Can Never Get Too Mmmad in Ecuador

Break Stuff

I’m not quite sure if everything is breaking in this country because I’m rough on it or because Ecuador is. As if frequently the case, I’m sure we can safely blame a combination of these factors. Whatever it is, my camera broke yesterday. Now, when I turn it on, the only thing that appears on the display screen is a bunch of horizontal stripes, something like a grocery store barcode. This was after (as my Uncle Jim will attest) the keyboard on my laptop had broken a few weeks before. The M key on my laptop’s internal keyboard began to act as if I was holding it down. I’d be trying to type up lesson plans or the latest blog posts and a trail of Ms began running along the screen as if the letter was afraid of something (mmmmmmmmmm... pretty annoying stuff). I got email instructions from my Uncle Jim and performed the vital surgery that involved disconnecting an internal cable. I know what you’re all thinking and—no!—my computer is not permanently broken. The surgery was a complete success! Unfortunately, I don’t think the camera will have such an easy fix. Either way, I’m just praying this computer will last the duration….

Peter’s Tom

I feel like, once again, a ton has happened since I last wrote. Peter’s friend, Tom, is here now, having arrived just a week ago. Tom is, to use their word, a real legend. He’s one of the most genuinely optimistic people I’ve ever met. I really can’t see that there’s a way to get this guy down. Tom had hardly arrived home here before he was singing Ecuador’s praises. This was after completing the lengthy and sleepless journey all the way from England. To make a few bucks, Tom’s been set up with a small tutoring position that he does for a few hours everyday. He’ll be around well into March.

An Update on Correa

Happenings in Provincia 24 have been at an all time high this last week since the new “state” was born. Rafael Correa came to Santa Elena to dub in the new prefecto, a government title the president hands down to the person meant to be in charge of God-knows-what. I walked out of school on Friday night around 8:30 to see that the town square was absolutely packed with people, national police officers having lined every street corner within sight. People here take local government very seriously. I, for one, didn’t feel the need to hang around to see Correa speak. From my understanding, the guy isn’t a real great president. He is, in fact, kind of a dunce.

I read an article about Correa recently and the general consensus is not good. Having just past his landmark first year in office, a local newspaper published the polls inquiring about the president’s perceived popularity. Something like 37% of people here approve of the job that he’s doing. Yesch! Numbers like that begin to remind me of another president’s approval rating.

Correa isn’t doing a lot to help himself. Even a gringo like myself knows that some moves aren’t going to engender a lot of fanfare. The first of his bonehead moves was to reform the process by which governmental employees are paid. While the changes to the system might be beneficial in the long-term, the transition was anything but seamless. What this meant for a number of volunteers from my program working for state-run institutions was that their pay was “temporarily” delayed. In fact, some of these volunteers (my heart goes out to Sarah and Shelby in Guayaquil) haven’t been paid since November. The Guayaquil girls were organizing to go on strike before their directors paid them for a month’s worth of work out of their own pockets. I should think that, generally, it’s a good idea for people to receive pay in a timely fashion. The second of Correa’s bonehead moves was to punish governmental employees for Caranval. If you remember from the last post, Carnaval is a countrywide celebration in Ecuador (and Latin America as a whole) extending from the weekend preceding Ash Wednesday up until Fat Tuesday. But since this holiday knocks out two viable workdays, Correa took it upon himself to make up for the lost working hours. Only a few days after Carnaval happened, he—almost whimsically—sent out a presidential decree instructing that all governmental employees would have to work the following two Saturdays. Time was served last weekend and this one (I can understand why Pedro, who works for the oil refinery, wouldn’t have been a happy camper). I should also think that, generally, it’s not a good idea to screw your employees on account of a national holiday. All in all, it’s not looking like too much fun to work for Correa right now. Thank goodness I work at a private institution. A number of volunteers in Quito were having the same problems as the Guayaquil girls.

