Salasaca.

So, from the tourist haven of Banos, we moved on to a decidedly non-tourist destination, Salasaca, the home of an indigenous community (the Salasaca), in the Central Highlands. There is a backstory here: over the summer I met Rosa Maria, the director and founder of a bilingual school in Salasaca, when she came to Chicago to work with my organization. She graciously invited us to visit her town and school and stay in her home when she heard we would be in Ecuador. So we did, and it was wonderful. Here's the view from the porch of her really cool house, which she has set up sort of like a hostel (though we got to be the only guests!):

But we spent most of our time there at Escuela Katitawa, Rosa's school. To be clear, the school is bilingual in Spanish and Quichua, the indigenous language of the Salasaca and many other Ecuadorian groups. It is not a public school, and thus does not receive government funding for its operations. It has 30 students, from the ages of 3 to 14, three classrooms and three teachers. Rosa is a fascinating person, extremely active in her community in terms of political issues, women's rights, and education. She is passionate about her indigenous identity and culture and preserving it for the children at the school, who are surrounded on all sides by towns where people speak only Spanish. Here's one of the school buildings and one of our youngest new buddies:

Just because she was the cutest little person ever and super funny, we had to add a face shot of her as well. Her name is Karina, and she's three. And she has some trouble keeping her soup in her mouth.

We spent about two and a half days there, working most of the time with the kids at the school (where the staff was not shy about thrusting us into leadership roles immediately!). The kids were pretty hilarious, and also not shy whatsoever. We played games, taught some English, and realized that kids are pretty much the same everywhere:

As for other Salasaca experiences, we were fed some excellent soup (almost exclusively soup, actually), we got to attend a political movie screening (Spanish, quite interesting) and town meeting (Quichua, not understandable to us, unfortunately), and we got very used to the noises that cows and donkeys make, which are actually quite different than the moos and hee-haws we usually imitate... All in all, it was a great few days, and a place we'd love to visit again.