Hola amigos y familia!\u00a0 Estamos muy emocionados para compartir con ustedes todo que ha pasado durante nuestro viaje apasionante\u2026<\/p>\n
We are writing to you from San Luis de Las Mercedes, where we are currently building a comedor (kitchen) for the local school!!!\u00a0 After our week of orientation in Otavalo, we drove 8 hours to San Luis de Las Mercedes, where the community welcomed us with open arms and a delicious feast full of local watermelon, papayas and avocados, cheese empanadas, corn, grapes, fresh papaya juice, and banana chips (with banana leaves used as plates).\u00a0 After some eating, dancing, and introducing of ourselves, as well as the community, we headed over to meet our host families and new accommodations.\u00a0 All of the families were extremely welcoming and very excited to share their homes and customs with the students.\u00a0 From teaching us how to take bucket showers and how to manually flush the toilet, to having us walk our sisters and brothers to school in the morning and bathing in the river, we have all learned an exorbitant amount solely in the last 3 days.<\/p>\n
On Monday, we finally started working on our project!\u00a0 Because we had to wait for some materials to arrive, groups of students spent a couple of hours teaching the local children English in the classrooms.\u00a0 From colors and welcome phrases, to body parts and animals, the students incorporated a variety of lessons and games to teach the children some of the first English they had ever heard.\u00a0 All of the children here are incredibly loving and adorable, and we love getting close to all of the students.\u00a0 Meeting all of these new people gets overwhelming at times, but as we get accustomed to our new homes and the people we are living with, it gets easier to understand and communicate with everyone here.\u00a0 As no one in the community knows English, we are all constantly improving our Spanish and feeling better about our communication skills.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we cannot post any pictures for this post, but in the future we will share many more photos of the project, the community members, and the children.<\/p>\n
A little more about our project\u2026The current elementary school of San Luis de las Mercedes is located in the center of the village, with 3 classrooms and 36 children aging from 1 to 12 years old.\u00a0 Here, children have class from\u00a0 8 am until 11 am, which is when all the mothers work to cook them lunch.\u00a0 Although the children eat lunch at the school, there is no actual kitchen for the food to be cooked, which makes it very hard to provide healthy and sanitary food for the children.\u00a0 By July 27th<\/sup>, the children, mothers, and community of San Luis de las Mercedes will have a place to cook, eat, and sit together: something that is often taken for granted back home.<\/p>\n We miss you all and will be calling sometime next week!<\/p>\n -Nicole Sinno<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hola amigos y familia!\u00a0 Estamos muy emocionados para compartir con ustedes todo que ha pasado durante nuestro viaje apasionante\u2026 We are writing to you from San Luis de Las Mercedes, where we are currently building a comedor (kitchen) for the local school!!!\u00a0 After our week of orientation in Otavalo, we drove 8 hours to San 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