Life

My apologies if this entry is not particularly well-written. My objective was to update friends and family with speed rather than utmost clarity. Thankfully my hands have recovered enough from my glass wounds that I can type.

T.S. Eliot once wrote, “April is the cruelest month,” but I think that he was wrong. July is the cruelest month. At the beginning of this month I suffered from a bad bought of dysentery that more or less put me out of commission, and then came the accident. I must have spent more time in bed this month than ever in my life.

I’ll start with the reason for my travels. Our entire March WT group went out to the coast for our mid-service conference in a pueblo called Puerto Rico. We stayed at a really nice eco-lodge, complete with beachside bonfires. After a great couple of days, the group headed down the coast to hang out with a volunteer in Montinita. The next day, not wanting to miss a once in a lifetime chance, I got up early and travelled up the coast to join our WT field directors who were going whale watching. This whaling excursion was awesome but put me really late in traveling back to Ambato, and it put me on a solo ride back to Ambato because my traveling partner on the way to the coast had decided not to go see the whales. I arrived at the Guayaquil terminal around 7:30pm, just missing all the 7:30 buses headed in the direction of Ambato. Guayaquil is a six hour bus ride from Ambato. The earliest bus I found my direction was an 8:15pm Transandinia. Having taken that bus line several times before, I felt super comfortable with it. Furthermore, when I actually got to the bus, and they handed us tickets for our bags I was impressed. My reassurance only doubled when a security guard used a metal detector on everyone before they entered the bus. I was super excited about being able to relax on this night bus not having to worry about anyone hijacking it or about my bag getting stolen from underneath the bus. Plus, I was in seat number one, which is by the window right behind the driver’s seat and has the most leg room. Later, I would be super grateful that there is a plastic wall between the driver’s compartment and the passenger section which probably prevented me from flying out the front window. The one fact I paid no attention to at the time but in hindsight wish I would have realized is that there was only one driver. Normally on buses there is a driver and an assistant who collects fares. This bus was lacking the later. I think it would contribute to our driver falling asleep at the wheel.

Feeling completely exhausted from the weekend, I quickly fell asleep on the bus and slept until about 11:30pm. When I awoke, I enjoyed my iPod and reflected on my life. Bus rides, mountain scenery, music, and Kat’s mind are especially conducive to a reevaluation of life. I won’t share what those thoughts were here, but I will say that they regarded the goals of my life and what I want to be about. Around 12:30am I started to go into the dreamy sleep state, somewhere between awake and asleep. I would fall asleep and then wake up again, then fall asleep and awaken. Around 1:15am in a very dreamy state, I felt the bus hit what I thought was a really big pot hole. The bus dipped hard to the left, the side I was sitting on, and then the bus came back up again. I later deduced that this “pot hole” had really been the small drainage ditch on the side of the road. Then next thing I feel is the bus starting to turn over. There are no shoulders on Ecuadorian roads, and we were traveling in the Andes Mountains. We were falling off a cliff. My first thought was, “No way. This can’t really be happening to me. We really aren’t falling off a cliff.” But as the bus continued to roll, the reality of the situation sunk in.

The next thought I remember is, “Are you serious? This is how I die? But I really like life right now. And I’m 22 years old. This is really young to die.” Now, I find this last thought pretty funny because I three months away from turning 24. I guess I really only feel 22. At this point, I don’t remember being particularly scared of death. Rather I just had a calm acceptance of the obvious fact that I was going to die here. At one point, I do remember flying from one side of the bus to the other and trying to put my arms up to my head.

After about four or five rolls, the bus slowed down, and I felt it teetering from one side to the other. This was the moment when I finally got scared. In my mind, we had rolled down part of the cliff, but now the bus was on the edge of a huge drop-off into a ravine. My thought was that I had to get out a window and find a tree to hang onto like in the movies. Before I could act on this thought, the bus rolled over one more time and landed right-side up on solid ground. However, I was still very unaware of how stable or unstable the bus was where we were, so I knew I needed to get out as quickly as possible. Amazingly, when I tried to stand up, I was able to, and when I started to try to walk, I actually could. Some other people had made it to the front of the bus and were trying to open the door. They were yelling open the door, and I joined them. I can only assume that they were yelling at the bus driver, but I don’t recall seeing him. The door was jammed into the side of the mountain and was not going to open. I am going to guess that the bus driver then climbed out his side window, and then the guy in front of me who had been trying to get the door open followed. I remember thinking that the broken glass in the window was going to hurt my hands, but my desire to get out of the bus superseded my concern for my hands. I pulled myself out of this driver’s window and walked around to the other side of the bus. I think there were people on the ground in front of the bus as they had been dropped there on the last roll of the bus. However, I only have a hazy image of this. Not only was it very dark outside, but I am pretty sure that my mind blacked out the image of those people. I don’t know if this is when I started to hear the screaming or if it was before. Again, my head has erased much of this noise, but there is one distinct scream that stays with me. I remember hearing a grown man screaming, “Mama! Mama!”