Teaching

Teaching has been going really well lately. It’s tough for me to motivate myself sometimes, to think that my ultimate goal is to become a doctor; but also to think that, in the here and now, I’m an English teacher. But then I remember that this is a temporary opportunity for me. I can be a doctor for the rest of my life, but I might only be an English teacher for the next four months. That thought certainly helps me when I begin to feel some of the pressures inherent in being a teacher. I’m sure the work variety will, in the end, serve me well.

This week will actually be my final week of teaching both module 5 and 8. After Friday, I’ll have off until March 3rd, when I’ll be teaching an intensive course for beginners. I don’t know all there is to know about this class yet, but I do know that it will meet four hours everyday, for four weeks, for a total of 80-90 teaching hours and a very challenging month of March. I’m scarred about having to motivate a group of teenagers to learn English for four hours day in and day out, but I’m excited about being down to only one class again. Sometimes I feel as if I’m spreading myself thin in teaching two classes. It’s a lot of extra prep work, not to mention the teaching hours themselves.

I do my best to keep things interesting for my students, which might seem all fun and great, but there are definitely those times when things don’t turn out precisely how I envision them. Last week, however, went very well considering the planning I’d put in. In my module 5 class, I assigned them an unusual speaking assignment. I told them I’d be splitting the class in three groups and that each group would be in charge of planning a St. Valentine’s Day party for the class. Each group would present their plan to the class, and then the class would vote on which party they’d like to have most. We’d chosen the winning group by last week Tuesday, so I had two days to get things ready for the event on Thursday. I think things went so well, though, not because of my commitment, but because I did a good job of doling out responsibility to my students.

Perhaps the best idea I had was the formation of my “game committee,” a group of students in charge of—yes, you guessed it—coming up with a few games for the class to play during our party. We had a treasure hunt on the beach with instructions on how to find the treasure written and announced in English. After that, we played a game of keep away with a soccer ball, boys versus girls, where the first team to pass the ball twenty-one consecutive times without having it dropped or stolen away, counting along the way, were the winners (yeah, guess which team won that one?). My favorite part, however, was the “secret name” gift exchange. It was pretty hilarious to watch my students blush before the rest of the group asked them to reveal which name they’d drawn from the hat earlier in the week. Blancha gave me a pack of chocolates that my module 8 students ravenously ate up, but don’t tell her that.

Travel

As far as traveling goes, I’ve been staying closer to home lately. Last weekend I went a few hours up the Ruta del Sol to a place called Salango. We’ve been trying to hang out with Tom (not Peter’s Tomb; Carla’s Tom) as much as possible lately because he’s headed back to England at the end of the month for a few months of training. He was the one to suggest that we head north to keep up with the tradition that they’d started a year earlier. After meeting up with a bunch of Tom and Carla’s friends, we buzzed up the coast. In Salango, their Ecuadorian friends took charge of renting a boat so that we might avoid the “gringo tax,” which is a nice way of saying that many tour operators will do their best to charge those of us paler-skinned individuals as much extra as they can get away with. We all hopped on our chartered boat and took a fifteen-minute ride to an island off the coast that bears the same name as the town. There we jumped into the water. I can’t remember the last time I’d gone snorkeling. A little later, the charter boat took us to a small beach on the island. Coincidentally, I met a bunch of U.S. Air Force officers on leave from the base to the north in Manta. Countrymen!

I spent this weekend back in Montañita, which would make it an even two for two over the last two weekends after a quick sunset surf after the Salango snorkeling adventure. On Saturday, Montañita was hosting a Reef surfing competition. The surfers had come in from all over South America to catch some of the beach town’s legendary waves. Anita, an Australian friend I’d made during my time in Quito, was coincidentally in town, so we headed to the point sometime in the early afternoon. Pretty much, if you’re a tough shit surfer in Montañita, you surf near the point; that’s where the waves are the biggest. It was sweet to see what some of these surfers could do. The really good ones actually used the wave like a ramp that they’d jump into the air off. The surfing competition wasn’t that great of a spectator sport, however, because the waves broke so far off shore, which made it hard to see. Heats of four surfers would head out to compete at any given time, and there was a lot of down time while the surfers set themselves up in the water. I must admit that the announcer was pretty entertaining, though. He seemed to have a fascination with varying his voice as much as he possibly could… and screaming when we least expected it.

