let it be

Pardon me for not updating in a while. It´s just that during school week, nothing fantastically exciting ever happens. I wake up in the morning, make breakfast, plan lessons, get lunch, and teach from 3 to 7PM. Then I come home, exhausted, read or watch a movie, make dinner, and go to sleep. At least I have a routine now. That´s comforting.

Last night we had a party. It was supposed to only be a get together of a few people before going out to Casa Tinku, which most of us did, but Charles stayed behind with another teacher who doesn´t live at our apartment to keep an eye on the place and the random Ecuadorians in it. We went to Casa Tinku because there was a Beatles tribute band playing and they were super good. The singer of the band was English so that was helpful to hear an English-speaking person singing. The rest of the band was seemingly Ecuadorian. It was good too because every time we go out and see live music I have no idea what the songs are and can´t sing along. It seemed that all the teachers that went to the bar to see the tribute band really enjoyed being able to sing the songs with the band. And it was really funny watching the locals sing the words they knew of the songs too. We stayed at Tinku until about 1:45 and then Annabel and I went home to find about 10 random guys sitting in our living room, all of our alcohol gone, and Charles passed out in his bed. We proceeded to kick everyone out with no problem whatsoever since they were all pretty nice guys and we just sitting around listening to music. However, after they left, we noticed that not only was all the alcohol we bought completely gone, but they had also eaten a bunch of our food while we were away including the jar of Nutella I bought. The nerve! And someone had eaten Charles´s hotdogs, which we realized after seeing of hot dog puke all over one of our bathrooms. What a situation.... it was pretty weird, but oh well, it could have been a lot worse for sure.

The weekend goes by way too quickly. Hope you all had a good one :)

some pictures of my apartment and view from the roof

49 stairs

Well, moved into the new apartment last night. No one was expecting that we would actually move this weekend because on Saturday, we phoned Michelle and she said it was unlikely that we were moving. Then Sunday, Cassie, my Canadian roommate called Michelle´s husband Diego and he said "Why can´t you move today? I´ll be over to get you guys and your things in a half hour." A half hour to pack up our whole house? Talk about  a whirlwind. Thankfully it was more like an hour. Then we drove one load of stuff to the new place. Annabel and I were dropped off with those things to start hauling them up 49 stairs to our apartment (yes, we counted the stairs). Once all the stuff was there, Annabel and I had taken about eight trips up the apartment I´d say. Walking up to the apartment is definitely good exercise. I haven´t really unpacked anything yet because my wardrobe and drawers are pretty dusty and I don´t have any hangers.... and no time to go out and buy stuff today so it´ll have to wait until tomorrow. The apartment, as a whole, it probably not as spectacular as I made it sound, but for Ecuadorian standards in terms of what I´ve seen here, it´s really nice. I will post some pictures as soon as I get a chance. The best part about the place is definitely the view from the roof. You can see all the mountains surrounding the valley and all the monuments in the city. It´s pretty beautiful. And even though I did kind of miss sleeping on the floor of Annabel´s room last night, haha, it was really great to wake up in a bed in my own room. A maintance man who works for Diego fixed my bathroom plumbing this morning too which is great because last night when I turned the faucet on to test it, the water went straight to the floor rather than through pipes because the pipe was literally severed in half. All is good now.

Anyway, here´s to another week of teaching. I am glad because two of my classes are being divided in half today (hopefully) which means it will be a lot easier on me. My kids class has a test tomorrow in which they have to fill in missing letters of the alphabet, unscramble sentences like "look at the board" and "sit down" and figure out what to fill in in the question How do __ spell ____ name?". I hope they all pass.... yikes. I know that some of them haven´t been very focused on English during class, rather walking around getting different colored pencils from other students and coloring in their book.

I saw five of my students around town yesterday while Annabel and I were walking to and from the Central Market that closed literally 5 minutes before we arrived (ugh...) and they were all ready excited to see me...hanging out of cars yelling ¨hi teacher!¨and whatnot. it was pretty cute.

Have a great day!

movin´ on up. literally.

