Merry Christmas to you!

Have a happy Christmas with Jesus and a blessed 2011!

Piano and Violin

On Wednesday morning I woke up and remembered that it was the day when we would travel to Guayaquil.  That evening my aunty Ingrid was offering a Christmas Piano Concert and we had to be there.  We arrived in my abuelita's house at lunch time.  She had prepared a delicious chicken dish for us.  My abuelito had prepared some fresh fruits for after lunch.
We got ready for the concert.  I put on a smart pair of black trousers, a white shirt and a black tie, just like my two brothers did.  When I arrived at the venue we all helped to get things ready:  I helped welcoming people and giving the program out.

My aunty Ingrid is a very good pianist.  I really like how my aunty Ingrid played different Christmas carols.  My cousin Lizzy Joy also played her violin and I was impressed - she played three nice songs.
Early next day we traveled back to Cuenca.  The mist was horrendously thick.  But we made it back and arrived home safe and sound.  In the afternoon we went to the rehearsal for today's Christmas Concert in my music school.

My exams

Hello, I'm back from doing my school exams for the first term.  At last I've finished them all.  Before each exam I felt nervous, and with some exams more nervous than with others.  The one I didn't want to do was "Redaccion", because I had to write something from my own imagination.  I couldn't prepare for it because the teacher would give us the topic at the moment of the exam.  The topic was "a letter to Jesus".  I got an B+ in that exam.  The most difficult one was Spanish.  Spanish has a lot of rules and I can't always remember them all.  I got 17/20.

The exam I liked most was Drawing, because the teacher said we could draw anything we liked related to Christmas.  I drew baby Jesus in the stable.  Now that I've finished my exams I helped my mum to put up and decorate the Christmas tree.  I'm looking forward to the end of term in school so that I can rest a bit and celebrate Jesus' birthday.

A mysterious visitor

One night I was going downstairs to do my homework when I saw a crawly creature.  It was big as a saucer and had eight long legs all covered with dark brown hair.  It looked very scary and threatening.  It was standing just inside the front door as if it was deciding where to go next.

I called my mum, but she was upstairs and said, "Just leave it, it's only a spider".  But when she came down she said, "Oh, that's a tarantula".  So she punched holes in the base of a 1kg margarine tub and put it over the tarantula.

I got on with my homework, but I kept imagining that I heard the margarine tub moving across the floor.  When my dad came back from SEMBEC he took the tarantula across the street to an empty plot to give it a new home.  Now whenever Benjamin plays "The Crawling Spider" on the piano I get a prickly feeling up and down my back.

Benjamin's T-shirt

Benjamin draw his sports T-shirt for you:



Inauguration of the Sports Season

I have a new T-shirt.  All my classmates have one.  It is for the football and basketball school season.  On saturday 6th of November I wore it.  Each class marched out round the football field.  At the front a girl carried the shield of her class, and then a girl wearing a traditional dress from a province of Ecuador followed by the rest of the class.

This is how my new t-shirt looks like.

Our teacher, the vice-principal of the school, announced the entrance of each class, the name of the teacher of that class, and which province was represented by the traditional dress.  I enjoyed the different t-shirts for each team, because there were so many different colours, and designs.  After the parade of all the classes, there were some dances, and the first one was the Waka Waka.

My surprise holidays

All  schools of the province of Azuay are on holidays for eight days.  I am not sure why.  But, during those days I would like to go to Quito, a city in the mountains, where there is a Guesthouse which is very nice.  I like it there because there are some games that I can only play in Quito.  I also like the park.  And because of all our friends who are there.  The last time we went to Quito we went by plane.  Here is a picture of how Quito looked from my window in the plane.




This is a view of Quito from the aeroplane window, just before landing.  You can see the Pichincha volcano, the Guesthouse, the park nearby and the airport runway.

If we don't go to Quito, I'd like to go to Playas.  Playas is a beach village.  The last time I went to the beach at Playas I had fresh coconut, which was delicious.  I like the temperature of the water of the beach, where I play building castles with sand and jumping in and out from the water.  We usually eat fish when we are in Playas, and I kind of like it.


Here we are in Playas. You can see the man in the centre of the picture. He is the one selling fresh coconuts. First he makes a small opening in the shell of the coconut and we can drink the coconut water. Then he opens it up with his machete and we can eat the coconut flesh. 

Jungle Doctor

A few months ago my Grandma, the Mum of my Dad, sent me some books of the Jungle Doctor series.  The titles are Jungle Doctor (No. 1), Jungle Doctor Operates (No. 3 ), Jungle Doctor's Enemies (No. 5), Eyes on Jungle Doctor (No. 10) and Jungle Doctor on the Hop (No. 15).

Mvumi is the place where Bwana - the African word for a Doctor - has his hospital and has lots of friends like his African assistants Daudi, Roger, Samson and Simba.  Mubofu, one of Bwana's friends, is a blind boy and knows the way to the hospital even though he is blind.  He brings people from his village even though the chief of Mubofu's village didn't accept the offer of Bwana's help.  When the chief found out what Mubofu was doing he ordered some of his men to trap Mubofu and to hit him and throw him to a ditch where hyenas could eat him.  The chief also ordered his men to attack the hospital at the sound of the village's drum.

I liked reading these stories because Bwana did lots of things to help African people, I learned some African words, like fundi (expert), panya (rat), kabisa (completely) or mbukwa (good day), and the drawings are good.

The things I learned were:

• We have to kill rats otherwise they can cause a big crisis.  If we don't kill rats we can't get away from their fleas.  In order to catch fleas we need to put the dead rats in boiling water and the fleas will jump out, and we put some honey and the fleas will jump in the honey and sink.
• Bwana helped to cure the eyes of a witch doctor called Ng'oma.  We have to help the enemy.  Then we will have fewer enemies and more friends.
• Mubofu, the blind boy, could take an ill person to the hospital.  We all can help somebody else in one way or another.

In the tent

For the first time in my eight years of life I had the chance to be out for a night.  My Dad and I put the tent up right outside our house in the garden.  We pumped up the mattresses and took the sleeping bags into the tent.  I considered useful to take with me my torch, my pillow and my sandals.

I was very peaceful and asleep when I heard a monster creeping into the tent's waterproof cap.  My Dad was so deep asleep that he didn't hear the monster.  I saw the monster.  It was very tall, it had blue prickles all over his back and had black fur.  It made noices like "groawwwww" and it started to sniff right on the tent's entrance.  I reached for my torch and sandals.  I picked one of my sandals, switched on the torch and went over the tent's entrance.  I saw the monster and he had white, red and orange eyes.  I scared it off by moving my torch in his direction.  When he saw me he growled and I stepped out and slapped him with my sandal.  It run away very scared.

We woke up very early and we went inside the house.  I got ready for school and had breakfast.  I enjoyed my first night camping.  Maybe, I'll see the monster again next time I go camping.  But I don't know when I will go camping again.