After my slow start in Ecuador, life has somehow sped up to a blur – and what with living it, I have lost track of documenting it. It would be impossible to fit all that´s transpired into one blog, but below I’ve included a few weekend highlights.
THE BULL FIGHT
For independence holidays in Ecuador – which there are many, because they celebrate the independence of every city – it´s customary to host a bullfight. During Riobamba´s independence day in November, my friend Shelly and I packed up our sunscreen and headed to the open-air Plaza de Toros. Toreros – or bullfighters – were already strutting around outside the stadium, their gold-embroidered attire glittering in the afternoon sun. Shelly and I made our way inside to the cement bleachers, huddling against the wind. Like everything in Ecuador, the show started late, but after a brief parade of the toreros and matadors, they stabbed the first bull and loosed it into the arena. It streaked through the stadium in demonic frenzy, scattering the toreros, who dove for their lives behind wooden platforms. Finally one pink-clad torero stepped forward, snapping his cape with theatrical confidence. He began leading the beast in graceful circle inches from his own body. “Ole!” shouted the audience in glee each time the bull touched the cape. Whenever the bull seemed to decide chasing a cape wasn´t worth his while after all, someone would promptly ride up on horseback to stab the bull again. Bucking and snorting in fury, the enraged bull would do his utmost to flip the horse over by with his horns before pursuing the torero once more.
Bullfighting is a curious mix of art and brutality. Perhaps it is still accepted only because it is thought of as a tradition. As someone who had never really witnessed live violence, I could appreciate the skill but could hardly watch this poor bull loose more and more blood, leaving a trail in the dust behind him as he began to stumble doggedly after the torero. When the bull finally tumbled to the ground from exhaustion and blood loss, a matador walked up and finished the poor beast off.
I was amazed, though, at how quickly a person can become desensitized to the violence. Six more bulls appeared to fight, and after each I seemed to think less and less about the bull. I still feared for the toreros, though. Several times one would be knocked to the ground, causing the bull to lower his horns and charge at the helpless fighter. Each time, someone dragged the torero out of the way at the last possible second, but it still left my heart thundering at seeing (what seemed to me, anyway) the near-death of another human being. I have to say, watching a bullfight made me appreciate the virtues more peaceful sports. I suppose the excitement of the bull arena has its points, but I think I would be just as content with a nice round of golf.
IN THE COUNTRY
Because the maid in my house is around more than almost any other person, I’ve gotten to know her fairly over my two months here. Carmita is an ambitious woman, who teaches embroidery classes and takes online education courses in addition to being a single mom and taking care of my family’s house all day. She only has one day off per week – Sunday – in which she visits her parents in the country. One day she asked me to go with her and her seven-year-old son, David.
It is incredible how lifestyles in Ecuador within just a few miles. When you drive a few miles in the States, you can often witness a change in affluence. In Ecuador, it’s more like a change in time period. When I visited Carmita’s parents it seemed I went back at least 100 years.
We took a bus out from Riobamba, landing in the nearby pueblo Chambo, after which we clambered into the back of a local’s truck that was going our direction. We bumped along the choppy dirt roads, green mountains rising around us and water rushing in streams nearby. It was deliciously refreshing after the noise and dryness of the city. I could hear birds instead of the blare of sirens and car horns.
Her parents’ house was small, with about two rooms and a separate kitchen outside; and it didn’t appear to have any running water. The door was so low that a tall gringa like me needed to duck to go inside. The venerable-looking mother, an indigenous woman who still speaks Quichua (the language of the Incas), was lighting the wood fire for lunch. She welcomed me with open arms, as did Carmita’s father, and then they showed me around the back yard. It was a miniature Eden, dense with tropical fruit trees, corn, peas, and beans. Rabbits and guinea pigs ran freely, and David helped me catch baby rabbits to hold. Later David and I were assigned the task of catching a rabbit to eat, which I have to say is no easy task – though between the two of us we finally did.
The day passed in lazy peacefulness. I kept an eye on one of the toddler grandchildren while Carmita’s mother cooked over the fire in black cauldrons. Later we all went for a walk up the nearby hill to look out over the river to distant Riobamba and to craggy, snow-capped Chimborazo still further. I went home that day feeling incredibly at peace. Carmita invited me to go with them any time, and I have no doubt that I will go again.
BAÑOS
About two hours from Riobamba is one of the most touristy places in Ecuador: Baños. It derives its name from its natural hot springs (or “baths”), which entice tourists from all over Ecuador for a relaxing soak. It also affords all sorts of other activities, from rafting to hiking cycling. One of the sketchier operations is bungee jumping, in which a guide will find a bridge, tie on the rope, and then tell you to jump. I decided to skip that one.
For people like me who are on a budget, biking is the best choice. On almost every block, you can rent a bike for about five dollars and then head down the mountain roads towards the jungle city of Puyo. They also provide you with a map and a helmet that looks like it could survive a small atomic explosion. That´s probably a good thing, considering you can´t count on fully functioning brakes or inflated tires.