BIG NEWS: We (my roommates and me) found out yesterday that instead of just staying in the apartment we live in right now and me moving into a different bedroom, my roommates and I are moving somewhere else, probably tomorrow or Sunday. And that somewhere else is a beautiful top two floors and roof apartment in downtown Loja in a building that the owners of our school bought last week. Literally, they bought the entire building last week. We just saw the place last night and I´m not sure exactly what floors its on, just that we have to walk up a lot of stairs to get to the apartment, but I would say that our apartment is floors 4 and 5 and also the rooftop terrace. It´s smack dab in the middle of downtown Loja and the views from the roof are INCREDIBLE. We have an actual living room furnished with a coffee table, two chairs, and an IKEA futon (brought here from Canada I guess). We got into the apartment and immediately sat on the futon. I haven´t sat on a sofa since I got here, just mattresses and plastic or metal chairs. The dining room area has a table that isn´t an outside plastic picnic type table. Real wood with a lot of chairs around it. It has a pretty legit kitchen. No oven, but who would expect that, but a lot of stoage space and real counters. In the living room there is a bar area which is super nice. There are 6 bedrooms total ranging from tiny to gigantic. Mine is gigantic, about twice as big as my bedroom at home, and has a private bathroom and get this!, costs only $85 per month, which makes me bitter that once I paid $420 per month for a room half the size and no private bathroom. Cost of living is definitely relative to income wherever you live. Granted, I am making only $320 per month here, but I can certainly afford $85 with what I saved up before coming.

Anyways, Charles (my Nigerian housemate) has the other big bedroom and Annabel has the one next to mine. How convenient. Not sure what room my Canadian roommate and her boyfriend are going to live in, but time will tell. Charles made sure to write our names on the bedroom doors last night with a whiteboard marker to claim them. 

The school owners, Michelle and Diego, who are married, told us that we should be moving in this weekend so hopefully that happens. I really feel like this apartment would be used if Loja were to host a season of MTV´s Real World. It´s too nice. After we move in, I will take pictures and definitely get them uploaded here or somewhere else. Stay tuned.

The best part, in my opinion, about the apartment is that the walls facing the street are all glass. So that includes my bedroom. You stand next the wall, look down, get kind of frightened, and then appreciate the view. The two floors of the apartment kind of overhang over the rest of the building a bit which is freaky, but it´s also pretty sweet. Another good thing is that the rest of the building is going to be offices and no apartments so we will be the only ones living in there.

Sounds nice though, eh? I can´t wait. The new apartment is close to any store or resturant we would possibly need to go to except SuperMaxi (the most American style supermarket) and TropiBurger. bummerrrrr, haha. 

Too much excitement about moving. 

In other news, I´m still sick. Today, my nose is running like a faucet. Yum.

Have a great weekend!

pardon me while i whine

I have a cold. The whole shebang. Sore throat, coughing, runny nose, sneezing, body aches. It´s tough to teach 4 hours in a row with a sore throat. YUCK!

Thank goodness it´s Thursday already.
That is all.

two weeks since home.

Finally, now that Carnaval is done, businesses are open again and I can get on the internet….

So I’ve been in Loja for two weeks as of today (Wednesday, February 17). It’s hard to decide whether the time has passed quickly or slowly. The days I have to work go by quickly, but when we don’t have to work, the days pass pretty slowly. Because of Carnaval, the school was closed Monday and Tuesday. On Sunday, Annbel, newest teacher Kit from Boston, and I went to Parque Jipiro, which is in on the north side of the city. When we got to the park and I stepped out of the taxi, a truck passed us and someone poured a bucket of water over my head. Literally, the second I slammed the taxi door. Before going to the park on Sunday, Annabel and I walked around downtown Loja looking for an open internet café, which was quite a task as pretty much every business was closed because it was Sunday. Anyway, as we were walking, two kids on a balcony threw water on us and a guy that passed us poured a bottle of water on Annabel. When waiting for a taxi to get to Parque Jipiro, a city bus passed us and a kid standing on it sprayed us with foam. Unfortunate for sure. Getting soaked by strangers is not really fun and at the time, you get kind of pissed, but then just laugh it off. Thank goodness Carnaval is over. Okay, back to Parque Jipiro. It is this huge recreational park with a swimming pool, skate park, basketball courts, soccer fields, paddleboat pond, pony and horse rides, volleyball courts, and loads of playground equipment. There were also enclosures of ostriches, flamingoes, some llamas, and a goat. We walked around the park, the whole time nervous about potentially getting sprayed with foam. Rather, a couple guys soaked us with water bottles… three times. When they came after us a second time, I was yelling at them not to do it again and one of the guys said to me in Spanish “In our country, it is Carneval!” and I replied that I knew that and that I’m not a tourist, I live in Loja and didn’t want to be wet anymore …but to no avail, soaked again (see photo above). Oh well, at least it was warm and sunny on Sunday. Last week in one of my classes, I told them that in the US there is nothing quite like Carnaval except maybe Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which takes place at the same time and they were shocked.

