One Week in the Dust

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.