Rant!

Up until now, most of my blogs have been mainly informative. They detail the highlights of my Ecuador experience and the events I have witnessed or been a part of. This blog may be a bit different. Why? Because I had a bad day yesterday and I want to be real with my readers about the ups and downs of this year.

What started off as a typical work day turned into one of the more frustrating days in Ecuador so far. It was around noon and I was on my way in to the neighborhood where I work. My bus was approaching my stop so I got up and waded through the standing crowd, heading towards the doors. The bust driver (who is inside a plastic enclosure, separated from the people) got on his microphone and started saying repeatedly "Miss, miss, keep going, keep going." (I think that's the rough translation) I wasn't sure who he was talking to and everyone around me seemed to be looking around, confused. A couple of seconds later, we arrived at my stop and I got off the bus. Before the doors had a chance to close behind me, I realized that my cell phone, which had been in my pocket, was gone. Someone had, in the confusion of that moment, been able to swipe it right out from my possession. I turned around and had the thought that I should jump back in the bus and confront everyone, demanding they return the phone. Then I realized, what thief is going to say "Oh :) You got me! Nicely done! Here ya go...you're cell phone. Man! Quickest gringo I've ever ripped off! Well done, well done."? I don't think that would happen. Ever. So instead of getting back on before the doors closed, I just eyed everyone in the bus that I could and gave them a look of disappointment that said "Really? REALLY? Did that just happen?!" I hope that look is now burning a hole in the back of the thief's mind.

So that's how my bad day started.

It continued to go down hill when my high-school aged students pushed all the right buttons. First, about three of them came in 10 minutes late. Instead of quietly going to their seats while I was talking, one went to the back of the room and started looking out the window and another was on her cell phone talking to someone. I stopped mid sentence and asked "What are you doing?!" I continued to show my frustration by explaining what being rude and disrespectful meant, using them as examples. About 10 minutes later, two more students came in to take the test they had missed on Wednesday. I had to again stop what I was doing and leave the room to get the correct tests from the secretaries (which is the protocol at CEC) so these students could take the exam. When I got back to my room with exams in hand, half of my class was in my room and the other half was in the empty room next door yelling out the window to their friends. No one was working on the exercises I had assigned for those 5 minutes I was gone. I told one particular girl that if she didn't want to be here, she could go home. No one's making her come here to learn English, except maybe her parents, and she clearly doesn't want to learn the language. After that particular outbust, I think the entire class got the hint that I was pissed off and they tried to work in their workbooks (for a record 10 minutes). Somehow, I made it through the day...but barely.

No doubt exacerbated by my bad day, I didn't have much patience for bad listeners when I was trying to vent afterwards. What people should be aware of is that I am a professional listener. I usually don't talk just to hear my voice. I'm not interested in one-upping people during dialog and I put much thought into the ideas I want to express verbally (especially when it's personal). So when it's my turn to talk, you should probably be on your A game. Don't redirect the topic back to yourself. Don't interrupt. Don't start talking to someone else while I'm in mid sentence. Because I won't be entirely motivated to continue should I feel like what I'm saying is not important. I refuse to shove my feelings into the 5-second window of your short-attention listening span. There. Rant DONE!

Ah, blogging. It's good sometimes to just blog it out! I feel MUCH better!

I heart Fridays

Welcome to my blog entitled "I heart Fridays." It is, in fact, Friday and I'm really jazzed because today in class we're taking a field trip. Instead of the meticulous *cough cough* lesson planning I usually do, today I'm just relaxing at home, drinking coffee and catching up on some internet. My students today will be doing a Scavenger Hunt around the touristy part of town called La Mariscal (aka - Gringolandia). They will have to find answers to such questions as: What is the name of the MLB team from Boston? Krispy Kreme is what type of chain store? and my personal favorite, What is a mullet?

Last weekend I traveled a bit south of Quito to a small town called Latacunga for their Mama Negra festival. Now, I have asked several people what the significance of this festival is and I have gotten several different answers. At first I thought it was religious (and maybe it is), but after viewing the parade and shananigans that is the festival, I would hesitate to attribute any religion to it. One story I heard is that the Mama Negra Festival celebrates the first time the image of the Virgin Mary was seen as a black woman. The story goes that a forlorne slave woman trekked up to the peak of Cotopaxi and there witnessed the divine incarnation of Mary as a black woman, giving hope to all the slaves of that time. Other Ecuadorians I asked had no idea what the significance is.
The festival is an all day event (reminded me a bit of May Day/Spring Fling from my college years). People rise early in the morning and head toward the parade route to claim their seats. The parade starts around 10am and lasts for about 4 hours. In the parade, there men wearing black face and dressed in drag, people carrying hollowed-out crucified pigs adorned with cuy (guinea pigs), bottles of liquor and cigarette boxes. There are about a million marching bands, traditional dancers, people in parrot costumes and men who come around to cleanse any onlooker. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity to be cleansed. In my mind, I was envisioning some sort of meditative, patchouli-like ritual. What REALLY happened was three men danced around me chanting things like "long live mama negra! Viva Latacunga" and then, much to my surprise, a different man came up and sprayed alcohol all over me. The alcohol, which came out of his mouth mind you, got in my eyes as I didn't know I should avert my face. It stung for a couple of seconds, but I laughed at my foreign ignorance and spent the rest of the morning smelling like booze.
After the parade, people linger in the streets to eat, drink and have impromtu dance parties. We all had a really great time that day, ending our adventure at a club called The Galaxy dancing until about 1am.

