What's up with us...

I am writing right now from our plane to Galapagos. We got to sit to first/business class somehow; we are actually sitting in the bulkhead seats (row 1) in the front of the plane. Slocomb says its the first time he’s actually been comfortable on a plane.
We left Cuenca last night about 6pm in a full buseta, which meant that it was not nearly as comfortable as the previous two times we had gone to Guayaquil. Then, it was only us on the way to Guayaquil, and only two other people on the way back. Last night, there were five other people in the buseta. One of the guys on the buseta was from Chile, but spoke English very well. He used to work in port management, so that’s where he learned English. But after he found out that we spoke Spanish, we switched to Spanish (my preference because I need to practice!). Its not really offensive when people assume that we don’t speak Spanish; the reward is people’s faces when they realize we do speak Spanish.
Another person on the buseta was a woman from Cuenca who had known some of the CEDEI teachers from years past. She was very talkative (which was helpful for keeping the driver awake) and she did her nails while we were on the buseta. And when I say did her nails, I don’t just mean painted her nails. She glued on French tips, filed, buffed, and painted her nails on the buseta. Surprisingly, there weren’t any fumes (which was nice), and the filing/buffing wasn’t actually that annoying. I think it was because Slocomb and I knew we were on vacation, so the annoyances didn’t bother us. We entertained ourselves by making and eating sandwiches (which the nails woman commented on, saying, “Poor us, we don’t have any food!”) and by watching New Moon on my laptop. We found a bootleg copy (like every movie in Ecuador) that actually was in English. The audio wasn’t perfect, and there were a couple of times that I missed what they were saying, but it was good none the less. Also, hearing bachata and regeton on the radio the entire time might have messed with my listening skills. I still want to go back and see it in theatres again (because there were some moments that just didn’t look good on my little 13 inch screen) and because I kinda feel bad for buying a bootleg copy. Oh, well. When in Rome... one buys bootleg copies of movies...
Last week was a crazy week. It was our last week of school for the year, so we had lots to do. Jen (one of the other international teachers) wanted to help the kids make a nice present for their parents for Christmas, so we helped out with that because it was very labor intensive. We ended up making calendars decorated with the kids’ hand-print art work and also ornament balls with eight sides or so decorated by the kids. They turned out so well, but poor Jen was stressing the whole week trying to get everything done. As it turns out, we didn’t finish, but the national teachers are going to finish them with the kids and give them out next week.
I also had one of my graduate school applications due this week, which I finished and turned in on time, thank you very much. I’m a little worried because only two of the recommendation letters has been turned in, but hopefully my professor is working on it. UCLA (which is due the 15th) also recieved all of the stuff from me, but none of the stuff from my professors. I don’t want to hassle them about it because I know that its a crazy busy time of year. Luckily, the schools say that when the recommendation letters arrive doesn’t really impact whether or not the application is considered ‘on time,’ but I still want those letters to be there before they consider my application. I feel like I am a strong candidate based on my statement, transcript, and GRE scores (which I wish were better, but whatever), but the recommendation letters are a huge deal for applications. Oh, well. Its out of my hands now.
Also last week Slocomb and I found, leased, and moved into a new apartment. We had been thinking about moving for a while because we needed more space and our own space. Living with the Colomas worked out really well because they were able to show us a lot about Cuenca and living in Ecuador, but it was hard for Slocomb and I to go from living independently (with roommates, true) at Emory to being back in someone else’s house. It was a good experience, but four months was enough.
Our new apartment is gorgeous!! Slocomb doesn’t want us to put up pictures on the internet yet because he wants his family to see it first-hand when they come to Ecuador for Christmas. I will put up pictures in a couple weeks though. It is in the middle of town, which is really nice and convenient. It is very close to a lot of shopping, which is a lot easier that at the Colomas, which was at the top of a vicious hill. It was always a pain to walk up the hill with shopping or groceries, but since the new place is in the flat part of town, we don’t have to worry about that. It is on the fifth floor, but there is a new-ish elevator, which was incredible handy while we were moving all of our stuff. The huge advantage on the fifth floor is that we’re up away from a lot of the street noise, and we have an incredible view. From the living room and foyer, there are two walls of windows essentially, so we have an almost 180° view of the north and west sides of the city. To the north, we see the cathedral, which is half a block away. We can see all of the domes (there are three large ones, contrary to what a couple of guidebooks I’ve seen say), and the long wall. To the west, we see a good bit of the city and towards Cajas, the national park. We haven’t gotten to really experience the sunset because its been cloudy all of the evenings we were there, but I have a feeling its going to be a gorgeous one. On the tour that we took with CEDEI at the beginning of our time here, our tour guide took us to Plaza San Francisco and showed us the view of the cathedral of Cuenca (you know, the one you always see on postcards). Well, our view from the apartment is that view but better because we are above the buildings that block the view. It is incredible. The apartment building is just off of the Plaza San Francisco, one of the major open air markets in town. It is very convenient to be able to pop downstairs to buy things. It is very busy during the day, but everything closes up at sundown. There is plenty of light in the Plaza after sundown, but most of the ‘shops’ stay set up, so the view down to the Plaza isn’t really all that pretty. It is very Cuenca, in my opinion. All of the semi-permanent shops where you can (in the day time) find just about anything. It really is a wonderful location.