Early on Saturday morning, my friends Shelly and Steffi and I donned those helmets, looking like we were ready for the apocalypse, and hopped on rental bikes. Though they gave me the biggest bike they had, it was still far too small, and consequently my chin got well acquainted with my knees. I must have looked rather special. Needless to say, it was worth it. Half the time we barely had to pedal, and instead cruised downhill while the foliage grew more and more jungly. Colorful orchids exploded in color against spears of banana leaves, kept fresh by the perpetual mist of the nearby cascades. We explored the waterfalls by venturing onto the swinging bridges and cable cars that stretched over nearby valleys.
Despite the popularity of this bike ride, there weren’t any bike lanes to speak of, and pedaling frantically through a dark tunnel with cars zooming up behind was harrowing to say the least. Like many things in Ecuador, you say, “I think this isn´t a good idea,” and then you go ahead and do it anyway. (Because really, that´s often what I say when I cross the street). But what a treat it was to see a completely different climate in Ecuador – and only two hours from where I live! Like the population, the landscape can change in a matter of miles. It is the most diverse place I have ever lived, and for that reason Ecuador will always keep me guessing.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Tranquilo!
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been teaching at ESPOCH university for over five weeks now. It seems like only a moment ago that I was facing my students for the first time, smiling with feigned confidence at a classroom of strange Ecuadorians. It turned out there was nothing to be afraid of – my students, a mixture of teenagers and 20-somethings, are all enrolled in the class as an extracurricular activity, and consequently they genuinely want to learn English. They amazingly complete homework on time, seem excited about games, and all wave a friendly goodbye to me before they leave. What movie am I living in? When I assigned skits about going to the doctor, they showed up to class with various props that included lab coats, x ray scans, fake blood, and even a ladder. A couple of the performers were so exuberant during their injury scenes I worried that they might actually need a doctor by the end of the skit.
Enthusiastic as my students are, convincing them to speak English at all times is a constant battle. I bought a pair of sheep ears at a Halloween shop, and have tried plopping them on the head of any student who dares utter a Spanish word. The method is surprisingly effective as well as entertaining for the other students, but I also can’t run around with sheep ears all hour. I’ve discovered that my own selective hearing works pretty well too.
Despite having completed “five weeks” of class, however, none of those has been a full week. Every week there has been some unforeseen obstacle for classes, and hence I have had several unforeseen vacations. The second day of teaching, for example, an Ecuadorian English teacher at ESPOCH stopped by my classroom to say good night. “Oh, and by the way, I told your students not to come tomorrow,” he told me off-handedly as he left. “Wait, what?” I asked him. “Well, there’s the soccer game tomorrow,” he told me, as if the next day were Christmas itself. “They’re missing class for a soccer game?” I asked doubtfully. Apparently, I was playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. “Your students wouldn’t come anyway,” he told me matter-of-factly. And so I spent the next class day in a bar myself, sipping a beer and watching Ecuadorians wail in anguish as Ecuador lost its match. For me, the people watching is well worth the soccer game.
A common phrase in Ecuador is “Tranquilo!” which basically means, “Relax!” So whenever class is cancelled, or the lights flicker out in one of Ecuador’s ubiquitous power outages, or when people show up an hour late, or when striking students block the roads with flaming tires, you shrug and say, “Tranquilo!” The utter lack of predictability is pretty antithetical to Americans’ unshakeable devotion to punctuality and progress. And things are often a little dysfunctional from so much “tranquilo” – garbage never gets cleaned up and buildings stand unfinished for years. At the same time, people can skip work for an afternoon to get ice cream with a friend, and no one breaks a sweat over running a few minutes late. As an American taking a break from the frenzied pace of life in the States, I can’t say I mind.
Enthusiastic as my students are, convincing them to speak English at all times is a constant battle. I bought a pair of sheep ears at a Halloween shop, and have tried plopping them on the head of any student who dares utter a Spanish word. The method is surprisingly effective as well as entertaining for the other students, but I also can’t run around with sheep ears all hour. I’ve discovered that my own selective hearing works pretty well too.
Despite having completed “five weeks” of class, however, none of those has been a full week. Every week there has been some unforeseen obstacle for classes, and hence I have had several unforeseen vacations. The second day of teaching, for example, an Ecuadorian English teacher at ESPOCH stopped by my classroom to say good night. “Oh, and by the way, I told your students not to come tomorrow,” he told me off-handedly as he left. “Wait, what?” I asked him. “Well, there’s the soccer game tomorrow,” he told me, as if the next day were Christmas itself. “They’re missing class for a soccer game?” I asked doubtfully. Apparently, I was playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. “Your students wouldn’t come anyway,” he told me matter-of-factly. And so I spent the next class day in a bar myself, sipping a beer and watching Ecuadorians wail in anguish as Ecuador lost its match. For me, the people watching is well worth the soccer game.
