changes

Ever since school started up again my life, or plans for it have been somewhat of a roller coaster. To make a long, painful drawn-out story short (okay, that may have been a little exagerated)...but still. Right after I got back from the beach I was told that I wasn't going to have to change my house, school or anything. A few weeks later, rotary called Mami to tell her I was moving and had to change everything. They couldn't tell me where or when... just they were doing a draw to see where the girls in my club and I would end up. Gotta love when your future depends on who draws your name from a hat.... hahah. Really though, the day Mami told me that, was probably my hardest day yet. My family (being amazing) made up for it my taking to la mitad del mundo (the middle of the world)... literaly!

me, my aunts Lili and Ceci and Mami



Before going to the actual line of the Ecuator, we all had lunch on a volcano looking down into the crater.... very cool might I add.

I also got to make friends with a llama... there were a few in the front yard of the Inn where we ate.



To continue with my roller coaster story... since I kind of left it hanging in my intro, my coucellor e-mailed me the next day saying that they would not change my school. GREAT news for me since it meant I would still be able to do dance, play soccer in the olympics, organize the musical review and go to the model United Nations. However it also meant I long drive from either Quito or the other valley, Cumbaya. A few days later I got another e-mail with the information of my new host family, I'm going to Quito. Meaning, leaving my house at 6 am in order to take 3 different buses to make it to school on time. I'm not even going to go into the bus horror stories I've been told, because I'm pretty sure Papa would personally rent a jet plane and come to Ecuador and take me home. I just found out today that my new uncle works in Valley de los Chillos, so he will drive me to school every morning! Got very luck there! I still have to leave at six in the morning, but at least I don't have to deal with Ecuadorian public transportation. My cousellor called my mom a few days after I got the new host family e-mail to tell her I might not be changing houses at all anymore. By then, I didn't even want to think about hoping for that..... I was tired of rotary always changing their minds and had accepted that things like these happen for a reason. It's a good thing I didn't get my hopes up because as it turns out, I'm moving away as soon as I get back from the Amazon. I'm alright with it though, I have this peace about it and as sad as I am to be leaving this family, I'm a little excited to see what's in store for me up in Quito.

Other than my dizzing moving situation, I've been keeping busy. We were told at school that the exchange students now have to do ALL the homework, tests and projects and we will be marked just like the other students. I personally don't mind.. other than the fact that I had to restart taking math/ have been asking my brother for help ALL the time. I've been convinced to organize a musical review for mother's day. I have a lot of friends who can sing and we're going to be doing Mama Mia.. hahha I know. Since we have a very big dance competition coming up in March, I have dance everyday now except Fridays, I really love it! I've started running every morning at 5:45 with one of the orphans (Fanny) who lives in the school on my street. She's 18 too, I'm going to miss her a lot.

Saturday we had the opening ceremonies for our in-school olympics, every class is a team, we all have different uniforms and there is a playing schedule during class time and everything. My grade all had the same uniform. We kind of look like lady bugs... the jerseys are red and on the back have a line down the middle and three spots on each side... yeah... even the boys. One of my really good friends Santiago won best athelete of A P CH and got to run around the field with the torch! I think in school olympics are a really cool idea!

  My sexto (grade 12) sociales!!! <3 them





  I was "la representante" for our team, so at one point in the ceremony I had to walk out with out captain Agustine and have people judge our uniform. Our team won!! They also game me flowers, so cute! I guess having to wear the lady bug antenas was worth it. Maddie and I have be-friended the daughter of our gym teacher, she is adorable and always talks with us when we're having lunch before dance.

Me, Lea and Maddie

Later that day I went to help the people at Antorcha de Vida (the foundation where I help with the disabled kids). There was kind of a foundation fair going on in Conocoto. We had a little tent and were selling clothes and little bags of snack food. There wasn't A LOT of people there... lets just say we weren't selling a lot. I decided to take a tray of things and walk around.... thanks to my newly found "gringa" powers we ended up with quite a bit of money. Yes, mom, this story was for you by the way. I got my picture taken with one of the girls I volunteer with for the new paper.... cool!!

