I’m still loving Portov and haven’t gotten asthma from the dust so I think the first week was a success. Here’s a small rundown of the week’s activities.
Becoming a member of the Sierra Family
So my host family is definitely awesome and I’m so excited to live with them this year. We already get along really well and I’m so excited to spend more time with them. Here’s a little bio on each member of the fam:
Ruth (mom): She definitely runs our house and is in charge. She’s a civil engineer but also is the president of my province’s swimming association so has an office at the huge sports complex in town. She’s a great cook and I’ve loved everything we’ve had so far… mostly various combinations of fish, meat, rice, and plantains. I definitely missed plantains after the DR and eat them a bajillion times more often here so that’s really exciting. My mom is also trying to lose weight so always has a “smaller” bowl of soup or plate of food but she told me that she realizes it’s the same amount of food just in a different serving dish but she feels better about it: definitely my eating style. She loves to watch the news and after lunch we usually sit at the island and watch the news or random movies until she takes her daily post-lunch nap. She loves chatting with me about random stuff and she likes to hear about everything from home or that I’m doing here so it’s really awesome she’s so involved but never pushy about anything and always gives me as much space as I want.
Artillio (dad): I’m obsessed with my dad and I think we’ll for sure be good friends this year. My new father-daughter activity of the week was going to work out with him at the sports complex. He goes running for an hour three or four times a week and leaves me in the dust (literally, the track is made out of pure dust) and I jog/mom walk at the same time. He does a crazy stretching warm up routine and loves to listen to Lionel Richie, Elton John, or ‘Eye of the Tiger’ when he works out. He works at the hospital right by our house and does all the electrical work at home; he just put in a new bathroom for Paul and I and is always fixing stuff around the house. He went to the jungle on Thursday and will be back next week so I’m really excited to continue our team workouts.
Paul (brother): Literally the coolest kid I’ve ever met and the biggest dream friend I’ve ever had. I knew he was a competitive swimmer, but when I was upstairs I saw a walmart bag full of medals and asked him how many he had and he said over 300. He was the national champion in Ecuador (the whole country) in the butterfly in 2004 and has competed in the US, Cuba, Panama, Argentina, Peru, Columbia, Venezuela, and a few more and is like famous in Portov. I asked him if he still competes and he said he ‘doesn’t really have time’ but he trains 6 days a week and is super intense. He has a few competitions in November that I’m stoked to go to. He’s also in a rock band and is super good at the guitar.. he practices in his room a few hours a day and is really good and he had a concert at a beach town this weekend but my mom didn’t want to go because dad was out of town so hopefully I can see him play soon. He also just graduated but is working on his thesis right now (you do your thesis for about a year after you graduate) and is building a literal house for his project because he’s an architect. He also watches Glee which definitely sealed the deal. He’s pretty quiet though and talks really fast so I only know what he’s saying about 50% of the time soo hopefully that improves so he’ll be my friend.
Johanna (sister): I still don’t know that much about her but she’s a journalist who lives in Quito and is working on her PhD right now so she’s super busy. She might be coming for the day sometime in October otherwise maybe over Christmas or New Years depending if she can get off work. She’s crazy busy but seems really cool and I’m excited to meet her. I’m going to a wedding in her place in October which should be really fun and interesting.. I need to learn to salsa before then so I don’t make a fool out of myself (even though that’s probably inevitable).
Playa
I had my first beach trip on Monday to a little town called Crucita which is about 30 minutes away from Portoviejo. My parents took me and Heather to see not only the beach but also our BEACH HOUSE. Yeah, my family not only lives in a crazy nice house in Portov but owns a house about 50 yards from the beach. Insane. My host mom and her brother own it together and the whole family will go sleep out there and spend the weekend at the beach sometimes so I’m pretty jacked for those weekends. It was cloudy and really windy when we went so we just sat on the beach then went and had some awesome empanadas and drove home but I can definitely tell it’ll be an awesome place to go when the weather is good. Ha funny thing about the weather; my family thinks it’s crazy that we have a TV channel devoted solely to the weather. No such channel exists because on the coast the weather is always the same and in the Sierra everyone always brings a jacket and umbrella because they assume it will rain even though it only does a couple days a week.
School
I had my first meeting on Wednesday with my director and got a little more info about my classes and everything. Here’s my ridiculous schedule that literally couldn’t be any more awesome:
10:30 -12:00: Principiantes I (very basic beginner one class)
3:00-4:30: Principiantes I (I have two sections of the same class so I have a lot less to lesson plan)
4:30-6:00: Intermedio II (second level of the intermediate classes)
So not only do I get to sleep in and be done by 6pm, but I only teach Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I think I had worse hours when I ran my lemonade stand in kindergarten. I make $400 a month (comes out to about $5/hour that we’re teaching) and we give $200 to our host families. We have an office on campus so I’ll still go every Thursday to lesson plan and prepare for the next week but four days weekends for a year are going to be ridiculous. Cycles are 12 weeks long and I’ll have three of them while I’m here, this one ending about Dec. 15 for Christmas.
Our office has AC and a bathroom and we each have our own desk so that’s really nice. There are tons of grammar books and random toys and magazines from the literal 90s (I saw a People that had the cast of ‘Pearl Harbor’ on the front.. 2001 was a big year). It’ll be really nice to have resources though because I have no idea how to teach despite being fluent in English so that’ll definitely take some practice. My classroom is really big and has really nice big desks and office chairs which will be cool. It’s still an insane concept to think that I’ll be in the front of the room after so many years of being a student but I’ll have to get over that pretty quick.
