Here's a typical day. We get up at 6 am, have a quick breakfast, Maya and Kai put on their school uniform of jeans and polo shirt and we dinghy over to the dock at Puerto Amistad, our home on land. From here, the kids walk across the street and take the bus to school at 6:45 am. School, which is 5 kilometers away, starts at 7am and sometimes they do miss the bus. Then we have to take a taxi.
Can you tell how Maya and Kai feel about school?
Classes include Spanish, English, math, science, PE, art, music, and a really interesting one called "development of thought." During English class which is everyday for two periods, the kids are tutored in Spanish.
Maya and Kai come back in the school bus around 1:40 in the afternoon and quickly change into tennis garb. We jump on a 3-wheel bicycle taxi...which takes you anywhere in town for .50 cents...and head straight to the tennis club.
The local pro, Coco, teaches Maya and Kai tennis, while Ruth and I play on the clay tennis courts. After tennis the kids love to play with the other boat kids here at Puerto Amistad, while Ruth coaches some of the girls on their upcoming spelling bee.
It's comfortable and relaxing to be back in a routine. The stormy skies of Panama have been replaced by stable cool weather. Surprisingly, even though we're living on the equator, the weather is cool, almost like San Francisco. We actually sleep with a sheet AND a blanket at night and sometimes wear a sweatshirt or long pants during the day!
2 comments:
Hi All, Thanks for the update, Tim, and for the pictures of your life in Ecuador. I'll bet you feel terrible letting the engine of that pedicab run while you sit there in sun-shaded splendor. Looks like Kai and Maya are growing a mile a mimute. MMM
Wow, that has to be tuff after boat school for a year. At least it won't last too long! You look pretty stylish in your uniforms :-) Thanks for giving us a glimpse into your lives in Ecuador. Congratulations to Kai for his first publication, impressive! Carrie, Natie , and Audrey
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