I didn’t head out to surf this last weekend, however, because Lisa was finally back in town. Her time with my volunteer organization has actually expired, but she’s going to be living in Montañita indefinitely. She’s been hired as the director of a Spanish (no, not English) school located in view of the beach. The school itself is really nice—wood floors, white walls and lots of windows—and she really fits perfectly into the community there. I’d missed her the last two weekends because she’d been traveling in Peru and working out stuff with renewing her work visa. It’s good to have the Teach back.

The three of us, Peter, Tom and I, had to be out of Montañita by Saturday night because we’d chartered a deep-sea fishing boat for Sunday, and thus, we had to be up early at the break of dawn the next day. We said our fond farewells to Anita (she’s headed back to Australia this coming Friday) and caught a bus back to La Libertad. We all hit the sack early that night.

Deep-sea fishing yesterday was great! The five of us, having added Tom and Carla to our little pose, only caught a couple of Dorado, but it was still well worth it. I couldn’t have been more excited when something hit one of the lines. For those of you who haven’t been out that far in the ocean (this was actually my first time), it’s cool to go just to see how the ocean moves. I found it incredible to watch the incoming swells of water. One second your in a valley and the next you’re on top of the world (it almost seems like one of those metaphors for life). Seeing the Dorado running alongside the boat was really cool as well. I couldn’t believe how amazingly blue the fish were underwater. I was glad not to have gotten seasick either. For a while I thought the sea was going to get the best of me, but then that sickly sort of queasiness left me.

Sleep, or the Lack Thereof

I can’t complain about too much out of the ordinary lately, except for the amount of sleep I’ve been getting lately. I’ve told a couple friends that I feel like a scene from The Exorcism of Emily Rose when I wake up every night between 2:30 and 3:00 A.M. and can’t fall asleep again until 4:00 or 5:00. I really can’t say why’s it’s happening either. And, no, it’s not the mosquitoes. While the mosquitoes here are ridiculous in that (I truly believe) they are not only faster and more agile than the mosquitoes in Wisconsin, they’re also better at choosing where to bite me (invariably just above the square of my back or around my ankles) and where to hide after having stolen a meal out of me. But it’s not them because I’ve become a fiend for keeping my door closed at all times except when I’m passing through it. When mosquitoes are to blame, they also have a tendency to wake me up during the course of the night just to let me know that they’re winning.

Despite this, I know the heat has something to do with it. After a really hot day, for instance, I’ll wake up covered in sweat. Not a good sign. I’ve bought a cute blue and white box fan to combat this aspect. But still, there's something more to it. Steph has suggested that's it's probably stress. She must be on to something, but, then again, maybe losing sleep and feeling additionally stressed out is one of those self-fulfilling prophecies. If this continues for much longer, I'm going to elect the route of self-medication.

Other News

Peter’s girlfriend, Joanna, will be here before the end of tomorrow night. She’s patiently waiting to catch her flight somewhere in Madrid as I type this. Getting to Ecuador from Europe sounds pretty terrible. Peter’s excited, though. He talks about her quite a bit.

I wanted to mention, too, that I’m going to be headed back home for a while in early April, so I’ll be seeing some of you for a little while earlier than expected. I need to find a place to live for next year and square up some other crap (including a bunch of blood work I really don’t want to have done in Ecuador if I don’t have to) before medical school starts up in the fall. Not to mention, of course, that I'm really excited to be seeing my girlfriend, Steph, and having a chance to spend some time with her. I’ll be home for two weeks sometime right after finishing the intensive course I mentioned earlier. Most likely, I’ll be back in Wisconsin by the 5th or 6th of April. Humberto, my director at ESPOL, has—once again—been absolutely incredible in helping me through these scheduling adjustments. I’m already looking forward to it!