Getting Settled in Quito
So as I mentioned in my last post, Noah and I are in Ecuador. We'll be here for a little over a month. We've decided to spend the entire time here in Quito, the second largest city in Ecuador (1.4 million- any geography buffs out there know a comparably sized US city?). We're searching for an apartment right now. Apparently, it's quite easy to find furnished apartments rentable by the month (even week or day) due to the incredible amount of foreigners who visit here. I'm looking forward to having our own place, or more accurately our own room in an apartment that we'll likely be sharing with some strangers (fellow travelers). The place we looked at yesterday and may settle on would cost $170 for the month.I'd like to get settled as soon as possible because tomorrow we start school! I am really looking forward to being a student again. If I could do it professionally, believe me I would. It's way better than teaching! For the rest of the week we'll be in classes for 5 hours a day starting at 8 AM. Noah and I took a written and oral test today at the school we chose and it seems we are at a similar enough skill level that we can take classes together which makes me happy. I was surprised at how well I did on the written exam. I got almost none wrong even though I haven't taken any Spanish classes since, uh, 1993. However, I think it was obvious to the teacher that my conversation skills don´t quite match up with my reading and writing skills. I try to only use present tense, past tense, and the idiot's future tense ("Voy a estudiar" or "Voy a whatever") because they're easy and I'm comfortable with them. I avoid the subjunctive and imperfect tenses at all costs, including accurate communication. I'll lie in the present tense rather than try to tell the truth using the subjunctive. I'm going to have to get over this fear of trying out things I'm just learning.
Today we tried something new. (No, not guinea pig! Not yet anyway...) We went to this restaurant for almuerzo. Many restaurants have a daily 3 or 4 course lunch special simply called the "almuerzo." It's usually $1 or $2. They're a great deal. You usually get so much food it puts you into a pleasant little coma. Well, at this restaurant we had a choice for the main course: bistec or chuleta. The waitress didn't speak English so we couldn't ask what the hell chuleta might be. So we just ordered it. We waited with anticipation to see what the mystery meat would be. Happily it was a slab of thick, lean bacon. Always a nice surprise, no? It was super good.
So that´s the news so far. We ate some bacon. We've done some eating, some drinking, and a hell of a lot of walking around in search of lodging. More on the city in the future.
2006-07-31 16:02:15 UTC
I Am No Longer a Real Teacher
So it's all over. I was a real teacher for six long ass weeks. And now I'm not. Now I'm unemployed and in Ecuador. A much happier situation. Summer school is like super concentrated teaching. You're supposed to cram an entire semester of school into six weeks. I taught two different classes, each two hours a day with a ten minute break inbetween. It was totally draining. Due to the aforementioned concentrated nature of summer school, I also got to experience the full-fledged bitterness of teacher burnout within the first week. Talk about efficiency! Since I had to plan for four hours of instruction each day, I ended up earning less than I did delivering sandwiches. A lot less, actually. It probably ended up coming to slightly over minimum wage. And I'm a pretty fast planner, too. Some of the other teachers I talked to spent five or six hours a day just planning. I did manage to have some good teaching days, even some of those coveted "teachable moments" that make you feel kinda high. I'm serious. It's a high. When you see a kid make some new connection and think in a more expansive way, it's amazing. It's like seeing them change right before your eyes. It's like watching them grow smarter and feeling like you're the catalyst. I think those rare occasions are what keep people in the field. It's a unique feeling in that it makes you feel both supremely powerful yet also completely selfless and giving. Teachers often say that they're not in it for the money (obviously), but for the pleasures that come from giving back to the community and helping children to learn. They don't often mention that selfish high that's inextricable from the social benefits of the martyr.2006-07-30 11:11:39 UTC