I have a ton of t-shirts. This may not be the most interesting revelation to our readers, but it is something that I’ve had on my mind for the past few days. Sonia and I switched rooms Wednesday to get the PD living arrangements squared away for summer. As I had to take all my current possessions from my old room into the office before finally moving into Sonia’s old room (Erik and Chet’s “Fort” now) I had ample opportunity to look at exactly what is in my wardrobe.
I have 8 button-down long-sleeve shirts. One each is from Mark and Seth. I have 1 Rumiñahui soccer jersey that I play in on weekends. I have 4 jerseys from other teams (Ecuador, Argentina, LDU Quito, and a YMCA one that is good for hiking). I have a “kick it with Pi-Phi” tank top that I don’t believe I’ve worn since orientation. I have four undershirts and 3 collared polo shirts on top of that (again, two of those collared shirts are from Mark and Seth). All in all, I have 34 shirts here in Ecuador with me.
That is a ton of cotton (or polyester, as the case may be with some). And I have even more shirts sitting in my closet at home.
Sure, some of these shirts have very different uses. I can only play soccer in my Rumiñahui jersey, because it is the team uniform. Some of the t-shirts are so ratty I don’t like to wear them outside the house. I try to wear a button down shirt when I’m teaching and wear either a collared shirt or an MPI shirt when I am in the library. But I wear my shirts more than once before washing and do laundry every 7-10 days, so I really have way more than I need.
I’ve learned a lot in my time here in Ecuador with Manna, but something I’m only now starting to pick up on is how to do more with less. Manna already does a pretty good job doing more with less. Of our three children’s English classes, only 2 have boards. But we had enough demand for children’s English that the English profes felt the need to offer a full third class. We have gone from having every PD in the library every afternoon to only having three there to allow us to run more programs and plan for more classes. I hope I can get a clearer picture of how to do more with less in my remaining 76 days. I don’t want to come back with this skill just to be thriftier; I don’t just want to mop my kitchen floor with a little less cleaning solution to save money in the long run. I’m interested in conserving resources because, from what I’ve seen, if you pass your extras along to someone else some really incredible results can spring from relatively small gifts. The art class, which has around 15 kids ages 5-10 coming to the library each week, has had to buy almost nothing because out biggest needs (construction paper and markers) are always being donated. Our English classes couldn’t function without the dry erase markers that get sent down a box or two at a time with volunteers. Some of the clothes I wear most often I got out of the adoption corner.
So thank you donors, and not just my donors, for everything you have made possible this year so far, both in the PD’s lives and the lives in the communities we work with. When I leave Ecuador at the end of July, I want to leave 21 shirts behind. I might even leave more if I can. If another PD doesn’t feel the need to augment their wardrobe from the adoption corner like I did, they will be passed along to Ecuadorians in need. But more than just thanking you for what you’ve already done, I want to encourage you to keep passing along little extras: small monetary gifts, in-kind donations, and even clothing to us (or an organization closer to home) to continue producing incredible results.
And yes, this is a repost of a guest blog for the daily life blog. I hope it was even better rereading it.
Song of the blog: “Bigger than my Body” by John Mayer
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
New Year, New Blog
Hi avid donors. Sorry for not updating in a while. The biggest parts I have been not-blogging recently are my vacations, which may or may not actually merit lengthy description on a blog where I describe my work. I’ll summarize them quickly: For Thanksgiving, Mike, Erik and I split our time between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay. I’m very glad I got to see both these places. Buenos Aires was way more “European” than I expected. I thought Uruguay had a lot more to offer, even though we spent less time there. Going to the currency museums in each country was one of my favorite parts; both Argentina and Uruguay have been racked by inflation in the past (as was most of South America). Seeing a million peso bill and learning that 1 new peso (Argentina’s current currency) is worth 10 trillion pesos from the first currency after they created a central bank in the 1920s were some pretty shocking facts.
I kicked off the New Year by hiking the Inca Trail in Peru. It was incredible, I highly recommend you all fly to Peru and do the same before the chance passes you by. Strictly speaking as a boy scout, I have never been so pampered camping. They woke us up with hot tea at our tent door, carried everything but our personal gear (and normally people pay a little extra and just hike with a little daypack), and served us two and three course meals on metal plates. The views in that part of the Andes are breathtaking; in my opinion it blows the socks off the Rockies. All the ruins are fascinating as well. The fact that a 12 million person empire carved their homes that high into such steep mountains is mind-blowing. It was also nice having a knowledgeable, English-speaking guide to explain exactly what we were looking at.
We have kicked off the New Year back here in Ecuador programmatically as well. The library has been open for 1.67 weeks now, and programs are starting this week. We spent all of last week advertising for the big “Celebración Comuniteria” we held last Saturday. It took a lot of work to bring together several partner organizations, find tents and chairs, hire a dj and speakers, set up information booths, plan games and activities for kids and adults, and bring in some local food vendors, but we did it. Several hours of advertising and hundreds of flyers later (I personally passed out flyers in three different communities, made announcements at two organization meetings, and Erik and I flyered 20 busses at La Marín and more in the community) we had a big fiesta on the cancha outside the library from 3-7 on Saturday. It seemed to be worthwhile for all the effort and we had a fairly productive debriefing session for how to do it more successfully next year. One of the biggest reasons we decided to do this was because of the problems we have seen with attendance after we close the library for holidays or vacation days. Well donors, we have not had that problem this time around. Advertising in Tena, Mike and I came upon a pack of 10 or so kids who we told about the library, and they have been there every day since. This puts our average daily library attendance at around 20 kids, which makes for a very lively space. Both children’s English classes are full at their 12 student cap, and Adult English has 7 of 10 with a promised two more coming next week. There is still space in Children’s Art and World Studies, though; tell your Ecuadorian friends.
One other big Manna announcement for the start of the New Year (really for the start of Quarter III) is we have switched management styles to “Management by Objective.” After a lot of research, Bibi decided that this management technique, where we set measurable, attainable objectives for each quarter and then plan steps to achieve them would help us accomplish more and have more of a record to look back on and say what we achieved. I will say this management style looks like it will be more effective for some programs than others, but overall I am really excited to try it out. For clarification, the goals are more long term, possibly less measurable goals that are in the direction we want our programs to go. Objectives are achievable, measurable, and should be completed by the end of the quarter.
Here are the objectives I am set to accomplish for Quarter III (by the end of March).
Adult English:
Goal 1: Teach a class for proficient conversational English
• Objective: Improve English by 1 point on the IRL Scale
• Devote 1hour (1/3 of the class) to conversational practice
• Teach the class 2/3/ in English
Goal 2: Strengthen ties in a new community
• Teach a 1 month pilot course in Barrio Ruminahui
• Assess our relationship with this community and hopefully continue
Art:
Goal 1: Increase art education and retention
• Collect a portfolio of all projects by quarter for a bigger display at the end
• Teach 8 classes on a different type of art from all around the world in different time periods
• Ask, at the beginning of class, what previous projects we have done this quarter.
Goal 2: Increase the legitimacy of the art class
• Make an announcement about the next inscription date every class
• Call parents if kids miss two classes in a row after inscribing
• Shadow 2 classes in schools to learn about teaching techniques (art classes preferred, but may not be possible)
Goal 3: Increase creativity
• Teach 4 classes without an example on the board
Microfinance:
Goal 1: Strengthen EPV and our relationship with them
• Be shadowing at EPV 1 day a week by the end of Q3
• Spend 2 hours a week researching the feasibility of EPV’s capacitación requests, and have one selected to pursue by the end of the quarter
• Spend 1 hour a week researching (and writing) grants or international funding
• Update the MIX market account for Q3
Goal 2: Strengthen individual businesses in the communities
• Finish, 100% in English and Spanish, the manual to teach a small business class
• Meet and form relationships with 20 business owners in the communities
Goal 3: Strengthen business networks in the communities
• Spend 10 hours researching and designing a survey to gauge current business practices and the feasibility of some sort of cooperative
• Administer the small business survey to 50 small businesses in the area
• Have all data aggregated for analysis by the end of Quarter III
So I have plenty to keep me busy until at least March, but this system should help me accomplish a lot more, especially in the realm of Microfinance. Mike and I are still playing soccer. Our team is tied for first place 6 games into a 10 game playoff system. We play Aurelas again this Saturday at 12, which will probably be our toughest game. I’ve been running more to try and be more of an asset on the field. Wish us luck!
Chao,
Chet
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Happy Shield Day
I had really intended to write this blog update last weekend. If I had, it would have been filled with the excitement and anticipation of taking the small business training course through CIDE. As it is, you are getting the update from after me finishing the course, so I just spoiled that ending—I in fact completed the course.
