In the jungles of the Upper Amazon 100 species of trees per acre have been recorded. In Central America, only up to 40 species of trees per acre have been discovered. In the temperate3 forests of North America and Europa, rarely more than 20 different species exist per acre. The Amazon support over 600 species of fish and more than 250 species of amphibians and reptiles.

We offer you the possibility  to explore this fantastic World combining with Spanish classes ,it’s ideal for groups from 3 to 6 students.

You will arrive to a comfortable and nice hotel, you will receive classes in the morning and your teacher will go with you to the different activities you’ll have in the afternoon. The last day you will visit an indigenous community of the tribe Shuar and attend to a Shaman healing ceremony. It will be an unforgettable experience.

The itinerary is:

Sunday:    You will travel to the hotel in Puyo and arrive in the afternoon. At your arrival you can take the rest of the afternoon to do some light exploring of the places nearby. When you return to the hostel you will enjoy a dinner.

Monday:    Class in the morning. In the afternoon you will visit a botanical garden “Las Orquídeas” (The Orchids) where you can admire these beautiful flowers. Ecuador has the greatest diversity of orchid species in the world.

Tuesday:   Classes and a visit to the Fatima Zoo where you can see the different animal species of the area.

Wednesday: Classes and a visit to the Hola Vida (Hello Life) waterfall where you   can enjoy the beautiful landscapes and take a swim if you’d like.

Thursday:  Classes and a visit to the Omaere, Nice Park where you can enjoy the botanical diversity of the area.

Friday:      Classes and a visit to an aquarium where you can admire the rich marine life of the Amazon region.

Saturday:  Visit to an indigenous community and a Shaman. This will last all day and you will have a fantastic opportunity to learn about the Shuar culture and attend to a shaman ceremony.

Sunday:    After breakfast in the morning, you will return to Quito.

* Price per person, all inclusive:  $599 per person.

* This is for groups since 3 persons

Important things that the student needs to bring:

Copy of your passport showing your visa permit for Ecuador! , shorts and long pants (avoid cotton jeans if possible); T-shirts and long-sleeved shirts , Raincoat or poncho, Bathing suit , sandals, Insect repellent,Sunblock (VERY important) , Cap to protect your head from the sun, Flashlight , Binoculars  (optional)

* The Class and activity schedule is subject to change depending on the activity and the weather. Class could be in the afternoon and the activity in the morning, always in accordance to the instructor.

Ecuador is a small, tranquil Andean national that boasts some of the world’s most unique & spectacular landscape (including active and extinct volcanoes, mountains), colourful flora, endearing fauna and traditional Andean culture.

The rare beauty of Ecuador has attracted a number of important events in the recent past.

Our Language Center has branches in other cities as Baños, and Guayaquil so if you wish to study or to continue your studies among these cities you can do it.

For further information contact us. We are pleased to help.

They are supervisors. And with our special training for instructors in study technology they acquire the ability to transmit their knowledge and ensure the student had really learned. We offer all of these features surrounded by a warm and joyful environment.

Guayquil Staff

They will work in the development of the three skills; hearing, writing and oral, correcting the pronunciation and identifying which one you need to reinforce. Besides, the study won’t be only theoretic but mainly life applied, so your instructor will use different audiovisual resources that will provide increased help for you to learn.

To give an example, you will use the objects in the classroom or in the strolls to interesting places near our school.Our professionally-trained staff regularly attend workshops and seminars to ensure that their skills and teaching methods are constantly up-to-date.

Our knowledgeable team provides help with fair price to any place you may want to visit in Ecuador as Coast, Highlands, Jungle and the worlwide known Galapagos islands, point you in the right direction for restaurants, shopping and accommodation.

]]> http://southamerican.edu.ec/2009/02/27/our-staff/feed/ 0 http://southamerican.edu.ec/2009/02/27/our-method/ http://southamerican.edu.ec/2009/02/27/our-method/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:57:11 +0000 admin http://southamerican.edu.ec/?p=92 You’re going to receive one-to-one classes! all our Spanish classes are private classes. If you prefer you can always receive our excellent group method too.
Your teacher is going to apply our system in order to meet / suit your personal needs and requirements.

The method is direct and communicative. Every teacher teaches you to speak and write Spanish using audio and visual resources and not only by translation. Achieving for you to think in Spanish. Our specialty. 

You’ll learn the language easily through imitation, repetition and appropriate correction. We use the same methods that all people use to learn their native language.

But the classes not only take place in the classroom; there are excursions to the market and different interesting places near the School where you will experience and to prove in the field  what you had learn in the classroom.

We have developed our own, in-house Spanish books, which complement our teaching method.
Our method is really going to teach you to speak Spanish.

Our individual classes

Your learning experience will be personal!

Through readings, comprehension questions, vocabulary, dynamics, group conversational forums, grammar, exercises, and permanent correction, your teacher will always be ready to help you with all your specific learning needs.

The satisfaction of our students is in extreme important to us..

We strive to gurantee progress and success for each student.

