Halftime Report

Pic 1: Carley and I at the Marine House for Happy Hour at the US Embassy
Pic 2: My house in Quito. I live on the first floor with my host parents, and one of their grown children lives on the 2nd floor with his wife and son.
Pic 3: With mi papás, Mercedes and Ernesto
Pic 4: Out with Jenny and Hannah

I am officially halfway done with my semester in Quito. It feels really good. I still have plenty of time here, but nonetheless it feels downhill from this point. It is a nice time to reflect and remember why I am here. For starters, I can't believe I am here. Twelve months ago, I was sitting at Seamless Logistics not even knowing that Quito was a city in Ecuador. Now, here I am, and it has become my home.

I am still enjoying living with my family. My host dad is super cute and funny. I asked him where his wedding ring was one day and he said that he was single.... and free! He said this several times and he thought he was funny, which made it that much cuter.

Today was a crazy day at the school where I volunteer. One of the teachers resigned two weeks ago, so I have been filling in all over the place. It has been frustrating at times, because they don't have any lesson plans whatsoever. It's also hard playing the role of a 'sub' because you can't really get anything worthwhile started. The lady who is my coordinator, Leticia, is great though. She encourages me and always compliments on how I work with the kids. Today, during our weekly meeting for the teachers who teach in English (so there are about 8 of us... only one other American), she said that a few of the directors/principal were wanting to hire me to work there full time. Lety said they didn't realize I was taking classes at La Católica. Anyway, I was pleased to hear that they are happy with the work I am doing there.

Overall, I am loving working at the school. The kids are crazy. They have no consequences for anything, so it's hard to enforce much. It's kind of trial and error for me with such little experience. When I work with the juniors and seniors it is normally with just a few kids, or one-on-one. The 9th graders are ridiculous. I feel like I am at a zoo. That was until I subbed for the 7th graders today for the first time. I thought I was going to break my voice from yelling so much. I am frequently sending kids into the hall for misbehaving. They HATE this. It's as if I just gave the an in-school suspension or something, I don't get what the big deal is about the hall. But, I've never been one to say I'm going to do something, and then not follow through with it. Today, I found myself saying "I don't care" to a few students about various things, such as...
"I don't have my notebook. "... "I don't care." (Is it really that hard to borrow a piece of paper?)
"I ripped a page in my book."... "I don't care." (Who cares? Find some tape.)
"I want a drink of water." ... "I don't care." (I know that's code, for let me out of here.)
I'm pretty sure I should stop saying that. Not really a good thing for a teacher to say. Today was a rough day. I seriously felt like something was in the air with these kids. All of the classes were crazy, and then I ended it with the 7th graders, who were nuts. I think this is partly what spurred my "I don't care" comments. Despite this rant that I just went on, I can honestly say, I love it. I have definitely had fun moments with the students. The thought of having my own class, and being able to REALLY teach, is so incredibly exciting!

A few stories from teaching over the past few months:

-A kid asked me if we had 4 seasons in Ohio?

-I was in the library for a 'free' hour, doing some of my homework when a student's came in and asked me to translate a letter for her. She needed to send it to Canada. I definitely had to concentrate to translate this letter, and it was made more difficult with her breathing down my neck as I did this.

-My coordinator, Lety, said that I should just go teach some English slang to a class. Literally, that's all she said, no guidelines, nothing. When we got to other words for 'shoot,' after darn and dang, I said crudmuffins. Who uses that? No one. Glad they are learning useful words. I also taught them hot-diggity dog. Good job, Em.

-Today I was teaching about the circulatory system (in English) to the 6th graders. I don't know a thing about the septum, capillaries, or pericardium. As I was drawing the human heart on the board, a kid said it looked like a pizza. He was right.

-I complimented a 5th grader, who I have had in class a good bit, on her English. She just gave me this look and said, "I'm British." Whelp, that explains it. Don't I feel like an idiot.

