Last Saturday my friend who lives in the Galapagos came to Ambato to visit. We were going to go to a nearby town called Baños where they have all kinds of extreme sports like rafting and cave diving for tourists. Baños is located near the base of the volcano Tungurahua, so when there is activity they don't let people enter.
We were on the bus only ten minutes away from the city when the volcano started erupting and we had to turn around. There was no lava, but it was rumbling and shooting smoke high above the mouth. I guess of all the reasons to have to cancel a trip to Baños, an erupting volcano is one of the best because we at least got a show from up close. Check out the picture my friend Chris took before the bus turned around.
The End of My First Cycle
Last Thursday was the last day of class of my first cycle/semester teaching in Ecuador. It doesn't seem like I have been here for too long, but I am already done with one-third of my work here and I have lived four out of eleven months here in Ecuador already. Now I'm on vacation until January 10th when school starts up again. Being a teacher has proven itself to be hard work, but I really can't complain about the vacation time.
The last week of classes was tough because Ecuadorians absolutely love to whine and complain about everything. When I broke the news that there was going to be a final during the last week of class I thought I was going to be chased out of class by an angry mob of students.
At first I tried to reason with my class when they whined about things, but I have come to the conclusion that since whining isn't driven by reason, it cannot be resolved by reason either. My solution now is just to whine back with more drastic fluctuations in the pitch of my voice and more violent body convulsions than my students.
At the advice of my fellow SECAP teacher Caitlin, I had my students do the work for me in making the final test. I broke them into groups, gave each group a theme, and had them write questions. The next day I had my best students review the answers to the questions and resolve any doubts, and the same questions then appeared on the test. Even though I essentially gave them the questions and answers to the final before they took the test, some students still tried to cheat.
In my first class, I maintain a fairly rigorous anti-cheating environment. I make all the students put their bags away, they are only allowed to have one pen on the desk at all times (I instituted this rule after I caught a girl with answers written on the back of an eraser), then I make them all roll up their sleeves to see that they don't have notes written on their arms. The final in my first class passed without incident.
In my second class, the students are much older and I usually feel weird asking them to do things that I ask my first class to do so they usually are less strictly monitored during the tests. Since it was the final, I figured I should give them the same treatment as my first class so I asked them all to roll up their sleeves so I could check their arms. To my surprise, one of my students in her mid-twenties had answers written on her palm. I told her she had to go wash her hands off before she could take the test, but I was still stunned that I had to scold someone ~five years older than me for cheating on a test.
When I was walking by inspecting my students' arms in my second class, I noticed that on one of the tables, written in very light pencil, were some answers to my first class' test. I was furious that my first class had gotten away with cheating because I didn't look at the desks carefully enough, but I remembered which two students were sitting there earlier so the next day as I was handing out final grades I confronted them.
Me: So yesterday I found answers written to the test on the desk. Which of you two was it?
Student 1: (*looks directly at me*) It wasn't me teacher.
Student 2: (*eyes well up with tears, looks at wall behind me*) It wasn't me either teacher.
It wasn't hard to tell which one cheated, but they were two of my best students and both would have passed even with a zero on the final. I let them off with the most intimidating warning I could manage in Spanish, and I hope my class got the idea that I don't tolerate cheating so I never have to rip someone's paper up and fail them on the spot.
What annoyed me even more about this cheating incident than the cheating was that whoever cheated didn't think to erase the answers when they were done with the test. I wanted to tell the class afterward that it is a good idea to get rid of the evidence after you cheat, but I didn't want to inadvertently give them a lesson on how to be better cheaters during a lesson on common sense.
Birthdays
Ecuadorians like to have parties, so both of my classes threw me a party for my birthday. The first one was on Wednesday. I went out with my Intermediate class for parrillada, which is grilled meat. We were supposed to be going out to celebrate the end of the semester and do Secret Santa, but they surprised me with a cake and a present for my birthday.
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| Some of my Intermediate students. |
I'm not sure why, but the first time I went in for a bite the student sitting next to me didn't push my head in. I think it was because at that point I still had not graded the finals and he didn't know if he would pass, so he didn't want to hurt his chances any more by shoving the teacher's face into a cake. The class insisted that I take another bite and my face was gently shoved into the cake by my borderline passing student (He would go on to pass "conditionally" because he scored a 69 in the course).
The next day, my Beginner class brought a cake and snacks to class for my birthday.In this class, I had already graded the tests and my students who passed already knew. When I went in for a bite of the cake they shoved my head in so hard that I had cake in my eye and far enough up my nostrils that I smelled frosting for the next hour.
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| "Cool tradition guys, now have fun eating snot frosting." |
My third and final birthday party was with my host family, family friends, American friends, and my real father who is in Ecuador visiting me at the moment. My tradition every year since I was a kid has been to go to Applebee's. Even the semester I studied abroad in Mexico, me and my friends found an Applebee's and I had my usual chicken finger platter.
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| This was the only cake that my face was not shoved into. |
Travels with Dad
My dad has been in Ecuador for a week now and I have already shown him around Ambato, Quito, Otavalo, and some other places nearby. Tomorrow we leave for the Galapagos where we will be staying until Friday. I'll be sure to take a ton of pictures and put them on my photos page.
On an unrelated note, when I was with my father in Quito we passed by this guy in the car. He was riding his motorcycle with a young child in front. That's traffic in Ecuador in a nutshell: very unsafe, but probably a lot of fun.
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| At least they were both wearing helmets? |
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