Homebound

After lots of planning I have finalized my trip back to the United States for medical school interviews. One week from today I will be flying to Georgia for an interview where I will stay the night with a friend of mine (shout out to Michael T.) who goes to Emory. The next day I will be flying out to stay with my cousin (shout out to Rosie) who conveniently attends Wake Forest while I interview there. On the third day I will be flying back to New York for an interview and I will stay at home (shout out to Swamy and Marianne Surasi) for the remainder of the week. I have already started putting together a list of things I miss living in Ecuador that I will do when I am back in the States. The list includes, but is not limited to:

• Eating cereal and bagels
• Drinking apple juice (clear, clarified apple juice— not the opaque, syrupy garbage they drink here) 
• Watching late night American television
• Droid
• Driving a car
• Using a dryer
• Having solid bowel movements

Reflections on Ambato

The first month when we lived in Quito I was concerned about leaving to go live in Ambato. Quito is a huge city and they have pretty much anything you could want to buy or do if you are willing to search around for a bit. After living in Ambato for a month now, I have decided that I like living here.

One of the big differences living in Ambato is that it is not a tourist attraction. There is not really anything special to see or do here, so almost everyone in the city lives here. It is nice to not encounter any gringos around and it is fun when all the Ecuadorians are not jaded about meeting foreigners. That's not to say that there are never foreigners in Ambato, but there are few enough that it is still a treat to some Ecuadorians to be meeting an American.

For example, yesterday I went to the centro in Ambato to buy a suit for my interviews (yup, definitely forgot to pack that). Before I went I looked up all the relevant Spanish phrases I would need to know for buying a suit ("Nothing touches this body but pure silk.") so the conversation with the saleswoman started off pretty well. As we went on she threw me a couple of wild card questions like asking me about how I want the pants hemmed and I stumbled.

In Quito, a salesperson would at that point immediately begin speaking in English (if they hadn't already assumed you spoke English from the start) and not think twice that you are not Ecuadorian, but this woman didn't make the connection right away. After all, why would an American be buying a suit in the centro of Ambato, let alone be in Ambato in the first place? She asked me confoundedly, "You're not from here?" and I made her guess where I was from. She guessed Australia. I'm not sure why she guessed that, but I'll take it as a compliment since I've never met an Australian person I didn't want to be best friends with.

And I know what you are all wondering so I'll just put your mind to rest now. Yes, I look awesome in a suit.

Quito Revisited

On Saturday night I took a bus to Quito to meet up with some of the other volunteers and hang out together like we did the first month when we were all there. The bus ride is about two and a half hours long, so we spent the night in a hostel so we could stay out late and hang out the next morning as well.

I joined some of my friends since they already had a hostel room and paid for my bed. Sure enough, in typical Ecuador fashion, someone wasn't paying attention and put me in a room that was already full. Late that night, after waking up the strangers sleeping in our room and discussing the situation with them, two of my friends decided they would share a bed and the situation turned out fine. The next morning when they checked out they just explained to the guy that they were only paying for one person since they shared a bed and he didn't contest. I was pretty upset about it the night before when we realized we didn't have enough beds and we all paid for one, but in retrospect I guess that's what I should have expected from a hostel called The Magic Bean that charges ten dollars a night.

I have already talked about how crazy the regular public transportation buses are, but the buses that go long distances from city to city are also absurd in their own respect. When the buses make stops in small towns along the way to pick up passengers, food vendors usually jump on the bus and try to sell stuff. Today on the bus back from Quito, it started off pretty reasonably.

Some guy came on the bus and was trying to sell bottles of water to people. Next a girl came on and was selling fruits. That would be unusual in America, but it was not surprising for me in Ecuador. Next a woman came on and was selling hot tortillas of something in small plastic containers. That was the first thing that kind of impressed me because hot food is a step up from what I would normally expect to see hawked on a bus. Still, the food was well contained and easily carried by the seller.

The next person that came on the bus really got my attention. He was holding a big aluminum tin filled with fried chicken and french fries. He walked up and down the aisles and people were actually buying meals from him. I thought it was done after this, but the last guy that came on the bus had a hand full of chicken kebabs. On paper, he wasn't really that much more ridiculous than the fried chicken guy, but the image of the kebab vendor holding chicken on sticks at the front of the bus made my day. Keep in mind that all these people walked on and off the bus at the same stop. I would have killed to have had a video camera to record the parade of people selling food at that stop.

