Lonesome George

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Meet Lonesome George. He's a 70-year-old tortoise and the last of his kind on the Galapagos Islands. You can't get too close to these creatures. I was teaching on San Cristobal Island for the summer and I was out in the playground at the school when I saw some kids squatting around an enclosure across the street. It held a gigantic tortoise. They were poking their fingers in between the links in the fence as the tortoise slowly approached.

"Keep your fingers to yourselves," I said, "if you don't want to lose them." We were delighted as the tortoise lumbered in our direction, but soon I had to take my class back in to the school. The other kids stayed as they weren't my students, and I warned them again to be careful, but shortly after I began my class we heard a high-pitched shriek and a scream and more screaming and a whole lot of crying.
Lonesome George.
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This little tortoise was only 25 days old! He was adorable. The Charles Darwin Research Center has been working for fifty years to preserve the animal and plant life of the Galapagos Islands. Please click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Teaching English in Ecuador - Cuenca

Here are two pictures of the school where I taught in Cuenca - CEDEI School. It's a language school where foreigners can come and learn Spanish and Ecuadorian children can immerse themselves in English. There were quite a few foreigners there and it was a beautiful school.  Unfortunately, I just couldn't find a place to live in town, and it was very, very cold in the classrooms there was no source of heat and I froze my butt off.  They offered Spanish classes and I loved taking advantage of that.  I was only there for three months before heading off to the Galapagos Islands to do a volunteer summer camp. I liked CEDEI, but a five-hour class with a 12-year old, an 18-year old and a 40-year old, all at different levels of English, was too mind-numbing.


















I stayed in the beautiful Hostal Macondo when I was in Cuenda teaching. It was serene and peaceful in the garden, the atmosphere was almost reverent. I slept well every night the bed was so good. There's a kitchen where you can cook your own food. It was about thirty dollars a night for a double. The bathroom was outside my door, but it wasn't a problem, everything was super clean. The staff were friendly and they had loads of information about Cuenca at the front desk.