It started with a a rumbly in my tumbly. I woke up Sunday morning with the feeling that something wasn't quite right in my upper abdomen. The feeling came and went all day, progressing from vague pressure, to fist-clenching spasms, to a fairly certain speculation that gremlins had taken up residence inside my stomach, to the distinct feeling of sharpened spikes piercing and protruding through the the lining of my digestive tract from the inside out. Maybe the gremlins were swinging their maces.
That night the shit hit the fan. Or shall we say, the bowl.
And yet, the next day, Monday, was one of those days in teaching that it would've been way harder to miss, and subsequently make up, than it was to drag myself out of bed, put on my proverbial Big-Girl Panties, take some Big Girl Immodium, and drift through the day in a hazy, semi-conscious state, subsisting on saltine crackers, tea, and the will to make it to the 2:30 bell.
The gremlins were also very likely behind the Internet in my apartment going down for two days. I think they like to mess around with electrical cords and things that have flashing lights and buttons. (Thankfully, Nicole rescued me by explaining my predicament to the TVCable people, who were able to re-set it.)
I'm confident that gremlins were also behind the day at school this week where I spent almost the entire day re-doing work I had already done. I had to enter my report card comments 3 times because of a lack of clarity about the format that was expected, and once I had made my schedule for Parent Teacher conferences, I had to re-make the entire thing and change appointment times to accommodate a support teacher whose schedule I didn't receive until it was already too late. Not to mention the gremlins' handiwork of making me totally misunderstand what I was supposed to do with some of the assessment data we were given earlier in the year and consequently completely miss a deadline, not by a little...
The gremlins definitely stole the final project of one of my students that I definitely had sitting right on my desk, and hid it away from me in some extremely remote corner of my classroom.
I also think it's safe to say that gremlins were responsible for Alancito losing track of his passport somewhere between LaGuardia and Houston, and for him becoming trapped in Texas for an unspecified amount of time on his way to Chile (and indirectly, on his way to me!)
Finally, though, I am pleased to report that the gremlins have moved on, because my parent teacher conferences went off without a hitch, Alan was able to get his passport replaced in a single business day, and my appetite has returned with a vengeance.
Gremlins, good riddance!
Friday, October 23, 2015
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Add to the list of minor milestones...
First (highly unpleasant) bout of Ecuabelly. That's the clinical term.
Parks, Plazas and Potato Soup
What a great Ecuadorian weekend!
Early Saturday morning, I went with Nicole and her dog Lola to hike in Parque Metropolitano. This is an amazing place because it's right on the edge of the city and only took us 5 or 10 minutes to drive to, but once you park your car and go a few steps into the park, you are enveloped in a beautiful semi-wildnerness. Any Westchesterites that are familiar with Rockwood Park, that's kind of the feel that it has... meandering trails you could get lost in if you don't know your way around, a canopy of trees, beautiful views. There's even a little farmstead that belongs to people who lived there before the park became a protected area... But instead of maples and oaks like in New York, there were neon-green bamboo forests and tingly-scented eucalyptus trees, and instead of overlooking the Hudson River, the lookout points gazed out upon a chain of volcanoes. The best part is that you can end your hike with a cup of fresh juice for a dollar... I think every hike should end that way.
Also, my birthday is in November, so I've never before been able to have an outdoor birthday party... this year I plan to take advantage of the mild weather and have a barbecue in the park!
Saturday my neighbor and landlord Berthita had me over, along with her two other renters (also teachers from school) to her apartment for an Ecuadorian family lunch. Her son made shrimp ceviche, and she made colada morada, which is a traditional fruit soup made for Day of the Dead. (We're a little early for Day of the Dead, but Berthita is headed off on a cruise next week, because that's the kind of gal she is.) The fruit soup is made from all of the red fruits that grow in Ecuador: mora, which is in the blackberry family, raspberries and strawberries, plus spices like cinnamon and cloves. It's sweet and dark red in color, and represents the blood of ancestors who have passed on. It's served with gua guas de pan, or bread babies (great for dunking), and traditionally eaten in the cemeteries next to the family plot as a way of remembering those that have gone before. First you eat the head, and then the rest of the body, and there's a cheese or jelly filling inside. It was a lovely spread, and her apartment looks out over Parque Carolina, with slices of the mountains visible behind uneven rooftops, pale in contrast to the dark charcoal grey land behind them. Berthita and her family are so generous and gracious. The three of us are lucky to have her as a landlord!