I noticed that there were two guys starting to climb back up the mountain. Realizing that we were out in the middle of nowhere and that no help was probably going to come for a long time, I decided to stick with those people who were also able to walk. I began my ascent up the mountain. The side of the cliff, thankfully, was not very rocky, but was grassy and muddy. It was raining outside. I remember having to use my hands to make it back up to the road. When I got to the top and looked down at where the bus was relative to the road, I thought, “How did I walk away from that?” At this point, there were about four of us who had climbed back up to the road. I reached into my pocket and realized how lucky I was. Zipped inside my jacket pocket was my cell phone, my camera, and my wallet, the three things that I would have grabbed if someone had given me a choice of what to take. I pulled out my cell. There was no signal. My companions asked me if I was alright. This is when I start to notice the pain on my head and the blood on my hands. A guy held his cell phone up to my head to see what kind of damage there was. He told me that it was some word in Spanish that I didn’t understand. However, I did understand that he said it was not broken. I asked where we were. People said that we were near a city whose name I didn’t not recognize, but later would find out was Cajabama. We were about 20 minutes from Cajabama and then another 20 minutes to Riobama, the next major city with a hospital. Suddenly we see headlights coming around the corner. The four of us wave furiously trying to get the bus’s attention. Like a smart Ecuadorian bus, they rush on by. You must know that there is no such thing as a good Samaritan law in Ecuador. I don’t fully understand Ecuadorian law, but I do know that WT has told us not to offer help to anyone who is hurt because you can actually be held legally and financially responsible for that person even if you had nothing to do with getting them hurt. About five minutes later a bus going in the direction of Guayaquil comes around the corner. We flag it down. This time, the bus stops. One of the guys explains the situation, and the bus attendant says that they will tell the police in the next town about the accident. This is positive because you must remember that there is no such thing as a nationwide 911 number. There is a different number for the police in every city, so we would probably get the message delivered faster via bus than trying to figure out what the local police phone number was.

One of my companions has been walking around looking for cell signal, and he yells over to me that he found a spot where there is signal. I head over there. Bingo – signal! By this point, it is probably 1:30am, time to wake up my WT Ecuador field director. I call Katie and explain what just happened. She goes to work being an objective voice by asking me about my injuries and offering to call my host family to explain the situation. We have a brief conversation, and she says that she will call me every 15 minutes to keep tabs on the situation as it develops. I rejoin the group on the side of the hill. At this point, there are about 7 or 8 of us at the top. About 10 minutes later another bus comes around the corner. This bus also stops and some of the injured people start to get on. I head toward the bus, but the guy I have been talking to the whole time asks me if I want to try to get my bag from the bus. I go to the side of the road, look down, and think about it. Then another guy is says to forget about my bag and get on the bus. Reason kicks in, I forget about my bag and get on the bus. This bus is completely full with people all in the isle from front to back. People have packed to the back of the bus to make room for the injured. Most of the other injured people are sitting down in the front seats. They are all holding parts of their bodies and moaning. I slide into a place standing in the isle. I had no choice but to get right back on a bus after haven fallen off a cliff in one.

About five minutes after the bus gets going, I finally see some guy’s girlfriend shove him and tell him to give me his seat. I gladly accept this offer. The next hour and a half consisted of me sporadically talking to Katie and my host family about my status and where I was in my bus. Everyone else from the accident got off in Riobamaba. Not feeling any major pains, I decided to take the bus all the way to my hometown, Ambato, where I could be with my family. We finally made it to the first stop in Ambato where the majority of the bus got off, and I could hear everyone gasp as they walked by me. I knew that I must look like I was in a state. For sure my hands were completely covered in blood, and I could feel blood run down my face from my head every once and a while. The bus took me to the terminal in Ambato where my parents were waiting. I stepped off the bus and saw my parent’s car. My mom rushed out to give me a hug, and I could hear her gasp at the sight of me. This was about 3am.

