Author Archives: tim

Nothing invokes self-pity more so than vomiting. Diarrhea is uncomfortable, but vomiting is like getting kicked in the stomach repeatedly. It squeezes the tears out of you. Luckily, it didn’t last long. I woke up at four am yesterday and endured an off-and-on stomach ache for about three hours. That’s all. But then I was pretty tired the rest of the day. Instead of hiking up Pichincha like we were going to do, we ended up staying home all day. We watched a DVD we brought with us called “Ghost World.” It’s this quirky story about alienated people, basically. After watching it, Eileen and I talked about being losers. The conversation went like this:
Eileen: We’re losers.
Tim: I know. I was thinking the same thing. We’re essentially one loser split in two.
Eileen: Why are we such losers?
Tim: Well, would you really want to be a normal person?
Eileen: What do you mean?
Tim: I mean, if you were a normal person, you’d have to talk about stupid things like sports and what you did last night at the bar.
Eileen: I don’t know.
Tim: What don’t you know?
Eileen: I don’t know. Do you want some bread?
Tim: No. You do know. I mean, don’t you prefer meaningful conversations?
Eileen: Are you saying that normal people don’t have meaningful conversation?
Tim: No. I’m saying that I’ve observed a lot of social normalcy and that it’s boring. It involves talking about a lot of stupid crap.
Eileen: Oh.
Tim: You’re just don’t like criticizing anyone. Not even privately. Don’t you have any idea what I’m talking about?
Eileen: How about crackers?
Tim: Sure.

PS: check out new pics in coppermine.

So, I’ve got a couple stories. First one: Eileen and I were coming home from classes one night on the “trole,” which is just an ecologically friendly, but crowded bus. It has its own special lane, so it’s faster than many of the other busses. Anyhow, it was standing room only and I’m talking to Eileen when I feel an unusual pressure right below my right hip, approximately where my pocket would . . . So I reached down quickly and grabbed a hand. Yes, that’s right a hand. I held onto it and pulled it up and stared its owner down. He was an older guy and he looked surprised and tried to tell me that the bus was bumpy and that he had just accidently placed his hand in my pocket. I stared at him a little more and he looked away, a sure sign of subservience among the pickpocket species. He walked away.

The next day, we were walking with the entire group to catch a bus for “Selva Alegre,” which means “Happy Forest.” Why were we going to Happy Forest? To eat guinea pigs, naturally. So Eileen and I stopped for a few minutes to help a friend who was suddenly feeling ill. We hurried to catch up with the rest of our compatriots only to find that the bus had already left. Luis, the Ecuadorian Spanish teacher leading our excursion, informed us that we would take a taxi and try to catch the bus. A thrilling high speed chase ensued. There were five or six of us in two taxis. We weren’t sure which bus to pull over, and the driver in our taxi was much faster than the driver of the other taxi, which contained Luis, the native Ecuadorian and the only one of us who knew where to go. Thus, the high speed chase involved a lot of looking backward to make sure the authority taxi was still with us, and a lot of looking forward to try to ascertain which bus to pull over. After pulling over the wrong bus, the chase got faster until, minutes later, Eileen shouted “esto, esto” and we waved our arms out the window and honked until the bus stopped and let us on.

And finally: Eileen and I went to a folk music concert last Saturday. We talked the ticket price down to two for $15, walked in and found some seats. After two or three songs, a man from Ambato(about two hours south of Quito) sat down next to me and began chatting about his cattle processing career, his carpe diem attitude, and his being favored by God. He bought us wine (in a box) and candy (Halls mentholyptus). He was very nice and patient, but as the evening wore on, he got drunker and drunker and therefore became much more difficult to understand. It was at this point of low intelligibility, of course, that he began to tell us that his wife had left him. He had hit her twice, and another time, he had given her a leather jacket, which she didn’t like, so he gave it to another woman. Woops. His wife took their son and moved to Quito. He asked our advice, told Eileen several times that she had beautiful eyes, and then wanted to change the subject when we suggested marital counseling from a priest. The evening ended with him insisting on taking us home in a taxi on his way to the bus station.

That’s that. Orientation ends today. We’re sure to become homesick in the ensuing weeks, so keep reading and keep responding everyone.

By the way, this should be our correct phone number for anyone who wants to call us: 011 593 99 807 971

We’re starting to feel guilty about moving out of our host family’s place because we’re starting to really like them and it definitely improves your Spanish when you have to communicate with native speakers. We’re also starting to doubt that it’s financial smarter. The $300 per month at la casa Ordonez includes food — cooked for us by a wonderful cook. But it’s far away. The bus ride to our schools is 20- 40 minutes each way. We’d be spending two hours a day on a bus if we stayed there. Versus 40 minutes if we moved. And the air’s worse at our current location. I mean it’s horrible. I feel like we’re going to shed years from our life spans by inhaling all this pollution

We have a week left of orientation, and I’m becoming aware of the impending shock: we will no longer have a full schedule; 28 of our American friends will be gone; we’ll be moving from our present location; and Eileen’s lesson planning panic attacks will increase in strength and frequency.

