The Little Thing...Chicken...For Soup

This is what I said to the guy running the tienda just down the block from my apartment when I wanted to buy a bouillon cube for my soup broth.  Before buying my bouillon cube I attempted to go to the market to buy a chicken bone to boil, but I became so nauseous at the site and smell of all the whole, dead chickens-- feet and skin still on-- that I left in search of fresh air before I could manage to try to ask for what I wanted.

 So a bouillon cube it was for me. Anyway, I dread shopping here because I can't just go into a store, pick out what I want,pay, and leave. In most cases I have to go up to a counter and ask for what I want, which of course makes it glaringly obvious that I am a non-Spanish speaking Gringa. This is the crux of most of my insecurity here in Ecuador: I don't speak Spanish. Most of the time I am able to use hand gestures and single words in succession (like the title of my post), or point to what I want. Sometimes I bring a friend, which makes things much less painful during the buying process, but I do not love the feeling of not being independent. Either way, I always, always walk away wishing I knew more Spanish. I am also fairly aware that people probably charge me a higher price because I am white and unable to fully (or even partially) communicate with them.  This is just a fact of life here, at least for now.

On the other hand, my Spanish use in the classroom is getting better. I am supposed to speak to my students solely in English, which I do 99% of the time. I don't really have a choice. But I have learned the words for write, draw, be quite, etc., and I use them when I necessary. I also have my students write down the new vocab in Spanish and English on the board, and draw a picture. Once our new vocab is on the board they all copy this into their notebooks, which gives me time to copy the Spanish words into my own notebook. I will not pretend to have learned all my student's English vocab in Spanish, even with the help of my new system. But it is helping me with exposure.  The other day I was trying to help a student in my class with special needs (who does not speak any English), and using very broken Spanish and lots of gesturing and visual aids, I eventually got the point across to him.  As I was turning to leave him, the girl sitting next to him grabbed my arm excitedly and said "Tia! You are starting to learn more Spanish! Good job!" It was really endearing (especially with her accent). 

On Being Sick in a Foriegn Country

So I've got a pretty bad cold, and I've been running a fever all day. I stayed home from school today, and I've been working on taking care of myself. I homemade chicken noodle soup last night, and I've been really intentional about eating lots of sick-friendly foods. I bought vitamin C tabs and I've been drinking hot liquids all week.  One of the janitors at my school told me to juice many limes, heat the juice with honey and drink it hot. A friend who's lived here for the past two years (though is originally from Minnesota) told me to add cayenne pepper to this mix. This home remedy definitely clears out your sinuses and the honey is great for the throat. Still, despite my best efforts, I seem to be getting worse instead of better. Taking care of myself is exhausting. I am always mentally exhausted from so much learning, but the time intensive process of making soup, constantly making tea, and cleaning up after myself is physically exhausting. I am not so sick that I want my mommy, or anyone else for that matter, to come take care of me.  But I am sick enough to wish for the comforts of the U.S.: I would love canned soup. I would love the convenience of honey that I can squirt out of a bear rather than spoon out of a jar. I would love a couch to lay on (my apartment does not have a living room, and therefore no couch or even upholstered chair). I would love a sweatshirt and a pair of slippers I didn't bring for lack of room in my suitcase. I would love a bathtub and hot water.

Still, I know that this experience is shaping me. This is why I'm here. Life is messy and uncomfortable at times, and I am definitely living down here. I have never been more aware of how alive I am. I have never been more conscious about the need to be intentional with my time and my actions. I have never been more aware of the direct relationship between that which makes me uncomfortable and the lesson I am learning from the experience. This experience is such a gift. This is why I'm here.

Still Learning

I feel like "still learning" could be the title of every post I ever create for the entire year I'm in Ecuador. I am figuring things out, but very very slowly. Poco a poco as they say here, or little by little. Teaching continues to rival the challenge of learning Spanish, and while I am actively working on both, I am not sure I'm doing all that well with either task at present.

I will definitely learn patience, flexibility, and adaptability if I successfully make it through this year. Today was especially trying for me. Yesterday I was told that I will be switching classrooms with another teacher because my classroom has a tile floor, while the Octavo homeroom classroom has an uneven, dirty, cement floor.  Apparently parents complained about this, and as more parents will enter the octavo room than will my classroom, it makes more sense give the octavo students, and their parents, a "finished" classroom.

