Halloween-time

Que semana… What a week. It started out early on Monday morning with a visit to the SRI, the Ecuadorian IRS. We had to register as persons making money in the country, but in order to do so we needed to prove residency through a water or phone bill. Well, somehow our house missed the memo of what bill we needed, and showed up Monday morning with our electricity bill. Not good enough. Luckily, other teachers from CEDEI were registering that morning also, and we just “borrowed” the bill of another teacher, who happens to live down the street from us. Another hoop cleared, and hopefully the last for a while. As I said earlier, this week was midterm/finals week, meaning we were just reviewing and testing all week. I had little lesson planning to do, and a couple of hours on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to grade papers and plan for the next week while watching my students take tests. Beautiful. With this extra time in the morning, Kels, Annie and I enjoyed a venture to the market Tuesday morning, exploring a new part of the market with handmade baskets, art, and sculptures. Tuesday evening my roommates and I decided to put a little bit of Halloween in our lives and watch a scary movie. We ended up seeing “The Woman in Black”, the movie adaptation of a play I had seen in London three years ago. I remembered the play being haunting and scary, and the movie did not fall short; I don’t think I will be watching another scary movie for a long time now. Wednesday evening I enjoyed Lady’s Night at Eucalyptus, the same restaurant we dined at last week. For Lady’s Night we received two free glasses of wine with our dinner, enjoyed the company of about ten other female CEDEI teachers, and ate another DELICIOUS dinner (I tried the green curry this time. It was excellent).

Friday morning Kels and I took the grand adventure to Baños de Cuenca, a pueblo nearby with several hot springs baths. We took the public bus (which costs a whole 25 cents) for about 30 minutes outside of the city, and got off where our nice bus driver recommended. Because we had never been to Baños before, we were a little skeptical when it felt like we were wandering deserted neighborhoods in a small town. But after asking a nice woman at a tienda where to go, we came upon Hostería Durán, the cheaper of the thermal hot springs baths. It cost $4.20 to get in, and it included a large hot springs pool and an incredible steam room. After spending around an hour there, Kels and I were relaxed and content. We stopped for a chocobanano at the tienda where we had asked for directions, and got back on the bus towards Cuenca. After our hot springs experience we were exhausted, and took a quick nap before heading over to Centro for our free dance classes. All CEDEI teachers are entitled to free dance classes, but only about four of us showed up. No worries though, more dance space for us! Our teacher, Danny, was an expressive and excellent dancer, and really funny. He taught us some beginning Salsa and Meringue moves. I still have a long way to go, but my goal is to be a better Salsa and Meringue dancer than I was when I came here (not a difficult task, really)! Friday evening I was back at Centro giving my Intensive 101 class their final, and after the final we all went out for pizza together. They were a great class and I’m really going to miss them; dinner was a nice closure to the class, and one of my students even paid for everyone’s pizza! After dinner I came home to Kat 1, Kat 2, a zebra and two pirates: my roommates were all ready for the Halloween party we were going to that evening. I quickly put on my gato negro costume, and joined the girls upstairs. Although most of us had Saturday morning classes, we decided just this one Friday we were going to go out; a bar in town was having a Halloween party with free entrance and free drinks. We arrived at Inca Lounge around 9:30pm, and were surrounded by even more dressed up Gringos, and more Ecuadorians than I was expecting (Inca is famous for being a Gringo-friendly bar and restaurant). The evening was fun, although our 1:30am leaving time was probably not the best decision… Waking up at 7am for Saturday classes was rough. Luckily it was midterm day, and after giving them their speaking test and doing a little review, I again just had to sit and watch them take the exam while I graded my Intensive 101’s finals. And I think we all learned our lesson; that will be the last Friday evening we go out while Saturday classes are still in our lives. Saturday was spent as the definition of a lazy Saturday, with frequent naps, eating, and the watching of the Oregon Ducks football game by me and Kels. Saturday night we costumed-up again, and went to the house of some fellow teachers for a little party. They had great food and a bonfire over which to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, but Kels and I only lasted a couple of hours there because the night before had still left us tired. We took a taxi home with another teacher, and were happily in bed by 12:30am. Sunday morning I visited another church with fellow teacher Jeff, a church called 608. The name is based off of the verse Micah 6:8, which says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. The service was nice, and a lot smaller than the previous church we had been to. The rest of Sunday was spent grading midterms, cooking (homemade pasta sauce and hummus again), and watching TV; the perfect lazy Sunday, preceded by that perfect lazy Saturday.

