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. :)