Well, that's about it for now! Cheers to all my readers!

(Cleansing pre alcohol in eyes)

Hola todos!

It has been a while since my last post. My deepest apologies! At this point, I now have two weeks of teaching experience under my belt. A typical day for me goes as follows:

I wake up around 8:30 or 9am. My beautiful morning personality and bead-head wanders out towards the kitchen where I make coffee and eat breakfast with my family. Around 9:30 or 10 I look through my lesson plan for that day and make sure I have all the materials I need, or have at least saved them to my flash drive. Around noon or 12:30 I leave the house and head towards the bus stop. Forty minutes to an hour later I arrive at work. I teach two classes per day, one at 2pm and the second at 4pm. Both classes are the same level: Intermediate I. Half the class is present at around 5 after the hour, and most of the class is there by 10 after. The few stragglers who show up after this are marked absent. Sorry, Charlie. What I hadn't anticipated was having to teach high school students. Most of my students are between 15 and 17. "Was I like that when I was 15?!" I wonder silently to myself. "Of course not!" comes the automatic reply. When I finish my last class at 6, I usually wander down to the teacher's office and either grade homework or start planning for the next day(s). This is because at 6pm traffic is horrible and it would take me over an hour to get home if I left then. I like to think I'm saving time by staying. This also gives me the chance to chat it up with other teachers. One particular evening, I met a guy named Scott whose grandmother is from the same town that my grandmother is from! Thats right...the Freeport Pretzels! Small world...who doesn't love those connections?! Finally, after getting home in the evening, I eat dinner, plan a bit more, maybe watch a movie or Skype it up a bit...then I'm off to bed around midnight or 1am.

Pretty sweet schedule, huh? I'm not complaining!

The reason I have time to update my blog at this particular moment is because we have a 4 day weekend this weekend. While Halloween is tomorrow, the real reason for this extra time off is a Latin American holiday called Dia de los Difuntos. Those who participated in Spanish Club in high school may be more familiar with the phrasology, Dia de lost Muertos. As for myself, I will be watching Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local indy theatre here in Quito, then after the show heading to a "suburb" of Quito called Cumbaya (pronouced exactly like Kumbaya, the song). My costume this year, you might ask? Well, you'll just have to wait for the pictures....I will say, however, that I'm not a bird, nor a plane...



pic: Iguana Park in Guayaquil. Just a bunch of iguanas hanging out. In a park.

New Closets!

Ahh...My lovely host dads hired workers to fix my closet this week. Even though it took 3 days to complete the job (this seems unnecessarily long to me), it was well worth it! I can now, a month and a half into my stay, unpack my suitcase.

That said, tonight I have to pack my suitcase. This is because my dads are taking me to Guayaquil this weekend for their Independence Celebration. I´m pretty jazzed for this excursion to a more tropical climate (not in the mountains) and for the massive festival that is this weekend. Coastal cities are also known for their amazing seafood dishes which I plan to sample, as well.

On a more personal note, I was surprised yet not surprised to find my spirits a little lower this week. It´s strange the memories that pop into your head at a moments notice. This weekend is my best friend in the entire world´s wedding. Before leaving for Ecuador I even helped plan the engagement with her fiance. In short, I´ve known for longer than she has that I´d miss their wedding but this doesn´t seem to ease the lil pang of sadness I´ve felt all week. But I wish them all the best and hope the day is beautiful, full of friends, family and merriment! Rhys and Jon, I love you guys! (P.S. - Send pictures!)

