Its Thursday!

Writer’s note: I apparently felt the need to emphasize things in ALL CAPS tonight.

Buenos noches friends, family, and most importantly donors,

Its been a while since I have posted (two weeks or so). That’s not to say that nothing has been going on, I have just been spending all of my spare moments (and some moments that probably should have been used for other things) to work on my applications to graduate programs in Economics. Technology is great. I can pretty much apply to grad school online in Ecuador. At the same time, this would not be possible without: my professors who agreed to write me recommendations, and, my family and friends on the ground in America carrying forms around, sending off mailings, and giving me comments on what I have written. So, if you are reading this, thank you (I’m pretty sure at least my mom does). I have made some progress, but still have plenty to do before I am done applying everywhere. It is still only late September, which makes me early to on-schedule.

Applications have taken up almost all of my spare time. I’m not going to lie; it is tedious, grating, and I’m probably in a worse mood because of it. The two other things that stand out are the two professional soccer games I have attended. My club team is now LDU Quito, (Liga Deportiva Universidad Quito), or affectionately called “Liga” here (if you speak Spanish, you see how terrible a name Liga is for your team. If you are good at guessing what words that sound like something in one language mean in another language you might be able to tell why this is an uncreative name as well). Two weekends ago on Sunday they had an 11h30 game in la Casa Blanca, their stadium, up a little north of the airport. This stadium is very much in Quito; it is also just about two hours away from our front door. Quito is a very long city. They tied Macara 1-1. It was incredibly sunny and NO ONE was there. It was great. Last weekend, Liga played South Quito at 18h30 in Estadio Atahualpa, another stadium in Quito south of the airport but on the Ecovia, not the Metrobus. The crowd was much more into it. I consider myself a good fan in general: I go early, I stay to the end, I am willing to stand the whole time and cheer, and know what is going on for the most part. In a professional soccer game here, not only do you stand the whole game you sing the WHOLE TIME. It was awesome. By the end of the game we were learning some of the lyrics. Some songs were very encouraging. Others were less so. However, I do believe everything we said was much less racially/ethnically charged than reading “How Soccer Explains the World” would have you believe soccer fans behave. Liga got pounded. They went down 3-0 in the first half and stayed there. The fans…got…rowdy (edited for content). Still, it was a great experience and I cannot wait to go to the Ecuador-Paraguay game in a couple weeks.

Programs also started last week. Mine started slow. Monday, there was plenty of attendance at kids English, but no adults showed up for Adult English. Tuesday, the first day of art, was also the first day of winter, so the weather was terrible and no kids came to art/the library. Wednesday no adults showed up for Adult English. Thursday we had three kids for children’s art (we made egg crate caterpillars). Friday is the day Haley and I go in early and then come home to cook (we have classes that exclude us from doing this every other day of the week). We made chicken jambalaya and it turned out great.

Things are better this week (if you have trouble following my timeline, in-between the last paragraph and this one soccer game two occurred). Monday we had three adults in Adult English (technically two adults and a kid). They were also much more advanced English speakers than we had planned on. Krysta and I scrambled for two hours. We started by walking to the window and learning all the vocabulary we could see but didn’t know. Then we played “I spy” in English. I won. We got the diagnostic, vocab, and game to last an hour. Then we did pronunciation; our students red aloud to us from books. We spent half an hour on pronunciation, and then Krysta and I went over four major problem areas (pronouncing “g,” words that end in “y,” words that end in “ed,” and “th”). I feel like it went pretty well, especially for having to scramble.

