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Weekend(s) Recap

Happy Monday to all!
So, last couple weeks- ready...go! Last weekend was Beth´s birthday so we all slept over AJS for a celebration in her honor. Next morning we headed into Guayaquil for its independence day party and ended up staying in the city for almost 12 hours- nothing like a parade, good food, sail boat tours, fire works, and a free concert to keep a few thousand people entertained. This particular Ecuadorian concert was pretty amusing because the artists and songs switched about every 45 seconds (one would wonder if Ecuadorians have ADD when it comes to listening to music- this was reminiscent of a power hour mix). Perhaps the best parts of the concert were the continual interruptions by the host shouting ¨WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS!¨ outrageously loudly and in English, when this phrase simply had nothing to do with whatever antics were happening onstage. Many audience members found it more amusing to watch us, the gringos (dancing, obviously) than the performers.
The week passed generally normally. I tutored a couple kids who live in the neighborhood (and was fed birthday cake for breakfast- not a bad deal) and had lunch with Lupe, one of our wonderful neighbors. She has informed us that she would like to have a one on one date with all of us to determine who she gets along with best- I asked her if our lunch was like a test and she said yes- no pressure or anything. We finished up our first partial (3 partials make up a quimestre) at Nuevo Mundo so things got a little hectic with grading (one of these days I will learn how to use Excel, but not yet..) This past weekend 6 of us- myself, Tierney, Jon, Christina, Mark, and Tasha- headed to the beautiful beachside town of Puerto Lopez and the national park Isla de la Plata. We got in around 9:30 Saturday morning and were under the care of our guide, Cherry, by 10, meandering through the fish market and stepping over 6 ft. long sharks, swordfish and the like. Just like a fish market at home, right? I was tempted to plop a swordfish down in the seat next to me on the way back to Guayaquil. A few men did end up bringing live chickens on the bus home so next time I must not let animals be a deterent. Anyway the boat ride to the island is about an hour and a half- a complete blast (and for those whose stomachs didn´t love the boat ride in its own right, it seemed the wildlife made it worth the rocky trip). We hiked the island for a couple hours and checked out a few species of birds, including the blue footed boobies, which are native only to the Galapogos and this island. From the boat we saw sea turtles, dolphins and one humpback whale (apparently whale mating season has just ended, so we were lucky to glimpse one). We snorkeled off the boat all afternoon by this gorgeous coral reef (first time snork-ler) and saw a million, as Cherry put it ¨Nemo and Dory fish.¨ Saturday night we ate at a local seafood restaurant on the water and stolled along the beachside bars and shops, stopping to have a beer in a hammock on the beach. Sunday we ate a breakfast overlooking the water in an awesome cane hut at our neat little hostel and spent the day at Las Frailes, famous for being the most beautiful beach in Ecuador. Encased by cliffs on each side, the beach was nearly deserted and we spent the day swimming, snakcing, and hiking a bit. The view from the mirador reminded me of the view from the lookout point at Gay Head (water was warmer, though). We were back by 9 Sunday night. This Monday morning I hung out at our neighbor Francisca´s with all her kids and will head over to Semillas, our afterschool program, soon before tutoring 5-year Jon-Pierre in some English. That´s about all the ¨new¨ stuff here for now, hope everyone has a great week!

Baby´s First Coup

Yesterday morning the opposition party tried to dislodge President Correa from office. He was released last night from the military hospital in Quito where he was being held. There were riots and protests in Guayaquil yesterday and access to the Puntilla and Guayaquil was cut off because the bridges were blocked. I was in Duran all day. One of my adult students in my morning class got a phone call (yes, I let them answer the phone in class) telling us what was going on and so I knew not to go to Mundo. Those who came back from Guayaquil said the streets were hectic with people protesting and burning tires. Everybody is safe; Kipp and Celso picked everybody up from work (only took a few hours..) and brought everyone back home. From where I am it doesn´t seem like we are in the thick of things. Life is going on as usual.