One of my housemates is leaving to go back to Switzerland tomorrow and another one of my housemates is moving into his room, which means I get to move my things into the available room so I don’t have to sleep on my mattress on Annabel’s floor anymore and have all my stuff upstairs. Hooray! As a bonus, the room I am moving into has an in suite bathroom. How convenient!

On Monday night, my Canadian housemate’s Ecuadorian boyfriend cooked dinner for everyone. He made minestra (different beans and peppers in a sauce that consisted of peanut butter and various spices), chicken, rice, fried plantains, French fries, and a salad of avocado and tomato. O M G, it was so delicious! Definitely the best meal I’ve eaten here yet. TropiBurger (think Ecuadorian McDonald’s) is still in second place. Haha. Their clasica con queso combo is on par with McDonald’s for sure.

I’m still trying to determine if I want to stay here for 6 months or a year.  I am kind of grateful that we only have to teach three days this week. It will go by quickly.

Hope you are all doing well!

 ps Heres a picture of me in front of a Simon Bolivar mural across from la Puerta de la Ciudad, which I would also post pictures of, but waiting 5 minutes for one photo to upload is outrageous. I miss the speed of the internet at home.

poker face

Happy 10th birthday to my cousin, Dylan! I miss you and I hope you have a great day!

The school was chaos yesterday. No teacher planned a lesson because the owner of the school came into all of our classes on Thursday and told the students they could bring water balloons, foam spray cans, and water guns to celebrate carneval. I had some students who didn´t want to parktake in the fun outside the school in my first two classes so I taught them some Valentine´s Day phrases and we made Valentines cards. Those kids are so cute. I bought candy for all my classes as well, but in my 3rd class only 5 out of 27 students showed up and they all just threw buckets of water at other people and only came upstairs when they saw me through a window holding up candy I promised on Thursday to bring them. Not a single person showed up for my last class so that was convenient. I guess it makes sense because on Thursday I told them we weren´t going to learn anything new on Friday, just make Valentine´s Day cards (and what teenager wants to do that?) or they could celebrate carneval outside the school. A lot of students didn´t pay attention to the whole "only celebrate outside the school" bit because the school cleaning lady was sweeping tons of water out of the hallways of the school. I got sprayed by foam only once and otherwise just stayed in the school as much as possible to avoid getting soaked, but when I was leaving for the night a student who I don´t know poured a bottle of water on me... Oh well, it´s all in good fun.

Last night I went out to a bar called Casa Tinku with a bunch of other teachers and it was tons of fun. We had some drinks beforehand at someone´s house and took taxis to the bar. There was a band playing for a while and they were pretty good, then they just turned on a playlist of music. Lady Gaga´s song "Pokerface" and The Black Eyed Peas song "Ive Got A Feeling" are huge here right now. It was comforting to hear those and some other songs I know and after a few more drinks, we were all dancing like idiots. Good times.

Anyway, off to the Saturday open air market to stock up on fruits, vegetables, eggs, etc.

Hope everyone´s doing well!

a few pictures

 

Here are six pictures because I found an internet connection that is allowing me to upload them. I am sure they will not post in any particular order, but I´m sure you can figure out which picture is which: view of a street with colorful buildings, but not sure which street it is; the shower that electrocuted me and is almost lukewarm every day; a view from my bedroom window of the clouds covering the mountains before it started downpouring for the rest of the day; our kitchen sink and food storage area, modest no?; this river may look beautiful, but it´s main purpose is apparently to flow sewage through Loja. Whil standing on this bridge, I saw a little girl (see bottom right of pic) get pushed in the river in her school uniform; Annabel and I saw these cows a day before in a small lot between two houses on the same hill, but when we had our cameras the next day to take a picture of them, they had been moved to a more open space.

gettin into the swing of things

I hope this post finds you all well.