Two weeks ago was a pretty typical week of programs. The only major thing that stands out was art. One of the comments Holly made in her transition report was that in the future it might be good to try having projects that take more than one day to complete. We attempted that this time with picture collages. The students were supposed to cut out pictures from magazines to glue together to form a new picture. The results varied, from series of animal pictures cut out in boxes glued next to each other in no intelligible sequence to the profes’ art, which looked like what I had originally planned. However, the project did last two days, with some students actually splitting the time between two days to make a more complete project. Bottom line, the project was a mixed success but leaves room for us to try more two-day projects later (issues with regular attendance and latecomers at least currently limit what kinds of projects we can do on a daily basis).
Erik also got a call from CIDE Thursday morning asking if we could come in for a meeting about our upcoming course that afternoon. We can’t ever meet in the afternoons, so we scheduled a meeting for Friday morning instead. With such a last minute meeting before a class that was supposed to start on Monday, I assumed they were calling us in to talk about how we couldn’t have the class next week. Boy was I wrong. We ironed out the last minute details, were given a huge shopping list of supplies, and told the room number where the class was going to be held on Monday. It was a TON of last minute work for us, but the class was going to start on Monday. It was pretty exciting to think that Erik and I were finally going to get trained to teach small business classes in the community. I also cooked alone Friday, because Haley and her novio were off exploring Ecuador! It went well, except for the facts that 1) we had no Tupperware in the house so I had to use pots and pans for all of my prepping needs, and, 2) I had to turn everything off and leave the house a 5:40 for a 20 minute paseo (fieldtrip) because we had no vegetable broth and walk all the way up to the Tia because all the tiendas between here and there didn’t have anything but chicken (we use maggi-brand bullion cubes for all our broth needs. Thanks, maggi broth).
Last Saturday was a blast. Mike and I had a soccer game at 2pm, and we were short on players this time. We both started and I played the whole game. That is so, so much harder than it was in high school for so many reasons: I’m out of shape; I’m no longer at 50 feet above sea level; The field is much bigger; the halves are longer; and, even in high school as a starter you would be subbed in and out so others could get playing time. All those reasons aside, I made it through the whole game and had a lot of fun. I had an assist for a goal, my first in all my years playing soccer (I play outside mid here rather than defense like I did in Texas), knocked a bunch of players down because I am a giant, and even forced a yellow card on someone.
After the game, Mike and I rushed home, showered, and headed over to a birthday party in the community. Emelia, one of the cutest girls ever, turned 5, and we were invited to her birthday party. The main feature of the party was a clown. Yes, clowns are still popular here, and with all age groups. He “entertained” us for probably two hours, with all the Ecuadorians rolling in laughter. The part I enjoyed most was when he had some adults sit on the floor (again, including me and Mike), and had us scoot on our butts to the other side of the room in a race. First prize went to Mike, and first prize was a whole bottle of whiskey. Sadly, because of our no drinking in community policy, we didn’t get to taste the fruits of victory, but it still makes for a story.
I also pulled off the triple crown of chores on Sunday. I went to Aki (the grocery store) after 9:30 mass, to the markets with Erik after lunch, and cooked dinner with Sonia.
My eventful weekend was followed by an eventful week. We had to be at ESPE, EScuela Politecnico del Ejercito, or the military polytechnic college, at 8am for classes. That meant I was up at 6 and out the door 7ish. Even trying my hardest, it was impossible to go to bed before 10:30. We had to bring the coffee maker from our house (along with a lot of other supplies each day), walk a mile up to the highway, and grab a crowded bus. CIDE (centro de innovación y desarrollo emprasario) had promised to bring some students as well, but we had a smaller class than we expected. It was Erik, myself, Marina, Wilson’s (from EPV, the microfinance organization we work with in Rumiloma) daughter, her cousin Tatyiana, and Carlos, the one CIDE recruit. Remember, this was a 25 hour class designed to certify us to train small business class instructors. It was totally in Spanish, and really for people who are fluent. The first project we did after introductions was one that involved following verbal instructions-we had to make paper cups. At one point, Erik, who is basically fluent, raised his hand and said, “Lo siento, pero no tengo este vocabulario,” to which Maribel, who was leading this exercise, just smiled and continued. They class was like that all week. The concepts themselves were not complicated (that’s the point of the class), but the Spanish was brutally hard. We had class five hours a day, and with only five students I was expected to (and did) participate fully, adding commentary, following directions, and presenting segments. This class was GREAT for my Spanish. I understand a large majority of what is said to me, and I can now respond for the first part with making notes beforehand.