Back to the Grind

It was a fun weekend, but now I've got some quizzes to grade and some lessons to plan for this coming week. At least I have the motivation that after the next four days I will be back in the States for a mini-vacation in the Land of the Free. I won't be in Georgia or North Carolina for very long, but if you are in NYC any time from Oct. 20th to Oct. 23th let me know, otherwise you probably won't see me for another ten months.

Surasi for President!

Yesterday morning I was in my house, figuring out a new lesson plan because classes were canceled the day before due to a bus strike, when I got a call from my WorldTeach supervisor.  She informed me that there were some disturbances in Ecuador and that all of the volunteers were advised to remain in their houses until further notice.  That message seemed strange to me because where I am living it was very quiet, and although I hadn't left the house yet that day, everything seemed normal.  When I asked my host mother about it she filled me in that the police force had went on strike due to a supposed government plan to alter their benefits.

I called the other volunteers in my city to relay the message and one of them who had already went to school and returned home reported that the bus he was on had to take an alternate route because the police were causing a disturbance and blocking the streets.  A couple of hours later I passed by my host father who was watching the news and he told me that the president had been kidnapped by the police.  What made everything even more bizarre was how nonchalantly everyone in my house was taking the news.  I walked into the kitchen and told my host mother that the president was kidnapped.  She let out a concerned gasp, but then continued washing the dishes.  I would later find out that "kidnapped" is a strong word to describe what happened to the president (he was in a building and unable to leave because it was surrounded by protesters) but still, if that happened in the U.S. I feel like everyone would be glued to their T.V. until the situation was resolved.

From what I understand the following is what happened yesterday.  Early in the day the police force went on strike because they were under the impression that their benefits would be reduced (the government claims that this is not true and that the police had misinterpreted the legislation).  In Ecuador's major cities, the police were causing all kinds of drama like burning tires and trees in the streets and blocking off major roadways.  They even took control of the airports and flights were not coming into or leaving from Ecuador for a while. 

The president, Rafael Correa, went to the police station to talk the protesters down and he was assaulted and tear-gassed.  He had to be taken to a hospital for treatment, and it was in that building where he would be held unwillingly for most of the day.  At one point he got hold of a microphone, leaned out a window, and gave a speech in which he challenged the police protesters to stop hiding like cowards and come out and kill him if they wanted to.  If there is one thing I learned from this ordeal it is that Rafael Correa is a G, because that speech was awesome.

Later that night the military removed Correa from the hospital and brought him back to the (disconcertingly under-protected) Presidential Palace, where he gave a speech to a plaza full of his supporters. 

In the end, there has only been one confirmed death and the country is starting to stabilize again.  The military has re-taken control of the airports and they are in charge of enforcing the law until the police situation is sorted out.  I have been given the green-light to leave my house again, but I don't think I'll be visiting Quito this weekend like I had planned.  I'm curious to see what happens to the police force now and what this will mean for the rest of my time here in Ecuador.

For a while there, when the president was being held in the hospital, it occurred to me (and everyone from home I talked to that day) that there could very well be a job opening in the Presidential Palace in the near future.  I'm not saying that I'm running for president of Ecuador, but it would look killer on a med school application...

Vota por Surasi para Presidente de la República del Ecuador!

Things Ecuadorians Like: Diners Club Cards

Today my classes were canceled because of a bus strike (drivers want a bus ride to cost 25 cents—an increase from the current 20 cent fare).  Since I had a lot of free time I went ahead and wrote what is hopefully only the first part of a multi-part series entitled “Things Ecuadorians Like”.  These are brief observations about Ecuadorian life that don’t really fit in with any other narrative but that I  feel compelled to share nonetheless.

When I read in our orientation manual that the preferred credit card in Ecuador is Diners Club, I couldn’t help but start laughing.  I had literally only heard about the existence of Diners Club about a year ago in a blooper reel for The Office, so the only thing I knew about Diners Club was that it is used so infrequently that acceptance of it has become a joke in itself.  What is really so ridiculous about the whole thing is not that it is accepted, but that it is preferred.  In Ecuador, you’re not a baller unless you have a Diners Club card.  Here you can eat at a restaurant, attempt to pay with a MasterCard, American Express, or Visa, and be told that you can’t use a credit card unless it’s a Diners Club.

Just think, somewhere in Ecuador at a fancy nightclub a millionaire is handed a bill for a wild night of partying with his posse:

- Thank you for choosing our establishment tonight. Your total comes out to $152,500. How will you be paying?
- Put it on my Diners Club (*girls in the hottub giggle and whisper to each other about what a pimp move it is to pay with a Diners Club card*).
- Very well, sir. Enjoy the rest of your night.

