After spending a couple of days in Quito sight seeing and getting to know our South American colleagues, we drove for 6 hours to Atacames on a yellow school bus, stopping only once for water and to try 'empanada verte' (a strange banana and cheese combination that looked like something a gremlin would emerge from, but was tasty!)

It is very hot and humid here, but it´s a holiday place for Ecuadorians so I don´t feel like I am working – promise I am! Our hotel is very nice and on the beach… The irregular hot water doesn't bother me thanks to the weather.

Yesterday we visited 3 schools. All quite basic, but really nice and they greeted us with dances and handmade hats and it was all pretty emotional. My school is in Atacames and as a trio (me, Marketa from Czech Republic and Miguel from Peru) we are going to help with English classes and IT classes. Telefonica have kindly supplied a number of computers but the teachers seem too scared to do anything but point to them as a teaching method! We also would like to do something with the outdoor space.. it´s very big, very empty and als o quite dangerous, with a well and exposed iron from a rusty old slide in the middle of the school.

We are going to spend the evening making detailed proposals to the head teacher, then we can work out exactly what we can acheive in the short time we have. I'll let you know how it goes!

Erika x

Erika is one of our Pronino volunteers and is blogging from Latin America. To find out more about Proniño, head to http://dnc.o2.co.uk/home/Pronino.

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