$7.50

So I think it´s safe to say that everything is slower in Ecuador haha and I don´t mean that in a negative way at all. Things here are just very different, and getting a strong enough internet connection to actually write a blog post can be somewhat of a challenge, nevermind the confusion and loss of connection associated with actually making a phone call. I will try to update you as best I can.

I have now completed my second full week of working at both Santa Marianita, as well as at Semillas AND we have finished painting the inside of our house and have FINALLY moved in! The kids at Semillas never stop screaming or running around. It´s awesome. Even though it´s a lot to handle, it really is extremely entertaining, and things happen that you never would expect. For example, last week, a goat was charging through the cancha (soccer court). We have no idea how this goat got in or where it came from, since there is a locked fence that surrounds the John Drury School (where Semillas is held every day). The kids there also pronounce my last name as Mariachi, like a mariachi band from Mexico. I feel like I should carry around a pair of maracas.

I am becoming more and more comfortable at Santa Marianita, especially with something I found out this past Thursday. At the end of the mornings I have been going up to the soup kitchen to hang out with Lourdes and her family and to help them serve the food. I hope I´ll be able to learn some Ecua-cooking techniques while I´m here. They´re so wonderful and so patient with me (being the only one speaking English in the school, clinic, and soup kitchen combined was and continues to be very intimidating at times). I am also working some mornings in the medical clinic, probably in the front room, helping to check people in and organize their folders. Everything here is done manually, and computers are really only used for the most basic things. I have also decided to take on two classes per day, Monday through Thursday, meaning I will be sharing my responsibilities for teaching with another professor (not the current one though, since she´s on maternity leave beginning the end of September). I found out this past Thursday that the other professor is actually a student at the University of Guayaquil! She´s studying tourism and therefore has to take English classes. From the sounds of things, she´s probably right around my age so that will be really fun to figure out how to actually teach with another person my own age! I should be starting to take on my own classes next week; this coming week I will still be observing.

That´s something that´s actually hilarious about Ecuador. Classroom etiquette here is not nearly what it is in the US. Kids are up and running around in the middle of class and there´s always lots of noise. I love it. The kids are so funny and really like hearing me speak English because they can tell the way I pronounce things is very different from what they generally hear in class. The other day I got asked multiple times if I personally knew Justin Beiber or Michael Jackson, and if I had a picture with them. Then a kid was humming Lada Gaga during his aporte (like a chapter quiz). I didn´t even tell him to stop because I thought it was too entertaining. This morning I went to Las Olimpiadas at Santa Marianita with Caitlin (basically their version of field day but parents come and each grade performs a dance). That was absolutely hilarious, especially when the teachers did a performance too and all wore costumes representing the different planets. The principal wore a bright yellow, glittering sun outfit. It was hilarious.

My birthdy here was great, and thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes and cards! Jón´s birthday was August 22nd so we had a joint birthday and between three days we had two cakes, chocolate banana bread, chocolate chip pancakes, and I received a tub of Nutella. I didn´t realize how vocal I had been about my apparent need for Nutella haha but it was great. There´s also a tradition in Ecuador for birthdays: you get whipped on the butt with a belt, one time for each year. I was fortunate enough that nobody around had a belt when they decided I needed to start partaking in Ecuadorian customs, so I just got whipped with a flip-flop.

The thing that is becoming most apparent here is how much things cost. Last week, the Arboltio house was responsible for cooking for seventeen people (all the houses were coming together for our monthly meeting). We bought: three pounds of rice, two pounds of lentils, three pounds of carrots, a pound of queso fresco (the type of cheese here), two pounds of tomatoes, a pineapple, eight peppers, five onions, ten cloves of garlic, and twelve eggs. All of that cost $7.50 and it adequately fed 17 people with food left over. In the states, $7.50 would get you a lemonade and a You-Pick-Two combo at Panera. And that would only feed one person. How crazy is that?

The Arbolito house also had a talk the other morning about how to allot our food stipend, like what things should we take out of our weekly food stipend and what things should come out of our personal stipend. We talked about setting a price for breakfast before we ultimately decided on only using the house stipend money for what we actually needed, versus what we just wanted, for breakfast. We were at first thinking that 25 cents per person would be an okay amount to set for breakfast, since most of us buy it on our way to work. 25 CENTS! That would buy a GUMBALL in the US. Here that could buy you five pieces of fresh baked bread. I generally only spend 10 cents on breakfast because two pieces of bread is more than enough!

I´m definitely adjusting to life here in Ecuador, but certain things, like prices for food, just blow me away. It makes me wonder what kind of sticker-shock syndrome I´ll develop when I have to go back to that states. I´m glad I still have eleven more months to figure that one out. I miss friends and family at home, but I am truly growing to love it here.

