Round Two: Teach!

Betty Azar Changed my Life

This week I made copies of my custom books, put on my wristwatch, and combed my hair to the side for the real start of my second semester teaching English. After abysmal turn-outs the day we were supposed to start teaching at SECAP, we delayed the start of the semester two weeks and now I actually have a respectable number of students. I have eleven in both of my classes, which is about half of what I had last semester but a great number for a language class where face-time with the teacher is much more important than in other subjects.

In an attempt to remedy the worst part of teaching at SECAP (not having a book or curriculum), I prepared a workbook for my class by pulling from a number of different ESL books I had lying around so that I have something to guide me, the students have something to study from, and I am not spending an hour every day before class making 200+ copies of random worksheets I found on the internet. I have only taught with the book for one week, but I can already confess that Betty Azar has changed my life.

First step to teaching English like a boss: Azar-up

After an extended break, it feels good to be working again and to see my students who have been absent from my life for the past month and a half. It had been so long since I taught that I was actually pretty nervous the first day of classes like I was when I first started. It is a lot easier this time though, because my students already know me and what I expect of them.

Search Words

Blogger (the website I'm using to write this blog) has a really cool stat feature that records things like how many people visit my blog and what country they are viewing it from. For instance, this month I got views from the United States, Ecuador, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Bangladesh, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Hungary. Most of the time when it is a country other than the U.S. it is only one pageview, so it is not like I have fans who read my blog regularly around the world. Still, it is really cool to think how easy the internet makes it to connect with people around the globe for free.

Outside of the location of viewers, one of the most interesting stats Blogger records is what words people type into search engines to arrive at my blog. Most of the time it is something like "Krishna Surasi's blog" or "e is for ecuador", but other times they are pretty unusual and it makes me laugh to see how people are directed to my blog.

For instance, one of the recent searches that led to my blog was "zipline jargon." Some dude was looking to learn zipline lingo so he wouldn't sound like an amateur when he hit the canopy, but instead he was lead to a story about how I feared I would soil myself while doing a massive bungee-swing.

Another one was "ecuador birthday traditions." Someone was probably preparing to visit Ecuador for her birthday and wanted to see what kind of fun celebrations she would be in for. What she learned when she read my blog was that she will get a sinus infection from having her face shoved into a cake and she will probably be whipped with a belt for every year old she is.

One of the searches that actually was appropriate was "leísmo en ecuador." I'm glad to see that someone who was interested in learning about leísmo in Ecuador was directed to my site, and I hope that they learned something from my reflections on the Spanish in Ecuador since it is a pretty specific topic that I don't think many people write about.

Culture of Travel

An aspect of Ecuadorian culture that I have gleaned by talking to people here is how the culture affects people's perspective on travel. I noticed from the beginning when talking to people about where to go in Ecuador that most Ecuadorians haven't seen a lot of places in their homeland. This is surprising because the country is so small and to get from one end of the country to the other is about a twelve-dollar, twelve-hour bus ride. As an American, it is absurd to think that Ecuadorians—who always tell me that I haven't experienced Ecuador until I have visited so-and-so city—have never been there themselves.

Part of the reason why Ecuadorians don't tend to travel much, even within their own country, is because of the culture. Ecuadorians are much more family-centric than we are in the States, and that fact is most obviously demonstrated by the large number of Ecuadorians I know who continue to live at home well into adulthood. My host brother, for example, is over thirty years old, married with a child, and he still lives with his parents. If people depend so much on living with their family, I understand a little better why it would be unappealing to travel far away from home.


Ecuadorians are always shocked to hear that in the States some parents kick their kids out of the house when they turn eighteen or finish college and they need to find their own places. I told this to an Ecuadorian last night and she asked me how an eighteen year old is able to pay for an apartment alone. When I told her that my mother continued living at home but had to pay her father rent she could not believe it. My parents should probably be concerned that too much Ecuadorian doesn't rub off on me, otherwise they might have me living in their basements for another ten years.


DELE


I have decided that while I am in Ecuador, I will take the test of Spanish language proficiency called DELE. The test is fairly comprehensive and even includes a one-on-one conversation with a tester. To prepare, I have signed up for classes at a local language institute inexplicably named Mega World.


When I told one of my friends that I would be taking Spanish classes to prepare for the test, he made a good point by asking me why I didn't just talk to people. I'm in Ecuador and everyone here speaks Spanish, so why can't I just walk around talking to people to practice?


While I agree that there is a great deal to be learned just by shooting the breeze with Ecuas around town, I know that my Spanish is not improving as much as it could if I was taking classes. At this point in my Spanish education, I can pretty much always convey the meaning I want and the person listening will almost always understand what I am trying to say. Just because I am understood, however, does not mean that I am speaking at the level that a college educated Spanish speaker should be at.


