Introducing…..Felicia!!

Hi everyone, my name is Felicia and I’m one of the volunteers participating in the project !

As I see that Tricia already mentioned in former posts, I’m from Sweden.

After studying spanish for nearly 6 years in Secondary and High School my dream was to travel to a South American country to use&improve my spanish and to get to know a new culture.

I searched the internet up and down for different volunteering projects until I found this organisation, Teach-English-Volunteer. I thought: “I like English…I like children…I could totally teach!”

A Sunny Day at my School in Guamote

English is actually my second language,

but as I mentioned earlier I love learning languages and I consider myself fluent in English.
I’ve really experienced the glory of being able to communicate with foreigners in their own language.

For me, that’s the best feeling in the world and I felt like I really wanted to help other people experiencing the same.

So I applied and HERE I AM, enjoying life at its fullest.

But that was just a small introduction, I wont tell my entire life story, not right now at least, so I’m just going to tell you about my first christmas away from home!

Beautiful Chimborazo

In the beginning of this month, some of my lovely students came up to me and said:

“Felicia, Felicia, would you like to dance with us???”

The students in that particular school are more or less my age (I’m just 18 and freshly graduated from High School)
and we joke around alot so I thought they wanted me to GET UP AND DANCE with them, there and then!

I laughed and said “Yeah, why not?!”… But then they ran off and didn’t return…
I figured that I must have misunderstood the question – my spanish is far from perfect yet – so I just continued with my work…

The next day though, they came and said: ” Venga, venga, now we have dance rehearsal!!”
It turned out that I had agreed on participating in A BIG TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS PARADE, “El pase del niño” ….
Suddenly I found myself dancing a traditional ecuadorian dance and really enjoying it.

We practiced everyday for 2 weeks, but even the night before we didn’t know the dance perfect… Do I need to say that I was really nervous waking up at the BIG DAY?

We had rented costumes, we were all made-up and stylish. The sun was shining from a clear sky.The square which was our meeting point were crowded with children and teenagers in different costumes. It was soon to be our turn. My heart was ponding, like crazy.

When the music started it felt like all fell into place and we just danced of joy, regardless of all the people watching… It wasn’t PERFECT all the time, but it was lovely anyway!

I estimate that we danced for around 2½ hours, and about 2-3 kilometers, but it felt much less, because it was so fun!
Our school’s “Pase del Niño” was really big, I think we were about 50 different dance groups performing… I felt so lucky to be a part of this traditional way of welcoming Jesus into the world. In Sweden we seldomly do parades, and particulary in December it would almost be impossible with ice and snow…

Here on the other hand, the heat was nearly unbearable to dance in, 30 degrees celsius, and the strong equatorial sun really burned my face.
(I look like a tomato at the moment.)

Me and my students, all exhausted after dancing!

The following day was 24th, the day we swedes celebrate christmas on.
I thought it would be SUPER HARD to spend the christmas away from my swedish family, but after a Skype-session in the morning I felt completely calm and was really able to enjoy the ecuadorian way of spending Christmas.

That was all I had to say for now, talk to you later!