Anoche

Last night I went out for dinner with some friends at Cafe Moliendo, which is a small Columbian restaurant near my place. It serves the BEST guacamole I have ever tasted and is probably my favorite place to eat here. Anyway, we were just sitting around laughing and talking when we heard a "boom!" outside. Now, if anyone has ever been to a Latin American country (or probably any developing country, I`m willing to bet), "booms" are everyday occurances, between the cars backfiring, fireworks and firecrackers. The first few days, you duck everytime you hear something, thinking someone is taking aim at your head, but after awhile you just kind of get used to it, and it fades into the background noise with the honking horns and the Spanish pop music. At any rate, no one really paid the sound much attention. There was a pause, and then conversation resumed. Until the owner for Moliendo jumped up and ran to the door. We all looked up to see some guy jumping around on one leg with blood pouring out. For someone who had just gotten shot, he was pretty calm (or perhaps drunk). He wasn`t angry, and he wasn`t panicking. He calmly jumped down the street, leaving a trail of blood behind him. It was quite strange. Eventually an ambulance came and loaded him up, and took him away. We couldn`t figure out if he accidentally shot himself, or if one of his friends accidentally shot him. It had to have been an accident, since there was no anger, no yelling, no confrontation. At any rate, for some reason, I`m not in any shock or surprise over the incident, which scares me a little. My friends and I were like, "Oh, some guy just got shot outside of Moliendo while we were having dinner...just another day in the life." It seemed like not really a big deal, and that`s how we acted. But if someone even fired a GUN within a block radius of me in Canada, I`m sure I would be soiling my drawers! It`s so strange how easily you slip into the mindset of other cultures, where it`s not a huge deal if someone gets SHOT within eyesight of you. To be honest, we were more enthralled with all the blood afterwards, than concerned about the man. How callous! I amaze myself sometimes. And not in a good way.

Church Bells and Car Alarms

In Ecuador, the sun comes up at 6:30 in the morning. On the dot. The sun seems brighter here, because I find I can´t actually sleep past 7 or 7:30, no matter how hard I try to block out the light. It doesn´t help that the curtains in my room are like tissue paper, and barely block out Giovani, the creepy stalker-esque neighbor who likes to peer into our apartment, let alone the big shiny sun. As many of you know (or perhaps, everyone who has met me for more than five minutes), I am not a morning person. However, it´s not so bad to be woken up by the sun. What really gets me are the bloody car alarms that go off for hours a night, and the dang church bells. ARGH!! The car alarms are the most obnoxious, by far. It seems everyone who owns a car here, no matter how crappy, installs the most annoying car alarm on the market. In fact, the uglier the car, the more offensive the car alarm. They go off at all hours of the night, sometimes for up to half an hour! I want to drop rocks onto the stupid cars to teach them a lesson (don´t disrupt my beauty sleep!), and as I am about 10 stories up from the cars, it would do a fair bit of damage. Tempting. Then there are the churches. There are about four cathedrals in my immediate vicinity. And they all compete for parishioners by ringing the loudest bells. And they tend to start at around 6am. It would be fine if they all rang at once, and continued to ring through, because you can get used to continued noise, even if it´s loud and clangy. However, they ring for five minutes every fifteen or twenty minutes, all morning long. So, just as soon as you fall back asleep (because the sun hasn´t even come up yet!), the cacophony starts up again!

I think I need a sleeping mask and ear plugs.

XOXO

I can`t get used to all the kissing!! You would think that after a month in a new culture I would at least sort of get a handle on one of their main cultural greetings, but each time someone new kisses me, I can`t help but go beet red and awkward. It`s so embarrassing.

For example, if a student is the first one in the classroom, he/she will greet me with a kiss. However, if there is already a class full of students, no kisses. If I meet a student, or a group of students on the street, we will all kiss each other. If I am introduced to someone new, sometimes they lean in for a kiss, and sometimes they don`t. But when we leave, we will for sure kiss! It`s really hard to kiss someone I`ve only met a minute ago. Especially if it`s a guy. It`s even harder to control my embarrassment if it`s one of my 15 year old male students...cuz if my face goes red, they get embarrassed too. It`s a problem.

However, I am getting used to kissing people I already know, like my landlords and their children. Hopefully, I will get used to kissing complete strangers, but maybe by the time I figure that out, it will be time to go home, and I`ll be running around kissing randoms on the street in Canada! I`m pretty sure that`s frowned upon in Cranbrook...

These are the people in my neighborhood

Oh blessed day off!! Today is a national holiday in Ecuador (or maybe a city-only holiday in Cuenca...maybe Independencia de Cuenca or something...these guys take any reason to not go to work!). I don`t usually work on Fridays so it`s all the same to me, but it is nice that for once the streets aren`t clogged with cars and taxis trafficing people to work. The pollution here is absolutely terrible. I mean, it`s quite a clean city, in that there`s not garbage everywhere, and they have regular trash collection, but the smog and diesel fumes are nasty most of the time. For the first week or so, my snot was black when I blew my nose...it`s not anymore, and that worries me. Maybe my body decided to accept the smoke and it`s now polluting my lungs so I am slowly but surely developing lung cancer. Cheers!