A common phrase in Ecuador is “Tranquilo!” which basically means, “Relax!” So whenever class is cancelled, or the lights flicker out in one of Ecuador’s ubiquitous power outages, or when people show up an hour late, or when striking students block the roads with flaming tires, you shrug and say, “Tranquilo!” The utter lack of predictability is pretty antithetical to Americans’ unshakeable devotion to punctuality and progress. And things are often a little dysfunctional from so much “tranquilo” – garbage never gets cleaned up and buildings stand unfinished for years. At the same time, people can skip work for an afternoon to get ice cream with a friend, and no one breaks a sweat over running a few minutes late. As an American taking a break from the frenzied pace of life in the States, I can’t say I mind.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Adventure of the Day-to-Day
While having an injured ankle certainly prevents a person from seeing many of the sites in a new city, in my case it has given me time to settle in with my new family. We volunteers in Riobamba don´t start teaching until October 12th, and consequently have plenty of time on our hands. I can´t quite say the same for my host family. My host dad works full-time as a math professor and my host mom works full-time as a health educator. My host sister apparently manages an entire shopping mall herself, and the precocious seventeen-year-old niece goes to university all day. And then there´s me, the presently dead-beat volunteer who loafs in bed until ten every morning.
Sitting around waiting for my ankle to heal, I feared I would begin to collect dust. I thought it would at least be better to mill around in the kitchen with the Carmita, the maid. And so every morning now I´ll hobble into the kitchen with a ¨"Buenos dias," and plop myself on a stool in the cheerful, sunlit kitchen, enveloped by incipient aromas of almuerzo (lunch) simmering away on the stove. Though I am probably all the company of an oversized toddler, Carmita doesn´t seem to mind having me around. I liked Carmita right away upon meeting her. She´s a stout woman with a thick rope of black hair, her face framed by earrings that dangle down to her shoulders. A single mom in her thirties, her life can´t be an easy one, but somehow she always seems to glow.She´ll bustle around the kitchen, scrubbing the counters and teaching me a few basic nouns like "sink" or "cow," and whenever I make some preposterous mistake she´ll just laugh her Woody Woodpecker laugh and keep scrubbing. She even taught me how t make fresh juice from tomate de arbol, a special sweet tomato here that grows on trees and makes a delicious frothy fruit drink.
My first real interaction with Carmita was laundry day. I had awkwardly toted my laundry up to the roof terrace, where there was a faucet, basin, and clothesline. It was a sunny day, warm and breezy - the kind of afternoon that makes manual labor pleasant. Other rooftops nearby were strung with flapping laundry as well, splashes of color dotting the beige cement walls. I could look across the city all the way to the volcano Tingaragua, where clouds tumbled over its craggy grey summit. I dumped some detergent into the cold water and was scrubbing my clothes inexpertly when Carmita appeared at the top of the stairs, ready to help out. Apparently, however, the faint brown tint my socks had acquired simply violated Carmita´s perfection standards. Seizing my socks, Carmita took over with the zeal of a crusador. (Carmita´s other cleanliness standards include waxing the door frames and polishing the marbles in the flower vases). She scrubbed until I was afraid my socks would disappear, but when she was finished, they could have passed for new.
I told her I was a little embarassed about my laundry abilities, but she just winked and said, "With me, no."
Most upper-class households in Ecuador have a such maid or "empleada," evidence of a still very classist society here. Generally, empleadas are paid hardly more than a dollar for hours of difficult labor, which is just evidence that there enough impoverished people that they will take any job they can get. Our directors warned us that empleadas might be treated terribly, with our usually-sympathetic host parents turning briefly into tyrants, but I´m happy to say my family seems different. Though Carmita and her seven-year-old son David still eat apart from the family, my host dad will joke around with David and the mom will compliment Carmita´s cooking. My host parents´niece Jessica, though, confided over a game of cards that she doesn´t like the idea of empleadas at all. "I think all people are the same," she told me in a low voice, out of earshot from her aunt and uncle.
During the evenings and weekends, I´ve also had the time to get to know the rest of my host family, and we´ve taken excursions to movies and nearby towns. Because my family likes to entertain, I´ve met quite a few friends and relatives as well. I always know there will be interesting fare served when company is over. Last time, my mom pulled out her best plates and dining decor for catered burritos bowls of guacamole that guests ate straight with a spoon. My mom filled elegant glass bowls with Doritos and her best glasses with Coca Cola. For dessert, we ate a kind of peach pastry with a side of lavender jello. To be fair, I guess the meal did manage to hit most areas of the food triangle.
The company dinner before that, however, was decidedly more peculiar. I came home for lunch to find the table packed with unknown relatives. My host mom eagerly asked me if I had tried the soup "locra" before. Admitting I hadn´t, my mom placed a steaming bowl in front of me. Jessica looked at me with a kind of desperation from across the table. That wasn´t a good sign. I took a bite, and my teeth came down on something rubbery. I chewed....and chewed, and chewed, but to no avail. It was like being asked to eat rubber bands for dinner, and I didn´t think I could do it without fangs. (I did, however, eye the nearby pair of ancient grandparents, who seemed to be slurping down their soup without any teeth at all. How did they do that?!). Jessica managed to sneak hers into the trash when no one was looking, but I unfortunately was not that quick. I never was able to finish it. I found out later that it was intestines.