-During my not-so-brilliant explanation of the human heart, amid all of the chaos going on in the classroom, this little boy was asking me about Octopus' and how they have 5 hearts, what if one heart gets shot... will it still live with the other 4 hearts? Heck if I know. I didn't even know Octopus' had more than 1 heart.... I actually Wikipedia'd this after class and learned that they have 3 hearts. That kid was on the right track. Still not sure of the answer to his question. Who do I look like? Bill Nye?

I guess that's a solid update on my volunteer position.

A few things I love about Ecuador:
1. The diversity of the geographical regions is gorgeous.
2. Quito is nestled into the mountains, and it is spectacular.
3. I am surrounded by Spanish, and learning a little bit day by day.
4. I can go to the beach for super cheap.
5. Bananas taste better here.
6. Guacamole is cheaper. I eat it, probably 5 days a week.
7. It is almost always sunny and a perfect temperature (about 70 degrees).

I saw a Condor

Pic 1: Volcán Antisana
Pic 2: Waiting for a bus back to Quito from Papallacta... we were in the middle nowhere
Pic 3: At the fútbol game

This past weekend I went to Papallacta. We left Friday morning and came back Saturday afternoon. It is a teeny tiny pueblo about 2 hours away from Quito. The only thing there is to do is go to the hot springs and there is a really nice Spa. I went with Pam and Samantha, two girls from my program. It was the first time I traveled in a small group and it was great! The hot springs were really relaxing. On our short walk back to the hostal, we got a glimpse of Volcán Antisana… absolutely stunning. Then there were a few people that noticed a Condor, which is the national bird of Ecuador. I have heard different numbers, saying there are 17 to 26 condors left (not sure if that is in Ecuador or the World) … and we saw one! I was super pumped! I never would have noticed it, had that group not pointed it out to us.

When I got back Saturday afternoon, I went to the fútbol game. It was Liga versus Quito Deportivo. Both teams are from Quito and it is quite the heated rivalry. My host parents said I had to root for Liga, so Liga it was. They were easily the fan favorite and won, 1-0. This game was crazy! For starters, there was no assigned seating from what I could tell. We got there right at 4pm, when the game started, because we were just getting back from Papallacta. Big mistake… you definitely want to get there early. It was a mad house just trying to get IN to the game. Most of the doors to the stadium were closed. The one that was open had a massive line. Once we finally got in, it took a while to find a seat. During one point, a fight broke out in the stadium… right near us. The fight was so big that the entire stadium could see it. A few people were using fire extinguishers (not sure why), throwing full coke bottles, even the nice guys we were sitting next to started getting into the brawl. Once the police got involved, things settled down, and the rest of the game was really fun, despite my lack of appreciation for the sport.

Later that night I was talking to my host mom about fútbol americano. She was surprised I liked it because it is so ‘barbaric’ as she put it!

I feel settled into my new house here! I am really glad that I moved. I will get a pic with my new parents (Mercedes and Ernesto) and post soon.

On a side note, I have been getting information about the master’s program. My advisor just replied to my email, and he had this suggestion:

SUGGESTION: While you are in Quito, be sure to collect teaching materials (e.g., cultural artifacts such as magazines & newspapers in Spanish, maps, flags, recipes, cereal boxes, supermarket, flyers, etc. ANYTHING that you might want to use to develop authentic language lessons for K-12 students when you are in the MEd program courses.

Ohhhh my goodness! That got me ridiculously excited! This is definitely the path I should be on and it feels darn good :)

Not sure what is in the works for this coming weekend yet. A few people are going to the beach. I might hang around Quito for a change, not sure yet.

¡Un besito!

Canoa

After waiting around for 2 months, I finally talked to our housing coordinator and told her I still wasn’t living with my actual family here. She strongly encouraged me to switch families entirely. So, after thinking about it and truly feeling like I couldn’t move because I was already so far in to it with this family, I did it. I switched families. It was super hard to tell both my Ecua-grandma and my Ecua-mom that I was switching. Overall, everything went really smoothly. I more or less went ‘family shopping’ (weird!) on Monday morning and then I moved in with my new family Monday evening! It feels awesome to be completely settled in with my new fam! It is an older couple, Mercedes and Ernesto :)

Last weekend I went to Canoa, a little beach town about 8 hours from Quito. It was the epitome of a lazy South American pueblo. We left Thursday night and rode the bus through the night. Then we arrived around 6:20am on Friday morning. We then walked about 20 minutes, then took a motorized canoe for about 15 minutes, then another bus for 30 minutes and we were there!

