Day Adventures: February 2014

Friday, February 28, 2014

A Party

At the daycare they started celebrating for Carnival which is this weekend. They celebrate here with shooting each other with foam and water and throwing confetti. I hear no one is spared. All week the school aged kids have been smashing eggs on each other too. Pretty much everyone has Monday and Tuesday off too, me included! If we had known earlier we would have planned a trip, but we also want to experience Carnival too. We may go for a day visit somewhere though which will be fun. The kids at the daycare pretty much just played all day shooting each other with foam and water. Lucas loved it, but Melayna was not a big fan. The kids really got a kick out of shooting the teachers. It was actually nice to have the kids want to chase me around and spray me. It felt like we truly belonged. Lucas also had a few of the boys that had been mean to him play with him and tell him secrets. Of course, he has no idea what they said, but he just smiled all the same. Melayna has found two older girls that take here places on the playground and help her use the bathroom and wash her hands. She prefers them over me. It is wonderful to see them thriving. After seeing the big deal they made at the day care about this weekend, I am looking forward to a good weekend. We will just have to remember our extra clothes.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Things Kids Say

Today was a good day and the kids had fun. Nothing really new happened so I thought I would talk about the funny things the kids have been saying.
Today Melayna said, "Look mommy, that little girl is pretty like me."
When we hear the truck selling gas tanks, Lucas always says they are saying, "Oh my goodness I have gas! I have gas." It cracks me up.
Melayna says she is "winning you" instead of beating you.
Melayna likes to kick her feet fast and say "rapido, rapido!" Then she kicks slowly and says real slow, "lentamente."
They both love to say the names of the buses, Vingala, Marco Polo, Amaguaña, General Pintag and Condervall. Amaguaña is my favorite one they say.
Lucas says,"Ai, yi, yi!"
Melayna plays "peek at you" with babies.
Lucas likes to "practice being an adult" on the bus.
They both say, "choa!"
Lucas says his heart hurts or it is broken when something does not go his way.
Melayna can count better in Spanish than in English
They are just funny sometimes. I love to watch them develop and change and some things they say just remind me that they are still young and other things make them seem so grown up. So sweet.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Great Teachers

I got to thinking about great teachers I have had in the past today while doing homeschooling with Lucas. I am not cut out to be a teacher. I do not have the patience that you need to help a child learn. I get frustrated when Lucas knows the answer, but then he says he does not know and won't try without promoting. I am not sure how much to assist, if I should let him make mistakes without correcting them to encourage more writing, and most of all how to make it interesting and different. I thought about some of my favorite teachers like Mrs. Rigano, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Simpson, Mr. Bag well and Mr. Foskel. I remember their classes being interesting, different and challenging all the time. We were always doing something creative in Mrs. Rigano's class and writing stories about a character we created at the beginning of the year and wrote about all year long. We built a science hut to do science experiments in, we had a class election and did the Olympics after researching our countries. She was by far my most creative teacher and I remember some things we did like it was yesterday. I hate that Lucas is missing out on that and I know I will not be his favorite teacher, but I hope he has good ones like I did. He is a really smart kid and I want him to be able to learn what he needs to make it. My sister and her husband and my sister-in-law and her husband and my friend are those kinds of teachers that kids will remember. I have heard some of the fun things they have done and just know their kids will say they were the best teachers they had. I hope Lucas has teachers like them. In the meantime, I hope Matt and I can do our best to teach Lucas what he needs and make it creative and fun. I am so busy learning and trying to pass on Spanish these days that I forget to work with Melayna on her age appropriate concepts too. We have starting working on shapes, colors, letters and numbers again and I have to day it is harder without all the toys and books we had when Lucas was little. It makes you realize what low income families and families in countries like Ecuador where toys are so expensive have to overcome if they want to teach their children well. For example puzzles are really expensive so the daycare has drawn pictures on cardboard and then cut them into pieces to make a puzzle, which does not stay together and only frustrates the kids. Once we started looking, we have been able to use the environment more to teach her, but it has taken some time. I will remember how hard it is next time their is a toy drive for any organization and get those kids toys they can use to learn and excel. My lesson of the day is that teaching is really hard and to remember to thank teachers often.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Progress

After an adventurous weekend, it was nice to have some time off with the kids and to reflect a bit on our time in Ecuador thus far. At one time or another, I suppose most of us have experienced the realization of how far we have come or how far we may have progressed toward a certain goal if we take the time for reflection. With God’s help, I think we have made a lot of progress both in our personal lives and with our work here in Ecuador.