After three days of teaching, I am incredibly exhausted and at the same time relieved that so far, I really like my job. I am teaching four classes a day right now. The first is a beginners six to nine year old class, then beginners seven to nine years old, a level four (out of eight levels) 12-14 years old class, and lastly a beginners teen class (15-17 years old). There is definitely a benefit in teaching four different classes in a row in that time flies by, but by the end of the four hours I am exhausted mentally from having to teach in two languages. Planning for the lessons is going to be time consuming as well and the downside is that we don’t get paid for lesson planning. It seems like most teachers at the school rely on the books we’re teaching from for each class mostly and don’t do much more supplemental planning or out of the book activities. I can imagine that this is because they don’t get paid for lesson planning. It’s hard to want to spend a lot of time planning if you know that that’s more time you work without getting paid. I am trying to limit myself to no more than one hour per day of lesson planning. That way I am only missing out on getting paid four more dollars a day. Yes, the teachers at the school get paid $4.00 an hour. Ridiculous, I know, but I guess that’s just the way it works. Apparently it’s enough to make it here. But really, you can’t beat getting hugs from 30 young children every days. In Ecuador, it’s customary I guess for young students to hug their teachers. That certainly isn’t the case at home, but we were warned before starting to teach that a lot of the students are going to want to hug us every day. Adorable.

An update on Carneval, yesterday Annabel and I were walking to school to meet with the owner about signing a contract and a little boy hiding around a corner sprayed us with his water gun. Nothing serious, but a bit annoying nevertheless. In front of our school after classes, kids fill up water balloon from the faucet on the side of the building, throw them at each other, spray each other with cans filled with foam, but don’t do anything to the teachers (so far anyway). While just walking to the school right now, we saw a little girl get a bucket of water poured on her from a building above and a girl get an egg thrown at her (she was already soaked with water and foam)

In Ecuador, lunch is the biggest meal of the day. Most businesses, including our school, close from around noon to two in the afternoon every day for siesta. “Almuerzo”, or lunch, is served in most resturants as a soup, main dish with a meat and rice, and a drink. Sometimes even dessert. Almuerzo is always between $1.50 and about $2.50 depending where you go. Yesterday, Annabel and I wanted to try our first almuerzo so we walked around downtown Loja, went to two restaurants that are recommended in my Lonely Planet tour book. The first was a Mexican restaurant that was totally packed, no open tables, so we figured that they must have really great food, but didn’t stick around to wait for a table. We walked to another restaurant recommended by the book that was 2 blocks away and there wasn’t a single person in it. We walked in, waited for someone to approach us to get a table, but what we thought was the hostess desk was surrounded by woman talking and the only other person in there was a worker sweeping the floor. We waited a couple minutes, not knowing what to do, but then just left because no one took notice of us at all. Then we backtracked and went to a different restaurant we passed on the way and ate almuerzo there. The soup we had was pretty sketch. It was like a beef broth with plaintains, potatoes, and the most fatty, weird meat I’ve ever seen. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat the meat in the soup. After having been a vegetarian for over 10 years, there is still meat I can’t even bring myself to try. The main course was chicken with rice, which was fine. But the drink that we were served was like an horchata, chai tea drink that just tasted like what I think Christmas in a class tastes like. It was incredibly sweet, not awful, but certainly not a good match with chicken and rice. All ends well though because it only cost $1.75. I didn’t feel well last night or this morning though. My stomach is definitely not used to Ecuadorian food yet….

Well, that’s all for now. Just wanted to note that it’s warm and sunny here today. I am contemplating only staying for 6 months because the contact we’re signing is for 6 months, but we’ll see how much I love it here and if I want to stay longer as more time passes.

getting used to it

Firstly, happy birthday to my sister Elizabeth!

Seconly, sorry for the delay in updates. I haven't been able to use my own computer since I got to Loja. I've been paying to use the internet at various internet cafes. I'm on day six here and today is my first day of teaching. I start in less than one hour and as of right now, I have no idea what classes exactly I will be teaching today. It's the first day of the new terms for kids at the school so it's really chaotic, I guess. I will be teaching Monday through Fridays from 3PM to 7PM, which isn't a terrible schedule. That will give me time to do stuff during the day and not have to get home too late at night.

