Mercado Santa Clara with Chef Francisco Guevara, currently a culinary/gastronomy professor at the Universidad of Ibarra a couple hours north of Quito. One of the oldest markets in the city, Francisco showed us around and explained typical cuisine from various (coast, mountains, amazon) regions of Ecuador. A very rich history of food and culture descending from Ecuador’s first people groups.
Anna, Simon and Andrew ordering for our lunch!Erica and Sophia ready to put their orders in! I first met Francisco Guevara last spring through a community development project and we’ve become good friends. He kindly shared his time and expertise with us on Monday! After making our puchases at the market we returned to Casa Goshen for cooking class with Chef Francisco! The shrimp ceviche was a hit! Students building their ceviches, yumm!!Celeste, Erica, Carolina and othersTuesday morning kicked off 4 straight days of spanish class, I think we all appreciated the consistency of the schedule this week and opportunity to focus in on spanish studies again. Enjoying break time sun and snackAs we were setting up and waiting for our speaker to arrive, Jackson gave an impromptu presentation in spanish on the qualities of track and field. How many feet are in a kilometer? Actually quite relevante for our metric system here! Next week he said he’ll give a race tactics lesson. 🙂 Tuesday afternoon, Alexandra Meneses shared with us about her work regarding movilidad humana (human mobility).
Alexandra provided historical context for various waves of migration and immigration into and out of Ecuador since the 1960’s through present day. We appreciated her explanation of how the economic crisis of 2000 and decision of converting Ecuador’s currency from Sucres to the US dollar impacted this subject especially in the early 2000s. She shared about her current work with Quito Mennonite Church and their ongoing relief and development work with refugees mainly from Columbia and Venezuela. Wednesday afternoon Casa Goshen time, our weekly reflection, discussion and group processing time.After Casa Goshen, some folks stuck around to play a friendly match against the neighbors!Thursday morning during second half of class, all three groups got together for a shared lesson activity.Silvia and classLoli and classMaría Teresa and classWaiting for their ride: Andrew, Richard, Sophia, SimonCarissa, Claire, and Anna found a good lunch spot Friday This is a studio that just recently opened in our Casa Goshen neighborhood. Nina knows the owners and we set up a time!With instructor Alejandro we learned the fundamentals to SalsaWorking up a sweat 🙂We didn’t expect students to LOVE the dancing as much as they did! They are still going! This weekend is a free weekend with host families, some have plans for travel, others just normal vida familiar. Heading into the weekend students and families are currently covid free and feeling good! We’ve been so appreciative of students and families’ flexibility as we navigate these additional challenges over the last weeks.
