Last Tuesday and Wednesday recap...

Blog, 31- Aug

So I promised a fuller run-down of last week, so here goes:
Tuesday was our first day of real stuff with CEDEI. We had met the director and gone to the school last Friday, but we got to meet more of the staff and talk more about the school on Tuesday.
We met up at the main office of CEDEI, which is on the corner of Juan Jaramilio and Herman Miguel streets in downtown Cuenca. Slocomb and I decided to walk there since it was a nice day, and the walk took about 40 minutes from our house. There we met Erin and Maria, as well as the main directors of CEDEI. Erin is a fellow American (Minnesota, to be precise) who studied abroad with CEDEI two years ago and is now back teaching at the CEDEI school. She actually started teaching in May, I think, and has been working doing other things at CEDEI all summer. In college, she studied Spanish education, so her Spanish is quite good. Also, since she’s been around Cuenca for a few months, she has been telling us all of the good places to eat and how much things should cost. Very handy.
Maria is the Coordinator for the international staff, meaning that she’s my boss. She is originally from Cuenca but moved to Minnesota (what’s with all of these mid-westerners?) when she was 13. A year ago, she moved back to Cuenca with her daughter, Isabella, who is the cutest kid ever. She’s also been working with CEDEI for several months and has been a great resource. She also has a car and doesn’t mind helping us run errands.
After meeting these ladies and the directors of CEDEI, Erin took us to see one of the other CEDEI buildings (where most of the study abroad action happens) and to get some yogurt and pansitos. Like I said, Erin knows all of the good places to eat in town, and so we got yogurt milkshake kinda things and bread for about $0.50. Yum.
Anyway, after that, we went out to lunch at this nice restaurant on Calle Largo (“Long Street,” but it is where a lot of the good restaurants and hang out spots are in Cuenca). At lunch, we got to meet Braulio, the Director of the CEDEI school (so my 3 boss, kinda) and Ximena, the Academic Director of the school (so my 2 boss). Braulio doesn’t speak a whole lot of English, but his English is better than my Spanish, so I can’t really say anything. Ximena has been really accessible for all of our questions, but sometimes the questions and the answers get lost in translation. As an aside, she’s a very stylish dresser, so I’ll have to ask her where she shops sometime...
Also at this lunch were the two other American teachers, Livia and Jennifer, both from California. They arrived at lunch straight from the airport, so I got a sense of how Slocomb’s and my faces looked when we first arrived in Cuenca. Jennifer just graduated from college with an education major, and Livia just finished getting her teaching credentials in CA. However, since CA isn’t really hiring teachers, Ecuador is as good a place as any to teach. Livia speaks a good bit of Spanish, but Jen is a beginner like me (yay!)
After lunch, which was about half in English, half in Spanish, we went back to the main CEDEI office to talk with Mark, the Executive director of CEDEI, a little bit more about being an American in Cuenca. He had lots of useful tips, including which places of town aren’t really safe after dark. Mark is a great resource too, and seems really excited about the crew of teachers we have this year.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet before or not, but things take a long time in Ecuador. The afternoon I’ve just described, which in the states would probably take 3 hours or so, lasted from noon until about 6. There’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait that goes on here, but I’m getting used to it. As long as I’m on time, it doesn’t really bother me if the people setting the schedule choose to stray from it. A lot. But its all good. Just one of those cultural things, I suppose.
Anyway, Wednesday was a very cool day because all of the American teachers went on a tour of Cuenca and some of the surrounding towns, courtesy of CEDEI. Our tour guide, Wilson, was very informative and fun, and his dad, Mario, was our driver for the day. We started the morning (about 8 am) in downtown Cuenca, and we visited the San Sebastian church (originally the western edge of town) and the adjacent Museo de Arte Moderno. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the Museum (we were mainly just observing the mid-19th century architecture), but I am definitely going to go spend some more time there.
We then went to the central park are (Parque Calderón) which is between the old and new cathedrals. There is a big flower market just south of the new cathedral which is adjacent to a Carmelite convent. Wilson took us into the foyer I guess of the convent where the nuns sell different sorts of herbal remedies and religious paraphernalia. However, since part of these nuns’ vows is to never leave the convent or be seen by outsiders, there is a wooden revolving shelf (like a revolving door but just a window) where people go up, ask for what they want, put the money on the shelf, and receive their purchase, all without seeing or really interacting with the nuns. Very dedicated, these nuns.
We also went to the market next to the San Francisco church (a block from the Cathedral - no shortage of opportunities to worship here in Cuenca, so long as you’re a Catholic...). The market had fruits and veggies as well as clothing and blankets and the other randomness one is likely to find at a market. In the parking lot outside of the market is also where migrant workers from the surrounding area come to find work. While we were there, there were lots of workers but not anyone looking for laborers. Unfortunately, I think this may be the case more often than not. Maybe its just cause it is winter time and there is less agricultural opportunity, but it seems as if unemployment (or at least underemployment - people not getting paid nearly enough for the work they can find) is a rampant problem. In Cuenca, the “minimum wage” salary is about $215 a month, but I think that the migrants around here may only see that much money in a quarter if they are lucky.