 In the middle of the day today I was told that actually, we will not be switching rooms. However, teachers have been complaining about the loud music played by the dance teacher, who only comes to teach dance on Tuesdays. Since my classroom is somewhat out of the way, dance class will now be held in my classroom on Tuesdays, and I will be going to each of my students homeroom classrooms to teach my English lessons. I spent a lot of time preparing my classroom that morning with visuals for the day, and wasn't able to transport all of them to each room. Also, since there is no passing time between classes at my school, I was constantly frazzled and started each of my classes late. My students could tell and took full advantage of my feelings of ill-preparation by talking and playing with toys at every transition (which I was especially bad at facilitating today). To top it off, I have been preparing lessons for my sexto students out of a workbook called InSync 2A. As it turns out, all my sexto students were asked to buy InSync 1B, and therefore the lessons I planned for my double block (80 minutes) of sexto were completely null and void. I threw together some review games, but again, I was frazzled, and they didn't turn out all that well.

All of these things are definitely frustrating, and it is rare that I feel like I meet these challenges with the grace and adaptability that I would like to. Still, I find myself relying on this foundation of optimism that I find myself standing upon. I believe that I have the potential to make all of these things work. I believe I have the potential to gracefully accept whatever this school (and being in Ecuador in general) throws my way, and to adapt so that the outcome of the situation is still successful. Where this self-assurance is coming from is somewhat of a mystery to me. However, I am trying to nurture it intentionally and daily, so that it continues to be my companion throughout my adventure. I have a feeling that if I succumb to total doubt this experience will be a lot harder.

Photos

The three blue domes are a part of the Cathedral of Cuenca.

Here are some photos of the city of Cuenca.  I will post more photos soon, though I have not been good about actually taking my camera with me in these past few weeks. I will be intentional about taking more photos and posting them soon.



View of the street with Ecuadorian Flag.

San Sebastian Church, taken from my apartment balcony.



Santo Domingo Church, also taken from my balcony.

Learning Curve

Well I'm half way through my second week of school, and let me just say, I am not a very good elementary school teacher yet. I have sucked at creating procedures and enough structure in my daily lessons to invite productivity into my classroom.  The only class I feel good about is Octavo, or 7th grade. Their English is great, and they're totally excited about the story writing project we've launched into. Quinto and Sexto, I definitely bomb every day. Septimo is questionable. Some lessons are better than others. I need to really work on making a ton of visuals and totally structuring my plans into lots of mini lessons. This overwhelms me. I want to do this, and to create lessons that are really on my student's level, but it's hard for me to gage what my student's level is. It is something I think about often though. Luckily, we start teaching the student's workbooks next week. Aka, I will not be left to my own devices.  I have 8 units in each workbook to complete with each class. So, I just have to figure out how to best teach that unit, instead of what to teach and how to teach it at the same time. 

It's funny, when I was in college, I never wanted to teach at a school that gave me a workbook and expected me to have my students complete it daily. Here, I am so grateful.  This learning curve is BIG and I am quickly realizing that I may not ever feel totally confident in what I'm doing here. I have heard teachers say that after the first three years they really started to feel like they knew what they were doing. Unfortunately for my teaching career, I want to start graduate school in a social work program next year, so I may never know what it is to feel confident in my teaching skills. Still, I felt called to do this, and I am already growing from being pushed so much. I just worry my kids will be at a disadvantage because of my lacking in this arena.

My personal life is very much paralleling my professional life at the moment: I have to meet more learning curves. My Ecuadorian life is very different from the life I led in the United States. I was prepared for this in some ways, but in many ways I was not. Life is more holistic here in that you have to work for what you want all the time.  For example, there are no coffee makers here. You have to actually make it in the morning, rather than just pouring in some grounds and pushing a button. If you want coffee you must boil the water in a pot on the stove, and then pour that water through what my fellow gringos have started calling a "coffee sock." A "coffee sock" is basically like an over sized, sock-shaped tea bag that you pour coffee grounds into, put over your cup, and then pour boiled water through.  There is no such thing as cream here, so milk and sugar it is for me. There are also no canned beans. You have to rehydrate them, which involves soaking overnight. Even lighting my stove-top is a process that involves turning on the gas and lighting the burner with a lighter. I have never been good at lighting lighters, and so far I have singed off the baby hair on my knuckles twice while lighting the burner. Eating is definitely a more involved process, in that cooking involves a lot more effort.

Running errands also involves a lot more effort. First of all, I have to walk or take a cab everywhere, as I do not have a car, and I do not know the bus routes all that well yet. Sometimes I will opt for a cab, but most of the time I walk everywhere. Taking out cash from the bank involves a 10 minute walk to an ATM that accepts international debit cards, waiting in a line, and praying continuously that I do not get mugged on the way back to my apartment. Grocery shopping involves going to the market for most things, going to a tienda for chocolate, and going to SuperMaxi (the Westernized grocery store) for cheese, pre-sliced bread, and other products not found at the market. Supermaxi is about a 15 minute walk, so you need to be fairly committed.  But, the clerks there usually speak some English, which has been so helpful.