I have some other anecdotes from the class. The lesson Monday was all over teaching styles, learning styles, the role of the instructor in this class (Fundador), and the specific teaching style we use: Metaplan. I don’t know if this exists in English, but all information is put up on colored strips of construction paper, everything is written in caps with no more than 3 lines of text and 10 words per card, and using colors that stand out. At the end of class on Monday, we were given a little time to read over the descriptions of four different types of teaching styles in our HUGE binder and then told to each act out a teaching style. The whole class did poorly. But even with my broken comprehension of what I read and said while performing, Giovanna at least had (wrong) guesses for what Erik and I acted out, but didn’t even have a clue for what the Ecuadorians acted out. That was one difficult Spanish-based activity.
The first thing we did Tuesday morning was take an 80 question quiz to determine what learning style we have. Again, this was brutally hard. The questions were up on a projector, and we had about as much time to answer each question as it took for Maribel to read them aloud. This exercise was wickedly fast. It turns out that Spanish Chet is a reflexivo teóratico (reflexive theorist, or possible reflective theorist). The most important questions for my learning are ¿Qué? and ¿Por Qué?
Wednesday was probably the hardest day, because it was the day we started going into college classes and teaching units in Spanish to the students. I’m not sure, but I think it was borderline the kind of stuff you would have to get a waiver signed for in the States. Erik and I taught a unit on business organization. I had to teach an hour and 15 minute unit on basic organization, with a taller. There were some problems, and we were crunched for time even ending half an hour late. Overall, it went better than the other taller on markets we had that morning. It was also an invaluable learning experience. You think public speaking is hard? Try it in a language you don’t speak over a subject you know almost nothing about (Erik loved this, as a business major this stuff was right up his alley). After all of these, we had retroalmientación, or feedback, which was just another example of the kind of language proficiency I had to use on a daily basis; I had to say what went well and what could have gone better about everyone’s group.
Thursday was the start of units of production, with a very involved Taller on production “ensalada de frutas.” We spent half an hour making a fruit salad in front of a class of students, pretending that it was an international cooking show. I had the easy role; as a famous international chef I had to cut up fruit and talk in English with my assistants. Erik had the worst job; as “his show,” he was supposed to translate everything I said (and I was told to talk the whole time) into Spanish for the class. Then, we had a lesson on fixed and marginal costs, and figuring out exactly how much to charge for your product (fruit salad). This was Econ 101 stuff, so I knew all of it, even in Spanish. Supply and Demand can transcend even a language barrier, and I loved it. However, I had Spanish lessons at 2pm in Rumiloma, 45 minutes away using a 3 bus system, and we straight up walked out a 1:40. Needless to say, I was half an hour late to class.
On Friday we had my favorite project, again on production. We were split up into two teams, and each given the same assignment about a small marmalade factory that we were supposed to mathematically analyze, say what the factors limiting production were, and then redesign the current factory layout. I basically did everything between me and Tatyiana, which was fine because it was easy. Then, when we started presenting first, I was met with a new surprise. Maribel, who was playing the role of the company owner, treated it as a business presentation! She asked us for our fake credentials, would interrupt and ask why we did that or how much it would cost, and other things that made it more of a simulation and less of a presentation. Luckily, it was Friday and I was much more comfortable with my Spanish. At one point, I told Maribal “you have to spend money to make money” (well, technically, I said “you have to pay money to create money”). I could barely keep from laughing after that. Tatyiana and I won, and Erik was so pissed. He raised his hand and asked why we won, and then during break he and I had a longer conversation in English about the merits and flaws of his plan. But, at the end of the day, the Econ major beat the Business major at his own game.
In addition to the difficulty of having 25 hours of class in Spanish, the early mornings and busyness added a lot of extra strain to my normal workload. It was hard to both prepare both a one hour unit on business organization and a lecture and worksheet about the past perfect continuous verb tense for the same day. It was hard to get up at 6 everyday. One thing we were in charge of was bringing snacks (and coffee) everyday. I used 5/6 of a pound of coffee for 5 pots, and there were no complaints. I will say, problems or obstacles that seemed much more challenging before this week seem smaller now. I am also much more indifferent to tasks that used to annoy me more (hopefully that will stay). I guess I know what a “real job” would be like now.
Happy Shield day From Ecuador. Remember, Correa prohibited public celebrations on Halloween (yea, the article is in Spanish, but it will be good practice for you, the reader, especially since you can probably guess what it is saying.) It is the start of a four day weekend here, so tonight we are all taking night busses to Canoa, a sleepy beach town about 8 hours away. Mike and I have a soccer game soon; hopefully we will win again.