When I talk to people in Spanish, they see that I have studied it for a while and can communicate well. They therefore frequently let my mistakes slide uncorrected because they don't want to insult me or break up the flow of the conversation. The same thing happens in English when someone, like a professor from another country, always makes the same mistake but never fixes it because he is still perfectly understandable and no one has the nerve to tell a PhD that he doesn't know how to use the third-person singular "s".


Another reason why just talking to my Ecuadorian friends hasn't always been helping me learn Spanish is because when I ask questions about the correctness of various grammatical constructions, they rarely agree on what the right answer is. The other day after class as my students were filing out, I wrote two sentences on the board and asked them which one was correct. The responses ranged from both perfectly correct, to one very correct and one less correct, to one correct and one completely incorrect. 

People are not very good at analyzing their own language, so I am happy that I found a good language school here in Ambato to take classes and get my Spanish in top-form for the test.


Pronunciashun


I used to tutor Spanish in college, and I remember one time there was a guy who brought in a paper with a very bizarre spelling mistake he kept making throughout the entire thing. In present perfect constructions, he was writing "a" instead of "ha" for the third-person singular conjugation of the verb haber. I was further puzzled by the fact that when I asked him to read his paper out loud, he spoke with an excellent accent as if Spanish was his first language.


As I continued talking to him I found out that Spanish was the language he spoke at home growing up, so he was essentially a native speaker. Since he went to school in the States, however, he never learned to read or write in Spanish and he was rarely exposed to materials that would teach him correct spelling. Since Spanish reads exactly as it is written, he went the opposite direction and wrote it exactly as it sounds, which is a problem because some different letters have the same sound (in Spanish, the "h" in words starting with "h" is silent, so "ha" is pronounced just like "a").


The mistake made perfect sense after I took into account his background with Spanish, but at the moment it was incredibly confusing. Language classes in the States are so focused on objective measurements, so reading and writing are stressed more that oral examinations and exercises. Anyone who studies past basic Spanish would be exposed to the conjugations of the verb haber, so I couldn't comprehend how this student could possibly speak the language very well but commit such a grave spelling error.

This one student isn't the only person who makes spelling mistakes because of Spanish's homophonous letters. The other day I saw this sign on the streets of Montañita:

Translation: "Don't vote garbage"

The error in this sign arises from the fact that in Ecuador (and probably other places too, I'm not sure) "v" and "b" are pronounced the same (the English "b" sound). When people are spelling something to another person, they often have to clarify by sayin "b de burro/b grande" or "v de vaca/v pequeña" so that the person listening knows which letter they are referring to.


So while this sign could be encouraging the citizens of Montañita to not vote "garbage" politicians into office, it is likely a misspelled attempt at getting people to not botar garbage into the streets.

Things Ecuadorians Like: Ecuador

In spite of the fact that the entire country of Ecuador is only about the size of the state of Colorado, its divisive geography has led to the development of distinct cultures in its different geographical regions.

The most well-known region outside of Ecuador is the Galápagos Islands, which are isolated from the rest of the mainland by 972 kilometers of water. Residents of the Galápagos have a much different experience than mainlanders due to all the crazy dinosaur-animals that live on the Islands and the international tourists they attract.

On the mainland, the Andes mountains cut through the center of the country and divide it into three more distinct regions. The far west area of the country are the lowlands of the coast, where the weather is hot and humid and the Spanish is so fast that it is often difficult to understand for the uninitiated.

Drive a few hours east (and about nine thousand feet high) and you will find yourself in my stomping grounds, the so-called Sierra. Due to the high altitude, the climate in the mountains is surprisingly temperate considering that some areas lie directly on the Equator. If hot weather breeds fast talkers, the chilly Sierra air lends itself to a much slower Spanish that makes mountain cities a great place to learn the language.

People on the coast are known for being more laid back and friendly than their mountain-dwelling compatriots, who are stereotyped as being snooty and conservative. Regionalism is particularly strong in these two areas, and debates about which region of Ecuador is the best are always heated.

Lastly, farther out east past the Sierra lies the Orient, where cities have sprung up in the middle of the Amazon Forest and you are likely to find yourself in a town where more people speak an indigenous language than the Castellano of Ecuador's Spanish conquerors.

Regardless of the diverse regional cultures and attitudes that pervade Ecuador, every Ecuadorian seems to have at least one thing in common: they all love Ecuador.