In our new apartment, we are about three blocks from the building where we take Spanish classes, so we can actually go home for lunch now before classes. We still have to take the bus to school, but I’m pretty sure we can get away with only taking one now instead of two (saving us about $20 a month). There’s a washer and dryer in the apartment, so that is really nice. And the owner of the hostal upstairs has offered to let us use the wi-fi for no charge!! We’ve had some problems with the hot water heater and dryer, but hopefully we can get those worked out soon. The hot water heater overflowed on Thursday when we turned it on for the first extended period of time. There was water all over the kitchen and into one of the bedrooms, which of course is carpeted. Our apartment kinda has that wet dog smell right now, but Slocomb is going to get some air fresheners and maybe a fan when he gets back from Galapagos on the 18th. Also, the dryer wasn’t blowing hot air the other day. We’re not sure if this is because the hot air runs on gas (because we turned the gas off after the hot water heater funness), or something else. Our landlord is going to bring in a technician to check it all out soon. And everything will be functional when Slocomb’s family arrives on the 26th. Or else...
We got the keys to the apartment on Tuesday, and moved all of our stuff on Thursday and Friday. Things are still very disorganized, but Slocomb is going to take care of a lot of the stuff when he goes back to Cuenca. And then when I get back after new year, we can finish putting everything together. Setting up an apartment takes a long time, especially when one of the inhabitants is going to be gone for almost three weeks. But it’s something very exciting to come back to.
At school this week, we spent a lot of time preparing for the special Christmas pageant that took place last night. Slocomb and I had to miss it because we had to leave for Guayaquil, but we did get to see the rehearsal yesterday. The whole school day yesterday was spent in the park (and I forgot my sunscreen, so I have intense sunglass lines right now) preparing. Unfortunately, we didn’t really plan ahead that well for the rehearsal. We all arrived in the park about 8:30, but the rehearsing didn’t start until almost 11. Bad idea when you have 110 kids. I brought books and coloring books (thank God!!), because I realized that if the kids were bored, it was going to be a lot harder to keep things in order. I learned that from my mom; bored kids are obnoxious/trying/bad kids. Another frustration was that two of the international teachers had to leave at 10:30, meaning that we were down two sets of hands. Also, two more international teachers decided they needed to leave at 12 - not really sure why. I think they felt that had too much to do before leaving Cuenca (today, I might add), so they decided to peace out early. Unfortunately, Slocomb and I were the ones who actually had to leave Cuenca yesterday and move the rest of our stuff from the Colomas to downtown. But we got roped into staying longer because the rest of the teachers didn’t want all of the international teachers leaving super early. What really made me mad was the unfairness of it all. I mean, I completely understand that the national teachers wanted us to stay, but it was obnoxious that it was okay for some of the international team to leave and others not too. I guess thats one lesson that I’m learning here in Ecuador: fairness rarely matters in real life. Which is a bummer, because I like fairness. But I’m on vacation now for another three weeks, so I’m not going to think about school.
One last thing about school, actually. We had our Christmas party on Thursday night at the director’s, Ximena’s, house. I think I’ve mentioned that we’ve been having power outages to try to conserve electricity in Cuenca (because all of the power is from hydroelectric sources and there’s not been enough rain to run them as much). Ximena’s power was supposed to be off from four until seven, but the power didn’t come back until almost 8:30!! That’s the first time I’ve heard about that happening; normally the power comes back right on time. Dinner, of course, got delayed as a result, but we just hung out and chatted for the first hour until the power came back. We also finished our secret santa exchange. I had Prisci’s (the first grade teacher) name, and I bought her a pair of silver heart earrings. They were really cute; I was tempted to keep them! Jen had my name, and she got me some earrings with real tiny flowers in them and a beautiful pink and purple scarf. She did a really good job throwing me off of who had my name; every day I got a little present with my name spelled “Lesli” on it (which is how they spell it in Ecuador usually so I assumed it was a national teacher). Very tricky, Jen! Slocomb got a new wallet from his secret santa, but I’ll set him tell you about that.
I guess this is the time for overall first semester impressions. Well, its different, especially the work culture. In the states, all of my work experiences were very supportive of their staff and very quick to solve any problems. In Ecuador, it seems much more like a solve your own problems at work kind of place. Which is fine, and works well for me, except when it comes to things like pay checks (we were almost a week late in getting our December paychecks - which was really hard because we needed to pay for our new apartment, etc). I have learned to be more independent and use the supplies I know I can get for myself fairly easily.
As for Ecuador in general, I have seen that people are very nice and very generous. People actually give money to people begging in the streets and people juggling at traffic lights. But people are also very self-interested. It seems very much like an every person (and family) for his/herself or themselves. In a place where there honestly isn’t enough to go around all of the time, this attitude makes sense. Even thought times are hard right now particularly, Ecuador is prospering. The attitudes just may not have kept up with the prosperity.
Thirdly, it makes a huge difference if you try to speak Spanish and are interested in the culture. When he’s feeling up to it, Slocomb almost always tries to talk to the cab drivers, usually about soccer. And it makes a big difference. If you get a cab driver talking, you usually have a much better cab experience - and sometimes pay less. People in Cuenca stereotype ‘gringos’ frequently, based on their previous experiences with them. And a lot of Americans - or estadounidenses I should say - come to Cuenca to see the sights of a UNESCO world heritage sights. Fewer are like us, who come to live in Cuenca, speak Spanish, and find out a little of what its like to be Cuencano. Yeah, we want to see the sights too, but for Slocomb and myself, the people are the interesting part. And when Cuencanos figure that out, it completely changes their relationship to us. We’re not going to stop being ‘gringos,’ but we have stopped being tourists.