Until something else exciting happens,
Chao,
Chet Polson
Fundador de Fundadores
Song of the Blog: “Bigger than my Body,” by John Mayer
Two weeks ago was a pretty typical week of programs. The only major thing that stands out was art. One of the comments Holly made in her transition report was that in the future it might be good to try having projects that take more than one day to complete. We attempted that this time with picture collages. The students were supposed to cut out pictures from magazines to glue together to form a new picture. The results varied, from series of animal pictures cut out in boxes glued next to each other in no intelligible sequence to the profes’ art, which looked like what I had originally planned. However, the project did last two days, with some students actually splitting the time between two days to make a more complete project. Bottom line, the project was a mixed success but leaves room for us to try more two-day projects later (issues with regular attendance and latecomers at least currently limit what kinds of projects we can do on a daily basis).
Erik also got a call from CIDE Thursday morning asking if we could come in for a meeting about our upcoming course that afternoon. We can’t ever meet in the afternoons, so we scheduled a meeting for Friday morning instead. With such a last minute meeting before a class that was supposed to start on Monday, I assumed they were calling us in to talk about how we couldn’t have the class next week. Boy was I wrong. We ironed out the last minute details, were given a huge shopping list of supplies, and told the room number where the class was going to be held on Monday. It was a TON of last minute work for us, but the class was going to start on Monday. It was pretty exciting to think that Erik and I were finally going to get trained to teach small business classes in the community. I also cooked alone Friday, because Haley and her novio were off exploring Ecuador! It went well, except for the facts that 1) we had no Tupperware in the house so I had to use pots and pans for all of my prepping needs, and, 2) I had to turn everything off and leave the house a 5:40 for a 20 minute paseo (fieldtrip) because we had no vegetable broth and walk all the way up to the Tia because all the tiendas between here and there didn’t have anything but chicken (we use maggi-brand bullion cubes for all our broth needs. Thanks, maggi broth).
Last Saturday was a blast. Mike and I had a soccer game at 2pm, and we were short on players this time. We both started and I played the whole game. That is so, so much harder than it was in high school for so many reasons: I’m out of shape; I’m no longer at 50 feet above sea level; The field is much bigger; the halves are longer; and, even in high school as a starter you would be subbed in and out so others could get playing time. All those reasons aside, I made it through the whole game and had a lot of fun. I had an assist for a goal, my first in all my years playing soccer (I play outside mid here rather than defense like I did in Texas), knocked a bunch of players down because I am a giant, and even forced a yellow card on someone.
After the game, Mike and I rushed home, showered, and headed over to a birthday party in the community. Emelia, one of the cutest girls ever, turned 5, and we were invited to her birthday party. The main feature of the party was a clown. Yes, clowns are still popular here, and with all age groups. He “entertained” us for probably two hours, with all the Ecuadorians rolling in laughter. The part I enjoyed most was when he had some adults sit on the floor (again, including me and Mike), and had us scoot on our butts to the other side of the room in a race. First prize went to Mike, and first prize was a whole bottle of whiskey. Sadly, because of our no drinking in community policy, we didn’t get to taste the fruits of victory, but it still makes for a story.
I also pulled off the triple crown of chores on Sunday. I went to Aki (the grocery store) after 9:30 mass, to the markets with Erik after lunch, and cooked dinner with Sonia.
My eventful weekend was followed by an eventful week. We had to be at ESPE, EScuela Politecnico del Ejercito, or the military polytechnic college, at 8am for classes. That meant I was up at 6 and out the door 7ish. Even trying my hardest, it was impossible to go to bed before 10:30. We had to bring the coffee maker from our house (along with a lot of other supplies each day), walk a mile up to the highway, and grab a crowded bus. CIDE (centro de innovación y desarrollo emprasario) had promised to bring some students as well, but we had a smaller class than we expected. It was Erik, myself, Marina, Wilson’s (from EPV, the microfinance organization we work with in Rumiloma) daughter, her cousin Tatyiana, and Carlos, the one CIDE recruit. Remember, this was a 25 hour class designed to certify us to train small business class instructors. It was totally in Spanish, and really for people who are fluent. The first project we did after introductions was one that involved following verbal instructions-we had to make paper cups. At one point, Erik, who is basically fluent, raised his hand and said, “Lo siento, pero no tengo este vocabulario,” to which Maribel, who was leading this exercise, just smiled and continued. They class was like that all week. The concepts themselves were not complicated (that’s the point of the class), but the Spanish was brutally hard. We had class five hours a day, and with only five students I was expected to (and did) participate fully, adding commentary, following directions, and presenting segments. This class was GREAT for my Spanish. I understand a large majority of what is said to me, and I can now respond for the first part with making notes beforehand.
