Time Out: Part 1

I recently spent two weeks enjoying my vacation time in between semesters by traveling to several of the places in Ecuador I still hadn't visited. It started with a trip down south to get acquainted with Loja and some surrounding small cities followed by a short venture to the coast to visit a friend in the banana capital of the world, Machala.

Day Bus Blues

Traveling in Ecuador by bus is a great option because it is so inexpensive (roughly one dollar per hour). Additionally, due to the small size of the country, it is a viable option to get just about anywhere save the Galapagos Islands. One of the downsides of bus travel in Ecuador is that under certain circumstances it is incredibly dangerous.

Due to the mountainous terrain, the roads in Ecuador are winding and barely guarded by barriers to prevent vehicles from falling over the edge. Since I have been in Ecuador, I have heard of at least three horrific bus accidents that involved buses rolling off the edge of a mountain road, resulting in the death and injury of many of its passengers. Most of the accidents happen late at night in scenarios where the bus driver falls asleep at the wheel. Because of this, WorldTeach has prohibited any of its volunteers from taking buses at night (not that I would take them anyway) and our only option is to take buses during the day.

This is obviously a huge disadvantage because instead of getting on a bus at night with a bunch of quietly sleeping passengers and waking up in your destination city (without having to pay for a hostal that night, might I add), you end up spending half of your day and all of your daylight on a sun-heated people oven that either smells like a locker room or a gas station bathroom—depending on how many infants are sitting around you—and sounds like a wrestling match or salsa club—depending on whether the bus driver puts on a Van Damme movie or blasts the radio through the bus speakers.

I was traveling with my SECAP co-worker Caitlin, and we decided that Loja would be our first destination. With the drive clocking in at a whopping twelve hours, we agreed to make a stop in Cuenca for the night to make the trip more bearable. One of our WorldTeach friends lives in Cuenca and her host family runs a hostal, so we stayed at her place for a very reasonable $3.50 a night.

Before we left for Loja the next morning, we walked around one of Cuenca's parks. I remembered the park from the first time I was there because of the ridiculous statue it had of Ecuador's only Olympic champion, and Cuenca resident, Jefferson Perez. I say the statue is ridiculous because Perez won an Olympic medal for racewalking.

For the uninitiated, racewalking is a sport in which you move as quickly as you can without picking both feet off the ground at the same time and while keeping your leg straight while your foot is in contact with the ground. While the idea of walking as fast as you can sounds (and looks) ridiculous, good racewalkers actually move incredibly fast considering the restrictions on their movement.

To give you some perspective, the fastest racewalking mile time I could find online was 6:07. If you have no idea what that means, my freshman year of college I ran a 6:20. I guess the spirit of racewalking is kept alive in Cuenca by the statue of Perez because that morning we saw multiple groups of people racewalking around the park and looking absolutely foolish doing it.

A statue that captures all the excitement and awkward body movements of racewalking

(Aside: Every now and again I will mention an absurd internet video that I saw a long time ago to a friend of mine, only to question myself later when I am alone about whether or not I had actually seen the video or just fabricated it by mixing up old memories. One such video was a prank where they scared Jefferson Perez to see if he would racewalk or run to escape. I confirmed that the video in fact does exist, and it is funny to see him admit that he only runs a little bit faster than he walks.)

Loja

Loja is a city way in the south of Ecuador nearly at the border with Peru. It is a small city known for its live music, clean Spanish, and proud people. Loja was actually my first choice city when coming to Ecuador (the WorldTeach application doesn't have a section for city preferences, but that didn't stop me from listing mine). It turns out I had a pretty good taste in Ecuadorian cities before I got to Ecuador because I had a great time in Loja and could definitely see myself living there.

Plaza in Loja featuring a statue of a man who I assume is the most famous racewalker from that city

The city seemed small compared to Cuenca, but the streets were alive with people and there was a great energy everywhere we went. Even though it rained every day we were there, it didn't stop us from visiting the city's many attractive streets and plazas, and watching a live outdoor concert and dance performance.

The first afternoon we were in Loja we met a guy who was selling sucre, Ecuador's former currency before its dollarization and switch to U.S. currency, as souvenirs. I don't really know anything about how currency or economics work, but it was interesting to hear him talk about how bad the inflation was (Wikipedia tells me 25,000:1 at the time of dollarization). The guy had all other kinds of world money too, and it was incredibly frustrating to see how pretty much every country in the world has more fun looking money than the U.S. dollar.

Two other interesting sights from Loja that have no accompanying narrative are the following: a store called "Seven & Leven" and a place that sold pizza cones.

They had great Slerr-P's

Around Loja

While we were staying in Loja we visited a few nearby cities of interest. The first one we visited was Vilcabamba, a town that became famous because of rumors that the people there regularly live to be over 100 years old. We went horse riding in town, and my guide told me that the oldest confirmed person from Vilcabamba is 115 years old since they only started officially recording birthdays 115 years ago.

Vilcabamba was tiny and filled with gringos. We met an interesting character from Virginia called Charlito, who referred to his eponymous restaurant as "conspiracy theory headquarters" because it is where the crazy local expats gather to talk about all the illegal things they think governments are doing.

After starting up a conversation with us, Charlito told us more about his life and how he ended up in Vilcabamba. Apparently he got fed up with the lack of freedom in the United States ("You can't even put a dog in the back of a pickup truck anymore!") so he sought* out a place where he would be free to carry as many animals outside the cabin of his moving vehicle as he wanted. He claimed that he settled in Vilcabamba because the weather there is the best in the world, which was hard for us to believe because it rained the entire time we were there. As we were leaving he encouraged us all to consider moving to Ecuador to start an English school because it is impossible to not make money since there is no real business competition here. I'm not too sure about that, but "Krishito's" does have a ring to it...

