Finals period: Adult English

As our second quarter draws to a close, Sam brings an update on the end of his first adult English course:


‘You look weird,’ our students exclaimed when Brock and I walked into Intermediate Adult English at the start of November.  I didn’t think we looked weird.  I figured we looked distinguished.  I guess I thought wrong.  ‘Why did you grow hair on your lip?’ they asked through disapproving giggles.  This was a great opportunity to explain to our students what Movember is all about. 

In case you don’t know, November is a month dedicated to the awareness of and raising money for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer, as well as depression in men (see Movember.com).  It has become a tradition, in November, to grow a mustache to raise awareness, thus the name Movember, or mustache November. Our group of gents down here in Ecuador decided to partake in this year’s Movember and dawn mustaches for the entire month.  It was a great success, as in we made it the whole month without shaving them off (though my English class wasn’t all that excited about it), and I hope we can all do it again next year.

An artistic rendering of the Manna men during Movember.

All mustaches aside (they are all shaved off and long gone by now, as it is December), Intermediate Adult English is still one of my favorite things that I do down here.  I teach Intermediate Adult English with Brock twice a week.  It’s very fulfilling when you can see your students improve over the course of your twelve week class.  Just last week, we were working on pronunciation and I threw in a few ‘V’ words, and my students, who would have struggled in the beginning of the class, all looked at me as if I was silly, before pronouncing the words with great articulation.  One of my favorite things about our students is that they keep a sense of humor about the learning process.  We all laugh together when working on pronunciation, which is nice because the students lose the fear of making mistakes and enjoy the learning process more.


We have had a very tight knit group in our Adult English class.  As was mentioned on the blog before, our class helped us in making the traditional drink for our ‘Dia de Los Difuntos.’   Furthermore, about half our class regularly rode the bus home with us at the end of the day, joking and trading colloquialisms and cultural observations along the way with us. 

Having now completed the course we feel exceedingly proud: our students did well and the course went smoothly overall.  We were really excited to give our students ‘graduation certificates’ and are quite eager to see who returns for the next round of courses.  All in all, it’s been a great experience and I have learned immeasurably, given that this is my first time teaching English.

Hope all is well with our readers out there.  Stay classy!   

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

To fill you in on our festivities, we present you Becky:

On Saturday, the Manna house celebrated the great tradition of Thanksgiving.  We decided to wait until Saturday to have our Thanksgiving feast since we all had to work on Thursday.  (Apparently, the people of Ecuador do not commemorate the joint harvest celebration between the pilgrims and Native Americans.)  I volunteered to be in charge of the dinner since Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite day of the year.  I wanted to make sure that everyone had their favorite traditional foods during this holiday that makes us all miss our families and the time we usually spend with them.  I asked everyone to send me their favorite foods and the recipes that their families make.  Throughout this past week, everyone helped go on the multiple trips to the markets, grocery stores, and mega stores to make sure that we had everything that we needed to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  We looked everywhere for cranberry sauce or cranberries to make the sauce from scratch and were almost ready to admit defeat until Zoë’s last minute trip to a shop in the mall that sells foreign foods culminated in us buying their last two cans of cranberry sauce.

We ended up with a delicious menu of a 20 lb turkey, three types of stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (well, purple camote dulce casserole, since the orange sweet potatoes we love are not available at all here), roasted corn, salad, and gravy.  We also had the essential surplus of desserts including two pumpkin pies, a pecan pie, two apple pies, two pumpkin loaves, a pumpkin cake, and a mango crumble, since mangos are in season.

The cooking went as smoothly as any Thanksgiving goes.  Bibi and I spent most of Friday baking pies and other desserts.  On Saturday, we began cooking at noon trying to get the Turkey in the oven by 1pm.  Throughout the afternoon, Bibi, Noel, Zoë, and I kept watch over the turkey and prepared our numerous side dishes.  We planned to eat at 7:30pm, but unsurprisingly, the turkey was not ready until 8:30pm.  When dinner was finally ready, we stood around the table and everyone talked about what they were thankful for.  It was nice to hear that everyone was grateful to have such a great group of friends here in Ecuador (and that Noel was thankful for the internet). 

We were all excited to share our holiday dinner with friends that live in and around Quito.  Three of our friends, Lucía, Roniel, and Nolo, had never celebrated Thanksgiving before, and it was fun to introduce them to our tradition.  We also had some American friends, Amy and Scott, whom we were happy to have come celebrate with us.

Bibi, Noel and me tending to the turkey during the long afternoon.

Noel, Zoë and me, proud of our afternoon's labors.

Amid a crowd in our kitchen, Luke has a moment with our friend and guest's son, Gabito.

Nolo, Hannah, and Sam congregating while Luke cuts the turkey.

Nothing like carving into a turkey to ignite those smiles!

The kitchen is absolutely the place to be on Thanksgiving.

THE SPREAD.