Sitting around waiting for my ankle to heal, I feared I would begin to collect dust. I thought it would at least be better to mill around in the kitchen with the Carmita, the maid. And so every morning now I´ll hobble into the kitchen with a ¨"Buenos dias," and plop myself on a stool in the cheerful, sunlit kitchen, enveloped by incipient aromas of almuerzo (lunch) simmering away on the stove. Though I am probably all the company of an oversized toddler, Carmita doesn´t seem to mind having me around. I liked Carmita right away upon meeting her. She´s a stout woman with a thick rope of black hair, her face framed by earrings that dangle down to her shoulders. A single mom in her thirties, her life can´t be an easy one, but somehow she always seems to glow.She´ll bustle around the kitchen, scrubbing the counters and teaching me a few basic nouns like "sink" or "cow," and whenever I make some preposterous mistake she´ll just laugh her Woody Woodpecker laugh and keep scrubbing. She even taught me how t make fresh juice from tomate de arbol, a special sweet tomato here that grows on trees and makes a delicious frothy fruit drink.
My first real interaction with Carmita was laundry day. I had awkwardly toted my laundry up to the roof terrace, where there was a faucet, basin, and clothesline. It was a sunny day, warm and breezy - the kind of afternoon that makes manual labor pleasant. Other rooftops nearby were strung with flapping laundry as well, splashes of color dotting the beige cement walls. I could look across the city all the way to the volcano Tingaragua, where clouds tumbled over its craggy grey summit. I dumped some detergent into the cold water and was scrubbing my clothes inexpertly when Carmita appeared at the top of the stairs, ready to help out. Apparently, however, the faint brown tint my socks had acquired simply violated Carmita´s perfection standards. Seizing my socks, Carmita took over with the zeal of a crusador. (Carmita´s other cleanliness standards include waxing the door frames and polishing the marbles in the flower vases). She scrubbed until I was afraid my socks would disappear, but when she was finished, they could have passed for new.
I told her I was a little embarassed about my laundry abilities, but she just winked and said, "With me, no."
Most upper-class households in Ecuador have a such maid or "empleada," evidence of a still very classist society here. Generally, empleadas are paid hardly more than a dollar for hours of difficult labor, which is just evidence that there enough impoverished people that they will take any job they can get. Our directors warned us that empleadas might be treated terribly, with our usually-sympathetic host parents turning briefly into tyrants, but I´m happy to say my family seems different. Though Carmita and her seven-year-old son David still eat apart from the family, my host dad will joke around with David and the mom will compliment Carmita´s cooking. My host parents´niece Jessica, though, confided over a game of cards that she doesn´t like the idea of empleadas at all. "I think all people are the same," she told me in a low voice, out of earshot from her aunt and uncle.
During the evenings and weekends, I´ve also had the time to get to know the rest of my host family, and we´ve taken excursions to movies and nearby towns. Because my family likes to entertain, I´ve met quite a few friends and relatives as well. I always know there will be interesting fare served when company is over. Last time, my mom pulled out her best plates and dining decor for catered burritos bowls of guacamole that guests ate straight with a spoon. My mom filled elegant glass bowls with Doritos and her best glasses with Coca Cola. For dessert, we ate a kind of peach pastry with a side of lavender jello. To be fair, I guess the meal did manage to hit most areas of the food triangle.
The company dinner before that, however, was decidedly more peculiar. I came home for lunch to find the table packed with unknown relatives. My host mom eagerly asked me if I had tried the soup "locra" before. Admitting I hadn´t, my mom placed a steaming bowl in front of me. Jessica looked at me with a kind of desperation from across the table. That wasn´t a good sign. I took a bite, and my teeth came down on something rubbery. I chewed....and chewed, and chewed, but to no avail. It was like being asked to eat rubber bands for dinner, and I didn´t think I could do it without fangs. (I did, however, eye the nearby pair of ancient grandparents, who seemed to be slurping down their soup without any teeth at all. How did they do that?!). Jessica managed to sneak hers into the trash when no one was looking, but I unfortunately was not that quick. I never was able to finish it. I found out later that it was intestines.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
On Culture Shock...
Culture shock. It´s one of those slippery terms that can mean just about anything, from somebody serving you a steaming platter of ox tail to having your cab driver weave down the street backwards in an attempt to find your house (both of which have happened, needless to say). It can be other things too, like the acceptance of a perpetually volatile political climate. Televised news affirms this daily, with its incessant newscasts of the Indigenous marching the street, yelling and rolling tires and tossing burning branches, all in protest of the government´s policies on water. Culture shock is mostly just the daily things, though, like remembering to greet everybody with an ¨Hola¨ and a touching of cheeks. Getting beyond the greeting, of course, is an adventure in itself, and mix-ups are more or less constant for new speakers like me. The words ¨city¨ and ¨careful¨ sounded very similar to me, and when my host mother in Quito would admonish me to be careful, I would attempt to agree by saying, “I´m a city,” and step cheerfully out the door. I´m sure that was little comfort to my host mom.