I have some other anecdotes from the class. The lesson Monday was all over teaching styles, learning styles, the role of the instructor in this class (Fundador), and the specific teaching style we use: Metaplan. I don’t know if this exists in English, but all information is put up on colored strips of construction paper, everything is written in caps with no more than 3 lines of text and 10 words per card, and using colors that stand out. At the end of class on Monday, we were given a little time to read over the descriptions of four different types of teaching styles in our HUGE binder and then told to each act out a teaching style. The whole class did poorly. But even with my broken comprehension of what I read and said while performing, Giovanna at least had (wrong) guesses for what Erik and I acted out, but didn’t even have a clue for what the Ecuadorians acted out. That was one difficult Spanish-based activity.
The first thing we did Tuesday morning was take an 80 question quiz to determine what learning style we have. Again, this was brutally hard. The questions were up on a projector, and we had about as much time to answer each question as it took for Maribel to read them aloud. This exercise was wickedly fast. It turns out that Spanish Chet is a reflexivo teóratico (reflexive theorist, or possible reflective theorist). The most important questions for my learning are ¿Qué? and ¿Por Qué?
Wednesday was probably the hardest day, because it was the day we started going into college classes and teaching units in Spanish to the students. I’m not sure, but I think it was borderline the kind of stuff you would have to get a waiver signed for in the States. Erik and I taught a unit on business organization. I had to teach an hour and 15 minute unit on basic organization, with a taller. There were some problems, and we were crunched for time even ending half an hour late. Overall, it went better than the other taller on markets we had that morning. It was also an invaluable learning experience. You think public speaking is hard? Try it in a language you don’t speak over a subject you know almost nothing about (Erik loved this, as a business major this stuff was right up his alley). After all of these, we had retroalmientación, or feedback, which was just another example of the kind of language proficiency I had to use on a daily basis; I had to say what went well and what could have gone better about everyone’s group.
Thursday was the start of units of production, with a very involved Taller on production “ensalada de frutas.” We spent half an hour making a fruit salad in front of a class of students, pretending that it was an international cooking show. I had the easy role; as a famous international chef I had to cut up fruit and talk in English with my assistants. Erik had the worst job; as “his show,” he was supposed to translate everything I said (and I was told to talk the whole time) into Spanish for the class. Then, we had a lesson on fixed and marginal costs, and figuring out exactly how much to charge for your product (fruit salad). This was Econ 101 stuff, so I knew all of it, even in Spanish. Supply and Demand can transcend even a language barrier, and I loved it. However, I had Spanish lessons at 2pm in Rumiloma, 45 minutes away using a 3 bus system, and we straight up walked out a 1:40. Needless to say, I was half an hour late to class.
On Friday we had my favorite project, again on production. We were split up into two teams, and each given the same assignment about a small marmalade factory that we were supposed to mathematically analyze, say what the factors limiting production were, and then redesign the current factory layout. I basically did everything between me and Tatyiana, which was fine because it was easy. Then, when we started presenting first, I was met with a new surprise. Maribel, who was playing the role of the company owner, treated it as a business presentation! She asked us for our fake credentials, would interrupt and ask why we did that or how much it would cost, and other things that made it more of a simulation and less of a presentation. Luckily, it was Friday and I was much more comfortable with my Spanish. At one point, I told Maribal “you have to spend money to make money” (well, technically, I said “you have to pay money to create money”). I could barely keep from laughing after that. Tatyiana and I won, and Erik was so pissed. He raised his hand and asked why we won, and then during break he and I had a longer conversation in English about the merits and flaws of his plan. But, at the end of the day, the Econ major beat the Business major at his own game.
In addition to the difficulty of having 25 hours of class in Spanish, the early mornings and busyness added a lot of extra strain to my normal workload. It was hard to both prepare both a one hour unit on business organization and a lecture and worksheet about the past perfect continuous verb tense for the same day. It was hard to get up at 6 everyday. One thing we were in charge of was bringing snacks (and coffee) everyday. I used 5/6 of a pound of coffee for 5 pots, and there were no complaints. I will say, problems or obstacles that seemed much more challenging before this week seem smaller now. I am also much more indifferent to tasks that used to annoy me more (hopefully that will stay). I guess I know what a “real job” would be like now.