Tuesday was a banner (and long) day. It started with a 10am meeting with CIDE about these small business classes. That meeting definitely exceeded expectations. We walked in and said we have the money, lacked the people, but are ready to take the class. We talked about details a little bit and PICKED A DATE. Class will be October 12-16. Classes run from 8-13h00, with a coffee break at 11h00. It is a one-week, twenty five hour class that we will walk out of being certified to train instructors for the course. I personally am paying for the instructor fee (most of the course cost) at a price of $375. When I say personally I mean you, my donors, who have donated all the funds I will use to do so. It is going to make for a long week doing this in the mornings in top of all the program stuff in the afternoon, but we think its 100% worth it. I also plan on writing up a proposal to USAID with some more long-term goals to see if I can finagle some extra bones out of those tax-dollars we all pay (and because Ecuador also uses the dollar there is a small chance that it will be the physical dollar you gave to the government to pay your taxes with. Oh, what’s that? In some places the entire economy isn’t cash only? Interesting.) After our meeting, we ran some errands in San Luis and I turned $120 in twenties into $120 in dollar coins and quarters for the bus jar. We were home by 11h30. Tuesday is children’s art day; Sonia planned this one. We made mobiles of the life cycle of caterpillars! (fun and educational, which in all seriousness is something we strive for). This was a learning experience. The kids loved it, but some parts (cutting spirals, attaching hanging things with yarn) might have been a bit two advanced for some of our younger students. My favorite story from the day was when after explaining the parts of the CATEPILLAR LIFE CYCLE we were going to make, Paula told me she was going to make “a flower, a dog, a house…and…a dog house! She did. We encourage creativity.

Wednesday was Adult English again. Wednesday really started after dinner on Tuesday with lesson planning until about midnight. Erik’s Spanish teacher Diego once said “native speakers speak their language at about the intermediate level.” I figured he was probably right. I also figured my degree in English would make me more or less exempt from this statistic. WRONG. I learned this planning my review of all the verb tenses for regular verbs in English. I did not even know how many tenses there are, and definitely could not name them all. It was a humbling experience, but I do think it turned out pretty well. In class, we had three more teens, which is great, because they were about the same English level, but it did really change the dynamic (everyone was less willing to speak up). We also only got through about half of the verb tenses. This is fine, because we teach for understanding, so if we need to go slower we certainly will. The worksheets we had for class/homework were too hard. I’m still learning.

Thursday (today) was children’s art. I spent the morning prepping by helping Mike and Erik move the broken cinder block pieces off the roof (from the door we put in). To put it lightly, some of our neighbors are a bit too protective of the field they don’t own. So we only got about three-fourths off the roof (there are so many random projects do to around the house). In art, we did hot and colors and drew animals with echo lines. Props to http://oodlesofart.blogspot.com/search/label/2nd%20Grade and the appropriate links to help me plan this one. I had been wanting (did you notice I used the past perfect progressive? I did it intentionally, because I made a calendar of all the art classes this semester, split the months into categories [September is animals month] and then filled in about half the dates with projects) to do tissue paper dragons, but funding issues got in my way. We started the class with a lecture on hot and cold colors (Hot: red, yellow, orange, pink; they open up spaces and are active. Cold: blue, green, purple, gray; they make spaces seem smaller and calm or depress.) Then we had the kids draw an animal on the page, draw concentric contour lines around it, and then color in the rings in an alternating pattern of either warm or cool colors. Everyone except the two youngest really seemed to get this and ended up with good projects. We also had a lot of talking today, which I thought was great/fun. Sonia brought in music, which really enhanced the mood. I will probably have to be stricter about staying seated on Monday.

Afterwards Paula and some others spent about half an hour decorating my hair/face with construction paper scraps. I was in a pretty AWESOME mood today (lucky everyone) so I just took it in stride. The two things that stand out are the fact that 1) at one point they called me “the bull,” which is a nickname I am more than willing to keep, and, 2) they obviously want me to grow a mustache because they taped a paper one on my face. I’ll probably indulge them on that one once this small business class in done. I’ll need to fit in when I go to Argentina over Thanksgiving.

Today was also Haley’s birthday, so we went to Crepes and Waffles for dinner. It was delicious. Absolutely incredible. Tomorrow the library is closed because we are taking our first quarter retreat. We are going to a resort called Sierra Azul, in the Tena area. Its in the jungle. It should be wet and gorgeous. I really wanted to watch Anaconda tonight to get in the mood, but only Mike and Erik thought this was a good idea. I hope my camera is up to the challenge. And with all the lesson planning I have ahead of me and applications to look forward to in my spare time, it should be a good chance to get away.

Things to report in general: I did in fact have a sinus infection. Due so some technical problems in the lab, I spend the first 4 days on antibiotics that the bacteria was drug resistant to. I then spent another 8 days on real antibiotics. I think its cleared up now.

The faster I finish my applications, the faster you can get regular updates again.

Chao,

Chet

Song of the Blog: “You Belong with Me” by Taylor Swift