Second week of volunteering!

HOLA!

So last week was pretty similar to the first week we were here. On the Tuesday Lizzy wasn´t feeling great so I went and taught at the school on my own. It actually went OK considering how little spanish I know! The kids were not too badly behaved and I managed to teach them some english. On Wednesday we started painting the school playground. This was good fun although the kids did come out and get all of the paintbrushes mixed up in different paints and try to ´help´. We have so far only painted a hopscotch and the blue of the river that we are going to write the months in a stepping stones. We did manage to get acryllic paint all over our hands as well, and it is VERY difficult to get off. I was wearing my PJs to paint in because I do not really want to get paint on my other clothes. I only got a small amount of paint actually on my clothes so far altough there were times when the kids were around that I thought I could have easily been covered in paint all over! We have also been continuing to make a bird list of all of the birds in the reserve and look through a booklet to go in the guets´rooms about the lodge. It has been really interesting and fun to spend more time getting to know the kids and the people at the lodge.

Last weekend we went to Otavalo. It was great fun. On Saturday morning we got up early to go and see the animal market. There were pigs screaming constantly! There were also cows, sheep, cats, chickens, guinea pigs and ducks. They were often just shoved in to bags or in cages. The chickens were held upsaide down by their legs, often tied to other chickens by thier legs as well. It was certainly an experience! After that we went and looked round the other markets. There were stalls absolutely everywhere! There was fruit stacked really high and then just rows and rows of stall selling clothing and jewelry. It was very impressive and very hard not to buy everything! I think that I managed to be quite restrained and not buy tooo much stuff!

On Saturday afternoon we went up to somewhere where birds of prey are kept. Some of the were massive! We saw the andean condor, the biggest flying bird! It was about 1m tall and their wing span can get up to 3m. It was very impressive but they are in danger of extinction. We also went to some magic tree. It said about it in the guide book. It was slightly random, it was just a tree in separate from any others but we did get lovely views from there. We then walked the 4.5km back in to Otavalo and again had some really fab views. In the evening we went out for a lovely chinese meal!

On Sunday we had a fairly relaxing morning. We walked around Otavalo a bit more and looked in another church. It is a very pretty little town. There are lots of people there in the local clothes. We got back here to the lodge on Sunday evening and this morning spent 1.5 hours washing our clothes!

We are hoping to be off to Mindo next weekend but this week should be similar to the others.

Adios!

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