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador <3

surprise! i just became an english teacher!

Bienvenidos a Ecuador! I have now been in Duran for about a week and a half. All of us are trying to find our niche, to get settled in and to become comfortable with feeling slightly uncomfortable in a foreign place. We´ve all been staying in the retreat house in Arbolito, and although continuing to live out of a suitcase may not be ideal, it´s fun for the two Duran communities to be living in the same place, and with the Monte Sinai volunteers living only a short drive away in the AJS retreat house. We´ve still been living all together because we´re actually still in orientation. Part of that orientation involved a day at the beach (three jellyfish stings split between sixteen of us) and a full 8-hour day of riding bus routes and doing a really elaborate scavenger hunt through all of Duran and Guayaquil. My feet were extremely dirty after that haha and our bus broke down, which was actually hilarious.

Until recently, last year´s volunteers were actually still here with us too, and we spent a lot of mornings travelling and learning the bus routes to various work sties. Rostro de Cristo volunteers work in a bunch of foundations in and around Guayaquil (look on the website under where we work to see the whole list!) Our morning placements range from a shelter for street kids to working with patients of Hansen´s Disease (formerly known as leprosy).

In the afternoons, the majority of us work for one of the afterschool programs (Semillas de Mostaza in Arbolito, Valdivia in AJS, or Manos Abiertas in Vientiocho de Agosto). The afterschool programs involve an "activity" each day, usually constructed somewhat like a lesson. Recreo is the last part, which is basically a free-for-all constituting of lots of soccer and a somewhat organized episode of chaos. The last part is the charla, in which case one of the volunteers will give a small talk revolving around the theme of the week (something like respect, citizenship, or kindness). As the kids leave, they get a vitamin, a banana, and a piece of bread. For some, these programs are their only source of schooling and food that they will receive all day.

So last night and this morning we went through this huge discernment process and...i will be the program director for Semillas but also I AM BECOMING A TEACHER! Never in a hundred million years would I have ever thought I would want to teach. I came into this program being locked in on the logistics position, because it involved lots of organization and work with the retreat groups that we host. However, my heart pulled me towards Santa Marianita (also known as Redima), where I would have the opportunity to work in the school there (as much or as little as I wanted), the soup kitchen (the family that runs it was so open and friendly!) and then possibly even do some administrative work in the clinic. It sounds like a great way for me to get a little taste of everything. And teaching? Well hands down it scares the crap out of me, but I knew that this year was about challenging myself, and here was a perfect opportunity for me to do something I think I could be really good at, but at a pace that I could handle. The school system in Ecuador involves the teacher writing something down and the students memorizing it. Students may be able to reproduce answers, but not have any idea as to the meaning behind it. I want to change that. I´ve had the privilege of having a lot of great teachers, and I feel like I could really bring something to the classroom. And I love to cook (and eat), so holler at Santa Marianita :)

I´m becoming more and more adjusted to life in Ecuador every day. Whereas I once was extremely paranoid about safety and security in the neighborhoods and on the busses, I know now that yes, it can be dangerous, but it can be dangerous anywhere. We have lots of rules to follow and I know that these are given to us to keep us safe. So I´ll sit only on the outside seat on the busses and not walk alone over "sketch" bridge.

It´s weird to think that it actually can be very easy to forget where I am. We went to the Puntilla to see Nuevo Mundo and we easily could have been driving past gated communities in Florida. The MegaMaxi supermarket is in a shopping mall that is as pristine as some of the nicest I´ve ever been in. The area known as Las Peñas is littered with restaurants and bars like in many European cities. But then you walk down the road in Arbolito and there´s lots of dirt and dust and trash, young kids running around with absolutely no supervision, and stray dogs everywhere. But as you walk down the street the next day, trying to get used to all the stares that a "gringa" here attracts, you get a smile and a hello from a little kid, and that makes you realize that when all´s said and done, we´re all human. I may have been lucky enough to have been born in a country where I was granted freedom and rights with birth, but people born into alternate circumstances are in now way any less human than the rest of us. It´s amazing what a kid´s smile can do, huh?

Sometimes I´ll wake up in the morning and for a split second forget where I am. And then I remember that I actually moved to Ecuador. And not only to Ecuador, but to one of its most impoverished neighborhoods. Volunteers must be crazy for signing themselves up for something like this. Aren´t we? I don´t really think so. We may be a bunch of crazy people, but we´re also just a group of 20-somethings who have come here because we feel we owe it to the world to do our part to help. We won´t change or save the world, but we sure as hell are going to try.

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador <3