¡Las Aventuras en Ecuador!: First week of teaching Englsih!

My first week at the orphanage was great. When I first moved into the orphanage, Raissa was still in the hospital and I was visiting her every day after teaching classes. Raissa returned back to the states on Thursday, so now that I am not going to visit her every day, I feel like I now can actually settled into life at the orphanage and focus all of my energy here. Saying goodbye to Raissa was really hard and sad because I know that it will be a long time until I see her next. Thankfully, she is also from Washington so hopefully I will be able to see her shortly after I arrive back to the US at the end of November.

Visiting Raissa on her last day at the hospital.

This orphanage is really an amazing place. There are twenty orphanage houses that are all in a circle facing each other. Currently, there are about 15 houses that are filled with children at about 12 children in each house with an Ecuadorian “mom” who cares for them. The orphanage school is on the same property has the houses, just up the driveway. My little apartment is pretty close to all the orphanage houses and I am assigned to eating in a specific house for all my meals.

A few of the orphanage houses

The children at this orphanage are so sweet and precious and they all just want to be loved and receive attention. Most of the children here have at least one parent that is alive, but cannot adequately care for them. Things like their parents abusing them, teaching them to steal, being mentally ill, severely abusing drugs or alcohol, living in extreme poverty, ect. These are basically the kids that would fall through the cracks if they were not living at the orphanage.

I did not tutor this past week since I was visiting my friend in the hospital every day after teaching, but this week, I will be tutoring the kids with their English homework every day after school. I will go around to each orphanage house and help whoever needs it with their English homework. It will be a lot of work!

My first week teaching, I helped out in all different grades from kindergarden to the last year of high school. I feel like I want to focus on helping out in the middle school and high school classes since it seems more relevant to have a native English speaker in those classes rather than in the very young kids classes where they are just learning things like numbers, letters and colors. I enjoy working with all ages of kids for different reasons, so I am happy to work in any class but I feel like it is more useful for me to help with the older kids English classes.

I am really enjoying my time here at the orphanage with the wonderful and precious children and youth! I am excited for this week of classes and spending time helping the kids.