I cannot help but notice the startling amount of pride that Ecuadorians exhibit for their homeland. One of the first questions I had when I came to Ecuador was why there is a fingerprint on the Ecuadorian national soccer jersey. The answer is that it is a reference to a campaign throughout Ecuador to promote Ecuadorian pride and the purchase of products made in-country.

Translation: It's much better it it's made in Ecuador

The posters for this campaign highlight another way that Ecuadorians are constantly showing off their pride in their country, and that is by using the colors of the Ecuadorian flag everywhere. I have seen the Ecuadorian flag invoked in countless ads by layering yellow, blue, and red into whatever is being depicted in the photo.

It is also not hard to find any kind of clothing sporting the Ecuadorian "tricolor" (especially if you are looking for a tracksuit). The only red, white, and blue clothing I have seen recently are a pair of  American flag Zubaz. While these pants clearly demonstrate that the wearer is proud to be an American, they would surely draw ridicule if worn in public in the States (something that would never happen to an Ecuadorian wearing his flag's colors from head to toe).

If you laugh, you don't love America.

The idea that things made in Ecuador are better isn't simply a slogan thrown around by the government either; Ecuadorians really do love things that are from Ecuador. Exhibit A: Pilsener.

Pilsener is a beer brewed in Ecuador, and anyone not from Ecuador will tell you that it is terrible. Ecuadorians, however, love it and would only drink something else if it was the other beer brewed in Ecuador, Club.

At first I thought that the Pilsener preference was simply a matter of convenience since imported beers are more expensive and Ecuadorians would rather drink the cheapest brew available. False. I talked to an Ecuadorian recently who traveled to Germany for work. He assured me that he tried everything they had to offer and that Pilsener is still the best beer he has ever tasted (but what do Germans know about beer anyway, right?).

The Ecuadorian pride extends beyond the realm of commercial goods, and in my experience, Ecuadorians are also quite concerned about how their culture is portrayed and what their reputation is like in other parts of the world.

I have an Ecuadorian family friend who always calls other Ecuadorians out for being rude. Once we were in a touristy place and there were some tourists going up the wrong staircase while the people who worked there just watched. My family friend went off on the people working there about how they should be ashamed of themselves for not helping the tourists and that they are insulting Ecuadorians at large by being rude.

Another time, I was on the bus with a bunch of other foreign friends and the guy collecting fares tried to charge us more than the regular amount. I asked the Ecuadorian sitting behind me how much the ride should be, and within seconds there were at least four Ecuadorians around me yelling at the guy collecting money about how he shouldn't be doing things like that to tourists because we would think that all Ecuadorians are thieves.

In places like bus terminals and public bathrooms there are frequently signs posted on the walls saying "show your culture" that are essentially asking people using the facilities to be respectful and clean to represent Ecuadorian culture well.

Lastly, whenever Ecuadorians meet me for the first time, they are always very eager to hear about what I have done in Ecuador and offer their own suggestions about what I need to see. I have been invited by people I barely know to go on trips to the jungle because they assured me that my experience would not be complete if I didn't make a trip there. Ecuadorians are very aware and appreciative of the fact that I left the U.S. to live in Ecuador, and they in turn feel as if it is their duty to show me the best of what Ecuador has to offer in return.

All in all I am impressed with the enthusiasm and pride that Ecuadorians have for their country, and I have already been thoroughly convinced that Ecuador is a special country that has much more to offer than its size suggests, both in the diverse beauty of its nature as well as the quality of its people.

Patience...

Delays Ahead

There are a lot of things about life in Ecuador that are different from what I am accustomed to in the U.S. For instance, the people here are a lot touchier, and even greetings with complete strangers manifest themselves in kisses on the cheek or awkward, extra-manual body contact between dudes. Most of the differences are easy to get used to because they simply involve learning a customary courtesy or accepting the fact that people in this country put ketchup on everything, but others have more profound implications on the way I live my life on a daily basis. One of the most difficult adjustments for me has been dealing with Ecua-time.

Ecuadorians have shown themselves to be a warm and welcoming people, but they are not celebrated organizers. I'm currently learning this first-hand as I deal with the start of my next semester teaching at SECAP.

Since SECAP is a trade school, the students are of all ages and they sign up independently for individual semesters of classes. Because registration is semester-by-semester and the teachers at the school frequently move in and out of positions, it is up to the students to remember on their own when classes start and to sign up for them. To help recruit students every semester, SECAP puts out ads in the paper when the new semester starts.

This semester, the administration neglected to put out any advertisements for the classes. The result was that I had three students show up for my first class.

The cultural difference was immediately highlighted when I brought up the fact that there were only three students in my class to the administration. "Don't worry,"they told me "more students will sign up over the next couple of weeks."