So yeah, that’s the kind of stuff I think about when I don’t have work to do.

Teaching at Last

Surviving Week One

This week I finally got started teaching my English classes in Ambato.  The original plan was that I would be teaching two classes of Intermediate II, but the demand for Basic I was so high that I am now teaching one class of Basic I and one class of Intermediate II.  I was bummed at first because having two classes of different levels means I need to make two lesson plans every day instead of one, but after actually spending some time teaching in the classroom I think it will be much more interesting teaching two different classes with different material rather than teaching the same exact thing back to back.  In any case, I am only in the classroom for twenty hours a week so I don't have much of a right to complain about anything related to workload (I'm sure all of my Teach for America friends would agree).

The place I am teaching at is different than the traditional teaching job I was expecting for a number of (mostly welcome) reasons.  Like I mentioned before, the school I am teaching at is not a high school or a university.  It is a trade school that offers English classes and anyone is welcome to enroll regardless of age.  This means that for the most part my students are adults.  I do have a few younger students in my Basic I class that are around fifteen years old, but a majority of them are over eighteen and some are as old as in their forties.

One of my biggest concerns being a teacher was discipline because, believe it or not, kids generally don't find me very intimidating.  I'm not sure if it's my lack of ability to grow facial hair or my open obsession with Pokémon, but they just never seem to respect my authority.  Thankfully because of the age demographics of my classes, discipline has not been a problem so far and I don't predict it being a problem in the future.

Another distinct feature of my job is that there is no curriculum.  The students don't have textbooks and there are no standards for what the students need to learn at each stage of English classes.  This means that I am responsible for choosing what the students will learn and providing the necessary materials to facilitate that learning.  Translation: I make like 200 copies a day of grammar book pages and exercises for my students.

At the beginning, and even after my first week, the idea of being responsible for creating a curriculum for both of my classes has been very intimidating.  Topics and grammar points in language overlap an incredible amount, so trying to figure out which topics are best learned before others and which are appropriate for the different classes at their particular levels is overwhelming.  I was very jealous of the teaching positions of the volunteers in high schools that have curricula already created for them.  They know what they are expected to teach to their students every day and the expectations for the class at the end of the semester are very clear.

This jealousy didn't last long when I heard more about the kinds of things those teachers are required to teach their students.  It is definitely nice that they each have a curriculum laid out for them, but they are also forced to teach some pretty awkward and unimportant vocabulary and grammar points because they appear on the already written exams they are required to administer.  My situation requires me to work more to prepare for classes, but it is completely up to me what to teach and how to evaluate my students.  I think once I get the hang of lesson planning down I will prefer my format and have more fun being in complete control.

The last interesting caveat of my teaching job is the hours.  Each class lasts two and a half hours (!) and I have two a day: 3:45-6:15p.m. and 6:30-9:00pm.  I was concerned about the hours at first because the idea of working until 9:00 at night did not sound very appealing.  However, given my penchant for sleeping until noon and staying up late at night writing blog posts, this schedule has worked well for me so far.  Another bonus is that I only teach Monday through Thursday, so I can go out on Thursday nights and take longer trips on my three-day weekends.

Where Can I Buy a Gallon of Adderol?

Planning for the first day of class I tried to let my own experience in foreign language classrooms guide me.  I remember learning a little bit of grammar, doing some exercises in class, maybe a super awkward speaking or role-playing game, and then the teacher frantically telling us things as we walked out the door because we ran out of time.  Class time was always paired with significant assignments outside of class like writing papers or doing grammar worksheets.

It turns out this format isn't going to work well where I am.  In contrast to my two and a half hours of classroom instruction a week in college, my students are getting ten hours a week.  This means that although each course only lasts ten weeks, they are all receiving 100 hours of classroom instruction, which is a crapload of teacher time when you think about it.  The question now is, what is the best way to fill those 100 hours?

I first wondered how it would even be possible to teach a class for two and a half hours because most people's attention spans are tried after fifty minutes of class.  I had an image in my head of me standing in the front of the classroom teaching grammar for two hours straight every day, with the students falling asleep and preparing to kill themselves if class went another minute longer.  That, or me showing a Lord of the Rings movie every class.

The first decision I made was that there will be very little homework given in my class.  The students are already spending two and a half hours a day in class and a lot of them have full-time jobs during the day.  I don't really expect students to go home and find time to do homework in addition to our class time and their jobs, so I am going to use some of our time everyday to let them do homework-like assignments that I can still grade and give them feedback on.

