holidays in the oriente

Hola, we are the 7th grade class from Macas, Ecuador. Macas is the capital of the province Morona Santiago in the Amazon.

In the Amazon we don’t have four seasons. We just have two; the Rainy season and the Dry

season.

The Rainy season lasts from June to August…

And the dry season lasts fromSeptember to July.

In the month of December we have many of the same holidays as the United States, like…

AND

We decorate Christmas trees with our families.

Many of our costumes and celebrations are the same during Christmas.

With Lights…

Ornaments…

And of course a star at the top!

We also give presents to our family…

A lot of us our Catholic, so we put together manger scenes from the birth of Jesus Christ…

And we always have parades and performances around Christmas…

New Years is a little different…

To bring in the New Year we create a dummy…

Stuff him full of old news papers from the year…until he is nice and fat!

And draw a big smile on his face…

Then we say “adios” to him and the old year at midnight… by lighting him on fire…

And those are our holidays…

We hope you enjoyed our PowerPoint!!!

Keep clicking forward to see what other students in the Amazon do during this season.

During the Christmas holidays, we perform traditional dances for our parents.

The photos in slides 15 – 22 feature students at the General Pintag Elementary School in Campana Cocha, Napo Province, along the

Napo River.

It’s not all fun and no work this time of year. It’s also planting season. Here we are digging in the finca.

It’s also a time of year when the fruit of many

rainforest trees becomes ripe. That means we have

to climb the trees to collect the fruit. Fun and

food – can’t beat that!

Certain kinds of fish also lay there eggs this time of

year – which makes the fishing good, too.

Of course, we also enjoy swimming and playing by the river any time!

This time of year, we also celebrate the Dia Civil, during which we have a flag ceremony.

And the week before Ash Wednesday is Carnival. That means you have to watch out for people throwing water and flour at you all week! Here we are celebrating at school.

Naturally, we also go to school during this season of the year – as you’ll see on the next two pages.

The photos on the last three pages feature students (and a dog!) from the Escuela Aurelio Guerrero Sanz in Rukullakta, Napo Province, Ecuador.

That’s the end of our PowerPoint. We hope you enjoyed it and learned about things we do during this season. (Now

you can have a rest!) Samashun! Bye, bye!

From your friends in Macas, Campana Cocha and Rukullakta in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rain Forest.

Peace Corps Volunteers Ryan Young in Macas, Sadie Funk in Campana Cocha and Mary Fassnacht in Rukullakta - and Ryan’s students - contributed photos and content for this PowerPoint, which was compiled by OneWorld Classrooms staff.

Thank you!

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