Today my regular classes resumed as normal, but I decided it was time to do something fun outside of the classroom. I took my first class to a nearby pizza place, asking them for the English menus and asking my students to order in English. The conversation quickly turned to Spanish, but at least I tried. And with my second regular class, we attempted to go to ice cream, although many of my students didn’t want ice cream (what kind of teenagers are they?!). After sending the rambunctious boys home (because they didn’t want to do anything fun) the two girls in the class and I went out for humitas, tortillas de chocolate, and flour drinks. It was a nice turn around from my frustration with the boys that didn’t want to participate in my planned activity. Yes, today was a great day to be an English teacher. And the rest of the week I only have my two regular classes, meaning it’s going to be a week of smooth sailing, and lots of outside of school activities. I can’t wait. :)     

Food Babies, Shoes, and Friends

It seems that the more time we spend in Ecuador, the better the weekends get. This weekend started out right with an eventful and fun Thursday evening. After class got out at 8pm, Kels and I ran into our friend Isabel, who talked us into enjoying a nice dinner out to celebrate the (almost) end of the week. We ate at a place called Eucalyptus, a restaurant owned by a British ex-pat, with a beautiful environment and even better food. I ordered the pad thai, that, although was different from traditional pad thai, was still amazing. Our dinner ended perfectly with roasting marshmallows over the fireplace, a great idea for a restaurant that draws a mostly gringo crowd. After dinner Kels and I headed home, excited to watch the ASU vs. UO football game online. Once we got home though, and tried to enter the house, we realized the door had accidentally been locked from the inside, leaving us no way to get in. We asked the señora that cares for our house if she had any keys for the door, but after trying several with no success, we began to lose hope. That was when I noticed the window above our door that had no glass pane, and which we had covered using a cardboard box. I looked at Kelsey, told her it was happening, took of my coat, and climbed the bars up to the window. I was hoping not to do this in front of the señora, but because she was still hanging around, I just went for it. I ended up hanging through the window, reaching down to unlock the door from the inside; not an easy maneuver. Needles to say, I felt like super woman; it made the Ducks game and the ice cream bar I had bought even sweeter. Kels and I ended up pulling out our knitting too, and were very satisfied both with our evening, and the prospect of what we will be like as old ladies, knitting and watching Duck football.

The next morning started of with us meeting Isabel at Parque Calderon, the main square of Cuenca, with plans to head to the bus station and then off to Gualaceo. Although I had heard Gualaceo was pretty, the main draw to visiting this other town was simple; shoe shopping. Everyone we had talked to had told us this was THE place to get shoes or boots, and because all of my boots had been left at home, it was time to venture out and buy more. We took a taxi to the bus station, and from there caught a 60-cent bus to Gualaceo, about a 45-minute ride. The scenery along the way was nice, and we were on a luxurious bus compared to the buses I had grown accustomed to in Guatemala. 45 minutes later we were in Gualaceo, ready to get our shopping on. We stopped first to get lunch, settling for a pizza place because we couldn’t find any vegetarian almuerzos. The owner was nice and chatty though, an Ecuadorian that spoke English well and had been to the States before. After lunch we starting heading towards where we thought the shoe shopping was, stopping only to take pictures of a whole pig being roasted (a common sight here, actually). After wandering for a bit we came across the central market, full of fresh fruits, veggies, and right in front of a beautiful church. We took some pictures, but still wondered, where are all the shoes? We almost thought the trip was a bust, with us wandering around, asking, looking, and not finding more than a couple stores with shoes. Eventually though, we saw a street sign that rung a bell, because the pizza shop owner had told us this was the shoe street, so we turned the corner and decided to check it out. And thank goodness we did; this was it, boot mecca. We spent hours in a two-block radius, stopping in close to 20 stores, and trying on boot after boot. By 3:30pm, we all had at least one pair of shoes in hand, and were ready to head back to Cuenca, accomplished. We caught another 60-cent bus heading out at 4pm, and I napped during the ride with a shoppers smile on my face. We pulled into Cuenca close to 5pm, and Kels and I took a taxi home, had a quick dinner, and headed to CEDEI Centro where I had class at 6pm, made better by the fact that I was rocking my new boots.