All in all, my biggest challenge here is not knowing Spanish. I am learning new words and phrases, and my students, co-workers, and friends speak it to and around me constantly. At times I am in the company of many, and feel fairly lonely, as I totally cannot follow the conversation. One of reasons I came here is to learn Spanish, and I will. But these first 12 days have brought lots of misunderstandings, total uncertainty, and repeated apologizing on my part.

Learning so many new things is exhausting. I realized today, that I have not felt completely comfortable since I left Minnesota. It's not that I am ragingly homesick, or that I berate myself constantly for my lack of teaching and Spanish skills. The thing is, learning is a lot of work, and I never really feel comfortable during a learning process. I usually start feeling comfortable when I feel confident in my ability to do something. So I guess, exhausted as I am, the only real option I have is to put in the work, and build my teaching and Spanish skills so that I do not constantly live with a low level of discomfort looming over me.

One week down, 33 to go.

I just finished my first week of being an elementary school English teacher in Ecuador. Whew I am tired. I am teaching Quinto, Sexto, Septimo, and Octavo, which translates to fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, because kindergarten here is called primero. All of the teachers at my school go by their first names, and students call us Tia or Tio (aunt or uncle) depending on our sex. I love being called Tia Becca, because Krauss is a name I share with my family.  Becca is my own, and I feel like my students (and the kids I worked with in Chicago) are asking for me personally, when they call my name. I have also never felt old enough to be called Ms. Krauss. Maybe I never will.

In terms of my classes, think I have a fairly good grasp on how to teach my fifth, sixth, and seventh graders, but I am definitely grasping at straws with my fourth graders. Part of this is that their English is way lower than it is supposed to be at present, so they get bored when I'm giving directions because they don't understand me. They always speak to me in Spanish, and since I don't understand them, they are easily discouraged.  Although I created models for all the activities we did in class, I am still learning how to effectively give directions so that my students understand and participate.  Every day I thought I'd created a better model and method to give directions so that my students would understand, and every day my students got bored and start talking to one another, and playing with toys that they brought to class. I learned today that my students should not be bringing toys to class (I wondered if this was cultural and maybe I was somehow being insensitive by asking my students to put away their toys), and that I need to be sending messages home to their parents if this persists. My administration has told me that this class is fairly immature, so we need to use as much parental reinforcement as possible concerning their behavior.  One perk of working in a private school is that there is a lot of parental involvement.

 I really do like my quinto students, despite the fact that they don't listen. They are so tender. They always want hug me when they come in the room, or when they see me in the morning or after school.  The girls always want to touch my earrings, my hair, or my scarf. The boys always ask me about watching Ecuadorian soccer.  One boy in particular, who has almost no English speaking skills, asked me my name on the first day, and has taken care to learn how to pronounce it correctly. When his homeroom teacher called me Rebecca one day, he very quickly corrected her and told her my name is Tia Becca.

Outside of teaching, my life is only sort of coming together. I still do not have housing, and the kitchen in my hostel is currently under construction which has made eating a little bit precarious. I have gone to friend's apartments and such for meals, but I am not invited all the time (nor do I want anyone to feel the need to invite me to eat every meal with them), so sometimes my dinners consist of cheese and crackers.  I have eaten out a fair amount, but that also gets expensive. All the other international teachers have worked out their housing situations already (they had more time as they were able to make it for orientation), so I am kind of on the fence. There is a new group of English teachers coming to work for CEDEI English, the English tutoring school for adults that is associated with my school, but it will be another week until they arrive.  This situation is a test of my patience, to say the least, but I am working on trusting the process and accepting that this is somehow part of the plan. 

Hopefully I will be posting pictures in my next blog entries, so you can all see my classroom, etc.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today was the first day of school, and also my 25th birthday. 

 It was a short day at school, as we just had inaugural speeches (which of course I did not understand) and then each teacher did a short art project with a class of students and their parents.  I worked with my sexto students (which is 5th grade, as kindergarten here is called primero), and my students and parents made felt owls which we glued to the walls.  Tape doesn't work very well on the walls here, as they are cinder block and paint, so if you want to hang something up you use a hot glue gun.  Each parent was also asked to write a message to his or her student in a caption bubble, which we glued up next to the owls.  One of my co-workers translated some of these for me, and the tenderness the parents expressed to their children was really heartwarming.  Even the fathers, who may or may not subscribe to some form of machismo (I haven't really figured this out yet in Ecuadorian culture, so I don't know the degree to which machismo is a factor here) expressed their love and hopes for their child with the same level of sentimentalism as did the mothers.

