Week 3: Call Out the Childcatcher!
Sunday
I woke up early without an alarm this morning (a rare thing for me) and decided I felt well enough to brave the expedition to Manta. I´d planned to ask Flor and the girls for advice, but when I emerged from my room, they´d already left, leaving me breakfast with a note saying they´d gone to Lopez for the day. I wrote back telling them where I´d gone, with thanks for breakfast, and set out to Salango´s bus stop (a rickety wooden bench by the roadside).
The sources I´d consulted say that Manta´s two hours away by bus, but this is a lie. It´s much closer to three hours, even counting in the half-hour when then the engine broke down and we all sat around while the driver and his buddies took turns trying to fix it. The local busses aren´t as fancy as the one that brought me from Quito, but they´re comfortable enough, and the scenery going up the coast is pretty similar to that around Salango and Puerto Lopez - hills covered in sand, grass, and scrubby trees, with lots of little dusty towns that have as many chickens as they do people. The bus left at a little after 10, and by the time it pulled into the Manta bus terminal, it was past 1.
Quito isn´t a very upscale city, but Manta (pop. 100,000-200,000) makes Quito look like NYC. I may have just been in a bad mood from the delay, but everything looks grimy and run-down. I had been hoping to find a shopping mall, or at least a store larger than a Mom-and-Pop, but that did not look promising at all. Since my map wasn´t very detailed, I thought that I´d just start walking along the main seaside road and see what I found, avoiding streets that looked obviously perilous (since almost every street looks like one that would be "obviously perilous" in the US, this isn´t an easy call to make).
Not far down the main street I found a tourist map, and was able to locate markers for 'shopping' and 'fast food'. With visions of picture books and cheeseburgers dancing in my head, I set out.
I was disappointed on both counts. Here in Manta, 'fast food' translates to little family-run chicken restaurants, and the biggest store I found was a sort of half-sized Wal-Mart, selling groceries, stationary, soap & shampoo, etc. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I bought some markers and pencils, and a few other school-related odds and ends. The highlight was a bag with a good selection of little plastic farm animals, which I thought could be a present for my brother.
Despite the signs, I found no other worthwhile shopping locales, and the only bookstore I found wasn´t due to open until October. By now it was midafternoon, I was hot (I don´t normally perspire much, but today I was soaking) and tired and hungry, so I decided to call it quits, have a late lunch, and go home. There were no burger joints to be found (oh, my kingdom for a cheeseburger!), so I settled for a pizza restaurant the guidebook recommended. It wasn´t anything too special - an open-air patio with paper tablecloths and visiting flies - but pizza is pizza, and if it´s got chicken and extra cheese, with a chocolate milkshake to finish the meal, it´s hard to mess it up.
Back at the bus terminal, I found one that was going to Puerto Lopez without much trouble. The awkwardness came from the people. While I was sitting on the bus waiting for it to start, a janitor came through to sweep up, and tried to strike up a conversation with me. This would have been okay, except that his main question was if I was single or married - when I told him I was single, he did a "Thank you, God!" motion (nothing further, though). Later, after the bus was on its way, the guy sitting behind me also started a conversation, which consisted of him repeating the same three or four English questions ("What is your name?", "Where are you from?", "How old are you?" etc.) over and over and over again, regardless of my giving the same answers and telling him I´d already answered that question. I tried telling him that I understood Spanish and we could converse in that, but he still kept up, and saying I was exhausted from my walk and didn´t feel like talking made no difference either. Eventually I just said "I´m going to sleep," and leaned against the window pretending to sleep. I guess he got the hint, because when I sat up to listen to music an hour later he didn´t bother me.
I had hoped that we might make better time if the bus didn´t break down again, but it still took nearly three hours to get to Puerto Lopez. I´d told Flor in the note that I´d be home at 6, but it was 7 by the time I actually returned. Fortunately Ecuadorians are very flexible about timing (it´s not unheard of for everyone to arrive half an hour or more late to a meeting), so all was well, and I was able to collapse.
Monday
There were no classes on Monday, so I took the time to rest from Sunday and catch up on my reading and Internet. Nothing too exciting.
Tuesday onward
This week marked the first one that I followed my new schedule: 45 minutes with each class, 5 classes a day, meeting with every grade at least twice a week.
I´d hoped that the shorter classes would mean the kids would be less rowdy, but nope. I am adapting, though. I think I´ve developed a bit of a reputation for being "the nice one", because the kids are always approaching me with smiles during breaks and saying "Hola!" etc. when they pass me on the walks, and I haven´t noticed them be this cheerful with the other teachers. Thus, when I do get angry, it stands out more. When I want attention, I wham the dry erase board once with the back of the eraser - it makes an incredibly loud, sharp sound that´s much more effective than my voice (and don't worry, it damages neither board nor eraser).
I don´t have the training to know if it´s really effective or not, but I have a sort of half-strategy in mind - rather than be intimidating, I´m trying to be friendly and cheerful with all the kids, and when they do misbehave, I ask them why they´re misbehaving, and explain that they´re hurting my feelings and being rude to me and the other students. Basically, I´m hoping that guilting them into submission will be more effective and longer-lasting than scaring them into it.
I had my first real trial of this strategy when I met with my nemeses from last Tuesday. This time, I actually did read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", but the boy and girl (they´ll come up again, so I´ll call the boy JP and the girl B) from before were a problem again, especially B. To be fair, though, they´re not the only kids who make trouble in that class - there are two other boys that I suspect will continue to be a problem. A few pages away from the end, when B still wouldn´t quit and kept riling the other kids up, I closed the book and told them that I wasn´t going to keep reading if nobody would pay attention, apologizing to those few students who were behaving. It was almost time for me to go to the next class anyway, so I took the time to get up in front of the class and ask them why they kept acting like this; I came to this country especially to work with them, and I wanted us to get along and work together; did they not like me, or not want to learn English?; I was sad. With that melodramatic turn, I departed, to the faint sound of their homeroom teacher giving a followup. I guess I´ll see how it went when I meet with them again.
A similar thing happened when I met with two classes later in the week, including the one I worked with my first day. I didn´t get up and do a melodramatic guilt-speech, but during the last ten minutes or so of class, when everyone was at their worst and I couldn´t get any attention, I just sat down in my chair with my face in my hands, not quite pretending to cry but looking close to it (I´m determined that I will not cry, and I´ve never felt near it, but I did feel tired and frustrated and wanted to show that). It worked - after a few moments, the kids noticed, and they calmed down as much as 40 semi-bored kids are likely to do. I promise that I will use this ability sparingly, and only for good.
During these last few weeks, I´ve been thinking a lot about To Kill a Mockingbird, specifically the chapter about Scout´s first day of school. In a way, my situation is a lot like that - the kids and I aren´t trying to be malicious to each other, but we come from different worlds and different ways of thinking, and it's a rocky start learning to work together (I am, however, very actively trying not to be like Scout's teacher).
And I do think things are starting to smooth over. All the kids are very friendly outside of class, even JP and B and the other known hellions, and I´m the same to them. When I pass students in town, we always say hi to each other. Too, the stuff I'm covering right now, basic traits of English and words for colors, numbers, common phrases, etc. isn´t very interesting, but unfortunately it´s very important. I hope that when I get to more interesting things, they´ll pay more attention. Next week I plan to start on words for people and family members, and then words for animals (I'm planning to have the kids pick which animals I give the words for - inviting chaos, but hopefully catching interest too).
My mom´s also sending a package of teaching materials (thank you so much, Mom!), which I hope to get ideas from, and sets of crayons in the colors I´m teaching - I had an idea of creating a sheet with the English words for the colors in outline, so the kids could color each word in the appropriate hue. I´ve drafted several possible guide-sheets to hand out, too, but before I can get them copied it´s always near dark and I need to head back to Salango. I'm understanding what real adults mean when they complain that there's never enough time.
This was my first time teaching on a Friday, and I got to experience another phenomenon. When the bell rang for my last class to go home, they all came up and said goodbye to me one by one, complete with a hug and a kiss (or at least a kiss gesture with a "mwa" sound) on the cheek. I know this is an Ecuadorian custom, but to an American mind, it´s odd to be kissed by 30+ kids in a row, boys and girls alike. I returned the little "mwa" sound, at least, since it´s the polite thing to do.
I also had my first chance this week to another volunteer besides Marianne. On one of my bus rides home from Lopez, I sat next to a (very cute) guy from Toronto, and across the aisle from two of his friends, a girl from Saudi Arabia and another girl who was from either the US or Canada, I didn´t hear which. They were all starving, so I gave them the bags of Cheetos I´d bought - they were very grateful to have American junk food. We all chatted about what we were doing, and I learned that they were working for five weeks in a village several towns over, building a day care and things like that. I told them where I was teaching, and we talked about possibly meeting up sometime (I don´t know if we actually will, but I hope so!). Since they would be going to Quito when their service was done, I told them what was worth visiting there, especially La Basilica and the museum, although the guy was happiest to learn that there was a McDonalds across from the museum (oh how we American visitors beseech you, Ecuador, why have you no cheeseburgers?). I returned to Flor´s a touch twitterpated.
Saturday
Most of my Saturdays here are pretty much the same: sleep in, have a late breakfast or early lunch, and then either blob for the rest of the day or go to Lopez and use the Internet. Today I did the latter.
The one real highlight was on the bus ride over: I sat across the aisle from a guy who had a chicken in his lap. A live chicken. A big white one. I read in the guidebooks that this is not uncommon, but it´s still the first time I´ve seen it. Having watched Flor´s chickens a lot over the last few weeks, I find it easy to believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs - when you look into the eyes of a rooster, you can see the yellow, reptillian eyes of a mini-velociraptor looking back at you. Eep.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
May 5th to 10th
Week 2: Livin´ on Reds, Vitamin C, and Malarone
Monday
Monday was basically the same as my last three days of work - wake up and dress, instant coffee, walk to school, teach one class for four hours with a half-hour break in the middle, go home for lunch, and stay in my room working on stuff for the rest of the day, unless I emerge to go to Puerto Lopez for the Internet. The kids were just as rowdy as the others, but now that I´ve come to expect that, I´m doing a better job of coping.
After lunch, I embarked on yet another new experience: washing my clothes by hand in a washtub. I´ve built up quite a pile of laundry in the last two weeks, so after learning how things worked from Vanessa, I spent the afternoon playing washerwoman. All things considered, I think I did a pretty good job of it - the smells were gone, and I didn´t see any lingering stains. I only hope that the clothes that call for dry-cleaning will survive the experience.
There´s no dryer, but there´s a jungle of clotheslines all across the back yard, so it was easy to find space to hang everything (though I did have to clean pollen off some of the lines). Since it´s hot but arid here, I hope that I won´t have to do what my mom and I did when we washed our clothes in Costa Rica: "learn to re-define ´clean´ and ´dry´". By the time I was done my back ached, and I went back to my room to rest.
Tuesday
Tuesday was awful.
I worked with the second grade, the youngest kids I´ve worked with yet. Most of them were okay, but there were two, a little boy and girl, who are perhaps the worst-behaved children I´ve ever met. They go around bothering the others, trying to run out of the classroom, disobeying direct orders, and flat-out refusing to do work. If they´d said they were having trouble, or complained that it was hard, I would have sympathized and tried to help them, but sullenly refusing to even try is something else. I generally like children and want them to like me, but working with these two, especially the boy, is the first time in my adult life that I can remember seriously wanting to hit a child. I didn´t and wouldn´t, but the fact that I even felt the urge is saying something.
When I asked the homeroom teacher if the class was often like this, she said they always were, and called them "horrible".
After the kids returned from recess, lessons had to take a pause, because a public nurse had come in to administer vaccinations. When I was these kids´age I was going through leukemia treatments, so I was sympathetic to fear of needles, and helped to hold and comfort those who were scared. The one exception was the little boy from before, who refused to cooperate not out of fear, but out of the same sullen brattiness - I can tell the difference. I confess that I got a mean sense of satisfaction out of seeing him get the shot.
After the nurse left, I tried to resume lessons, promising the children that if they all copied the words I had written on the board, I would read them "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish". I knew some of them might have trouble, but as long as they all tried, I planned to read it anyway. But, of course, my two nemeses refused to do any work (the boy claimed he couldn´t write because his arm hurt, which I knew was a lie because not only were the others doing fine, but the shot wasn´t in his writing arm), and since I´d said that I´d only read if everyone did the work, I told the students that I was sorry, but I wouldn´t be able to read the fun book, and it was these two´s fault because they wouldn´t do the work. Mean, I know, but I thought that if I couldn´t get them to behave, guilt and peer pressure might be more effective.
It turned out to be moot point, because the lesson was disrupted by outside forces. A bunch of older students were helping clear a field next door, and right outside our window, they found a big snake under one of the overturned picnic tables. There was shouting and talking and general chaos, with my kids climbing up on desks to see outside, until the janitor came and killed the snake with a shovel. By then class was almost over and all the kids were wound up, so they all just sort of milled around until I was able to leave. I asked the teacher about possibly talking to the kids´parents, if they were always so badly behaved, but she said it would be hard, and it would, since the parents don´t usually come with the kids to school.
On a happier note, my clothes all dried just fine, although they´re a bit stiff because I didn´t use fabric softener. I can live with that.
Wednesday
Today was better than the past ones. I still had class all morning, but it was a class I´d worked with before, so I got to expand the topic to colors, adjectives, and verbs. This gave the perfect chance to read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", which was a big hit. I told the kids that they didn´t need to understand all the words, just that it would help to see the words I´d taught today being used, and I translated many as I went along.
In even better news, Gaston came around and gave me a schedule he´d created: starting tomorrow, I´d only be teaching a class for 45 minutes at a time, working with five classes each day and meeting with each grade twice a week. A much, much better plan, and I´ve started making plans to type up and copy vocab lists for the students, since they won´t have time to copy everything anymore.
I went back to Casa de Flor in the best mood I´d been in for days, and set to work thinking up new ways to organize lessons. My throat started to feel sore as the day went on, but I thought it was because of the soda I´d had earlier, and kept drinking water, hoping it would feel better.
Thursday
My new and improved schedule for today turned out to be pointless. I woke up this morning not only with my sore throat worse, but with a stuffy nose, a headache, and a small fever. It would have been a mistake to try and teach in this state, because it hurt to talk, and with my nose stuffed up I couldn´t pronounce things, which is a problem when you´re trying to teach a language. I told Flor of my state over breakfast, and she agreed with me, so I went out to the school to tell Gaston, knowing it would be better to show up so they could see first-hand that I was sick. Gaston wasn´t there, but I spoke to one of the senior teachers, who told me to go home and rest.
I took her advice and spent the rest of the day in bed, writing stuff and drinking orange juice that Flor made. I also read through the list of diseases in my traveler´s health booklet, trying to see if my symptoms matched any of them. They´re not the symptoms of dengue fever, I´m vaccinated against almost everything that can be vaccinated against, and I´ve been very good about taking my Malarone, so what I have is probably just the local cold/flu strain, especially since schools are an excellent reservoir for that. I´ll wait a few days, and if my symptoms change or I don´t improve, I´ll call Marianne and see about visiting a doctor.
In the meantime, I´ll blob.
Friday
My symptoms were worse on Friday, but at least I didn´t have any new ones. Once again I went to the school to say that I was sorry, but I was sick and it would be hard for me to teach because it hurt to talk. This time Gaston was there, and he sent me home without fuss.
Thus began another day of blobbing, sustained by Ibuprofen and orange juice.
Saturday
I woke up on Saturday feeling a little better. My throat was still sore and I had a cough, but my fever was gone, and my aches were down to a twinge in the joints. I still spent most of the day blobbing, but after lunch I stayed out for a few hours, watching Sky High (a Disney movie about a school for superheroes) with Denise and Vanessa. I now have proof that some of these movies are bootlegged - this one was obviously filmed in the theater with a video camera, down to there being a silhouette of seats across the bottom and some people getting up to leave at one point. But, considering all the movies and TV shows I´ve sort-of-illegally downloaded off the Internet (if they were available I would buy them legally, I swear!), I have no place to say anything.
I think I´m on the mend. I´ve had some ideas for making pictures to use in class, possibly from coloring books and the like, so if I feel up to it tomorrow, I´m going to take the bus to Manta and go shopping. Ah, adventure.
Monday
Monday was basically the same as my last three days of work - wake up and dress, instant coffee, walk to school, teach one class for four hours with a half-hour break in the middle, go home for lunch, and stay in my room working on stuff for the rest of the day, unless I emerge to go to Puerto Lopez for the Internet. The kids were just as rowdy as the others, but now that I´ve come to expect that, I´m doing a better job of coping.
After lunch, I embarked on yet another new experience: washing my clothes by hand in a washtub. I´ve built up quite a pile of laundry in the last two weeks, so after learning how things worked from Vanessa, I spent the afternoon playing washerwoman. All things considered, I think I did a pretty good job of it - the smells were gone, and I didn´t see any lingering stains. I only hope that the clothes that call for dry-cleaning will survive the experience.
There´s no dryer, but there´s a jungle of clotheslines all across the back yard, so it was easy to find space to hang everything (though I did have to clean pollen off some of the lines). Since it´s hot but arid here, I hope that I won´t have to do what my mom and I did when we washed our clothes in Costa Rica: "learn to re-define ´clean´ and ´dry´". By the time I was done my back ached, and I went back to my room to rest.
Tuesday
Tuesday was awful.
I worked with the second grade, the youngest kids I´ve worked with yet. Most of them were okay, but there were two, a little boy and girl, who are perhaps the worst-behaved children I´ve ever met. They go around bothering the others, trying to run out of the classroom, disobeying direct orders, and flat-out refusing to do work. If they´d said they were having trouble, or complained that it was hard, I would have sympathized and tried to help them, but sullenly refusing to even try is something else. I generally like children and want them to like me, but working with these two, especially the boy, is the first time in my adult life that I can remember seriously wanting to hit a child. I didn´t and wouldn´t, but the fact that I even felt the urge is saying something.
When I asked the homeroom teacher if the class was often like this, she said they always were, and called them "horrible".
After the kids returned from recess, lessons had to take a pause, because a public nurse had come in to administer vaccinations. When I was these kids´age I was going through leukemia treatments, so I was sympathetic to fear of needles, and helped to hold and comfort those who were scared. The one exception was the little boy from before, who refused to cooperate not out of fear, but out of the same sullen brattiness - I can tell the difference. I confess that I got a mean sense of satisfaction out of seeing him get the shot.
After the nurse left, I tried to resume lessons, promising the children that if they all copied the words I had written on the board, I would read them "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish". I knew some of them might have trouble, but as long as they all tried, I planned to read it anyway. But, of course, my two nemeses refused to do any work (the boy claimed he couldn´t write because his arm hurt, which I knew was a lie because not only were the others doing fine, but the shot wasn´t in his writing arm), and since I´d said that I´d only read if everyone did the work, I told the students that I was sorry, but I wouldn´t be able to read the fun book, and it was these two´s fault because they wouldn´t do the work. Mean, I know, but I thought that if I couldn´t get them to behave, guilt and peer pressure might be more effective.
It turned out to be moot point, because the lesson was disrupted by outside forces. A bunch of older students were helping clear a field next door, and right outside our window, they found a big snake under one of the overturned picnic tables. There was shouting and talking and general chaos, with my kids climbing up on desks to see outside, until the janitor came and killed the snake with a shovel. By then class was almost over and all the kids were wound up, so they all just sort of milled around until I was able to leave. I asked the teacher about possibly talking to the kids´parents, if they were always so badly behaved, but she said it would be hard, and it would, since the parents don´t usually come with the kids to school.
On a happier note, my clothes all dried just fine, although they´re a bit stiff because I didn´t use fabric softener. I can live with that.
Wednesday
Today was better than the past ones. I still had class all morning, but it was a class I´d worked with before, so I got to expand the topic to colors, adjectives, and verbs. This gave the perfect chance to read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", which was a big hit. I told the kids that they didn´t need to understand all the words, just that it would help to see the words I´d taught today being used, and I translated many as I went along.
In even better news, Gaston came around and gave me a schedule he´d created: starting tomorrow, I´d only be teaching a class for 45 minutes at a time, working with five classes each day and meeting with each grade twice a week. A much, much better plan, and I´ve started making plans to type up and copy vocab lists for the students, since they won´t have time to copy everything anymore.
I went back to Casa de Flor in the best mood I´d been in for days, and set to work thinking up new ways to organize lessons. My throat started to feel sore as the day went on, but I thought it was because of the soda I´d had earlier, and kept drinking water, hoping it would feel better.
Thursday
My new and improved schedule for today turned out to be pointless. I woke up this morning not only with my sore throat worse, but with a stuffy nose, a headache, and a small fever. It would have been a mistake to try and teach in this state, because it hurt to talk, and with my nose stuffed up I couldn´t pronounce things, which is a problem when you´re trying to teach a language. I told Flor of my state over breakfast, and she agreed with me, so I went out to the school to tell Gaston, knowing it would be better to show up so they could see first-hand that I was sick. Gaston wasn´t there, but I spoke to one of the senior teachers, who told me to go home and rest.
I took her advice and spent the rest of the day in bed, writing stuff and drinking orange juice that Flor made. I also read through the list of diseases in my traveler´s health booklet, trying to see if my symptoms matched any of them. They´re not the symptoms of dengue fever, I´m vaccinated against almost everything that can be vaccinated against, and I´ve been very good about taking my Malarone, so what I have is probably just the local cold/flu strain, especially since schools are an excellent reservoir for that. I´ll wait a few days, and if my symptoms change or I don´t improve, I´ll call Marianne and see about visiting a doctor.
In the meantime, I´ll blob.
Friday
My symptoms were worse on Friday, but at least I didn´t have any new ones. Once again I went to the school to say that I was sorry, but I was sick and it would be hard for me to teach because it hurt to talk. This time Gaston was there, and he sent me home without fuss.
Thus began another day of blobbing, sustained by Ibuprofen and orange juice.
Saturday
I woke up on Saturday feeling a little better. My throat was still sore and I had a cough, but my fever was gone, and my aches were down to a twinge in the joints. I still spent most of the day blobbing, but after lunch I stayed out for a few hours, watching Sky High (a Disney movie about a school for superheroes) with Denise and Vanessa. I now have proof that some of these movies are bootlegged - this one was obviously filmed in the theater with a video camera, down to there being a silhouette of seats across the bottom and some people getting up to leave at one point. But, considering all the movies and TV shows I´ve sort-of-illegally downloaded off the Internet (if they were available I would buy them legally, I swear!), I have no place to say anything.
I think I´m on the mend. I´ve had some ideas for making pictures to use in class, possibly from coloring books and the like, so if I feel up to it tomorrow, I´m going to take the bus to Manta and go shopping. Ah, adventure.
April 28th to May 3rd
Week 1: Getting to Know You
Monday
Gaston told me to be at the school around 7:30, so I set my alarm for 6 this morning. This turned out to be unnecessary, because Everett and his friends sang me awake in the pre-dawn hours once again. With a stomach full of butterflies I showered and dressed, and had a small breakfast of bread, jam, and coffee. Coffee here is something interesting - everybody I´ve met drinks instant Nescafe, even in Quito, but at least there they had actual milk to mix it into. Here on the coast there´s only a yellowish milk-powder, which turns into lots of little gooey clumps when you try to mix it into the water. It reminds me a lot of Bill Cosby´s sketch about lumpy cream of wheat. But I got it down, and set out down that fateful road to the school.
Felicisimo Lopez School is . . . really not like any school I´ve ever seen in the US. It´s all behind a ten-foot cinderblock wall, which the students have painted murals on, and you enter through a gate of corrugated tin. The school itself is a collection of bunker-like pastel buildings, each divided into two or three classrooms. The buildings have neither lights nor windows - instead, the upper sections of the walls are open metal gratings, so the air circulates easily and the sun comes in for light. Since it´s pretty arid around here, all the rooms are dusty, and it´s very easy for bugs to get in.
This is going to be interesting.
The school gates open at 7:30, and the students and teachers wander in and sort of mill around in the dusty little yards until the bell (a horrible roaring buzzer-thing) rings at 8 or so. Then the students line up by grade in the courtyard in front of the main office (a two-story building much newer than the others), and have what´s basically a morning assembly - hearing announcements, sometimes singing the national anthem, and doing stretching exercises. When that´s done, they all go to their classrooms, the youngest grade first and the oldest last.
Since nobody told me anything about where I was supposed to go, I went to find Gaston, and he brought me into one of the classrooms and gave a small introduction. After that, I was left to my own devices, for the rest of the morning.
Yes, you heard that right. The school day runs from 8 AM to a little past noon, and I was with this one class that entire time, not counting the 30-minute recess at 10. I really hope this isn´t the standard schedule - never mind that I can´t keep 40 kids entertained for that long (especially kids whose language I don´t speak that well), it´s cruel to the kids to make them study the same thing for 4 hours, even with a recess in the middle.
I´d planned to start the lesson by teaching the phrase "My name is _ and my favorite animal is _ ", thinking it would be a way for me to learn names and I could get them interested by teaching the English words for animals. For an example, I said my name was Katherine, and my favorite animals were loros, parrots (I´d even worn earrings shaped like parrots for this lesson).
This was when learned something else - each person saying something one after the other isn´t a familiar concept in Ecuadorian schools. I wrote the sentence on the board so the kids would have a reference, but rather than say it with me to learn pronounciation, they copied it into their notebooks and came up to show me their penmanship. When I tried to get students to answer verbally, even in Spanish, they seemed lost. If the class had been smaller, I would have tried to go around and help each one, but that´s almost impossible with 40 kids. Eventually I just gave up and let them copy what I´d written, then fill out the answers in their notebooks.
After this fiasco, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics, and teach how some letters have different sounds in English. Once again, "say it with me" was an unfamiliar concept, and aside from a few half-hearted whispers, all they would do was copy what I wrote and then come show it to me. If this is standard protocol, I don´t think lessons will go very well, since you need to speak a language to learn it.
To make matters worse, it was the first day of school, so almost all the kids were rowdy and talkative, and I had to fight to make myself heard. I tried what the info packet suggested, and rapped on the board with my marker for attention, but that didn´t do much good. I´m really not sure how to cope with this - I can´t force the kids to respect me.
By this point I was exhausted, and it was only mid-morning. To kill time until I could leave, I wrote the words for numbers and days of the week, pronounced the words without expecting the kids to speak, and let them copy what I wrote. This is a bad way to teach and I know it, but really, there wasn´t much else I could do when I couldn´t even get them to stop talking and running around.
Finally class ended, and I fled back to Casa de Flor for lunch. When asked how things went, I replied along the lines of "Difficult, but it´s only the first day. I´ll learn." I really, really hope this will be true.
I spent the rest of the day in my room, studying Spanish and trying to think of new strategies. I did emerge for dinner, but beyond that, not much else happened.
Tuesday & Wednesday
Events were almost exactly the same as Monday´s, except that I was in a different classroom and I started right away with different sounds in the alphabet, not bothering with "My name is __ and my favorite whatever is __". The kids were just as rowdy as those in the first class, and from what I can tell, this isn´t just because it´s the first week of school. Ecuadorians tend to be very free with their children, so the little ones aren´t used to being corrected, and I´ve noticed that the other teachers tend to be loud and harsh by American standards. I don´t think I have the capacity for that - it´s hard for me to shout, I don´t know what discipline procedures are allowed, and in any case I don´t want the kids to be scared of me.
The only improvement was that the school took pity on me, and stationed a teacher outside the classroom to keep an eye on me and bail me out if things got too rough. I do appreciate this, but I also know I can´t keep turning to them every time the kids won´t obey - they have their own work to handle, and I need to have power on my own.
In other news, I made the jaunt back to Puerto Lopez in search of an Internet cafe. It turns out the connection here is horrifically slow - I was online for several hours, and didn´t manage to upload even one photo. This is not good.
Thursday onward
Thursday started with an embarrassment. I got ready as usual and headed off to school, only to find it completely deserted except for the janitor. He told me that there weren´t any classes today or tomorrow, because the teachers had gone off to Manta (a big city a few hours to the north) for a conference. Of course, no one had breathed a word of this to me.
Upset, I went back to Casa de Flor, where even she had known there weren´t going to be classes, yet hadn´t said a word when she saw me all dressed and heading out. I know it´s not the Ecuadorian style to be direct, but come on people, I´m a clueless gringa - you need to tell me things.
On the up side, I only had to work for three days this week instead of five, and I got to spend the rest of the time thinking up lesson plans, studying Spanish, and hanging out with Vanessa and Denise. Denise was still very determined to show me their collection of movies, so I had a unique experience: watching The Simpsons Movie in Spanish when I hadn´t even seen it in English. I now want to see it in English, though, because I liked it a lot. We also watched Alice in Wonderland, and I did my best to explain how that movie had disturbed me deeply as a child, since we lived near a big forest and it was easy for me to imagine being lost and scared like Alice. I also won laughs by crying out melodramatically, "Las ostritas son muertas!" ("The little oysters are dead!")
I finally made good on my offer to make Barbie clothes for Denise. She has a fairly good collection of cloth scraps, and I looked through them, thinking of what clothes they could be and asking her opinion. I ended up getting started on a plaid flannel shirt for Ken and a pair of denim shorts for Barbie, but had to put them on hold until I could go buy some Velcro.
I bought said Velcro on Sunday, at the same time that I went to meet with Marianne to discuss mailing stuff from the US to Ecuador, and to pick up some teaching materials that previous volunteers had used. These turned out to be a few storybooks and some excercise books matching endings and consonant sounds with pictures. Those aren´t much good to me now, since the kids don´t know the English words for the things in the pictures, but I might be able to use them later. I also discovered something else - Puerto Lopez gets frequent blackouts, which means no Internet during that time. I´ll have to take this into consideration.
Denise was very happy with the shirt and shorts, and I hope to be able to make pajamas, a tuxedo, an evening gown, some tank tops, and more with the cloth she has. Waspinator the chick came to visit us while I was sewing, and I learned that his real name is Junior (pronounced yu-nee-or), and he´s the only one of the chickens with a name. I´m taking their word for it that he´s a he - I´m not sure how you tell with a baby chicken. Denise tried to get him to play with her Barbies, and I joked that he could play an ostritch, or a velociraptor.
I forgot to mention that the chickens aren´t the only animals who live here. Dogs and cats aren´t allowed, since they might hurt the chickens (not that it stops several local cats from lounging in the back yard), but Denise has a pet turtle named Juanita. Juanita´s about the size of a big football, but flatter, and she lives in a plastic bin in the kitchen, eating fish bits, except when Denise lets her out to roam in the house and yard during the day. Denise has tried a few times to get Juanita and Junior/Waspinator to play together, but I think you can guess how successful that´s been.
Tomorrow I leap back into the fray. I need all the luck and good will I can get.
Monday
Gaston told me to be at the school around 7:30, so I set my alarm for 6 this morning. This turned out to be unnecessary, because Everett and his friends sang me awake in the pre-dawn hours once again. With a stomach full of butterflies I showered and dressed, and had a small breakfast of bread, jam, and coffee. Coffee here is something interesting - everybody I´ve met drinks instant Nescafe, even in Quito, but at least there they had actual milk to mix it into. Here on the coast there´s only a yellowish milk-powder, which turns into lots of little gooey clumps when you try to mix it into the water. It reminds me a lot of Bill Cosby´s sketch about lumpy cream of wheat. But I got it down, and set out down that fateful road to the school.
Felicisimo Lopez School is . . . really not like any school I´ve ever seen in the US. It´s all behind a ten-foot cinderblock wall, which the students have painted murals on, and you enter through a gate of corrugated tin. The school itself is a collection of bunker-like pastel buildings, each divided into two or three classrooms. The buildings have neither lights nor windows - instead, the upper sections of the walls are open metal gratings, so the air circulates easily and the sun comes in for light. Since it´s pretty arid around here, all the rooms are dusty, and it´s very easy for bugs to get in.
This is going to be interesting.
The school gates open at 7:30, and the students and teachers wander in and sort of mill around in the dusty little yards until the bell (a horrible roaring buzzer-thing) rings at 8 or so. Then the students line up by grade in the courtyard in front of the main office (a two-story building much newer than the others), and have what´s basically a morning assembly - hearing announcements, sometimes singing the national anthem, and doing stretching exercises. When that´s done, they all go to their classrooms, the youngest grade first and the oldest last.
Since nobody told me anything about where I was supposed to go, I went to find Gaston, and he brought me into one of the classrooms and gave a small introduction. After that, I was left to my own devices, for the rest of the morning.
Yes, you heard that right. The school day runs from 8 AM to a little past noon, and I was with this one class that entire time, not counting the 30-minute recess at 10. I really hope this isn´t the standard schedule - never mind that I can´t keep 40 kids entertained for that long (especially kids whose language I don´t speak that well), it´s cruel to the kids to make them study the same thing for 4 hours, even with a recess in the middle.
I´d planned to start the lesson by teaching the phrase "My name is _ and my favorite animal is _ ", thinking it would be a way for me to learn names and I could get them interested by teaching the English words for animals. For an example, I said my name was Katherine, and my favorite animals were loros, parrots (I´d even worn earrings shaped like parrots for this lesson).
This was when learned something else - each person saying something one after the other isn´t a familiar concept in Ecuadorian schools. I wrote the sentence on the board so the kids would have a reference, but rather than say it with me to learn pronounciation, they copied it into their notebooks and came up to show me their penmanship. When I tried to get students to answer verbally, even in Spanish, they seemed lost. If the class had been smaller, I would have tried to go around and help each one, but that´s almost impossible with 40 kids. Eventually I just gave up and let them copy what I´d written, then fill out the answers in their notebooks.
After this fiasco, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics, and teach how some letters have different sounds in English. Once again, "say it with me" was an unfamiliar concept, and aside from a few half-hearted whispers, all they would do was copy what I wrote and then come show it to me. If this is standard protocol, I don´t think lessons will go very well, since you need to speak a language to learn it.
To make matters worse, it was the first day of school, so almost all the kids were rowdy and talkative, and I had to fight to make myself heard. I tried what the info packet suggested, and rapped on the board with my marker for attention, but that didn´t do much good. I´m really not sure how to cope with this - I can´t force the kids to respect me.
By this point I was exhausted, and it was only mid-morning. To kill time until I could leave, I wrote the words for numbers and days of the week, pronounced the words without expecting the kids to speak, and let them copy what I wrote. This is a bad way to teach and I know it, but really, there wasn´t much else I could do when I couldn´t even get them to stop talking and running around.
Finally class ended, and I fled back to Casa de Flor for lunch. When asked how things went, I replied along the lines of "Difficult, but it´s only the first day. I´ll learn." I really, really hope this will be true.
I spent the rest of the day in my room, studying Spanish and trying to think of new strategies. I did emerge for dinner, but beyond that, not much else happened.
Tuesday & Wednesday
Events were almost exactly the same as Monday´s, except that I was in a different classroom and I started right away with different sounds in the alphabet, not bothering with "My name is __ and my favorite whatever is __". The kids were just as rowdy as those in the first class, and from what I can tell, this isn´t just because it´s the first week of school. Ecuadorians tend to be very free with their children, so the little ones aren´t used to being corrected, and I´ve noticed that the other teachers tend to be loud and harsh by American standards. I don´t think I have the capacity for that - it´s hard for me to shout, I don´t know what discipline procedures are allowed, and in any case I don´t want the kids to be scared of me.
The only improvement was that the school took pity on me, and stationed a teacher outside the classroom to keep an eye on me and bail me out if things got too rough. I do appreciate this, but I also know I can´t keep turning to them every time the kids won´t obey - they have their own work to handle, and I need to have power on my own.
In other news, I made the jaunt back to Puerto Lopez in search of an Internet cafe. It turns out the connection here is horrifically slow - I was online for several hours, and didn´t manage to upload even one photo. This is not good.
Thursday onward
Thursday started with an embarrassment. I got ready as usual and headed off to school, only to find it completely deserted except for the janitor. He told me that there weren´t any classes today or tomorrow, because the teachers had gone off to Manta (a big city a few hours to the north) for a conference. Of course, no one had breathed a word of this to me.
Upset, I went back to Casa de Flor, where even she had known there weren´t going to be classes, yet hadn´t said a word when she saw me all dressed and heading out. I know it´s not the Ecuadorian style to be direct, but come on people, I´m a clueless gringa - you need to tell me things.
On the up side, I only had to work for three days this week instead of five, and I got to spend the rest of the time thinking up lesson plans, studying Spanish, and hanging out with Vanessa and Denise. Denise was still very determined to show me their collection of movies, so I had a unique experience: watching The Simpsons Movie in Spanish when I hadn´t even seen it in English. I now want to see it in English, though, because I liked it a lot. We also watched Alice in Wonderland, and I did my best to explain how that movie had disturbed me deeply as a child, since we lived near a big forest and it was easy for me to imagine being lost and scared like Alice. I also won laughs by crying out melodramatically, "Las ostritas son muertas!" ("The little oysters are dead!")
I finally made good on my offer to make Barbie clothes for Denise. She has a fairly good collection of cloth scraps, and I looked through them, thinking of what clothes they could be and asking her opinion. I ended up getting started on a plaid flannel shirt for Ken and a pair of denim shorts for Barbie, but had to put them on hold until I could go buy some Velcro.
I bought said Velcro on Sunday, at the same time that I went to meet with Marianne to discuss mailing stuff from the US to Ecuador, and to pick up some teaching materials that previous volunteers had used. These turned out to be a few storybooks and some excercise books matching endings and consonant sounds with pictures. Those aren´t much good to me now, since the kids don´t know the English words for the things in the pictures, but I might be able to use them later. I also discovered something else - Puerto Lopez gets frequent blackouts, which means no Internet during that time. I´ll have to take this into consideration.
Denise was very happy with the shirt and shorts, and I hope to be able to make pajamas, a tuxedo, an evening gown, some tank tops, and more with the cloth she has. Waspinator the chick came to visit us while I was sewing, and I learned that his real name is Junior (pronounced yu-nee-or), and he´s the only one of the chickens with a name. I´m taking their word for it that he´s a he - I´m not sure how you tell with a baby chicken. Denise tried to get him to play with her Barbies, and I joked that he could play an ostritch, or a velociraptor.
I forgot to mention that the chickens aren´t the only animals who live here. Dogs and cats aren´t allowed, since they might hurt the chickens (not that it stops several local cats from lounging in the back yard), but Denise has a pet turtle named Juanita. Juanita´s about the size of a big football, but flatter, and she lives in a plastic bin in the kitchen, eating fish bits, except when Denise lets her out to roam in the house and yard during the day. Denise has tried a few times to get Juanita and Junior/Waspinator to play together, but I think you can guess how successful that´s been.
Tomorrow I leap back into the fray. I need all the luck and good will I can get.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
April 24th, 25th, 26th, & 27th
Day 18: The Butcher, The Baker, The Candy-Stick Maker
Today began much earlier than expected, when I woke up at 4 AM to the sound of the doorbell. I still have no idea what that was about - I heard Isabel and the other residents talking, but couldn´t make anything out, and I thought it best not to get involved.
I went back to sleep and woke up again when I´d planned to, around 6 so I´d have time to finish packing. That was when I hit my first snag of the day: the mystery of the disappearing toothbrush. I remember specifically not packing my toothbrush, because I wanted to use it this morning, yet it had vanished from its cup in the bathroom. It´s not as if anyone would mistake it for theirs, either, because it´s a big white-and-purple electric one, not to mention I´m the only one who uses that bathroom. Roc wasn´t much help - his questions about it made Isabel think I was looking for a hairdryer. Heh. But one of the other residents gave me a new toothbrush that he´d packed as a spare, and really, may a lost toothbrush be the worst problem I have on this trip.
After breakfast and a minature ransacking, Roc and I headed out to the bus station, where we hit another small snag when they wouldn´t let me take my backpack as a carryon, since it was so heavy. Fortunately they gave me time to retrieve my water bottle and some of my favorite books before they locked it in the luggage hold.
The bus ride was something of an adventure. Even though Ecuador´s only the size of Colorado, it takes about 13 hours to get from Quito to the coast, because you have to take lots of winding roads down from the mountains. The bus´s size turned these roads into a roller coaster, as we the passengers were tossed from side to side at every turn. The most exciting part came when I had to use the tiny bathroom at the back - I was thrown from one seat to another on the way down the aisle, and in the bathroom itself I was shaken like the beads in a maraca. As I said to the lady who was waiting to use it after me, "Es una adventura!"
The view made up for it, though. Walls of green hundreds of feet high, with little waterfalls and streams everywhere. Once you get out of Quito, you can really see that Ecuador isn´t a wealthy country - there are lots of shantytowns, and (very) rural markets, with fruit spread out as far as the eye can see, not to mention entire pig halves hanging outside butcher shops. My favorite was the candy store, because I got to see how they make a type of candy-stick that´s very common here: they start with a forty-pound lump of taffy-like stuff, hang it over a beam, and then bring the two ends together and twist them into narrow sticks.
One interesting thing to note is how the livestock change with altitude. Up in the mountains, people mostly have sheep, with a few cattle and horses (it´s quite something to see cows in a pasture that slopes down at a 45-degree angle). Farther down, the sheep disappear and it´s mostly cows, although I did see a herd of horses with one llama hiding in their midst. By the time you´re down in the flat lands, the cows are outnumbered by the chickens, and the horses have been joined by donkeys and mules. I also spotted one lone herd of ostritches.
By 1 PM I was getting hungry, and worried because I hadn´t brought any snacks. We drove into a town with a big sign proclaiming "Bienvenidos a Venezuela!" (Me: "I knew we´d been driving too long."). This was Santo Domingo, where we passengers were herded through a cheap buffet and even cheaper snack store - chicken, pasta, and cookies all around.
By the time we were on the coast proper it was almost dark, and there was an awesome view of a lightning storm over the mountains as we drove along. I was the only passenger going to Puerto Lopez, so for the last hour or so it was just me, and the conductor invited me up to the driver´s section to sit and chat. I´m half-sure they were trying to flirt with me, since a lot of their questions were about whether I had a boyfriend and whether I liked to go dancing, but I stayed professional and tried to keep to topics like my interest in teaching and other traveling I´d done.
We reached Puerto Lopez around 9:30, and I met up with Marianne, the local program representative. When I talked to Roc yesterday, we´d agreed that since I´d be arriving so late, it would be better for me to stay in Puerto Lopez the first night and go to Salango in the morning, so Marianne took me to a hostel owned by a friend of hers, and we agreed to talk more tomorrow. After I dropped off my luggage, I went looking for a nearby restaurant she´d described. It was cute: a tiny family-owned one, where I had fried fish and rice at a card table, and was waited on by the owner´s children.
Even if I hadn´t seen the ocean down the street, I would have known I wasn´t in the mountains anymore, because the air is a good 15 degrees warmer, and I´d guess the humidity is close to 100 percent. There´s no air conditioning in the hostel, but I´ve lived through 12 Maryland summers, and if I can survive that, I can survive this.
Day 19: Where the Water Meets the Land and Says "Hello, Land!"
Either I didn´t put the mosquito net down right or the bed isn´t very clean, because I woke up this morning with a number of insect bites. This shall be guarded against in the future.
Actually, I discovered them the second time I woke up - the first time was before sunrise, when the local roosters serenaded me with an early morning chorus. After a cold shower (which felt good in the heat), I went down to have breakfast in the lobby/common room/patio/etc. Marianne arrived at 10, and we chatted about what my placement would involve, what my previous experience was, and her own experiences and those of past volunteers. Marianne used to be in the Peace Corps, and she´s very much a latter-day hippie, right down to the, uh, personal appearance choices and the slightly-stoned way of talking. In other words, she´s exactly my kind of person, and I think we´ll get along very well.
Just as planned, she gave me the cellphone used by past volunteers (which means it has most of the important numbers already programmed in), and then we drove out to Salango. It´s about 10 minutes by car, along a very dusty, bumpy road that runs through rocky hills and dunes of sand and grass. To my delight, we turned a corner and saw a flock of magnificent frigatebirds flying down the beach - Marianne says there´s a bird sanctuary nearby.
Salango itself is very much a rustic fishing village. Only one street is paved, the (small) houses are of wooden slats and painted concrete, there are chickens and dogs roaming everywhere, and it all smells of the sea. I´ll have to get some pictures.
We met up with Ivo and Fernando, my host uncles, at El Pelicano, their family´s restaurant and gathering spot for tourists who want to go on snorkeling trips. They brought us to the home of Flor, my host mother, and we all sat down and talked for a while. Flor has three daughters: the oldest one is in her mid-twenties and is working as a graphic designer in the Galapagos, but the middle one, Vanessa (or possibly Manessa, I´m not used to the local accent yet) is 17 and lives at home. They all seem like nice, laid-back people, and I hope we´ll all get along. Marianne also took me to see the school where I´ll be working, and to meet the headmaster, Gaston. He seems like an okay guy, but I get the impression that he´s pretty distracted, so I´m not sure how much I´ll be able to count on him.
After finding a phone and letting my family know I´d arrived safely, I spent the rest of the day unpacking and resting from the bus ride yesterday. There isn´t any air conditioning, but the weather isn´t that bad, no more than 90 or so at most. Compared to Easton and Costa Rica, this is nothing.
I had to repair my mosquito net before putting it up, and I think Flor and Vanessa were a bit surprised that I knew how to sew - I told them about how I´d made a lot of doll clothes when I was younger. My bathroom has a toilet and shower, but no sink, so I´ve found myself washing my hands in the shower. Fortunately I brush my teeth with my water bottle anyway, so that shouldn´t be a problem.
Day 20: Mad Dogs and Americans
Flor´s family keeps a flock of chickens in the back yard: a big rooster, seven or eight hens, and a two-month-old chick who comes into the house to beg for food and escape being the lowest in the pecking order. Since they don´t have names, I´ve mentally dubbed the rooster Everett, the three fluffiest hens Peach, Perdy, and Rae Dawn, and the chick Waspinator.
Everett got his name because one of the movies on my iPod is O Brother, Where Art Thou? and he woke me up with a song in the pre-dawn hours, complete with the neighbors´roosters as backup. Since today was Saturday, I went back to sleep, and didn´t get up again until 10-ish. Despite what the info packet said, my shower does not have hot water, but the water it does have isn´t very cold, and as I´ve said, cold showers feel good in this weather.
Eventually we all got up and had breakfast, and I went out for a walk on the beach, camera in tow. It´s a flat, crescent-shaped sand beach maybe 2-3 miles long, backed by cliffs and the village, and stopped at the ends by rocky points. The fishing boats are moored just offshore, and there are lots of kids roaming around, helping the fishermen on shore. As I was going back, one of the local guys came up to say hello and ask about me (I explained that I was a volunteer come to teach English in the school, no I did not have a boyfriend, and no I was not hoping to find one. I´m glad that MondoChallenge has a rule against having relationships with local people, since it gives me a way to end that line of questioning quickly.) In contrast, the other half of the beach is deserted, except for the frigatebirds, pelicans, herons, and crabs.
Around 1 PM I headed back to Flor´s for lunch, and she and Vanessa went to pick up the youngest daughter, 11-year-old Denise. The family has a big collection of movies on DVD (I suspect that at least some of them are bootlegged, but I won´t ask), so at Denise´s insistence, we watched Naufrago, a.k.a. Cast Away with dubbed Tom Hanks. I joked that if they ever made a sequel, it could be about the adventures Wilson had after he floated away - this idea was a big hit.
I like Denise a lot. She´s very bubbly and talkative, and she was intrigued when she learned what I´d said last night about making doll clothes. I agreed that I could make some for her Barbies, if she had the materials.
I picked up quite a sunburn from my walk on the beach, so I didn´t go out for the rest of the day, but after dinner (meals here consist almost entirely of rice, beans, fish, chicken, fried plantains, spaghetti, and tomatoes, in various combinations) the four of us went out to a small carnival that had set up shop a few streets away. We met up with some of Flor´s friends-and-relations and went to various amusements - I managed to win a pack of gum in a dart-throwing game. Vanessa and I went on the ferris wheel, a small and rickety one that I´m not sure would pass inspection in the US, but obviously we survived. By then everyone was tired, and we sat off to the side talking. I had great fun with one of Flor´s nieces, a heartrendingly cute girl about 4-5 years old, whose favorite game was to blow up a balloon, pretend it was a fruit ("Es una manzana!" "Es una sandia!" etc.), and "eat" it by letting the air out. I set her family up for future annoyance, I´m sure, by showing her how to make the balloon squeal and wheeze by pulling it tight when she let the air out.
I just hope I can keep up this kind of rapport with children in the weeks to come.
Photos:
A shot of my room. It isn´t very big, so it´s hard to get a good view.
Frigatebirds outside my window.
Everett and Waspinator. This pic doesn´t really capture how gangly Waspinator is.
Some shots from my walk on the beach.
These crabs were all over the beach. This one´s about the size of an egg.
Cue "Ride of the Valkyries" playing here.
Even in remote Ecuadorian fishing villages, people throw sneakers over power lines.
Day 21: Sailing for Adventure on the Big Blue Wet Thing
Once again Everett woke me before dawn, and once again we all went back to sleep and didn´t get up until late. I´d planned to spend the afternoon going over lesson plans, but around 3, Vanessa ducked in to say that the extended family was going on a boat trip to a nearby beach, and I was invited to come along.
A dozen of us piled into a motorboat owned by one of the uncles, and we sailed to a quiet beach in a cove just around the corner from Salango. I was a bit surprised to learn that not everyone here learns to swim at an early age - Flor, for example, hadn´t learned until a few years ago. We anchored 50-100 yards offshore, and took turns jumping off and swimming around the boat and to the beach. I went exploring in the rock caves, where I saw a largish fish trapped and swimming around in a tide pool - funny. Eventually everyone got tired, and we just sat on the beach and talked. I was asked about why I´d come here, what my life had been like before, and I told how I´d never been anybody very important or interesting, or ever accomplished much, and that hopefully my time here would give me some life experience.
Back at Casa de Flor, I had another adventurous first: washing my hair in a cold shower with low water pressure. It took a very, very long time to get the conditioner out, and I´m still not sure I did get all of it, but I guess it´ll have to do.
I crashed and crashed hard tonight, because I need all the sleep I can get. Tomorrow the adventure really begins.
P.S. I´m going to start posting blog entries by week, rather than one for every day, since it´s unlikely each day will be as exciting and different (to you the reader, anyway) as they´ve been in the past.
Today began much earlier than expected, when I woke up at 4 AM to the sound of the doorbell. I still have no idea what that was about - I heard Isabel and the other residents talking, but couldn´t make anything out, and I thought it best not to get involved.
I went back to sleep and woke up again when I´d planned to, around 6 so I´d have time to finish packing. That was when I hit my first snag of the day: the mystery of the disappearing toothbrush. I remember specifically not packing my toothbrush, because I wanted to use it this morning, yet it had vanished from its cup in the bathroom. It´s not as if anyone would mistake it for theirs, either, because it´s a big white-and-purple electric one, not to mention I´m the only one who uses that bathroom. Roc wasn´t much help - his questions about it made Isabel think I was looking for a hairdryer. Heh. But one of the other residents gave me a new toothbrush that he´d packed as a spare, and really, may a lost toothbrush be the worst problem I have on this trip.
After breakfast and a minature ransacking, Roc and I headed out to the bus station, where we hit another small snag when they wouldn´t let me take my backpack as a carryon, since it was so heavy. Fortunately they gave me time to retrieve my water bottle and some of my favorite books before they locked it in the luggage hold.
The bus ride was something of an adventure. Even though Ecuador´s only the size of Colorado, it takes about 13 hours to get from Quito to the coast, because you have to take lots of winding roads down from the mountains. The bus´s size turned these roads into a roller coaster, as we the passengers were tossed from side to side at every turn. The most exciting part came when I had to use the tiny bathroom at the back - I was thrown from one seat to another on the way down the aisle, and in the bathroom itself I was shaken like the beads in a maraca. As I said to the lady who was waiting to use it after me, "Es una adventura!"
The view made up for it, though. Walls of green hundreds of feet high, with little waterfalls and streams everywhere. Once you get out of Quito, you can really see that Ecuador isn´t a wealthy country - there are lots of shantytowns, and (very) rural markets, with fruit spread out as far as the eye can see, not to mention entire pig halves hanging outside butcher shops. My favorite was the candy store, because I got to see how they make a type of candy-stick that´s very common here: they start with a forty-pound lump of taffy-like stuff, hang it over a beam, and then bring the two ends together and twist them into narrow sticks.
One interesting thing to note is how the livestock change with altitude. Up in the mountains, people mostly have sheep, with a few cattle and horses (it´s quite something to see cows in a pasture that slopes down at a 45-degree angle). Farther down, the sheep disappear and it´s mostly cows, although I did see a herd of horses with one llama hiding in their midst. By the time you´re down in the flat lands, the cows are outnumbered by the chickens, and the horses have been joined by donkeys and mules. I also spotted one lone herd of ostritches.
By 1 PM I was getting hungry, and worried because I hadn´t brought any snacks. We drove into a town with a big sign proclaiming "Bienvenidos a Venezuela!" (Me: "I knew we´d been driving too long."). This was Santo Domingo, where we passengers were herded through a cheap buffet and even cheaper snack store - chicken, pasta, and cookies all around.
By the time we were on the coast proper it was almost dark, and there was an awesome view of a lightning storm over the mountains as we drove along. I was the only passenger going to Puerto Lopez, so for the last hour or so it was just me, and the conductor invited me up to the driver´s section to sit and chat. I´m half-sure they were trying to flirt with me, since a lot of their questions were about whether I had a boyfriend and whether I liked to go dancing, but I stayed professional and tried to keep to topics like my interest in teaching and other traveling I´d done.
We reached Puerto Lopez around 9:30, and I met up with Marianne, the local program representative. When I talked to Roc yesterday, we´d agreed that since I´d be arriving so late, it would be better for me to stay in Puerto Lopez the first night and go to Salango in the morning, so Marianne took me to a hostel owned by a friend of hers, and we agreed to talk more tomorrow. After I dropped off my luggage, I went looking for a nearby restaurant she´d described. It was cute: a tiny family-owned one, where I had fried fish and rice at a card table, and was waited on by the owner´s children.
