Back home!

Hey Students!

It was a little weird sweating in Guayaquil Tuesday morning and then coming home to shovel 8 inches of snow on Wednesday morning. But I'm back, safe in sound, and ready for another semester. I will actually see you guys tomorrow!

So for my last post, I wanted to share with you a couple of things that I found interesting in Ecuador.

1. You don't flush your toilet paper. Apparently the pipes aren't as large in Ecuador, so if you flush your toilet paper, it will clog. So there is a little garbage can next to every toilet. This was a bit of culture shock in the beginning.

2. Sometimes bridges aren't finished.... No caution tape, no signs, just lose planks 20 feet in the air...

3. Crosswalks are rare...

Notice the road behind me... It is a 5 lane highway. My sister and I had to sprint across this road every morning. No crossing guards. It felt like we were playing real life Frogger.

With all that said, I will miss Ecuador. It was a great trip and I loved being there. I am very thankful for a great time with my sister, experiencing what she sees daily.

Sorry students, no bonus question today. But if you would like to get extra credit for the bonus questions, please turn in all four questions with your names on them. See you tomorrow!

Mr. Hayes

Poverty

I’m a normal person in America. I drive a saturn. Four doors, electric windows, stick shift, 32 miles per gallon. Nothing special, just gets me from A to B. If I’m in the mood, I’ll stop in at Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks and grab a coffee. I go out to eat with friends at times, no big deal. I have an ipod, a cell phone, and a new computer. Normal, right? Doesn’t everyone live like that?

Not everyone...

Here in Bastion, Ecuador, I’m met with a new kind of normal. Here, its normal to have a family of 8 with no car. Its normal to raise chickens as your form of income. Its normal for a whole family to live in one room with a mattress on the floor. It’s normal to make less than $200 per month for a whole family. Its normal to work all day collecting cans and bottles to turn in for pennies.

So what’s normal? Life in Hawthorne, or life in Bastion?

Statistics tell me that more people live lives mores similar to life in Bastion. According to GlobalIssues.org, “Almost half the world - over three billion people - live on less than $2.50 a day.”

So what does that mean? Since there are 365 days in a year, $2.50 a day means...

$2.50 x 365 days = $912.50 per year

Imagine living on $912.50 per year. Thats less than my meal plan at college cost for 3 months. Thats less than I spend on gas in 6 months. Thats less then a new mac!

Check out this for perspective. Imagine making $36,500 per year. That’s a relatively low paying job in our economy. But...

$36,000 ÷ 350 days = $100 per day

$100 dollars per day for a bad job in America compared to half the world living on less than $2.50 per day!

Visiting here turns statistics into faces.

This is a house that Erin and I visited in a community about a half hour bus ride from us. This neighborhood is extremely poor. Notice that we are sitting on the floor. This was because she had no chairs to offer us. When we had lunch there, there was no table to eat from. The only furniture was one bed, the stove in the background, a hammock, and a small table with a tub on it which she used for a sink. There was no running water in this bamboo house.

Its good to know that even in this drastic of poverty, there are still smiling children.

Honestly, at times it is tough for me to be here. Things which I accept about life are being challenged. I don’t like being a rich person among poor people, but that’s what I feel like here. Its hard to spend money when I know people who are counting pennies. I guess the reason for that is my mentor was a really rich guy who gave it all up to become really poor and dedicated His life for others, and I want to be like Him.

I’m not writing this to make people feel guilty. Guilt doesn’t bring about change in the world... it just doesn’t have the power. This is just reality.

Q: Go to http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats. According to the graph, how many people in the world live on less than $1 per day?

Q: The American federal minimum wage rate is $7.25 per hour. If a person works 40 hours per week for 50 weeks in a year, how much money does a person make in a year? How much is that per day?

An Ecuadorian New Year

No students, this isn’t a riot….. It’s an Ecuadorian New year! And wow, I’ve never seen anything like it. Whenever I met someone new, most would ask me if I was going to be around for new years. When I told them that it was my first time here for new years, they got all excited and told me I was going to love it.

Well, I did love it. It was absolutely insane.

This is the Ecuadorian New Year’s Tradition. In the weeks before January 1^st, people make paper mache figurines or “Año Viejos” (Old years). Some Año Viejos are imaginary creatures,

some are politicians,

and some are cartoon characters.

The purpose of the Año Viejos is to represent all of the bad things that happened in the past year, hence the name “Old Year”. When 12:00 hits on New Year’s night, people stuff their Año Viejos with fireworks and set them ablaze in the streets. This is the celebration of out with the old and in with the new.

When midnight hits, you are supposed to watch one Año Viejos with family and friends. Well, this was the first Ecuadorian New Year for my sister and me, so we ended up running through the streets trying to get to another house. I videotaped on my digital camera as we dodged burning Sponge-Bobs and exploding figurines of Rafael Correa. (I can’t put the video up now, but I can show you guys when I get back)

It was funny when people asked me, “What do you do for New Years?” It’s almost as if they assumed that in the U.S. we did something similar, if not crazier. I told them how we typically hang out with family and friends with some great food. Then the climax of the night is when we all gather around the TV to see glass ball slowly lower in New York City as everyone counts down from ten …. so boring…

Q: Willian and his two twin brothers, Jesús Anthony and Jesús Manuel have 10 different kinds of fireworks to light off with their Año Viejo. They want to light off 3 at the same time. How many different ways can they do it?

Hint: You are finding the number of combinations of fireworks, not permutations.