Portov Futbol
I went to my first soccer game on Friday night which was so much fun despite how terrible our soccer team is. The Portov team used to be really good but now I guess they’re horrible but people still go and get really into the games which is really fun. The stadium is right by the university and isn’t anything too fancy but is pretty big and is painted green and gold in a very similar way to the Mayo High School stadium. The Mayo soccer team probably could have beaten the Portov team but I’ll definitely still go to games just for fun.
Hot Spots for Teens
Saturday night I finally stayed up past 11:00 and made some friends. Ellah is a WT volunteer that’s been in Portov since February so she has a lot of friends which is really helpful because Heather and I failed at trying to find friends on our own. We went to one of her friend’s apartment (slight detour on the way there though.. Ellah’s phone didn’t have service and when we got lost we just had to tell the taxi driver to let us off at a little restaurant while we waited for her to call.. it’s definitely not the norm for two blondes to order cokes—which apparently translated as bad orange pop—in a small Ecuadorian restaurant but we finally figured out where to go) and met her friends Reuben and Juan Carlos. They were hilarious and so much fun and told us all the bad words we need to know and we got to try this strong sugar cane liquor that was bad but apparently doesn’t give you hangovers (we’ll see about that). We were just going to watch a movie but they wanted to show us the downtown area so we went to a little bar and danced on the smallest dance floor I’ve ever seen. I got a few stares for my white girl dancing but hopefully I can learn to be “mas suave” and eventually pretend to blend in despite being one of two blondes in the town. They finished the night with a medley of American soft rock tunes that should never be played in a discoteca but it was really fun to not be watching TV in my room or hanging out with my host parents. I’m really excited to start making more friends and just meeting different people; everyone here is so nice and welcoming and excited that we’re here so I think it’ll be super fun to go out and meet people.
My internet has been down for the last few days so I wrote this last weekend.. I started teaching this Monday and loved it/survived and will write about that as soon as I have more time! AMOR.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Byeee Quito, what up Portov!
LAST WEEK OF ORIENTATION!
Although it’s been great to hang with the WT kids in Quito, spending days on end in a conference room was getting old so luckily a bunch of crazy stuff happened this week. Monday was Cate’s (volunteer who’ll be in Manta, like 40 min from Portov aka one of my new besties for the year) birthday so we went out to an Irish pub to watch the Boise-VA Tech game. I had a cheeseburger and fries and watched football with a bunch of Americans.. pretty awesome. Wednesday night was the second part of the Recopa de Sudamerica (South American Championship) so Liga (the Quito soccer team) played against the Estudiantes from Argentina again and the score from the game two weeks ago got added to this game to see who wins the championship. We went to the big plaza downtown by all the bars to watch the game because they projected it on a huge screen. It was super crazy and fun, everyone was going nuts the whole time and doing all these cheers we tried to learn but didn’t and just drinking in the streets. There were a few fights which got a little scary but overall it was super awesome to be right where everyone was especially because Liga ended up winning the championship so it was craaazy and everyone started throwing their bottles around so we got out of there super quick but it was still great. Thursday night we went to an Irish pub to watch the Vikings/Saints game which was a sad loss but really fun to watch so much football in one week. Everyone is either from the south or hates Farve so I was the only Vikings fan in the bar (and probably in the country) but it was super fun and hopefully I’ll be able to watch a few more games. Also on Thursday night my host sister Evelyn had her baby, Sophia Emelia!! She wasn’t due until the week after we left but had her early so we got to see the baby on Friday! I’ve never seen a newborn baby before and she was so adorable but had a full head of hair so looked older than a newborn but it was so great to be a part of. Friday was our last day in Quito so after seeing the baby we had a party with our Spanish class and made canelazo (hot wine) at the Spanish school then went to a karaoke bar at 1:30pm and sang horrible karaoke for two hours, it was great. I definitely sang some Daddy Yankee and other reggaeton favorites. Friday night we had a party with our practice teaching class and met them at this little Cuban bar and were just hanging out for awhile but then it came up that I had learned to dance meringue in the DR so we danced with our students and they taught us meringue and salsa which was so much fun. After class we had our final WorldTeach dinner with all the volunteers and our directors at this awesome Italian place with great pizza but I’d been sick all week (better now) and didn’t need to be sick for my 9 hours bus ride at 8am on Saturday so ordered spaghetti which came INSIDE a pizza crust. Literally insane and the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. We tried to go out afterwards but 33 gringos in a bar is a horrible plan so I ended up just saying goodbye to people and going home early.
PORTOV!
