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.