“Cuidad,” or “careful,” is perhaps a word I need to take to heart. My first day in Riobamba on Monday, I popped on my running shoes, ready to take advantage of the safer environment that Riobamba affords (more so than Quito, anyway). But what Riobamba lacks in thieves and frenzied traffic, it more than makes up for in potholes. I was about six blocks away from my house when I stepped in one of these little hazards, twisting my ankle so badly I could hardly limp out of the street. Sitting down and trying desperately not to faint, I was obliged to eventually hop in a car of an Ecuadorian family, who seemed rather excited to be rescuing a lame foreigner in distress. I promptly called my host mom upon returning, trying to explain what happened over the phone, but I used the wrong word for pothole, saying instead, “Violetta, I have little problem. I ran and stepped in golf hole. Now ankle sick.” Probably wondering what on earth I was doing on a golf green, my host mom came home and whisked me off to the doctor, where I was fixed up with a brace and an ancient-looking crutch sized for Bilbo Baggins. Already conspicuous as a 5’10” white female, flailing down the street with my tiny cane I must look like a regular circus act.
I´m happy to say my ankle is doing better, though I need to stay off of it for a few more days. In the meantime, I´m settling down with my stacks of English grammar books and attempting to guess what my future students may or may not know. I will be teaching advanced-intermediate, which could really mean anything….like all things "culture shock," I´ll do my best to anticipate my students, and, when my expectations hit way off mark, I´ll just simply readjust and keep going.
“Cuidad,” or “careful,” is perhaps a word I need to take to heart. My first day in Riobamba on Monday, I popped on my running shoes, ready to take advantage of the safer environment that Riobamba affords (more so than Quito, anyway). But what Riobamba lacks in thieves and frenzied traffic, it more than makes up for in potholes. I was about six blocks away from my house when I stepped in one of these little hazards, twisting my ankle so badly I could hardly limp out of the street. Sitting down and trying desperately not to faint, I was obliged to eventually hop in a car of an Ecuadorian family, who seemed rather excited to be rescuing a lame foreigner in distress. I promptly called my host mom upon returning, trying to explain what happened over the phone, but I used the wrong word for pothole, saying instead, “Violetta, I have little problem. I ran and stepped in golf hole. Now ankle sick.” Probably wondering what on earth I was doing on a golf green, my host mom came home and whisked me off to the doctor, where I was fixed up with a brace and an ancient-looking crutch sized for Bilbo Baggins. Already conspicuous as a 5’10” white female, flailing down the street with my tiny cane I must look like a regular circus act.
I´m happy to say my ankle is doing better, though I need to stay off of it for a few more days. In the meantime, I´m settling down with my stacks of English grammar books and attempting to guess what my future students may or may not know. I will be teaching advanced-intermediate, which could really mean anything….like all things "culture shock," I´ll do my best to anticipate my students, and, when my expectations hit way off mark, I´ll just simply readjust and keep going.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Training Wheels
The Monday before last, I started practice teaching a two-week course in Quito. It's basically a chance for us volunteers to take our first wobbly steps as educators (before we start teaching in our assigned provinces). Despite my year in Americorps in front of, shall I say, energetic high school students, I still felt undeniably nervous about this little two-week experiment. How much English would my students know already? Would I have five students or forty? It was hard to say.
Really, though, there is no predicting a class in Ecuador. Though all self-classified as “beginner,” in every other way my students are as diverse as if you had just unloaded a city bus straight to my classroom door. The would-be English speakers include Joshua, a daunted-looking 15-year-old whose mother clearly signed him up for the course, to Patricio, a spry middle-aged man who enthusiastically pumps everyone’s hand upon arriving, to Ramiro, a lackadaisically confident 22-year old with long curly hair, who props his feet up on his desk and smirks while yelling out the answers before all the other students.
Because all we volunteers are technically practice teaching, the class is free for students. That means there is not only a range in ability but also in dedication. I’ve had students pop into class just long enough to learn their favorite color in English before apparently running for their lives, and other more dedicated students burst into class 45 minutes late, straight from work and breathless. Despite the mayhem, though, most students can at least now order food in a restaurant, go grocery shopping, recite a morning schedule, and identify their profession in English (or some version thereof). They have also learned how to play BINGO, a crucial skill should they ever retire to small-town Minnesota. I, in turn, have had the amusement of seeing grown men in business suits all simultaneously color a menu.
Even with all the preparation for lesson plans, there’s still been time for some adventures. Last weekend several of us volunteers climbed Mt. Pichincha. It’s said to be about 13,000 feet, so not nearly as high as many of the neighboring volcanoes, but still high enough to leave you winded and to make the sprawl of Quito look like Lego Land. The entire way up, we were treated to absolutely stunning views, the breadth and distance of which is impossible to capture on a camera. I’ve never seen planes fly below me before. Well, we got these views almost all the way up; near the top, a rush of clouds engulfed the mountain in a matter of minutes, reducing our vision to pure white. Exciting, in a way, but also a little scary as we scrabbled our way down the rock face, dodging drops of rain and hail. I’m happy to say that the only damage done was an achy muscle or two, and we were ready to start classes again on Monday.
