Looong post

It's been over 2 months now, and oh boy, time is flying. I'm almost halfway through! Ahhh!

We are now on our fourth teacher for Pre-Kinder in 2.5 weeks. People keep showing up, teach for a few days, decide it's not for them, and leave. Four teachers in 2.5 weeks. It's ridiculous. I don't blame them, though. I only have to have one class with them; I can't imagine teaching them an entire day. With almost every kid either having attention problems, behavioral problems, speech problems, or mental problems, Pre-Kinder is certainly a handful.

I have to start creating the kids' exams, which start next Monday. This is harder than it sounds because of the aforementioned problem: we have so many different types of kids--and they all learn differently--and hence we have to have different types of exams. So while I have only three classes, I'll think I'll end up having to make at least six different exams. The methods of teaching and testing here at my school are so different from what I experienced in the States, and I wonder sometimes which actually works better. I remember my elementary school experience being lots of sitting at a desk, copying the alphabet from the overhead, and becoming increasingly less and less interesting as we watched our field trips and game playing disappear--it was never this wild, play-based style here at the school in which the kids learn solely through songs, games, art, and some writing. I wonder who actually learns more, or who actually retains the information longer, or who learns faster. What exactly IS the best way to teach the children?

We celebrated a great St. Patrick's Day on Wednesday. We found the sole Irish bar in the whole of Quito and joined the hordes of green gringos ready to celebrate their Irish (or pretend-Irish) heritage. Trying to explain to our Ecuadorian host families why we were celebrating was a challenge--why DO we all wear green? Who's St. Patrick anyway?--great fun, though.

Funny story about St. Patty's Day. The minute we stepped into the area called "Gringolandia" (Land of the Gringos), the first people we saw were from somewhere in the Middle East, not the expected mass of Irish or at least Americans. These guys were wearing long robes and turbans and had really long beards and wore not a tad of green. We all sorta looked at each other and said, "Well, they're certainly not Irish!" These not-Irish-looking people then tried to sell us special brownies which just made us crack up even more. Soo funny.

Now for some more observations:
- In almost all Ecuadorian schools, a uniform is required. Sometimes it's the plaid, private school look that you see in the States occasionally, but more likely the school uniform is actually a sweatsuit. The first time I saw a group of kids walking around in these sweatsuits, I just assumed they were on a sports team. But no, what Americans wear to the gym, Ecuadorians wear to high school.

- There are no hard cheeses here in Ecuador. Only soft, white cheese with strange tastes and an inability to melt EVER. No cheddar to be found, sadly.

- Not only does milk come in bags, but yogurt does too.

- Ecuadorians have this annoying habit of not telling you what's going on. You have to ask about EVERYthing. For example, I never am told the school schedule for the day, let alone for the week. So sometimes I get a surprise when there's like a birthday party for one of the kids or something that I didn't know about. My host family is the same way. I never get told when somebody has a late class or has to go to the doctor's. They just disappear and leave me wondering where they are.

- Wedding anniversaries are a big deal here. There's a pretty serious, Catholic church ceremony for 25 year and 50 year anniversaries. I went to this ceremony with my family to celebrate 30 years of marriage between the aunt and uncle of my host mother. It was a 45 minute ceremony with lots of Bible readings and prayers and even communion. Then everyone came to our house for a big lunch and cake and champagne. I got bitten by a trillion mosquitos during the lunch which was a bummer, but overall, it was really great.

- I'm gonna get kinda Spanish-nerdy here for a minute so you Spanish students reading will understand and probably nobody else will. Sorry. I'm still trying to figure it out but they seem to use "usted" and "tu" interchangeable here. (Both are forms of "you" but "usted" is used to be more polite, generally used with teachers, children to adults, the elderly, etc. and "tu" is used casually for friends.) But at the school here, I've found that the teachers sometimes use "usted" commands for the kids, saying "Vaya a jugar" etc. And some of the kids use "tu" forms for the teachers. I would've thought the kids would use "usted" with the teachers to be polite and the teachers would just be casual with the kids. Not the case. I even sometimes hear things like "Te vaya" where they mix "tu" and "usted." I don't get it.

- They love to cook with bananas here. At first I thought it was gross when I found a hot, cooked banana lying limply there on my plate, but now I just love it. They fry 'em, cook 'em, make little chips out of themÉ. Delicious.

- Nobody walks barefoot here. Not even at home. I always wear shoes at my house because the house is set up so that you have to walk outside to get to the other rooms, but when I spent the night at a friend's house and walked around barefoot, they kept asking if I wanted to borrow some sandals.

