Biking Riding: The Ecuadorian Way

So I know, sometimes we go overboard in the States. For a school to go anywhere that's not school with their students they have let the parents know and get their permission, plan the trip, get extra chaperones to make sure none of the students run off, etc, etc, etc. We all love to roll our eyes that the

So how do the Ecuadorians do something like this? Well, permission slips don't exist in this country.. If the school says 'jump', the students jump. If they say 'go here', the students go there. Once, the child of a family that I know went with his school to the movie theater to see some 'educational' movie (I don't remember the name, I just remember that it didn't sound all that educational). The parents found out AFTER the fact when the kid arrived home and told his mom and dad that he needed to take $10 to school the next day to pay for the field trip he had ALREADY gone on. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at this.. The hourly minimum wage here comes out to something like $2.70.

Anyways, around 8 AM this morning (towards the end of my 7-8:15 AM class) I started to notice that cars were starting to drop off kids and bikes outside of our school..

'That's cool,' I thought. 'I want to bike!'

When I got downstairs around 8:25 I realized that absolute mayhem was unfolding outside.

"What's going on?" I asked some of the other teachers. I found out that a lot of the high schools and some of the universities in Cuenca were biking around the city today.

There were hundreds of high school students (lets say 13-17 here in Ecuador) students gathering on the street. But, here's the catch... The street was still open and cars were slowly pushing through the throngs of students, honking to tell students to pedal (and pedal quickly) out of the way.

I stepped outside to watch. This was too good to miss. Among the hundreds of students students (and several cars) I think I saw... Four teachers. That's right. FOUR!

On of the teachers was standing on the corner and shouted, "Asuncion! Por aqui!" (Asuncion - one of the high schools. This way!). The mob of students just continued to mill about.

'This is hilarious', I thought again.

I went inside to get my camera. Picture opportunities like this don't come along too often. By the time I got outside (maybe 2 minutes later) all of the students were gone.. Maybe it was better organized than I thought. I'll let you be the judge.