Category Archives: Ecuador

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. I have lots of excuses, but no one likes to hear excuses so I’ll spare you. My last few weeks have been pretty up and down. I was fairly sick (I’ve never experienced vertigo like that before and I’m SO glad it’s over). Tim took good care of me and my wonderful worldteach co-teachers at the cec subbed for some of my classes. Last week I had a fantastic birthday. My students were amazing: both of my classes brought in a cake and my morning class also had a beautiful traditional Ecuadorian shirt as a gift for me.

I can’t believe we’ll be home in less than 4 weeks. The time is flying. We are thoroughly excited to see all of you back in Wisconsin.

Happy (late) birthdays to Angie Storm and Eva Payne. Congrats to Rob and Emily! We heard it was a beautiful wedding. We can’t wait to see pics and wish you well in person.

To all the lightweight crew ladies out there: sorry I never got a chance to say congrats on kicking some Princeton butt earlier this month. Keep up the good work. I think about you guys when I’m at the gym on the bike.

“the girl”
So our landlords are great. We’ve been invited for Sunday lunch twice. They’ve taken us fishing, given us rides various places, answered any questions we’ve had and overall been very kind to us. They have two kids: David is 12 and the girl is 16. And of course, Bella is the family dog: pretty cool for a “two-biter” little white yippy dog. About a month ago, the girl knocked on our door with some English homework questions. Before this she was very quiet: she barely said two words to us. So I invited her inside and sat down to help her. I’m fairly certain she has a learning disability, and to make things even more difficult her English text book was WAY too advanced for her level. Anyhow, we struggled through the book and afterward she hung out to talk a bit. At first it was nice. But she is very difficult to understand, definitely the hardest of the family. She speaks very fast and doesn’t rephrase when you ask a question. So anyway she was here for about 2 and a half hours. When she finally left she said in Spanish, “so we’ll do this tomorrow.” (We’ll do this tomorrow???? AAAHHHHH). I told her that maybe every once in awhile I can help her out, but I don’t have time everyday. I felt bad but I couldn’t bear the thought of daily sessions like that one. She and David have come a few times and Tim has also done his part tutoring, but I think his patience ran out Sunday.

PS: we called her “the girl” because we didn’t catch her name when we first moved in and no one ever referred to her by name. So yesterday Tim was working on spelling out English letters with her and he asked her to spell her name. Very clever boy. So at least now we don’t have to call her “the girl.” Her name: Mireya.

o Tim and Eileen ate $20 worth of sushi for Eileen’s birthday meal.
o Tim has illegally downloaded over 200 songs since we’ve been here.
o The Snickers slogan in Ecuador is “Hambre?”
o We clean the house once a week.
o We’ve bought ten DVDs since we’ve been here.
o Ecuador’s soccer team beat Brazil this past week.
o Tim’s students tear gassed Steph’s students (Steph is another WorldTeach volunteer).
o We found a tree frog in our shower this weekend.
o There’s a Mac store opening near our gym.
o The people at the Swissotel know our names.
o Our “welcome” mat says “bienvenidos.”
o We keep a calendar on which we X off the days until our winter break.
o Tim has gone into the “Smocking Center.”
o Eileen had three cakes and a brownie in honor of her birthday.
o Tim and Eileen’s cell phone is held together with tape.
o The festivities for Quito’s December 6th Independence day have started.
o Two weeks ago, we purchased our first Christmas gift.
o Tim has refrained from purchasing any cinnamon rolls from the Cinnabon right next to our gym.
o There is a church next door that has hours-long music worship sessions every Sunday

It’s not that I haven’t urged Eileen to write more blogs. So why hasn’t she? Good question. You should ask her yourself.

By the way, we do receive emails that go to our cell phone, but we can’t respond to them via the cell phone. Thanks to those who have sent messages. It’s nice.

I made Eileen a cake for her birthday. It’s okay, but not as good as her mom’s version of it. I also bought her the fourth season of the Simpson’s on DVD. She also opened up her gift from her parents after an impressive display of will-power (she received the gift in August, wrapped). It was a really nice watch. We’ve received all sorts of birthday messages from relatives and friends. Thanks to all who sent their best. The cell phone was ringing off the hook, um, so to speak.