Now I’m finally in Portoviejo and I’m super excited about it. We were told the bus ride would be 9 hours but we actually got here in about 7 so that was an excellent surprise (especially because there was a screaming baby in the seat right behind us. Perfect). My host mom Ruth came and picked me up from the bus station.. Heather and I were sitting together therefore we were very easy to spot (I’m pretty sure we’ll be almost the only blonde people in the entire city). She’s adorable and excited to have me and has been explaining to me how everything works which is really nice. She’s a civil engineer and designed the house that they live in now (which is AWESOME.. get to that in a sec). My dad’s name is Artillio and he’s really funny and always tries to say stuff to me in English even though he doesn’t know very much and is always making jokes. He’s an electrician at the hospital which is like three blocks from my house and put all the electrical wiring in their house and is very handy and already helped me fix the drawers in my room. Paul is my host brother who is 23 and is writing his thesis this year and still lives at the house and Johanna who is a journalist in Quito. I just met Paul this morning and haven’t talked to him very much.. but he’s one of the best competitive swimmers in Portoviejo and there’s a big competition this fall that I’m super excited to go to and he’s been to national and international tournaments and stuff and has a ridiculous amount of metals and trophies. He’s also in a rock band which I can’t wait to find out about .Their house is beyond cool.. they told me that every weekend people take pictures of it when they drive by because the architecture is so different from any of the other houses in the neighborhood (I’ll put pics up soon). There’s a gate/garage door that’s really sturdy so that makes me feel safe and you walk around the house to the driveway/patio where they park the car and also have a little seating area and hammock (and they told me they have dance parties out there too.. super jacked for those to happen). My room is right by the back door; I have a double bed, a desk, two nigh stands, and not a real closet but a place to hang all my clothes with drawers below it so there’s plenty of room for all my gear. My bathroom is right next door and it’s the only bathroom on the main level but I don’t think anyone uses it but me (we also have no hot water because it’s so hot here all the time.. getting super jacked for 365 days of cold showers). Next to my bathroom is an empty room that they’ve used for other volunteers (5 bedroom house, it’s huge). They have a really big living room with super elegant furniture and the kitchen is MASSIVE (it would miserably put the chateau kitchen to shame).. there are huge marble countertops and a big island where everyone eats (everyone in the family has their own spot and I learned mine at breakfast this morning) as well as a table with some fancy chairs that appears to be more like a dining room table that’s for special occasions. Also really exciting about the house.. I have a roof again like I did in the DR!! It’s pretty hot and humid here so I’m not sure how much time I’ll really spend up there but it’ll be so nice to have somewhere to go and read and attempt to not be so white and gringa. Oh and another awesome thing about my house… for $15 a month I get unlimited internet which is super great because the internet cafes that are close are like $1.50 per hour soo I’ll be able to work in the evenings (and skype and watch Glee which were also top priorities).
After my tour of the house and unpacking, my parents took me out for dinner. On the way we stopped at the bigger mall so they could show me around.. it’s a super nice mall that’s two stories and has a walmart type thing attached to it and a Payless and basically anything else I’d need. Oh and hilarious, the mall is called “Paseo Shopping.” Nice. For dinner we went to a “BBQ” place which just means a lot of different kinds of meats grilled and the BBQ sauce is actually green and nothing like American BBQ sauce but still really good. I could already tell I was going to get along with my fam because they love to sing and dance to any music that’s on and they tipped the little boy who cleared our table because he was dancing the whole time we were there. They both have a ton of energy and have had volunteers for 9 years (and one extended and lived with them for 2 years) now so I think everything will be awesome this year. My parents usually go to bed at like 9 so I watched Sherlock Holmes and went to bed early.
Today was a really fun day with the fam.. for lunch I tried ceviche for the first time which was super awesome and they have it every Saturday so I’m pretty jacked about that. They also eat a ton of chifles which are basically chips made from plantains (Artillio’s brother owns a factory and is really proud of his fam’s chifles) and really good juice.. so far my mom is an excellent cook and I can’t wait to keep trying more stuff. She’s also really excited that I don’t drink milk or coffee because she doesn’t either and she likes that I eat like her. After lunch we went to the mall to buy random appliances.. for Christmas this year they’re redoing all the bathrooms in the house so we hung out in the hardware section for awhile and got a bunch of gear. This afternoon we went to this pool/sports/restaurant place that’s like an hour from Portov for my cousin’s 16th birthday so I met a bunch more people in my family. I rode with Paul and two of my cousins there and we listened to his ipod on the way there.. it was pretty much all American classic rock and more current rock so I knew like all the songs. It’s kind of weird to sing Bon Jovi with your Ecuadorian host brother but it was pretty badass. And it was really nice to be able to see the country on the coast.. it’s definitely not as crazy impressive as the mountains in the sierra and it’s mostly just rolling hills with brown vegetation and palm trees but I honestly couldn’t be more pleased with my placement. It’s nothing fancy but has everything I need and I am so excited to feel like I’m part of a real community rather than constantly being surrounded by Americans. I definitely stand out and everyone stares at me but I think I’ll be able to ignore that pretty quick. I can’t wait to start making ecua friends and to start classes and start real (fake) life.. I can already tell this year is going to be so awesome and challenging and the best thing I ever could have done.
Ok, hopefully I never write this much at once again but I finally have free time and am so excited to finally be here so lo siento and I’ll write again soon! AMOR.
