Well, for those of you waiting breathlessly for the next installment of my life in Ecuador, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. In early October I bailed out of my situation in favor of something far better and more lucrative–it was something I simply could not ignore. It was one of those offers you can’t refuse.

So now I am in various places including San Diego, Montana, Panama, Chile and other areas I’m supposed to visit but have yet to arrive. This chapter of my life is complete and I doubt I’ll be teaching English again any time soon. If the opportunity were to arise, I’d take it in a heartbeat. The students in other countries are simply eager to learn and wonderful to be with. However, with dollar bills flapping in my face it’s hard to go back…maybe one day…

I’m sorry to have to leave the story unfinished but that’s the way life is sometimes. Maybe I’ll start another blog one day when I have the time to keep it up to date. For those of you who have stuck with me and my ramblings, thank you.

Jim

Wow–where has the time gone? I see I last posted to this blog almost 2 weeks ago–sorry about that.

The work here is never ending–lots of students need a lot of preparation time. The books finally arrived but only one of the teacher manuals did–so now we hand off the manual as we jump from class to class.

Still–the classes are fun and the students are absolutely wonderful. Well, I would like to say that about my teenager class but I’ll withold comment… Actually, both of my 2 hour classes of adults, one from 9-11AM and the other from 7-9PM, are great and have bonded very well. In fact, on Fridays they like to take “Teacha” out for lunch and dinner respectively. That’s always very entertaining because I never know where we’re going, what we’re going to eat or much of anything else. Then, once we get there, I am subjected to the same experience the students have in my class–trying to understand what is being said.

The next few months should be very interesting as we get more teachers and redistribute some of the students. Hopefully we’ll get down to class sizes of around 12-15 max–that would really help the students in their learning. One problem here is everything is so communal, when you tell the students to work individually, they never do. To them it’s not cheating to share work and answers–just the way they do things. As a result I have had to adapt a lot of techniques to make everything pair work or separate the class and do two separate exercises.

Still, the adults I have are really trying hard and always have questions. I try to concentrate more on conversation skills than anything simply because that is what they most lack. Of course, my biggest problem is understanding them, especially being deaf in one ear. Try covering up one ear while trying to understand someone in rapid-fire Spanish in a room with about 25 students–now there’s a challenge.

The school alarm continues to go off occasionally but now it’s not my fault. The school owner discovered that as he set the alarm at night when leaving, it set it for the entire building. Thus, when I walked into a particular area upstairs, it set the thing off. That has been fixed so now it’s only the forgetful owner or the wind knocking something open sets it off. Does keep me on my toes though…

The photo blog has been updated with my latest trips and forays around town. That’s beginning to wear a bit thin simply because I’ve pretty much seen everything around here. Guess I’ll have to start taking some weekend trips farther afield.

All of you up there in funland USA enjoy the coming circus. The Ecuadorians are very interested in the presidential race–much more so than I–and as I read the few things I can on the internet, it looks as though the popularity contest is about the same as usual. Glad I’m here.

With the Internet problems here, not to mention the time constraints, I haven’t been keeping this up as well as I should. I promise to do better in the future so please stay tuned!

I’m sorry this will have to be short but school just started it’s term and the word “chaos” is simply not adequate. We’re a bit short on teachers (anyone want to come to beautiful Ecuador?) and a bit long on students. Here they practice the time honored practice of disorganization. Obviously the school wants to enroll students so that’s what they do. One of my classes went from 5 students to 20 overnight. But with few teachers, we’re having to hold large classes.

Large classes are OK since the students like learning and we all have a lot of fun. But with open enrollment, no one really knows which classroom to use because no one really knows how many students of what level are going to be in there. The secretaries are working 12 hour days trying to keep up, the owner looks like he’s been beaten with a stick, and we teachers all feel like we’ve been dragged through a keyhole backwards. Add to this that the books have not yet arrived so we have to copy pages from old books, it’s an incredible balancing act every day.

The good news is the students are really great. I scared the hell out of them when I announced that I only speak English–no Spanish. But after a few classes they are showing they really can understand my antics at the front of the room. Thanks to my CELTA training, I seem to be getting more out of them than the other teachers and we’re all having fun. I made up a game where I throw a ball at someone and they have to answer a question in a full sentence, then they throw it to someone else. At first they try to ignore the ball but after a while when they answer the question, they throw the ball at someone else they want to get–becomes a fun game all around.

I’ll be posting more pictures on the photo blog and more here later on this weekend (that’s my goal if I have survived that long) so don’t think I’ve given up on the blogs. Stay tuned–it’s a thrill a minute.

Oh–and by the way–if you know of anyone wanting a challenge, fun and to see  very interesting part of the world, have them get in touch with me and I’ll get them set up as a teacher of English. Trained teacher are great but not necessary–they want native English speakers to help push conversational English.

