Week 2

Last Saturday, I went to the Festival de la Luz in Quito with Carmita's family. The festival was in honor of the United Nations conference Habitat III last week. This conference meets every 20 years to discuss housing and sustainable urban development. The lights displays were scattered around Quito's historic center.

Carmita and I at the Festival de la Luz

 

But the most impressive was the church Compañía de Jesus. By day, the church is stone colored, but at night the lights make it look painted.

 

 

On Sunday, I was supposed to fly to Loja in the afternoon. In true Ecuadorian fashion, our flight was canceled for "operations" less than two hours before our flight. We ended up flying to Cuenca and then taking a 3.5 hour bus ride through the mountains to Loja, arriving at 1 am instead of 4:30 pm. Luckily, I was with Carmita and her husband. The best way I can describe a bus trip in Ecuador is like the Knight Bus from Harry Potter (see link for reference). I dozed some on the bus, but I constantly woken by the bus going too fast around the mountain curves, slamming on the breaks to keep from hitting a truck in front of us, or pulling over in the gravel to let a car pass.

 

 Harry Potter Knight Bus

 

In the middle of the night, I arrived at Bertha's house, a friend of Carmita and another English professor at the university. I would be staying with her and her son, Carlos, until I could find a permanent residence. On Monday afternoon, I went to the university to meet the professors. 

 

I worked Tuesday and Wednesday morning at the university, lesson planning and finding resources. I will work 20 hours/week at the university. 10 of these will be spent in an afternoon lab/enrichment time where students strengthen their speaking and writing skills. The other 10 hours will be assisting professors in their classes. There have been a lot of recent changes in higher education, so the professors have been shuffled around a lot. I am not going to go into the specifics (partially because I don't think I completely understand it) but instead of starting classes on September 26th like they were supposed to, we are hoping to start English classes next week. 

 

Loja is a small, beautiful mountain town and a cultural center full of music, art, poetry, and tradition. Little by little, I am getting oriented and finding my way around town. There are several music-themed statues and murals, and it really does remind me of home (pictures to come). On Thursday nights, there is a cultural night in the main square, and this week I got to see traditional dancing and musical performances from Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia.

 

Calle Lourdes, the oldest street in Loja. It hasn't been changed since colonial times and still has cobblestones.

The fountain in the main square of Loja

Another view of the main square

 

I am also enjoying my daily walks with Bertha (here they say Berta). We live right next to the river, and right by the house is a park and walking trail that runs along the water. The scenery is gorgeous due to the water, the mountains in the background, and the very artistic bridges that cross the river. I wanted to live with a host family during my time in Ecuador, and Bertha and Carlos have so graciously offered to let me stay here long term. Host families provide a great insight into a new culture, they allow me to practice speaking Spanish, and they ease the loneliness and homesickness. Between Berta, Carmita, and the rest of the English professors, I am being very well taken care of.

 

Bridges along the river close to the house that I see on my daily walk

 

In other news, they are trying to feed me to death. Breakfast here is usually pretty small, yogurt or fruit, maybe an egg or bread, and hot tea. I have been eating around 7:30 in order to get to the university by 8. At 10:30 or 11, the professors all go together to an on-campus café to get a cafecito (coffee), which also includes some sort of empanada, cookie, or plantain-based mash. By this time, I am hungry so I am always looking forward to cafecito. Then, we eat a huge meal around 1:00, which so far has consisted of soup, grilled chicken with herbs, rice, maybe some small potatoes, and a salad. This is the biggest meal of the day and is about 1.5-2x bigger than what I normally eat for dinner, and usually I'm not all that hungry after the cafecito. Then at 4:30 or 5, around the time I can start moving again, we have merienda (snack) which is similar to cafecito with coffee and some sort of pastry. My poor confused stomach then gets hungry around 10:30 pm, when I am trying to go to sleep. The English professors are all worried I am not eating enough when really, I am full all the time. I suppose I will adjust.

 

Last night (Friday) several of the professors were getting together for a late merienda (around 9 pm) with their husbands. Bertha and I made Spanish tortilla to take, and other people brought a salad and a cake. Food by itself is very plain here, but meals are always served with ají, a kind of sauce that usually is a little spicy and every person makes slightly differently. Last night, I put ají on my tortilla, but this kind had peanuts in it so I had an allergic reaction at the party. Luckily I had Benadryl and water with me, but it was still really embarrassing and Bertha had to take me home early. I had a very sick night, but Bertha and Carlos were so kind and took care of me. There's nothing like having to depend on practically strangers when you are sick. Being sick usually makes you wish you were at home, but after that bonding experience I now have a new level of trust in this house and it is beginning to feel more like home.

 

I am feeling much better today, and I am hoping the rest of the weekend is much less exciting.