In the U.S., the first day of class is the one that everyone attends. It is when the teacher has the opportunity to lay out all the rules and expectations for the class, and set the tone early on about how the class will run and what the students can expect from the course. One of the areas I skimped on in my first semester was not clearly establishing all the rules of the course on the first day. The result was that I had students who would come in late to class and miss test days with no real consequences other than a stern talking to.

This semester I was determined to get it right so I wrote up all the rules clearly outlining how the class would operate and the repercussions for things like missed tests and coming to class late. I ironed my shirt and debuted a new sportcoat so the students would know from the start that I'm a boss. I was all ready to give my first class and kick off the new semester on the right foot when only three people showed up.

I have no problem teaching a class of three people. In fact, it would be a great class for the students because they would have much more talking time with me. What I do have a problem with is having students come in a week after classes have started so that they are already behind and down a week of attendance.

In the U.S., we place a high value on scheduling and promptness. The American in me wanted to go on a tirade about how we have a schedule and the students should have all already been registered long before the teacher came in for the first day of class, but then I remembered that I am not in America.

The only way to survive living abroad is to roll with the punches and adopt the local attitudes, so I holstered my frustration and came to an agreement with the administration to push everything back a week so we can get more students, inform them when classes begin, and start this semester the right way. The more time I spend here the more my Ecuador is beginning to show, so let's just hope that I adjust back to American-time when I head back Stateside.

Homestay Horrors

Since I have not been working this week due to the delay of the start of the semester, I have been spending a lot of time in my house. The extended family was back in Ambato visiting, so I got to share some warm memories with the children of the family who never cease to astound me with their ability to have multiple distinct crying episodes in a single minute.

Yesterday morning I was woken up by the sound of the youngest kid crying in the bathroom right outside my door. The reason? He was taking a dump and he was screaming for his dad to come wipe his butt. At 7:30 in the morning.

There is an old saying in my family that sums up how I feel about this situation. It goes, "If you can't wipe your own ass, don't take a shit at 7:30 in the morning."

Tonight I was scavenging in the kitchen for leftovers from lunch when I found that there was still some chicken soup left. I poured myself a few ladles and a hunk of unidentified chicken meat and began distractedly eating it while checking my e-mail.

Halfway through the soup I picked up the chicken part and tried to find some meat on it. I was biting different promising areas, but coming up short each time. I started looking more closely at the piece of meat in my hand and noticed a flap of skin that was hanging off in a weird way. It had ridges on it and I thought it looked a lot like the floppy thing that chickens have on their heads. Then I noticed a slit that looked like an eye socket. Then, about 30 seconds later that I should have, I realized that I was in fact sucking on a chicken head.

"I'm watching you!"

When it finally hit me that I was eating a chicken head it freaked me out and I actually jumped in my seat a little. Again, I was shown in dramatic fashion how American I really am by being scared by finding a chicken part in my chicken soup.

I eat chicken all the time in the U.S., but because our culture (at least in N.Y.) has managed to put so much distance between the living bird and what ends up on our plates, I am still thrown by seeing meat that reminds me that it came from a live creature.

And if you think this image is going to give you nightmares, wait until I upload a picture of a whole guinea pig being roasted on a skewer. Trips to the pet store will never be the same.

Grammar Talk: Impersonal Constructions

SECAP Ambato decided not to put out advertising for this semester's classes. The result was that I had three students in my class on Tuesday and we have postponed classes for a week to promote the coming semester in the local newspaper and get some more students.

The result of this one-week extension of my break is that I have been hitting the Spanish grammar books again to put an end to my doubts about impersonal constructions and move forward on my quest to becoming a Spanish genius.

Is it like English?

My first instinct when trying to put together impersonal statements was to use the same constructions we use in English and translate them directly.

In English, one common way to create impersonal sentences is to use the second-person singular pronoun you, as in You have to cook oatmeal before you eat it. While this utterance uses an ostensibly specific pronoun, it is really making an impersonal statement and the advice that oatmeal should be cooked before it is eaten applies to everyone, not just the person being directly spoken to.

I can't recall ever hearing this use of the second-person singular tú in Spanish to convey an impersonal meaning as it would in English, but B&B states that it is used informally in Spain, even in situations in which the speakers are using usted with one another, Es increíble, si lo piensas (It's incredible if you think of it). In Ecuador, I never use or hear this construction, so I would not recommend its use in this country.

Another common impersonal construction we employ in English is using the third-person plural pronoun they to refer to no one in particular when the subject is either obvious or unimportant.  