Although it’s been great to hang with the WT kids in Quito, spending days on end in a conference room was getting old so luckily a bunch of crazy stuff happened this week. Monday was Cate’s (volunteer who’ll be in Manta, like 40 min from Portov aka one of my new besties for the year) birthday so we went out to an Irish pub to watch the Boise-VA Tech game. I had a cheeseburger and fries and watched football with a bunch of Americans.. pretty awesome. Wednesday night was the second part of the Recopa de Sudamerica (South American Championship) so Liga (the Quito soccer team) played against the Estudiantes from Argentina again and the score from the game two weeks ago got added to this game to see who wins the championship. We went to the big plaza downtown by all the bars to watch the game because they projected it on a huge screen. It was super crazy and fun, everyone was going nuts the whole time and doing all these cheers we tried to learn but didn’t and just drinking in the streets. There were a few fights which got a little scary but overall it was super awesome to be right where everyone was especially because Liga ended up winning the championship so it was craaazy and everyone started throwing their bottles around so we got out of there super quick but it was still great. Thursday night we went to an Irish pub to watch the Vikings/Saints game which was a sad loss but really fun to watch so much football in one week. Everyone is either from the south or hates Farve so I was the only Vikings fan in the bar (and probably in the country) but it was super fun and hopefully I’ll be able to watch a few more games. Also on Thursday night my host sister Evelyn had her baby, Sophia Emelia!! She wasn’t due until the week after we left but had her early so we got to see the baby on Friday! I’ve never seen a newborn baby before and she was so adorable but had a full head of hair so looked older than a newborn but it was so great to be a part of. Friday was our last day in Quito so after seeing the baby we had a party with our Spanish class and made canelazo (hot wine) at the Spanish school then went to a karaoke bar at 1:30pm and sang horrible karaoke for two hours, it was great. I definitely sang some Daddy Yankee and other reggaeton favorites. Friday night we had a party with our practice teaching class and met them at this little Cuban bar and were just hanging out for awhile but then it came up that I had learned to dance meringue in the DR so we danced with our students and they taught us meringue and salsa which was so much fun. After class we had our final WorldTeach dinner with all the volunteers and our directors at this awesome Italian place with great pizza but I’d been sick all week (better now) and didn’t need to be sick for my 9 hours bus ride at 8am on Saturday so ordered spaghetti which came INSIDE a pizza crust. Literally insane and the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. We tried to go out afterwards but 33 gringos in a bar is a horrible plan so I ended up just saying goodbye to people and going home early.
PORTOV!
Now I’m finally in Portoviejo and I’m super excited about it. We were told the bus ride would be 9 hours but we actually got here in about 7 so that was an excellent surprise (especially because there was a screaming baby in the seat right behind us. Perfect). My host mom Ruth came and picked me up from the bus station.. Heather and I were sitting together therefore we were very easy to spot (I’m pretty sure we’ll be almost the only blonde people in the entire city). She’s adorable and excited to have me and has been explaining to me how everything works which is really nice. She’s a civil engineer and designed the house that they live in now (which is AWESOME.. get to that in a sec). My dad’s name is Artillio and he’s really funny and always tries to say stuff to me in English even though he doesn’t know very much and is always making jokes. He’s an electrician at the hospital which is like three blocks from my house and put all the electrical wiring in their house and is very handy and already helped me fix the drawers in my room. Paul is my host brother who is 23 and is writing his thesis this year and still lives at the house and Johanna who is a journalist in Quito. I just met Paul this morning and haven’t talked to him very much.. but he’s one of the best competitive swimmers in Portoviejo and there’s a big competition this fall that I’m super excited to go to and he’s been to national and international tournaments and stuff and has a ridiculous amount of metals and trophies. He’s also in a rock band which I can’t wait to find out about .Their house is beyond cool.. they told me that every weekend people take pictures of it when they drive by because the architecture is so different from any of the other houses in the neighborhood (I’ll put pics up soon). There’s a gate/garage door that’s really sturdy so that makes me feel safe and you walk around the house to the driveway/patio where they park the car and also have a little seating area and hammock (and they told me they have dance parties out there too.. super jacked for those to happen). My room is right by the back door; I have a double bed, a desk, two nigh stands, and not a real closet but a place to hang all my clothes with drawers below it so there’s plenty of room for all my gear. My bathroom is right next door and it’s the only bathroom on the main level but I don’t think anyone uses it but me (we also have no hot water because it’s so hot here all the time.. getting super jacked for 365 days of cold showers). Next to my bathroom is an empty room that they’ve used for other volunteers (5 bedroom house, it’s huge). They have a really big living room with super elegant furniture and the kitchen is MASSIVE (it would miserably put the chateau kitchen to shame).. there are huge marble countertops and a big island where everyone eats (everyone in the family has their own spot and I learned mine at breakfast this morning) as well as a table with some fancy chairs that appears to be more like a dining room table that’s for special occasions. Also really exciting about the house.. I have a roof again like I did in the DR!! It’s pretty hot and humid here so I’m not sure how much time I’ll really spend up there but it’ll be so nice to have somewhere to go and read and attempt to not be so white and gringa. Oh and another awesome thing about my house… for $15 a month I get unlimited internet which is super great because the internet cafes that are close are like $1.50 per hour soo I’ll be able to work in the evenings (and skype and watch Glee which were also top priorities).
After my tour of the house and unpacking, my parents took me out for dinner. On the way we stopped at the bigger mall so they could show me around.. it’s a super nice mall that’s two stories and has a walmart type thing attached to it and a Payless and basically anything else I’d need. Oh and hilarious, the mall is called “Paseo Shopping.” Nice. For dinner we went to a “BBQ” place which just means a lot of different kinds of meats grilled and the BBQ sauce is actually green and nothing like American BBQ sauce but still really good. I could already tell I was going to get along with my fam because they love to sing and dance to any music that’s on and they tipped the little boy who cleared our table because he was dancing the whole time we were there. They both have a ton of energy and have had volunteers for 9 years (and one extended and lived with them for 2 years) now so I think everything will be awesome this year. My parents usually go to bed at like 9 so I watched Sherlock Holmes and went to bed early.