After Vilcabamba, we checked out two other little towns called Saraguro and Zaruma, known for their jewelry and gold mine respectively, that had nothing worth writing about.

Except for this 7 Eleven in Zaruma I guess

*I tried to type "seeked" and just learned that it is not a word.

Machala

The last stop we made on the first leg of our trip was to a city on the coast called Machala. Machala is the fourth largest city in Ecuador (behind Guayaquil, Quito, and Cuenca) and since I live in the fifth largest city (Ambato), I have now visited the five largest cities in Ecuador, which I feel like is some sort of accomplishment.

Machala is not known for being a tourist spot since there is really not much there except for ports where bananas are shipped to different parts of the world. Still, it's neat to look out the window on the bus to Machala and see miles of banana trees on both sides.

Interestingly enough, although there are a ton of bananas in Machala, people don't really ever eat them plain like we do in the U.S. Instead, they have several different varieties of cooked, mashed bananas that show up in many of their typical dishes. From the first minute I stepped off the bus in Machala I started looking for a banana to eat, but it wasn't until two days later as I was about to get on a bus home that I finally stumbled across a restaurant with bananas on the tables and the owner let me buy one from him.

The whole trip to Machala was basically just an excuse to see our friend Amy who lives there, so we spent a lot of time hanging out with her and we were even invited to spend the night at her place by her gracious host family, which was nice since the hotels in Machala are pricey.

We ate a lot during this trip; I recall eating one too many banana things during this dinner and almost throwing up afterward.

Outside of seeing our friend, Machala was really no different than any other area of the coast I have been to. The Spanish was nearly unintelligible, I was sweating the entire time, and I had tasty seafood.

Caitlin and I considered continuing to travel up the coast on our way back to Ambato, but my impacted wisdom tooth thought otherwise and I ran home crying so I could see a dentist and hopefully get my tooth pulled before we headed out east to the jungle town of Tena for part two of our vacation.

There's No Crying in Ecuador

After my last trip outside of Ambato to Quilotoa, I was reminded of how many cool things there are pretty close to where I live that I still haven't visited yet. This past weekend I asked around to find out what there was to do in a day trip and I learned about an intriguing train that runs through a nearby city. This past week also marked the end of my second semester at SECAP as I look forward to two weeks of vacation before starting my final semester here in Ecuador.


A Series of Unfortunate Events

Right behind my house in Ambato there is a set of unused train tracks that are beat up and overgrown with grass and weeds. My host brother told me a couple of weeks ago that a train used to pass through a large portion of Ecuador, and the now defunct tracks out back were once a part of that line. He said that since the trains didn't pass very often, when one came through Ambato all the kids in the neighborhood would hear it rumbling by and run to the tracks to wave at the passengers looking out. At some point during that conversation he mentioned that there are still some parts of the line functioning, and the most visited section leaves from the nearby city of Riobamba.

I did more research about the train and learned that the Riobamba section runs for several hours and culminates in an interesting stretch of track known as La Nariz del Diablo (the devil's nose). La Nariz del Diablo is a section of track which requires the train to reverse directions several times to zig-zag down a particularly steep section of a mountain. Additionally, I read from various sources that the train that leaves from Riobamba is famous because passengers are permitted to sit on top of the train for the duration of the ride as it passes through beautiful mountain scenery that includes great views of some of the area's prominent volcanoes. Some of the words I saw associated with the train ride included: exhilarating, hair-raising, and thrilling (remember these adjectives, because they will be necessary to contrast with reality to understand the extent of my disappointment later in the story).

When I found myself with nothing to do last Saturday, I remembered the train and convinced some of my friends to go to Riobamba with me and spend the night so we could buy tickets to get a good seat on top of the train that would be leaving the next morning at 7am.

(Aside: I've said many times that Ambato is a great place to live and I am very happy I ended up working here. With that being said, Ambato is the ugliest real city I have seen in Ecuador yet. Since Riobamba is only an hour away, I expected it to be a smaller and less impressive version of Ambato. It was small like I expected, but when we walked around I was surprised to see that the streets were very alive and the buildings were noticeably nicer than what we typically see here in Ambato.)

When we got off the bus and headed to our hotel, I walked into what appeared to be the train station (judging by the tracks leading out of the building) to try to buy tickets. It was there that our expectations for the trip started their sharp spiral downward into disappointment. I asked a guy who worked there where we buy tickets and he said a word I didn't understand. He repeated it and what I took away from the conversation was that we needed to buy tickets at "Alausí" and something about a bus. I assumed that the bus station in Riobamba was called Alausí and that the train now left from there instead of the old station.

I went to the reception desk at the hotel we were staying at to find out where exactly in Riobamba the Alausí station was and how we could get there. She was visibly stunned by how misinformed my question was and then set me straight. She told me that Alausí is the name of a city an hour and a half away from Riobamba, and we had to go there to get the train now. I looked on a map in the lobby, and it turned out Alausí was pretty much the end of the line and the train ride would only be about an hour descent and return through La Nariz del Diablo instead of a four hour journey through the mountains.

