Welcome to Peace Corps Ecuador!
We spend our days in this very lovely training center.  It’s a converted house in a lovely part of Quito.  
We don’t get many breaks throughout the day, but when we do, we love to hang out in the sun,  and                                       play soccer or frisbee on the court.  But we never forget the suntan lotion!  Sometimes the intense sun feels like it’s sizzling your skin.
One of our volunteers offers weekly dance class. I’m learning to dance Salsa and Bachata.
There’s a great park nearby for an after class hike among the Eucalyptus trees. 

In class, when we’re not learning how to ingratiate ourselves into this culture and stay alive, we are learning a lot. This week we started our “how to teach English as a Foreign Language” classes.  I sat through how to teach reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary and how to manage a classroom of 35-50 students.  My teacher friends will not be surprised by the fact that I have A LOT of opinions about how to do this well, and I spent much of the time interjecting all of our ELD Language Practice Routines into the lessons!  Such routines as Clock Appointments, Talking Stick and Lines of Communication are in the future for our Ecuadorian students!  It’s all so much fun for me to teach these future teachers, and to think about how I’m going to tweak these lessons and routines for middle and high school levels.

Next week we get our first look at our future schools as we will shadow a current Peace Corps volunteer.  I can’t wait to see what I’m in for!