Ecuador, Harry, and the Chair

On Monday morning I got an email from Dr. Wells, principal of Alliance Academy International in Quito, Ecuador. Dr. Wells was writing to offer me a position in the ESL department at the school and I am quite excited to accept this offer. Should you like more information about the school, you can check it out at http://www.alliance.k12.ec/ . I noticed when I was last on the site that they're serving chicken fingers for lunch tomorrow. So that's good news. :)

The other day I woke up in the middle of the night, and as I was lying there in my warm little bed, snuggled under my new comforter, I couldn't stop smiling as I thought about going to Ecuador.

If all goes as planned, I will move there early in August, and classes begin at the end of August. I'll use the extra time to find an apartment, get settled in, and adjust to the altitude in the city- over 9,000 feet above sea level! (compare that to Denver, the Mile High City, which is about 5,280 feet) So that should be interesting.

After I got the email I went to the library to get some books on Ecuador. It's always good to know a little something about the countries you visit. So I'm learning all about the country's history and geography. I was relieved to read that the part of the country where I will be is not close to the Amazon river basin, where all the large, poisonous snakes reside. That was great news. Also encouraging is the fact that Quito is small (2 million; compared to the Chicagoland area, over 9 million) and beautiful (it's in the middle of the mountains). Because it's only 15 miles from the equator, the sun rises at 6am and sets at 6pm, year-round. The temperature is also really mild and steady- average high of 77 degrees and average low of 43 degrees all year. So, feel free to come visit. I'll be your tour guide!

Since I haven't gotten a temp job yet, Ecuador has been a main focus in my life right now. I did fail to mention that I finished re-caning my rocking chair and my dad fixed the rockers for me while I was at home, so now I have a nice wooden rocking chair, courtesy of someone in Wheaton who put it on the curb for the garbage men! Here's a picture of the little beauty. (Don't look too closely if you know caning; it's not that good of a job. I can tell from my mom caning chairs my whole childhood, but unfortunately I never paid close enough attention to know what I was doing wrong when I finally tried it myself. Alas!)

The old Chicago weather made a valiant effort to turn winter again today. After weeks of mild temperatures, we got some light snow this afternoon and the temps are supposed to drop tonight and be in the single digits all weekend. Still a pretty wimpy winter for this area, though.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Harry. My friend Kristy and I have been watching through all the Harry Potter movies this past week. She's working part time and I'm not working and we both graduated in December, so we decided it would be a great time to burn some time. :) I've enjoyed it immensely. All we have left is the newest movie. That one has to be rented (Kristy and her sister owned all the others) so we're planning to do that soon.

It occurs to me that I write two types of posts on this blog; the update type, and the random thoughts kind. I like the latter better. That's all.