The Big Move

I am now a resident of El Triunfo (see some pics above.) For those of you who don’t know anything about El Triunfo or about how I ended up in this small Ecuadorian mountain community, read on.

As I was working on my study abroad plans during my sophomore year at Middlebury (plans that seemed to have changed every other day…) I mentioned the idea to my advisor about taking a semester off from official school-work. I already was set to spend the fall semester studying in Montevideo, Uruguay (which I did, and loved), but I wanted to do something different in addition to this experience. My advisor was very supportive of this new idea and one spring day when I passed him on the sidewalk returning from a morning class he said “I have the perfect spring plan for you, Megan. I have a friend connected to a community in Ecuador…” Thus, within the week I was having coffee with this “friend” (who happens to be an adventure-book author who was in El Triunfo about ten years ago writing about his search for Incan gold in the Llaganates (the national park and mountain range the borders El Triunfo)), and by the following month I had concrete plans to teach in the school in El Triunfo and live in the community the following spring.

So here I am. Having spent the month of January living in Baños de Agua Santa (a adventure tourism town that is about 40 minutes downhill from El Triunfo) and having travelled up in the bus or sometimes milk truck to the school every morning (waking up at 5:30 am to do so), I feel as though I am ready to start out here in El Triunfo. Although the area known as El Triunfo includes a few other small mountain towns, the area I am living has a little under 1,000 inhabitants. In this town center there is a school, church, discoteca, karaoke bar, a little restaurant, two small stores, a soccer field and volleyball court (or rather square shaped dirt area with a makeshift net). As my first day living in El Triunfo was yesterday, a Saturday, there was a lot happening in the town. Soccer games were going on (speaking of soccer, they 20-30 age group team wants me to play with them but as I have no identification card for the league they will have to pass me off as “Diana Rodriguez” in order for me to play…we’ll see how that goes), mora (blackberries) were being sold in the streets, a group of young men were playing volleyball, and of course a slew of girls from the school were already following me around. I ended up spending my first day playing with a bunch of the kids I teach in school (as well as with the 3 year old, Melanie, that lives in the house I will be staying in), watching a soccer game of the sixth grade girls, playing with a litter of puppies and having to turn down one as a gift (NOT easy to do), and being invited to make the 7-day trip into the mystical Llangantes mountains by the towns oldest and wisest treasure guide, Segundo, (while we were picking an Ecuadorian fruit called Claudias off of trees I might add).

Although I certainly miss my travel partner and while it was fun to be in Baños with all the action I am excited to be here in El Triunfo – I think it will allow me to be more involved in the community and focus more on school and teaching .

New post below...but here are some photos!

Photos include: a couple photos from a weekend stay in the Andes (falcon with prey in it's claws and Chris and I at Laguna Quilotoa), some of my students swimming at the river, the volcano in Baños (might I add, "active volcano), and the colonial zone in Quito.

Problemas en la escuelita

As I mentioned in my last blog, tomorrow grades 2-7 (the entire escuela) will be going on a day long “caminata” (long walk/hike) to visit another school high up in the mountains. This school is in an indigenous community and half of the classes are given in the native language, Quechua. I would say a million times over the supervision of students is much less important to school staff in Latin America, but yesterday when during the middle of fourth hour every single teacher left their classroom alone to chat/argue for thirty minutes about what the teachers should eat for lunch the day of the caminata: “Chicken…no trout….Doña Myra does the best chicken…No, it is Doña Anita that does it best….” As the conversation drowned on students would stick their heads in the office window, “Profe, so and so están peleando” (Teacher, so and so are fighting) and the teacher, barely looking at the student would reply rather uninterested and without worry “Vengo ahora” (I’m coming now…which really translated in this case to “I’ll come when I am finished here).”

Another issue in República de Suiza (the school in which I am volunteering) and other Latin American public schools is the lack of creativity of which the students are allowed. For instance, the other day in an English class four and five year olds were asked to color in their hand that they had just traced on paper. When a handful of them began to color their hand in colors such as hot pink, green, blue, etc. the teachers flipped out. “NO NO NO…look at the color of your hand, you have to use a tan color.” They actually made the kids start over. I was thinking, and actually told one of the kids “I LOVE your hot pink hand, it is my favorite of all.” Because who cares what color kids color in their hands…I was imaging myself doing the same type of project when I was in pre-school and coloring my hand rainbow and then having the teacher “ooo” and “aah” about how pretty it was (now, the extent to which some teachers and parents praise kids in the U.S. is a another issue), but still, you get the point.