Saturday morning was class as usual, which went by at lightning speed again; we had to get through an entire unit and peer edit papers, because their midterm was coming up the next week. I was exhausted after class. Emily and I stopped for a good ‘ol slice of Chicago Pizza (a pizza place near CEDEI Centro that serves a slice of cheese and a glass of soda for $1, hard to beat), and then headed home for a quick nap. After that it was mercado time, and a little bit of wandering around Parque San Sebastián, enjoying a semi-nice day. That evening we went to our friends Clara and Adam’s house for a get together and potluck. I think sometimes when you’re in other countries, your ability to adapt to plain food is a good thing; but sometimes, it makes you really forget what GOOD food tastes like. Well at this potluck, we had a taste of GOOD food, and it was amazing. Annie made a killer pad thai, Kat an epic bean dip, and Clara made a potato salad and two fruit-topped cakes that were incredible. We ate until we all had food babies, drank some beers, played ping pong, seesawed (yes, they had a seesaw at their house), and watched the boys play soccer on a half-size soccer field (complete with metal goals) in Clara and Adam’s backyard. It was such a fun evening, and I’m still smiling thinking about all of the food. After that we headed to the local discoteca, Zo, to do a little dancing before going home.

This morning I met Isabel at Parque Calderon again, and headed to church at Verbo with her and Jeff, another teacher. Church was great again, where we sang some songs in Spanish I knew in English, and listened to another sermon in their prayer series. Now it’s time for a lazy Sunday; reading, sleeping, watching movies, knitting, and maybe a little grading and lesson planning. This upcoming week at school is finals week for my intensive class, and midterm week for my regular classes. Although I’m sure the students are dreading the tests, I couldn’t be happier; less lesson planning, and more time to sit, watch them take the test, and lesson plan for the next week! Oh the life of a teacher…     

Busy Weekends

Kelsey and I decided we wanted to be more proactive about what we were doing here Ecuador, and proactive we were this weekend. It started on Wednesday evening when we went out for beers after work at the La Compania Cerveceria, the only microbrewery in Cuenca. As Oregon girls, Kels and I were both craving a real, good beer, and luckily the Cerveceria delivered. Friday was a national holiday, meaning we had the day off and a little extra time to play and explore. We started the morning with a trip to Cajas, a national park about 30 minutes from Cuenca. Although the weather was kind of gray, it was beautiful nonetheless, and nice to get out in nature again. We went with our friends Oliver and Sarah, Oliver being another CEDEI teacher and Sarah his Ecuadorian girlfriend. The elevation at Cajas is about 9000 feet, around 1000 feet higher than Cuenca, which we could definitely feel at different points. We went on one of the smaller “hikes” (walks) around two of the lakes, and spent a lot of time stopping, taking pictures. We even spotted a llama within our first 30 minutes, which was on Kelsey’s Cajas bucket list. She was pretty excited. After our hike we went into the lodge and had a canelazo drink, a warm alcoholic beverage made with herbs, cinnamon, and the local Ecuadorian liquor, Zhumir. The idea behind the drink (a shot essentially) is to warm you up with the alcohol, and to help you adjust to the elevation with the herbs. Kels and I weren’t super enamored with the drink, but it was worth trying once. We had taken a taxi to Cajas after showing up at the bus station to find out no tickets remained for the buses to Cajas. So after spending $15 on a taxi there, we planned to take the bus back into Cuenca. We were waiting in the bus stop beside Cajas, when I remembered many people had told me that a successful way to get back from Cajas to Cuenca was hitchhiking. So I decided to try it… I was a goofy gringa, smiling and passing cars with my thumb stuck in the air. After about 10 minutes and a lot of cars passing me, I thought maybe I was just too weird looking and wouldn’t get anyone to stop when… I couple pulling out of the Cajas parking lot stopped for us! Unknown bucket list item accomplished: successfully hitchhike in Latin American. The man was from Colombia and his girlfriend was an Ecuadorian, and they were on vacation from Guayaquil, heading to Cuenca for the first time. Although I was excited about successfully hitchhiking, and it was a really pleasant ride, I was pretty excited when we piled out of the car near Parque San Sebastián, where we had been four in the backseat. Returning home from Cajas was great too, because it was the first time I had left Cuenca and had that returning home feeling for coming back to Cuenca. After our hike it was nap time, shower time, and off to our next event. We ended up going to a friend’s house that afternoon to watch the Ecuador versus Chile fútbol match, one of many World Cup qualification games. It was definitely more exciting watching the game with a group of Ecuadorians than it would have been had I watched the game by myself; but, I still must say, soccer isn’t my sport. After the game we devoured some pizza, and hung around for karaoke/dancing time. It was unlike any get together I had been to before, and something must be said for how well Ecuadorians move, and how much they like to move, that they end a fútbol get together with living room salsa/meringue dancing, a few trying desperately to teach the gringas how to move their hips. Hilarious.

