An anniversary celebration!!!

ECOLE Travel and Idiomas are celebrating!

A few days ago, all the staff from ECOLE got together to commemorate our 10^th anniversary!

It is hard to believe that all that time has passed by when we still preserve our humble beginnings freshly in our minds. We started with just four people –we remember- and all throughout the years, all magnificent years, we have kept going stronger, getting more businesses, more students and more projects, and surely we have the will to hang on to our success and continue maturing, developing and expanding our services.

Relying on a current staff of 25 people, we have progressed and learned a lot on the way, and we wanted to express somehow our thanks to those people working with us, so we had a great dinner which concluded with a nice surprise from the owners of the institution, Lydia and Wytze, and everyone showed their eagerness to carry on undertaking a remarkable job as it has been done so far!

A new Spanish book was launched in Ecole Idiomas

Julio Awad Yépez, General Manager of Ecole Idiomas, launched his new fiction book: "Historias de Nénofir: El viaje de Nabîl" last week.
This adventure book, full of nice descriptions and a solid story line, is adressed to young people between 9 and 15 years old. Values like friendship, courage and intelligence are the central subject of the book.

Ecole Idiomas, a dutch Spanish school in Quito - Ecuador, offers Spanish lessons, volunteer work facilities, accommodation and tours in Ecuador and now, wants to suport Julio Awad with the promotion of his book.
Julio has writen several short stories, exercices, grammar texts and articles for Ecole Idiomas and for other organizations in Ecuador and other countries of South America and Europe. He is also the author of our grammar book "Enfoques: Libro Guía de Gramática".
Ecole Idiomas wishes him success in this new adventure.

For all our Spanish students and volunteers about the political situation of Ecuador

This is how the things happened yesterday:

In the morning, police and army started a strike.

At 10, the president went to the Head Quarters of the Police. He tried to discuss the new law about reducing some extra bonuses for promotions. The officers started an aggression to the president and he needed to go to the police hospital (he had had a surgery in his right knee last week).

Once the president was in his room, he was surrounded by some police officers who didn’t let him out. Thus, the president was kidnapped al 11.

All the presidents of South America countries announced their support to the constitutional order and the president.

During the morning and afternoon, all political parties expressed their support to the president and democracy.

At noon, the army quitted the strike and announced that all army staff support the president.

At 5 in the afternoon, the police expressed support to the president.

Therefore, only the officers who stood close to the police hospital were in deep troubles. They were surrounded by the army, citizens and other Police elements.

At 7, army and policemen went in to rescue the president. Unfortunately, one cop died.

At 8:30, the president arrived to the Presidential Palace, explained what had happened and the situation calmed down.

A political party was behind the first strike and tried to have advantage of the situation that the president was kidnapped. Under those circumstances, Ecuador had a “coup d’état” (change the president violently) that doesn’t succeed. Nevertheless, the government has declared a state of emergency (not a state of siege). This means that the normal line of power for police and army (President – State minister – generals - troops) will be shorter (President – troops).

The state of emergency doesn’t mean that people loose rights or things like that.

The following items have been done in order to keep our students and volunteers safe:

-       We contact all volunteers and students to give them information about the situation and about safety under those circumstances.

-       Ecole Idiomas gave lunch to the students and send them home in taxis yesterday

-       The office was closed at three

-       We call the host families and explain the situation.

-       This morning we gave the students and volunteers a report and some information printed from the Internet about the current situation.

-       We recommended the students and volunteers to stay home this weekend in spite of the calmness of the situation today.

Everything is fine and peaceful now.