on our bus ride and walk back to la casa de los gringos, we are going home) and then turned around and went to the north to watch HARRY POTTER.  We were all caught up in the suspense of whether or not the movie was going to be in spanish (we knew there would be subtitles, but the language was still in question).  The previews were 50/50 in spanish and english.  Plus the first couple minutes of the movie are just artsy and there is no dialogue.  We were so excited once they started speaking english.  The movie was amazing.  Still hasn't hit me that it's the last one.  What am I going to look forward to without new books or movie premieres??  Afterwards we walked past McDonalds and it smelled so good, which is weird.  Taste of home and familiarity.  Fries and real coffee (first in three weeks - everything here is instant coffee = gross) never tasted so good.

But I have been here for almost three weeks now!!  Crazy feeling.  I haven't missed television really at all or my cell phone.  I used to feel lost when I forgot my cell phone or when it died, but no longer.  Night for now - we are catching a super early bus tomorrow to go to Otavalo, which has a really big artisan market on saturdays.  We get to say hello Quitumbe (the bus station close to our house - much cleaner and nicer than any major bus station in the states) at a bright and early 5:30.  But I'm so excited to see all of the jewelry and blankets and wide variety of everything.  Everything is cheaper, so we are doing most of our souvenir shopping there - we aren't spending the night but we're bringing backpacks to carry everything back.  Brilliant plan.