Farewell

This post is a bit confused chronologically, but I was short on time in between my last English class and my trip to Peru so I never got a chance to write about the end of my teaching soon after it happened. It also happens to make more sense to combine my departure from SECAP with my final departure from Ecuador in my last blog post, so I'll join the two in this final chapter of "E is for Ecuador."

School's Out Forever

The end of the semester was supposed to be a Thursday, but SECAP wanted the grades a day earlier so I gave the final exam on Tuesday and just handed out grades and certificates on Wednesday so that there would be no business to take care of for my going-away party on Thursday.

After administering the final in my first class and all schoolwork for the year was over, a bunch of students hung around to see what kind of silly unprofessional things they could get me to do now that they weren't really my students anymore. Their approach was to play card games and have the loser do something embarrassing. For our games it was to do the "8,888", which meant putting your back to a wall and drawing out a figure-eight with your butt to simulate dropping it like it's hot.

The first game we played was called "nervous donkey" and it involved putting down cards and trying to be the first one to slap the pile when a particular card was dealt. They were all a lot slower than me so I didn't have to do the punishment, but they at least managed to get some good slaps on me during the game.

Me dying laughing at the girls screaming at each other for slapping too hard

After a few rounds of losing, one of my students, Maria Luisa, challenged me to a one-on-one round of the Ecuadorian card game cuarenta (translation: forty). I had played before, but the rules of the game are actually quite complex and it requires good memory skills to win. She absolutely destroyed me, but as I did my 8,888 as punishment, everyone was laughing at me too hard to get a camera out and document it before I was done.

The girls insisted that we take two gender separate photos so that I would have "two memories"

Dudes, dudes, dudes!

My second class went to get hamburgers at a famous hamburger truck in Ambato that I had never heard of in my previous eleven months living there. Coincidentally, I played lots of cards with them too.

The only thing I remember about this game is that people kept making up rules

I told them to make funny faces for this one. I don't think they all understood.

Goodbye Party

My students got it together for my goodbye party and rented out a private room at a bar in Ambato. I was very pleased at how many people showed up, especially the students who didn't pass the semester and some of my old students who I hadn't seen since my first module.

Me with my students from the first semester

It started with just the students from my first, younger class. They got bored after a little while talking and eating chips, so they decided that they wanted to see if they could get me to do more embarrassing things. Given my class' maturity level throughout the year, this was not at all surprising.

The first game they played was spin the bottle, but the person who the bottle landed on had to answer any question that the person opposite to him/her asked. After a very inappropriate first question and answer between two of my students, I put an end to that game but let them suggest another.

Just as they had agreed on a new game to play, one of my students warned, "Teacher, this game is almost sexual." Everyone sat in a circle and had to pass a long rectangular piece of paper to the adjacent person using only his/her mouth. After each successful lap around the circle, a section of the paper was ripped off and the rectangle got shorter, making lip-touching during a pass more likely. Again, this game had grammar school written all over it and I stopped it before anyone got the chance to yell "Ichiiiiii, (insert student's name) kissed Teacher!"

Later on in the night some students from my second class came too. Like with my first class, some people I hadn't seen since first semester showed up and I was glad to see them again before I left Ecuador.

It's not clearly visible in this picture, but the guy in the front is wearing a hat that says "Hat.com" which always made me laugh when he wore it to class

My students left me with some parting gifts to remember my time in Ecuador like a llama wool sweater, a picture of the class, and various other small souvenirs.

Although I would go on to remain in South America for another three weeks, I said goodbye to all of my students because I was fairly certain that I wouldn't be back in Ambato after my trip to Peru long enough to see any of them again.

Adios, SECAP

Our students weren't the only ones who wanted to see us off with fond memories of Ecuador, so SECAP was nice enough to throw Caitlin and I a little party before our departure to Peru. It was a pretty basic setup with some traditional Ecuadorian food like llapingachos (fried potato patties with eggs and sausage) and fritada (fried pork with mote). They thought the festivities would be enough to make up for those last two months when they never had paper for us, but I'll never be able to forget those dark and uncertain times.