Melayna seems to be doing a little better with potty training and Lucas is doing great with his school work. He continues to excel in Math and is improving with his reading and comprehension. Both kids are starting to yell Spanish words, some of which I am not sure of the meaning. Bethany is progressing very well with her Spanish. I noticed this weekend that she was able to carry on several lengthy conversations in Spanish with locals. I am not to that point yet, but I can usually come up with a question if I need something and understand the general idea of most responses.

Last week was one of the best clinic weeks that I have had since being in Ecuador. One patient in particular stands out. I treated a young lady who was diagnosed with tuberculosis and became partially paralyzed from the waist down. At the time, no one gave her much of a chance to recover. She has been confined to the bed and wheelchair for most of the last 2 years. To complicate her recovery, the patient became pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy 6 months ago. I first saw this patient back in mid-January. I spent some time going over exercises and pain management. It was a whole month before I had the chance to see her again and to my surprise her lower extremity strength had substantially progressed. After my second assessment of her, I knew she was ready to stand. However, Mercedes and I met some opposition from the patient secondary to fear of falling. Long story short, she was able to go from sit to stand 10 times with moderate assistance. What a determined and hardworking patient! I can’t wait to find a walker so that we can try walking in a few weeks! Other patients have shown improvement, albeit less dramatic. Bethany has talked me through progressing a few pediatrics from only being able to lift their heads in prone to an independent army crawl. The bottom line is the patients/parents that are motivated are progressing fast and it is fun to see their success.

Let’s pray for another great week.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Mindo Adventure

We had so much fun this weekend in Mindo! It was a beautiful place. Mindo is in the rain forest and it did rain a lot, but we planned for that so we still had fun. We started our trip at 7:00AM with a bus ride to Old Quito. I have never seen Lucas walk so fast. I think he was the most excited about the trip. After we got to Old Town, we walked to the next bus station and caught a bus to the North Terminal. We had a little trouble communicating with the bus terminal people, but eventually I said the right words to get us on the right bus. We took that bus to the bus terminal where we bought the tickets to Mindo. The bus ride from there was 2.5 hours and we were able to see a waterfall and some really tiny towns along the way. You could watch as we climbed into the clouds. Mindo is known as cloud forest and it fit that name. When we arrived in Mindo we decided to find a place to eat lunch. We voted for some pizza, which was really delicious. When we finished eating, we took a truck with a sign that said taxi in the window to the hotel. The hotel was five separate cabanas and then a lodge area, a pool overlooking the rain forest and a game room. When we arrived the owner greeted us and got us a pitcher of guanabana juice on the house which was delicious. Then we were taken to our cabana which had three double beds and a twin bed and two bathrooms. The bathroom upstairs had a jacuzzi tub that had a huge window overlooking the rain forest. Matt and I's bedroom was upstairs and had a balcony. When Lucas went out there he said, "If grandma was here, we wold have our coffee and graham crackers out here." It was really sweet. After we settled in a little, we went for a little exploring of the forest. We saw a parrot and a bunch of ants carrying leaves in a long line. It was really cool. It rained on and off, but we had fun. We also walked to the Rio Mindo, which is the main river there and threw in some rocks. The water was really cold and very rapid. After that we tried to go swimming, but it did not last long since it was raining and the pool water was only a little warm. It was really pretty though. That night we ate dinner in the lodge and had trout with different kinds of nuts on it and shrimp with a an amazing sauce on it and fried bananas. We also had blackberry or mora juice. It was delicious. In the morning we were up before breakfast was served, so Matt to the kids to play Foosball so I could read for a little while. It was so nice. For breakfast we had fresh off the trees mango, papaya, bananas and watermelon from the vine. We also had fresh bread and scrambled eggs. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. Next we headed to town to get a guide to see the waterfalls. Our guide was about 16 years old and she hiked with dress flats on, but she knew what she was doing. It was beautiful and I wish we could have hiked longer, but it was too hard for the kids to get to the other waterfalls. We headed back to town to eat at the recommended restaurant from our travel book and were not disappointed. We had huge hamburgers and french fries which hit the spot. Lucas almost ate more than Matt and I. Needless to say it was really good. After that we head back home on the bus which was very full due to elections being held on Sunday and people traveling back from voting. When we got home dinner was waiting for us and it was back to soup and rice with vegetables and hotdog pieces. It was good too. We were tired, but it was a wonderful birthday weekend and I came home to 75+ birthday wishes. Yet again feeling blessed!