Even with homework in class, there is still a lot of time left every day.  One thing that I remember clearly from my foreign language learning experience is that the teachers were always running out of time.  I tried to think more about what they always wanted to do and I think I figured it out.  Classes in the U.S. are very grade-centric and if the teachers only have time to evaluate the students on one aspect of language it will always be the most objective and the quickest format: reading and writing.  Speaking with students takes too long and it needs to be done individually.  For a class that only meets for fifty minutes at a time, it is impractical.  It is because of this lack of emphasis on oral production that I am still not an excellent Spanish speaker after eight years of studying Spanish.  It's hard to think of any other area besides foreign language that people can dedicate years to studying and still not be proficient.  It only takes four years to become a doctor, but after eight years of studying Spanish I still have trouble ordering a pizza in Ecuador.

Because of this lack of oral production in class, I am planning on utilizing a large chunk of my class time over the course of the semester to speaking to my students in English and encouraging them to produce in English.  I have already had some success in this aspect in terms of me speaking a lot of English in my classes.

During orientation, one of the suggestions that kept coming up was "only speak English in your classes."  The first time I heard that I laughed because it simply did not seem possible.  In an advanced class, sure.  The students are familiar with all of the common classroom things the teacher says and they have enough vocabulary and grammar to get through class in the target language.  But a Basic I class?  I just tried to imagine what I would have thought if the first day I took a Spanish class the teacher didn't speak a word of English.

I am finding out that when I have two and a half hours to use every class, I can spend a lot of time talking students through things in English.  For example, if I was in an American classroom teaching Spanish 101, I would only probably only have fifty minutes a class.  I would get the class' attention, say the instructions in Spanish, and be faced with an unresponsive class and a ticking clock.  I would maybe try again, but more likely than not I would just give in and say the instructions in English because I wouldn't want to run out of time for the rest of the day's activities.

In my classes I have nothing but time (literally, because the students don't even have books), so I can spend an absurd amount of time drawing pictures and miming to get my point across without using any Spanish.  In the worst case scenario, I can't explain an abstract idea like the rules to a game so I say it to my best student in English and she translates it for the rest of the class.  I still don't speak any Spanish and the students are reminded that I only speak and respond to English in class.

Teaching is Kind of Fun

We all know that learning isn't fun unless you're a nerd, but teaching has been pretty fun for me.  Since I'm the boss of my classes and I teach what I want, I try to play games to practice grammar points and get the students in the mood to learn at 6:30pm after a day at work.

Last week in my Basic I class I taught my students classroom vocabulary.  One of the things we learned in our orientation from other ESL teachers is that giving out lists of vocabulary words with their Spanish equivalents next to them is not a great way to get those words to stick.  A better idea is to have the students make direct connections between the word and what it stands for by bringing things in and physically showing objects to them.  Students also learn vocabulary better when they are using it in context and it is not just a word on a sheet that they read and learn how to spell for the test.

One of the tools WorldTeach offered us is a book filled with different language games.  In one of them, you split the classroom into two teams and give each student a piece of paper with a letter on it.  You point to an object in the room and the students with the letters necessary to spell the word need to run to the front of the classroom and get in the right order to spell it out.  The first team to spell it out correctly wins a point.

It's always hard to tell what kinds of things people will get excited about and what people will just think is stupid (see: the Shake Weight).  I was scared that the students wouldn't really care about the game and just go through the motions, but they were out of control.  They were screaming at each other for screwing up and I witnessed at least three different attempts at cheating to win.  Keep in mind that there was no prize to be won—the students were just having a good time and doing it for the glory of tick marks on the board and maybe a high-five from me after the game.  Also keep in mind that these are not little kids and most of them are over eighteen.  So yeah, I was impressed at how easy it was to get them motivated to learn new vocabulary.

After the game, the losing team was not satisfied with how I refereed the activity and they wanted redemption, so I played another game in which I write eight letters on the board and they need to rearrange them to form as many words with only those letters as they can.  Again, I underestimated how much they would care about this game and what was supposed to be a five minute activity ended up lasting over twenty minutes.  I was planning on giving them three minutes to come up with words because they are only in Basic I and I didn't think they would have that much vocabulary.  After three minutes they were still going at it strong so I let them keep going until I saw they were slowing down.  It turned out that both teams whipped out dictionaries when I wasn't paying attention because they both wrote down ~40 real words (at least five of which I had to look up myself because I had never heard of them).

