Practicing my Teacher Face

Teaching English and Taking Names

This week the focus of our orientation shifted from "How to survive Ecuador" to "How to be an ESL teacher."  The amount of freedom we are going to have over our classes is a bit overwhelming.  For many of the WorldTeach sites, including mine in Ambato, there is no predetermined curriculum and we have to decide for ourselves how we want to evaluate the students and what kinds of assignments and tests to administer.  Good thing I'm a boss, so the only work I will have to do to gain the respect of my students is teach them enough English so that I can explain to them how big of a deal I am.

"You guys ever hear of America?  Yeah, I'm from there."

I start my first day of practice teaching at a site here in Quito where I will be part of a group of four volunteers teaching a twenty-hour free Spanish course.  I think it will be helpful to get some experience teaching in front of a free class filled with students who have zero expectations before I meet the class I am going to teach for a whole year in Ambato.  Luckily I am teaching at the Beginner I level tomorrow, so it will be pretty hard for them to not learn anything even if I just talk at them in English for two hours.

Otavalo

My wildest dreams are coming true in Ecuador

This Saturday I went with some other volunteers to a nearby town called Otavalo.  Otavalo is known for its market where the largely indigenous population sells goods.  You can buy anything you can imagine in Otavalo like scarves, jewelry, jackets, Panama hats, or... well I guess you can really only buy those kinds of things and most of the stands sell the same textiles and trinkets, but every now and then there was something that took my breath away— like a rug with a panda bear design on it made out of alpaca fur.

The only thing I bought from the Otavalo market was an Ecuador national jersey so that when I return to the States I can be that obnoxious American who roots for a sport he doesn't care about and a team that isn't his country during international football matches.  Yeah, I call it football now too.

From Otavalo we took a bus ride to a nearby city called Cotacachi.  There we visited a caldera called Cuicocha Lake.  We took a boat ride around the small islands in the lake and we could see bubbles coming up from the water caused by gas emissions from the volcanic activity below.  I am learning that there are lots of volcanoes in Ecuador, even in the lakes.

La Mitad del Mundo

Today I went to a nearby park with some other volunteers to play basketball.  None of us were expecting much because basketball is not very popular here.  In addition, we have heard from previous volunteers that the few Ecuadorians who do play basketball are atrocious.  I was fully expecting us to show up at the courts and be the only ones there, but to my surprise there were actually quite a few people shooting around.  After a quick warm-up we challenged the most promising group of players on the courts and started a game of three-on-three.  What ensued was an ass whooping that none of us could have predicted.

I should have sensed that it was going to be a tough match-up when while we were discussing the terms of the game the Ecuadorians proposed that we play to thirty.  We are definitely not acclimated enough to the altitude here to play a game to thirty points and we should have argued for a more reasonable number.  Our team was altogether about three feet taller than the other team and at the beginning we were doing so well that I started to feel sorry for them.  That came to an end quickly and after the first several points we were all embarrassingly winded and we straight got our shit wrecked.  Final score: 6-30.

After another bad loss to what we all agreed must have been the Ecuadorian national team, I took a trip with my host mother and some other volunteers to the place where the equator actually passes through the country.  The area is a very touristy city called La Mitad del Mundo (literally "the middle of the earth").  I tried my best to get a photo in a different pose than everyone else who was taking their picture there and my friend Will snapped this shot of me.

Straddling the equator is played out

 In my next post expect to hear more about how my first teaching lessons went and whether or not I was able to convince my students to call me Professor Surasi.

Leaving the Country and First Impressions of Ecuador

I have been in Ecuador for a week now, but I have been so busy with orientation and getting settled into my host family's house that this is the first chance I am getting to write on my blog. 

Packing it Up and Making it Rain

As I was packing to leave for Ecuador, I had to keep in mind that the limit on the airline we would take to South America only allowed for two check-in bags at no more than 50 lbs. a piece if I didn't want to pay a ridiculous fine.  I was careful to select clothing with neutral colors that would be easy to mix-and-match so I would be able to take less clothing with me.  The result: every shirt and sweater in my suitcase is gray.

Fashion Emergency!

The currency in Ecuador is the U.S. dollar, but we were well warned that it is very difficult to use large bills here (anything larger than $10) and equally as difficult to get them broken at cashiers.  This, in addition to the suggestion to bring at least $300 in cash with us, ensured that I came ready to make it rain on Ecuador should an appropriate situation arise.

Quito

I am beginning my year in the capital city of Ecuador, Quito.  All of the WorldTeach volunteers will be spending the first month in Quito for orientation where we will learn more about the Ecuadorian culture and begin classes to obtain TEFL certification for teaching English as a second language.  After the first month I am moving to another large city in Ecuador two hours south of Quito called Ambato.

La Mariscal

After we checked into the hotel my first night in Quito, we had a couple of hours to kill so me and a few other volunteers walked around the neighborhood called La Mariscal.  This was well before any kind of orientation about the city of Quito and which areas are safe to carry a camera around in (it turns out none of them are), so I took a few pictures.  The neighborhood is also known as "Gringolandia" because there are so many tourists who stay there and it is a great place to get pick-pocketed if you are not paying attention.  