After a brief introduction and immersion in the language, classes will begin.  The materials we use are exclusive to this Center, and plenty of extra material for the exercises and our instructors are trained to properly work with them.

If the student so desires, a different instructor may be chosen each week.

In order to make teaching more effective, our method is supplemented by exercises, discussions, games, cultural excursions, videos, and audio, as stated before.

After each lesson, the student completes an oral and written quiz, this is another way to assure the knowledge acquired.  The time set for each lesson, and for each level depends entirely on each Student.

We also provide extra activities for the students, which are organized in a schedule so that all the students are able to enjoy their spare time after each daily lesson.  The purpose is to offer further knowledge of different sites and of Ecuadorian culture, and for inter cultural experiences.  They are optional and provided at no additional cost.

These activities are:

• Ecuadorian cooking classes: Tuesday 17:00 – 19:00
• City tours to museums, art galleries, etc: Tuesday 10:50 – 12:30.
• Conversation club: Monday 17:00 – 18:00.
• Dance lessons featuring salsa and other Latin rhythms:

Wednesday/Thursday 16:30–18:30

• Group exercises (games and conversation): Wednesday/Thursdays 10:50 – 11:50.
• Video: Friday 10:50 – 12:30.

Depending on the Spanish Version Program you have choose everything is organized and payed by the Center. The students don’t have to worry about anything.

The daily schedule for the students in the Center is:
Lessons:        08:30 to 10:30
Break:            10:30 to 10:50
Lessons:        10:50 to 12:30
Lunch:        12:30 to 13:30
Lessons:        13:30 to 15:00
Break:            15:00 to 15:15
Lessons:        15:15 to 16:30

All additional and optional activities take place after these hours.

in Parque La Carolina on the Avenida Rio Amazonas side, has a fascinating collection of snakes, frogs, turtles and caiman.  The Vivarium plays an important role in research, in caring for amphibians confiscated by customs, and also in educating students and visitors.  Ecuador has several poisonous snakes, notably the “equis” (“X”) or bushmaster and the coral snake.  Only around 10% of Ecuador´s 290 types of snake are poisonous, many are endangered, most are shy and well camouflaged.

The House of Urrutia
The house/museum of María Augusta Urrutia is located in the colonial section of Quito, and was built at the beginning of the 20th century, and is an excellent example of the arquitecture of this period, a typical style with inside patios, corridors and many rooms.

Mrs. Urrutia, came from a very wealthy family and was born in Quito in 1901. She spent her childhood and adolescent years in Europe, where she developed a taste for French decoration and the art of the great masters. The house is furnished with a collection of Ecuadorian art from the Colonial times to the 20th century: apart of the paintings and other works of art, you can see, together the local large bronze pots beside fine French porcelain and silver dinnerware.

Mrs. Urrutia’s husband, Alfredo Escudero, died a few years after the marriage. Mrs. Urrutia dressed in black for the rest of her life, until her death in 1987. She kept the house exactly as it had been at the time of her husband’s death, and as she was very religious, puts all her efforts and wealth to help the poor, specially the children, and to patronize very good Ecuadorian painters, like Mideros, whose mystic and esoteric type paintings, of great format and much use of bright blue, adorn the house. The House of Urrutia is an encounter with the time, the spirit and the daily life of Quito at the beginning of the 20th Century.

The Museum of the City
The Museum of the City of Quito (Museo de la Ciudad) opened in July, 1998, in the former Hospital of Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Old City. The historic building was used as a hospital from 1565 to 1974. In the 16th century the hospital provided lodging for the sick awaiting death and also for travelers. After the Bethlemite Brothers acquired the hospital around 1700, they added a doctor, chaplain, church, drugstore, vegetable garden and two fountains with fresh water. The brothers also built the richly decorated chapel, which has nine splendidly carved altars representative of the Quito School of Art. The first Ecuadorian doctor, Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo, was born in the hospital in 1747 and later practiced there. A Faculty of Medicine and a lecture theater were added in 1826. French scientists came to teach at the hospital in 1872.

The Museo de la Ciudad shows Quito’s history in chronological order from 10,000 BC to today. The city is presented as a center of exchange and of multicultural encounters, as a political and administrative center, and as the departure point for expeditions that discovered and explored the
Amazon. Many exhibits, which include dioramas and lifesize replicas, focus on the changes in daily life through the centuries. The first rooms show the area’s prehistoric inhabitants and Indian communities that preceded the arrival of the Incas in 1487. The other exhibitions are organized by century. The original hospital is recreated with a ward containing beds, where the sick awaited death on boards covered with hay

The 16th-century Room includes a map of Quito made of inlaid wood, a lifesize Indian hut, a drawing of Plaza San Francisco as the city market, helmets and armor of Spanish conquistadors, and the orders of priests that came to Quito. The prosperous 17th century is depicted by the manufactoring and trade in textiles, the studio of Miguel de Santiago of the Quito School of Art, and houses with bakery and candle shops.