This past Sunday, I went to a local church called English Fellowship. Nearly everything is in English as the name suggests and the pastor I think is from South Carolina. The story of how I got to this church is very telling of Ecuadorian society and worth sharing:

About a week and a half ago I was waiting at the bus terminal near my house after work. It was my first time taking the bus to my new Quito host family house. I knew the name of the bus I was supposed to be on and I knew there was a gas station with an orange sign on the corner where I was supposed to get off. While I was contemplating the best way to successfully execute this public transportation venture, the girl behind me in line started asking me questions in English. I turned around and began chatting with her about how she learned English and what her name was, etc. She told me she had actually studied abroad in the States and her name was Daniella. She then asked me, almost out of the blue, if I was a Christian. I said yes and she explained that she´s actually working towards becoming a missionary. Our conversation continued while boarding the bus, riding the bus, and also while missing my stop. Luckily her stop was the one right after mine, so after disembarking, she walked with me back to my corner by the gas station. I got her number and told her I´d call if I could swing church this week.
As it turned out, I could swing church. After a couple of text messages, she told me that she had a meeting on Sunday morning, but that her friend Ivan would pick me up at that same gas station. I was a little leary of this 3rd party especially because he would be driving me in his car to a place I wasn´t familiar with. This probably wasn´t an exemplary performance of street smarts, but I did it anyways. As planned, Sunday morning I jumped into Ivan´s silver Volkswagon (admiring the German craftsmanship and simultaneously missing my Passat, Ruby) and rode with this chatty Ecuadorian guy to church. The people were nice and I ended up having a pretty good discussion about American government with Ivan on the ride home. He invited me to have lunch with him and some of his friends the following Wednesday. That Wednesday (yesterday to be exact) I met up with Ivan again and met his buddy from the university, Antonio and also his new friend from Norway, Anneth. Two Ecuadorians, an American and a Norwegian enjoying almuerzo and each other´s company. Pretty amazing.

And this is just how it goes in Ecuador. You meet someone once and they introduce you to their friends and before you know it, the contacts in your cellphone have doubled.

Perhaps in another post I´ll tell you the story of how I came upon my guitar. It´s pretty interesting as well and involves a couple from Canada.

Well, I must be off. I have other lunch plans today and I have to run some errands before work and the trip to Guayaquil.

Chao!

This is gonna be a doozy

Holy long time, Batman!!

 (left: JUICE! It´s a big deal here. I wish I had taken a pic of the menu...sigh)

Sorry, kids.  Life just swept me away down here on the equator.  I just finished up the orientation portion of this experience on Friday.  It has been a long, but fruitful month. Lots of info flying at me, lots of getting to know Quito and people and families.  The focus of the last two weeks has been practice teaching which was a great learning tool for what to expect in the next year.  We offered a free two-week English course at a local school in Quito.  The volunteers then worked in teaching groups of three.  The first and last days were group teaching days, then in between we each took a couple of individual teaching days.  I don´t know if that made any sense.  Long story short: I was responsible for three days of lesson planning and teaching for a 2 hour long class in Basic English.  It is strongly recommended that we don´t use any Spanish even for the beginning students.  This makes communication more......interesting.  And def. more fulfilling.  Lots of hand gestures, cognates, and encouragement so the students feel safe to test drive the language even if they make mistakes.

 So for those three days of individual teaching, I woke up at 5am, got ready, made sure I had time to eat breakfast (so that my host mom wouldn´t freak out...no literally, one day the other volunteer in my house rushed out bc she was late and that´s all I heard about that evening when I got home ¨oh, pobrecita! Christine didn´t eat breakfast this morning!! She didn´t even drink her juice OR coffee!! Que lastima! She should have taken some bread with her! Oh my little girl!¨ etc., etc.  Juice, by the way, is made fresh daily with allll sorts of fruits. It is a way of life.  A blender comes standard with every house, I´m pretty sure.) I then took the bus at 6 or 6:15, arrived at the school around 6:40 and started class at 7.   This schedule isn´t too terrible, but the kicker was then having orientation all day after class and then going out at night.  The latter might have been a bit more optional, but ya know...ya kinda gotta.  Bonding with everyone and all.

Entonces.... Ah yes!  There has been some maneuvering going on down here with my placement site.  After a somewhat awkward weekend trip to Portoviejo and the subsequent discussion with my site directors, I was offered the opportunity to stay in Quito for the rest of the year.  I jumped on this opportunity.  Porto wasn´t terrible, persay, but it wasn´t ideal for me.  The family claimed they didn´t know I was coming during my weekend visit.  Then they didn´t really offer me dinner the first night.  The father was away ¨on business¨and when he returned there may or may not have been some tension with the wife.  All I know is that they didn´t sleep in the same room and I´m not really sure he stayed at all.  However, their kids were adorable.  Two 6 year old twin boys who loved playing soccer with me and taking pictures with my digital camera.  The decision to stay in Quito wasn´t the easiest, but at the end of the day, I´m really glad I´m staying.  There is so much more diversity and things to do here.

So now that Quito is my reality, I´ve moved into my permanent host family for the year.  They are amazing! Their names are Daniel and Diego. They have been together for six years and share the apartment with their dog, Teddy.  I have my own room, my own bathroom and the internet! (hence this long ass post) There are a handful of other volunteers within a five minute drive from my place and I´ll have about a 20-30 minute commute to work in the mornings.  

Since I won´t start teaching until October 20th, here is my list of things to do:

Buy a guitar

Day trip to Otavalo, the biggest open air artisan market in Latin America

Go to a DVD store where you can score movies for about a buck and buy the crap out of it

Check out Banos for a weekend,  a really fun town that offers a plethora of outdoor adventure-type activities like horseback riding, canopy gliding (?), hiking, etc.

Go shopping.  Since I packed for coastal weather, I think I might need to purchase different attire.

Oh and plan a Halloween party.  Apparently on Oct. 31st there is going to be a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local theatre.  This should clearly be followed by a costume party. I´m stoked.

Ah I´m sure there´s more but I can´t type any more and I´m sure your eyes are tired.

Peace and Love,

C

Sunday, August 30, 2009

(right: the cathedral of Santo Domingo in an area of historic Quito called La Ronda. This is about a 5 minute walk from my house)

Hola todos!
Today was a great day. It was my first full day with my host family. There two of us volunteers living here for this first month. When I leave for Portoviejo at the end of September, Christine (the other volunteer) will stay here for the entire year. It’s a really great set up. We each have our own rooms complete with a big-girl bed (aka a double), a tv and space for all the things I packed. The room locks from both the inside and the outside, which is nice, but I’m not terribly worried about it because the family is so respectful, caring and generous. They treat us like their own daughters and they’ve been hosting volunteers for over 20 years. Marco and Elisa are my host father and mother who live with us. We also get to spend a lot of time with their 25-year-old daughter Doris and her husband Edy. Doris is 7 months pregnant with their first child, Nicholas. Down the street are Edy’s parents. They are all super helpful in showing us how get around and which buses to take. Not to mention they feed us all the time! This morning I was journaling outside when a neighbor approached. He greeted me enthusiastically and when I told him who I was, he said he already knew! Needless to say, the people here are pretty great. Our house is in an area called La Loma Grande, which is located about 20 minutes south of downtown in the historic part of the city. The buildings and architecture here are very beautiful. Near our house is the touristy section of Old Quito called La Ronda. The streets are narrow and made of brick, there are lots of little shops and even more history. This is also where one can find the amazing old cathedrals like La capilla de Santo Domingo.
One of the biggest cultural differences I’ve noticed so far is how the family spends time together. Today, around mid afternoon, we all returned to the house after a group picnic. Christine and I were then ushered into the master bedroom where the entire family sat on the bed at watched TV together. It’s called un descanso, or a rest. With the Biography channel (in Spanish) highlighting Andy Garcia in the background, we all sprawled out on the bed and chatted, watched the program and even napped a bit. At first, it didn’t feel like much a rest to me because I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. But I went with the flow and eventually nodded off a bit. I think this practice, while somewhat strange to Americans, is something I could totally get used to. Who doesn’t like to siesta in the afternoon?! Well, there’s no doubt I could write more, but I need to get some sleep as tomorrow is our first real day of training, Spanish classes and probably much more. Hasta luego!

Tuesday, September 1st
These past few days have been rather full with orientation type things. Lots of discussions on safety and culture along with Spanish classes at a local school. Most of the activity happens in an area known as Gringolandia or Mariscals. It's a really fun, touristy part of town. Think 8th Street in Holland but busier, more places with live music and dance clubs. If I didn't emphasize this earlier, my host family is really great. On the 19th Christine and I are going to a baby shower for Doris. The entire family is so accommodating.
This Friday, the entire group of volunteers are going to a place called Papallacta. It's a famous geographical site with hot springs, gysers and the like. I'll know more after Friday :)
Funny story: I was trying to chat up the owner of this cafe to practice my conversational Spanish and she told me that she doesn't speak English. I guess I wasn't aunnciating well. But fear not, I can already tell my Spanish skillz are on the rise. I'm starting to think in Spanish, understand more and soon, I will probably be dreaming in Spanish. Maybe. It's up for debate.

I'm hoping to post more pictures soon. Unfortunately, the uploading speed is rather slow at the moment. If my FB album is successful, check out more there. If not...then just hang tight.

Day 2!

I have made it to Quito safely and am enjoying myself thoroughly! I can't update a lot right now because we're waiting for our host families to come pick us up. Today we woke up at 7 and then had breakfast as a group on the balcony of this restaurant. It was beautiful with the mountains in the background and huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) and fresh jugo (juice). We spent some time discussing safety and host families then we had lunch at a Mongolian sytle restaurant. The altitude threw me for a loop last night but I seem to be feeling much better today. I think I was just dehydrated. I'm so excited for this next year and I promise my next post will be longer and more detailed. Much love!