First day of work at Fundacion

June 12, 2017

after three lazy days, especially yesterday's Sunday was one of those days when I am there but still away, this morning it started at the 'Minadores de Sueños' foundation. In a few sentences, this is what we do there: in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Quito, there is a house where children from the neighborhood spend half a day when they are not in school. They are taken care of - help with homework, games, supervision - and are provided with a healthy, rich lunch and a good snack. Hand washing is a duty, and teeth brushing after meals. For some children, this is a blessing, as they would otherwise not be adequately nourished and partially unsupervised.

I will be happy to provide more details later or you can simply google 'Minadores de Sueños'. It is written in German, because the founder and boss is Swiss.

For the first week, I still have a little grace period, mainly observing and learning, so that I can fully participate next week. Laura from Switzerland has been working here for five weeks, and I can mainly learn from her activities. By the way, we speak Swiss German among ourselves, it's faster, and when others are present, we speak Spanish. I also often speak Swiss German with Marco, the boss, and with Corinna, the coordinator. So, it's not complicated here, practical work is done.

Work starts at half past eight in the morning. Snack is prepared. Then we wash the dishes, brush teeth with the children, go to the hall and help with housekeeping as much as possible. It is easiest in English, but already in math it becomes more difficult, because the calculation methods here are different. When it comes to geography, history, and general knowledge classes, it depends on Spanish, so I learn more from the children than I can teach. Around 11:30, the children have lunch, and then some of them have to hurry to school, as the schools are sometimes far away and the children go to different schools. We eat at half past twelve, including coffee at the end (yay! made with one of those Italian coffee machines, which you fill with coffee powder and water and then put on the stove. Super!). Gradually, the children arrive, who will be supervised in the afternoon. They come from different schools and therefore cannot eat at the same time. At half past two, supervised homework help starts after brushing their teeth. Before the snack at quarter past five, there is half an hour of playing. Today indoors - I won't say anything about the weather here! Half past five is the end of my workday. Washing the snack and toothbrush cups, tidying up, and 'hasta mañana'.

So, this is the normal workday. Today, I had expected to be able to work on the construction site, but Marco wasn't there in the morning. There will probably be days when they can use me there, but the work in the children's center is fun. I will report more about the children later, once I have found out if they are different from ours.

After work, I went up to the volunteer apartment with Laura. On the way, we bought a few things at the store on the corner, 20 meters from our entrance. And I got my beloved bread with cheese from the bakery 50 meters away, and then into the unfortunately not heated house. As I have already reported, it doesn't exist here. If it's cold outside, it's also cold inside.

Laura cooked, and when I saw that there were a bit too few spaghetti for three people, I switched to bread and cheese and platanos, so that there wouldn't be any supply shortages in this cold, energy-consuming environment, because Diana was still here.

So, now I'm writing and ending the daily blog with the comment that I will have a good time here, even though the days are long and the weather is...