el mitad del mundo!!

 On Sunday a group of the volunteers and I decided to take a trip to el mitad del mundo a.k.a. the EQUATOR!! We took a bus there and you get off at this very touristy park with a monument and huge gardens to mark the equator. However, it marks the wrong equator! haha Since the invention of GPS they have discovered that the equator is actually a little bit further away than this monument. So we walked down the road and went to a more seedy, yet more official, equator line and museum (It reminded me slightly of the Petrified Wood Gardens in South Dakota if that's any hint... )

 

Joe, Megan, Julie, Julia, Andy, Alexis, CC, Kristin, and Julia outside the front gate (: 

Packers vs. Bears in 2 hours...duhh I wore my Packer Gear to the equator! 

 

Our nice tour guide showing us animals that we might want to avoid here in Ecuador...

 

Yeah, those are real 150 year old shrunken heads

 

LUNCH! haha just kidding! I still haven't eaten any guinea pig (:

 

cool totem poles from across central & south america

 

The COOLEST part about going to the equator are the little experiments they do to show how the gravitational forces are less and how other things like the coriolis effect don't apply there. 

1. First, they spun a globe really fast. If you look at it from the north pole it appears to be moving clockwise and if you spun it and looked from the south pole it appears to spin counter-clockwise but the equator always looks the same. They then showed this by putting a big sink on the equator line, pulling the plug, and you could see leaves just drain straight down. Then they moved the sink like 3 feet south of the equator and you could see a little twister forming in the water & the leaves would spin all around! Then they moved the sink 3 feet to the north and the twister spun the opposite way as the water drained!! It was wild! 

 

(One of my friends took a video which is way cooler than this picture so I'll post that once I get it from her!)

2. The second experiment was to show how much less resistance we have on the Equator. First we all stood on the Southern Hemisphere and laced our two hand together, arms straight out, level with our head. The guide would count to 3 and then push down. Most people could resist this pretty well (although not me with my scrawny arms...haha) Then we moved to the line at the equator and tried the same exact thing again. Even the strongest boys had ZERO resistance when they were on the line! It was very cool! 

3. The third test was to close your eyes, hold your arms out to the side, and try and walk a straight line on the equator. It was hilarious to watch everyone do it because everyoneeee tips over!! It is the weirdest feeling like you are being pulled one way or the other by some kind of force! 

4. And last but not least...the old "balancing an egg on the head of a nail" trick! I unfortunately didn't do it on my turn & then another tour group came up behind us so I had to stop trying but like three girls from our group could do it and our guide could do it in 3 seconds!

 

All in all it was an amazing day trip and I had a great time! Check out some more pictures that my friends have posted on Facebook & I'll try to load that video up here soon! xoxox

Weekly Update

Wheww this week went fast! Classes are going well but I'm still adjusting to working from 8 am to 8:30 pm everyday. Today seven of the volunteers and I went downtown to get our censados which are like our identification cards you need to carry with you when you travel around here. We had to leave our house at 7:30 this morning which was tough and we didn't get back home until 1:30 so it was a long day with lots of waiting around. However, we meet some nice Canadians who teach here at an English school so that was good!

 

 On an unrelated note, I now have 300 new nicknames that my friends have come up with here (: They begin with Mere and then say any word that starts with the letter "d" haha For example, there is MereDiversity, MereDope, MereDon'tStopBelieving, and many many more as you can see in this picture of the interactive nametag on my bedroom door.

Also I was able to hang up some pictures in my room this last week (: I love you all & miss you & love seeing your smiling faces on my wall now xoxox

Time Flys!!

Today is my ONE MONTH marker for living here in Ecuador! It flew by so quickly!! I have been teaching for 2 weeks now and it's going great because we have 2 retired teachers here to help us. They have given us so many helpful tips on classroom management and these kids at the Center are pretty wild so I've needed all the help I can get! (:

My favorite class so far is girls English level 3 which has about 6 nine and ten year old girls. They are super well behaved so we can play a lot of games and do a lot of activities in class without getting out of control. On Friday we played "telephone" to practice saying What time is it? and answering with It's ____. They loved whispering and passing the answer around the circle.

My most difficult class so far is definitely my Human Relations class for all three levels of high school girls. There are no plans that exist from previous years except for one 6 week unit the freshman should learn and the director of the program is not being the most helpful person. Also it was no fun being a 13 or 14 year old and my colegio girls definitely are in that awkward stage right now. I think one of our trainers, Cory, will come into my class on Wednesday and try to help me get these girls to buy into the class and their education to see that it is their best chance to change their lives.

Today I am celebrating my 1 month anniversary by writing lesson plans (: A visitor just arrived this morning & brought us all teacher manuals to go along with the English workbooks we have for our classes so I am really excited to have that! It will make planning much easier and probably more effective! Oh and of course I will be watching the Packers beat the panthers (: (:

scheduleee

Is it a bad sign that classes haven't even started yet & I'm posting my list of vacation days already? hahaha joking! While it is overwhelming right now making plans for so many different classes, I'm just looking forward to actually starting on Monday!! Then I'm sure everything will become more clear & fall into place.

But for now if any of you are looking for a top notch vacation to El Mitad del Mundo, here are my days off where I could be your top notch tour guide (:

November 2nd -6th
December  26th- January 8
February 18-21
April 6-15
And anytime after July 13th

There are like 10 or 15 guest rooms here & the door is always open (: