Sunday
Well, the cat was dead when I woke up this morning. Since its eyes were closed and it hadn't moved from the comfy pillowed-against-the-bricks position it was in the last time I saw it, I'm guessing it died in its sleep, and that's something. Flor the girls weren't home to say how to dispose of it, so I bagged it up and left it in view on the concrete shelf, washed my towel, and life went on.
Monday
Classes went pretty smoothly today. I'm still going over the words for people and family with the little kids, but with the older classes I've moved on to words for animals. Rather than draw pictures, I ask the kids to give me the names of animals, then write them on the board and write the English words next to them. It's a lot like the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? - I'm Drew Carey asking the audience to yell out suggestions, picking out ones that I like from the cacaphony, and then telling the audience that I have enough and to shut up so I can be heard. Oh well, at least the kids seem to enjoy it.
I got an unexpected chance to bring up the word 'ratón' today. One of the buildings is off by itself, rather than in the square that the others form, and while I was teaching in there, a mouse ran into the room. Chaos ensued as the students either tried to flee from it or tried to catch it, and it only got worse when Bus, Gaston's dog, ran into the room and chased the mouse, then caught it and ate it (Me, cheering: "¡Es deliciosa!").
I've meant to say a few words about Bus (pronounced 'boose') before now. He looks like someone dressed a timber wolf in the skin of a yellow Lab, and he acts like it too. He roams around the campus and in and out of the classrooms, trying to get the students to give him food, and he really, really doesn't like me. On my first day teaching, he came into the classroom and I tried to shoo him out - he responded by snarling and trying to bite me. Another time, when I was trying to walk through the main gate in the morning, he stood in my way, barking angrily and snapping when I tried to go past. I don't know if this is because I'm new, because I look different from the people around here, or because he hasn't forgiven me for that first day - he doesn't act like this with anyone else. I've settled for just speaking nicely to him when he goes by and avoiding confrontation, and he pretends I don't exist.
For the last few days I've been kind of jumpy, waiting for Marianne to call and say the package has arrived. The call came today, but with one very serious complication - because it was sent by expediated shipping, I have to meet with a customs agent before I can take it home, and the agent is only at the post office from 9AM to 12 on Wednesday and Thursday, and from 2:30 to 4 on Wednesday afternoon.
I can't go in the mornings, obviously, so I'll have to shoot for Wednesday afternoon. I told Flor the situation, so she could spread the word that I wouldn't be at the community center that day. After recess on Wednesdays, I teach the same grade for two periods - I'll just teach for one period this time, and pray that the bus is on time.
Tuesday
I explained the situation to Gaston this morning, and he was fine with me leaving early tomorrow once I told him it was to pick up school materials.
I was back in the same classroom as yesterday, and wouldn't you know it, another mouse came in. Chaos ensued again, but Bus was nowhere to be found. In the confusion, one of the students injured the mouse, giving me a chance to pick it up by the tail.
I've killed mice before. My family uses glue traps, and rather than let the stuck mice suffer, I try and put them out of their misery - a quick smashing with a paint can is the standard method. There weren't any paint cans available, so I took it outside, put it down on the concrete floor, and one heel-stomp to the head later, it was dead. As I carried it to the trash can, a trail of kids followed, wearing expressions of shock and frightened awe. One little girl was upset, so I tried to explain that the mouse was already in pain, and it had died quickly.
For the rest of the class, the kids, for once, were silent.
After school, I went to Lopez to pick up the authorization letter from Marianne's host mother (and waited almost an hour for the bus, not making me feel good about tomorrow). There, I ran into a serious snag - she didn't know what I was talking about. We got on the phone to Marianne, and managed to figure out that she had asked a friend to deliver the letter, and he never had. Then Marianne got on the phone to him, and he said he'd come right over, and to be on the lookout for a red car. He did show up, but on a motorcycle, cheerful and not seeming to care that this was his fault or how upset I was. Still, at least I finally got the letter.
Not wanting to go home just yet, I spent the rest of the afternoon roaming Puerto Lopez, walking up and down the beachside street and checking out the little shops there. I bought a pretty headscarf from a store that had a nude poster prominently displayed (when I say nude, I mean leaving nothing to the imagination and adding a few things as well), and one thing I've been seeking for a while: a white volleyball. As those of you who know me probably know, I write stories in my free time, and one of my works in progress is set on another planet. Covered with clear tape so I can use dry erase markers, the ball will make an excellent globe of that planet.
Wednesday
Days like today are what make me believe in a divine presence watching over me.
I went off to school with my passport and other necessary documents in tow, ready to head out to Manta as soon as possible. When I arrived, I learned that the teachers for the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades were on a small vacation, and the students from those classes wouldn't be coming in today. Since the class I'd planned to cut short was with the seventh grade, this was a stroke of extremely good fortune.
I left as soon as recess began. The wait for the bus was only twenty minutes this time, so by 11AM, I was off on the road to Manta. Sort of, anyway. The conductor told me that this bus was only going to Jipijapa, a halfway point (this despite the bus wearing at least two signs for Manta), and I'd have to catch another bus there. Fortunately the first bus made good time, and when I reached the Jipijapa terminal there was a bus just about to leave for Manta.
I reached Manta just before 2PM. The post office is only about a block away from the bus station, so I went there to touch base - they knew who I was and gave me some forms to show, but told me to come back at 2:30. To kill time, I tried to find the pizza restaurant I went to last time, since I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I did find it, but it was closed, so I hiked for a mile looking for another restaurant (the tourist map said there were many on this route - it lied). I eventually found a cute little one, and had Ecuadorian fried chicken (slices of chicken fried with spices).
By the time I was done it was almost 2:30, and not wanting to hike all the way back, I took a taxi to the bus station. I picked up the package - they had to cut the box open to examine the contents, but since it was crayons and school books, there was no trouble, and afterward I bought some cookies and chips to have for dinner on the bus.
For the last few weeks, I've taken mototaxis back to Salango in the evenings. A mototaxi is basically a scaled-up version of those little stroller-cars parents attach to the backs of their bikes so their kids can go along for the ride. It's an open-air seat under a canopy, attached to the back of a motorcycle, and it has no shock absorbers - you're bounced and vibrated like crazy on the bumpy roads.
My second bus ride back was just like that, but worse, because the bus was bigger and had more room to throw me around. It's a very good thing I don't get motion-sick, or I would have died before we'd gone halfway, being tossed up and down and side to side with every turn of the wheels. It was so bad that the windows kept being vibrated open, and I had to actively hold mine closed while fighting to keep from having the wind knocked out of me. Eventually, though, the road smoothed a bit, and the ride settled down to only making parts of my body bounce, rather than the whole thing.
I got back to Casa de Flor mostly unscathed, and spent the rest of the evening going over the books my mom had sent. They look excellent - pictures with words, spaces for copying, and lots of stuff to color. Thank you, Mom, I owe you a lot for this. I probably won't get very far into the material in the time I have left, but the good news is, I can leave the books here to be used by future volunteers, and they can pick up where I leave off. This thing is bigger than me, after all.
Thursday
Thursday began with a great battle.
Being exhausted and braindead from the trip last night, I forgot and left an open bag with several cookies in it on my dresser, and I woke up to find the bag filled with ants. I dumped the bag, ants and cookies and all, into my toilet, emptied half a bottle of high-concentration bug spray onto them (the spray's supposed to be a repellent, but it works well for killing bugs too), then emptied the rest of the bottle on and around the dresser. When all was done, I surveyed the carnage, triumphant, and washed it all away. 5/29 Never Forget.
The battles continued at school, when yet another mouse infiltrated the classroom. Fortunately it found a hiding place, so there was only a moment's chaos, and I got an excuse to teach the word for 'ratón' again.
In several of the classes I've gone past teaching animals (I usually do about 20-30, and figure they can look up others themselves) and moved on to plants. This is a big hit, because I draw pictures of a tree, a flower, grass, a vine, and a bush, and label all the important parts. The markers and colored pencils come out in force. In the sixth grade, I even got as far as to teach six vegetables, doing the best I can with only four colors of dry erase marker.
Because most of the drawers on my dresser don't have handles, I only store my underwear in there, and I keep the rest of my clothes folded on a countertop across from my bed. As I was moving them to find a roll of tape, a brown spider the size of a quarter scurried out. I've made a hobby of researching dangerous animals, so I know what brown recluses look like, and this spider was the right size, color, and shape (brown recluses have a crab-like stance, and this spider definiely looked similar).
I leapt back with a gasp, and went to war. With a flashlight in one hand and a bottle of bug spray in the other, I stalked the spider for half an hour, poking it out into the open with a pencil and spraying it whenever I had the chance. Eventually it began to weaken, and the spray rained down in torrents as the foul beast writhed in its death throes.
If you're wondering why I didn't just squash it, it's because I didn't want to put my hand anywhere near it, and because I wanted to examine it when it was dead. Looking closer, I'm not sure it was a brown recluse: it didn't have the distinctive 'fiddleback' mark. I do feel better knowing it's dead, though. I don't mind spiders normally - I like watching them when they're outside, and when one's in the house I'll more often release it than kill it, but hiding among my clothes while looking like a dangerous spider is an offense punishable by death.
Friday
June 1st is a child-related holiday here in Ecuador, so because it's on Sunday, the students and teachers celebrated today and partied all morning. The three youngest grades came to school in costumes - butterflies or Cinderella-esque princesses for the girls and clowns or cowboys for the boys (with one Superman in their midst). The older kids had a sack race across the courtyard, with GI Joe-style dolls and other such toys as prizes. I had to run out at one point to buy batteries for my camera - when I came back, the littlest kids were parading down the street, and the older boys were having an eating contest, with all the rest cheering them on.
I'm pretty interesting to the little kids when I'm not in teacher-mode. As those who've seen me recently know, I have very long, very thick hair, and the little girls love to play with it (no, they don't ask, they just grab for it). I followed my mom's advice and brought several pairs of funky earings shaped like animals - dolphins, fish, parrots, and dinosaurs - and these are a big hit with both genders. If I'm not careful, the kids grab them and try to use them as toys, forgetting that they're attached to my ears.
Having my camera in hand made me even more popular today. Everybody wanted me to take their picture, especially the little girls in princess dresses. I got more photos of the layout of the school, as well as some video clips - there's a tiny circus visiting in town, and several kids from there came up and did an act that was half clown, half stand-up comic (I'm not sure what it was about, but everyone thought it was funny).
After the clowns left, everyone went to their classrooms to have snacks. Not sure what else to do, I went to the class I would have been teaching at this time, and was soon hard at work filling and re-filling cups of soda. Many sandwiches and biscuits and such were offered, but being not very hungry and unsure of their origin, I declined, to the puzzlement of the other teachers ('not hungry' seems to be an unfamiliar concept here). When the time came I went to my last class of the day, where I did accept a slice of cocount cake and a cup of Jello.
On an unrelated note, I noticed that I'm not quite as lily-white as I was when I arrived. Since I'm not usually in the sun for more than half an hour at a time, I don't normally wear sunblock these days, and I've picked up a faint golden tan, mostly on my face and arms - I can tell because I have a pale stripe where I always wear my watch. It's funny - when I was a kid, I browned like anything, but these days I don't. Heh.
Photos (at long last!):
The parade came marching . . .
Another shot of the parade. The girl in the cream dress is the balloon-is-fruit girl I told about a while back.
More shots of the parade.
Some of the kids. The girl in the white dress is a camera-hog.
This hen and her chicks roam around the campus. It's interesting - she has three white chicks and one black chick. Occassionally a chick will get lost, and we'll run around looking for the mother to match it back up.
Send in the clowns.
The eating contest.
Bus wasn't invited to the party.
Some shots of the school and Salango in general.
Saturday
I spent most of Saturday helping Denise with her homework. The assignment was to make two foam puzzles, one with the Spanish alphabet and one with the English alphabet. She used a wooden Rugrats puzzle as a pattern (if you care, Chuckie is 'Carlitos' in Spanish), and I showed her how to cut along the trace lines with a sharp knife. When that was done, I drew the letters and she cut them out - actually, I drew them all and ended up also cutting out half of them. We glued the letters onto the pieces, and when they were dry, cut again along the lines so the pieces could come apart. Again, I did most of that - all in all I probably did about 2/3 of the work on the puzzles.
Before we worked on the puzzles, I helped her with English pronounciation - she has a CD that goes along with her book, but the people on it speak fast and not very clearly. They're also British, which made some of the pronounciation tricky. Still, I did get to help her get the rhythm of the Alphabet Song, and I was very amused that they used the tune of 'Yellow Submarine' for a song about your hometown (Me, giggling: "It's the tune of a very famous song"). We left the CD playing while we worked, and I translated some of the funnier picture descriptions for Denise (" 'The apples are under the watermelon'. That might be a problem.").
In the evening, Vanesa and Denise and I went to the circus I mentioned yesterday. I wasn't really thrilled to be going, since it didn't look very impressive and I'm scared of clowns, but I didn't want to refuse the offer, and it was a chance to get out of the house.
I've developed a chronic case of what my mom calls 'museum shoulders' from standing all day, and the narrow, very uncomfortable bench I sat on inside the big top didn't help any, especially since I had to sit upright to keep from hitting the feet of the people behind me.
The circus itself was . . . bizarre. They opened with the Star Wars theme, and began with a group of women (though I think at least one was a transvestite) doing a racy dance while colored lights flashed. Then three kids came out (the oldest couldn't have been more than ten) and did a gymnast act, climbing up cloth ropes to the top of the tent, posing in midair, spinning down to catch the ropes at the last minute, pulling each other up on a ring, etc. all without a net below. It was scary to watch - I shudder to think of the reaction if they tried this in the US. I was impressed, though, and clapped and cheered with the rest. After the gymnansts came a clown act, with an adult in one of those baggy Jamaican hats joined by the kids from Friday and one of the dancers from earlier. I'm not entirely sure what the act was about, but the second half seemed to be about mugging, with the clowns threatening each other with knives and stealing things back and forth. The audience loved it, though. Then the gymnast kids came back and did some more stunts, as did a group of adult gymnansts (this meant lithe, muscular men in skintight leotards striking magnificent poses, but unfortunately I was too tired and achy to appreciate it).
A few hours went by, and Vanesa and I were ready to go home, to Denise's disappointment (it was almost midnight - how much longer could the acts go on?). We went back to the house, and we all crashed.
