More workshops

¡Saludos! It´s been a busy week for Semilla. Last Friday we finished our work at Honrar la Vida in Quito. The Teachers´workshop was a great success. They work so hard and are so dedicated, despite difficult circumstances. They enjoyed having a few hours dedicated to their own well being, which was the focus for the workshop.

Monday we left the city and traveled to Mindo, a small town a couple hours from Quito. We had fun playing theater games with some children from the school there.

Wednesday we went to a very rural area of the subtropics close to Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas. We worked with a local one-room school comprised of 16 children from second grade to seventh grade and one teacher. Again we played a lot of theater games with them and involved the children in a mural project to beautify the school. It was an amazing experience to work with these children. They are in such a remote area, that they never have had the experience to do projects like we were able to offer them.

Honrar la Vida

¡Saludos! We just finished two days of workshops at Fundacion Honrar la Vida - a school in Quito that works with children who live in very difficult circumstances. We have worked with them in the past and always receive a warm welcome. In this project we have been doing theater games, an cultural exchange project, and murals with some of the students. There are two small murals that we painted 6 years ago that we are redoing, since they don´t hold up well in the Quito sun. We have also had a chance to talk to some of the children and get to know them. It´s important for all of us to realize the huge obstacles that these children are facing, such as drugs, alcoholism, violence, family problems.
Tomorrow we are doing a workshop with the teachers of the school, who never disappoint us with their hard work and love for the children.

After we finish at Honrar la Vida, we will be heading out of Quito for the countryside.

Arriving in Ecuador!

Andres and Meredith and their 3 children (ages 4, 8 and 11) arrived Wednesday after extremely long travels caused by a flight cancellation in New York and the resulting scramble for different flight arrangements. However, after nearly 30 hours and very little sleep we finally arrived! The kids were incredibly patient! Thanks, guys!

We caught up on sleep and with family members and are enjoying ourselves immensely, especially since we arrived for Las Fiestas de Quito! One of the fun things to see is Las Chivas - open buses with bands playing on the top deck and people having lots of fun dancing and singing. We have been pleasantly surprised by changes in Quito, such as less pollution, safer streets, new attractions.

We are preparing details and materials for our first workshops, taking place next week in Quito.

We will add pictures soon, so check back!

Lauren, an invited theater artist, arrived Tuesday and will post her experience, too.
Pedro, a Semilla artist, arrives tonight.

Getting Ready!

Hello, Friends! Since we won't have our computer with us in Ecuador and will be relying on cybercafes, we decided to use this site to blog, rather than on our website. I know we could get it to work somehow on the website, but we just don't have the time to figure it out right now!

Please check our blog from time to time and see how the project in Ecuador is going!

Thank you again to all those who are supporting this project! We appreciate it so much!