Two minutes in My Life

Warning: This is not an exciting video. However, if you are interested in seeing a video an Ecuadorian street, go ahead and watch. It´s only two and a half minutes…

Cuy!

Cuy a.k.a guinea pig, is a special treat in Ecuador. When our group was in Jima, we had the unique opportunity to see how it was prepared. Of course, I had to film it.

WARNING: If you have a weak stomach or don´t like to see small animals hurt, this video may not be for you.

Pictures from Facebook

I searched for the best way to post my pictures so that everyone could see them. It turns out that facebook seems the most logical. Therefore, I have made my Ecuador albums public. Enjoy the pics!

Pictures from Quito

Pictures from the Amazon

Pictures from Ambato

Pictures from Cuenca

Street English

This morning I was walking down the street in the center of town. All of the sudden I heard a man exclaim, “Oh my God!” I started looking around trying to figure out what had caused the man to shout. When I did not immediately notice anything unusual, I glanced over at the man. He had a huge smirk on his face. That’s when it dawned on me that the man had yelled, “Oh my God,” in English. Clearly, I had been the reason for the exclamation. It’s just another day of what I call Street English.

People in Ecuador, particularly males, enjoy practicing their English with me on the street. I have met several men who have an extensive English vocabulary consisting of “pretty woman” or “beautiful girl.” Many people on the street like to greet me with a “Hello” as well. Occasionally, I think they forget to speak in English and just say, “Hola.” Sometimes though, Street English vocabulary is quite limited, but my fellow ambatenos don’t let this deter them from practicing English. If they know any English words, fellow town strollers will try to practice them. One of my friends was walking down the street when a man approached her. He looked at her pensively, clearly searching for an English word that he wanted to practice. Suddenly his face lit up, and he said, “Eggs!”

What is the best way to deal Street English? Unless you want to get creeped out, the best way to avoid giving Street English lessons is to act as though you are a deaf mute who is pissed off at the world. I feel like Ecuador is slowly making me into a rude person. The cultural differences have forced me to make a dramatic change in my interactions with strangers. Walking down the street, I feel like a stereotypical New Yorker. My face is expressionless, my walk is swift, and my attitude is one of utter skepticism. It’s a sad reality, but I really feel like I can trust very few people. Part of the problem is a cultural that doesn’t want to admit that they don’t know something. For instance, this past week I was in a restaurant eating breakfast with some other WT volunteers. I saw a nice picture of pancakes on the menu, but couldn’t find them listed on the menu anywhere. When the waiter came over, I asked if I could order pancakes. He said, “No.” I asked, “Why not?” According to the waiter, the restaurant did not have them. I sulked. Pancakes would have been a nice treat. Then, one of my gringo friends who has been living in Ecuador for over a year, asked the waiter again if they had pancakes. Again, the answer was no. My friend asked again. This time the waiter said he would go ask the cook. Sure enough, ten minutes later I had a short stack of mildly delicious Ecuadorian pancakes in front of me. Apparently the waiter didn’t know if the restaurant offered pancakes, so he thought he would just tell me that they didn’t. This is not a customer is always right society. The other part of the cultural problem is my skin. People have no trouble lying if they think they can take advantage of you. The sad reality is that most people see me and automatically think dollar signs. This means that I cannot trust what most random people tell me about prices. For instance, taxis drivers always lie and tell me that I need to pay more for a ride home because I live in the suburbs. In Ambato, it is a dollar for everywhere in town, and I am almost always quoted a dollar fifty. When this happens and they refuse to come down on the price, I just give them a dollar and get out of the taxis. Again, I feel like a rude person, but refuse to be ripped off all the time.