At the end of class we had ten minutes left still so I told them they could ask me any question they wanted, given that it was delivered in grammatically perfect English.  One of the students immediately asked in Spanish if I was married.  Just like every time one of my students speaks in Spanish, I acted like I didn't understand and they remembered that they needed to say it in English if they wanted a response.  The whole class turned to the student with the best English and they tried together to figure out how to ask me in English.  A few minutes later:

- Teacher, do you have a girlfriend?
- (*looks at watch*) O.K. class, time's up.  See you tomorrow.

My class lost their shit because they wanted an answer, but I told them they will get another shot at it next week so they should practice their questions over the weekend.  It is so funny to see how quickly they learned how to form questions when there was something they really wanted to know.

Duds

I have had a few good teaching moments this past week, but I did not go without a few duds as well.  One of my activities after teaching how to make questions was the game "21 Questions."  I explained it in English, modeled the game in front of the whole class, then began—assuming that literally playing the game in front of them for five minutes before starting would be enough for them to catch on.  Here is how it went:

- O.K. so remember (*points to head*), I am a famous person (Michael Jackson).  First question?
- Teacher, are you a man?
- Yes, I'm a man.  Very good.  Next question.
- Are you a woman?
- Uh, no I'm not a woman.  You need to listen, someone already asked that.  Next question.
- Are you a man?
- No, no, no.  I mean yes I'm a man, but someone already asked that question.  You need to listen (*points to ears*) then ask (*points to mouth*) questions about the celebrity that I am.  Who understands how to play the game and can ask the next question?
- Are you Indian?
- No.  Next question.
- Are you from New York?
- No. (Finally, they are understanding it!)  Next question.
- Is your name Krishna?
- Jesus Christ!  I'm a celebrity, CE-LE-BRI-TY!  Like Bratt Pitt or Jennifer Lopez, a famous person.  You are not asking questions about me!  (*Points to student with the best English*) Please explain the rules in Spanish to the class.
- O.K.  Él es un personaje, y estamos intentando adivinar quien es.  Pues, él es alguien famoso y tenemos que hacerle preguntas de "sí o no" para averiguar quien es.  (*the entire class sighs in apparent comprehension*).
- Great, thank you.  Now, who wants to ask the first question?
- Teacher, do you like music?
- (*facedesk*)  We are now going to play a game called Hangman.

Next week I'll share the story about my attempt to teach past progressive by listening to "Just a Friend" by Biz Markie.

Settling Down

Before I write about anything new in my blog, it seems as if I own a small apology to Comcel, the company that manufactures my Ecuadorian cell phone.

It was brought to my attention two nights ago that two of the features I claimed were missing from my phone—the option to send mass texts and the ability see the name of the person texting me—are in fact available.  These features, however, are poorly implemented and require a gratuitous amount of button pushing.  So while my initial review stands to be humbled slightly, the final evaluation of my cell phone has not changed: it's a joke of a phone that Comcel has no right to be manufacturing in the year 2010.


The Farm

Since I didn't really start working this week (I only had to give some placement exams) my host father took me to his farm on Thursday.  It is located in a town not too far south of Ambato called Cevallos.  My host father is a retired civil engineer,  so he goes to the farm every day to take care of his two cows, fruit crops, and two not so friendly farm dogs.  

On the way up we stopped at a market to buy food for the cows.  While I was waiting for my host father to get what he needed I heard a very familiar noise coming from the other side of the plaza.  It wasn't long before I realized what I was hearing were the nostalgic tweets and purrs of guinea pigs from my childhood.  In contrast to the pets I had as a kid, these guinea pigs were being sold as food, not as pets.  

Host nephew Lucho and host dad Pablo

For anyone who has never been to Ecuador or any of the surrounding countries, guinea pigs are a traditional dish of the people of the Andes, and although I have yet to try cuy (as they are called here) they are apparently tasty.  I also learned today that cuy are very expensive in this country and buying a whole cooked one costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.  If my elementary school memories of pet guinea pigs reproducing at an incredible rate serve me right, selling cuy seems like it could be a very profitable business here in Ecuador...

I helped my host father pack the truck up with potatoes he had grown and we went back into town to deliver them to his customers.  My host father actually has cuy on his farm that he sells as well, but they were all sold out the day I visited.  He probably sold them before I came so I didn't pull a "Free Willy" and let them all go so they could live in the wild with their guinea pig herd, or however wild guinea pigs roll.

*Not really pertinent to recounting my day at the farm but worth noting nonetheless, when we stopped for gas on the way to the farm I saw an awesome dog.  He was straight posting up on the roof of the gas station, barking at people when they walked by.  I could tell he was a boss because the paint on the wall was worn down from where his feet were hanging, clearly indicating that he runs shit at that gas station from the roof every day. 

