DSC_0739Personally, I love economics, the graphs, numbers and charts are right up my alley. However, many don’t have quite the same love for graphs as I do, and that’s what today was for. The two themes of the day were Global Business and Aid and Development.

The day started off with a hearty debate of the usage of oil in Ecuador. Unsurprisingly, the boys versus girls discussion heated up, but who doesn’t like to start the morning with a good old hot button topic? We had a few guest speakers come to the hostel for a workshop about food consumption and its impacts in Ecuador. They covered  variety of topics from food labeling and  typical Ecuadorian diet to GMOs.

Next, we had a field trip to a local market, where we had a scavenger hunt in the masses of the surrounding fruits and vegetables. We talked to some local vendors who were pretty uncluttered when we asked them how much an apple casted and didn’t buy any. To contrast that experience, we went to a supermarket which reminded me of Trader Joes. The two experiences, both involving purchasing the same food, were drastically different in atmosphere.

 

DSC_0734Back to la primavera for some skits to demonstrate the pros and cons of aid and development in foreign countries. Public service announcement: developing nations typically want medicine and resources to build an economy, not one million t shirts. We had a little more discussion on our two market experiences before going to school for our penultimate English lesson. Most group’s lessons went well. My students were not entirely pleased with my super realistic and artistic drawings of firetrucks, I can’t imagine why…

We had two special surprises at dinner. First, cuy, or as most of you know it as, guinea pig. Most of the group went right for it, but personally I passed. The second surprise was dining with Azucena, who we are working with to rebuild and repair La Casa de la Mujer, for our community action project.

For even those who are repulsed by thru graphs of econ, today was still a really great day. It’s a really important question to ask yourself “where did this product come from?” before purchasing. Today’s activities, seeing where our food comes from and different ways it’s sold, questioning how effective our typical donations to charity are, add perspective to our consumer choices.

 

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Personal shout outs:

Mom and dad, hey. Enter the theme song to p&r here. Love you

Steven: hey buddy, I might beat your Australian PICS…

KDR: woof

Zoe: Do not spoil GOT for me