Alausí: Quichua for "not a bus terminal in Riobamba"

I thought, whatever, as long as we get to ride on top of a train down a mountain named after a body part of the devil I'll feel like I got the experience I set out for. Unfortunately, even that small desire was crushed when I asked the woman what time we would need to get to Alausí to get tickets to ride on top, and she told me that they no longer let passengers ride on top. The reason? Two years ago a cable came too close to the top of the train and decapitated two Japanese tourists. Yikes.

When traveling, things don't always go according to plan. What separates the traveling babies from the traveling pros is being able to make the best of whatever you've got to work with. After breaking the very disappointing news to my friends who I had convinced to come with me, I was very pleased to see that no one made as much as a disappointed groan; everyone agreed we should continue with the modified trip. That's what I'm talking about.

I was further impressed with two of my American friends who met us in Riobamba much later because they missed their bus stop at Riobamba and ended up stranded at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and my Ecuadorian friend who couldn't stay the night in Riobamba so she took a bus at 4:00am to meet us on the bus to Alausí for our compromised trip. Uh, can you say "Champ Wagon"?

Ari was not pleased

The next day we took the bus to Alausí and walked to the train station only to find out that (I can't make this stuff up) tickets for the train had already been sold out. At that point the group got really upset and we tried to get on the train anyway. We argued in English, Spanish, and even resorted to more childish methods such as pulling papers out of the "pick a number" distributor in the office, all to no avail.

After a few minutes of moping, our group pulled it together and yet again made the best out of the situation. We couldn't ride the train down the tracks, but there was no reason why we couldn't just walk down them, so that's exactly what we did. We got to see all the same scenery as the people on the train and we were outside already so we could take as many pictures as we wanted. The only slightly scary part was hopping off the tracks when we heard a train coming.

If I keep botching transportation on trips like Quilotoa and Alausí every weekend, my quads are gonna get huge.

At the end of the tracks we ate lunch then started working on how to get back up to Alausí. We ended up hiring some guy with a pickup truck to bring us to a major road where we could catch a bus back to Ambato.

When the truck arrived there was already an unfriendly dog in the back where we were going to sit. We fed it some bread and it calmed down, but I still sat as far away from it as I could in the back of the bed. That was a good idea until we started bumping around and I realized that the car was beat up and the door latch probably wasn't in good enough condition to handle someone's full body weight slamming against the door.  For safety, I latched onto an unwilling Ariana's arm. If that door opened I was either being saved or bringing someone down with me.

Me, Ari, Lis, and Will. You can't see in this picture, but we were in fact riding in the back of a truck.

Amanda fears nothing

I have been in Ecuador long enough now that catching rides in the back of a stranger's truck is no longer a novelty. However, this particular truck ride took a turn for the ridiculous when two kids jumped on the back of the truck with live crabs in their hands. Dead crabs freak me out enough, so I was very uncomfortable the entire time they were waving crustaceans in my face. Soon after they jumped on the truck and we started moving again, the dog fell off and it was the funniest thing I had seen in months. Everyone started screaming that the dog had fallen off to alert the driver to stop the car, and one of the kids grabbed the dog and threw it on top of my legs. The dog was flipping out a little when one of the kids dropped a crab on me, then I started freaking out and laughing hysterically at the absurdity of the situation. It was a new twist on the usual Ecuadorian truck bed ride for me.

The zig-zag in the mountain is La Nariz del Diablo. (Not pictured: El Codo del Diablo)

Another funny thing that kept happening throughout the trip was people asking my Ecuadorian friend Lis what tour company she was with, because that's really the only plausible explanation for one Ecua rolling with a group of six gringos.

Even though nothing went according to plan on this trip, we still had fun footing it and it turned out to be a memorable weekend for other reasons. Since the trip was my idea, I'm crossing my fingers that the numerous malfunctions we experienced will exempt me from having to plan any more group trips in the future.

School's Out

This Thursday was the end of my second semester teaching English at SECAP. I can say with confidence that this semester I was much more organized and I was better in front of my classes than I was last semester. This semester I had about half as many students as I had last time, and I was surprised by how different it is teaching a group of 11 students compared to a group of 24. Having fewer students means they are easier to handle as a group and everyone gets more chances to talk and participate in class, but it also means that there is much less energy in the room to begin with. The first semester my goal was getting everyone to focus their energy on the task at hand, whereas this past semester I found myself needing to get the class riled up at the start so they were awake and willing to participate.

This semester I was also much stricter about attendance, something that was a problem my last module. Round two I made two tardies equal one absence, and eight absences an automatic fail. I felt like kind of a jerk on Thursday failing two students with passing grades in the class because they missed too many classes, but I have learned that leeway on things that sometimes seem trivial (like being a minute late to class) shows students that they can do whatever they want. If you want to teach English like a boss, sometimes you've got to lay down the law.

Another thing I am learning the more I teach is that teaching a foreign language is much more than teaching students how to translate their ideas into English. Someone's ability to be good at using a foreign language (particularly writing) is dependent on their ability to use their own language. For instance, writing is not something that is intuitive by any means. Good writing is hard work even in the writer's mother tongue, so when a student doesn't understand the principles of adequate writing in his own language, he has incredible difficulty writing acceptable English. This is particularly frustrating in regards to punctuation. The majority of my students don't know how to put together sentences, and their essays usually end up looking more like long lists of sentence fragments or a page of loosely connected ideas strung together with commas. Of course, that is not to say that bad writing is exclusive to Spanish speakers; it is mostly due to the terrible writing I have seen in the English language that makes me believe that I could be a writer back home if I don't ever get into med school.

Butter Me Up

I have seen students in the States try to butter their teachers up with the hope of getting something in return—usually a grade—but they always try to be subtle about it so that the teacher doesn't realize what is happening (because no Embryology professor wants to believe that she gave a student a better grade because he gave her a disc with a fetus design on it). My students try to win brownie points from me sometimes, but it is never even close to subtle and it is always embarrassingly shameless.

In one of my classes this past week a student came in early and handed me a box of cookies. When I was three cookies in, she jumped to the point and asked me if she could leave because she had to do something with her family. I felt like I had been used, but the cookies were so delicious that I let her go and finished the box in disgrace at being so easily manipulated.

Another student who had cooked dinner for the entire class one night failed due to absences. On Thursday when I was giving out the grades the entire class was essentially staging a protest in the classroom trying to convince me to pass her, and she tried to make me feel guilty by saying, "But teacher, I cooked you dinner!" I'm proud to say that I didn't let that one go, but it was ridiculous to see a 26 year old woman trying to argue that point.

A funny student of mine had seen somewhere on T.V. that students in the States give apples to their teachers. He was failing at one point late in the semester, and I heard him joke to his classmates that he was going to bring the teacher a watermelon to save his grade (bigger fruit means bigger points, right?). Since he passed the class he never did bring me that watermelon, but next semester I might trick him into thinking he is failing to see if he actually does it.

Break

I have two weeks off now before I begin my third and final semester teaching here in Ecuador. I am planning to visit the last parts of Ecuador that I am interested in seeing before I return to the States, namely cities in the south like Loja, Vilcabamba, and Machala. Ecuador is a small country, but there are certainly a lot of cool little places to see. I can't say that teaching is my calling in life, but I also can't complain about the vacation time.

Teacher Traveler

I recently wrote an article for a teaching traveling website called teachingtraveling.com. If you are at all interested in teaching abroad there are a lot of interesting articles on the site, and you can check out my piece here.

Ecuador Omnibus

Quilotoa Loopy

After a stagnant past several weekends here in Ambato, I finally packed it up and made a trip out of the Big-A with two of my friends, Caitlin and Ariana. We headed to a natural formation about two and a half hours away from Ambato called Quilotoa.

Ari and Caitlin riding dirty

We left Ambato bright and early at 6:45am to catch a bus to a nearby city called Latacunga, immediately followed by another bus to a town called Zumbahua. Once at Zumbahua we paid some guy with a truck to take us through the Saturday market and afterward drive us to Quilotoa. I still don't feel comfortable when random strangers approach me and ask me if I want a ride in the back of their pickup truck, but sometimes in Ecuador that is the only option to get to less visited places.

Quilotoa used to be a volcano, but through some process that I still do not fully understand after reading the Wikipedia article, it collapsed and is now a lake at the bottom of a crater. It is a particularly interesting sight because the water is a dark green color due to the dissolved minerals in the lake. When we arrived at Quilotoa we talked to some people and learned that while the hike down the crater to the lake is manageable, the hike back up is quite difficult. We resigned to hiring some guy to bring horses down to us at the bottom so we could ride them back up when we were done looking at the lake.

Quilotoa from the outlook above

Just like the man had said, the hike down was not too bad. Due to the high altitude, the weather in Quilotoa is quite chilly so we had a comfortable trip down to the water level of the lake. Contrary to what the man had said, however, when we reached the bottom there were not three horses waiting for us. He apologized for not having enough horses and we were faced with the decision of how to get back up the crater (NB: The night before in a discussion about how we all control our weight in Ecuador, Ariana was quoted as saying, "Exercise just isn't my thing."):

Horse Guy: Here are the horses and you can all go up right now... psych, psych, psych! We can either make two trips up with the horses we have or you all can walk.
Krishna: Walk.
Caitlin: Walk.
Ariana: There isn't even a donkey or something we can take up?
Krishna: Well he's got the two horses, but by the time we make two trips up to get us all to the top it will end up taking longer than if we walk.
Ariana: O.K., but I'm warning you two that I haven't done anything even closely resembling exercise in several years.

Ariana was hesitant at first, but she quickly jumped on the champ-wagon and we started up. After a long, hour and a half hike uphill, we finally reached the top and were able to eat lunch and head home exhausted.

Taking a photo break during the hike. No one said Ecuador would be easy.

On the ride from Zumbahua back to Latacunga, we got on the smallest bus I have been on yet in Ecuador. I was the last person to get on and there were no seats left, so it looked like I would have to stand up for the hour and forty minute ride. To make matters worse, the ceiling was about five and a half feet high, so I had to tilt my head at a 45° angle to stand up straight. About two minutes in the lady working on the bus came to the rescue and, demonstrating typical Ecuadorian resourcefulness, gave me and Caitlin stools to sit on in the aisle.

SECAP: Pros and Cons

I have talked about the advantages and disadvantages of working at a broke government school before, but a recent incident was the best example of my love-hate relationship with SECAP yet.

A few weeks back, the lights in my classroom stopped working so my evening students and I had to move to a classroom in a different building. The second day that the lights weren't working, my class saw I was upset about having to move to a really beat-up classroom to have class, and as we were walking around outside to get to the new room someone asked if we could play soccer on the small SECAP field we were passing. I called their bluff and said, "Sure, who's got a ball?" When no one had a ball to play with I dragged them into the classroom and I tried to teach them something as usual.

The next day the lights still weren't working and I was furious that SECAP still hadn't fixed them even though I asked them to two days earlier. Again we walked around the building outside to get to the other classroom and one of my students asked if we could play soccer, only this time someone actually had a ball. I was so angry that SECAP wasn't paying attention to my complaints that I gave in to my students' request and instead of having class we just played soccer outside for two hours. I was impressed that every one of my students was excited and played really hard except for two: Angel because he has a (alleged) heart condition and Heliana because she was wearing heels.

So while it is nice that the well-run schools in Ecuador provide their teachers with books and curricula, it is definitely not bad having the option of playing soccer instead of teaching English if I'm not feeling the crappy room I was assigned.

Another advantage of working at SECAP that I have talked about is that most of my students are adults so they like to take care of me. After class last Thursday I was telling one of my students that my host family doesn't eat dinner so I always have to find food for myself at night, so four of my students took me to a restaurant and bought me dinner. Today one of my students invited me and Caitlin to her house for lunch and even took us out and bought us ice cream afterward.

Dealing with the unorganized administration at SECAP is frustrating sometimes, but being fed by students is certainly better than taking paper balls to the back of the head like some of my other friends who teach high-schoolers.

Silly Americans, Spanish is for Ecuas

As much as I try not to, I frequently laugh out loud at the things my students say because they just sound so funny saying English words with their Ecuadorian accents sometimes. Because of this it is always a relief when I say something incorrectly in Spanish and my class gets a chance to laugh at me and see that people mess up speaking a foreign language even when they have been studying it for close to a decade.

My class couldn't stop laughing at me the other day when I was introducing someone to them and said Esta es mi ex-alumna (This is my ex-student). Apparently my translation was too literal because my students informed me that what I said came off as offensive because demonstrative pronouns are only used for objects, not people. I learned that the correct way to refer to someone is to use the subject pronoun, and I should have said Ella es mi ex-alumna (She is my ex-student).

This week my class had a chuckle because I couldn't pronounce the word desestresante after multiple attempts. I gave up when my ego could no longer take the building hysteria of giggles closing in around me, and I had to resort to threatening to draw marker mustaches on them (my go-to disciplinary technique) to get them to calm down and continue with class.

Caitlin had a real winner at lunch today when she recounted our failure to acquire horses on the climb out of the Quilotoa crater. She said something along the lines of Quería montar en un caballero (I wanted to ride a gentleman) instead of Quería montar en un caballo (I wanted to ride a horse).

Another Caitlin classic, and perhaps my favorite "I don't know the word in Spanish, but I'll take a guess assuming it is something like English" attempt was when she didn't know the word for sneeze. She was banking on an onomatopoeic word with a typical Spanish verb ending and threw out achuchar. Coincidentally, chucha is a strong, vulgar word in Ecuadorian Spanish that means "cunt". My director heard this story and suggested that achuchar would probably translate to something like "pussy-up", an undefined term which is nevertheless one of my favorite English expressions now.

Teacher Talk

My Spanish teacher also happens to be an English teacher, and sometimes during class we have very interesting discussions about the differences between English and Spanish. I have a lot to say about how they are different from the perspective of a native English speaker, but it is always enlightening to hear how he views their differences as a native Spanish speaker.

One of the differences he mentioned the other day was prompted from a question I had about which vocabulary word fit better in a sentence about shortening a trip, abreviar or acortar. He told me they both worked fine and was confused about why I was unsure because he was aware that we have a cognate in English, "abbreviate."

I explained to him that in English we only use abbreviate for technical situations, and while someone would be understood if he said "We can abbreviate our trip by an hour if we go by car", it would sound very unusual. He noted that in Spanish there are not many distinctions between formal/technical and informal vocabulary as in English, and that most of the time in Spanish you will be just fine using the fanciest word you know in a sentence.

In Ecuador, people always use the word cachar to check for comprehension and find out if someone has understood something ("Catch my drift?"). It can also mean "catch" in the sense of capture or grab, although it is used less frequently that way. I always thought it was a coincidence that cachar sounds so much like "catch" and they have almost identical meanings, but my teacher told me it is an adapted word from English. I'm not entirely sure if I believe him though because they don't use that word in Mexico (from what I can remember), and it would be strange if American English has had more of an influence on Ecuadorian Spanish than on neighboring Mexico's variety.

A long time ago I noticed that the Dictionary.com Word of the Day "lagniappe" came to American English from Quechua, the indigenous language of the people of the Andes. It is interesting to see how even words from an indigenous language can penetrate the vocabulary of the language of a more dominant culture quite a distance away.

In my Spanish class I also have painfully static arguments with my teacher over punctuation every time he reviews one of my essays. We argue because he is convinced that the punctuation rules are different in Spanish and that I need to use less periods in my essays because regardless of how they are used in English, my usage is considered incorrect in Spanish. I am all about learning Spanish and familiarizing myself with their syntax and orthography, but as long as I am writing from left to right I will never change my beliefs on where a comma, period, and semicolon should go. Never.

Don't You Dare Touch My Cat!

Bus Entertainment

Very often in Ecuador people will jump on the bus and do something to make money. They all apparently go to the same bus performer school because there are only a few different routines and I see them executed by a new person every day. For example, one of the most common shticks in Ambato is the magic eye drop vendor. The guy will come on the bus and give an inspired speech about all the miraculous health benefits that come from using vitamin enriched eye drops (and for only one dollar!).

Other times people who jump on the bus don't sell things to make money. Rather, they do some kind of performance like hold up an x-ray image while pleading the bus riders for money so they can get a brain tumor removed or dress up like a clown and perform a monologue. I don't believe the x-ray guys and I never understand the clown jokes, so while some Ecuadorians enjoy the performances it is just annoying for me.

