A Night on the Town

So last night was our group´s last night in Quito together. Hilarity ensued. We all met up at a Cuban restaurant for some dinner and dancing. The food service here is in a word casual. Basically you order your food and can expect to just hang out and talk for at least two hours until your food comes. Not an ideal setting for On-the-go people, but what are you going to do.

One quick note about transportation. My main mode is a bus line called the Ecovia. It´s a big red bus that shoots you north-south along an avenue called seis de diciembre. Many of the streets here are named after the dates of famous holidays. Actually a pretty cool idea. I wouldn´t mind living on the corner of July 4 and December 7th back home. All of the trains are completely diesel powered so if you get caught standing next to one as it accelerates you are treated to a nice blast of eau de cough up a black lung. The pollution is intense. I definitely miss the cold clean air coming of the Pacific or Lake Mich. The best thing about the Ecovia is finding out whether you have Careful Carlos or Raging Raoul as your driver. It usually takes about five minutes and you either chuckle at the fact that you are taking a sunday drive on a tour bus or drag racing on a box on wheels. There literally is no middle ground. Hopefully you get luck enough to find a seat so either way you´re golden.

Anyway back to last night. Basically everyone was super pumped to be done with seven billion hours of instruction so people started getting ragey. The Cuban Restaurant was very chill and we were treated to a live rendition of Guantanamara, which was pretty tight. I even felt so inclined to Steveo swing dance some of the ladies. However our trip to the cuban restaurant was cut short by the 4.00 tab for all beverages. Thanks but no thanks when you can walk down the street and purchase cervezas grandes for less than a dollar.

Being a foreigner is crazy. We were rolling about six deep into this homebar and when we walked in we enacted that scene from a movie where the music screeches to a halt and everyone stares in awe. However luckily for us the silence was broken by good old Kane dog throwing up his arms and yelling, ¨Los gringos han llegado!!¨, which basically means ¨Ta-Da! White people!¨Lucky enough for us my quip broke the awkwardness and they bartender set up a nice little corner for the whities. We started playing never have i ever, because clearly that´s always a good idea, and then I got bored so went and started chatting up the Ecuadorians. After explaining never have I ever to them in Spanish they chuckled and we became casual acquaintences. As someone stated, we are not here actually to teach English. We are simply here to amuse people.

Anyway so it was a girl´s twenty-fourth birthday so I led our group in a vociferous version of Happy Birthday in English, which went over very well. The group of twenty Ecuadorians was all family members, which is one of the coolest things about Ecuadorian culture. The people here are extremely family orientated and excited to be around each other.

AFter that we went to kareoke and then danced at a local club. I happily honed my bartering skills and got the cover down from 3 dollars to 1.

Quick disclaimer before I share some thoughts about Quito women. I hate generalizing because obviously no gerneralization can be entirely true. However, I do want to shed some light on my first impression. In Quito as a whole the women are not drop dead latin lover gorgeous. I guess all the J-Lo´s are on the coast. They also are very shy. The birthday girl´s brother came up to me last night and whispered that she ¨Wanted to get to know me¨, so I introduced myself and she giggled and then went to the bathroom. I guess the extra twelve inches and one hundred and fifty pounds seemed a lot bigger up close and personal. Quito women also look gorgeous all though their university ages, and then quickly age. I don´t whether it is parasites or bad diets, but I have seen an unstoppable barrage of bare bellies that really are GET IN MY BELLIES. One of my colleagues offered up a hypothesis, that maybe there aren´t a whole lot of middle aged looking women and after talking to some people I think he might be right. You either look 19, 40, or 60 in Quito on the whole. Not a whole lot of transition areas.

All right I am off to Ibarra tomorrow. Hope everyone is well.

Gringolandia

So I started writing this blog this morning, but yet again everything went hay wire and instantly deleted. Awesome. So here we go again.

This October Ecuador is launching their political elections. They sure have a lot to choose from. There are more than 12 political parties and something like 20 candidates. The election is decided in two waves. The first narrows everything down to 2 candidates and then they duke it out to decide a winner.

The first interesting thing is the fact that people are super gung ho about the elections. For example, Yesterday I was driving around with my family members in their white truck. As we were driving along, a car-avan passed with every car supporting one of the members, Correa. Apparently he is a communist and also my family loves him. So while my family is driving by my host mom proceeds to play bump ba da bump bump, bump bump on the car horn-FOR TWENTY MINUTES. Super excited to see their candidates´caravan.