They say that talking on cell phones gives you cancer. Who is they? The speaker didn't bother mentioning the names of all the institutions that came to this conclusion because he either doesn't know their names or he is talking to someone who wouldn't care even if he did know them.

Also, They arrested Tim's uncle yesterday. Since an impersonal construction is used here, we can assume that the captor of Tim's uncle was the police since that is the most likely possibility. If Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife had done the arresting, the impersonal they would probably not have been utilized because they are not the most likely subject and they deserve specific mentioning.

In Spanish, the use of the third-person plural forms to signify impersonal constructions works exactly as it does in English, Hablan feo en la costa. The speaker is not referring to the speech of particular individuals, but to people from the coast in general.

I encounter this construction frequently in Ecuador and use it a lot myself since it is so similar to how I would speak in English. This is perhaps the easiest way to make correct impersonal statements for native English speakers.

How One Uses the Impersonal

A less common form of the impersonal in English is to use the word one to mean a person in general, One should never take calls at the dinner table. In English, this sounds a bit stuffier than using you or they to make impersonal sentences, but the Spanish word uno/una functions the same way, Uno tiene que aprobar para pasar al próximo nivel.

As I'll talk about later on, the use of uno to denote an impersonal subject comes in handy when pronominal verbs make using the impersonal se impossible.

Spanish Only Constructions

There are two more ways to express impersonal subjects in Spanish that we do not have equivalents for in English (both of which are quite confusing).

The first is the one that I was familiar with before I came to Ecuador: the impersonal se. In this construction, the pronoun se is added before a verb conjugated only in the third-person singular, Se come mucho pescado en la costa (They eat a lot of fish on the coast).

The impersonal se can lead to some ambiguities when the subject is singular (since the impersonal se is never plural, Se venden manzanas en el mercado can only be passive), but I rarely find that they interfere with the essential message of an utterance because context clues are usually available to clear things up.

For instance, B&B gives the example sentence En España se come mucho. In a discussion about a particular type of food, garlic for instance, the se in this sentence would be interpreted as the passive se and it would read A lot of garlic is eaten in Spain.

If the discussion was about the quantity of food eaten in general, it would be interpreted as the impersonal se and would read People in Spain eat a lot. Like I mentioned before, the main point usually comes across depending on the context and the impersonal and passive se rarely get me mixed up.

The impersonal se is very common in my experience and it is definitely worth mastering.

*It should be noted that in sentences with pronominal verbs, the impersonal se cannot always be used. For instance, the pronoun is essential to the meaning of the verb cansarse. In this sentence from B&B, Con estas cosas se cansa mucho, the subject is someone specific and the meaning is that He/She gets very tired with these things. If someone wanted to make this sentence impersonal it would be impossible to have two ses next to each other. Instead, the pronoun uno/una must be used to make it Con estas cosas se cansa uno mucho (One gets very tired with these things).

The last variety of impersonal constructions is the one that has eluded me until I arrived in Ecuador and started paying close attention when listening to people speak and reading the newspaper. It is the impersonal se with the personal a.

When the subject of a sentence is a living thing that is capable of doing things to itself, the passive se can lead to difficult ambiguities. The example provided in B&B is, Se mataron dos ingleses. This can be interpreted as a passive, reciprocal, or reflexive se to mean that Two Englishmen were killed, Two Englishmen killed each other, or Two Englishmen killed one another.

A common attempt from an English speaker to rectify this ambiguity would be to invoke the passive using ser (Dos ingleses fueron matados). B&B notes that this style is typical of written language but rare in spontaneous speech.

To avoid this ambiguity in spontaneous speech, therefore, an impersonal construction can be used to imply an unidentified human agent as the subject to eliminate the reciprocal and reflexive interpretations. With this construction the sentence would read, Se mató a dos ingleses. The only interpretation here is that two Englishmen were killed. The information conveyed is the same as the construction with the passive se (two Englishmen were killed by an unnamed subject) but without the possibility of confusing it with other constructions.

Other examples from B&B include:

• Se persiguió y encarceló a millares de creyentes. (Thousands of believers were persecuted and jailed)

• Se incitaba a las muchachas a trabajar más que los muchachos. (The girls were encouraged to work harder than the boys.)

•  ...hasta que se les pueda evacuar (...until they can be evacuated)

B&B notes that many speakers prefer to use le/les instead of lo/la/los/las with this construction even when the pronouns are the direct object of the verb, which explains the pronoun choice in the last example (leísmo anyone?).