My parents immediately took me to the hospital. Half of me wanted to go on to Quito where there is an American standard hospital. The other half of me realized that Quito was three hours away, and I did have to have my injuries looked at soon, particularly my head injury. We pulled up to the nicest hospital in Ambato, which is fairly new and looked very clean. I am super glad that I didn’t get off the bus in Riobamaba with everyone else because I was the only patient in the Ambato hospital. The way the emergency room works is more or less on a first come, first serve basis. For a time, I had the doctor’s full attention.

The cleaning process began. The doctor removed all the glass from my body, cleaned my cuts, gave me stitches and injections, and checked for signs of major injuries. The worst part about all of this was that I could not relax and just say that the doctors will take care of me, and I will get better. In Ecuador, your medical attention is up to you. I asked about every injection and every stitch. Everyone kept telling me to calm down and relax. One of the nurses even asked if I had even been in a hospital before because I was so concerned about everything. As an example of how your health is up to you, after I was all cleaned up, the doctor and nurses kept telling me to rest. Knowing that my head had just been through some major trauma, I said that I refused to rest until I had it looked at. I feared a concussion. Another example is that while I was in the hospital another accident victim came in. They took him to get x-rays. Later, when I went to get x-rays, there was blood on the x-ray table. I told the nurses that I refused to get on the table until they cleaned up the blood. The nurses replied that it was nothing and not to worry about it. We argued. Finally, one of the nurses went and got some water and a paper towel and cleaned it up. I still refused to get on the table until they used some sort of disinfectant. After enough insistence, they finally complied, and I got on the table.

During all of this, my family had gone home. I don’t think I realized until much later that I was alone. One of the male nurses who was with me asked me if I was in the hospital alone. Apparently my mom had left without me knowing it. I was constantly crying. The nurse held my hand and told me how beautiful and brave I was. Normally, I would not like an Ecuadorian male’s flattery, but I must say that it was quite comforting while I was laying their in pain.

After I found out that everything looked okay on my x-rays and my CAT Scan, the doctor told me that he wanted to keep me for a few more hours for observation. This would have been the perfect time for a little rest, but I was completely alone in the hospital and couldn’t calm down. The only thought that was going through my mind was, “Why am I still here?” At this point, I thought that the few of us who had made it up the mountain were the only survivors. How did I walk away? These thoughts kept circling through my head, and I kept crying. And here is where an interesting cultural note comes in. The cultural perspectives on this accident seem to differ. Every nurse or doctor who came by to check on me for the next couple of hours kept asking me where I hurting and why I was crying. The truth was that I nothing really hurt on my body, but the mental anguish was entirely more painful. Being absolutely sure that you were dead and then realizing that you are still alive does a huge number on your head. For some reason I have found that here in Ecuador that it is assumed that if the physical body is healthy, then you are okay. It is a big deal, but it is not the biggest deal to fall off a cliff in a bus here in Ecuador. Stuff like this happens. People expect you to be able to deal.

To further elaborate on this topic, my family, rather than asking me how I feel, keeps asking me if I am better yet. I don’t know how to answer that. They keep telling me that in a few days I will be normal again. Physically, I think this may be more or less true. Five days after the crash, and I am up, moving, and show few physical signs of the crash. However, the mental and spiritual healing process seems to be on a much slower timescale. Trying to do this outside your own cultural context, without family and old friends is proving to be a challenge. I am sure that I will have more thoughts on this in the future.

I must send thanks to family and friends who have known about the accident and sent their love and support. A special thanks is in order for my friend, Marcie, who took off from her Peace Corps post to come spend a few days with me after the accident. There are only certain people that can call you Frankenstein after an accident and have it be funny. Marcie is one of them. I know that if many of you could have you would have been to my bedside in a heartbeat, reassuring me that the bald spot on my head will indeed grow hair again. I thank you for your continued prayers and support.