Then this morning, I went with some of my girls down to the Old Town to go to Catholic mass in the old Jesuit Church, Compania de Jesus. It is an incredibly ornate church, with a gold-plated ceiling and elaborate carvings and statues everywhere, and a high dome above the altar that reaches towards the heavens. I was surprised, given how fancy of the building appears, how relatively casual the service was. Many people attended in jeans, babies and toddlers were kind of sprawled out across the pews, and it was also not very long. It was quite beautiful, although I couldn't help wondering how many Inca temples and palaces had been pillaged in order to cover the entire arched ceiling in gold...
We capped off our morning with lunch at Case de Geranios, the House of Geraniums Restaurant on one of the cobblestone streets in the La Ronda area. We ate locro de papa, or creamy potato soup with cheese, and fried empanadas and plantain chips with spicy aji sauce. We sat in an outdoor patio overlooking the statue of the winged Virgin high up on the hill above us, surrounded by colorful pastel buildings, Spanish style ceramic rooftops, and balconies planted with lacy ferns and of course, geraniums.
And now I'm back home confronting the conundrum of being part tourist, part teacher. If we were simply on vacation, we'd almost certainly be still sitting in the Plaza Grande having a latte and taking in the colonial architecture, or perusing the shops, or exploring a museum, or meandering through the Botanic Garden for the Orchids and Chocolate exhibition.
Instead, I'm here in my apartment preparing to (or procrastinating from) writing report card comments, an IEP, and planning of the start of our next unit...
The positive side of this is that I get to know that I'm here to stay for some time, and there are many more weekends ahead to plan for, in addition to planning my units... climbing up in the rafters of the big basilica, my birthday barbecue, mountain biking or cycling down Amazonas Avenue, which is closed to traffic on Sundays, and maybe learning how to cook locro de papa and empanadas for ourselves! Cheers, to many more beautiful weekends in Ecuador.
Early Saturday morning, I went with Nicole and her dog Lola to hike in Parque Metropolitano. This is an amazing place because it's right on the edge of the city and only took us 5 or 10 minutes to drive to, but once you park your car and go a few steps into the park, you are enveloped in a beautiful semi-wildnerness. Any Westchesterites that are familiar with Rockwood Park, that's kind of the feel that it has... meandering trails you could get lost in if you don't know your way around, a canopy of trees, beautiful views. There's even a little farmstead that belongs to people who lived there before the park became a protected area... But instead of maples and oaks like in New York, there were neon-green bamboo forests and tingly-scented eucalyptus trees, and instead of overlooking the Hudson River, the lookout points gazed out upon a chain of volcanoes. The best part is that you can end your hike with a cup of fresh juice for a dollar... I think every hike should end that way.
Also, my birthday is in November, so I've never before been able to have an outdoor birthday party... this year I plan to take advantage of the mild weather and have a barbecue in the park!
Saturday my neighbor and landlord Berthita had me over, along with her two other renters (also teachers from school) to her apartment for an Ecuadorian family lunch. Her son made shrimp ceviche, and she made colada morada, which is a traditional fruit soup made for Day of the Dead. (We're a little early for Day of the Dead, but Berthita is headed off on a cruise next week, because that's the kind of gal she is.) The fruit soup is made from all of the red fruits that grow in Ecuador: mora, which is in the blackberry family, raspberries and strawberries, plus spices like cinnamon and cloves. It's sweet and dark red in color, and represents the blood of ancestors who have passed on. It's served with gua guas de pan, or bread babies (great for dunking), and traditionally eaten in the cemeteries next to the family plot as a way of remembering those that have gone before. First you eat the head, and then the rest of the body, and there's a cheese or jelly filling inside. It was a lovely spread, and her apartment looks out over Parque Carolina, with slices of the mountains visible behind uneven rooftops, pale in contrast to the dark charcoal grey land behind them. Berthita and her family are so generous and gracious. The three of us are lucky to have her as a landlord!
Then this morning, I went with some of my girls down to the Old Town to go to Catholic mass in the old Jesuit Church, Compania de Jesus. It is an incredibly ornate church, with a gold-plated ceiling and elaborate carvings and statues everywhere, and a high dome above the altar that reaches towards the heavens. I was surprised, given how fancy of the building appears, how relatively casual the service was. Many people attended in jeans, babies and toddlers were kind of sprawled out across the pews, and it was also not very long. It was quite beautiful, although I couldn't help wondering how many Inca temples and palaces had been pillaged in order to cover the entire arched ceiling in gold...
We capped off our morning with lunch at Case de Geranios, the House of Geraniums Restaurant on one of the cobblestone streets in the La Ronda area. We ate locro de papa, or creamy potato soup with cheese, and fried empanadas and plantain chips with spicy aji sauce. We sat in an outdoor patio overlooking the statue of the winged Virgin high up on the hill above us, surrounded by colorful pastel buildings, Spanish style ceramic rooftops, and balconies planted with lacy ferns and of course, geraniums.
And now I'm back home confronting the conundrum of being part tourist, part teacher. If we were simply on vacation, we'd almost certainly be still sitting in the Plaza Grande having a latte and taking in the colonial architecture, or perusing the shops, or exploring a museum, or meandering through the Botanic Garden for the Orchids and Chocolate exhibition.
Instead, I'm here in my apartment preparing to (or procrastinating from) writing report card comments, an IEP, and planning of the start of our next unit...
The positive side of this is that I get to know that I'm here to stay for some time, and there are many more weekends ahead to plan for, in addition to planning my units... climbing up in the rafters of the big basilica, my birthday barbecue, mountain biking or cycling down Amazonas Avenue, which is closed to traffic on Sundays, and maybe learning how to cook locro de papa and empanadas for ourselves! Cheers, to many more beautiful weekends in Ecuador.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Miniature Milestones
The rainy season has begun. Before this week I barely saw a drop of water fall in Ecuador, and I was beginning to think that the rain was only a myth, and that maybe tales about the rainy season were just some sort of elaborate wide-spread hazing ritual for gringos to make them more confused. Throughout August and September the land looked parched and desert-like and felt like Arizona. This week it feels like Seattle.
Other small but significant milestones:
Other small but significant milestones:
- I found a cleaning guy for my apartment. Apparently our security guard also moonlights cleaning and doing odd jobs, so Berthita hooked it up so he comes twice a month and cleans until it shines, all for $25 bucks... I might as well enjoy it while I can afford it.
- The signs on the front of the city buses that explain where they go (which when I arrived did not have a lot more meaning to me that Egyptian hieroglyphics) are starting to make sense. When I read the names of the destinations, I am starting to have an idea of what places they are referring to and where they are located in relation to where I am.
- I started Spanish lessons. My teacher's name is Miriam. She's my age and hopefully will be the one who helps me go from kinda knowing Spanish to REALLY knowing Spanish.
- I answered a phone call that was all in Spanish and didn't get confused.
- I answered a different phone call that was all in Spanish and got so confused that I showed up a week early for my appointment.
- So, yes, things are moving right along. All that is left to make me feel as if I have officially settled is to arrange for water delivery, so I can stop lugging 3-liter jugs home from Supermaxi.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Happiness is riding in the back of a pick-up truck
The best part of this weekend was sitting in the back of a pick-up truck taxi, climbing a seemingly endless cobblestone road up into the mountains near Otavalo. I was wedged in happily with half a dozen other gringos and our hiking packs, bumping along and peering down over the cliff into the valley to see the patches of varying shades of green and brown farms, dotted with cows and sheep and simple farmsteads nestled at the bottom.