I am getting used to the house I am living in. I've figured out how to make the shower slightly warm, certainly not hot, but warm enough where taking a shower isn't torture. It only took a couple days and being electrocuted while showering to figure it out. Yikes.  I bought a new frying pan and pot to cook with and that has made things much easier. I am still sleeping on my mattress on Annabel's floor, which is fine. Because of the leaks in the roof in my actual room when it's raining and how cold it is up there at night, I don't forsee myself sleeping in there anytime soon. I am also getting used to not flushing toilet paper. Really, its not a bad as you might think. This morning, Annabel and I even flagged down the water and gas truck to buy a 50 pound jug of water since we were out and I got a bit sick after drinking the tap water last night.

It's great to have met Annabel on my way here and now have someone going through the exact same thing as me. We pretty much do everything together and we have the same work schedule so it's really convenient. We walked around downtown Loja a couple of times. There are shops everywhere. A lot of them sell just random stuff, anything from spoons to mirrors to sheets of paper, food, whole chickens, pretty much whatever they feel like selling I guess. We went in a few clothing stores as well, many of them sell American clothes like Abercrombie, American Eagle, and Hollister stuff. Bizarre. We went to one store called American Clothing that had a sign on the front with a picture of Melissa Joan Hart on it (think Sabrina the Teenage Witch). The store itself was just a thrift store and it was really weird.

We were walking around downtown today when all the young kids got out of school and were walking home wearing their uniforms. Carnaval is this coming weekend and it's customary here for kids to throw water balloons and eggs at people in celebration. We saw someone through an egg at a little girl and another kid with a squirt gun and quickly dodged in the other direction. I think it's even worse for "gringos" here because we stick out so hopefully I dont get any eggs or balloons thrown at me, but I've heard that it's very likely to happen.

I am definitely still going through culture shock, but it's getting better here every day. I got a cell phone yesterday and that was quite the ordeal. Thank goodness I speak Spanish. I got it mostly to use locally, but can make and receive calls from the US. It's pretty expensive to call here from the US I believe, but when I can figure out for sure how to call here, I'd be happy to give anyone my cell phone number.

I will try to get some more pictures posted as soon as I can find some place with a fast enough internet connection to make that possible.

at least i´m alive.

Well, I made it to Loja yesterday morning and it has been raining on and off since then. It has been quite a whirlwind since I arrived. Thankfully though I met a girl teaching here rnadomly at the airport in Quito before flying into Loja. It was totally bizarre. She approached me, asked me if I was from England. I said no, but quickly realized that she is. We then found out we were both flying into Loja to teach at the same school and now we´re housemates. Annabel is gracious enough to let me put my mattress on the floor of her bedroom in our house. Our house is totally modest by American standards. We have running water (I have yet to figure out how to make the shower warm), a refrigerator, and a 4 burner stovetop. That´s about it for luxuries.  I know it´s wrong to complain because that is how the majority of people live happily here. I will get used to it soon I´m sure, but culture shock set in for me as soon as Annabel and I walked into our house and right now it´s only one day later.

My bedroom the top floor of the house, kind of like a loft, but the roof is just laying on top of the walls. It´s very breezy, which you think would be nice, but I´m not shielded from the outside world in the sense that there are gaping holes between the roof and walls of the room and it´s actually quite chilly here at night. There were only two rooms available in our house when Annabel and I arrived yesterday so I took the loft one because it´s not that big of a deal, but when we returned home last night from observing night classes I realized that it is way too cold up there to sleep right now and that I didn´t want to because I found a slug on the floor of my room near under the sink that´s in there (the room used to be the kitchen in the house) and picked it up with a clothespin and threw it out a window. I wonder how much longer it would have taken me to notice the slug had I not stepped on it first. One of my housemates is moving out in a couple weeks I guess so I will be able to move my things into his room, which is below our house in what´s referred to as an in-laws suite. Also, the owner of the school told us yesterday that they are waiting for someone to get evicted from an apartment closer to the school so we can move in there.