Today while greeting all the parents and students, I followed the Ecuadorian custom of kissing everyone on the right cheek. I have to say I very much enjoy this custom.  When I worked in Chicago I often thought about the "rule" I've heard, that there are psychological benefits to receiving seven "good touches" a day.  I am almost positive that my girls at Mercy did not meet this target number on a daily basis.  Today I must have kissed thirty people's cheeks.  Every day when I walk into school, I will greet my Ecuadorian co-workers that way. I wonder if people here experience some psychological benefit, which many in the U.S. do not, simply because of this custom.

After school, my fellow gringos and I went to eat at a Colombian restaurant to celebrate my birthday.  We also went to a shop that sells chocolate covered fruit on a stick.  I got milk chocolate covered strawberries, though there are many variations. It was a great way to celebrate midday.

First Impressions

So I have now been in Cuenca, Ecuador for almost two and a half days.  It feels like I have been here for much longer because I have done so much in such a short time.

On Thursday, August 30th, I flew from Minneapolis to Miami, and then from Miami to Quito, Ecuador, the capitol city.  LAN Ecuador, the airline I took from Miami to Quito, was very impressive.  I do not fly internationally very often, so maybe this is not as impressive as I think it is, but there was a touch-screen screen on the seat back of every seat, so each passenger could watch his or her own movie, tv show, or listen to the music or play the game of his or her choice. Unfortunately, I became ill after eating the food provided by the airline, and I ended up vomiting in the airplane bathroom. Maybe there is another kind of mile-high club that I inadvertently joined. Anyway, I was still feeling pretty weak when we landed in Quito, but I was able to take a taxi from the airport to the hostel I had reservations at, as I had a 17 hour layover in Quito before my flight to Cuenca. Once safely at my hostel, I sent a few emails and promptly went to sleep.  I will be honest, I had a lot of anxiety that night. I spoke to one of my favorite people in Chicago the night before I left, and he expressed a lot of concern about me travelling alone, staying in hostels, getting ripped off by taxi drivers, and basically being some kind of easy prey. Although I was aware of these things before, his words stayed with me during my travels and I was hyper aware, probably to the point of being unnecessarily skittish, for the first 48 hours of being in Ecuador.

I flew to Cuenca the next day, and checked into my hostel there with no problem.  I was able to meet up with an international teacher from my school who is beginning her third year teaching at Cedei, and who also happens to be from Minnesota.  She cooked me dinner and introduced me to some of the other international teachers with whom I will be working this year. So far I've met five international teachers (all of them are from the U.S.), though there are others.  My first night we just hung out, drank a few beers, talked, and listened to music. To generalize, we are all twenty-somethings with bachelors degrees looking for some kind of adventure; we do come from a wide variety of background and experience levels, however.  I also speak the absolute least amount of Spanish out of the group of us that I've met so far.  Good thing I am teaching English to the older kids who already understand most English.

Yesterday, my first full day in Cuenca, I went with some of the other teachers to the school to see my classroom and get my teaching materials for the year. This was overwhelming. I got my class list and was able to take home some of the materials I will be using to teach my students.  Many teachers were finishing up projects and preparing their rooms for the school year, but I was so overwhelmed I didn't do much.  I am hoping to take time next weekend to spruce things up a bit. I am able to paint anything I want in my room, so I am going to paint two huge trees (This will come as no surprise to my MercyWorks Community) from which I will hang my students art and other projects as leaves.
School supplies are really, really expensive in Cuenca, so the school does not have much.  There are two five inch stacks of construction paper which are meant to last the school the entire year.  We have some paint, markers, crayons, etc., but like I said, what we do have is meant to last the whole year.  This means I will be doing a lot to create "something out of nothing," which I'm convinced can be done with a little ingenuity.  Hopefully I have enough to make it all work!

On a totally different topic, Cuenca is cold. Well, not cold by Minnesota or Chicago standards, but definitely colder than I expected it to be. It has been between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit every day, but there is no heat in buildings so we all wear our jackets and many, many layers all day long.  I sleep with lots and lots of blankets on each night, and it is the only time I am truly warm.  My shower, at best, gets to luke-warm.  I have consistently taken the fastest showers of my life so far. I am glad I brought three pairs of wool socks.  I wish I had brought more sweaters, but I did bring about 6.  And I brought a polar fleece and my nice Loki jacket, which is rain and wind resistant with a fleece lining. I will be wearing these daily.

I will write more again soon. My first day of class is tomorrow, and I am nervous but also so excited. I hope this school year starts off on a good note!