I basically relaxed for 2 days straight.... I did a lot of reading, it was awesome! I rented a surfboard (I don't know what I was thinking) for just an hour. I basically just floated on it for 45 minutes, instead of trying to surf. I played in the ocean a lot... never before have I played in the ocean so much. It was basically your typical weekend at the beach.... except for one tiny detail......

The TSUNAMI warning. When we woke up Saturday a few people had text messages from the US Embassy in Quito. We also had messages from our program checking on us. It was looking like we might have to leave the beach a day early. All the earthquake/tsunami watch, warning talk was crazy. I thought "I'm not in Kansas anymore." For real, where have I ever been that I've had a Tsunami warning? That's right.... nowhere! So crazy. We were in constant communication with our program coordinators and I talked to my host mom. A few people ended up leaving early. All in all, it was an awesome weekend!!

This week, as I said, I switched families, so it has been a little bit different.... I don't feel like I'm in my routine, as I am learning new bus routes and all that jazz.

Headed to Papallacta tomorrow for one night.

Fuya Fuya

Pic 1: a little bouldering
Pic 2: the view... didn't last long, because we were in a cloud higher up
Pic 3: Club Andinismo... everyone on the Fuya Fuya day trip
Pic 4: Pam and I on our way to Fuya Fuya

I feel like I never know what’s going on here… in regards to plans for the day with my family. I think it’s a combination of the Spanish, but then also, people just being so relaxed and not really having plans until they happen. Example A: Yesterday morning I went downstairs to ‘my’ house to have a cafecito (coffee) with my mom and her cousin, Alicia. We then made plans (I thought) to go to lunch. We left around 12:30pm and there were 5 of us, and 2 little boys, all piled in this old Crown something or other car. We went to the quesadilla place and bought a bunch of “quesadillas” (completely different than our quesadillas) and got them “to go.” I was wondering why we weren’t eating them. So, we get back in the old brown car, drive a few blocks and it stalls out and will not re-start. We are on a hill (of course, because we’re in Quito) and have to get out and push this car up hill for a few feet, blah blah. The crazy thing is- everyone acted like this was a normal thing they do. No one got frustrated, mad, impatient, annoyed… nothing. It was great. Heck, I didn’t care, I had nowhere to go. But it really hit me about how darn patient everyone is with basically everything.

So back to the day. After we remedied the car troubles, one of the cousins dropped my mom, Alicia, and I off at the peluquería (hair cut place). It’s probably 1:30pm now. We had a total girls afternoon: manicures, pedicures, they got their hair washed and styled, etc. So fun (and dirt cheap too… mani AND pedi $9)! Now, it’s 3:30pm (still no lunch… should have had my wheaties instead of corn flakes at 8am). It was my grandpa’s birthday, so the whole family was going to go to Mass at 4pm. So, off to Mass we go. We finally get around to eating lunch at 5:30pm. It was delicious though, worth the wait!

I should know by now, that if you agree to go to lunch, you probably will not be back until dinner time or even later. This has happened on multiple occasions.

Today (Sunday) I went on a trip with Club Andinismo. It is an adventure club through my university, but you do not need to be a student to do the trips. We met at 6am at the school and then took a bus about 2 hours away. We went to climb a mountain near Otavalo named Fuya Fuya. There were 23 people total and only 2 other girls from my program, so there was a lot of opportunity to talk in Spanish and meet some Ecuadorians.

I guess I had never climbed a mountain before, I hadn’t realized that until about halfway up the mountain. Let’s just say that I did not know what I was getting myself into. Less than 10 minutes into our climb, I really thought I might have to turn around and wait for everyone to come back in 6 hours. I could not breath. My friend (who had been on one other hike) told me that after about 15 minutes I would get more accustomed to the thin air and it wouldn’t be as hard. Well, I don’t think I got accustomed until we were headed back down, 3.5 hours later! I kept going back and forth from thoughts of “This is completely miserable” to “God, this is amazing! Thank you!” I literally was a huffin’ and a puffin’ the entire way up.