Today was a really fun day with the fam.. for lunch I tried ceviche for the first time which was super awesome and they have it every Saturday so I’m pretty jacked about that. They also eat a ton of chifles which are basically chips made from plantains (Artillio’s brother owns a factory and is really proud of his fam’s chifles) and really good juice.. so far my mom is an excellent cook and I can’t wait to keep trying more stuff. She’s also really excited that I don’t drink milk or coffee because she doesn’t either and she likes that I eat like her. After lunch we went to the mall to buy random appliances.. for Christmas this year they’re redoing all the bathrooms in the house so we hung out in the hardware section for awhile and got a bunch of gear. This afternoon we went to this pool/sports/restaurant place that’s like an hour from Portov for my cousin’s 16th birthday so I met a bunch more people in my family. I rode with Paul and two of my cousins there and we listened to his ipod on the way there.. it was pretty much all American classic rock and more current rock so I knew like all the songs. It’s kind of weird to sing Bon Jovi with your Ecuadorian host brother but it was pretty badass. And it was really nice to be able to see the country on the coast.. it’s definitely not as crazy impressive as the mountains in the sierra and it’s mostly just rolling hills with brown vegetation and palm trees but I honestly couldn’t be more pleased with my placement. It’s nothing fancy but has everything I need and I am so excited to feel like I’m part of a real community rather than constantly being surrounded by Americans. I definitely stand out and everyone stares at me but I think I’ll be able to ignore that pretty quick. I can’t wait to start making ecua friends and to start classes and start real (fake) life.. I can already tell this year is going to be so awesome and challenging and the best thing I ever could have done.
Ok, hopefully I never write this much at once again but I finally have free time and am so excited to finally be here so lo siento and I’ll write again soon! AMOR.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Still loving absoluely everything
8/22/10 – 9/5/10
Hola a todos! I’m just finished up my third week in Quito and everything is so fantastic. I’ve been crazy busy but I’ll try to talk about all the cool stuff I’ve done. Sorry that I write so much and feel free to just look at my fbook pictures if it’s too much (Paige).
WEEK DOS
On Sunday we had a picnic with all of the volunteers and their host families which was really fun.. it was at a huge park with a fabulous view of the mountains and it was really fun to meet everyone’s families and hang out in a non-conference room setting. I also played my first game of soccer! One of the host moms even played and she was for sure the most aggressive one out there, it was so much fun but exhausting because we’re at such a high altitude and I haven’t played soccer in years so I’m going to have to get ready to play a lot more this year.
This week I alsoI watched my first soccer game.. It was the championship of something that I’m still not sure of, but the Quito team ( Liga) played against the Argentina team (Los Estudiantes) and won 2-1. People here really do get super excited about soccer and we went to watch the game in this Indian restaurant (literally called “Great India Restaurant” and they constantly play ridiculous Bollywood music videos on their big screen TV when soccer isn’t on) and everyone just goes crazy all the time. After the game we went out to another bar called Bungalow 6 which has ‘ladies night’ every Wednesday. Ecua ladies night = no cover and free drinks from 8-10pm every Wednesday and no guys are allowed to come in the bar until 10 and they literally line up at 10 to come in and hang out with the drunk girls. Hilarious concept, but we usually just stay until 10 because it’s a super gringo (American/anyone who’s not from Ecuador) bar but really fun for awhile and who doesn’t love free cocktails.
Our second week orientation finally got into the fun teaching stuff instead of just the logistics of how we’re going to get pick-pocketed. I’ve determined I have absolutely no idea how to be a teacher but I think once I learn how I can be really good at it. We’ve been learning a lot of teaching strategies and different games and activities we can do in our classes (which also means we get to play a lot of ridic games which is pretty fun).
Our second weekend was the first actual weekend we had off so we got to go out on Friday night. There are tons of bars in the center of Quito in an area that’s called the Mariscol and none of the bars are really huge but all super packed every weekend and play a mixture of salsa and reggaeton which I looove so much (it’s so great to hear Daddy Yankee again and all the Ecuas look at me funny because I know all the words despite my blonde hair and blue eyes). I also forgot how hilarious the guys are here when attempting to pick up girls when they’re bad at English.. I already have one boy who’s told me he loves me and is coming to Portoviejo to find me. He also was wearing a ridiculously tight v-neck , had overly gel-ed hair and kept fist pumping and it felt very Jersey Shore. Hilarious.
Saturday we went to a town about two hours north of Quito called Otavalo that’s famous for its huge market that has literally everything like jewelry, food, hand crafts, scarves, ridiculous pants that look like they’re for clowns but apparently are super popular, and a bunch of trinkets. I got 2 scarves for $2 each and an Ecuadorian National Team soccer jersey for $10, nice. I’m super bad at bargaining but am getting better so hopefully I’ll be a master by the end of the year. After spending the morning in the market, we were going to go to a waterfall that was about 10 minutes away but decided to take a bus to a town called Cotocachi (famous for its leather market but we didn’t go there) and go to a crater lake that’s in an active volcano, BADASS. It was literally one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.. the mountains are all around it and the water is so blue and it was so great to be out in the country instead of breathing in extreme smog in Quito. We took a half an hour boat tour around the lake and got to see the part of the lake where you can tell the volcano is still active because bubbles come up from the bottom. The water was still really cold and I don’t think it’ll erupt any time soon but it was still super cool. That night when we got back we went to La Ronda (the historic district) for a chill evening with some canelazo (the really strong hot wine stuff) and some empanadas.