There is so much that I will have to get used to here. The biggest thing for me so far is not being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet anywhere. Eeek. But I did buy 4 avocados for a dollar this afternoon so life isn´t all bad. I am just trying to take it one day at a time and try not to dwell on how different everything is here, but how interesting it is to experience living in a different country. Yesterday after arriving, I ate lunch with my housemate Annabel at KFC, which is a 10 minute walk from our house. We ate at a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner and I had falafel and then this morning after going to a military acadamy to hand out pamphlets and introduce ourselves as a form of advertisement for the school, the school owner bought us breakfast. We at a ¨restaurant¨ in the courtyard of an old house turned businesses downtown and I had a tamale with chicken. The coffee, oh the coffee, it was delicious. We don´t really live near to downtown or anything like that right now so I am hoping we´ll be able to move closer.

Right now, I am only observing English classes for a couple hours a day at the school where I will be teaching, which is called Canadian House Center. I think that Annabel, the other new person who is arriving on Saturday, and I will start teaching on Monday when the new ´semester´ starts. We were told that we´ll be teaching kids so hopefully that isn´t too hard for me since I´ve only taught adults in the past.

Here´s a picture of the first meal that Annabel and I actually cooked. We bought 2 pounds of potatoes, 2 huge carrots, the biggest head of broccoli I have ever seen, and an onion all for just $1.75.

I know this post is super long and I could write tons more.... I miss my family and friends terribly, but will make the best of this situation because I know that teaching here for a year will be a great experience.

I hope to get around to taking more pictures soon so share with my friends and family, but it has been overcast since we arrived so I haven´t wanted to take my camera out in the rain.

hi from Quito

Well, I made it to Quito, which if you didn't know is the second highest capital city in the world at 9,186 feet above sea level. I was pretty nervous during the whole trip here, but I made it safely with all of my luggage and was happy to be greeted by the owners of the hostel I am staying in tonight as soon as I made it through customs. They are shockingly kind and are bringing me back to the airport in the morning so that I can catch my flight to Loja.

On the flight from Milwaukee to Atlanta, I sat next to a 67 year old man on his way to Belize. He was telling me really interesting stories about his mother who was a travel agent until she retired at the age of 88 and about all the places she had been. He was very nice and when we departed the flight all he said was "Just remember to be happy." So fitting.

My flight to Miami was short and I was glad that the plane was way underbooked. There was no one in the aisle next to me, in front of me, or behind me. Let me just say also that the Atlanta and Miami airports are so huge that I was intimidated walking through them.

From Miami to Quito, I sat next to a man and woman from Guatemala who were on there way here (to Quito) from Miami for a conference for some company they work for that sells nutritional supplements. I spoke with them in Spanish, which was good and it seemed like the company they work for is a gigantic pyramid scheme, but I didn't say anything about that so as not to offend them. Their two sons were on the plane and about halfway through the flight the wife switched places with one of her sons who talked to me in English and asked me tons of questions about what I'm going to be doing here and also showed me pictures of his family and friends on his camera. It was kind of bizarre and they all wanted my email address to keep in touch and then gave me their business cards. I just hope I don't get junk emails from them because they want me to use and sell the products they vend... But whatever, they were all very friendly and told me not to be nervous and to just have faith because everything will work out.

I breathed a large sigh of relief when waiting to get off the plane in Quito because I saw my suitcases being pulled off the conveyor belt from the plane

It's hard to believe still that I am so far away from my friends and family. I cried a lot today thinking about how I won't see my family for a year. 

Well, I am physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted so I need to sleep. Those two hours I got last night and the maybe 2 I had intermittently on the planes today just weren't sufficient.

Think good thoughts to get me through my last flight tomorrow. I hope everything works out well.

It's 11PM. My first flight is scheduled to take off at 7AM.... 8 hours from now. I am leaving from home for the airport in 5 hours and probably should be sleeping, but just finished repacking and weighing all my luggage. I know I overpacked, but it's hard to say no to bringing clothes and shoes that I'll need for a year especially because I am not moving to a booming metropolis so who knows for sure what will be available.

This is really happening.

Thanks to everyone, friends and family included, who have been really supportive of my trip and who have given me words of wisdom and encouragement. I really appreciate your support because as much as I am freaking out right now, I am still excited about what's ahead.

<3