Well, that's about all for now. Thanks to my changing of home drama I've experienced a few hands on life lessons. Like... nothing is certain, never take what you have for granted and when life throws you lemons, make orange juice. Doesn't make sense? Neither does life, but I know there's a plan behind all this and I'm ready to find out where it is taking me. All I need is some patience, strength and faith. Thank you to those who have encouraged me while I ranted at them via facebook chat. Thank you to everyone really for the prayers and support. You're a really big part of the biggest year of my life! 

Love, la gringa (who isn't really a gringa because she's canadian but gets called that anyway).

Me and Sonja (my German daughter)... oh yeah, sorry

mom, I forgot to tell you I've adopted. hahah









Feliz Navidad y Año Nuevo!

Alright, so I realise it's been a while but in my defence I did try to do this twice right after Christmas and my computer died on me both times. December was my busiest month yet, fnishing up school, practicing everyday for my dance presentation and of course preparing for Christmas. The dance presentation went really well. We had both a hip hop and a zamba choreography. I never expected to be dancing either of those styles EVER... but hey, that's what exchange is for.                                                                                 Sonja, Usman, Maddie and I did a secret santa gift exchange aswell as having one in each of our classes. The one in my class was really fun. We started about 2 weeks before the last day of school (exchange date) and gave our secret santa something small leading up to it. My secret santa was Patricio who is actually our student council president, I gave him mapple syrup and other Canada type things. I got a really cool bag that says "yo corazon Ecuador" (I heart Ecuador) on it from Andreas. All the exchange students gave a presentation on Christmas in our countries and finished it off with our own version of Feliz Navidad. Another fun event we got to participate in was our grade's

Cena de Navidad (or Christmas supper). It was at Danilo's house (he's in the physics class). There was food, picture taking and of course dancing... it wouldn't be Ecuador if there wasn't dancing.It was a really fun evening with all our school friends. A Christmas tradition that is different here would be "La Novena". Now before I decribe it I would like to remind everyone that the majority of people here are Catholic or have that background.What happens is, nine days before Christmas and all the days leading up to it people get together to pray the Lord's prayer as well as recite a prayer from a little pamphlet everyone has. There is also usually food involved and it's a nice time with family and friends. Since our Cena de Navidad was 8 days before Christmas,

my whole grade got together before we ate and prayed "La Novena". It was pretty cool. Now, my family didn't do this everyday, I think we went to two but some people pray it every single night. You don't have to have a big group of people to do it either, some people do it by themselves or with one other person. 

We got out of school on December 23rd. Everyone recieved a scarf, gloves and candies from the school, which I thought was really neat. On the 24th, Mami, Andrea, Sebas, my two aunts Ceci, Lili and I all drove down to my abuelito's (grandparent's) house in Ambato. A city about 2 hours from where I live. Since my host father treats all his employees to Christmas dinner down in Coca (the Amazon) he wasn't there with us.

.  We all had a nice supper at my granparent's house. The food wasn't really that different. We ate turkey, yummmm! Along with rice and a bunch of different salads. I must say, I did miss the usual mashed potatoes, although I got those the next day for lunch so really everything was quite normal. In Ecuador they celebrate Christmas like they do in Quebec, the night of the 24th. Although it isn't quite as big. My aunt Ceci and Andrea dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Clause and passed out all the presents that were under the little, fake Christmas tree in the living room. That's one thing I should mention, all the trees here are fake. Doesn't quite have the same Christmas smell as I'm used to. I managed to give everyone a present on my exchange student budget with the help of some of the Canada themed things I had brought with me. My family gave me a pair of black boots, and I got scarfs and a shirt from my aunts and grandparents. It was just enough to make me feel like part of the family. Oh! Special thanks to Jeff who sent me a David Phelps C.D., which I may have opened early due to excitement.. love, love LOVE! Haha..Christmas day we had lunch at our cousin's house then drove back to the