The other day on the bus I encountered the most obnoxious bus performer yet. The guy just stood in the front of the bus and announced that he would kiss anybody who didn't give him money. That's it. What's worse, nearly everyone gave him money as he walked down the aisle puckering his lips and moving in for the kiss on passengers. He got to me just as I was leaving the bus and yelled at me that I needed to give him money. When I walked off the bus without having paid him he yelled at me (and this is a direct translation), "I hope when you go back home you discover your house robbed and your cat raped." Well the joke's on him because my host family doesn't even have a cat so half of that insult didn't even make sense.


Ricky's Wedding

The main event of this week was my host brother Ricky's wedding. The ceremony and reception were both on Saturday night at a chapel and restaurant in Ambato.

The ceremony was pretty much identical to what we do in the States. The bride and groom go to the front of the room, exchange words with each other and the priest, then they kiss and as they are leaving the guests throw rice at them.

The bride, groom, and army of small children in ridiculous costumes

The biggest difference that I noted about Ecuadorian weddings is how relaxed everyone involved was. In the States every little detail about the wedding is planned weeks or months in advance, and if anything doesn't go according to plan people freak out. Ricky's wedding was supposed to start at 7:00pm, and at 6:53pm he walked into the kitchen of our house still not ready to leave and asked me what time it was. I went to the church with my host parents and we didn't get there until at least 7:20pm.

Even during the ceremony it was much less planned out than what we expect of a wedding in the United States. There were a number of children running around during the ceremony—like, literally running up and down the aisle while the priest was talking and the bride and groom were saying their vows. They were climbing on the benches, stepping all over the bride's veil that was draped across the floor, and being all-around brats the entire time. Towards the end one of them was running behind the altar, fell down, and burst out in hysterical crying. In the States, a kid that made noise during a wedding ceremony would most likely be smacked upside the head and told that he is going to hell if he keeps it up.

The reception was also very similar to what we do in the States, with the big exception that the people here started dancing as soon as they got to the restaurant. In the U.S. people dance at weddings, but I imagine that more often than not it is alcohol induced and it doesn't last very long. At this wedding every single person got out of his seat and danced for the entire time he wasn't eating.

I don't remember why I thought that pose was a good idea

After dinner they started serving whiskey so the alcohol inspired dancing did eventually come, but it wasn't until the last couple of hours. I'm glad I got the opportunity to experience a wedding here in Ecuador and it was a good reminder of how little I want to get married myself.

Me and my host dad. Ricky wasn't drinking that night.

More whisky-based pageantry with my host brother Santiago

In the end I didn't get a chance to say a speech like I originally wanted, but now that I've been to a wedding I'm more motivated than ever to get a microphone in my hand at the next one I attend.

Grammar Talk: Indirect Object Pronouns

As usual, the ambiguous constructions of Spanish and its differences with English has driven me to hit the grammar books, and this time it is to figure out why indirect object pronouns give me so much trouble.

Anyone up on his English grammar knows that an indirect object pronoun can replace any person or thing gaining from an action. Spanish indirect objects can perform this duty as well, so sentences like Le mandé la carta and Te digo la verdad are easy enough for English speakers to understand. In school we learn how to use Spanish indirect object pronouns from examples like these, so the connection is made that indirect object pronouns are used in sentences that would utilize the prepositions to or for in English.

One of the major differences with indirect object usage in Spanish, however, is that an indirect object can also replace a person or thing losing by an action—sentences that in English would utilize the prepositions of, from, or by. Examples from B&B include:

Mario le ha quitado a Ana. (Mario's taken Ana away from him)
Les han robado un millón de pesos. (They've stolen a million pesos from them)
Se le ha muerto un hijo. (A son of his has died)


The variety of relationships that indirect object pronouns can indicate sometimes leads to notably ambiguous sentences like Le compré un vestido, which can be read as "I bought a dress for her" or "I bought a dress from her." Similarly:


Cómprame algo (Buy something for/from me)
Ángel me robó una manzana. (Ángel stole an apple from/for me)

Although meaning is usually clear with knowledge of the flexibility of indirect object pronouns, sentences can always be rewritten to specify meaning, such as Le compré un vestido para ella.

Conclusion

As a native English speaker, I tend to specify as much as I can with prepositions like in the last example. However, I have been told by Ecuadorians that it sounds odd to them, and I have been advised to "use less words" on a number of occasions. Oh well, when in Ecuador...


Note: There are a number of other relationships that can be expressed using indirect objects, but those cases are much more confusing and I wouldn't attempt to describe them until I am sure that I completely understand them myself (although I'm not sure I'll be in Ecuador long enough for that to happen).

Fiestas in Review

From last Thursday to Tuesday of this week, the majority of Ambato took a five-day weekend to celebrate the city's signature celebration: The Festival of Fruit and Flowers. My mini-vacation started on Thursday when I went to a carnival with my students after class.

Playland Park

Amusement parks have been set up in a couple of locations in Ambato for a few weeks now, but this past Thursday was the first time I have actually entered one. Since English class Thursday night was the only thing standing between my Advanced students and the Fiestas, they were getting unruly after the first half hour and pretty much refused to do anything I told them to. A student suggested that we go to one of the amusement parks called Playland Park, and she promised that if we went every student would get on the scariest ride. Always the cool teacher, I said yes.

