Los Simpson

New Blue

I don’t believe I’ve ever brought this up before, but I find it amusing that I can track how much Spanish I’ve learned by watching The Simpsons—the show itself is very popular here. Of course some parts (even individual characters) are easier to understand than others, but still. It’s kind of fun to flip on an episode sometime around 8 or 9 o’clock and see if I recognize any verbs I’d learned that week. That’s what I was doing earlier tonight. That was, before Carla came back and we ate some choclo and drank a few Clubs.

I have very little to say that’s new, which might be for the best as I have a tendency to get really longwinded with the whole blog thing.

Adam, the new volunteer, still isn’t down here. He’s finished orientation, yes, but he’s doing a bit of traveling before coming here to stay. I don’t know too much about it as we haven’t been texting each other as much as we might, but it’s all good. He’ll be here soon enough.

Peter’s been gone for over two weeks. Saying see you later was tougher than I thought it was going to be. We lived here together for five months, and I didn’t really realize how much I’d confided in the guy. We had a pretty happening send-off in Guayaquil before I went with him to the airport the day after. Maybe too good of a send-off….

Tom is still in England and is doing well, I hear. Carla is working her ass off on a project for the tourism she’s involved with. She’s on vacation from her normal job right now, but what she’s doing now might be even more time consuming than her normal job. Sarah, as always, is doing well. She’s been really busy with preparations for the re-opening of the museum. Allow me to explain:

As well as being a hospedaje (equivalent to like a bed and breakfast) and a really, really cool house, the place I live at actually houses the skeletal remains of one of the original habitants of the peninsula. Way back, when they were still building this home, the builders chanced upon a skeleton. Instead of moving it or selling the land, Sarah and her husband decided to make an exhibit of it. Along with a bunch of other artifacts and really old tools and stuff, it’s a cool little two-room museum. I’m not too sure why it was ever closed in the first place, but this coming Monday is the grand re-opening. Maybe I’ll get to meet the mayor! I understand he’s been invited.

Easter

I had a nice, relaxing Easter here in Ecuador. The highlight of last weekend was definitely fanesca. While Latin America doesn’t seem to be as big on Easter traditions as we are in the U.S. (no Easter egg hunts, for instance), around here, they do have only little thing they like to do—and that’s to eat fanesca.

I should mention that eating fanesca certainly isn’t as big of a deal as making fanesca is. The dish is a fish and bean soup, but it definitely leans more heavily on the beans than it does on the fish. There are twelve—count ‘em!—twelve different kinds of beans in fanesca, one for each of Jesus’ disciples. (Side note: I did my best to find out which one was the Judas bean, but no one seems to know or care.) Two of Sarah’s brother-in-laws had come down with their wives to celebrate the holiday, and even with the four of them, Sarah and one cooking-incompetent gringo, it still took all morning to make the stuff. But make the stuff we did! You should’ve seen the size of the pot we ended up using. Sarah’s been hawking the leftovers all week, and we only finished eating it on Thursday night. It was pretty good, but not that good. The soup had a lot of different consistencies, depending on which random bean constitution you spooned up for a mouthful.

Teaching

Now that I’m almost done with Basico A, it’s safe to say I’m familiar with the intensive course teaching style. Four hours a day is not to be taken lightly, and I only say that because of the last hour, not the first three. Getting through three hours of teaching is, at least for me, a piece of cake. Getting through that last hour, though, is a different story. It gets damn tough to keep a bunch of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds attentions! I’ve declared war on cell phones. I’ll never win, but that won’t stop me from fighting. My students think they’re so sneaky, but they’re not! I know all the tricks by now. I feel undeservingly powerful when I steal one of their phones for the remainder of a class.

Really, though, I still maintain that the group I have now is the best bunch I’ve yet had. A lot of them are really dedicated and student hard for the class. That’s nice to see.

Besides for a few untimely power outages and a lot of temporada heat (it’s been damn hot lately!), I really don’t have all that much to say here either. It really cooks in that little room (my classroom is fairly cramped; that’s a lie, it’s extremely cramped) when the air conditioner goes on the fritz. It seems to have taken a liking to doing just that, but I should expect as such in a new building when they’re doing electrical work.

Travel

I went up to Puerto Lopez this weekend to meet up with a few others volunteers who are on vacation right now. We went to Machililla National Park, just a little further to the north from Puerto Lopez, and did some hiking and swimming at the awesome beaches they have there. After that, we hopped a bus back to Puerto Lopez, and then another bus from there to Montañita.

The best part about Montañita was seeing Lisa again. She was gone for the month of March to visit her family back in California, but now she’s back. We went surfing on Sunday morning, and even though I haven’t been surfing in three or four weeks, I did surprisingly well. I even managed to turn the board so I was riding on the actually wave, instead of in front of it. This is something I haven’t been able to do before. I’m getting there!

What about Mark?

Feelin’ fine. I’ve been running a ton to keep the stress levels low and take in some pretty beach scenery near sunset. Slowly but surely, I’ve been improvising my running routes. Kind of exciting for old Mark here. I’d write more about it, but I don’t think it’d mean a lot for anyone other than me.

Really, I’m totally focused on having a few weeks off at home. I’ve been waiting pretty patiently for this, and I only have to wait a week longer.

Hopefully most of the snow is gone when I get back to Wisconsin. I don’t feel like trudging through all that slush. I despise you, spring slush. I’m sure a bunch of you are wishing for the same as me. C’mon, sun, do your job!

The only thing left to say is… happy birthday, Karin!