Other random observations: One of the candidates is a bannana mogul. He drives around the country of Ecaudor dumping food on all of the poor people and they love him for it. However, apparently this candidate was dropped on his head one two many times and may or may not have done some ¨stuff¨as a young man and now has the capacity of Forrest Gump. Another candidate is actually a woman believe it or not. Her Television commericial is classic. She basically bombs around on a horse for 30 seconds in beautiful campo de Ecuador.

Another aspect of the election that is mildly intimidating is the amount of Anti-American sentiment. Though I have not had too too many conversations with people about America, most of them have been extremely negative. The distaste for our current president is rampant and almost vehement. This makes me mildly confused since so many of the past Ecuadorian candidates have been so terrible in the past as well-my host mom uttered Óh how I hate you for robbing my country¨as we passed the congress here in Quito. The other aspect of American culture that is despised is the Free Trade proposal. They call it, the tratado de libre commercial, the tratado de leones corruptos, which means the agreement of corrupt lions.

However, though many people hate Bush and the US government, they truly hate the attacks on 9-11. My family was riveted to hear my account of 9-11, and also offered their own account, which strangely mirrored mine. Basically they sat riveted to the TV and watched the news all day.

The other thing I have noticed is Ecuadorian affection for American movies. Everyone knows all of the actors, have seen all of the movies, and their is even one channel called Cinecanal that shows American movies in English with Spanish subtitles all day. I actually just watched Hugh Jackman battle monsters last night during a showing of Van Helsing.

Other random thoughts:

The pipes here are not equipped to handle toilet paper. Thus every toilet has a small waste basket next to it where people deposit their used TP

As stated before I am very tall. Never quite gets old.

There is a store in Quito called ´The American Store¨and it is filled with Flag print shirts and dockers.

Food is incredibly inexpensive. A four course meal: appetizer, soup, main course, and dessert, costs a mere 3 dollars at a local Cuban restaurant called Caloeche.

It is extremely hard being a girl here. The men cat call and stare like crazy-unless said girl is standing next to a 6 foot 2 220 pound male. Your welcome ladies. Gringo men are called upon to be chivalrous like they never are in the states, which is actually kind of refreshing.

People here love to dance. Nonostop. all the time. They also enjoy making fun of gringoes who can´t dance. That´s when I love to strut my booty shaking skills honed in the fraternity basements of Dartmouth.

All right I have had great luck with this entry not deleting.

Que les vaya bien.

Teacher

So I figured I might as well write about teaching in Ecuador since that is why all of us are in the country. Plus my mom asked me to write about teaching.

Here is a compelling fact my organization. Unlike other abroad programs, we do not sign up volunteers and then approach countries with a big grin saying, ¨Well here they are where do you want ém?¨ Countries approach my organization and specifically ask for volunteers. We are a desired actually a desired commodity. Put more simply, volunteers are hired to help, much like construction workers, or electricians. Other abroad programs, on the other hand, provide the person who walks up to a construction site and offers to help. Bottom line: people in Ecuador who take English classes are SO excited to learn. We did an exercise in my class the other day where we wrote ´english´on the board and then asked people why the language was important. I spent the next twenty minutes writing tons of responses on the board all ranging from profession, jobs, family, self, country, city, tourism-one girl even wanted to learn English so she could write a letter to her daughter´s husband explaining how happy her daughter was.

So first thing about Ecuadorian classrooms are that showing up on time is completely optional. Class never starts until fifteen minutes after the designated start time, which is completely fine. It give me ample time to get my head together after 10 hours of classes of my own.

I am teaching basic English classes, which is absolutely perfect for me because it gives me time to practice the job I never had: drill sergeant. One of the major hallmarks of a native English speaker is his or her ability to speak words with the correct accent and intonation. Thus some of my time in class is spent with me yelling, ¨My name is¨followed by twenty Ecuadorians timidly chanting ¨Muy naeme ees¨followed by me urging them to chant more loudly while dancing around like a madman. Awesome times had by all. Muy chevere.

The other interesting aspect of teaching in Quito is the complete lack of resources. For example there are no textbooks that detail pictures of people wearing different types of clothing. Thus I needed to create my own. As my middle school art teacher could attest, I do not possess shall we say superior drawing skills, but I put my head down to create a picture worksheet for words such as suit, hat, high hells, shirt, scarf, etc. As life often does my creations worked out even better: Ok the keyboard just went postal on me and i no longer can create capital letters or periods: bare with me: point is the ecuadiorians loved my little drawings and everyone was all the better for my efforts:

off to class: take care:

que les vayan bien

Ballin in Quito

Wow. I had just written a fair amount describing life in Quito and suddenly it all deleted. WTF. Obviously someone is telling me to write about something more interesting.