Once at the top (thank God! … literally), we ate our lunches and then most of us went on a little side hike. We went over to another peak of the mountain… the tallest of Fuya Fuya. This hike eventually involved some serious bouldering. My other friend, Pam, was a hilarious commentator the entire time. She said something to the effect of “At what point does this go from being cool to being dangerous?…. I’m pretty sure we’ve crossed that threshold.” I did get a little nervous on this side hike, but we were with a lot of people that knew exactly what they were doing and helped us the entire way. At any point of feeling uncomfortable, we could have stopped and gone back…. several people did that.

I still can’t believe how incredibly difficult the entire day was. Even going down was tougher than I thought it would be. It feels awesome to have done it though!!

This weekend I’m off to a beach town, Canoa. It has been really easy and cheap to travel so far, so I am trying to take advantage of it all while classes aren’t super busy.

Mucho amor!

Just Call Me Jane

There was a request for explanation of the pics... these are self-explanatory, but here you go anyway:
1st pic- at my new favorite nook in the world, a waterfall in the Amazon
2nd pic- swinging on a vine in the jungle
3rd pic- holding a nocturnal monkey

I just got back from the Amazon a few hours ago. I went with everyone in my program, so there were about 25 of us. I literally do not know where to start. We did so much in just a few days. Bottom line is: After this jungle-filled 4 days, I feel like I could hang with Tarzan and be his girl, Jane.

I keep going back to how gorgeous Ecuador is, but it is. I have yet to get tired of just looking out the window and listening to my iPod on the bus rides. On our 5-hour trip back today, I couldn’t help but think that maybe God just got a teensy bit lazy when he created what I consider ‘my’ three states (Ohio, Indiana and Mississippi). The entire 5-hour drive today was incredible. He did some serious work here.

Our first day was jam-packed. We stopped and toured some caves, then hung out at this little pool that was filled with natural water and had a couple awesome slides. Then we took the bus to a different spot and did about a 40 minute hike to my new, most favorite nook on earth. It was a stunning waterfall that we played in for about an hour, climbing up it and jumping off. Simply incredible. It was the best hour I’ve had in Ecuador. It seemed as if there wasn’t a care in the world.

That night we stayed in a little hotel in a small town called Misahuallí. Lonely Planet book calls it a “sleepy jungle town that pines for the past.” That pretty much sums it up. Someone told me that the population of the actual village is just 200. It is one square plaza. This tiny village is what I picture, when I think of Ecuador. In case you were wondering (and have read previous blog) that night for dinner at the hotel, in some seriously hot weather without A/C, we were served hot soup. They need to learn the whole cold soup thing.

The funny thing about this trip was that there was no such thing as being gullible. For example, when we first stopped at the caves, my friend told me to turn around because there was a tarantula. I thought it was going to be one of those “Oh, I made you look” type of things. No, there was the most massive tarantula just chillin’ about 6 feet away from me.

For the remainder of the trip, we stayed in a jungle lodge that took about 1.5 hours to get to on the river by motorized canoe. We then used these 15-seater canoes everywhere we went. I didn’t see a car until we got back to the tiny town of Misahuallí at the end of the trip. Upon arriving to our lodge in the jungle, you get out of the canoe, have to walk about 100 meters in ankle deep mud then have about a ¼ mile walk through the jungle. As we were walking to our cabin, I thought, “Okay, this is the real deal. We are IN the jungle.”

The temperature was surprisingly not THAT hot per say, maybe 85 degrees, but it was the 99% humidity that was the killer. I had sweat pouring out from every pore for 4 days straight. No air conditioning the entire time, no hot water (not that I would have used it), the water was from the river and the pressure was hit our miss (meaning that sometimes no water at all would come out), and no electricity in our cabins (we used a candle). Like I said, just give me a cute jungle outfit and I can roll with the whole jungle girl thing.