Being Sunday in a Latin country you can almost guarantee things will be quiet. Today was one of those days. This was our 34th wedding anniversary so I began the day calling home to wish my bride a happy and, of course, waking her up in the process. So much for romance.

Going out for breakfast was interesting, especially since everything was closed up tight. I did find a panaderia open with some basic pan dulce (sweet bread) rolls that were better than nothing. Of course, no coffee to be found anywhere. Since my room is still not quite ready, neither is the kitchen area where we can make coffee. Another day of sacrifices.

Later, Diego, the owner, told me he was taking the secretaries out to the big Ferial, or fair, going on for a month in the north. This is like a huge state fair where sellers come in from Colombia, Peru, Brazil and all sorts of places to sell their wares. Held at the big parque, it attracts one heck of a lot of people.

This is a really cute Russian style play house for the kiddies and it is usually full of them. There are slides, poles and windows for all sorts of make-believe activities.

Because of the long line of people buying tickets to get in, I decided to go to the big public parque across the street where our school people were volunteering with children, painting faces and that sort of thing. It was wild–the park itself is a year-round attraction for everyone in Loja, but designed primarily for the children. And children there are–as far as the eye can see, and all having a wonderful time on a Sunday afternoon.

This does not do justice to the crowds standing to buy tickets into the fair.

The park has a lake where people can paddle boats around and listen to live music. There are food festivals popping up–one was a whole pig and another was tilapia–great diversity. I tried the pork sandwich-a chunk of smoked pork on a bun with lettuce, tomato and mayo…lots of mayo. It was very tasty. It came complete with a drink which was, unfortunately, strawberry soda which everyone seems to love…umm…

Families rent little paddle boats, stuff the kids in and go paddling all around the lake. Americans would be horrified to see them hanging out--but they do great.

I declined on the tilapia because it was expensive and you got the whole fish from which you had to pick the meat. In a park setting with no place to sit and no utensils I figured it best not to even try.

It was a fun time and cost a whopping $1.50 for everything, harking back to the days of yesteryear when $1.50 meant you got something worthwhile. Ah, inflation…

The day was very reminiscent of our Sunday treks in Chile, thanks to Jan, our intrepid walking buddy. The idea was to go out and see something new after church. While it usually ended in an interesting meal somewhere in the bowels of Valparaiso, in Loja, I’m afraid it will end at the room eating potato chips simply because nothing is open. Ah well, I wanted to lose some weight anyway…

It’s been a pretty hectic week for not having accomplished a whole lot. So far I still am living in the temporary bedroom as the only night resident of the school, I have set the burglar alarm off twice now, I’ve been walking about 5 miles a day or more just to get around and none of the machine or banks will accept my credit union debit card.

Setting off the burglar alarm was a lousy way to wake up. I’m on the third floor and was walking to the other end of the hall to one of the other rooms because it’s the only room with hot water in the shower. OK, just gonna take a shower. Open the door and-holy #@!*&%$@#!#!!!! The alarm bells were going crazy! I ran down to the second floor and entered in the alarm code then walked back upstairs muttering things to myself. About the time I was starting the shower the school phone rang on the extension in one of the other rooms. Realizing this was probably the security people, I ran over to answer it.

Now answering a security service in broken Spanish at 6AM is hard enough-of course, to make things more fun, I was not given the security code password. When they asked my name (and I was supposed to give the code) I nicely said “Jim”, as if that was going to mean anything. They hung up on me—ah, all things better now. Wrong…

As I once again started to get into the shower, I heard all sorts of commotion downstairs as several police cars pulled up with their horns blaring. Oh crap. I wrapped the towel around me and headed down to the second floor classroom where I could go outside on the balcony to greet them. Knowing this is Latin America and that I could likely be greeted none too friendly, especially when they have guns and I have a towel, I meekly leaned over the railing and said a nice friendly, “Buenos dias!”.

The head cop, with radio in one hand and the other on his holster looked up at me with a look of utter amazement. It’s not every morning you get to see some fat, old gringo dressed in nothing but a towel with soap in hand and hair all askew. He tried to look authoritarian but he was definitely holding back a smile. Once again I tried my broken Spanish apologizing for setting off the alarm and once again he asked my name. That was nice of him, I thought, never once realizing that without the magic code they may have the rest of their SWAT guys hiding around the corner.

Of course, it was rather obvious that I had screwed up and that I was harmless-they just didn’t know what to do with me. After an embarrassing silence, I waved, smiled and said, “Gracias-hasta luego!”, turned and went inside hoping I wouldn’t be shot. I guess they were so amused by me and that it was so obvious what had happened, they decided to pack up and go home. Whew.

Well, I finally did get my shower and, since I had turned off the alarm, nothing further happened-until the next evening when it happened again. But that’s another story.