I have decided it is high time to tell you about my roommates. We are an eclectic mix of old and young, from all over the world. Well, the english speaking world, that is. First off, there is Kristi, a math teacher from Oregon, who is about my age. She`s great, and quite anti-American for an American! The second day in the apartment, she knocked on my door at around 7am and suggested we go to the hospital because of an inflamed cyst on her back. Que adventura!! The doctors decided to cut her open right then and there, with only a little local anaesthesia to numb the pain. With me holding her hand, germs and all. Hmmmm. I almost passed out/threw up. I couldn`t decide which one to do first, and by the time I figured out which one would be most beneficial, it was over, and we were on our way home. At any rate, she`s much better now.

Next, there is Hannah, the Brit. She`s hilarious, and says things like "stroppy cow" and "bag of wank" which never ceases to amuse me. I was in email contact with both Hannah and Kristi before I arrived in Ecuador, so we were all practically best of friends before we even met! It was nice to arrive with people I already sort of knew.

Then there`s Jerome, one of the guys who was living at the hostel when we moved in. He`s a skinny black guy from California, apparently a recluse and a computer nerd back home, although you would never be able to tell that from the Ecuadorian Jerome! He knows EVERYONE in Cuenca, it seems like, and prides himself on "getting around." He`s really friendly, and I`ve gone out with him a few times to meet other people than the teachers at CEDEI. He`s an interesting character. One minute, we`re talking about books we`ve read recently and the next, he`s telling me to stay away from this guy nicknamed "Cock-Block" who is a "gringa-hunter." Anyhow, Jerome moved out a few days ago, to make his way to Peru, but I ran into him last night, and he told me he`s not allowed to leave the county unless he pays $200, because he`s "overstayed his welcome!" So he`s here a few more days. I think he`s trying to smuggle his way out of the country to Columbia, but you never know with Jerome!

Finally, there are the Renatas. I`ve saved the best for last. These are two older ladies who were staying in the hostel when we moved in, both named Renee. We call them Big Renee and Little Renee, because Little Renee is normal size, and Big Renee is huge! Kristi, Hannah and I are convinced that Big Renee used to be a man. Actually, we`re almost certain. She is taller than most of the men I`ve seen, she has a big, booming voice, and no hips. She also plays guitar (badly) and sings (badly) every morning for at least an hour. Little Renee is a normal 55 year old woman, and they`re so mismatched, it`s funny that they`re "travel partners." Which we think is a euphemism for "lovers." As you can tell, there`s a lot of gossip in regard to the Renees! However, they are VERY nice, and are fun to live with. However, they are leaving in a few days, to continue their trip down South America.

Once they leave, two other ladies, Ruth and Scotty, are moving in. They are both teachers at CEDEI, and although I don`t know them well, they seem nice, and it should be a blast!

Que huevos!

Hey All,

I finished my first week of teaching this week (...well, I start another class tomorrow, but that´s a story for later on), and I believe I´ve pulled it off quite well, thank you very much! It turns out that both my classes are teenagers, and not adults like I originally thought. However, I quite like teens...Once you get past the judging and the "I´m too good for this" act, they have a lot of potential. As I mentioned before, I´m teaching an intermediate class and an advanced writing class, and it´s actually really close to where I´m living. The intermediate class is all boys, between 13 and 16 years old, and they are quite enthusiastic and funny. They do tend to get out of hand, being all boys, so I have a plan of action for Monday, since it´s only one or two trouble-makers who rile up the rest. My favorite is Fernando. He´s quiet and sweet and very smart, and he has a bowl cut. My advanced writing class is mostly girls with one boy. They are a lot of fun once I get them chatting about stuff they´re interested in, but they can hardly conceal their boredom if I start lecturing about essays or something. They´ve taken a shine to one of the other teachers with whom I share a classroom. Everytime they see him, they start giggling and acting quite silly. I think he´s kind of a dork, but he´s blonde, so I guess I can see his appeal...

Anyhow, I also have a Saturday class from 8:30 to 12:30, which was supposed to be an intermediate class as well, the same curriculum as the class I´ve been teaching. However, just as I finished lesson planning this morning, I was informed that that particular class was canceled because I only had one student, and they gave me another class to prep for, which is NOT one I´ve been teaching, and so I have to spend my day off prepping for a 4 hour class tomorrow. I´m not very impressed, but it´s such a gong-show here, so I´m also not that surprised. Ack! Welcome to Ecuador!!

Last night some of the new teachers got together and had a rant-session and a gossip session about CEDEI. It was quite nice to know that there are others who are as frustrated as I am, and who feel like some of the returning teachers are treating us like children without brains. Also, it was awesome to get to know them, because they are all so nice, and we all live pretty close together along the river. There are two girls from Toronto, a few Yanks, and a few Brits, and I think they are all great.

I´m trying to figure out my Christmas plans. We get 3 weeks off in December/January, and I would like to actually like to see another part of the world than Cuenca, Ecuador. I am tentatively planning on going to Bolivia for that time, but some of the other teachers are talking about going to the coast of Ecuador to this surfing village for awhile, and also there is an island not too far away that is refered to as "poor man´s Galapagos" (because seeing the Galapagos is really expensive, and out of most of our budgets), so I might join them. It would be nice to spend Christmas with people I know rather than random hostelers.

Anyhow, off to work on my lesson plan for tomorrow´s class! Yippeeeeee....

Always,

Emily

Address

Emily Raymond
CEDEI - Depto. de Ingles
Casilla 597
Cuenca - Ecuador