During one of the hikes, Paul (guy in our program who rock climbs a lot) said something about feeling really “extreme” on the trip because of all the hardcore stuff we were doing. I was thinking, “Heck, if HE feels extreme right now, then I am just totally out of my element.” And I loved every second of it. Although, I must admit, I am my mother’s daughter. I tripped at least once on every hike. On one hike, I fell three times! Granted, we were on some steep hills with lots of mud, but I’m pretty sure most of it was my natural grace (AKA clumsiness).

We didn’t see a ton of natural wildlife. We saw 3 monkeys that were completely wild. We saw a ton of different animals in different rehabilitation centers or in what is more or less a zoo, but not like the zoos in the U.S. In one of the centers we went to, there were some animals in cages, but then a good number of monkeys and birds wandering around loose. My favorite was the nocturnal monkey that I got to hold. I did eat three ants on one of our hikes because they tasted like lemon.

We went to visit an indigenous family. This family works to survive. They grow, hunt or catch what they eat. I could talk about this for 5 blogs, but will try and give the gist. I still don’t know how I feel about it. I sure felt like a big jerk when we first walked up... not exactly sure why; it was such a bizarre feeling. I just didn’t think that we should be there. When we first went into their “house” I thought we were just going in to say hello and goodbye really quickly. Little did I know that we were going to be in there for 45 minutes hearing the guide talk about them as they go about their business. So awkward. The heat was stifling and I literally had sweat pouring down my face but that was the LAST thing I was concerned about. At one point, I had to fight back tears. It’s amazing to think about how little we truly NEED to survive. This experience spurred on a ton of conversation that night at dinner.

Yesterday afternoon we got into two teams and, with the help of two guides, built rafts. It was exactly like something you would do on the show Survivor so I was pumped. I got everyone acting like we were in some type of competition. We put war paint on our faces with mud and the game was on! The entire thing was hilarious. We were pulling people off rafts, stealing the bamboo paddles and attacking the other team... it was WAR. Then we finally had to get situated on our makeshift rafts because we were going through some strong currents. Of course we sang down the river most of the way. When we got the Celine Dion song that is in Titanic, one of the guys jumped off our raft. I don’t understand why he didn’t like our singing. ;)

It was great to be pushed to do and try different things. Despite this super long blog, I am finding it difficult to put into succinct words to explain the crazy-awesomeness of this weekend. Anyway, you get the idea.

For a few more photos, try the below link for the pics I posted on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=56855471&l=f1240ce8bd&id=6803468

The Tides are Changing

I’m not noticing things as much. By ‘things’, I mean differences.

Below are a few examples:

The endless piropos (whistles, comments) that guys say to any female walking along…. “Mi preciosa, mi amor, muneca, mi vida…” At first, I found it highly irritating, now it’s part of the daily routine.

Everyone seems short here. I used to feel so tall, and still do sometimes. But the other day I saw a man that was probably about 6’5’’, and I literally wanted to classify him as a giant. Must be getting used to all these short people ;)

I went to the gym and was on the treadmill. I won’t bore you with the details of how the machine was different (it wasn’t just that it was in kilometers, but something else too, that I still haven’t figured it out.) Anyway, the first few weeks I would have found that really frustrating, and now I just was more curious about what “measurement” it was in.

It’s actually hard to think of examples, because, like I said, I am not noticing the differences as much. Of course, I still notice things, but for the most part, I feel like I am getting into the swing of my new Ecuadorian life.

My family (and from what I have heard, everyone else’s Ecuadorian families too) eats soup every single day, typically twice a day. This is one difference that I just can’t get used to. I mean, I like my fair share of soup, but not twice a day… everyday. I’ve started to say that I don’t want it with dinner. To this, my “grandmother” then says that I need to eat a good meal. My question is, “since when did having soup with every meal constitute a good meal?” The whole ‘soup situation’ was brought to my attention today (again, I was forgetting about the excess of soups until the following comment) by a comment from my “great aunt.” She started talking about all of the wonderful soups (most of them taste the same to me…. AKA lots of cilantro) and she was just explaining how they have the perfect weather for soups. I was so confused. I didn’t know that “summer” was the perfect weather for a hot bowl of soup. Ohhh, that’s right. People here think it’s kind of chilly at 70 degrees. Apparently, being high up in the Andes is perfect weather for eating soup. Who knew?

