The trip, Day and Stay at Otavalo

This might end up being two posts depending on how much I write because this past weekend I took a TON of pictures at Otavalo.

But first, I´m going to write a bit about my community service experience this past week. Once again, the name of the program I am studying abroad with is called International Partnership for Service Learning and Leadership. The unique thing about the program is that you are required to do 20hrs of community service which will enhance my understanding of the place I´m studying abroad in. They have many programs in many different countries including one in the U.S. with the Lakota Nation in South Dakota, which seems really interesting. Anywho, I was originally slated to work at a school called Colegio Ipatia Cardenas.

*A picture of me and a girl in my program, Alison Ethridge, and some heart shaped bread I bought while the bus was at a stop*

In the application they had 2-3 pages of questions asking preferences of where you would like to work(school, hospital etc) and who you would like to serve(Persons with physical or mental disabilites, elderly, children, adolescents). It seems as those preferences went right out the window. I was going to be at a school teaching English(because I´m trained to teach English as a secnod language right?...NO). Apparently the first school didn´t work out because there were too many volunteers. We went to another school but the service coordinator didn´t like the principal of the school because she wasn´t punctual. So I went to an organization called, Chicos de la Calle which was not my original site but the site of another student in the program.

*A pensive shot of Alison looking off and this neat little house on the road there*

Sometimes mistakes work out for the better. Chicos de la Calle(Children of the Street, literally) may not be too P.C. but they do a lot of good work and have been for 30 años. Basicamente, trabajo y ayudo con chicos quien no tienen una casa con su tarea. Or as they say here deberes, which is the same thing as tarea:homework. I was actually helping a child with his long division and was completely lost because it read: 986.453/4 - 222 = ??????? It took me a while but I soon remembered that our comma used to separate numbers is their decimal and vice versa. I remember thinking wow, at age 10 I was not dividing decimals, haha....stupid me.

Last story, I swear. Yesterday we went and this girl that couldn´t be older than 12 came in with her 10yr old brother and infant sister. All, including the infant, were dressed in very dirty and ragged clothing. The girl had a...half inch gash that she got on Friday that looked swollen around the yellow looking scab....aka. infected. Being the Boy Scout that I am I still had some first aid stuff left over in my backpack from the trip to Otavalo. I first cleaned the already scabbed over gash with some chloride wipe stuff, then put bactroban type stuff on it and covered it with a band-aid however the band-aid didn´t fit her hand well at all, so I gave her a couple more. It´s depressing that nobody was there to tell the girl to go get some hydrogen peroxide for the cut or anything else...and we aren´t at all equipped to be a first aid facility.








*A picture of another girl in the program, Eva Mantybande, knocked out during the 2hr, $2, bus ride to Otavalo*


So.....I lied, I´ll upload a couple of pictures of the road trip to Otavalo here and then make a new post, JUST talking about Otavalo...

This last picture down at the bottom is what my bed looks like everyday when I come back from work or school, the empleada, Brisa, washes my clothes and even fixes my bed!!!! ridiculous!