Saturday morning I had class for four hours yet again, although the four hours goes by surprisingly fast; I only managed to get through three-fourths of the material I had planning for the day, which I count as a win, because I would rather be over-prepared than under-prepared. After class, Kelsey and I were in a productive mood again, going grocery shopping at both the mercado and Supermaxi. Post shopping it was naptime, and a quick dinner before attending the Saturday night church service at Verbo. I went again with my friend Isabel, and we were blessed to sit by a 50-something-year-old woman named Dora. In the greeting “God be with you” part of the service, she gave us a big, warm, motherly hug. And then when it was time to break off into smaller groups for the sermons, we just asked her, “Where are you going?”, and she took us under her wing to her sermon of choice. It ended up being a great selection, the sermon being given on the different steps of prayer (ask, look, call), and by the son of an American missionary with impeccable Spanish. Although his Spanish was flawless, I think his being a second language learner (and the fact that he was super animated) helped me to understand the whole sermon, something I can’t always boast. After chatting with Dora at coffee hour after church (and exchanging numbers), Isabel and I took a taxi back to the city center, and I was off to my next event. We had planned our housewarming party for this weekend, inviting all the teachers at CEDEI and any Ecuadorian friends/boyfriends/friend-boyfriends, knowing fully well that things might get a little crazy. And crazy they were; we probably had close to 50 people in our house, with different bubbles of conversation, guitar sing-along, and dancing. Also, it was a dip party, and oh my the dips that people brought; they were delicious. Although the party was really fun, cleaning up the next day makes me want to never have a party again. We spent hours cleaning up the kitchen and mopping, with the water turning black every few strokes. Needless to say, Sunday was spent cleaning and recuperating, with a little bit of lesson planning and grading in the evening. All in all, a successful weekend in Ecuador, and hopefully only a first of many adventure-filled weekends.   

Update: Week 3

Well, I unfortunately have not been as diligent about blogging as I was in Guatemala, so here’s my attempt to catch up from the last week and a half. Teaching is still going well. Definitely a challenge, but in a good way. I love (most of) my students, and figuring out how to explain something and make the lessons fun is good. Also, lesson planning is taking less and less time, and I’m able to enjoy the city and not freak out every moment about school. Balance is coming.