Speaking of weather, it’s always perfect. Gorgeous blue sky, fluffy white clouds occasionally, and probably ranges from a low of 55 degrees at night, and gets up to 77 degrees most days. For the most part it seems like it is right around 70 degrees if I had to guess. I’m still waiting for this supposed rainy season to happen. (Apparently this January was the driest they had had in years…. Which meant they had to have scheduled power outages…. Will get to that in a second.) So the interesting thing is that very few people where sandals, shorts or skirts. I think this just adds to me sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes, I’m wearing sandals… did you not get the memo that it was going to be gorgeous out?

So, power outages. I still need to learn more about this. But, it is something to do with the rain creating hydroelectric power… does that sound right? Well, with the lack of rain, they are lacking electricity, so they have these scheduled (or not-so-scheduled) power outages. Again, this does not bode will for businesses trying to make money. I was at an internet café the first week, and an employee came to tell me that the power was going to go out in 5 minutes and that I needed to get off. You will constantly see different intersections with the stop lights out. They have police officers directing traffic at these intersections. Typically they turn the power off for 2 hours at a time. When I got home from the beach (exhausted, tired, dirty) the power was out at our house. So that meant I had to lug all my stuff up 8 flights of stairs. I also had to wait to have a hot shower. Funny thing is, when this happened, I didn’t think much of it.

Again, I am getting more accustomed to all of the differences. I think the tides are changing: so far, this week is feeling really normal (something I haven’t felt much since I got here.) It feels really darn good.

This weekend I’ll be heading to the Amazon region (will be my 3rd of 4 regions). I’m really looking forward to it.

Chao :)

Em

La Playa

I just had my second day at my internship, at the school. Let’s just say that I am completely unqualified to be teaching English. So far, I have mainly been working with kids individually, or in a small group. For example, we were working on present perfect, and I couldn’t explain why it should be “I have gone” instead of “I have went”. Apparently, “gone” is the past participle or something or another. Clearly I know what is right and wrong, but I am having a rough time explaining it.

This past weekend I went to the coast (2 Ecuadorian regions down, 2 to go!). It was super awesome! Our supposed 7.5 hour bus ride to the coast, turned out to be 14 hours. There was an accident or something, and we moved about 10 km from 1am until 6:30am. Literally, people got off the bus and were chatting it up with other people in the traffic. I was trying to sleep through it all.

Once we finally got there, around 12:30pm (instead of 6am) we hit the beach. Friday was fairly cloudy, which was good, because we all got more than enough sun on Saturday. I actually got the most homesick I’ve been on Friday night. We were all sitting around a campfire playing a game called ‘the hot seat’. Everyone was asking each other all sorts of questions about everything. Someone asked the group about one of the most fun days in your life. It definitely was making me homesick… the most I have been since I got here. Later that night we went down to the beach, and it just hit me how awesome it is that I’m here right now. There is something about an ocean and the crashing waves at nighttime, and about nature in general, that I can’t help but be reminded of how awesome God is. It definitely helped with the homesickness ;)

On Saturday, one of the guys made pancakes for breakfast in our make-shift kitchen. They were more of a scrambled pancake, but hit the spot, nonetheless. Then the rest of the day was a mix of laying out, swimming in the ocean, and reading. We all played in the ocean for over an hour…it was so much fun. I felt like a little kid out there in all the waves. Then another one of the guys made spaghetti for dinner and we bought some South American wine to go with. All of it was extremely tasty. This was probably my most fun day since I have arrived…. true relaxation.

My entire 3.5 day weekend, including transportation, the hostel, food, drinks, everything, was $98... pretty darn good. I even splurged on a drink called Atacames de la Noche that was $6 (most expensive on the menu)…. because I was hell-bent on getting a drink that was served in a pineapple.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Much love, Em