According to the news, one person was killed in the crash, and 17 people were injured. They released the names of the dead and injured, and I was not on the list. I assume that the 17 people reported as injured were so severely injured that they could not make it back up the mountain on their own to catch a ride to the hospital like I did.

In other news, I did end up getting my bag back from the bus company. Everything was intact, which was like Christmas. I don’t have that many clothes here in Ecuador, and half of them were in that bag.

I still am not sure how I walked away from that crash with such little physical injury and why I have been given a second chance at life. I know that not everyone gets that opportunity. I am grateful that it wasn’t my time to go yet. I’ve got a lot more people to love on this earth before I go.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, “I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice. For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Thy sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Thy holy temple.’ Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, but Thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to Thee with a voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord.” Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.

A Clip of My Class

Why I Can´t Sleep

Not long after I made this video, they started working on finishing the house next door.  On top of the construction noise, they decided to put a radio right outside my window, facing toward me.  My brother walked into my room after I was complaining so much and said, oh – that´s coming from next door?  I thought that you were just playing your music really, really loud.

The Perfect Revenge

Every day in Ecuador I feel like I am learning important life lessons. Recently, Ecuador has taught me a lesson that I did not expect to learn, the perfect way to get revenge on someone you hate. Next time you hate someone, add a little feces to whatever they are eating and listo! You will have given them dysentery. Sit back and enjoy your revenge.

I learned this secret because after five months in the “developing world” my number was drawn by the revenging Inca gods, and I got the dreaded Montezuma’s Revenge. And revenge it was. I have actually spent the last three days contemplating what should go on my tombstone. I felt like I was in a game of Oregon Trail. I had happily traveled halfway to Oregon with my wagon full of people when suddenly up popped a message on my computer screen saying, “Kat has died of dysentery.” Believe me, I was close. I have sat in bed for the past three days thinking about how they are going to get my body back to the States. Does my insurance policy cover that expense or am I going to have to ask my parents for an early birthday present? Now I know that may sound a bit morbid, but have you ever had an intestinal infection? You can’t eat, but you are really, really hungry. All you want to eat are pudding snacks and saltines, neither of which are properly replicated by an Ecuadorian company. Furthermore, the only place you want to be is home where you can mumble, “Saltines and Pudding Snacks (the ones with the mixed peanut butter and chocolate layers),” and friends or family will go out and get it for you. You do not have to really be concerned that that $5 spent on snacks would really put your caretaker in the hole. However, when your caretakers are average Ecuas who make $2000 a year, you cannot just demand these tried and true remedies to make you better. You must imagine that the rice you’re eating is a saltine and mentally transform your bread into chocolate tasting pudding. This is not an easy task and one at which I quickly failed. Thus, on my way to the doctor, I ducked into a store and bought pound loads of crackers. They are no saltines but taste infinitely more like saltines than rice.

Now, my trip to the doctor was a whole other cultural experience. My brother dropped my off at the doctor’s office, and I climbed the stairs of an orange office building to the doctor’s office. When I reached the top, I found out that the doctor does not show up until 10am. It was 9:30 am, and there were some people already waiting. I went ahead and queued up. At 9:45 am the doctor rolls in, opens the door and starts serving patients in no particular order. Basically the patients just said to each other, “Oh, no you can go first. We can see the doctor next. You really should get that arm sewed back on first.” At 10:00 am the secretary rolls in, turns on the TV and starts sweeping the floors. Only after finishing the floors does she ask why I am in the waiting room. I mumble out in my cavewoman Spanish, “Me doctor need. Pronto death.” She gets the drift and asks for my name. With that, I am a new patient of Dr. Nelson Zamora.

