13 Nov 2012
by Zoe
in Adventure, Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Kids Stuff
Tags: Andes, Ecuador, Galapagos, Home school, Inti Nan, Mitad Del Mundo, Quito, San Cristobal, Spanish, World school
My Mum’s cousin Val is the head teacher at a school back home. She’s read some of our blogs and showed some of our photos to all the children in assembly.
They sent us some questions and these were mine :
Zoe – What do you do when you get bored? What games do you play? We are all jealous that you don’t have to go to school. How is World School school going? Have you been on any more adventures like your jungle journey to the beach?
We decided to use the questions to do our next blogs!
When I get bored, I have a Kindle so sometimes I read. I really like to draw or make stuff and now I have just got some new paints. We have pencils and paper. In Quito we got some scissors, sellotape and glue and more drawing paper!
Reading on a long bus trip – once I thought I lost mine on a bus which was awful but we found it safely put away in Dad’s bag!
I have beads and elastic too and we make necklaces and bracelets – sometimes for ourselves but often as presents. we got more beads in Otavalo,where we visited a massive craft market. Its a place where lots of people wear traditional clothes.The men even have long black plaits! I have got quite good at plaiting! We play on iPhone apps too, or play travel games like Rumicub, Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and sometimes cards.
This traditional lady in Otavalo was as interested in us as we were in her and she wanted to touch our hair!
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13 Nov 2012
by Martin Clark
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Volunteering
Tags: Charles Darwin, Ecuador, Galápagos Islands, Lara
The horror of being involved with getting the kids ready for school! Maybe I am a lone Dad who finds this part of the day a touch frustrating but I suspect this may be a common problem even in the more perfect of Stepford households. I feel lucky at home that we have had au-pairs to herd the fruit flies out of the door and Mo who loves this ‘quality time’ with the children when she can. Suffice to say that asking a child to put their shoes on 20 times makes me think of Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, yep I am going mad…
So the toys go out of my pram but with the help of a taxi we make it. The headmistress seems happy to see us and we get the obligatory peck on the cheek, smile and burst of Spanish which my brain fails to translate and I hope is nothing more than ‘good luck, you’ll need it’. The kids are gone, no need for embarrassing parental delivery to the door and we head to the classrooms we were shown yesterday. How will the kids fit in? Will they enjoy it? Get anything out of it? What about us?
Us at our new school
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12 Nov 2012
by Martin Clark
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Volunteering
Tags: Gap year, Mash, San Cristobal
Monday we have a reprieve, we will start on Tuesday at the school and Willy sits us down and talks to us about the kids and what to expect. San Cristobal has a population of 6000 of which just under half are of school age!?! This not so much a demographic problem (young people are good news as they will soon be workers) but a contraception problem. We are told that 13 year old Mums are common place and many teenagers struggle, unsurprisingly with parenting. Some quick maths tells me that I could already be a great grandfather and not just plain old dad if I started so young and my offspring followed in my footsteps. I start to wonder about Ben being 13 years old quite soon but don’t want to go there.
Our skool
Willy lays it on and tells us if it is ‘different’ here and not to expect the standard of discipline we might expect. Classes will be noisy and kids often get up and run around. With no streaming the mixed abilities mean it is difficult to target lessons to the brightest and slowest and the large class sizes make much of the lesson about crowd control. Some kids get hit at home or don’t come from loving homes so expect some emotional issues. To be a teacher you now need to have a teaching degree but they have a transition period so some don’t which is apparently a problem. We don’t admit to our shameful degreeless status. But they need help and we can make a difference. I remind myself that if it was easy it would be boring. More
11 Nov 2012
by Martin Clark
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Volunteering
Tags: Ecuador, Galápagos Islands, Quito
Map of Galapagos Islands (Ecuador, South America). We are on San Cristobal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is a long time since I blogged and I have missed it! Mo has been hogging the computer with her excellent Amazon Diary but I have plenty of posts planned so I won’t be as quiet.