Friday was Guayaquil Day, commemorating the beginning of the independence movement in this part of the world. We had a day off of school, and happily, a couple of colleagues organized a trip to Otavalo, a market town about two hours north of Quito. We stayed at a lodge/hostel called La Luna way up high in the mountains, with hammocks strung along the porch and a fireplace in every room, and several happy hostel dogs roaming around and schmoozing graciously with the guests.
Our destination for the first day of our trip was the lake at Mojanda for a hike. The landscape there was surreal. At 12,000 feet, the air was thin and cool and the vegetation shrubby. Everything was quite dry, even though it's next to a lake. It was a gray day, but bright, and it matched the color palette of the surrounding territory: cold colors, with grays and browns and pale sagey greens. The lake was surrounded by dark, sharp-edged, protruding mountain peaks whose profiles seemed to say, "don't mess with me."
The first part of the trail had us traipsing along a narrow path through monster-sized grass up to our waists. We turned left at a giant craggy boulder, and the path turned into a dry dirt road where we kicked up dust that coated our hair and clogged our nostrils. Enormous spiky plants taller than a tall human lined the steep edges of the path. The whole area had a prehistoric feel, like a forgotten land. It was totally silent, except for the sounds we made ourselves. It would have seemed totally within the bounds of reason for a pterodactyl to have come screeching along over the horizon.
The road actually led down to a little hostel at the far side of the lake, where, conveniently, there was a little open-air cafeteria. (That's my kind of hike - one with a snack bar at the other end!) We ordered typical Ecuadorian food that seemed fitting with the day's Jurassic feel -- we ate choclo, which is a species of corn that has enormous kernels that are kind of starchy and not actually sweet. It was served with ava, which look like gray, oversized lima beans, a boiled potato, another root vegetable that I'd never seen before that maybe was kind of like a parsnip, and topped off with some satisfyingly squishy rectangles of fresh cheese. (Naturally, we also doused everything with aji, which is the tangy Ecuadorian chili sauce.) It was a hearty and authentic-feeling meal.
The following day's adventure was a trip to the market at Otavalo, which spreads out on Saturdays through blocks upon blocks of the city's center. The market is known for all kinds of beautiful hand-made goods, especially textiles like alpaca blankets and sweaters and ponchos. Alpaca is amazing, because it's just as warm as wool, but like 10,000 times softer. It got really chilly up there in the mountains at night, so just about all of us came back from the market with soft new sweaters or blankets or scarves.
The market is a beautiful and colorful place, with vendors selling beaded jewelry, painted bowls, pillowcases, tablecloths, and a million other things. On the far end you can find the "food court," with women wearing indigenous clothing selling heaping piles of beans and grains from burlap bags, and if you're hungry you can go over and get a slice of the roasted pig on a spit, with a tomato in its mouth and peppers in its ears. You could wander endlessly among the stands, taking in the colors and sounds and trying to use your very best Spanish to negotiate a fair price.
At the end of each day of our long weekend, we made our way back to La Luna, a blissful and quiet paradise of relaxation. It basically felt like summer camp, because I was there with a group of about 20 friends that I truly enjoyed being around, and we slept in bunkbeds six or seven to a room and shared the bathrooms and just hung out. There was a cozy living room with pillows and another fireplace and board games, and wherever you wandered you would find a group of people to talk to, or read next to, or play board games with, or order beers for.
I got to talking with some of the other gringo teachers who have been here a little longer. They expressed how great it is to always have new people coming into the community to make friends with, but also how how bittersweet it is to constantly have people moving on. That's just the way it is, but that doesn't make it easy. One said in an endearingly tongue-in-cheek way, "When you're abroad, your friends become your family," acknowledging that this is at once very corny and very true.