Anyway, towering over the parking lot full of migrant workers in Cuenca is the new cathedral (as well as San Francisco church, just a block away). The cathedral was started in 1885 because the old cathedral was way too small for the inhabitants of Cuenca (and heaven knows that there weren’t nearly enough churches....). Its is constructed in the romanesque style (I think) with the altar (in 24k gold leaf) modeled after St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome. The building itself is immense and (according to Wilson) the largest cathedral in South America, measuring something like ? x ? m. The stained glass windows come from Germany and Belgium as well as some designed by Guillermo Larrazabal, a Basque artist who worked in Cuenca for a long time. The inside of the cathedral is actually rather plain, excepting the three or four shrines on each side. There are plain wooden pews only in the center, and the largest statue is of Pope John Paul II, commemorating his visit in 1985, I think. Also, the cathedral is still unfinished, though work ceased in 1980 or so. Unfortunately, something went wrong in the design of the cathedral, so the two huge spires planned for the two front towers were not added because the weight would have caused the building to collapse. Oops!
After seeing the cathedral, we left Cuenca to go see some of the artisan villages in the surrounding area as well as two small market towns. Our first stop was in the town of San Bartolomé, another example of a town where a huge church dominates an otherwise poor area. In San Bartolomé, we saw an example of how many people in the more rural areas live, essentially subsistence farming. The house we visited was above a corner store, and the family also has a wood-burning oven where neighbors bring bread to break. This family, with their multiple pursuits (the store, the bread, the farming, as well as hosting tourists for tea and coffee), seems as if they may be fairly well of, at least compared to families who can only farm. In this family’s garden, we saw many interesting plants, including an amaranthus plant which is used to make tea, babaco, a squash-looking fruit that has a wonderful flavor when cooked, and several types of verbena. The family also had a larger plot where they grow corn, I think. Oh, yeah, and they also raise guinea pigs. They seem fairly busy, don’t you think?
After leaving the ‘down-town’ of San Bartolomé (all four or five blocks), we went out to a guitar workshop where a family hand-makes guitars, mandolins, and the small, 10-string Andean charango to sell all over the country. They come into Cuenca every Thursday to sell their instruments at the San Francisco market, and a simple guitar costs about $50. However, since it takes them a week to produce this guitar, it is not nearly enough to really consider guitar making and selling an efficient way to make a living. Many of the beautiful handicrafts from the Cuenca area are in the same situation, too time-consuming to be a hobby but still not enough to be a full time job. Because of this, many of the children of these artisan families are choosing (perhaps wisely) to abandon the handicrafts in favor of professional jobs in the cities or in other countries where they can make a much easier wage.
After leaving the guitar workshop, we went to the small market town of Chordeleg, a popular destination among tourists because of its inexpensive silver jewelry. None of us bought anything except for a little ice cream, but it was a very pretty square. You never know, we might go back. Unlike the regular tourists, all of the American teachers at CEDEI will have more opportunities to go back and do more shopping.
Just down the mountain from Chordeleg is the town of Gualaceo, where we stopped to see the large central market and the smaller fruit market outside. We also had lunch at this market. Sorry to anyone whose sensibilities might be offended by the idea of whole pigs roasting inside on the off chance that people come by for lunch, but there were at least 5 different people with 5 different pigs roasting. A plate of pulled pork (pulled right off of the pork, mind you) with mate (fried hominy), a tomato salad, and mashed potato cakes was $2.50. And that’s even a little bit expensive. Some places you can get the same meal for $1.50. Anyway, as if we didn’t have enough food already, Slocomb and I also bought a couple of humitas and a tortilla. Humitas are a sort of sweet-corn tamale filled with cheese and steamed inside the corn husk. They are also my favorite new thing that I’ve had since coming to Ecuador. Tortillas in Ecuador are not the same as those with which we are familiar in the US. In Ecuador, they are much more like a corn pancake, thicker and with more substance than the flat corn or flour ones that are more in the Mexican style. Add a bottle of water for $0.30, and my huge lunch was only $3.20.
After lunch, we browsed around the fruit market and saw tons of interesting fruits that I had never seen before. Slocomb is keeping a list of all of the new fruits we have had since coming here, and it is becoming quite immense.
Anyway, the last stop on our tour was another artisan workshop where they make scarves and shawls using a weaving method that predates the Spanish arrival in South America. They actually design and dye the wool different colors before weaving, meaning that the pattern is set into the thread rather than in the loom. Crazy amounts of skill... I broke down and bought my first souvenir of Ecuador, a beautiful (and warm) shawl made at this workshop. It is red, black, and coral, and I am waiting for a special occasion to wear it. I’ll make sure to take pictures when I do.
So that’s Tuesday and Wednesday. I think I’ll post now, just to not overwhelm you too much, but I’ll write about the rest of the week and the weekend later on!