Rooms of the 18th century feature French and German scientists who studied the exact location of the Equator in the Andes and the area’s flora and fauna, period dresses, the rigid class system, a typical kitchen and a room where women sat in Arab fashion on rugs and pillows to chat, sew, embroider or smoke. The 19th-century Room shows the influence of the French, the struggle for independence from Spain and scenes of everyday life.

Recoleta de San Diego
San Diego, House of Retreat
The Franciscan Order is linked to Quito from the time of the foundation of the city, which, by the end of the 16th Century already had a solid urban structure and an important part of the religious buildings: churches, cloisters and monasteries with hundreds of altars, altarpieces and facades, which required a wealth of artists and capable craftsmen who studied from 1550 in the schools of San Juan Evangelista and the most known of San Andrés – where the famous School of art of Quito was born (Quitenian Baroque). These schools were run by the Franciscans.

The devoted parishioners who filled these places of devotion, also demanded the possibility of doing retreat exercises in places separate from the urban noise. Thus, the house of retreat or the “Recoleta de San Diego” was built, located between deep ravines on the slopes of the Pichincha mountain, in the outskirts of the city, and quickly became a renowned center for retreat for monks and laymen alike.

Construction was started in 1600 in care of Father Bartolomé Rubio. The construction includes a cloister of two patios, refectory, sacristy, cells orchards. It has a humble facade that extends in front an ample patio, similar to a small plaza, in the center of which stands an imposing stone cross. The main door has a cutoff cornice set in a high arch with a square window at the top, and a sober atrium of pillars ending in pyramidal spires. The original main door is now inside, to protect it from the elements. The walls of the cloisters show windows of all sizes, created at liberty according to the requirements of light of the retreat cells.

In its interior the church unites the simplicity of its whitewashed walls to the serene elegance of the craftsmanship of the presbyter in cedar wood in the mudéjar style (Moorish), it has floors of stone; the pulpit and altarpieces of The Candelaria (virgin of) and the much revered Virgin of Chiquinquirá by Menacho an Indian sculptor, are marvelous works of art.

During the last couple of years, an intense work of restoration has redeemed the church, the cloisters, the pictorial and sculptural works of art, the altarpieces and the caissoned ceilings. Fragments of murals of the 17th Century, later whitewashed with lime, have been found during the restoration works.

The local mythology has legends, such as that of the light and carefree Father Almeida, who used to escape from San Diego on nightly nocturnal adventures, by climbing up a large statue of Christ to reach the window, until the night the statue said to him: “Until when, Father Almeida” to receive the answer that most agreed with his double life of priest and night owl: “Until my return, my Lord”.

The Cathedral
Located on the Main Square has an interesting collection of sculptures and paintings from the Escuela Quiteña. Among the most important is the Descending of Christ made by Caspicara. As in most Ecuadorian and Latin American churches, many styles are used in the construction of the Cathedral, such as late Gothic in the arches Moorish in the ceilings and Baroque in the main altar. See the Neoclassic style in the choir, the stone Episcopal chair, the central painting by Manuel Samaniego and the Statues by Caspicara.

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San Francisco Church
It was constructed after the Spanish Conquest and is said to have given the capital of Ecuador the name of San Francisco de Quito. The atrium running along one side of the plaza is opened in the middle to give way to a beautiful staircase. The facade has a style similar to the Escorial in Spain and in the inside the Baroque style. The coffer ceiling in the marthex has a rich Moorish style ornamentation with paintings by Miguel de Santiago. It is interesting to note among the ornamentations images of the sun god, the Inca divinity. The main altar holds the original masterpiece by Legards: “La Virgen de Quito”. This sculpure is the only winged image of the Virgin Mary.

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Cantuña Chapel
According to the legend of this Chapel, Francisco Cantuña, the indian who paved the atrium with large stone block, constructed the chapel with the treasures saved from the Kingdom of Quito. The Calvary woodcarvings on the main altar are one of Legarda’s most outstanding masterpieces of the colonial times. At this Chapel, another masterpiece to look at, carved by Padre Carlos, is Saint Peter of Alcántara.

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San Francisco Museum
Located at the San francisco Convent, in San Francisco Square. The zaguan (antique entrance hall), the main cloister, the renacentist stair way, the chorus and the exposition lounge are now the site of a number of selected works of the Franciscan collection. You can find works of Andrés Sánchez Galque (of indigenous origin), Miguel de Santiago, Mateo mexía, the European authors Zurbarán and Bernardo de Bitti, or their repective schools, among others. In the third lounge you can find samples of the European engravings that inspired native painters. Among the sculptures, you can find the glass eyes characteristic of the XVIII century

Teatro Sucre and Teatro Variedades

Quito’s most elegant theatre, the Sucre National Theatre, was restored to its former glory in 2004 and has once again become the country’s foremost venue for concerts, ballet and opera. Begun in 1879 and inaugurated in 1886, the history of the theatre dates back to when the liberal intelligentsia of Quito wanted to give the citizenry something more than bullfights – the space the theatre occupies was once the city’s main bullring. The theatre was designed by the German architect, Frank Schmit, along neo-classical lines.