This past Saturday, I took my Basic 1 class on a field trip to the zoo that is about 45 minutes outside of Quito. But….since Quito is so freaking big, it takes about 1 hour to ‘get outside of Quito’. So it took about 2 hours to get there.

A couple of days before I started teaching animal vocabulary and then Saturday was our big day to practice. I LOVE my class. They are such a weird, lovely, diverse group of people! I have everyone from the goofy 16 year old teenage boy to a well-to-do dentist in his 50s. And we all get along beautifully!

I usually get depressed in zoos and this time was no different. But seeing how much everyone enjoyed themselves made it worth the effort. The animals here are so different! Bears with big white patches around their eyes, HUGE tortoises, cute colorful frogs, and jaguars! While the fauna was impressive, I was even more impressed with the flora! The plants here are amazing! I kept taking pictures of trees and flowers and my students thought I was crazy.

After, my students took me to a really nice restaurant and bought me lunch. It was kind of like Thanksgiving and I was so happy. Above all flora and fauna, it’s the people that make Ecuador special.

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