Day Two: Futbol and Love Letters

After a great night's sleep and a nutritious breakfast with our host families, we headed back to Huantugloma for another day of interacting with the students. Expecting to engage in a day of cultura and art, we found ourselves put into the same classes we interacted with yesterday. As we have learned so far, flexibility is key and we were more than happy to be with the students we had already met.

After feeling out the attitudes and circumstances of the students yesterday, we found ourselves more prepared to teach lessons. Given that this was our second day at the school, many of the kids were more responsive to our presence and seemed more eager to engage in our lessons. Through various activities - in drawing, playing games, and counting numbers - our students were able to learn more about English and we were able to get them interested in what we had to teach them.

One of the biggest takeaways from today's outing included relationship-building among ourselves and our students. Yesterday, many of the students were resistant and, in some cases, quite shy; today, on the other hand, our students participated in a large game of futbol, played interactive games, and even wrote one of our participants love letters. One student in particular - little Melissa - spent the day politely stealing our food, lovingly throwing flowers at us, and giving each of us much-needed attention individually. Overall, we felt as if today was critical in building our friendships with the students and we hope to continue bonding with them during the week.

When we came back to the University, we met with an associate who told us about Maki Fair-Trade, a business that carries artisan products made by local toquilleros. We learned that the purpose of the company is to enable the women creating the artisan products to gain fair payment; typically, intermediary companies exploit these women and don't give them a fair percent of their sales. We then visited the store and purchased many items, including.... absolutely all of their Pacari chocolate.

We came back from the store and participated in our reflection for the day. Today's activity was mainly based on self-reflection; we discussed our identities and who we are and how these have made us feel on this service trip. This led into a very thoughtful conversation between the participants.

In our remaining days in Ecuador, we really hope to build our relationships with our students and leave our impact on the community.