Random loose ends..

Slocomb's birthday was on the 29th of September, so we went out to a tapas place with our co-workers, Livia and Jen. We ended up running into Gamal (a former teacher at CEDEI school) as well, so we had a fun, chill evening to celebrate Slocomb's 23rd year.
The big birthday celebration was the trip to Quito, which is in another post.
Later on that week (October 1st) we went out with the other teachers at CEDEI School, just for an evening of relaxing. We went to this bar/club called ONCE (eleven or once, we're not sure), where we just relaxed for a few hours. It was fun because we were able to interact all as friends instead of having to worry about school stuff the entire time. There was also an interesting mix of Spanish and English being spoken all of the time. I'm not sure if any of us improved our English or Spanish skills, but my Spanglish is certainly a lot better now.
The next week (October 8 - right before our long weekend in Quito), the school celebrated Día de la Raza (Race - as in Ethnicity Day). Apparently this is how Columbus Day is commemorated in Ecuador. We left the school about 10am (so we only had about 2 hours of school) to go downtown to Parque Calderon where all of the marches, etc., take place. Most of the children were dressed in traditional costumes from around Ecuador (so cute). We had a musical presentation from most of the classes (segundo thru sexto), and then had a march promoting tolerance and equality. I marched with the preschool class (because they needed the most convincing to walk around the square chanting stuff), which was so cute. I guess they teach them very young here to get out and manifest for one thing or another.
That's all of the loose ends for now. I'm going to work on a post about this past weekend when we went back to Cajas to camp and hike. More to come later...