In another instance, I was on a 7-hour bus from Cuenca back to Ambato after a visit with another WT vol. I’m not a big fan of traveling alone, but I was only going solo from the Cuenca terminal to the Ambato terminal, and my travel plans were known by parties on both ends. Anyway, because I was traveling alone, the isle seat next to me was empty. When a woman with a small child sat down next to me, I breathed a sigh of relief. While there was the risk of the baby crying, I definitely felt more at ease having a woman and kid sitting next to me. However, my anticipated bliss quickly vanished when 15 minutes into our trip the woman got off. Of course, with my luck, who would replace her but a creepy- looking middle-aged man. Almost immediately he started saying, “Hola” to me. I felt so rude, but I just acted like I didn’t even hear him and stared out the window. If there is one thing I have learned in Ecuador, it is that Ecuadorian men never want to just talk. There are ALWAYS ulterior motives. Therefore, as this man kept trying to start a conversation with me, Rude Kat continued to act like she was deaf. When the man started to invade my space, I simply snapped at him in Spanish and that must have sufficiently satisfied his curiosity that I was not some lost foreigner because he left me alone for the remainder of the trip.

Some cultural signals were really hard to get used to at first. For instance, in the US, many times when you stare at someone it is seen as confrontational. If you look away first, you are weaker. The person who wins the stare is the stronger person, and you can get people to leave you alone if you stare at them. Using this logic, when you walk down the street, if you wanted someone to leave you alone, you would stare at them in a confrontational manner. This is such an innate body language in the States that you don’t even think about it. Think again in Ecuador. Any more than a second of eye contact is an inviting gesture. Staring a man down in the street won’t make him go away. It will actually encourage him to talk to you more. This goes for street children and beggars as well. Again, I feel like quite possibly the rudest person on earth, but saying, “No, thank you” and ignoring these children is the only way to be left alone. In a way, it is almost like Ecuador is making me hard.

I’ve been in Ecuador for two months now, and it’s been long enough that I don’t wake up everyday thinking about the fact that I’m in Ecuador. However, every once in a while I find myself saying or doing something that upon reflection I have to say, did I really just do that? For instance, the other day, I was going to make copies for my class. One of the nice things about Ecuador is that there is a “Kinkos” every 100 feet. This must be quite a lucrative business because to get anything done in Ecuador you need about five copies of every required paper. And there are several required papers. Believe me, I had to open a bank account. Anyway, I walked into one of these shops and asked how much copies cost. The store owner said they were three cents each. Being the suave gringa that I am, I told the owner that copies are only two cents on that street (which is true). He refused to budge on his “I’m going to rip off the gringa” price, so I walked out of the store. As I was searching for another store with a copier, I realized that I had just refused to pay an extra 40 cents for copies, something I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about in the States. It was a moment when I realized that I was really starting to get used to life in Ecuador. After all, 40 cents is two bus rides for me.

Talking about catching yourself saying strange things, several WT vols got together in one of the smallest WT sites, Jima. It is a town of about 2,000 people, and it probably perfectly fits your imagined picture of what an Ecuadorian jungle village looks like. After visiting that site and talking with the Jima vol about her experience, I’m super glad that I’m in a bigger city. Teaching English there is extremely difficult because of motivation and discipline problems. However, Jima does provide her with some great stories. For instance the other day, she caught herself saying, “Pablo, please put your machete by the door. You can play with it after class.”

My Life as a Teacher

Today while I was in the middle of teaching on the ever-interesting topic of how to punctuate a sentence, there was a soft knock on our metal classroom door. I asked one of the students at the back of the room to open it. In the doorway was an Ecuadorian man who asked me if he could speak to my class. Skeptical, I asked him what he wanted to talk about. He answered that he was going around to all the classrooms talking about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Considering that the man would be addressing my adolescent class, I thought his might have some merit, relevance, and effectiveness. Now, this is a perfect example of Kat forgetting that she is in Ecuador. In my mind, I envisioned that we were at a junior high in the US, and there was a man who had been approved by the principal to go around to all the homerooms giving a motivational speech to the students about not doing drugs. I was kind of expecting the man to produce a hand puppet of McGruff or give out some free D.A.R.E. shirts to my kids. However, these were all fantasies from my US paradigm, not the realities of my Ecuadorian soap opera. So into my classroom walks this man who begins to talk about how he used to do drugs and that my kids shouldn’t do them. Now, this might have been fine, but then he started talking about Jesus and how Jesus saved him from drugs and alcohol. Look, I am not saying I am against that method of finding hope, but I was not about to have preaching in my classroom. I started kicking myself for letting this guy in front of my class. Then all of the sudden, he says that he is trying to raise money for a church program that helped him get off of drugs. Any guess as to where the church was that started the ministry? You’re right, Houston, Texas! I let out a good ol’ whoop! My class cracked up, and the man looked at me with a very confused look. However, the fun was not over yet! Many times on buses Ecuadorians pass out goods like candy. They walk by and put candy in your hand. If you don’t want it, you simply put it back in their hand when they walk by again, and if you do want it, you pay 25 cents for a piece. While right then and there, my class turned into an Ecuadorian bus. The DARE officer wannabe walked about putting candy in all my kids hands and then collected money. I actually started laughing out loud about the ridiculous situation. I had inadvertently allowed some random man to enter my class, preach, and sell candy to my students. A day in the life…

In other teaching news, I gave my students their first quiz. My grand expectations for how they would do were dashed when I started grading the assignment. The range of scores went from a 27 to a 96. My class averages were a 68 and a 66. If I felt like I hadn’t taught the material that would have been one thing. However, my quiz was based significantly on work we had done in class and on homework assignments. Furthermore, at least one student seemed to have a handle on the material. You don’t get a 96 without knowing what is going on. However, it does really show the difficulty I face teaching to such a wide range of abilities. Some students still don’t really understand a word I say. Other students clearly understand what I am teaching. Sometimes it makes my job difficult and frustrating, but who can’t use a challenge?

Cheating is a huge academic problem here in Ecuador. This is really another cultural issue. Whereas in the US work is considered very individual, in Ecuador, everything is more corporative. In fact, if you are the smart kid and you don’t help your fellow classmates, it is considered bad. If you know me however, I hate cheating. In the US cheating is considered a very serious academic issue. Part of my job here in Ecuador is not only to teach English, but also to teach American culture. Therefore, I don’t find it at all culturally insensitive to crack down on cheating. From day one in my class I told my students that I would absolutely not tolerate cheating, either giving or receiving help on an assignment or exam. Apparently my students did not believe me. I gave my students a very simple homework assignment, fill in some blanks and write a paragraph. In both classes, I had students literally copy other students’ assignments. As in, my students went to one of the many “Kinkos”, stuck another students work on the copier, and turned in the black and white copied assignment. Are you kidding me? If you are going to cheat, at least try to cheat better than that! After talking with several other volunteers, they concurred that nothing works to prevent cheating in the classroom. Therefore I concluded that the best way to stop students from cheating is to shock and embarrass those students who did cheat. Today after I had returned the homework to everyone who did the assignment, I took the papers of those who had cheated and ripped them up right there in front of the class. Then I just simply said, “Don’t cheat in my class.” Judging by the looks on not only the faces of those whose assignment it was but on the reaction of the rest of the class, I think it was effective. Only time will tell.

How my Dog Lost his Virginity

Ecuadorian sexuality is quite the interesting topic. First of all, being a predominantly Catholic culture, birth control is still very stigmatized. As a result, unplanned pregnancy is a widespread phenomenon. Furthermore, the structure of the Ecuadorian family lends itself to supporting unplanned children. If a daughter gets pregnant, the daughter’s entire family pitches in to take care of the new baby. It is not like the US where many single mothers face the huge responsibility and financial burden of raising a child alone. In Ecuador, this burden is spread across several different people. This leads to a proliferation of teenage pregnancies because if a teen gets pregnant, inevitably, her mother takes care of the child. A few months later, that teen is pregnant again. In a way, there is a lack of the same kind of consequences you would find in the US. It is easy for girls here to continue their education with a small child. Her mother simply watches the child while her daughter attends school. I see this every day, an older, grandmother figure with a very small child. I have even seen very old women nursing small children. I am still trying to figure out exactly how that one works.

Now the men. They definitely contribute to the problem. First of all, many men have two “women.” There is little to no ethical delimia with having two girlfriends here. Of course, this practice is based on a the historical difference between the settlement of North vs. South America. In North America, whole families came over to settle the land. In South America, only men came over with the mentality of conquer, gain riches, and return home. Therefore, every conquistador had multiple women, and it was never considered an issue. Today that cultural practice is still very common. I know several women who were dating a man, and only when they got pregnant did he tell her that he already had a family and couldn’t be with her anymore. Oprah would have a field day down here.