Really, though, there is no predicting a class in Ecuador. Though all self-classified as “beginner,” in every other way my students are as diverse as if you had just unloaded a city bus straight to my classroom door. The would-be English speakers include Joshua, a daunted-looking 15-year-old whose mother clearly signed him up for the course, to Patricio, a spry middle-aged man who enthusiastically pumps everyone’s hand upon arriving, to Ramiro, a lackadaisically confident 22-year old with long curly hair, who props his feet up on his desk and smirks while yelling out the answers before all the other students.
Because all we volunteers are technically practice teaching, the class is free for students. That means there is not only a range in ability but also in dedication. I’ve had students pop into class just long enough to learn their favorite color in English before apparently running for their lives, and other more dedicated students burst into class 45 minutes late, straight from work and breathless. Despite the mayhem, though, most students can at least now order food in a restaurant, go grocery shopping, recite a morning schedule, and identify their profession in English (or some version thereof). They have also learned how to play BINGO, a crucial skill should they ever retire to small-town Minnesota. I, in turn, have had the amusement of seeing grown men in business suits all simultaneously color a menu.
Even with all the preparation for lesson plans, there’s still been time for some adventures. Last weekend several of us volunteers climbed Mt. Pichincha. It’s said to be about 13,000 feet, so not nearly as high as many of the neighboring volcanoes, but still high enough to leave you winded and to make the sprawl of Quito look like Lego Land. The entire way up, we were treated to absolutely stunning views, the breadth and distance of which is impossible to capture on a camera. I’ve never seen planes fly below me before. Well, we got these views almost all the way up; near the top, a rush of clouds engulfed the mountain in a matter of minutes, reducing our vision to pure white. Exciting, in a way, but also a little scary as we scrabbled our way down the rock face, dodging drops of rain and hail. I’m happy to say that the only damage done was an achy muscle or two, and we were ready to start classes again on Monday.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Riobamba or bust!
I’ve been in Ecuador for two weeks now, and a few things have become routine. First and foremost, a two-course lunch is only supposed to cost $1.50; only spend $2.00 if you really want to splurge. Second, you can expect to see a few forest fires every day, smoking away in the dry mountains. Third, automobiles always have right-of-way – if you question it, the bus will certainly win.
This is not to say that life in Ecuador has become exactly predictable. Last Thursday, me and three other volunteers left Quito and hopped on a bus to our teaching placement four hours away in Riobamba. Little did I know that a bus ride is more like a mobile shopping mall. At the moment the bus slowed to let off a passenger or pay a toll, a vender of some sort would leap onto the bus, chanting advertisements and waving his offering, from dried banana chips to clearly rip-off perfume brands. You can imagine the consequences of a bus full of passengers all applying generous perfume samples at the same time. Whew!
Arriving in Riobamba a tad more fragrant than when we left, all of us volunteers were thrilled with what we found in the city. Our directors had told us that many volunteers were initially disappointed in their placements, and we had consequently spent the bus ride peering anxiously out at the crumbling concrete settlements we saw in the countryside. It turned out, though, that Riobamba was full of restaurants, discotheques, parks, and thankfully all sorts of ice cream shops, but was still small enough where a cab ride to any place in the city was only a dollar. Clearly, it was a place where we could spend a year.
During my second day in Riobamba, I paid a visit to the director at my teaching site, a sprawling university known as ESPOCH that’s located near the outskirts of town. I was delighted to see that I had a large, sunlit classroom, complete with a whiteboard and projector screen. Planning a curriculum may be a bit of an adventure, however. The assistant director scrawled a few notes for me in Spanish about what I might teach (I’ll certainly need a Spanish dictionary, a magnifying glass, and perhaps a Private Eye to help me decipher exactly what it means), but it seems that my students will be at my mercy in terms of lesson plans. With only four days of teaching per week, however, I’ll hopefully have time to be creative!
This is not to say that life in Ecuador has become exactly predictable. Last Thursday, me and three other volunteers left Quito and hopped on a bus to our teaching placement four hours away in Riobamba. Little did I know that a bus ride is more like a mobile shopping mall. At the moment the bus slowed to let off a passenger or pay a toll, a vender of some sort would leap onto the bus, chanting advertisements and waving his offering, from dried banana chips to clearly rip-off perfume brands. You can imagine the consequences of a bus full of passengers all applying generous perfume samples at the same time. Whew!
Arriving in Riobamba a tad more fragrant than when we left, all of us volunteers were thrilled with what we found in the city. Our directors had told us that many volunteers were initially disappointed in their placements, and we had consequently spent the bus ride peering anxiously out at the crumbling concrete settlements we saw in the countryside. It turned out, though, that Riobamba was full of restaurants, discotheques, parks, and thankfully all sorts of ice cream shops, but was still small enough where a cab ride to any place in the city was only a dollar. Clearly, it was a place where we could spend a year.