Even if I hadn´t seen the ocean down the street, I would have known I wasn´t in the mountains anymore, because the air is a good 15 degrees warmer, and I´d guess the humidity is close to 100 percent. There´s no air conditioning in the hostel, but I´ve lived through 12 Maryland summers, and if I can survive that, I can survive this.
Day 19: Where the Water Meets the Land and Says "Hello, Land!"
Either I didn´t put the mosquito net down right or the bed isn´t very clean, because I woke up this morning with a number of insect bites. This shall be guarded against in the future.
Actually, I discovered them the second time I woke up - the first time was before sunrise, when the local roosters serenaded me with an early morning chorus. After a cold shower (which felt good in the heat), I went down to have breakfast in the lobby/common room/patio/etc. Marianne arrived at 10, and we chatted about what my placement would involve, what my previous experience was, and her own experiences and those of past volunteers. Marianne used to be in the Peace Corps, and she´s very much a latter-day hippie, right down to the, uh, personal appearance choices and the slightly-stoned way of talking. In other words, she´s exactly my kind of person, and I think we´ll get along very well.
Just as planned, she gave me the cellphone used by past volunteers (which means it has most of the important numbers already programmed in), and then we drove out to Salango. It´s about 10 minutes by car, along a very dusty, bumpy road that runs through rocky hills and dunes of sand and grass. To my delight, we turned a corner and saw a flock of magnificent frigatebirds flying down the beach - Marianne says there´s a bird sanctuary nearby.
Salango itself is very much a rustic fishing village. Only one street is paved, the (small) houses are of wooden slats and painted concrete, there are chickens and dogs roaming everywhere, and it all smells of the sea. I´ll have to get some pictures.
We met up with Ivo and Fernando, my host uncles, at El Pelicano, their family´s restaurant and gathering spot for tourists who want to go on snorkeling trips. They brought us to the home of Flor, my host mother, and we all sat down and talked for a while. Flor has three daughters: the oldest one is in her mid-twenties and is working as a graphic designer in the Galapagos, but the middle one, Vanessa (or possibly Manessa, I´m not used to the local accent yet) is 17 and lives at home. They all seem like nice, laid-back people, and I hope we´ll all get along. Marianne also took me to see the school where I´ll be working, and to meet the headmaster, Gaston. He seems like an okay guy, but I get the impression that he´s pretty distracted, so I´m not sure how much I´ll be able to count on him.
After finding a phone and letting my family know I´d arrived safely, I spent the rest of the day unpacking and resting from the bus ride yesterday. There isn´t any air conditioning, but the weather isn´t that bad, no more than 90 or so at most. Compared to Easton and Costa Rica, this is nothing.
I had to repair my mosquito net before putting it up, and I think Flor and Vanessa were a bit surprised that I knew how to sew - I told them about how I´d made a lot of doll clothes when I was younger. My bathroom has a toilet and shower, but no sink, so I´ve found myself washing my hands in the shower. Fortunately I brush my teeth with my water bottle anyway, so that shouldn´t be a problem.
Day 20: Mad Dogs and Americans
Flor´s family keeps a flock of chickens in the back yard: a big rooster, seven or eight hens, and a two-month-old chick who comes into the house to beg for food and escape being the lowest in the pecking order. Since they don´t have names, I´ve mentally dubbed the rooster Everett, the three fluffiest hens Peach, Perdy, and Rae Dawn, and the chick Waspinator.
Everett got his name because one of the movies on my iPod is O Brother, Where Art Thou? and he woke me up with a song in the pre-dawn hours, complete with the neighbors´roosters as backup. Since today was Saturday, I went back to sleep, and didn´t get up again until 10-ish. Despite what the info packet said, my shower does not have hot water, but the water it does have isn´t very cold, and as I´ve said, cold showers feel good in this weather.
Eventually we all got up and had breakfast, and I went out for a walk on the beach, camera in tow. It´s a flat, crescent-shaped sand beach maybe 2-3 miles long, backed by cliffs and the village, and stopped at the ends by rocky points. The fishing boats are moored just offshore, and there are lots of kids roaming around, helping the fishermen on shore. As I was going back, one of the local guys came up to say hello and ask about me (I explained that I was a volunteer come to teach English in the school, no I did not have a boyfriend, and no I was not hoping to find one. I´m glad that MondoChallenge has a rule against having relationships with local people, since it gives me a way to end that line of questioning quickly.) In contrast, the other half of the beach is deserted, except for the frigatebirds, pelicans, herons, and crabs.
Around 1 PM I headed back to Flor´s for lunch, and she and Vanessa went to pick up the youngest daughter, 11-year-old Denise. The family has a big collection of movies on DVD (I suspect that at least some of them are bootlegged, but I won´t ask), so at Denise´s insistence, we watched Naufrago, a.k.a. Cast Away with dubbed Tom Hanks. I joked that if they ever made a sequel, it could be about the adventures Wilson had after he floated away - this idea was a big hit.
I like Denise a lot. She´s very bubbly and talkative, and she was intrigued when she learned what I´d said last night about making doll clothes. I agreed that I could make some for her Barbies, if she had the materials.
I picked up quite a sunburn from my walk on the beach, so I didn´t go out for the rest of the day, but after dinner (meals here consist almost entirely of rice, beans, fish, chicken, fried plantains, spaghetti, and tomatoes, in various combinations) the four of us went out to a small carnival that had set up shop a few streets away. We met up with some of Flor´s friends-and-relations and went to various amusements - I managed to win a pack of gum in a dart-throwing game. Vanessa and I went on the ferris wheel, a small and rickety one that I´m not sure would pass inspection in the US, but obviously we survived. By then everyone was tired, and we sat off to the side talking. I had great fun with one of Flor´s nieces, a heartrendingly cute girl about 4-5 years old, whose favorite game was to blow up a balloon, pretend it was a fruit ("Es una manzana!" "Es una sandia!" etc.), and "eat" it by letting the air out. I set her family up for future annoyance, I´m sure, by showing her how to make the balloon squeal and wheeze by pulling it tight when she let the air out.
I just hope I can keep up this kind of rapport with children in the weeks to come.
Photos:
A shot of my room. It isn´t very big, so it´s hard to get a good view.
Frigatebirds outside my window.
Everett and Waspinator. This pic doesn´t really capture how gangly Waspinator is.
Some shots from my walk on the beach.
These crabs were all over the beach. This one´s about the size of an egg.
Cue "Ride of the Valkyries" playing here.
Even in remote Ecuadorian fishing villages, people throw sneakers over power lines.
Day 21: Sailing for Adventure on the Big Blue Wet Thing
Once again Everett woke me before dawn, and once again we all went back to sleep and didn´t get up until late. I´d planned to spend the afternoon going over lesson plans, but around 3, Vanessa ducked in to say that the extended family was going on a boat trip to a nearby beach, and I was invited to come along.
A dozen of us piled into a motorboat owned by one of the uncles, and we sailed to a quiet beach in a cove just around the corner from Salango. I was a bit surprised to learn that not everyone here learns to swim at an early age - Flor, for example, hadn´t learned until a few years ago. We anchored 50-100 yards offshore, and took turns jumping off and swimming around the boat and to the beach. I went exploring in the rock caves, where I saw a largish fish trapped and swimming around in a tide pool - funny. Eventually everyone got tired, and we just sat on the beach and talked. I was asked about why I´d come here, what my life had been like before, and I told how I´d never been anybody very important or interesting, or ever accomplished much, and that hopefully my time here would give me some life experience.
Back at Casa de Flor, I had another adventurous first: washing my hair in a cold shower with low water pressure. It took a very, very long time to get the conditioner out, and I´m still not sure I did get all of it, but I guess it´ll have to do.
I crashed and crashed hard tonight, because I need all the sleep I can get. Tomorrow the adventure really begins.
P.S. I´m going to start posting blog entries by week, rather than one for every day, since it´s unlikely each day will be as exciting and different (to you the reader, anyway) as they´ve been in the past.
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