- Books are expensive. And when I say expensive, I mean that the prices are pretty much the same as in the States. And the selection of English books is pretty scattered and strange. Lots of porn books, only the seventh book in a series, and lots of Isabel Allende. We've started a book sharing thing between ourselves so we're managing to get enough to read. However, it's not exactly a fair exchange since I keep giving people my English books (the language we all know) and can't get any in return because I can't read Icelandic and Swedish (the only books they brought from their countries).

- Don't trust the signs. Many a times we have been tricked by the "We're open 24 hours" signs because they are NEVER open 24 hours.

- Ecuadorians find ANY reason to celebrate. They just like to party here, I guess. We've celebrated Carnaval, International Women's Day, every kid's birthday here at the school as well as the teachers', wedding anniversariesÉ the list goes on. We get a whole week off for Easter and got two days off for Carnaval. They just love to break out the alcohol and clear away the chairs for some salsa dancing. At the wedding anniversary, all the old folks were jamming' away to the salsa in the living room and singing, maybe a bit drunkenly, all of the classic, Ecuadorian love ballads. So funny.

- After high school, kids here don't move out like they usually do in the States. My 20 year old sister still lives at home, which is the norm here. She says it's not realistic to try to find your own apartment; it's just so much easier to live at home for free.

- I've talked with my host sister a lot about going to university here and how it differs from my country. In Ecuador, you have to choose a major/job upon entering, and you graduate in 4 years with a job title, with a few extra years added onto the normal four depending on how qualified your job is (doctor, lawyer, etc.) Many students wear full suits or at least dress up to go to class which is a big difference compared to US university attire: hoodies and sweatpants.

- There are two cell phone providers here: Movistar and Porta. "People with Porta don't have friends," my host sister likes tells me because everyone in Quito, for the most part, has Movistar. It's also kinda nifty because they have 3x1 or 2x1 days where if you give the store person $5 it will either be doubled or tripled, depending on the deal, and you get more cell phone minutes.

- People pee in the street quite often. Just saying.

- They don't like cats here. I've only seen two in the whole of Ecuador while on the other hand, I've seen hundreds of dogs. And they howl at night, my bedtime music. Makes me miss my kitties!

- They honk their car horns just for the sake of honking. Hence, constant honking all hours of the day.

- There are no Asians and no gay people. My friend and I saw six Asians at once in the park one day and nearly died of surprise. We just sat there on the swings and stared with our mouths hanging open. What a day.

- I'm realizing that there aren't direct translations from English into Spanish and vice versa a lot of the time. When I first got here, I tried to translate everything from English directly and just couldn't do it. It means that none of us really have a verbal personality like we might in our home countries (for example, I say "legit" and other such phrases). And the same is for Spanish. They have little expressions that just can't be translated very well. Like "chute" which is something like "that sucks" but not quite. It's interesting.

Now for more news.
I had a great weekend this past weekend. To start off the fun, during school on Friday, we made Easter eggs! (Thanks, Mom!) The kids just loved it. When I was telling the story about the Easter bunny and how we dye eggs, one of my students just kept whispering "Wow!" with eyes as big as saucers. So cute.

Then that evening, I had two volunteer friends over to my house, and we baked brownies! My oven is horrible, though, and doesn't really like to bake anything in general, always producing cakes and brownies with burnt bottoms. It was still good though--we ate it right out of the pan and devoured it in minutes! We also made good 'lo American Kraft Mac 'n cheese (which cost us a whole $2.43 per box compared to the $.99 it costs in the States!). My volunteer friends had never had Kraft mac 'n cheese and they loved it. We also shared it with my host brother and his cousin, but I don't think they liked it.... haha. Then we had a bit of a salsa dance party in the living room and blasted the music while pretending to know how to salsa. (My host brother is pretty good at it, actually!) We're starting salsa classes in April so hopefully we'll be improving soon!

On Saturday, we went to Mitad del Mundo, or the middle of the world. It was a bit lame, though. We had to travel for hours to get there from Tumbaco, and when we arrived, there wasn't much besides the red line that supposedly is the equator. (We walked 10 minutes up the road and visited another place that said IT was the middle of the word--"according to GPS!"--since we'd heard that the actual big monument and red line weren't actually the real thing.) So we took the mandatory picture to say we'd been there then got ice cream and peaced out.

That evening we met Olivia's sister and sister's boyfriend who'd just arrived from the States for a visit. Her dad had visited a few weeks before so it was fun getting to know all of them! Now the rest of us are dying to see people from home--so hey, if anyone is interested in coming to Ecuador, now is the time! Now till July 2, you get a free tour guide!

We started exams today so Basica had their English exam. And all but one got really good grades!! It's such a relief to know they've actually learned stuff. Yay!

Ciao for now =)