On Sunday I did the most random thing ever.. I hung out with Dimitri Herard, one of my really good Haitian friends who was studying in the Dominican at the same time I was last year. He’s been going to the military school in Quito for the last year so I sent him a facebook message to see if he was still in Ecuador and it turns out he’ll be here for the next three years so on Sunday I went and hung out with him and his friends and his sisters. So crazy because I really never thought I’d see him again but we both ended up here which is so cool. His sisters and his cousin moved down here about a month ago and are going to school here too and have their own apartment so we just hung out all day. Dimitri and his friends live at the military school and Sunday is their only day off that they can leave so every Sunday they leave at 6am and spend most of the day drinking before they have to go back at 8pm so we had a few beers and were going to have Haitian food but went to KFC instead (everyone is OBSESSED with KFC in this country.. I’ve seen so many and they all are like two stories and have playgrounds in them that are way bigger than normal fast food restaurants in the US). We went to a KFC in a mall where I thought everything would be really cheap but turns out is super expensive.. like Payless shoe stores are everywhere but everything is close to $50 which is crap so I have to stick to my mom shoes. It was hilarious walking around the mall though because everyone kept staring at us because I was the only white person and he was the only black person in the entire mall. In general racism doesn’t seem as intense here as it was in the Dominican but it’s definitely a real thing that I’ll have to adapt to again.
WEEK TRES
This week has been one of my most fun and important weeks of orientation because I started practice teaching! There are two English schools in Quito that WorldTeach works with called SECAP and SEC and they let us give a free two-week class for anyone who wants to sign up so that we can practice teaching before we completely make fools out of ourselves when we start later this month. We’re all teaching in groups so I taught my class with two other people – we all did get to know you activities together the first day to see kind of what they know and then I was the first one to each by myself on Tuesday and Wednesday. My class was from 6-8pm because most of the students are adults who come right from work (fun fact: one of the guys in my class looked EXACTLY like the Ecuadorian version of Steve Carrell. He’s even as the same mannerisms and I had a hard time keeping it together). Anyways, the first day we had about 24 students but by Wednesday we were down to about 16. Teaching for the first time was super nerve racking but went pretty well.. I was teaching an Intermediate 1 class which I assumed would still be pretty basic but they actually knew way more than I thought so that was tricky (one girl was literally reading “Dracula” in English). My topic for two days was supposed to be food/the market/cost of stuff but they knew way more foods in English than I could think of but they’re all really excited about the class and excited to know the material. To practice I had them each make a menu and pretend to be a restaurant or a customer and they just loved it. The next day I wanted to do something where they had to talk more so I started the class with some tongue twisters about food like “how many cookies could a good cook cook if a good cook could cook cookies.” Beforehand I knew I would have to explain the difference between a cook as a chef and cook as a verb, but then they asked me why cook the verb doesn’t have an ‘s’ on the end because it’s third person singular. Ultimate fail in the first two seconds of class but somehow I managed to explain that it’s a conditional sentence and that they’d learn about it later. (Luckily I knew that and could give them some type of explanation.. I’m going to have to learn what I’m doing really quick here). But the rest of the class went really well; we had a Food Network show and first I did Food Network: Minnesota and told them about the food, the weather, the culture, the history, etc of Minnesota and then had them do presentations on the different regions of Ecuador. To make it more real, I brought my curling iron to use as a microphone and they loooved it when I presented about Minnesota and thought it was hilarious and then they loved using it themselves during their presentations. Literal adults in suits and business clothes talking about holidays in Ecuador into a curling iron microphone, it was a huge hit. I have no idea how to be a teacher but I have some really good ideas and I think I’ll learn pretty quick how to not talk so so fast and how to teach something rather than just ramble. It was a ton of work and really scary at first but I’m so excited to be a teacher this year and can’t wait to have my own classroom.
Yesterday (Saturday) we got to go to Papallacta, a town way up in the mountains about two hours east of Quito that has natural hot springs. It was super gorgeous because it’s literally in the middle of a mountain and there are a bunch of different pools that are different temps and it was so relaxing to just hang with the team and soak in the hot baths. We at lunch in the town and had llapingacho which is a traditional Ecuadorian dish that includes these potato cake things stuffed with cheese, fried eggs, sausage, avocado, beets, and salad (aka lettuce). The food is definitely different from the Dominican but I’ve been able to try more things that just soup, rice, and potatoes so that’s been good. I’m super excited to get to the coast because they eat seafood all the time out there and less rice and potatoes so that’ll be a nice change of pace. When we got back, we went to our director Kate’s apartment for a fiesta which was so much fun. First of all, she lives in an entire floor of an apartment building and her bedroom has the most ridiculous view of Quito ever. It’s super huge and super awesome and was perfect to fit 40 loud Americans for a party. Her sister-in-law has her own handmade chocolate business and is working on marketing for selling her chocolates in the US so we had a ‘focus group’ before we got too drunk where we got to try a ridiculous amount of amazing chocolates. They were all so good and had some really cool ones like passion fruit and other rando ecuafruits that we don’t have in the states that were soo good and we just had to tell them what we thought about them and what would make them sell in the US. After we finished our chocolate homework we drank wine all night and played a bunch of drinking games which was so much fun because usually we don’t all get to hang out together because there’s never enough room in the bars for all 33 of us. We went out downtown after for awhile but were pretty tired from getting up at 7 to go to the hot springs so we didn’t stay out too late.
