Weekend in the Campo

This weekend was the first time that we left the city since arriving in Cuenca on December 1st. On Saturday morning, Mary and I walked to meet Julia (Mary's teacher) and her husband at their house. We had made arrangements to visit their country home and drove for about 20 minutes outside of the city. When we arrived, we were reminded of how much we enjoy the fresh breeze and the calm sounds of the country. Their property was full of gardens and animals, trees and hills. We had a short breakfast (grilled plantains with ground peanuts and corn - costal dish) and we made our way to a small church to visit some children. We had purchased a few school supplies before leaving Cuenca (scissors, paper, markers, glue, etc) to donate during our visit. It was funny when we arrived, we were introduced to a group of parents as the english teachers from Canada and were shown to a small room in the community centre with 15 kids from the local area. The doors closed behind us, the kids stared at us, the two of us looked at each other with big smiles, realizing that we had to put together a lesson plan immediately. We spent 3 hours teaching these children english. We played a variety of games and sang songs; we left feeling very content with our impromtu teaching skills. We spent the rest of the afternoon with Julia and her husband, eating barbeque, listening to music, trading magic tricks and playing futball with some kids. We got a ride back to Cuenca with friend from the country home. That night we enjoyed a lovely dinner with Bob and Dorene from Canada.

This morning (Sunday) we woke up and went to the country home of Luis (my guitar maker) with his wife and son. Luis is from a small town about 40 km outside of Cuenca in a place called San Bartolome. It is a well-known village for guitar fabrication in Ecuador. There are 10 or 12 active guitar makers there. We visited the home where the family tradition began and wandered through the hills to a small farm where a family lived. We had brought some clothes and food. The 27 year-old woman had just had her 5th baby two days ago. The family was very pleasant and I was overwhelmed by their happiness. We spent some time with the kids who were building a pyrotechnical horse for the upcoming carnival in town. We left after a short time and climbed down the hill to the house where Luis grew up. It, at one time, housed eight brothers and sisters, including his mother and father. It may have been slightly bigger than 200 square feet. Afterwards, we climbed a steep hill that overlooked a town called Sigsig and we left around 3:30PM. On the way back to Cuenca, we visited a few small towns and when we were dropped off at our apartment, we thanked Luis and his family for the lovely day. Our weekend in the campo was beautiful. We will likely go back next weekend for another round of spontaneous english teaching.