During my second day in Riobamba, I paid a visit to the director at my teaching site, a sprawling university known as ESPOCH that’s located near the outskirts of town. I was delighted to see that I had a large, sunlit classroom, complete with a whiteboard and projector screen. Planning a curriculum may be a bit of an adventure, however. The assistant director scrawled a few notes for me in Spanish about what I might teach (I’ll certainly need a Spanish dictionary, a magnifying glass, and perhaps a Private Eye to help me decipher exactly what it means), but it seems that my students will be at my mercy in terms of lesson plans. With only four days of teaching per week, however, I’ll hopefully have time to be creative!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Ecua-mersion
Well, here it is - my very first blog! I've been in Ecuador for about a week now, though it seems about three times as long as that. It's a strange feeling to have swapped my life for another one in the matter of a plane ride or two - a new city, a new language, and new friends have suddenly become mine in just a few hours.
I suppose I should begin with a description of Quito, Ecuador's capital city where I am living to train as an English teacher. At 9,000 feet, it is one of the highest cities in the world, and all of we gringos (foreigners) started panting in the thin atmosphere almost as soon as we got off the plane! It's a long, skinny city, about 35 miles long and only about 5 miles wide, and is wedged into a valley in the towering Andes, which, I found out, are mostly moody volcanoes that treat Ecuador to the occasional ash eruption. Quito is a busy, chaotic city; full of rickety stick-shift cars and buses that belch smog, restaurants and dance venues painted exuberant yellows, pinks and reds (though many have faded with wear and dust), and, of course, the blare of cumbia and reggae ton music mixed with incessant honking cab horns. The old part of the city is a little quieter, with pedestrian-only cobbled streets and town squares filled with flowering trees and park benches, not to mention beautiful churches and an impressive basilica, though it is typically filled with people.
Just outside of Quito, the scenery is almost impossibly beautiful; we volunteers took a bus ride to some hot springs last weekend, and every (often hair-raising) turn around a mountain bend revealed yet another view of the looming, forested Andes and the little streams and waterfalls that wound throughout. The dramatic scenery (not to mention the rather sharp drop-offs) kept me wide-eyed the entire time.
Part of the immersion experience in Quito is staying with a host family during my three weeks of orientation. They are a lovely family and quite well-off by Ecuadorian standards. They speak virtually no English, which means there is a lot of pointing and confused glances. Most of my conversation still consists of the most basic comments. “Beautiful mountain,” I will observe carefully, pointing at the mountain Cotopaxi. “Yes, yes,” my patient listener will agree gravely about the mountain he or she has seen a thousand times. “Beautiful.” Sometimes my host mom will just throw up her hands and laugh when my Spanish tongue malfunctions, particularly when I say a dirty Spanish word when I mean to say “spoon,” or when I invited my host sister to a pineapple instead of a picnic. But I’m learning new Spanish words every day, and it’s exciting when I can say, “I’m going to the bus stop” rather than just “Bus! Me bus now!”
Even my host family’s house is an immersion experience. While my house in the States is a prime example of sparsely tasteful Western decoration, my house in Quito is an Ecuadorian pawn shop explosion. Every available surface is loaded with knick knacks, from fake flowers to Virgin figurines to snowglobes of Washington D.C. to trumpeting elephant figurines; enormous fake sunflowers grace the corners, and all of the furniture gleams in gold upholstery.
Different tastes in décor accounted for, however, my host family takes splendid care of me. I get fed marvelously seasoned soups every day, as well as a manner of things that I can’t identify but are delicious none the less. I have a host sister who is 21 and wants to be my best friend; she’s shown me a lot of her Latin music, and I’ve shown her how to play Frisbee (on the roof terrace, no less!) My host parents took great care in making sure I could make it to the bus on the first day of orientation classes. Originally, my mom told me to “get off the bus at the chicken,” and it took a trip in the family car to demonstrate that my bus stop was at the KFC.
“Bus stop” is really a misnomer, however. In Ecuador there are a few bus stops, but typically you just hail a bus like you would a cab…and most of the time, at least, the bus driver is kind enough to bring the bus to a full stop, but it isn’t something you can count on. They don’t waste much time in moving along, however, and more than once I’ve almost toppled into some unsuspecting person’s lap while trying to find a seat.
Orientation is also going well. There is a fantastic group of 36 volunteers, very adventurous and positive, and there is great rapport developing among us. During orientation, we’ve been learning all sorts of teaching techniques about how to introduce English to our university students – there is absolutely no Spanish allowed in the classroom, apparently (luckily for me!). We’ve also been learning the various hazards of living as gringos in Ecuador. As foreigners appear to be both wealthy and vulnerable at the same time, and thus are walking bulls-eyes for petty theft. One of the more peculiar stunts that pickpockets will pull is called “mustardization.” It’s a two person operation: the first thief will sneak up behind a gringo with a bottle of mustard and squirt it on said gringo, apparently without the foreigner noticing. The thief will then ditch the mustard bottle and say to the accosted foreigner, “Oh, look! You have mustard on you! Here, I have some napkins…let me help you!” In the midst of the commotion, the second thief will then make off with the gringo’s purse or backpack. So now the gringo not only is out of his or her wallet, but also has a heinous mustard stain. Talk about adding insult to injury.