Conclusion

Expressing impersonal with:

• Second-person singular: not particularly common where I am; I don't recommend it.
• Third-person plural: easy for English speakers and common in Spanish; do it.
• Uno/Una: more familiar for English speakers than the impersonal se, and necessary with pronominal verbs.
• Impersonal se: tricky for English speakers, but learn it.
• Impersonal se + personal a: technically an impersonal construction, but used to express otherwise exceedingly ambiguous passive constructions; worth at least being familiar with.

New Year's in Drag

I had a long, one-month break after my first semester of teaching English at SECAP, so I met up with my friend who teaches with me, Caitlin, and her visiting friend from home to travel around Ecuador a bit.

Mindo

Our first stop was a town called Mindo. It is a very small place in the cloud forest, about two hours outside of Quito, where visitors go to enjoy nature (birdwatching, hiking, butterfly farm) and do extreme sports (rafting, zip-lining, bungee jumping). I was fortunate to have been able to experience both the natural and extreme aspects of Mindo during the one day we spent there.

We got to Mindo late at night, so we went right to sleep and starting exploring early the next morning. The first thing we did was visit the butterfly farm in Mindo. It is essentially a big room with with net walls and butterflies everywhere. There were so many flying around that it was hard to walk anywhere without bumping into them constantly, and they occasionally land on visitors' bodies and hang out.

The pattern on these guys is supposed to look like the head of a snake, although I don't see it anymore.

I'm not a huge fan of butterflies in general because they still freak me out like any other bug. However, it was cool seeing so many of them in one place and there were some massive butterflies the size of my open palm, the likes of which I had never seen before.

After enjoying the serenity of the butterfly farm, we all decided to get radical and head off to do zip-lining. A zip-line consists of a cable connected to two distant points that slopes downward. The user gets into a harness and attaches a (pardon my technical jargon) spinning thing to the cable and slides down, fast. The attraction of the zip-lines in Mindo is that since it is in the could forest, the views from up on the cable are great.

In addition to sliding down the cable in a seated position in the harness, we also had the option of two other positions called superman and butterfly. Superman puts your body horizontally so it is like you are flying through the forest like a superhero, and butterfly situates you upside down so the harness painfully digs into your hips and makes you wonder why you chose to do it over the other two perfectly enjoyable options. I hate extreme sports and won't usually even ride a roller coaster, but I was feeling particularly brave that day and tried out all the positions. The pictures were taken on my friend's camera, so I will put them up on the Photos page when I get a hold of them.

Ambiguous advertising

Before I go on to describe what I did next, it will be necessary to go back to earlier that morning when I bought tickets to the zip-line. After I had purchased a pass to do the normal zip-lines, the girl at the desk brought a new attraction to my attention: Tarzan Swing. The poster advertising the attraction provided absolutely zero information about what it was, except that it would be extreme with a capital "X". The girl trying to sell me the ticket mimed something that resembled a zip-line on a long cord that swings back and forth. She was talking really fast when she was describing it to me, but I didn't ask her to say it again because she was cute and I didn't want to embarrass myself by admitting that I didn't understand. The only utterance from her I completely understood was "It's really cool." "I'm really cool too"—I thought to myself—and a ticket for Tarzan Swing was bought.

Now back to the cloud forest. After I had completed zip-lining, our guide started fitting me into a new harness for the Tarzan Swing. I still had in my head that it would be a modified zip line in which my body would swing from side to side while I went down the cable. We walked up to a platform over a huge pit, and the only thing I could see overhead was a series of cables coming from several directions meeting at a common point far off from the platform.

I started to use my imagination to figure out what I was going to connect my harness to and where I was going to slide since all the cables led to the same point. The stupidity of what I signed myself up for didn't click until I asked the guide what was actually going to happen. Words weren't necessary in this case, and all it took was one casual wave of the guide's hand to reveal that Tarzan Swing was simply a free fall off the platform.

Like I said before, I am not much of an adrenaline junkie, so I ran as fast as I could away from the edge of the platform and refused to do it until I saw someone else do it first. Thirty minutes and three Tarzan Swings by other tourists later, I figured since I already paid for the thing I might as well do it so I sacked up and strapped in. One of the scariest parts of the Tarzan Swing was that it took four guys about five minutes to hook up all the necessary cables to me. Wires and pulleys were flying all around my body, and I could imagine how easy it would be to get them tangled up or miss a buckle.


The way it works is that they tie the rope to your harness very tightly and hold you back until the gate is opened, so that instead of having to jump off they just let go and the rope pulls you off. When I was all hooked up and ready to go, I had a few final questions for my guide.

- How do I fall?
- Upright.
- Do I hold on to this?
- Yes.
- Will I faint?
- No. Worst case scenario you shit your pants.