After about a thirty minute wait I finally make it in for my consultation, which I must admit was quite strange. The doctor’s room is like a study from the 1970s. The doc has this huge wood desk as the centerpiece of the room, and off in the corner is an examination table. I can only imagine that this guy must practice every sort of medicine, from psychiatry to pediatrics. I take a seat at the desk. I tell him all my symptoms: feeling like someone is punching me in the stomach about once every hour, peeing out my butt, and craving chocolate and peanut butter pudding snacks. He then diagnosed me with an intestinal infection. This guy is good. He can diagnosis me just from my description. I think because he could see the doubt on my face about his diagnosis, we moved over the examination table. He did all the typical stuff, heart, blood pressure, ears and eyes. But then he pulled out the unique Ecuadorian specialty examination, the belly jiggle. Dr. Z put two hands on my belly and then started rolling me back and forth like he was trying to roll bread dough. Now I know I have belly rolls, but this was a bit too far. All I could think was, “Yes, Dr.Z, I am sick in the stomach, and I am sure this is helping.” After the inconclusive belly roll, I thought all the surprises where over, but no, I was wrong. What came next was the completely unanticipated ultrasound. That’s right. I am not certain if I got this because he didn’t want to directly ask me if I was pregnant or what. Regardless of its oddity, I rolled with the ultrasound. After that, I rolled out of that office feeling completely satisfied with some prescriptions and new knowledge of how to perform the belly jiggle. To think, I got all this for the low cost of $20.

As an update to this death blog, I am glad to inform you that my dysentery is passing, sometimes very, very quickly. Furthermore, there definitely was a light at the end of the tunnel that leads me to believe that, in fact, some of my work and time here is having a positive impact. Because there are no such things as substitutes in my university (much like the States), I had to ask one of my fellow volunteers to let my class know that there would be no classes when I was out sick. Well, after three days of me not showing up and reading the sign Aubrey posted on the door, “Kat is deathly ill. No class today,” I think that my students started to get concerned. I’m sure it didn’t help that last time I was deathly ill, I fought through it, and gave classes even when I could barely speak. My students must have known that to miss class, my illness was severe. And believe me, there was not a toilet close enough to my classroom for me to teach. While I am sure my students were very contented to have a few days off of classes, they also managed to quickly distinguish themselves from their American counterparts and demonstrate what I love about Ecuador, concern for people around them. My first day back to class, my students were genuinely asked about what had happened and if I was okay. Then, as I was giving my warm-up in my second class, one of the students approached me and said, “Teacher, we were really concerned about you being sick, so we got you a little something. If you hadn’t shown up to class today, we were all going to go visit you. But since you did show up today, we have a little something for you.” He pulled his hands out from behind his back and revealed a small bouquet of flowers and a card. It was from the entire class. They had gotten some money together and bought me a get well soon gift. Their card read:

“We hope that you recover soon of your illness. You are a person very important to us, and we really wish that you could be well to continue teaching us that ‘English is fun.’”

My Call to NYC Illegal Immigration

Yesterday, one of my classmates at IndoAmerica, Juan, asked me if I could do a favor for him. Hesitantly, I said okay. Juan said that he had a friend who went to New York to study on a visa, but when his visa expired, he stayed in the US. Apparently he was somehow caught by immigration and taken to jail. He used his one phone call to call his mom, tell her what had happened, and leave her the phone number of where he was being held. That was three months ago. His mom has not heard from him since and is very worried about him. Every time she calls the number her son left for her they only talk in Spanish. This is where I come in. Juan asks me to go with him to a phone booth to call the number and help find out what has happened to his friend because his mom is worried sick about him.

We go and I call the Homeland Security office of Immigration in New York. Soon the other side picks up, and sure enough, there is an electronic menu in English that you have to make your way through. Of all of the possible menus that might be in another language, I would think the office of immigration might be a good one to have in Spanish as well. Of course though, it wasn’t. I soon found myself talking to an operator who kept asking me for all types of information that I didn’t have, like birth date, illegal alien number, etc. The problem was that there were three people by the same name that had gone through the NY facility. Finally, when I just explained that I am trying to help out a friend whose mom is really concerned about him and that I was calling from Ecuador, I got some results. It turns out that the guy is now in Texas, waiting to be transported out of the state. I got the number for that facility and thanked the lady in NY. I think it was the first time that my English was really able to directly help someone.