That’s all for now – thanks for sticking with this rather extensive blog post. I hope that you’re all well, and would love to hear from you at some point! I will be posting again hopefully next Sunday.
I suppose I should begin with a description of Quito, Ecuador's capital city where I am living to train as an English teacher. At 9,000 feet, it is one of the highest cities in the world, and all of we gringos (foreigners) started panting in the thin atmosphere almost as soon as we got off the plane! It's a long, skinny city, about 35 miles long and only about 5 miles wide, and is wedged into a valley in the towering Andes, which, I found out, are mostly moody volcanoes that treat Ecuador to the occasional ash eruption. Quito is a busy, chaotic city; full of rickety stick-shift cars and buses that belch smog, restaurants and dance venues painted exuberant yellows, pinks and reds (though many have faded with wear and dust), and, of course, the blare of cumbia and reggae ton music mixed with incessant honking cab horns. The old part of the city is a little quieter, with pedestrian-only cobbled streets and town squares filled with flowering trees and park benches, not to mention beautiful churches and an impressive basilica, though it is typically filled with people.
Just outside of Quito, the scenery is almost impossibly beautiful; we volunteers took a bus ride to some hot springs last weekend, and every (often hair-raising) turn around a mountain bend revealed yet another view of the looming, forested Andes and the little streams and waterfalls that wound throughout. The dramatic scenery (not to mention the rather sharp drop-offs) kept me wide-eyed the entire time.
Part of the immersion experience in Quito is staying with a host family during my three weeks of orientation. They are a lovely family and quite well-off by Ecuadorian standards. They speak virtually no English, which means there is a lot of pointing and confused glances. Most of my conversation still consists of the most basic comments. “Beautiful mountain,” I will observe carefully, pointing at the mountain Cotopaxi. “Yes, yes,” my patient listener will agree gravely about the mountain he or she has seen a thousand times. “Beautiful.” Sometimes my host mom will just throw up her hands and laugh when my Spanish tongue malfunctions, particularly when I say a dirty Spanish word when I mean to say “spoon,” or when I invited my host sister to a pineapple instead of a picnic. But I’m learning new Spanish words every day, and it’s exciting when I can say, “I’m going to the bus stop” rather than just “Bus! Me bus now!”
Even my host family’s house is an immersion experience. While my house in the States is a prime example of sparsely tasteful Western decoration, my house in Quito is an Ecuadorian pawn shop explosion. Every available surface is loaded with knick knacks, from fake flowers to Virgin figurines to snowglobes of Washington D.C. to trumpeting elephant figurines; enormous fake sunflowers grace the corners, and all of the furniture gleams in gold upholstery.
Different tastes in décor accounted for, however, my host family takes splendid care of me. I get fed marvelously seasoned soups every day, as well as a manner of things that I can’t identify but are delicious none the less. I have a host sister who is 21 and wants to be my best friend; she’s shown me a lot of her Latin music, and I’ve shown her how to play Frisbee (on the roof terrace, no less!) My host parents took great care in making sure I could make it to the bus on the first day of orientation classes. Originally, my mom told me to “get off the bus at the chicken,” and it took a trip in the family car to demonstrate that my bus stop was at the KFC.
“Bus stop” is really a misnomer, however. In Ecuador there are a few bus stops, but typically you just hail a bus like you would a cab…and most of the time, at least, the bus driver is kind enough to bring the bus to a full stop, but it isn’t something you can count on. They don’t waste much time in moving along, however, and more than once I’ve almost toppled into some unsuspecting person’s lap while trying to find a seat.
Orientation is also going well. There is a fantastic group of 36 volunteers, very adventurous and positive, and there is great rapport developing among us. During orientation, we’ve been learning all sorts of teaching techniques about how to introduce English to our university students – there is absolutely no Spanish allowed in the classroom, apparently (luckily for me!). We’ve also been learning the various hazards of living as gringos in Ecuador. As foreigners appear to be both wealthy and vulnerable at the same time, and thus are walking bulls-eyes for petty theft. One of the more peculiar stunts that pickpockets will pull is called “mustardization.” It’s a two person operation: the first thief will sneak up behind a gringo with a bottle of mustard and squirt it on said gringo, apparently without the foreigner noticing. The thief will then ditch the mustard bottle and say to the accosted foreigner, “Oh, look! You have mustard on you! Here, I have some napkins…let me help you!” In the midst of the commotion, the second thief will then make off with the gringo’s purse or backpack. So now the gringo not only is out of his or her wallet, but also has a heinous mustard stain. Talk about adding insult to injury.
That’s all for now – thanks for sticking with this rather extensive blog post. I hope that you’re all well, and would love to hear from you at some point! I will be posting again hopefully next Sunday.
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