With those words of encouragement I was off, and as I was swinging back and forth I screamed every Spanish language expletive I could come up with. The guides all got a kick out of it, and I'm glad they did because I annoyed them enough by pacing around the platform for thirty minutes before finally deciding to go.



New Year's

After Mindo I headed back to Ambato so I could be home in time for the New Year's celebrations. I got ready to go out with some friends in a popular neighborhood of Ambato called Ficoa. As I was leaving, my host father warned me that it would be difficult to find a cab, and he was right because it took me fifty minutes to get one (an absurd amount of time in Ambato) and I had to pay twice as much. I was reluctant to give the guy so much money for a ride, but when we were driving and I saw how difficult it was that night, I started thinking that three dollars wasn't enough for what he had to go through.

On New Year's Eve in Ambato (and I think in other parts of the country as well), men dress up like women and take to the streets to molester passing cars. The get in the way of traffic and don't move until the drivers hand them some change. It was incredibly bizarre, but even more annoying because the cab had to stop two or three times every block to give the cross dressers money.

A more understandable New Year's tradition in Ecuador is the burning of big paper figures called "old years." These were displayed all over the place and they sometimes took creative and funny shapes, like one of president Correa in a gas mask and wheelchair from the police protest a few months ago. At midnight, people light their huge paper dolls on fire in the streets. A couple of minute after midnight, dolls were in flames everywhere, people were launching fireworks, and Ficoa straight looked like a war zone.

If you're looking at this picture right now going "Wow that looks kind of creepy", it's because it was.

Montañita

My month-long break between semesters ended with a trip to a popular beach town in Ecuador called Montañita. It was a long ~eight hours of bus travel to make it to the coast, but it felt really nice to breathe warm air and swim in the ocean.

It seems to be a common misconception that all of Ecuador is some kind of tropical paradise and that there is always hot weather here. On the coast that is certainly the case, but where I live in the mountains the weather is much cooler. We are on the equator, so the sun is still incredibly strong when it is out. However, because we are at such a high altitude the weather is much cooler here and I wear a jacket out at night. Not that I'm complaining (I actually prefer the weather here in the mountains) but I just thought I would give some justification for the long bus ride to anyone at home who was unaware of Ecuador's climate diversity.

While I was in Montañita, I gave surfing another try after a two-year hiatus. The lesson I took was a half-hour of "surf theory" on land followed by an hour and a half of water practice. I understand the utility of the land practice since a lot of getting up on a surfboard is having trained muscle memory so you can get into position fast enough to catch a wave, but I could not stop laughing at how ridiculous I felt paddling in the sand and bouncing up and down on my board to simulate riding a wave.

I am happy to say that for my second time surfing I am pretty awesome. I got up more times than I didn't, and my instructor was thoroughly impressed (I didn't tell him it wasn't my first time, but he never asked). If I keep up this pace of taking a surfing lesson for an hour and a half every two years, I should be able to go out on my own by the time I'm 73.

Back to School

This week I start my second semester of classes. Now that I have a few months of teaching experience, I feel incredibly optimistic about this semester. It was a strange feeling the first few days of classes being in front of a room full of students when my entire life I had always been one of the people sitting in a desk. I have come a long way to the point of actually feeling like a teacher and being comfortable managing 20+ students for two and a half hours at a time. I also recently bought a new sportcoat that I look great in, and everyone knows that nothing commands respect like well-fitting, smart-casual outerwear.

I talked to my parents this past week and they both asked me "When does school start?" They've asked me that plenty of times throughout my life, but it was very weird hearing that when they really meant to ask "When do you start work again?"

Word Recycle

I entered a travel writing contest about a month ago and just recently found out that I was not selected as a finalist. Since I wrote an essay for my application and it has to do with my experiences in Ecuador, I figured I would post it here so people could read it.


A Different Breed of Freedom

Life in the United States is on-rails. The American dream is a roller coaster that promises happiness to anyone willing to work hard enough to pay the park entrance fee (or jump the turnstile when no one is looking). Once inside, you learn the rules and understand that you have to wait in line just like everyone else in the park. When it is finally your turn, you file into the cart and strap yourself in. Remember, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. The rides are sometimes scary, but somewhere in the back of your head is the knowledge that you are on a track, and nothing can go wrong.

Ecuador has no rails. Life in this country is like playing on a trampoline in someone’s backyard. The amusement is cheap and accessible to just about anyone walking by, but there is no guarantee that it won’t collapse. There are no lines or any system that polices who gets to enjoy it—whoever can jump on and not get shoved off does whatever he wants. No maneuver is prohibited, no matter how ill conceived: back flips, mid-air chicken fights, flying dives into a nearby kiddy pool, or what have you. The taste of complete freedom is sweet, but along with it comes ample opportunity for dangerous mishaps (see: any episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos).

