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.