After doing the Tarzan Swing in Mindo, I didn't think I would be scared by any of the rides the dinky amusement parks in Ambato would have. I was right that they were dinky, but wrong that they wouldn't be scary. Take for example this carelessly thought out ride:

Safety harnesses are for pussies anyway

When I did a lap around the park to see which rides I would want to go on, I spotted this one before it started going. It appeared to be a tame ride that just tilted back and forth. I was right that it just rocked back and forth and bounced around a bit, but the kicker was that there was nothing that held the riders in their seats. People were forced to hold on to the metal bar along the outside of the circle while their bodies were flung into the air and slammed onto the hard plastic chairs on the way down. My tailbone was hurting from just watching it in action.

After checking out all the rides Playland Park had to offer, we agreed that the scariest ride in the park was a huge spinning/rotating attraction called Evolution.

Unlike the first ride I described, to get on Evolution you actually had to be strapped in. The ride didn't seem like it would be scary because it was moving very slowly. Terror only struck me when the ride inverted us and brought us far into the sky and all my weight was being supported by the harness I assumed that I was locked into.

It was at the peak of Evolution's motion I realized that my life was resting on the functionality of the safety harness, which was put together by carnies working at a traveling amusement park in a third-world country. I was preoccupied the entire time by thoughts of falling to my death before I even got to go to the Amazon Forest, but I survived and it turned out to be a cool ride to be on because we got a great view of the city (even though it was upside-down) when we were at the top.

Only one student didn't go on Evolution because he claimed he had a "heart condition." Lame.

I Want My Ambato Back

During the Fiestas there were fun events going every day like parades, concerts in the streets, and live music at most venues. The only problem was that there were so many people in the city that Ambato really lost its best feature, which is the fact that it is a calm, small city that is cheap to have fun in. During the fiestas, bars that are usually free to enter were charging upwards of ten dollars to enter and I paid three times as much to get a taxi from my house to the neighborhood where my friend lives.

Matters weren't helped by the fact that the only public transportation we have here in Ambato is the buses, and they stop running after 7:30 pm. This means that the traffic is atrocious from all the people trying to drive to where they are going (further complicated by the main streets being blocked off due to parades), it takes forever to get anywhere, and taxis charge whatever they want because they know you don't have any other options.

That is not to say that the Fiestas were all traffic jams and ten dollar covers, however. The most fun night I had during the Fiestas was when I just walked around the main street in Ambato with my friends enjoying a free outdoor concert and dancing outside.

Ambato is noted for being one of the few cities in Ecuador where people do not throw things at each other in the streets during Carnaval. In other cities like nearby Guaranda, the masses toss around water, eggs, and flour. While there was no aerial exchange of food-stuffs in Ambato, lots of people did spray colored foam at each other. While it was sometimes annoying to get foam in my eyes or have my shirt dyed green and orange for the night, it was all in good fun and I was surprised at how every single person I saw get sprayed was a good sport about it (except my friend Will who had his phone stolen while being sprayed; he was kind of a baby about it).

Carnaval foam-warriors

Fruits and Flowers

I had joked earlier on during the Fiestas that there were not many fruits or flowers to be seen in Ambato, but my criticism was finally addressed when they put up a huge mural on the cathedral in the center of the city made up entirely of fruits, flowers, and bread.

Things to find in this picture: Jesus, dove, sunglasses, Winnie the Pooh

For the entire five days the streets were packed with vendors selling all kinds food. The first day at Playland Park I even saw some guy who was selling pizza that he was cooking in an oven on the back of his motorcycle. I have no idea what was powering the oven because after I took a picture of his bike he got mad and started yelling at me before I could get a closer look.


From the start of the Fiestas I had been eating questionable street food multiple times a day and I felt fine, but it finally caught up with me on the second to last night of the long weekend. I had one too many fig and cheese sandwiches from a lady in the park and I had to sit the final night out, which was just as well because by that time I was done with the congestion in Ambato, and I am relieved that we are back to being a city that no one cares to visit.

Ambato Classic

There are two soccer teams in Ambato that share the same home field, Bellavista Stadium. Today was the Ambato Classic when the two teams, Técnico Universitario and Macará, play each other for Ambateño glory. Both teams are in the "B" division of Ecuadorian soccer so the games at Bellavista Stadium normally do not draw many spectators. Today was certainly an exception, and when I arrived at the stadium an hour before the start of the game there was already a line extending across the street to enter.

I went with my friend Caitlin, and when we got to the stadium we had to make the important decision of which team to root for since they were both from Ambato. The decision was crucial because the stadium was essentially split in half, and each side was filled with fans of only one of the teams (side note: the stands looked awesome because one half of the stadium was all red from Técnico fans and the other half was all blue from Macará fans). We decided that since the line to get into the Técnico side was longer, we would be Macará fans for the day, so we bough a couple of knock-off jerseys outside the stadium and headed to the Macará section.

Casual Macará fanfare

The game was fun, but not nearly as crazy as I have heard the "A" division games are in the bigger cities. If anyone was looking forward to a story about me getting into a brawl with an opposing fan or getting tear-gassed by riot police, I suppose it will have to wait until I make it to a Liga game in Quito.


Speaking to Writing

One of the unlikely advantages of having learned Spanish from mostly non-native speakers in the States came of the tendency of many English speakers to overlook the fact that in Spanish, the letters "v" and "b"—as well as "s" and "z"—sound the same. Because of this oversight, I have always been able to spell words with these letters correctly because I say them differently in my mind. For instance, when I was learning Spanish I always read the word hizo with a voiced consonant sound, and that word would sound different than hiso in which the "s" is not voiced.