Fulbright beginnings

This week, I started my Fulbright grant. I am one of six English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) placed in Ecuador for the 2016-2017 school year. Each of the ETAs has been assigned to a different Ecuadorian city, and I have been placed in Loja. While in Loja, I will assist professors at the Universidad Nacional de Loja in their English classes as well as participate in an additional project to further engage with the community. My grant lasts for 9 months, and I will be returning to the States in July.

Ecuador on the map from <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador>

Location of Loja, Ecuador from <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loja,_Ecuador>

  I left on Monday, October 10, flying Nashville to Atlanta to Quito. Around the time my first plane took off, my grandfather passed away. It had been a hard weekend with him in the hospital, but I am glad to have had that time with him and family. The last time I saw him on Sunday, he seemed so much better and likely to make a full recovery. When the news was bad again Monday morning, both my parents and grandparents encouraged me to go on to Ecuador. I keep remembering little moments of him at random times during the day and I've had to hold back tears several times this week during various meetings. Most of all, I have missed spending precious time with extended family as we grieve the loss of a man we so loved and admired. However, after love for his family, Granddaddy valued education more than anything else, and I know this opportunity meant as much to him as it does to me, and more and more I get the sense that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  After arriving into Quito late on Monday night, we had a security briefing at the US Embassy in Quito first thing on Tuesday morning. We got to meet the coordinator of Fulbright alumni and director of cultural affairs, as well as other Fulbright grantees working on research projects. Our subsequent security briefing has made me afraid to take pictures for fear of bring robbed (I will try to take more in Loja). The ETAs then got to have lunch together, and I am amazed that even though we are all from different parts of the US, we have similar personalities, interests, and passions, and I am really looking forward to sharing this year with them. Tuesday afternoon, we went to the Fulbright Commision and learned some more details about this coming year, and we got to meet the people we have been emailing since April. After a full two days, we were ready to go to bed pretty soon after dinner.  On Wednesday, we had several errands to run in Quito in order to set up a bank account and register our visas. The latter involved sitting in the Ecuadorian version of the DMV for about three hours, but it afforded more bonding time between the ETAs. Since our bank accounts will not be set up for a few weeks, we were encouraged to cash our stipend check this first month in order to pay for rent and food. Ecuador uses American dollars, but the highest bill here is a 20, since people usually do not spend more than that at once and all merchants look at $20 bills suspiciously. So after the bank cashed the check, they handed me a gigantic stack of $20 bills (I felt very rich), and I had to stuff it in my bag and make it back across the street to secure it. Wednesday afternoon entailed buying an Ecuadorian phone and seeing dear friends from my internship with Inca Link two summers ago, which was very uplifting despite the short visit.  On Thursday, we had a morning of teacher training, which I found helpful since I have no formal teacher training. We were introduced to English learning games and I was reminded of strategies I had encountered in my own education. Afterwards, I got to go back to Inca Link and spent a restorative afternoon in the kitchen talking through grief and life with old friends. That night, all 8 Fulbrighters that had met on Tuesday got together for dinner before everyone scattered on Friday. We had a great time sharing travel stories and discussing world issues; it is an honor to be here with these amazing people. We also went down the street to see a Chilean folk band called Los Tristes (they were excellent) and play fooseball. Lucklily one American was paired with one Ecuadorian or we would have been annihilated. 

Dinner with Fulbrighters on Thursday

Finally on Friday, we got to meet our mentor/tutor from each university. The mentor will help us find a place to live, be our Spanish language tutor once a week, and serve as a general contact in the city. My mentor is Carmen, a very kind lady with 4 grown children and 3 grandchildren. After our orientation as a group, some of the ETAs went to their new cities while I went to Carmen's children's house. Even though they are from Loja, all of her children now live in Quito. Both of her daughters are married and have kids, and they live in different floors of the same house while the unmarried sons live there too. It is always fun interacting with different generations and age groups of families to see the customs of different cultures. Saturday, I got to do touristy things with Carmen's son in the historic center of Quito. We went to the Palacio de Gobierno, where the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa works and the Museo Alberto Mena Caamaño, where we learned about the history of Ecuador's independence. The third United Nations Habitat conference is in Quito this week, so there are a lot of people here from all over the world. Saturday night, there is supposed to be a festival of lights that I am planning to attend with Carmen's family, but we are waiting to see if it rains. Since Ecuador is on the equator, the weather is pretty constant year-round, especially in the sierra, or mountains. However, there are two seasons, the rainy season and the dry season, and the rainy extends from September to April. Luckily, this does not means it rains all day everyday, but so far it has meant sunny and warm until about 3 pm, then storms in the evening. Tomorrow, I fly to Loja and I start at the university on Monday.

Inside Palacio del Gobierno

 

View of the Plaza Grande from the Palacio del Gobierno

 

Carmen's son, Dani, and I before the tour of the Palacio del Gobierno. Apparently Ecuadorian photographers don't count to 3 before they take the picture.