Of course there are loads of other issues and downfalls of the school system here and I wish even one of them were easy to do away with or alter, but I have to remind myself that I am just one person and just being here to offer my opinion in classes and on education in general and to be a positive influence for the students. Speaking of the students, they are fabulous (well, minus the handful that like to give me a hard time) and generally love to hang on me all day long. I often have one kid holding on to each of my fingers. In gym class, which I teach on Wednesdays and Thursdays they will actually fight over who gets to hold my hand when we are playing games. I am looking forward to moving to the village at the end of next week and having more interaction with the students: getting to know their families, reading to/with them after-school hours, and just being available to help with homework, be a friend, etc.

Ecuador is a special and beautiful country. Only the size of Colorado it is one of the most ecologically diverse countries in the world. This Saturday I am going on a day hike in the jungle (about an hours bus ride away) and this Sunday I am going on a bird-watching hike in the national park that borders El Triunfo. This past-weeks highlights include stopping at a house in El Triunfo after school that had a “SE VENDE TRUCHA” sign (selling trout) on the front door and Chris, I and the other three volunteers on the farm made delicious, fresh, trout for dinner. Another highlight was going up to the “Kinder” (pre-k and kindergarten) school up the hill to teach English and Physical Education…the thirty, always energized, little niños love to all give me a hug and the same time and then fall to the floor and it is so cute…they are absolutely adorable (and thank gosh, because they are crazy)!

That’s all for now…I will try to blog again later this week!

PS- If any readers exist…(Mom? John?...) please leave a comment for once. I feel like a goon.

You just can´t get away from your roots....

Of the ten or so new faces I met this weekend (of which the majority was spent in a realtively secluded village in the Andes) five were oddly connected to Michigan and or Middlebury.

One was a camp counselor at Camp Echo (the rival summer camp of the camp where I attended and worked, Camp Henry), another went to Calvin College located in good old Grand Rapids, Michigan, another (who owns a restaurant in Baños) is from Marquette, MI and has a whole wall of his restaurant decorated with Michigan memorablia (it´s a total gringo hangout, but still...),and another is a to-be Freshman feb at Middlebury.

One odd connection and game of name dropping after another and I had completely forgotten I was in Ecaudor.

Besides the odd connections that I came about this weekend I also made other connection: one with a fabulous, and rather enchanting actress from London and another with a Italian couple who invited Chris (my boyfriend) and I to stay at their flat in Roma! Not too shabby!

I met the majority of the aforementioned people/pairs this weekend when I stayed for two nights at the Black Sheep Inn, nestled in the Andes in a small, unknown town known as Chugchilan. The Inn is an eco-lodge that serves all vegetarian (gourmet) meails and specializes in day hikes around the area. As we only had one full day, Chris and I did the so-called most famous hike in Ecuador that begins at laguna Quilotoa (a lake formed in a crater many years ago after a volcanic eruption). We both decided it was the most beautiful natural formation we had ever seen. We had a guide who throughout the four hour hike (that passed around the rim of the lake, through a indigenous village that still speaks Quechua, up and down a huge canyon and back to the Black Sheep Inn) who showed up indigenous plants along the way and let us take rests when the altitude had us breathing more heavily than normal. Overall, it was a fabulous weekend and I reccommend the Inn to anyone looking for a fun, different getaway! (However, I would reccommend that if you do decide to make the trip and do so via the five hour bus that winds through the mountains to arrive to the small town of Chugchilan, to use the bathroom before you get on the bus because I, two hours in, had to bribe the bus drivers to stop the bus and let me use a bathroom...which ended up being a little canyon where an old indigenous woman motioned me over).

Enough about the weekend and bathroom troubles...now I am back in Baños and just finished a Monday at the escuela in El Triunfo. As for anyone interested in my teaching schedule, here it is:
Mondays and Tuesdays: English
Wednesdays and Thursdays: Cultura Física (Phys. Ed.)
Fridays: Computation (Although this Friday the escuela is doing a school wide four hour hike to another small elementary school up in the mountains...!)

I really like the school where I am working, although it is hard to not notice how far the Ecuadorian school system has to come and it is even more difficult to come up with ways to revive classes (such as the English classes) that have entailed nothing more than repeating the teacher and copying off the board for years (or rather, forever). Also a challenge is teaching Physical eduaction (a ¨subject¨in which I have no expertise in a country in which I have no idea what the kids are supposed to/normally do in such a class). Last week was my first official week as profesora de cultura física and all of the teachers were supposed to help me when it was time for their class to have physical education. To no surprise only one teacher helped me and one of the warm-ups she had the small second graders do was have three kids kneeling on the ground to see if the other students could jump over them (and let me tell you that most didn´t clear the jump...)

AKA feel free to email me with any brilliant physical education ideas...I will be sure to put them into practice!

besos!

ECUADOR!

Today marks my one-week “anniversary,” if you will, with Ecuador.

I am going to skip over the first full day spent in historic Quito….PAUSE: As I am writing this blog, sitting on a hammock overlooking the Andes mountains and taking in the scent of fresh flowers and herbs a hummingbird just few literally right in front of my face, pausing for a second, as if it wanted to get a glimpse of my blog (definitely not worth it, Mr. Hummingbird). OK, so back to the actual blogging….I am going to skip over the first full day I spent in Ecuador in which I visited numerous churches, museums and el famoso mirador, PIM El Panecillo (a fabulous view of the city on top of a little hill named “panecillo” because it resembles a bread roll) and dive into my arrival to Baños – where I will be spending the next two months.

For this blog I am going to focus on three topics: DOGS, VOLCANOES (or rather, THE volcano, Tungurahua) and EL TRIUNFO).

DOGS: For my first three weeks in the Baños area I am staying on a sustainable garden/farmed (WOOFF affiliated) owned by a Canadian woman. The volunteer workers on this farm work the land from 7-3 and in exchange receive free board and food (food meaning gather whatever you can on the farm and whip it into some delicious vegetarian masterpiece…. In addition, I like to keep a supply of Ecuadorian chocolate handy).

The first so called “chore” of the volunteers each day is to take the three dogs – two German Shepards one St. Bernard – for a walk. Dog walking…sounds SO simple. But I am not referring to a normal “dog walk” I am referring to a “mountain dog walk”…imagine three huge dogs in a setting similar to that of Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs)….endless waterfalls, rivers to cross, mountains to climb, “jungles” to get lost in, etc. Not to mention, a insanely fast moving foreman, Mario, who seems to revel in the fact that no one can keep up with his pace. Although I am not a working volunteer on the farm, and am instead paying my rent for the time being, I volunteered to take part in the morning dog walk my first morning on the farm. After being pulled up two mountain sides with the aide of a dog leash and having drenched and dirtied beyond belief the clothes I had set out for my first day of volunteer work in a neighboring school I figured I would skip on the morning dog walks for the time being…

VOLCANOES: I would consider myself a generally lucky, and certainly blessed individual. With that said, I will allow you to determine if the following was a stroke of luck or the opposite. The volcano Tungurahua, which towers above the farm I am currently staying, in an active volcano that has erupted two times in the last fifteen years. This volcano, which most had assumed prior to last Monday had entered it’s twelve year dormant cycle, has again stared to emit smoke (non stop) and let out startling roars (at all hours of the day, and unfortunately the night as well). Between the earfuls I have gotten from the locals, ex-patriots, and the local volcanologist himself, all concerning the newly active volcano, I am not sure what to make of the natural disaster that seems to hang over the heads of all in Baños…

For the record, the volcanologist believes there is nothing to worry about and that the volcano is not approaching another eruption… I guess for now I will continue to enjoy the views of lava trickling down the side of Tungurahua on a clear, starry, night.

EL TRIUNFO: I haven’t said this aloud, but I am going to type it here…I am afraid I have already fell in love with year another Latin American pueblo. Estoy jodida. Through a contact back in the states I was put in contact with a couple community members of this small Ecuadorian town and after a few emails last spring decided I would take this spring off from college and spend the semester volunteering at the town’s local school.

Here is what my week looks like in the school’s mountain village: Monday and Tuesday I assist the English teacher (What I mean by this is I basically teach the entirety of all they day’s classes), Wednesday and Thursday I teach cultura física (this is my actual class)….we are currently preparing for the annual zone-wide track competitions and Friday I teach computer classes both at the escuela (grades 2-7) and el colegio/high school. Like I said, after only two days and a slew of absolutely precious faces ingrained in my memory, I have fallen for the town. There is something about the atmosphere and community essence of such small communities in South America that gets me every time…I am looking forward to moving up the community late this month.

For the last two periods of school today the kids convinced El Director to let them go to the river to swim…so that’s what we did. As I watched the young students strip out of their uniforms and jump into the crisp water, as others played on the nearby bridge and I felt like I was in a U.S. elementary school….

Kidding.

***Tomorrow I start my new “position” as “gym teacher”…wish me luck! In addition, I am looking forward to a weekend trip to national park, Cotopaxi.

I think I already want to push back my return flight late March….