Sure the ground floor is easily broken into, but the roof?  You'd have to be a damn fool

Small World

I have a family friend that happens to live in Ambato so I mentioned it to my host family at dinner one night.  They asked me what his name was and to my surprise they knew his family and where he lived.  Turns out he is only about a ten minute walk from my house and I've already been over to eat dinner at his place.  Similarly, when I went out with my host brother and some volunteers the other night he knew some of the other random Ecuadorians that were eating at the restaurant.  I'm learning that Ambato is quite a small city and that families know each others' names.  That is one aspect of Ambato that is making me like living here more than in Quito.  The communities here are more close knit and I feel safer knowing that my family is acquainted with a lot of people in town.

On Saturday I went with two of my volunteer friends to a park to throw a frisbee.  When we arrived there was a game of soccer going on so we opted to join in instead of being super American and throwing a frisbee amongst ourselves.  The people we played with were very nice to us and even let us pick teams after the first game.  They play every Saturday so I think I'll probably end up at that park again at least once a week from now on.

After the first month of orientation in Quito being cautiously lectured about the dangers of Ecuador, it has been really nice to actually get settled down in Ambato a bit and meet genuinely nice Ecuadorian people.  I think most of the volunteers placed outside of Quito were concerned at first that their permanent residence was not mentioned in any guide books as being a place of interest to visit.  In the case of Ambato, however, I am starting to believe that a place doesn't need to be a tourist attraction to be a good place to live.  So far I am enjoying my time in Ambato and I am looking forward to making friends and building a life for myself here over the next year.

Teaching (No Seriously, for Real this Time)

Tomorrow afternoon I teach my first real class at a trade school called SECAP.  The students are mostly professional adults looking to improve their English, sometimes because their job depends on them being able to speak English.  I am really excited to be working at SECAP as opposed to a university because even though my students will be busy with their jobs and families, they are at least motivated to learn and they are attending classes on their own will (and paying out of their own pocket).  My classes are two and a half hours long each, so I am going to have to spend a lot of time lesson planning to fill my whole class.  The advantage to this schedule is that I have Fridays off, which should give me a bit more flexibility to travel on the weekends.

Speaking of traveling, I will be in Georgia and North Carolina October 18th and 19th respectively, trying to put my boyish charm to work on med school admissions committees.  I expect to see at least half the people reading this in the Atlanta International Airport when I arrive.

Hair

For a long time now I have combed my hair exclusively to the left.  Since I got a haircut here in Ecuador, though, I have been having a hard time getting it to stay put on the left.  I figured I would try to flip it to the right, and sure enough it stayed much better that way.  I thought it could be the result of the way the barber cut my hair, but I think I came up with a more likely explanation: it goes the other way now because I am in the southern hemisphere.  

When I go back to the States in October I'll report back and see if my hypothesis is correct, and if it is, book my ticket to the north pole to conduct further research.

Ambato First Impressions

The Journey South

On Saturday I made the trip with the other volunteers at my placement site from our orientation in Quito to our permanent home for the rest of the year in Ambato.  Ambato is the fourth largest city in Ecuador and it is located two hours south of Quito, still high in the Andes mountains.  No one in the group had been to Ambato before, so none of us had any idea what to expect from our new host city.

People we asked seemed to respond positively towards Ambato saying it is a pleasant place to live, but quite a few people also warned us that it is an ugly city.  This is because in 1949 an earthquake destroyed Ambato, along with nearly all of its colonial architecture.  The city was rebuilt (and I've read that it is now considerably more earthquake proof) and the Ambateños celebrate their history of persistence every year with the "Festival of Fruits and Flowers."

Major cities of Ecuador

Since we all had our luggage for the entire year with us, we opted to travel to Ambato in a chartered bus.  A funny thing about Ecuador is that addresses either don't exist or don't work.  It is never possible to get in a cab and tell the driver your street name and number.  It is always more like you tell them the general neighborhood and once you get there you keep telling them "left" or "right" until you are home.

This problem was magnified to comic proportions when neither we nor the bus driver knew anything about the layout of Ambato.  We all had our addresses, but like I explained earlier, that didn't make things any easier.  What we ended up doing was calling our host families one at a time and having them give us turn-by-turn directions to their houses.

My first mission in Ambato: buy a map of Ambato.


New Host Family 

The new host family I will be living with in Ambato is the Nuñez family.  They are a large family and they live in a nice house very close to the school where I will be teaching.  I have a big room with a comfy bed, access to the Internet, and most importantly a shower with hot water.  I predict that I am going to like it here.