Today has been the first day that I’ve actually just done nothing and it’s been great. We’re all going to our sites next Saturday so my roommate Sara and I decided we should do our laundry now because we won’t have time this week. My host mom did our laundry last week but we learned how today and got to wash our clothes on a washing rock before we put it in the washing machine and hang them on the line and everything so that was actually really fun to hang out with my host mom. After laundry I showed her all of my pictures of my family and friends (a lot of which are ridiculous/semi-drunk pictures but she loved them) and we drank tea and talked about politics and our families and it was just a very lovely afternoon. I can’t believe this is my last week in Quito and that I already have leave this host family, but I can’t wait to get to Portoviejo and get settled in my real house for the next year. Miss everyone so much and I’ll write again soon! AMOR.
Hola a todos! I’m just finished up my third week in Quito and everything is so fantastic. I’ve been crazy busy but I’ll try to talk about all the cool stuff I’ve done. Sorry that I write so much and feel free to just look at my fbook pictures if it’s too much (Paige).
WEEK DOS
On Sunday we had a picnic with all of the volunteers and their host families which was really fun.. it was at a huge park with a fabulous view of the mountains and it was really fun to meet everyone’s families and hang out in a non-conference room setting. I also played my first game of soccer! One of the host moms even played and she was for sure the most aggressive one out there, it was so much fun but exhausting because we’re at such a high altitude and I haven’t played soccer in years so I’m going to have to get ready to play a lot more this year.
This week I alsoI watched my first soccer game.. It was the championship of something that I’m still not sure of, but the Quito team ( Liga) played against the Argentina team (Los Estudiantes) and won 2-1. People here really do get super excited about soccer and we went to watch the game in this Indian restaurant (literally called “Great India Restaurant” and they constantly play ridiculous Bollywood music videos on their big screen TV when soccer isn’t on) and everyone just goes crazy all the time. After the game we went out to another bar called Bungalow 6 which has ‘ladies night’ every Wednesday. Ecua ladies night = no cover and free drinks from 8-10pm every Wednesday and no guys are allowed to come in the bar until 10 and they literally line up at 10 to come in and hang out with the drunk girls. Hilarious concept, but we usually just stay until 10 because it’s a super gringo (American/anyone who’s not from Ecuador) bar but really fun for awhile and who doesn’t love free cocktails.
Our second week orientation finally got into the fun teaching stuff instead of just the logistics of how we’re going to get pick-pocketed. I’ve determined I have absolutely no idea how to be a teacher but I think once I learn how I can be really good at it. We’ve been learning a lot of teaching strategies and different games and activities we can do in our classes (which also means we get to play a lot of ridic games which is pretty fun).
Our second weekend was the first actual weekend we had off so we got to go out on Friday night. There are tons of bars in the center of Quito in an area that’s called the Mariscol and none of the bars are really huge but all super packed every weekend and play a mixture of salsa and reggaeton which I looove so much (it’s so great to hear Daddy Yankee again and all the Ecuas look at me funny because I know all the words despite my blonde hair and blue eyes). I also forgot how hilarious the guys are here when attempting to pick up girls when they’re bad at English.. I already have one boy who’s told me he loves me and is coming to Portoviejo to find me. He also was wearing a ridiculously tight v-neck , had overly gel-ed hair and kept fist pumping and it felt very Jersey Shore. Hilarious.
Saturday we went to a town about two hours north of Quito called Otavalo that’s famous for its huge market that has literally everything like jewelry, food, hand crafts, scarves, ridiculous pants that look like they’re for clowns but apparently are super popular, and a bunch of trinkets. I got 2 scarves for $2 each and an Ecuadorian National Team soccer jersey for $10, nice. I’m super bad at bargaining but am getting better so hopefully I’ll be a master by the end of the year. After spending the morning in the market, we were going to go to a waterfall that was about 10 minutes away but decided to take a bus to a town called Cotocachi (famous for its leather market but we didn’t go there) and go to a crater lake that’s in an active volcano, BADASS. It was literally one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.. the mountains are all around it and the water is so blue and it was so great to be out in the country instead of breathing in extreme smog in Quito. We took a half an hour boat tour around the lake and got to see the part of the lake where you can tell the volcano is still active because bubbles come up from the bottom. The water was still really cold and I don’t think it’ll erupt any time soon but it was still super cool. That night when we got back we went to La Ronda (the historic district) for a chill evening with some canelazo (the really strong hot wine stuff) and some empanadas.
On Sunday I did the most random thing ever.. I hung out with Dimitri Herard, one of my really good Haitian friends who was studying in the Dominican at the same time I was last year. He’s been going to the military school in Quito for the last year so I sent him a facebook message to see if he was still in Ecuador and it turns out he’ll be here for the next three years so on Sunday I went and hung out with him and his friends and his sisters. So crazy because I really never thought I’d see him again but we both ended up here which is so cool. His sisters and his cousin moved down here about a month ago and are going to school here too and have their own apartment so we just hung out all day. Dimitri and his friends live at the military school and Sunday is their only day off that they can leave so every Sunday they leave at 6am and spend most of the day drinking before they have to go back at 8pm so we had a few beers and were going to have Haitian food but went to KFC instead (everyone is OBSESSED with KFC in this country.. I’ve seen so many and they all are like two stories and have playgrounds in them that are way bigger than normal fast food restaurants in the US). We went to a KFC in a mall where I thought everything would be really cheap but turns out is super expensive.. like Payless shoe stores are everywhere but everything is close to $50 which is crap so I have to stick to my mom shoes. It was hilarious walking around the mall though because everyone kept staring at us because I was the only white person and he was the only black person in the entire mall. In general racism doesn’t seem as intense here as it was in the Dominican but it’s definitely a real thing that I’ll have to adapt to again.