This experience lead to some interesting conversations among my friends and family about immigration. My older brother, who is a football fanatic, says that in the past the Ecuadorian soccer teams would go to the US and play in tournaments all the time. However on the flight home to Ecuador, only half the team would show up, and that is why the US doesn’t really allow many soccer teams from Latin America to come to the US to play anymore. One of my students was saying that many of the immigrants that go to places like the US are not necessarily from the upper class. Many of them are from a very low socio-economic level who have nothing to lose. This leads to a skewed view of Latin culture in the US. Many times, the US citizens only are exposed to those who may care less, say about littering or appearance of their houses because they are from a lower economic class. I have seen that these stereotypes do, in fact, rarely apply to the upper and middle-class Ecuadorians. Furthermore, my student commented that many of the Ecuadorian professionals that travel to the states aren’t very proud to have jobs that are considered lower in society. In Ecuador, they may be an accountant, but when they go to the states, they are embarrassed to be working as a janitor. Anyway, I don’t know what my own personal thoughts on immigration are, but it is definitely interesting to the issue through the eyes of a Latino, rather than just the American point of view.

Love Texts

I have been attending a conference all week on the “Rights of the Family” in Ecuadorian law. I had to pay $20 for 10 hours of lectures from people that did not even seem prepared to get up and speak. Part of the money was supposed to go to a charity to help families, but when I asked someone how much of our $20 was going to the charity, no one could tell me. They said, you never really know. To further exacerbate my frustrations with the wasting of my $20, the organizers put all of the panelist in the center of the room at a long table on a platform. Then, they put the speaker in one of the corners standing on the floor, without a podium. Not only could the speakers not be seen (as they were all Ecua height), but could not add any hand motions to their hour-long speeches because they were holding their notes. Furthermore, the speakers powerpoint presentation (if they happened to have one) was on the complete opposite side of the room with someone manually advancing the slides. Can we say poorly organized?.

However, just because it was a boring conference does not mean that I was bored. My peers provided plenty of entertainment and time for cultural observation. We were in a long room with rows of chairs and of course, everyone elected to sit at the back of the room. A constant hum filled the hall, and there was never a moment when everyone in the room stopped talking. People constantly texted throughout the presentations, and several people even answered cell phone calls right there in the middle of the speeches. I am glad to know that it is not just during my class that people pull out their cell phones.

One evening I am sitting there waiting for the conference to begin when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It was a girl, whom I had never met. “Could you help me read this text message?” she asked. “Sure,” I replied. The text message read, “A big kiss on your sweet lips…that aren’t mine.” She asked me if I could help her reply to the message in English. I’m not sure why I even asked who the text message was from because it was easy enough to predict the answer, her English teacher. The inappropriate relationships in this country never cease to amaze me. The girl told me she had a boyfriend and that she was in love with him, so she told me to write, “You know you have my heart, but I love another.” I wasn’t exactly sure how this was sending a clear message, but I translated it for her anyway. The English teacher replied back, “Who is the other?” When I translated and asked the girl who her boyfriend was, she said it was the English teacher. Uh-oh. Clearly, there had been some breakdown in communication. I was confused, had misunderstood the situation, and possibly caused some potential relationship issues. After all, these Latin men are quite jealous, and even the thought of their woman having another lover could mean a lot of anguish for the girl. I made some sort of excuse and told her to write back that she loved him. Four months here and the communication gaps are still shocking. Lesson – don’t ask me to translate love texts for you.

How I Became a Student Again

I decided it was high time that I get some actual Spanish lessons under my belt. My first attempt at having a conversation partner badly flopped, so I needed to find another way to get a Spanish fix. I have been asking around for four months trying to find a school, and finally, someone told me where one was located. Right next to IndoAmerican University, I was told, is a language school that gives Spanish lessons. My friend said me that if I couldn’t find the language school to just ask in the university, and they would know where it was. Of course, when I went looking for the language school, I couldn’t find it, so I went in the university and asked if they knew anything about the language school. The secretary didn’t really know anything, so she sent me up to talk to the director of the English department who had lived in the States for six years and spoke perfect English. I had a conversation with him about the possibility of someone at the university giving me Spanish lessons. Long story short, he, like everyone else told me that none of the professors had time to give lessons. Then, he came up with the idea that I could sit in on classes and just listen to improve my Spanish. Not wanting to turn down that kind of opportunity, I accepted. And that is how I am once again a university student. I now listening in on a law class and psychology class, spending seven hours a day immersed in Spanish. Although I am not extremely impressed with the level of my peers or how the classes are particularly run, I am definitely enjoying hanging out with people my age, and getting plenty of Spanish practice. I am definitely the first gringa that this university has ever had, but as a testament to Ecuadorian hospitality, the first night that I was there, I was already invited to the class trip out on the beach.