It's an odd thing to be so delighted and happy with your surroundings and the people who surround you, and at the same time also missing the other people and places that you adore. Being in a beautiful natural setting and living communally, I couldn't help but draw comparisons with Latvian camp. At the same time as I was enjoying the adventure and surprise of exploring a beautiful new mountain I'd never seen before, I found myself missing the well-trodden trails and coniferous forests of the Catskills. All these new crazy-looking plants are cool, but fir trees feel like home. I love my gaggle of new friends, but in different ways than I do the ones back home that I've known for decades.
The feeling of missing someone or something is also a little odd because it's not always totally logical. Of course I expected to miss my family and my friends and my boyfriend, but this weekend I also found myself missing loved ones that I won't be able to see when I go home for Christmas... my grandpa, our childhood dog Niks, my cousin Alfred, and my Uncle John. I guess when missing people is a part of daily life, your heart doesn't distinguish between those you will see again and those you won't.
That seems to be the challenge and also the satisfaction of this new life... letting new people into my life, and also letting myself love the people of my past. Leaving room to think about home, but also allowing myself to think of my apartment in Quito as home. Letting myself feel a twinge of homesickness sometimes, but not letting it overshadow fun and excitement of new places and the thrill of pick-up truck rides. Remembering truthfully that life in New York had downs as well as ups, as does life here. Enjoying my washing machine and my new alpaca poncho as much as I would be enjoying bagels and the Mets back home.
Before I left New York lots of people told me to “enjoy every minute” and things along those lines. But Leslie Spangler, when she took us boating in the Chesapeake, told me instead to “embrace every moment,” and that’s the advice I’ve chosen to try to follow, because it leaves room for a wider and more complex array of sentiments. I can be having fun and have an awesome weekend and be thrilled with my new friends, and still miss my old friends. I can fill my eyes with the gorgeous pale green mountain scenes, full of high-altitude shrubbery and cows in the road and and find them stunning and beautiful. And at the same time I can still be loyal to the rounder, lower, darker green but also stunning Catskill mountains of my youth. I can love my apartment but hate being trapped in in at night. I can be excited but also unsure. I can love Quito while missing New York. I can accept and even welcome these conflicting feelings, knowing they are all part of the experience, part of my story.
Friday was Guayaquil Day, commemorating the beginning of the independence movement in this part of the world. We had a day off of school, and happily, a couple of colleagues organized a trip to Otavalo, a market town about two hours north of Quito. We stayed at a lodge/hostel called La Luna way up high in the mountains, with hammocks strung along the porch and a fireplace in every room, and several happy hostel dogs roaming around and schmoozing graciously with the guests.
Our destination for the first day of our trip was the lake at Mojanda for a hike. The landscape there was surreal. At 12,000 feet, the air was thin and cool and the vegetation shrubby. Everything was quite dry, even though it's next to a lake. It was a gray day, but bright, and it matched the color palette of the surrounding territory: cold colors, with grays and browns and pale sagey greens. The lake was surrounded by dark, sharp-edged, protruding mountain peaks whose profiles seemed to say, "don't mess with me."
The first part of the trail had us traipsing along a narrow path through monster-sized grass up to our waists. We turned left at a giant craggy boulder, and the path turned into a dry dirt road where we kicked up dust that coated our hair and clogged our nostrils. Enormous spiky plants taller than a tall human lined the steep edges of the path. The whole area had a prehistoric feel, like a forgotten land. It was totally silent, except for the sounds we made ourselves. It would have seemed totally within the bounds of reason for a pterodactyl to have come screeching along over the horizon.
The road actually led down to a little hostel at the far side of the lake, where, conveniently, there was a little open-air cafeteria. (That's my kind of hike - one with a snack bar at the other end!) We ordered typical Ecuadorian food that seemed fitting with the day's Jurassic feel -- we ate choclo, which is a species of corn that has enormous kernels that are kind of starchy and not actually sweet. It was served with ava, which look like gray, oversized lima beans, a boiled potato, another root vegetable that I'd never seen before that maybe was kind of like a parsnip, and topped off with some satisfyingly squishy rectangles of fresh cheese. (Naturally, we also doused everything with aji, which is the tangy Ecuadorian chili sauce.) It was a hearty and authentic-feeling meal.