I recently received a package from my sister Jamie. And here’s what I told her about the whole ordeal:

Yesterday, I went to the post office to pick up the package, which arrived officially in time for Eileen’s birthday. It was 1:15, though, so I was 45 minutes late. They’re only open from 8:30 to 12:30. On my way home, I walked by this group of police. They didn’t say anything to me, not even “don’t walk around that corner because there are 200 students with rocks and they’re throwing them at us.” So I figured that it was safe to walk around the corner. It wasn’t.

I watched the police eventually run out and fire their tear gas rifles. Pretty crazy stuff. The students all screamed and ran back to the university’s property, where they’re safe, which is even crazier. It’s like gule. (is that how you spell it?). I throw rocks at you and then run back to gule, where you can’t shoot me. Ha!

So the package wasn’t actually obtained until today. I skipped Spanish class, went to the post office, went to window one, where I presented my claim slip, got directed to window 2 to pay 90 cents, went back to window one, where I gave them one copy of my passport, and then waited on a bench for 30 minutes until my name was called, at which point I translated the list of the contents of the package, and then paid 9 dollars.

Incidentally, if anyone tries to send us something, I guess you’re supposed to declare its value as being $0 or something very low. An American girl at the post office today was pretty upset because her package had been declared at $100, so she had to pay $40.

Eileen and I had a pretty amusing conversation the other day about her poop. Warning, though: we swear, so keep away from children as you see fit.

My English class this morning started with a brief discussion in Spanish about the demonstrations going on around town. The students at Central University, which is right down the hill from our house, have been protesting for a week or so now. A demonstration means they burn tires in the middle of the street and if a bus or a car tries to pass, they throw rocks at it, attempting to break windows. Most of the native Ecuadorians I’ve talked to are pretty cynical about the students’ demonstrations. They say they join in because it’s a game. They throw rocks at the police; the police throw things at them. They get out of class, and they get an adrenaline rush. Few of them really believe in the cause.

And what is the cause? I’m not entirely sure. I’ve heard they want reduced bus fares, and I’ve heard they want better salaries for the teachers. But since when do students smash windows and refuse to go to class because they selflessly want their teachers to receive better pay?

This morning, eight of my fourteen police were absent because they were called to work the demonstrations. “The student demonstrations?” I asked. No. Apparently there are also throngs of indigenous people marching downtown because they want the president ousted. Well, in order for that to happen, congress has to vote on sending him to a trial. They already voted, and they didn’t succeed in ousting him. So according to the paper, the protesters aren’t going to accomplish much. Even though there were 3000 of them yesterday.

Another one of my students this morning said she couldn’t get to school on her normal route because there were protesters on her side of town, too. I didn’t quite catch whether they were students or indigenous people. But I heard that the public employees are protesting because they want better wages also. So there are three different groups protesting right now.

Yesterday, I walked down the hill to the cheap copy place I always go to. If I want copies, I have to take my originals to a shop and pay anywhere from 1.5 cents to 4 cents a copy. Since 1.5 cents a copy is remarkably cheaper than the more common 3 cents a copy (especially after 200 copies), I always go to the 1.5 cent places, most of which are near Central University. So I went there yesterday and when I got to the base of the hill, I started seeing people holding scarves over their mouths. Soon, my own throat and eyes started to burn. The tear gas from the student/police battle had drifted down the block to the bottom of LaGasca. I figured it couldn’t be much worse than the West High copy room at 8:15, so I braved the discomfort.

Eileen was on a bus on Monday that drove through the nighttime aftermath of the battle and apparently everyone started sneezing. She said her throat burned.

The woman at the copy shop explained that the demonstrations really hurt her business because no one wanted to come into the quasi-war zone. She said that this Friday will be worse because students at the universities throughout town will march in the streets.

My police this morning said they would have to work all weekend and that Monday would be the worst day. They were explaining that they had to do training with tear gas and that there’s another gas that makes people vomit, but they don’t use that one as often. They also said that the universities have autonomy, which means that police can’t enter them. That’s crazy, I said. And even my more liberal-minded civilians agreed, saying, “This is why we’re a third world country.”