valley to unpack and re-pack... we were headed to the beach! On the coast it is summer time, winter where I live in the mountains, I know! SO COOL!  Once again, we drove five hours down that twisty, turny road. I'm not sure my stomac and I will ever get used to it. We spent the whole week leading up to New Year's at our beach house in Pedernales with mami's cousin, her husband and their daughter . Once again, I was the youngest (not used to that either). Since there was a lot of eating, sleeping and relaxing going on I needed to entertain myself. Papa has kind of raised me withthe mind set that napping is for old people and sitting around doing nothing is a waste of time, made the week a little restless for me.. merci Papa :-p. Let's just say I REALLY missed Patrick, Selina, Daniel and even the early wake-up call from the younger cousins at the cottage. Now, running on the beach is BEAUTIFUL, and I really loved doing it but the hot sand kind of ripped up my toes. Also... (and you can't tell in the last picture due to my newly found editing talents hahah) but I got the worst sunburn of my life! It was actually one of the few I've gotten here in Ecuador but.. * tear...ouch!

Okay, so now I've made it sound like we did absolutely nothing all week, which isn't true. One of my familie's own traditions is to buy tons and tons and tons of candies, then deliver them to the children living in the poor comunities very close to our beach house. It was a really neat experience and if only you could have seen them running up to the truck, they were so excited! We stopped at a few schools (there were a lot of candies). One of the schools had two rooms for all the grades (k to 12).

   

 I've already told this to a few people, but next year we all need to get together and copy some of Ecuador's New Years traditions. They are SO fun and there are a lot of them. My family didn't even do them all. We DID make a life sized doll called el año viejo to represent the old year. We made him with a paper mache head, and old clothes filled with wood chips, fire crackers and other stuffing. Once we were finished we took a lot of pictures and set him in a dry place (it was raining) to wait until 12. In the mean time, we drove out to the main beach community to see the festivities going on there. We got to see a lot    

 of unique año viejos, which can be made in any form you want. There was a ninja, the smurfs, the president, anything really. Of course there was dancing, along with fire works and fire crackers. Andrea had to save me from a fly away fire work.. kind of and entertaining moment. We didn't stay in the village very long. Back at the beach house we had a really late supper of chicken, rice, mashed potatoes and salad. Oh and wine that was mixed with pop (for me A LOT of pop) and different fruits all chopped up into the cup. At 11:45 we brought el año viejo outside to get him ready to be burned! It's supposed to represent the passing of the old year. We burnt him at 12, said happy new year and hugged and kissed (the usual). When the fire died down a bit we all took turns jumping over him for good luck. Very fun. Other traditions include:

1- Wearing white clothing and yellow underwear                              2- Running around the outside of the house three times carrying a suitcase 3- The boys dress up as girls, then go out onto the street asking for money. You go walking and take change with you to give them. They are supposed to represent the widows of the old years that are being burned. It's quite amusing.                                            I'm sure there are more, there's one that has something to do with eating 12 avas at midnight I think..... but I'm not exactly sure what that one is for. Obviously all the traditions can't be done all at once.. otherwise you'd be running around the house with a flaming dummy and a suitcase while choking on avas. I feel like that would only lead to injury which is not exactly the best way to bring in the new year.

Well, I do believe that's all for now. I apoligize for writing a short novel instead of a blog entry, hahah. I suppose that's what I get for not writing earlier. I'm doing fine and everything here is great, I haven't found out if I get to stay with my family for the whole year yet so I'm just praying I'll be able to! Thank you for all the love, support and prayers. I do miss home, although I am having the time of my life here.

So... to explain this picture, Sebas had sun in his eyes and was warming his

hands with the heat coming off of my back due to my crazy burn.