The following day's adventure was a trip to the market at Otavalo, which spreads out on Saturdays through blocks upon blocks of the city's center. The market is known for all kinds of beautiful hand-made goods, especially textiles like alpaca blankets and sweaters and ponchos. Alpaca is amazing, because it's just as warm as wool, but like 10,000 times softer. It got really chilly up there in the mountains at night, so just about all of us came back from the market with soft new sweaters or blankets or scarves.
The market is a beautiful and colorful place, with vendors selling beaded jewelry, painted bowls, pillowcases, tablecloths, and a million other things. On the far end you can find the "food court," with women wearing indigenous clothing selling heaping piles of beans and grains from burlap bags, and if you're hungry you can go over and get a slice of the roasted pig on a spit, with a tomato in its mouth and peppers in its ears. You could wander endlessly among the stands, taking in the colors and sounds and trying to use your very best Spanish to negotiate a fair price.
At the end of each day of our long weekend, we made our way back to La Luna, a blissful and quiet paradise of relaxation. It basically felt like summer camp, because I was there with a group of about 20 friends that I truly enjoyed being around, and we slept in bunkbeds six or seven to a room and shared the bathrooms and just hung out. There was a cozy living room with pillows and another fireplace and board games, and wherever you wandered you would find a group of people to talk to, or read next to, or play board games with, or order beers for.
I got to talking with some of the other gringo teachers who have been here a little longer. They expressed how great it is to always have new people coming into the community to make friends with, but also how how bittersweet it is to constantly have people moving on. That's just the way it is, but that doesn't make it easy. One said in an endearingly tongue-in-cheek way, "When you're abroad, your friends become your family," acknowledging that this is at once very corny and very true.
It's an odd thing to be so delighted and happy with your surroundings and the people who surround you, and at the same time also missing the other people and places that you adore. Being in a beautiful natural setting and living communally, I couldn't help but draw comparisons with Latvian camp. At the same time as I was enjoying the adventure and surprise of exploring a beautiful new mountain I'd never seen before, I found myself missing the well-trodden trails and coniferous forests of the Catskills. All these new crazy-looking plants are cool, but fir trees feel like home. I love my gaggle of new friends, but in different ways than I do the ones back home that I've known for decades.
The feeling of missing someone or something is also a little odd because it's not always totally logical. Of course I expected to miss my family and my friends and my boyfriend, but this weekend I also found myself missing loved ones that I won't be able to see when I go home for Christmas... my grandpa, our childhood dog Niks, my cousin Alfred, and my Uncle John. I guess when missing people is a part of daily life, your heart doesn't distinguish between those you will see again and those you won't.
That seems to be the challenge and also the satisfaction of this new life... letting new people into my life, and also letting myself love the people of my past. Leaving room to think about home, but also allowing myself to think of my apartment in Quito as home. Letting myself feel a twinge of homesickness sometimes, but not letting it overshadow fun and excitement of new places and the thrill of pick-up truck rides. Remembering truthfully that life in New York had downs as well as ups, as does life here. Enjoying my washing machine and my new alpaca poncho as much as I would be enjoying bagels and the Mets back home.
Before I left New York lots of people told me to “enjoy every minute” and things along those lines. But Leslie Spangler, when she took us boating in the Chesapeake, told me instead to “embrace every moment,” and that’s the advice I’ve chosen to try to follow, because it leaves room for a wider and more complex array of sentiments. I can be having fun and have an awesome weekend and be thrilled with my new friends, and still miss my old friends. I can fill my eyes with the gorgeous pale green mountain scenes, full of high-altitude shrubbery and cows in the road and and find them stunning and beautiful. And at the same time I can still be loyal to the rounder, lower, darker green but also stunning Catskill mountains of my youth. I can love my apartment but hate being trapped in in at night. I can be excited but also unsure. I can love Quito while missing New York. I can accept and even welcome these conflicting feelings, knowing they are all part of the experience, part of my story.
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