My point is that, as an American, I pride myself on all the sophisticated freedoms I am granted in my homeland. Lofty ideals like freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial come at a price, however, and there are some more basic freedoms that must be revoked in order to preserve our first-world way of life. This is usually done with the ends of fair treatment and safety in mind, but it has taken living abroad for me to realize that we do not enjoy every flavor of freedom available to mankind in the States. Nowhere has this been demonstrated to me more clearly than in third-world traffic.

I am from New York City, a place where the public transportation system tirelessly pumps the human life force of the city to every extremity of its five boroughs. There are precisely timed schedules, time-saving Metro Card swipes, and safety regulations abound. If a train doesn’t come on time or someone gets hurt due to reckless driving, the city is sure to have a mob of outraged citizens on its hands. Public transportation in New York is sometimes described as “crazy”; I think a better word is “busy”. No matter how packed the train gets, you can be certain that someone is carefully monitoring safety. Even though you might get pushed around a bit at rush hour, there is always an overarching order to things that the people respect.

Public transportation is Ecuador? Now that I would describe as crazy.

Let’s talk for a bit about the bus system, which is the form of transportation I utilize most frequently in my South American foster home. A new dimension of freedom is apparent even before the bus is boarded because in Ecuador, bus stops do little to control where buses stop. At any point on the route, prospective passengers can wave the bus down and board. Bus stops be damned; I’m free to get on the bus wherever I want in Ecuador!

Another consequence of not having bus stops is (you guessed it) the buses don’t stop. If you’re an old lady or you are carrying a baby you may get the luxury of a full stop and three seconds to get your feet off the ground. If you are anything else, you had better be ready to get a running start and grab on for dear life because that driver isn’t waiting for you to get behind the white line.

The same goes for getting off. Once the driver acknowledges that you want to exit the vehicle be prepared to hit the ground running because he wouldn’t want to (gasp!) make the bus come to a complete stop just for you to get off.

Jumping onto and off of a moving bus is the kind of freedom I yearned for as a kid. This was the kind of thing I saw people do in movies and television, but in the States the ride never starts moving until the safety bar has been securely locked in place. It appears to be such a simple action, but there are too many restrictions in the U.S. to even think about a driver not coming to a complete stop for a passenger.

Passengers are not the only people to take advantage of the freedoms allowed on buses. Vendors jump on buses at red lights and walk up and down the aisle to shamelessly hawk merchandise: candy, fruits, CDs, and pretty much anything else they can carry on board with them. On longer bus rides from city to city, bus vendors up their game.

I was once on a bus ride to the capital city and a man walked on with a large tin filled with fried chicken and French fries. People were buying hot meals on a bus ride from some guy who just jumped on from the side of the road. Did he have a permit to prepare food and sell it on a bus? I can say with confidence that he did not, but true freedom doesn’t require permits or licenses—if it is physically possible (and anything short of murder), no one is going to stop you from doing it in Ecuador.

When buses aren’t an option, taxis are the next best way to get around town. It’s easy, just wave one down, hop in the back seat, and fasten your seat… wait, where’s the seatbelt? Oh, that’s right, taxis never have seatbelts because no one cares. The law might technically oblige everyone to wear a safety belt, but in the incredibly rare instance that a car is pulled over, it’s nothing that can’t be solved by throwing a few bucks at the ambitious policeman.

But the freedom doesn’t stop at what happens inside the vehicle. Stop signs and red lights are best described as suggestions in Ecuador, and drivers ultimately pass through them as they see fit. That is not to say that Ecuadorian drivers are all blowing through red lights and stop signs, railing pedestrians and crashing into other cars at every intersection. They take precautions to prevent such disasters.

I can recall one salient example of a taxi I was in whose driver used an ingenious technique to prevent collisions. As he ignored a stop sign or red light, he would hit the panic button on his keychain so his car would emit a loud siren. This would (presumably) alarm possible side-coming traffic of his intent to ignore traffic conventions. I didn’t see him get into an accident while I was in the cab, so I can’t really say it was a bad method. What I do know is that it was a bold demonstration of the kind of freedom in this country that is unfathomable in my own.

I have learned from my experiences with third-world traffic that freedoms of every variety do not coexist in the United States. It is nice to know that life in the States is safe because everyone is on rails, but sometimes it is fun to jump off track and see what you can do when no one is around to stop you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just had a great idea involving a trampoline and I need to find a hose to fill up this kiddy pool.