On Sunday, my friend Isabel and I went to a new church, Verbo. It was a large church (close to mega church – 1400 members), and it had a great worship and message. Near the beginning of the service, they asked anyone that was new to raise their hand and let them know they were new. At first, Isabel and I weren’t going to raise our hands because we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. But once we saw the ushers walking around with roses for the new visitors… Well, what girl isn’t a sucker for flowers? After they handed us our rose and some pens and information, they told us to get up and walk over to the cafeteria for some more information. We ended up getting a welcome by one of the pastors, a goody bag with chocolates, pens, and more information, coconut cake, and coffee. After the welcome an American missionary came over to our table, talking to us about the church and answering any of our questions. He informed us that the church had its own orphanage, and by coincidence a woman that works at the orphanage was standing behind us and gave us her number. Hopefully, once teaching becomes less time-consuming, we will be able to go over there and volunteer a couple days a week. I definitely miss being around children, and although they aren’t my kids at Fundación, it will be a great outlet to have here.

Yesterday was an interesting day, a very “This is Latin America” sort of day. In the morning, Kelsey, Mark, Kat and I got a taxi to the Cuenca consulate to pick up our passports and visas that were being registered. We arrived around 11:30am, got our passports from one window, left to get photocopies at a store next door, came back in, waited in another area, entered a room with a woman typing stuff into a computer, left to pay $4 at a banco window within the building, went back to the room, got a paper, left again to take photocopies, and finally went back into the room to get our “empadronamiento” paper and BE DONE WITH THE PROCESS! We had gone there the week before to give them our passport, and that was a two-hour, three-stop (not including the stops at separate copy stores) process, plus this day… Yeah. Such an inefficient, Latin America experience. And we were the lucky ones; our roommate Kat had gone the week before to Guayaquil (a 3 hour van ride away) to get her entrance stamp fixed because they had swamped two numbers on accident. And our roommate Emily flew to Quito yesterday, to be there for about seven hours, to get more pages in her passport because they didn’t have enough space to add yet another stamp. Kind of ridiculous. To add to our super Latin American day, Kelsey and I went to San Sebastián park (which is less than a block from our house) last night for a free, outdoor dance/exercise class. It… Was… Amazing. First of all, Ecuadorians can MOVE. They were moving in ways Kelsey and I couldn’t, and this is including the old grandmas and grandpas that were taking the class too. There we were, gringas, dancing in the back row, looking up at San Sebastián church, with grandma and grandpa getting down, and kids running in and out of the rows and playing soccer on the side. It was beautiful.

This morning I went for a walk to enjoy the sunshine, followed by gringa lunch in the sun at a café near our house. Annie, Kelsey and I decided to splurge on some good food, and were rewarded with incredible black bean burgers and seasoned fries. And by splurge, I mean lunch cost $5 instead of $1-$2. It was delicious, and yes, I still love Ecuador.  

Teaching For Days...

Wednesday marks two weeks that Kels and I have been here in Cuenca, but it already feels like it’s been months. We are in our second week of teaching, and I must say, it is a lot more work than either of us was expecting… We are the only teachers in our room, planning our own lessons based off of a curriculum, coming up with our own activities, and grading our own assignments and student participation. It’s a great introduction to the world of teaching, but yes, it is still much more than we were expecting. As I said, earlier, I have three 101 classes during the week, which are both easy and extremely challenging at the same time. They’re easy because the grammar points are easy, but difficult because my students know very little English, so I find myself pointing in the book and making a lot of gestures. I have caved a couple of times and clarified in Spanish, but I’m trying to do that less and less. It is nice knowing Spanish though, because I can anticipate the kind of sentence structure and pronunciation errors my students will make. Teaching takes up quite a bit of our time, and I feel like we have been doing little else besides teaching and living. We have successfully gone to the American grocery store, twice, have returned to the mercado multiple times, found bread stores, notebook stores, pizza, and even yoga mats. Slowly, we are learning our surroundings and figuring out life in Cuenca. We have not, however, had time to be tourists yet. I have not taken a single picture here in Cuenca, and I hope to remediate that soon, but for now, photo posting will have to wait. Our weekends are cut short by four-hour Saturday classes as well, meaning our “free time” is limited to Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon (before it’s time to start planning on Sunday again). Summary: Teaching is hard, but great to learn now, and I am still happy to find myself in Ecuador. :) 