Since I have been paying more attention to my pronunciation and trying to eliminate my foreign accent the best I can, I have noticed that my spelling is getting worse. Now that I pronounce letters the way they are supposed to be pronounced (identically), I am making orthographical errors that I never used to make before. Just today I wanted to type vaya, but as I said it out loud my fingers instinctively typed baya to correspond with how I was pronouncing it.

Similar to my spelling regression, my attempts to sound like a native speaker are creating unforeseen problems for my spoken Spanish as well. In English, the "b" sound is bilabial, which is to say that it is articulated using both lips. In contrast, the "v" sound is labiodental, which means that it is articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth. In Spanish, both of these letters are bilabial and they both sound like our English letter "b."

As I am eliminating my use of the labiodental "v" sound, I am also accidentally eliminating other labiodental sounds that Spanish does have. For instance, I have told cab drivers multiple times in the past few weeks that I want to go to Picoa (bilabial "p" sound) when what I really wanted to say was Ficoa (labiodental "f").

Wedding Crasher

I guess I'm not really a wedding crasher since I got an invitation, but this weekend my host brother Ricky is getting married. Thankfully I brought my interview suit back with me from my last trip to the States so I have something to wear. While I have never been to a wedding in my adult life, I have a hunch that I am awesome at making wedding speeches, so I hope I can make it to a microphone before anyone realizes I am not part of the family and don't really speak Spanish that elegantly and tries to stop me.


Tsunami

Due to the massive earthquake near Japan, there was a tsunami warning all along the Pacific coast including Ecuador. Luckily I live way up in the mountains in the center of the country, so everything was fine in Ambato. Even on the coast of Ecuador, a state of emergency was declared and people in danger had time to evacuate, so as far as I know Ecuador escaped unharmed from the potential threat. My thoughts go out to everyone affected by the tsunami.

Ambato Shore

This week appears to have been the start of the annual festival in Ambato called The Festival of Fruits and Flowers (I am somewhat uncertain about whether it has actually begun because depending on who you ask, the festival either started in the beginning of February or will begin to coincide with Carnaval in March). The festival in Ambato is so named because of the prodigious amounts of fruits and flowers that are supposedly produced in Ambato during this season, although I admit that I am not impressed with the displays of either so far.

One of the events I went to this week was a concert in one of Ambato's parks, and I was excited to try Ambato's signature fruit that I have still not eaten yet called guaytambo. To my dismay, there wasn't fruit of any kind being offered on the streets (not to mention that I didn't see any flowers either). Based on what I saw a lot of that night, I propose that this celebration be renamed the Festival of Street Hotdog Vendors and Boxed Wine.


We Have a Situation

During the concert I alluded to earlier, there was one guy in the crowd who caught my attention almost from the start. He was quite a distance from me, but I noticed him because he was standing on an elevated surface and wearing sunglasses and a tight v-neck shirt. His outfit was complimented by the fact that he kind of looked like The Situation from Jersey Shore. The resemblance became even more striking when he started pulling up his shirt and rubbing his abs at people walking by.

After seeing him flaunt his body at a few innocent passersby I decided that I urgently needed a picture with him, so I pushed my way through the crowd and asked him if he would pose for a photo with me. In what had to have been the best possible response to that request, he asked me "Shirt on or off?"

La Situación

After the picture he gave me two high fives and started waving his shirt over his head.

I'm a Cool Teacher, but my Students Aren't Bad Either

Pretty much the only positive part about teaching at SECAP is that almost all of my students are adults so they like to plan activities together and we sometimes hang out after class. On Friday, my class planned a trip to a recreation center in a nearby city called Salcedo. The place was surprisingly nice, and for four dollars each we got to use swimming pools with water slides, a hot tub, saunas, volleyball courts, and a soccer field for the whole day. Afterward we ate lunch, and my students didn't let me pay for anything the entire trip.

With some students at lunch.

One of my students from last semester who couldn't continue English classes because she just started medical school even showed up, and it was nice to hang out with her since we hadn't seen each other in a while.

"Damn right I like the life I live." -Adriana's baby

Adriana, a student of mine, brought her baby on the trip. I forget the baby's name, but she was kind of a boss at one point when she fell asleep drinking out of her bottle so I took a picture.



Talking with Personality

A frustrating part of learning a language is how proficient you need to be before you can actually show your personality around other people in a non-native tongue. For instance, my personality is expressed mostly through bad puns and one-liners. Unfortunately for me, humor requires a high degree of facility with a language because you need to be able to respond quickly to other people to make a joke and you need to know what kinds of things a certain culture finds funny. So unless you have no personality to begin with, being yourself while speaking a foreign language takes a lot of time and practice.

This weekend when I was driving around with my students, one of the people in the car was a friend of the driver who didn't know me. She asked how much Spanish I spoke, to which one of my students replied "Teacher knows how to make jokes in Spanish!" That was an interesting comment to me for two reasons:

First, it supports the claim that conveying personality (especially humor) denotes a high level of language proficiency because my student was using the fact that I know how to make jokes as a measuring stick for how much Spanish I speak. Second, that was the best compliment I have ever received about my Spanish because he didn't say anything about how well I am able to articulate ideas; he said something about how I am able to convey my personality in Spanish, which is reassurance that my Spanish has been improving in an important respect since I have been living here. After all, who cares if you can speak a foreign language fluently if you sound as interesting as a spelling bee champ when you talk.

Another unrelated but funny part of that car ride was when the person who wasn't my student kept calling me "teacher" because that was what everyone else was calling me and she didn't know my real name.