It was awesome to see everyone work together to make this Thanksgiving dinner happen.  I know that in my experience I have helped my family in the past with cooking for Thanksgiving, but I have never had that much responsibility for the food.  It’s amazing that everything turned out perfectly, and it was because everyone pitched in to make it happen.  It was great experiencing a little piece of home this past weekend.  It has definitely made me excited to come home in December and see my friends and family.  

The whole day was a bit overwhelming for some of us...

...and we had to head off to bed immediately after the meal...

...but overall it was a great success!

iFeliz Día de la Acción de Gracias!

Program Needs blog

In the spirit of the dawning holiday season…

Hello again blog readers.   I wanted to start off by saying Happy Holidays, and more specifically Happy Thanksgiving!  Yes, this means while you are enjoying turkey and pumpkin pie we are down here enjoying another exciting day of work! (no sarcasm intended, honestly) 

As you may know, Manna Project International relies solely on donations and grants for funding.   In order to continue our community development work in Latin America we depend on the donations of organizations, foundations, and individuals.  We have been extremely fortunate to receive the generosity and support we have.  

This being said, in the spirit of giving that comes upon us this time of year, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new blog page containing all of our current program needs.  With the help of my compañeros here in Ecuador I have constructed this page in order to keep our supporters up to date with items needed for our programs.  Please check it out at http://mpiecuadorprogramneeds.blogspot.com/.  You can also now find this link to the right on this blog page in case you need to reference it in the future.  If you have any questions please contact me, Luke, by email. 

Wishing you all a wonderful and safe Holiday season: Chow!

Happy Turkey Day!

Family and friends of MPI,
This Thanksgiving I am blessed to say that I am grateful for many things. I am grateful for my family, my friends, my MPI family, an awesome boss (gaining brownie points with Bibi), a dozen beautiful, orange, Thanksgiving roses I just bought at the market for $2, my health, my sanity (most days), the opportunity to be down here in Ecuador... the list goes on and on. I do want to say a specific thank you to all of the PDs who came before us and paved the way for the work that we are currently doing down here in Rumiloma. Thank you to the board of MPI and to the original PDs (even though they were in Nicaragua) - without you none of us would be down here working for Manna.
There are other great reasons to be excited about this time of the year - the main reason being that we can now remove the Christmas tree from hiding and crank up the holiday tunes that I have been sneakily listening to for the last week (okay, two weeks). We will be missing Brock as he is spending this holiday in the States with his family and has been insistent that we stifle our Christmas cheer until after this 25th of November. The time has come!


Noel and I setting up our Christmas tree!


The finished product!

Although we are not celebrating Thanksgiving today and instead will be having a feast on Saturday evening, we wish you all the happiest of Thanksgivings. I can only hope you all feel as blessed as I do this Holiday Season.

Mannamor.

Birthdays in Ecuador!

Manna PDs 2010-2011 at C'est La Vie with the owner for Becky's birthday

This year’s PDs have celebrated much since arriving in Ecuador. Just last week we indulged in a Cajun meal at a Louisiana-themed restaurant in the north of Quito for Becky’s 23rd birthday! Jambalaya, gumbo, shrimp etoufee, and chicken fried steak were the welcome fare for the night at this establishment, founded and run by a native of Lafayette, Louisiana, who has called Ecuador his home for the last 28 years, and his Ecuadorian wife. Although it at times proved confusing (Tabasco sauce and a throw rug on the wall featuring a lobster and crab declaring laissez les bons temps rouler over a boiling pot of gumbo? Where are we??), the location turned out to provide a perfect atmosphere for birthday revelry, complete with the now highly anticipated presentation of Zoë’s beautifully creative birthday card. One of the highlights of all our birthdays here is receiving her card, though it’s for no small amount of anxiety on her part to create a work of art to memorialize each birthday in Ecuador. Overall, hooray for delicious food and wonderful company together to bring in Becky’s 24th year!

Zoë reading Becky's birthday card aloud to the delight of the table.

Becky and her complimentary cake and balloon at C'est La Vie

Admittedly, we have neglected to mark here the growing older (and wiser) of two more of our group. To right this wrong, we here give tribute to those old souls among us. In September we celebrated Sam’s 24th birthday at a Mexican restaurant in Quito. On a festively lit patio and joined by an old friend of Sam’s from California who happens to also be living and working in Quito, we partook in copious amounts of enchiladas and nachos to quench Sam’s longing for his favorite home comfort food. There’s really nothing like Mexican food to make one feel like one is home in the States, no?

In October we were not lacking for celebration either, as Luke turned 26 in our midst at an all-you-can-eat buffet in Quito. Meats, salads, sides, and desserts from an inexplicable assortment of culinary heritages decorated our table for Luke’s birthday dinner. The meal was followed karaoke, dancing, and more laughter with the entire group – not to mention a champagne cork popped in his honor when a bartender discovered it was Luke’s birthday. A night of friendship and joviality, it seemed the perfect way to mark the passing of another year for Profe Lukay, as our Centro kids so fondly refer to him.

Our two senior men, Luke and Sam, celebrating Luke's birthday!

¡Feliz Cumpleaños a todos!