So I must confess that when I first got here I was pretty intimidated. Quito has the casual reputation of being very dangerous. We have had numerous lessons learning to never leave our bags in plain view, always be conscious of our pockets, and never ever accept the first price quoted for any purchase.

However, Quito is absolutely gorgeous. As I have stated before the peaks and valleys are amazing and the people are truly proud of their city, which is awesome (chevere in Ecualingo).

My favorite memory to date was hooping it up with the local Ecuadorians at the local park-Parque Carolina. Centrally located in the middle of the city this park offers chain net (lo mejor) basketball hoops on opposite ends of an ADIDAS pastelled propoganda court. Very cool. It almost seems as if you are in the middle of some sort of Nike streetball classic where alley oops will fly and trash talk will abound.

Except for one small fact. I am probably six inches taller than everyone else in the entire city. Absolutely ridiculous. Literally people who meet me refer to me as ´That tall guy´. So anyway I head out to the courts for some balling and salivate at my opportunity for domination. In addition to towering over everyone, let´s not also forget that I outweigh them by 50 pounds. I am Shaq incarnate.

Ah life. So in Ecuador you play three points to warm up before playing to 21. I promptly scored three points and our team looked secure for an easy victory until....Shaq met his free throw. Holy moly it is impossible to breathe at 9000 feet plus playing basketball. AFter the calientar session of three points I was absolutely gassed. Like breathing razor blades through my lungs. Unreal. I was lost in a sea of Ecua-men, mostly fatter than I, running Indy car circles around me as I gasped for breath. Hilar right?

Not nearly as funny as not being able to speak street lingo on the courts. I, with my high school taught Spanish, busted out my gramatically perfect colloquialisms all over the court, and let me just say that never in my life have I felt like a bigger nerd. I was running around the court spouting the English equivalents of ´Please pass me the ball. Yes please give me the ball sir, oh ok I have the ball now´etc. etc. etc. Unreal. Awkward to a whole new level.

Anyway after an hour and a half Ecua fat men 21-Kane dog and Ecua friends 20. Game over. Would have crushed them 21-10 in the states. Next time I guess.

language aquisition

my first foray into language immersion has provided me with my first interesting insight into traveling in a foreign country. i came into ecuador with a solid background in spanish gained from numerous spanish classes and a couple summers swapping stories with restaurant workers in san francisco. i would say that i entered ecuador with an advanced speaking capability.

the first second you step off the plane creates a strong sentiment of ´´ok vamos a hablar´adrendalin pumping. however you inevitably end up botching your first attempt at communicating with a native speaker. my first forray was with a young woman at the passaport checking desk some know as ´customs´. i had my speech all prepared in my mind-a nice greeting followed by casual small talk. i waited my turn and as soon as i walked up to the desk i opened my mouth to a thunderous rendition of ´uh, um, hola, como esta usted, que, um que tal.´her answer? ´welcome to ecuador sir.´hilar right?

after my first botched attempt though, i have since impoved considerably. (Hey what do you know I figured out the whole capital letter thing. Apparently Ecuadorian keyboards capitalize with the right side shift insted of the left). One of the most interesting aspects of speaking in Spanish constantly is that your conversations with people start to become infinitely more real in your mind. For example, after spending last weekend partying with some of our Ecuadorian friends, I have little memories that are exclusively in Spanish or English. All of my memories of our conversations, which ranged from Ecuadorian customs surrounding dancing, to me proclaiming myself the ¨Chorizo of San Francisco¨ at the end of the night, solely are memories of interaction with no specific qualification attached. My Spanish teacher once told me that language aquisition is an ability to capture reality, and this opinion has since become much more clear to me. Think of it this way- when you remember a beautiful sight that you have seen-whether it be a mountain sunset, morning sunrise over a lake, or a panoramic view of a city, etc. you never think in your mind specific english adjectives. You only remember the scene and what you took away from it. After being immersed in a Spanish speaking culture for two weeks I have since come to believe that this memory quality applies not just to scenes, but conversations as well. I dont remember my coversations anymore as being English translations, but more of experiences unto which I can ascribe particular qualities. Once one feels comfortable with a new language, conversations take on this more scenic quality. It is for this reason that many people who first become comfortable with a new language report dreams in their new language.

Anyway sorry for the rambling quality of this entry as I am still adjusting to this whole blog experience, but I will improve. More to come.

here we go

this is the story of one man, one country, and a group of 32 teachers. stay tuned for more entries. also keep in mind that i have no idea how to capitalize letters with ecuadorian keyboards so please bare with me.