Quito looks pretty much exactly like I imagined it would.  Unlike Manhattan, the buildings in Quito aren't built too high up.  This means that the city is much less compressed and covers a tremendous amount of land.  Quito is also located in the Sierra mountains, high enough that  malaria carrying mosquitoes can't survive the altitude and luggage carrying Americans can't walk up a flight of stairs. The city is also different from any city I have been to in the U.S. because the nature around the city is almost always visible.  Since the buildings don't rise too high, mountains and volcanoes can be seen in the background from many parts of the city.  Even in the country's capital city nature defiantly refuses to be hidden, which is appropriate considering Ecuador's history of destruction caused by earthquakes and volcano eruptions.

Los Pazmiño

The family I will be staying with for the next month in Quito are called the Pazmiños.  They live in a suburban area far from downtown Quito.  They are a large family, (Pazmiños can actually be found in many parts of the city) but only seven live in the house I am staying at.  Three generations are represented including Señor and Señora Pazmiño, their three children, one son-in-law, and one three year old granddaughter.  They must be used to living with lots of people in the house because I am staying here with three other WorldTeach volunteers who will also be moving to other parts of the country at the end of orientation.  

The gringos of the house: Chris, myself, Justin, and Will.

There are great views of the city from the roof of our house, especially at night when Quito lights up (picture of that to come).

Scare Tactics 

Before we would learn anything about being teachers in orientation, we first had to learn about how to be safe in Ecuador.  This part of orientation took the form of horror stories from previous years to terrify us so severely that we don't make the same mistakes as former volunteers.  We heard stories of armed take overs of buses, kidnappings on mountain expeditions,  and drunk bus drivers cruising off mountains.  But don't worry!  Now I know how to avoid getting into these situations myself and be smart about living in a third-world country.

One of the important points of these safety meeting was the knowledge that no matter how cautious we are in Ecuador, each of us will almost certainly be the victim of some crime during our year here.  The good news is that in Ecuador almost all of the crimes are crimes of poverty.  This means that robbers are only out for money and victims are rarely injured if they cooperate.  We have only been here six days and one volunteer has already been robbed.  While she was on a packed (a word which takes on a whole new meaning in the context of Ecuadorian public transportation) bus, someone slit her pocketbook with a knife and stole her money, credit card, and camera.  Typical of a crime of poverty, she is completely unharmed and the criminal wanted nothing more than her valuables. 

The final threat we were warned about was more terrifying than anything I have described so far.  Getting onto a bus with a drunk driver is avoidable if I am paying attention.  Getting robbed will suck, but I am confident that I will never be hurt as long as I give up what I have.  The one thing that would scar me for life was what our director promised would happen to at least one of us during a year living in Ecuador: shitting your pants.

As a grown-ass adult, I cannot think of anything that would be more embarrassing than shitting myself.  Not only does your muscle control have to be seriously compromised to not be able to control your bowel movements,  you also need to destroy the work done by years of constant social pressures that have been telling you since you were potty trained that shitting yourself is entirely unacceptable in any society and it can only lead to exclusion and ridicule.  The most terrifying tale of the day took place in our director's apartment last year when two volunteers traded stories of how they shat themselves.  Really!?  At least two people shat themselves last year and it is a common enough event that it was made part of our orientation?  Regardless of the circumstances, no matter how sick I am or how many other people shit themselves, if I shit my pants while I am in Ecuador I will not have the courage to return home and face my family and friends again.  I will be a changed man.  A shamed and defeated man.

Spanish

The Spanish they speak in Ecuador so far has been very pleasing to me.  Ecuadorians speak quite slowly in the Sierra (something that cannot be said of the Spanish spoken on the coast) and they do not use a ton of slang.  The hardest part will be learning the words adopted from the indigenous language of Ecuador, Quichua.  There are many Quichua loan words that are commonly used in the Spanish here that you won't find in any dictionary.  Overall I am understanding Ecuadorian Spanish considerably better than the Mexican Spanish I heard when I studied abroad in Puebla and I think Ecuador will be a great place to improve my listening and speaking skills

Conversation I've had with Every Person I have Met in the Past Four Months

- Hi, my name is Krishna.
- Hey, nice to meet you.  So you just graduated from Notre Dame, right?
- Yeah, now I’m going to Ecuador to teach English for a year.
- Why are you going to Ecuador when you can teach English here?
- Because I want to learn Spanish.
- Well then you should have studied Spanish in college instead of English!
- I actually did study Spanish… and I didn’t study English.  What I meant to say is I want my Spanish to get better.
- Well I’m sure an experience teaching anywhere will help you get a job in a school when you get back.
- Yeah I hope so… wait, no!  I’m not trying to be a teacher as a career.  I’m applying to medical school right now — I'm  just going to Ecuador to teach English in the meantime.
- If you want to go to medical school why did you study Spanish in college?
- I was pre-med too, I just also like Spanish.
- Why didn’t you apply to medical school last year.
- I did and... well, I don’t want to talk about it.
- Oh OK, I got it now.  You want to go to medical school in Ecuador.
- No!  I just want to teach English there.
- (*squints eyes and thinks hard*) So you want to go to medical school in America, and to prepare yourself you are going to Ecuador for a year to be an ESL teacher?
- Correct.
- This makes no sense to me.
- I know.