Ecuador Arrival

Where to even begin… Well, ECUADOR IS AWESOME! Kelsey and I left Portland early at 8:45am on Tuesday, September 18^th, flew into Houston, and then onto Quito. We were exhausted of course, but our Quito flight was incredible. The plane was mostly empty so we had three seats to ourselves, and even got a full meal! Once in Quito we passed through customs, got our bags (both had arrived!), and got in a taxi to head over to our hostel. The nice hostel attendant helped us drag our heavy bags to our back room (the elevation was killing us already), and we brushed our teeth and got in bed, knowing the alarm would be going off at 4:30am the next morning. We had scheduled our flight to Cuenca for 7am the next morning, which, at the time, seemed like a good idea… In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the best plan. At 5am we met the hostel attendant in the lobby, got into our taxi, and were shuttled right back to the airport. Our flight to Cuenca went off without a hitch (except for having to pay $10 extra to check my backpack because it was too heavy… Oh well), and we arrived in Cuenca around 8am to find all of our bags had arrived there too. Though exhausted, we had planned to meet with other teachers at 10am at CEDEI (where we will be teaching English) to look for housing. So, faithfully, Kels and I showered and headed out at 9:30am. At CEDEI we met Emily, who ended up having appointments to look at two apartments that day. We went with Emily on her visits (only one landlord showed up though), and looked at a third place as well. After that it was lunch, nap, and then meeting up with other teachers that night for a beer and get-to-know-you. The next morning we met up with Emily again to check out the second place from the day before, and then saw an eight-bedroom house. After seeing the eight-bedroom house twice (we had visit the day before too), we decided it was what we wanted. So Emily, Kels, Mark (a friend from Ireland and the only boy in the house), and I said, “yes we’ll take it” without any formal documentation or deposits paid. We went out for a beer to celebrate, and went back to our hostel to collect our stuff and move in that day. Kels and I decided to share a room to save rent (okay, $80/month versus $110/month… Every penny counts here I guess!), with Emily and Mark on our floor, and three other girls on the upstairs floor. By 4pm we were all moving in, and went out to dinner that night to celebrate again. The next morning we had our first CEDEI orientation at 9am, where we met ALL the new teachers (there’s about 30 new teachers, 50 English teachers total at CEDEI) and got our first English teaching run-down and building tour. OVERWHELMED is pretty much all we were feeling, but little by little I think we will understand what we’re supposed to be doing here. After our long meeting, it was more beers, naptime, and then grocery shopping. We went to the mercado for the first time, a large covered building with stacks and stacks of fresh fruit and veggies, potatoes, and a really smelly meat section. We bought some veggies, some potatoes, got overwhelmed again but left satisfied after spending less than $5 on a whole bunch of good stuff. From there it was… Friday night! We ended up going out with our roommate Kat’s boyfriend and his friends, all locals and all Spanish-speaking. The next morning, Saturday, we made an adventure to the “real grocery store”, Supermaxi, where we could find packaged goods and more American-style products. Again, kind of overwhelming (and a half hour walk away), but once we were done and paid only $30 for a bunch of stuff, we were glad we had gone. The rest of Saturday was spent relaxing, shopping for random necessities, and then finished with a movie night interrupted several times by car alarms going off outside. Sunday we had another meeting for CEDEI, where we actually received our class assignments. It all became real, and at that point, OVERWHELMING again. I know teaching will make more sense once I’ve done it for a bit, but at this point I’m a little terrified. Plus I have all 101 classes except one long 301 class, so figuring out how to do ice breakers in English for people that have no previous English knowledge… Kind of difficult. Kels and I began lesson planning Sunday afternoon, and while it felt construed and time consuming, I know with more practice it will become easier and easier. After lesson planning and some dinner, I joined Isabela and Hannah, two other English teachers, at an evening church service. It was great to be in church in Spanish again, and was a very well planned and delivered sermon.

         On Monday, CLASSES STARTED! So I live in a house with five other new teachers, and Sunday evening we were all FREAKING OUT, and Monday evening we were all FREAKING OUT. Because most of us have never taught before, and because we were given little time to plan and little structure, this will definitely be a very foreign and stretching experience.