Happy Shield day From Ecuador. Remember, Correa prohibited public celebrations on Halloween (yea, the article is in Spanish, but it will be good practice for you, the reader, especially since you can probably guess what it is saying.) It is the start of a four day weekend here, so tonight we are all taking night busses to Canoa, a sleepy beach town about 8 hours away. Mike and I have a soccer game soon; hopefully we will win again.
Until something else exciting happens,
Chao,
Chet Polson
Fundador de Fundadores
Song of the Blog: “Bigger than my Body,” by John Mayer
Sunday, October 18, 2009
You did WHAT!
I could answer that question so many different ways in the weeks (sorry about the time lapse) that have occurred since my last blog post. The two main answers that come to mind are joining an Ecuadorian soccer league and hiking 13 km through the jungle in sandals. There will be a programmatic update at the end, so if you are only interested in that you can scroll down past all of my anecdotes of living in one of the other ten countries that still use the US dollar.
I left you last the night before we had our retreat at Sierra Azul, in the jungle. Well, technically Sierra Azul is in the transitional period between the highlands and the rainforest, “el bosque.” Its not quite rainforest, but hopefully I will see that too in the months to come. I have never been in a place so luscious. On our hike, I could only see between five and twenty feet off either side of the trail, depending on how close we were to the river we crossed several times. The lodge itself was great; if you are looking for a secluded place to spend a weekend in the bosque in Ecuador I recommend Sierra Azul. They have a huge recreation room, with a fireplace and couches (to read and play catchphrase), large tables (to play card games), a pool table, foosball table, ping pong, and a dart board. The rooms themselves are cabin-esque, and comfortable, if rugged-natural looking. They have hot water, and I mean hot water; the kind that you have to mix with cold water to make it bearable. This was a great treat after showering with electric shower heads (read: widowmakers) since arriving in Ecuador. The whole place is also run on generators, which makes it bright and inviting until they turn the generators off around 22h30.
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I had been informed beforehand that my huge, American feet would be too big for any rain boots they had for us to wear at Sierra Azul. That wasn’t really a surprise, because I’m just too big for this country in general. So, I brought the pair of Merrell “jungle moccasins” (slip on shoes) that I had picked up in the adoption corner earlier this summer, intending to hike in and ruin those if need be. However, after the girls came back from a short hike Friday, they told me that rubber boots were a necessity. Fernando, our guide, thought hiking in these slip-on shoes was also a terrible idea. In a move of desperation, I brought out my chacos and asked if they would be better, and they passed the test. So, while everyone else was in knee-high rubber boots (or tennis shoes and hiking socks in Erik’s case) I walked 13 km through the jungle in sandals. It was muddy. Crazy muddy. At least about every time it went from soothing to uncomfortable, we would cross a river and I would get to rinse off. But overall, the hike was great. The waterfall was gorgeous, my feet held up, and I think it’s a pretty unique experience to walk that far with such exposed feet.
Mike and I joined an Ecuadorian soccer league (most of the girls joined too, but we play on different teams, so I will keep the coverage to me for now). Some of the taxi drivers in Conocoto we have gotten closer to invited us to play. Men’s games are on Saturday; the specific time changes. Our team is part of the liga deportiva “Club Football Brazil,” which has its fields up at punte tres on the autopista (this will all make sense when you come visit). It isn’t the nicest of facilities, but it is already growing on me. I play on equipo Rumiñahui. It’s a family team, with several generations all playing together. The rest of the team isn’t incredible, but they are better than I am. I got to play about 30 minutes in the second half yesterday, and it was rough. I have been running (a little) to get in shape for soccer and the mountains I want to hike, and I apparently have a lot more to do. They ran me ragged. But the team was nice about my performance, and hopefully I will get better as time progresses. It is certainly a unique way to spend some time on the weekends while I am here.
Another big activity I have recently attended was the Ecuador-Uruguay World Cup Qualifier last weekend (Oct 10). Ecuador lost 2-1. They then lost to Chile on Wednesday, so they will not be in the 2010 World Cup. But just because we lost didn’t mean it wasn’t worth going. I bought my ticket for $13.50 off of the old PDs, who had bought a package. On game day, tickets were about $35 for general admission (which were were in). Still, $35 for international sports-play? Sounds like a deal to me, even though I am no longer even willing to pay $1.50 for a DVD.