WEEK TRES
This week has been one of my most fun and important weeks of orientation because I started practice teaching! There are two English schools in Quito that WorldTeach works with called SECAP and SEC and they let us give a free two-week class for anyone who wants to sign up so that we can practice teaching before we completely make fools out of ourselves when we start later this month. We’re all teaching in groups so I taught my class with two other people – we all did get to know you activities together the first day to see kind of what they know and then I was the first one to each by myself on Tuesday and Wednesday. My class was from 6-8pm because most of the students are adults who come right from work (fun fact: one of the guys in my class looked EXACTLY like the Ecuadorian version of Steve Carrell. He’s even as the same mannerisms and I had a hard time keeping it together). Anyways, the first day we had about 24 students but by Wednesday we were down to about 16. Teaching for the first time was super nerve racking but went pretty well.. I was teaching an Intermediate 1 class which I assumed would still be pretty basic but they actually knew way more than I thought so that was tricky (one girl was literally reading “Dracula” in English). My topic for two days was supposed to be food/the market/cost of stuff but they knew way more foods in English than I could think of but they’re all really excited about the class and excited to know the material. To practice I had them each make a menu and pretend to be a restaurant or a customer and they just loved it. The next day I wanted to do something where they had to talk more so I started the class with some tongue twisters about food like “how many cookies could a good cook cook if a good cook could cook cookies.” Beforehand I knew I would have to explain the difference between a cook as a chef and cook as a verb, but then they asked me why cook the verb doesn’t have an ‘s’ on the end because it’s third person singular. Ultimate fail in the first two seconds of class but somehow I managed to explain that it’s a conditional sentence and that they’d learn about it later. (Luckily I knew that and could give them some type of explanation.. I’m going to have to learn what I’m doing really quick here). But the rest of the class went really well; we had a Food Network show and first I did Food Network: Minnesota and told them about the food, the weather, the culture, the history, etc of Minnesota and then had them do presentations on the different regions of Ecuador. To make it more real, I brought my curling iron to use as a microphone and they loooved it when I presented about Minnesota and thought it was hilarious and then they loved using it themselves during their presentations. Literal adults in suits and business clothes talking about holidays in Ecuador into a curling iron microphone, it was a huge hit. I have no idea how to be a teacher but I have some really good ideas and I think I’ll learn pretty quick how to not talk so so fast and how to teach something rather than just ramble. It was a ton of work and really scary at first but I’m so excited to be a teacher this year and can’t wait to have my own classroom.
Yesterday (Saturday) we got to go to Papallacta, a town way up in the mountains about two hours east of Quito that has natural hot springs. It was super gorgeous because it’s literally in the middle of a mountain and there are a bunch of different pools that are different temps and it was so relaxing to just hang with the team and soak in the hot baths. We at lunch in the town and had llapingacho which is a traditional Ecuadorian dish that includes these potato cake things stuffed with cheese, fried eggs, sausage, avocado, beets, and salad (aka lettuce). The food is definitely different from the Dominican but I’ve been able to try more things that just soup, rice, and potatoes so that’s been good. I’m super excited to get to the coast because they eat seafood all the time out there and less rice and potatoes so that’ll be a nice change of pace. When we got back, we went to our director Kate’s apartment for a fiesta which was so much fun. First of all, she lives in an entire floor of an apartment building and her bedroom has the most ridiculous view of Quito ever. It’s super huge and super awesome and was perfect to fit 40 loud Americans for a party. Her sister-in-law has her own handmade chocolate business and is working on marketing for selling her chocolates in the US so we had a ‘focus group’ before we got too drunk where we got to try a ridiculous amount of amazing chocolates. They were all so good and had some really cool ones like passion fruit and other rando ecuafruits that we don’t have in the states that were soo good and we just had to tell them what we thought about them and what would make them sell in the US. After we finished our chocolate homework we drank wine all night and played a bunch of drinking games which was so much fun because usually we don’t all get to hang out together because there’s never enough room in the bars for all 33 of us. We went out downtown after for awhile but were pretty tired from getting up at 7 to go to the hot springs so we didn’t stay out too late.
Today has been the first day that I’ve actually just done nothing and it’s been great. We’re all going to our sites next Saturday so my roommate Sara and I decided we should do our laundry now because we won’t have time this week. My host mom did our laundry last week but we learned how today and got to wash our clothes on a washing rock before we put it in the washing machine and hang them on the line and everything so that was actually really fun to hang out with my host mom. After laundry I showed her all of my pictures of my family and friends (a lot of which are ridiculous/semi-drunk pictures but she loved them) and we drank tea and talked about politics and our families and it was just a very lovely afternoon. I can’t believe this is my last week in Quito and that I already have leave this host family, but I can’t wait to get to Portoviejo and get settled in my real house for the next year. Miss everyone so much and I’ll write again soon! AMOR.
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