Like my host family in Quito, three generations are represented in the house: the parents, three of their four sons, and the four children of the two represented sons that are married.  The biggest challenge of living with my new host family so far has not been cultural.  Instead, it has been trying to figure out how to interact with the kids.


There are two babies in the house that are pretty easy to get along with because they don't really do anything, but there are also two young boys Pablo Alberto (6) and Luis Adrian (~4) that I am still figuring out.  I am unsure of Luis' age because every time I ask him how old he is he says six but puts up two fingers, so I've just split the difference.


The kids are actually pretty funny because they talk non-stop and don't make any sense.  It is really strange to see little kids from another country speak their language because they make mistakes and can't pronounce words just like little kids who speak English.  I know that shouldn't really be surprising, but I guess I've just never tried to talk with little kids in Spanish before.  Although I can't always understand Pablo and Luis when they speak Spanish, I am fluent in Transformers.  The only utterances I have comprehended from the kids so far have had to do with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and they seem impressed that I know what they are talking about.  Too bad these kids aren't into Pokémon, otherwise I would really impress them.¹   

Centro

Since I don't start teaching classes until next Monday, I took a few buses an explored the city today.  I went to the centro where tons of people go to buy everything they need or get something to eat.  This was in stark contrast to yesterday when my host brother took me to the Ecuadorian equivalent of K-Mart.  Walking around the Supermaxi, as they are called, I immediately felt like I was back in the United States.  Today, however, I could not have felt any farther away from home.

The centro reminds me of Chinatown in Manhattan.  There are a ton of stores that jut out onto the sidewalk and an astonishing mass of humanity walking around in the streets.  It is definitely more work than shopping at Supermaxi, but everything is a lot cheaper if you buy it in the market.

Ambato is nice because a cab ride from anywhere in the city to anywhere else (with a few exceptions) is only $1.  On the way back home I was still feeling adventurous, however, so I took my best guess at which bus would bring me home and I jumped on.  I payed my 20 cents and was barely able to get behind the driver the bus was so packed.  I thought for sure the driver would not let any more passengers on the bus, but Ecuador was ready to surprise me again.

In New York, passengers on public transportation are aggressive.  People try to shove themselves into already over-full trains and will hold the door open until someone scoots over to let them in.  The rest of the passengers comply because everyone knows that the train won't start moving again until the jackass holding the doors open gets in and the doors close.

Ecuador is very similar with one small difference: the transportation doesn't wait for the door to close.  This means that people will jump onto already moving buses and hang on with their bodies outside of the bus.  The people on the bus have no incentive to scoot over because the bus is moving whether the door closes or not, so the guy holding on for dear life outside is going to do whatever he can to push his way inside.  This leads to dangerously overcrowded buses.

Today there was a woman with a baby strapped to her back standing in front of me.  As people kept jumping on the bus, I got pinned to the wall with the baby firmly pressed against my chest.  The bus approached my stop (I somehow got on the right bus) and I could not move because I didn't want to shove the baby.  I had to wait until someone else tried to get off the bus and push their way through.  The disturbance she caused incited some movement of the other passengers, and I delicately rode a wave of people (without elbowing the baby) to the front of the bus where I got off a few minutes past my stop.  

Needless to say, the taxis in Ambato have started to look a lot more appealing after today.


iCrap

During orientation they took all of the volunteers to get cell phones (I found out early on that my Droid still does in Ecuador, but that it also costs a lot of money).  I was surprised when our director found a place that was selling phones for $35 so I ran into the store and bought one immediately.  Unfortunately, when you buy a $35 phone, you only get $35 worth of features.

I hate you.

The only thing my Comcel phone does well is make calls.  The service is fine and I can even store numbers in a contact book.  What my phone doesn't do is tell me who is calling or texting me when it is one of my contacts.  Instead of the name of the person showing up, it only gives me the number.  Every text turns into four when I have to ask the sender who they are, wait for their response, then text my own appropriate response given the recently identified sender.  This is stupid.

Furthermore, my phone can only send texts to one person at a time.  This means that mass texts are a non-option and if I ever make more than one friend in this country a complex calling chain will have to be developed if we ever want to meet in the same place.

Finally, my phone has no vibrate.  I might understand this lacking feature given that the phone was so cheap if it weren't for the fact that Comcel decided that there were other things more important to include on a stripped-down, bargain-bin phone besides vibrate— namely a flashlight and an FM radio.  Sure the flashlight is cool and it is helpful for trying to find my keys at night, but if I ever designed a $35 cell phone, I would like to believe that vibrate would be higher than flashlight and FM radio on the list of "must include" features.

Getting Settled

The next week I will be preparing for my class by giving placement tests at the school and putting a curriculum together.  I have two Intermediate II classes that start next Monday.  In addition to my teaching job, I will spend my free time this week trying to get a schedule together for the other aspects of my life and join a gym so I don't gain too much weight while I am here.  I'm placing the over/under at 7.5 lbs.

Works Cited

1. Surasi, Krishna. "Evolution in Pop Culture: Pokémon Breeding." University of Notre Dame, 2010.

Back from the Dead

Parasite Week

My teaching career was supposed to have started last Monday giving free classes at a school in Quito, but I unfortunately fell ill the night before.  Later that week the doctor would tell me that I had parasites.  Well played Ecuador, well played.

Even though last week was kind of a bummer because I was sick and I didn't get to teach, over the weekend we took a trip to a place about two hours out of Quito called Papallacta.  Papallacta is actually higher than Quito so the temperature is noticeably colder.  On the bus ride up, people gradually put more layers of clothes on as we increased in altitude and the temperature dropped.  The main attraction in Papallacta are the hot springs that people can bathe in while being surrounded by cold mountain air.

I'm not much for relaxing things like spas, but after my experiences so far with Ecuadorian showers feeling hot water on my body again was great.  As it turns out, showers that can consistently provide water at an agreeable temperature are a luxury in this country that no one has.  Take for instance my turbulent relationship with the shower at my house.

The Time Machine

No curtain, no problem

At first glance, the shower at my house appears to be the greatest bathing chamber ever created.  It looks like a time machine and it has a radio built into it.  You can always tell when someone is taking a shower from anywhere in the house because of the Spanish gibberish projecting from the bathroom.  You can also tell who is in the shower because it has absolutely nothing obscuring the person inside from passersby.  In short, the shower is aesthetically appealing and it has provides features beyond what is expected of a conventional shower.  Unfortunately, it does not provide features that are expected of a conventional shower, namely temperature control.

Taking a shower every morning means engaging in an epic battle with the Time Machine.  Sometimes when I keep the water running for a few minutes, out of nowhere I suddenly get hot water.  Very hot water.  Like, "Holy shit my skin is peeling off!" hot water.  A slight twist of the cold water knob results in an equally sudden switch to cold water again.  On these days my battle plan is as follows:

1. Jump in cold water and get wet.
2. Jump out of water and soap up my armpits and crotch.
3. Twist the heat on for a few minutes and in the two or three seconds of transition to scalding hot, rinse off as much of the soap as possible.
4. Turn the water back to cold and repeat step 3 as necessary.

Sometimes I am not so fortunate.  On these days, I keep the water running with my hand under the flow of water waiting for it to get hot.  I keep it there for four or five minutes, after which point the water gets even colder (read: mountain ice-water).  I realize then that the water that had been running for the past few minutes was my hot water.  My battle plan for these day is as follows:

1. Step out of the shower.
2. Put on deodorant.
3. Don't sit next to girls I am trying to impress for the rest of the day.

Recovery

I stayed in and took my parasite meds over this past weekend and I was all better and ready to start teaching solo on Monday.  I actually took my first solid dump in a week and a half today.

Krishna: 1
Ecuador: 58

My group consists of myself and three other teachers.  After the first day of teaching as a group that I missed last week, we have been rotating in two day shifts.  My solo days were this Monday and Tuesday.  My group's class is Beginner I, so my first day I figured I would teach shopping.  It seemed simple enough to teach them a few phrases like "How much is this?" and "I spent __ dollars."  During my lesson, however, the students did not seem to be grasping the material as well as I had hoped.  When we took a 10 minute break in the middle of the class I asked the students what they wanted to learn for the next class, and the unanimous response was "numbers."  Whoops.  I guess I forgot that in a Beginner I class you should probably teach numbers before you try to teach prices and buying things.

As per my class's request, today I taught them numbers and it went well.  To learn how to say the numbers 1-21 we played a drinking game (minus the drinking) called Shoulders.  They were about as good at counting to 21 sober as many Americans are at counting to 21 hammered.  Right now I'm trying to incorporate Beer Pong into my lesson about conditionals...

Ambato Bound

This is my last week in Quito because on Saturday I am moving to Ambato where I will be living and teaching for the rest of the year.  I am excited to meet the host family I will be living with and see what Ambato actually looks like.  Orientation is officially over in a few days and my life in Ecuador begins next week.