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!