There is another contributing factor to teen pregnancy in Ecuador. As everyone knows, having sex increases your strength, and makes you more of a manly man. Consequently, at around the age of 13, every Ecuadorian male is taken to the red light district to lose his virginity. This is an Ecuadorian rite of passage. Usually an older male family member asks for the privilege of taking the adolescent to the whore house. Let’s just say this cultural practice of virility doesn’t exactly help the teenage pregnancy problems in Ecuador.

Yesterday, one of my friends here, another WT vol, walked into the university looking upset. After inquiring what was wrong, she replied, “My family makes me so mad sometimes!” I asked why. She answered, “They were trying to use a sheet to catch a female street dog.” My first thought was that my friend’s family was trying to rescue one of the street dogs, which is a noble idea. Oh, no. Of course I was wrong. The family intended to catch the dog and introduce it to their male guard dog. They wanted their guard dog to lose his virginity, so he would be stronger and better able to guard the house. Then they intended to put the female dog back on the street. And everyone also knows that all Ecuador needs is another litter of street dogs.

Ambato

Finally, I am situated where I will call home for the remainder of this year.  I arrived here from the jungle on Sunday, March 30, the day before I began classes at the University Technica Ambato.  Officially classes for the university had begun earlier in March, but because I was in WT orientation, I could not be there for the regular university schedule.  Also, the week before I arrived, the teachers had a strike, so I walked to the university on Monday, not knowing if I really would begin classes.  Unfortunately for me, the strike had ended, and I had to begin teaching on my first real day in Ambato.  Luckily my family was kind enough to drop me off at work and not leave me to fend for myself trying to get on the right bus. 

 

My first day went quite well, although it’s possible that I might have scared a few students.  It’s not very common for women to be loud and extremely animated in this culture, and I am both.  However, now that I am two weeks into the semester, I feel that this has fostered a more open classroom environment.  When they see that I am making a fool of myself, my students are a lot more open to talking and make mistakes.  This is huge because my students have had English classes since grade school.  The problem is that they cannot speak English.  Because many of their teachers teach English class in Spanish, they have great grammar, but little speaking ability.  My goal for this year is to really build up my students’ confidence so that they can listen and speak with a native.  From what I have observed, the grammar and vocabulary is buried in their minds somewhere.  It is a matter of drawing it out of the students.   The only other point that I am really going to have to work on is pronunciation.  Many times in class, my students have the right answer to a question, but when they say it to me, I have no idea what they are saying because the pronunciation is so off.  Everyone in the class understands what word the student is trying to say to me because they are used to that accent, but I am in the dark.  Usually, one of the students with better pronunciation has to translate for me from “Spanish” English into English that I can understand.  The other day, one of my students came up to me after class and said that he could not understand a word that came out of my mouth during class.  He proceeded to tell me that it was not because he didn’t know English, but it was because my accent was too difficult and different from what he had learned.  I replied, “Oh, are you used to a British accent.”  He said, “No, I am used to the way that Spanish people speak English.”  It was a perfect example of the problem.  Years of English classes that are rendered useless if a student cannot practically communicate.  And therein lies the value of my time here as a native English speaker.

 

In total, I have 46 students in my two upper intermediate classes.  One of my classes is adolescents (7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grade) whose parents are making them take English as an after school activity.  Against all my expectations about working with this age group, I am actually really enjoying this class.  This class works really hard, and they love to laugh at themselves.  My other class is university students who are also hard workers.  They are practically motivated by the fact that they need English to study abroad get a better job.  The aspect I like most about this class is that the students can have much more mature conversations.  Even though I teach the same material to both classes, each class has such a different feel.  I am still trying to learn how to keep it fresh for the second class and keep my mind open to the fact that it’s a very different class.

 

On a more general note about Ambato, I think that I’m going to have a great time here.  It’s a small town, but it is the forth largest city in Ecuador.  That means that I can still have a social life.  So far, the highlight of living here has been my host family.  They are absolutely wonderful people!  They are super willing to show me the ropes about getting around town and the like.  I fit in really well in their family dynamic.   Plus, every weekend when my host brother comes home from university in Quito, I have things to do with people my age.  Language is still a frustrating barrier sometimes, but I am that is just something that comes with time.  I’ll probably start taking Spanish lessons in a few weeks to really maximize my language acquisition time here in Ecuador.

