Taking it day by day

Today si a very important day in Guayaquil, it's the celebration of their independence, and it's a holiday for the city so my whole family is here and home from work. My whole family, that is, except my host father. Marco works about an hour and a half away with a naval base, so he's here for one week and then stays in a city on the coast called Salinas for the following two. Right now, there's a strike in Salinas because they, like us, are in the providence of Guayas. Since the electon on the 30th, there's been an uprising in the city because they want to branch off of Guayas and be their own providence. It's a very sticky situation, the roads are blocked off by the locals with rocks and anyone in a car trying to get in or out gets rocks thrown at their cars. So, my host father's staying there.

Aside from that, things have continued to move along smoothly. Spanish classes have continued to progress well, and from the outside, it amazes me the amount of progress some of my friends have made. My friend Michaela, in particular, came to Ecuador not knowing anything in Spanish except "Hola, como estas?" and can now carry on conversations and speak in the past, present, and future tenses at a basic level. Last night the group, minus Karlijn who's in Quito, had a debate on biotechlonogy, cloning, modifying foods, etc. in Spanish! It went really well, we hardly stuck to the topic, but then, that wasn't really the point. We had a real, full, english-less conversation for at least half an hour, expressing our ideas and showing off our vocabularies. It was really wonderful to be a part of it, I'm so proud of our progress.

One of the hardest days of our exchange time, I've been told, is Thanksgiving, and I had been worried about it as if fast approaches. Luckily, the students from the US and Canada have been given permission to make Thanksgiving dinner for the students from Germany, Belgium, etc. as well as for our Ecuadorean teachers. It should be really fun, and of course, it means mroe pictures! Keep checking back, things are really getting fun and part of why it's so great is being able to share it with all of you.