How many SECAP employees does it take to buy a ream of paper? Apparently more than five.

My favorite secretary, Elizabeth, wasn't there for our going away party, but I made sure to get a picture with her later since she was my A4 hookup during the SECAP paper shortage.

We also had a final get together with the rest of our gringo friends in Ambato who were still around, because by the time we would return to Ambato some of them would have already finished their time in Ecuador and be home.

From left to right: Latelin, Anna "Beast" Borkowski, LT, me, Wilson, and that loud girl

We didn't forget about this guy in the park who sold the best mora (Andean blackberry) ice in the city and caused a line of cars to form down the block on Sundays when he also had coconut and dealt out cocomora cones.

Last but not least, I got a shot with my Spanish teacher, Guillermo. Coincidentally, he used to live in Brooklyn and was giving me advice about where to go to find Ecuadorians around town.

On the left is his Guillermo's chatty sister, Maria, who would inadvertently give me an additional 30 minute conversation lesson after class to discuss life in America and gossip about Ecuador.

The Real Departure

Caitlin and I had originally planned to travel in Peru until the day before I was leaving for the U.S. in order to maximize our travel time and not get stuck in Ambato with nothing to do. However, the way the bus schedule worked out meant that we would have to return to Ambato three days before my flight out of Ecuador.

This made me a bit nervous because I was concerned that being in Ambato for too long before I left for good would make me nostalgic about my recently terminated experience and make me want to remain for another year. After all, Ecuador is an exciting country, I could continue to improve my Spanish, and teaching is supposed to be much easier the second year (oh, how much fun it could be if I just got a deferral from medical school for a year!).

When people move away from a place they have been in for a long time, they are hesitant to go because they don't want to leave the things they have: friends, relationships, and routines. In my life I have lived in a number of different places, and each time I prepared to leave where I was for a new place, I was struck with this brand of trepidation and anxiety. I always felt like when I went away I would be missing all the good parts of the place I was leaving, and that in my place would be a jigsawed gap in the puzzle that everyone in my life was a piece of.

Before I left for Peru I said goodbye to all of my friends and students. I had visions of my friends sitting around a table with an empty seat on a Saturday night wondering what they were going to do without me, and my students sitting in a classroom without a teacher waiting for someone to tell them what page to open up to.

When I went back to Ambato, I had to stop by SECAP to drop off some certificates I had forgotten to give out before I left for Peru. I was conflicted about whether I should stop by my classes to see how they were doing with the new course or whether I shouldn't because it would just remind me of my teaching days and make me sad. I decided to go, and the classroom I saw was completely different than the way I had left it.

There was obviously a new teacher in the front of the room, but only one of my former students was back. That particular student was very fond of me and was always starting, "Teacher, don't leave" chants during the last few weeks of classes. I don't know what I expected her to do when she saw me that day, but it was somehow disappointing. She just asked me about my trip and wished me good luck with school. No longer was she trying to convince me to stay in Ecuador because no one would be able to replace me.

It was probably weird for her to have a new teacher the first day of class, but soon enough she got to know her new teacher and her new classmates, and what she thought would be a corrupted version of a period of time she cherished ended up being a completely distinct and rewarding experience in its own right.

I'm glad I ended up going to my old classroom that day, because this short episode reminded me that life isn't a puzzle; there isn't a set place for everybody and things don't result broken and incomplete without all the original pieces. Over time, just about everything in life changes. People make new relationships with each other and routines change. Life doesn't necessarily get worse when someone leaves his spot; things move around, new pieces may come into frame, and a lot of times the big picture ends up looking better afterward than it did before.

I had a formative experience in Ecuador and I'll hold onto my memories of that year forever, but I know that even if I stayed in Ambato for the rest of my life I would never be able to replicate that time. At first it's sad, and at times scary, to move on, but if you don't keep looking forward to the future you run the risk of searching for a past that's no longer there.