Just a quick note for all the worried mothers out there. Eileen and I aren’t in danger. America is not a target. Most Ecuadorians that I’ve talked to hate Bush, but they also understand that the citizens of the U.S. do not all stand behind him. And though Rumsfield was here yesterday and also got protested, the big demonstrations are directed toward the Ecuadorian government, not ours, not us.

It’s all pretty exciting, actually. I can see why the students like it. But my police will put in 20 extra hours this week. And everyone will be inconvenienced. And if the past decade of Ecuadorian political history is any indication, things may change, but they probably won’t improve. So I can see why people hate it, too.

Today in class, I passed by a student who had an Ecuadorian Spanish-English dictionary. There was an outline of Ecuador on the cover. I was circulating around the class while the students were working on a present progressive exercise, and this realization hit me that “I am in Ecuador!”

I thought back to one of my favorite Far Side cartoons in which there are several cows in a pasture and one of them says, “Wait a minute, this is grass! We’re eating grass!” When I was in middle school, this was my favorite Far Side. I still think it’s comic genius.

I also thought back to this past summer when Eileen and I were teaching at Centrohispano in Madison. On any given night, the crowd could be pretty similar to the group of students I’m currently teaching here in Ecuador: there were about 15 to 20 of them; they were very nice; they spoke Spanish, but wanted to learn English; they were Latinos.

It’s in the classroom that I’m most prone to forget that I’m in Ecuador. Because the class could be in Madison. In the classroom, I’m the English authority; I’m not seen as a foreigner (alien, inferior, ignorant, naïve, rich). I’m seen as an expert, a holder of knowledge. It’s more like home, where I teach, and where I know the culture.

My senior year of high school, we read The Stranger by Albert Camus in my English class. Apparently, there’s a better translation that’s now more in favor with the academics, but whatever translation we had then struck me as absurd and, well, boring. I can still vividly picture my friend Adam pointing to a line in the book and laughing; it read “as I was partial to café au lait, I had a café au lait.” Well, duh. “What ridiculous writing,” I thought at the time. And to tell the truth, I haven’t revisited The Stranger since those days.

But I have read a little bit about Camus, and I just recently read an essay of his called “An Absurd Reasoning.” And it now occurs to me that, whatever the original French may have said, Camus may very well have intended for the occasional statement about café au lait to be utterly absurd.

Absurdity is incongruity, out-of-placeness. A shirt that says “Trash up your ass” is absurd. The following joke is absurd: “What is black and white and has trouble fitting through a revolving door? A zebra with a spear through its head.” In fact, much comedy is absurd. It plays with our expectations; or really, it defies our expectations. Heck, even the “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke is absurd because the first time we ever hear it in our lives, we expect something not so obvious. Thus, the answer, “to get to the other side,” is incongruous, out-of-place.

Camus was more concerned with existential absurdity. You know when you look in the mirror and you think, “whoa. That’s me. I’ve always been that person, no one else”? Or when you’re in Ecuador teaching an English class and you suddenly realize that you are in Ecuador and holy crap? That’s existential absurdity. It’s the feeling that your existence itself is out of place.

Camus and others like him were fond of the metaphor of the exile – the stranger who was living away from home and who thus had this constant awareness of his own absurdity. Eileen and I are certainly not exiles. But we are separate from this culture. We’re strangers. And so, more often than normally, we transcend the cultural norms here. That is, we step away from them and look at them from outside. So for us, there is a lot of absurdity.

TV is absurd. When it’s in a different language, you can tune out its meaning and see its power, how it sucks people in, how people use it as a source of hope.

Having public bathrooms you have to pay for in a city where men pee on sidewalks is absurd.

Soccer fans are absurd. They arrive at games five or six hours early. They feel like champions after a team they’ve only watched compete has won.

It’s absurd that the light switch in my classroom is two wires that you connect together and with which the risk of shock is very high. (I think they teach electronics in the building somewhere).

But when I’m teaching, I have complete purpose. I momentarily forget that I’m in Ecuador, that everyone outside of this classroom, including my students, speaks Spanish, that I will most likely have to jump onto a moving bus later in the day, that eating enough food to stay in the 170s is difficult, that my family and my beloved dog are not accessible. In short, I forget that I am a stranger.

And then I leave class, and I squeeze into the front seat of a Police truck dangerously carrying twelve full-grown men, and I think, “Wait a minute! This is grass!”

Moo