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.