There’s also this issue of our internal clocks being messed with. Back home, it’s mid-September. Fall is coming soon. Sunsets will come earlier and earlier until the days are just twelve hours of sunlight. Here, there’s currently 12 hours of sunlight everyday. And no real seasons. Soon, our Wisconsin-calibrated circadian rhythms will tell us that something is wrong, that we’re in the wrong part of the world. Right now, it feels like we’re pretty much on vacation, even though we’re really busy. And so, I think we, or at least I, have this subconscious feeling that when we come home, everything will be more or less the same, that everything will have been more or less frozen in time for us. Of course, since I’m articulating this feeling right now, it’s not altogether subconscious. But . . . see, now I’m speechless, cuz the rest of what I’m trying to say is truly subconscious knowledge.

So we’re finally in Quito, finally with our host family, and I’ll tell you, I’ve heard so many volunteers say their host family was “so cool” or “awesome,” that I’ve come to doubt whether they were telling the truth or just blowing the story out of proportion like young, overly-excited world travelers are wont to do. But it turns out our host family actually is pretty cool. We haven’t yet talked about our host mother’s soap opera career, but we’ve discussed the US presidential election, world peaced, Chechen terrorists, the Colombian government, and the Ecuadorian president. The house looks like a Catholic, Latin-American grandmother’s — full of breakable ceramic figurines of flamenco dancers, saints, and cute animals. The bed is a foot too small for me, as is the shower, most of the lighting fixtures, the doorways, and the ceiling of the bathroom. Our room is on the third floor of a house. We’re pretty much on our own up there. Within our “suite,” there’s a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen with a sink and a stove that doesn’t work. Outside the door to our suite is a small hallway which leads to a washing machine, a rock, and a door to the roof. The view is a mix of beautiful and ugly.
No sickness yet, but I’m writing this during our informational seminar on “staying healthy in Ecuador,” in which diarrhea is pretty much the main topic. Just talking about it gets my stomach rumbling. Eileen had an adventure this morning in the shower. (ooh, bad transition) Here’s how the hot water works: turn on the water, then flip the switch of the precariously wired electrical shower head. If the water’s still cold, lower the pressure. We got it working for Eileen, but then I heard her exhaling loudly and shivering two minutes later. We figured the thing could only heat two minutes worth of hot water; we even started figuring out how we might have to alternate showering morning and night. But when we got downstairs, we fouind Victor lighting a candle at the breakfast table because the electricity had gone out.
Victor rode with is on the bus to show us how to get to our classes. This week, we’re learning about Ecuadorian culture, safety, lesson planning, etc. Tomorrow, we all will go to our sites to learn about the schools where we’ll be teaching. Eileen and I will probably start looking for an apartment. We hear we can get a pretty nice place for $100-200/ month. We’ll see.

Wednesday: Day 2 in Quito

So we’re finally in Quito, finally with our host family, and I’ll tell you, I’ve heard so many volunteers say their host family was “so cool” or “awesome,” that I’ve come to doubt whether they were telling the truth or just blowing the story out of proportion like young, overly-excited world travelers are wont to do. But it turns out our host family actually is pretty cool. We haven’t yet talked about our host mother’s soap opera career, but we’ve discussed the US presidential election, world peaced, Chechen terrorists, the Colombian government, and the Ecuadorian president. The house looks like a Catholic, Latin-American grandmother’s — full of breakable ceramic figurines of flamenco dancers, saints, and cute animals. The bed is a foot too small for me, as is the shower, most of the lighting fixtures, the doorways, and the ceiling of the bathroom. Our room is on the third floor of a house. We’re pretty much on our own up there. Within our “suite,” there’s a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen with a sink and a stove that doesn’t work. Outside the door to our suite is a small hallway which leads to a washing machine, a rock, and a door to the roof. The view is a mix of beautiful and ugly.
No sickness yet, but I’m writing this during our informational seminar on “staying healthy in Ecuador,” in which diarrhea is pretty much the main topic. Just talking about it gets my stomach rumbling. Eileen had an adventure this morning in the shower. (ooh, bad transition) Here’s how the hot water works: turn on the water, then flip the switch of the precariously wired electrical shower head. If the water’s still cold, lower the pressure. We got it working for Eileen, but then I heard her exhaling loudly and shivering two minutes later. We figured the thing could only heat two minutes worth of hot water; we even started figuring out how we might have to alternate showering morning and night. But when we got downstairs, we fouind Victor lighting a candle at the breakfast table because the electricity had gone out.
Victor rode with is on the bus to show us how to get to our classes. This week, we’re learning about Ecuadorian culture, safety, lesson planning, etc. Tomorrow, we all will go to our sites to learn about the schools where we’ll be teaching. Eileen and I will probably start looking for an apartment. We hear we can get a pretty nice place for $100-200/ month. We’ll see.