Animal Sacrifices

So we have been trying to integrate some meat into our diet. Attempt 1: Mr. Pollo frozen chicken. Standard. Attempt 2: Christina and I went to a local chicken vendor and ordered a couple pounds of breast meat. At this particular establishment chickens arrive in trucks every morning and those which we don´t see in the streets being trained for cockfights turn into somebody´s dinner. At least we know it´s fresh; our little bird was hacked to bits in front of us and still had pieces of feathers hanging on it when we brought it home. We soon turned little chicky into Coca Cola chicken (recipe for this and many others courtesy of Christina´s friends at the soup kitchen where she works) and it was delicious! Attempt 3: Yesterday we walked over to the least developed area of Arbolito, Sector 4 (we live in Sector 3), for a birthday lunch for Leo, one of our kiddos at Semillas. The family killed a pig for us. Background information: the mother had previously told us she was going to kill a duck for us and, thinking something was lost in translation, we thought nothing of it until a couple of my community mates walked the kids home after Semillas and their mother, Maria, presented them with a fully prepared duck dinner (seco de duck) to-go. So this time when little Melena told us they were going to kill a pig for us we knew they meant business. The first course of pig soup was a little tough to get down (intestines or sausage?) but things got better with the second plate and the cake. We have been working on venturing out into the neighborhood more so this weekend was a success in that department.

We are planning out first weekend trip to Puerto Lopez and Isla de la Plata, a national park on an island that fancies itself the poor man´s Galapogos so I´ll keep you posted on our travels.

Visual Confirmation

Here are Mark, Celso and I at Nuevo Mundo in our glorious uniforms. Note that I was not lying about the summer scarf.

Happy Hump Day!

Howdy all! I finished lesson planning for next week- we turn them in by Thursday for the following week. Classes at Mundo are going much better now that we have split the decimos and novenos into smaller groups. The idea is to get them speaking and writing more and it was too tough to get the shy ones to say anything in English in a class of 30 kids. My own speaking skills (or lack thereof) are still struggling but my comprehension is coming along (thanks to La Catrina and Destinos I am sure). I am 3 classes in with my adults and they are always a ball- the 2 hour class goes by quickly. We started very basic- Hi how are you? (to which they respond How are you?.. not understanding I have just asked them a question) They are also quick to tell me which English grammar rules are stupid or unnecessarily confusing and I fire back with things I do not for the life of me understand about Spanish, so it works well.

I only have 2 classes at Mundo today and then am headed back for Semillas in the afternoon- I am there Mondays and for an hour on Wednesdays and that time is still the highlight of the week because the kids are hilarious. Monday we made newspaper hats with the little guys and tried to explain who Peter Pan is.. no dice.
That is about all for now. Sorry, I just noticed this post is really boring. Have a great day!

Back to school, back to school...

Here is a pic. of all of us at AJS (birthday kids in tie dye front and center)

I have officially survived my first week teaching! I have 2 sections of 8th graders (here they are called novenos) and one section of 9th graders (decimos). Starting this week Celso and I are splitting the sections so we can work with the kids in smaller classes which will be a big help because there is such a range of abilities and comfort levels with speaking English. We will be teaching history to the decimos and English, lit. and grammar, to the novenos. The first couple weeks will definitely be an adjustment (prep. work is not the most fun in the world, duh). We also assigned an absurdly difficult story to the noveos before we had a chance to gauge their reading comprehension levels and one of the kids told me ¨you´re a nice person but my class has a terror of you.¨ Aside from that things are going well and the kids are a lot of fun to work with. I am definitely going to have to seek out other outlets to practice my Spanish though- our classes at Mundo are all English immersion and the other teachers treat us a little like outsiders because we are the new uncool kids who have yet to learn the language. It´s great fun talking to little kids on the school bus because my grammar doesn´t bother them at all- they just keep climbing all over me and blowing bubbles in my face. Needless to say the bus is awesome.

I am also going to start teaching adult classes this Tuesday. My boss has a pretty awesome mullet and knows lots of English swear words so I think things will work out just fine. The classes are at the John Drury School (same place we have Semillas in the afternoons, 2 blocks from our house) and from what I´ve gathered it´s a pretty strange place- it´s a tech. school that never exactly opened. The guards, who struggle at doing their job of opening the doors (I have jumped the fence before) usually let Capitan and Principessa, killer attack dobermans, wander around with the small children and periodically they bring a goat as well? All standards for ¨normal¨ must be adjusted here which has actually been a pretty refreshing process- it keeps things interesting.

Aside from teaching we have been meeting some people in the neighborhood, being fed some delicious food, and learning some vegetarian cooking of our own (any recipes appreciated, the meat here can be a little sketch so we just have to be careful about where we but it). I believe we were fed some questionable parts of an ox´s body for lunch last week at Mundo but I´d rather not think about it.

Yesterday was spent baking bananna bread for our 150 closest friends for a church fundraiser where we had to, get this, perform a dance to Rock Around the Clock (not a joke and, yes, I warned them about my dancing). It was a ball. I will have to find the video.