The Jungle

I have now officially conquered the Amazon Jungle.  Our group decided that we would make one last trip together before going to our respective sites, so off we headed on a six hour bus ride to Tena, a gateway to the Amazon.  No pictures, TV shows, or movies that I have seen on the jungle have done justice to its immensity.  There are two types of jungle, the Secondary Rainforest, which has been in some way been influenced by man, and Primary Rainforest, which no man has touched.  Seeing the abundance of vegetation in the Primary Rainforest as compared to the Secondary Rainforest was depressing.  It makes one want to make watching the movie Ferngully a requirement for all Ecuadorian school children.  While traipsing through the Secondary Rainforest, we stuck to a path that had been traveled by hundreds before us.  In the Primary Rainforest, we had to travel in a river because the foliage was so impassable.

 

One of my favorite parts about the adventure was our guide who had grown up in a small village somewhere in the jungle.  Every time I turned around he was climbing another tree or pointing out a plant that would heal every imaginable disease.  Plus, he was an expert on all things edible in the rainforest.  I got to try several plants right off the jungle vine, which were amazing, ate lemon ants out of tree, and even ventured into tasting a grub that was burrowing in a rotting log.  The latter did not taste quite as good as our guide promised.  Furthermore, our guide had an affinity for snakes, and every time we spotted one, he raced to chase it down, catch it, and allow for great photo ops.  We actually had a close call with a snake in the River Napo.  We were tubing down the river, but since we were in a calm spot, many of us were out of our tubes swimming around.   I was in the last group of tubes when I heard one of my mates Chris yelled, “SNAKE!”  You should have seen how fast I was back in my tube.  I’m pretty sure it was a world record.  Apparently, his guide had yelled to him that there was a poisonous snake in the water just as it swam no more than five feet from him.  By the time we got near it, the snake managed to find the shore.  Of course, I insisted that our guide go chase it down, and he willingly took the chance to show off his jungle prowess.  Here’s a picture of me and the deadly snake:

 

Later, when we were whitewater rafting down the River Napo, we spotted a massive boa constrictor in the water.  Luckily it was dead, but it really made me think twice about getting in the water again. 

 

The sizes of the bugs in the rainforest were out of this world.  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea:

 

My other favorite part of the rainforest was painting ourselves with natural face paint to protect us from the evil spirits in the jungle.  As soon as the paint was on, I was transformed into an Amazon warrior.  However, our guide neglected to tell me that jungle paint does not easily wash off, and I was left with an orange face for the remainder of our trip.  Luckily, it did wash off in time for my first day at school.

Pass the Ball and Guess the Kiss

During practice teaching in Quito I taught a lesson on sports.  After reviewing some sports vocabulary, I thought it would be a great idea to get my students’ creative juices flowing.  After putting my students in groups, I asked them to invent a sport that had never been played and either demonstrate it for the class or explain all the rules.  15 minutes later, one group demonstrated for the class the game of dodge ball with a different name.  The other group invented a baseball/kickball type game.  However, the third group came completely out of left field with a game called “Pass the Ball and Guess the Kiss.”  They began to explain it to the class.  The guys get on one side of the room and the girls on the other.  Then, a guy sits down in a chair, and throws a ball at a target.  If he hits the generously large target, he is blindfolded in his chair.  My students chose a very old man to demonstrate the process of hitting the target and then being blindfolded.  After being blindfolded, a girl comes and kisses him on the forehead, then on the check, and then on the lips.  The object of the game is for the guy to guess which girl kissed him.  After explaining this, the group of presenting students grabbed the youngest, 15 year-old girl in my class and proceeded to pull her over to the old man to try and demonstrate this part of the game.  At this point I stepped in, said thanks for the demonstration and asked everyone to go back to their seats.  Basically, I think my students just wanted to watch someone make out.  So if you are ever bored, I encourage you to play the game Pass the Ball and Guess the Kiss.  It’s guaranteed to become an international sport soon, so start practicing!!!