We spent a few weeks in Quito learning Spanish, the success of which we will soon find out as we are in at the deep end with a month volunteering in the Galapagos. Apart from our one way flights to Rio the ‘volunteering’ was the only thing we booked well in advance. My preference was to try and find projects while in country but Mo was insistent we book something, perhaps she thought this was the only way to ensure we did give something back and not just spend our time on idyllic beaches drinking cocktails between swims and massages?!? More
04 Nov 2012
by Ben
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Photos, Top Experiences
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Wildlife, Ecuador, Napo River
The children at Woodridge school have followed our journey and sent us some questions! They asked me to tell them about more amazing animals & insects I’ve seen, after they enjoyed my posts about hairy caterpillars and piranhas.
We’ve travelled through the Amazon rainforest from Belem in Brazil on the Atlantic Ocean, through Columbia and Peru into Ecuador by river.
Our journey through the Amazon Rainforest on the Amazon and Coca Rivers
It’s been an amazing journey – hot, fun, tiring, lots of bugs, lots and lots of water, lots and lots of trees and getting sick!
The Amazon rainforest has more insects, birds and animal species than anywhere else in the world but when you travel there, what you expect to see and what you actually see can turn out a bit differently!
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02 Nov 2012
by Mo
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Foodie Central
Tags: All Saints Day, Colada Morada, Day of the Dead, Dia de Los Difuntos, DIa de Los Muertos, Ecuador, Guagua de pan, Halloween, Quito
With apologies to those enjoying our blog in date order, I’m fast forwarding to say an almost timely Happy Halloween!
Happy Halloween from Ecuador!
Halloween is certainly recognised in Ecuador. It’s the eve of All Saints Day after all and this is a Catholic country. But without much of the Halloween hype we’ve come to know back home.
Much more important is this Friday, November 2nd – the Day of the Dead, or more respectfully El Dia de los Difuntos (Day of the Departed) which, together with All Saints Day today, is a National holiday and a special time of year when families gather together and pay respect to their elders and those loved ones who’ve passed away, visiting and tending to family graves together, socialising with other families around them, young children playing at the gravesides.
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27 Jul 2012
by Lara
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Kids Stuff
Tags: Brazil, Ilha Grande, Lara, lara interview
Dad, Ben and Zoe have just left for an ambitious 2.5 hour hike across the island. It’s a chance for Mum and Lara to do a blog and have some quality time! We begin with a small bribe!
Mum : Lara come and do an interview with me and then we’ll have some chocolate!!
Just chilling!
Lara : Ok Mum, come on sit down! Are we going to have MY chocolate?
Mum : Yes, after we’re done! Do you know where Ben and Zoe have gone with Dad?
Lara : they’ve gone! ….. More
25 Jul 2012
by Martin Clark
in Adventure, Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year, Health & Fitness, Safety
Tags: Health, Ilha Grande, Survival skills
Ant hunter
Update – Video added at end.
Keeping Ben, Zoe and Lara alive, fit and healthy is our top priority. As kids they are inquisitive, independent and prone to getting distracted by anything that looks fun or interesting. Within minutes of our arrival on Ilha Grande Ben had caught the biggest ant you never wanted to see. I am pretty sure Ben hasn’t been bitten by ants as he was super confident. I then imagined him playing with a local spider which may not be as harmless as our homegrown Daddy Long Legs More
24 Jul 2012
by Martin Clark
in Education & Schooling, Family Gap Year
Tags: Ben, Card game, Fermat's Last Theorem, Homeschool, Whist, Zoe
Zoe is all in!
Schools out but rather than 7 weeks we have 60 weeks on our family gap year so a bit of home schooling is going to be needed. So far Mo has made the running and talked to all the teachers at school, grabbed syllabuses, work books and been carrying them! I have volunteered to do Maths as English and languages are not something I am particularly good at, apparently lawyers use more punctuation than I do?
Teaching is More
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