The game was at 5pm. Our Ecuadorian friend told us to leave the house by 10am, which we did more or less. The Ecovia was closed off one stop before the stadium, so we had to get off early and clear a police checkpoint (only those with tickets were allowed in) where entire blocks were fenced off before the stadium. The security line for our section of general was about two blocks long, and it was pretty slow moving, but we were still in the stadium by 12, where we then got to wait for 5 hours with the same three songs about Ecuador playing. Here is another example of the type of inefficiency that makes me want to pull my hair out (read: making me spend 1.5 hours physically going and paying the water bill in cash), perhaps if all of the seating wasn’t general admission so much time from all the fans would not have been wasted. But the time passed, and we even made friends with the people sitting by us. One man had his face painted like the joker; Mike asked to have his picture taken with him in the security line and he must have taken a shining to us. He came over and told us that we had picked bad seats (too close to the fence) and that the fans might come crushing down and punch us; needless to say, we moved over. One nice thing about sporting events here is you can bring in food; Erik had rugby practice until early afternoon but in return for saving his seat he brought in a 3 liter bottle of Coke and 40 dumplings from our favorite Chinese restaurant, which was the perfect greasy meal/snack. This stadium is set up much like the coliseum, where it is just one tier and quite wide. By game time, I don’t think I have ever seen a more electrified crowd. EVERYONE was in yellow Ecuador jerseys. It was as loud as or louder than a game in the Allen Fieldhouse, and this was an open-air stadium, not a limestone building. Ecuador lost 2-1 on a penalty kick in stoppage time, which is too bad because they really did play well. The fans, which had been so electric for the game, were not happy. They probably threw bottles on the field for half an hour after the game. Our friend, the joker, came to the rescue. We had great seats, probably 5 rows up from the corner of the field. He and his friends told us to just sit down and wait, and eventually as the stadium cleared out put us in a single file line and marched us out of the stadium to a relatively clear spot in the parking lot outside. We took an uneventful public transport ride home.
I spent the past two nights watching Benecio del Torro's "Che," the epic two part film that came out recently. Recuerdas, I don't do history, but I thought they were great movies and a great introduction to the kind of terrain that is in Cuba and Bolivia (I guess, and Bolivia isn't very high on my list of places to be sure to go to while I'm here). Put them at the top of your netflix queue. And that is my free time recently; on to programs.
Everything is running pretty smoothly. Adult (and teen) English continues to have people inscribe. I don’t know if my teaching has improved any, but we are definitely getting better at doing in-class evaluation of the material taught. We gave our first quiz Wednesday (which, at an hour and over pretty much everything we have covered, was much closer to a test) which will hopefully be a useful tool in evaluating our teaching. We still lack a good curriculum though; I have been fabricating lessons as we go along. While empowering to me, I worry the class lacks continuity. At least we have three heads planning the classes, which are a real asset to designing evaluations, vocabulary, worksheets, and a song of the day (all of which we have every class; two hours is a long session). I also have some leads to more permanent curriculum we can use now and in the future, hopefully they will pan out. Stay tuned. Originally we planned to have a one week break between classes (which would occur next week) but because of the week we will get off at Thanksgiving, we are just going to roll straight into the next one.
Art is art. The kids love it. We are about shin-deep into “Fun with Shapes Month” after a successful “Animals Month.” I really do hope this month will be a good way break down some of the barriers to creativity and rampant copying we see; so far we have had mixed success on this front. On the past Thursday we had our first paint project. Sonia and I cut potatoes into basic shapes, which they were supposed to use to draw more complete pictures like rubber stamps. They had a lot of fun stamping, but we didn’t get many complete pictures. They were also done 20 minutes into our hour class. Luckily, we could just send them back to the library, but it was still a definite learning experience. However, we spent about triple the amount of time setting up and cleaning than the kids did painting.
I still see big things in the near future for Microfinance (sadly, I also say this about Vanderbilt football). We had the training for the business class all set up, and it fell through on CIDE’s part (recruiting was “complicated”). However, we have the next class set up for the 26th. I fully expected the first class to fall through, working with another organization. However, I also expect this one to go through. Erik and I also plan to start shadowing/volunteering with EPV one morning a week. We have brought up the idea with them and they were okay with it, so it is about time for us to set that up for real. I also need to start my search for additional funding and grant writing.
First Quarter reports on program progress were due last week. I drew the short straw and got to write the reports for all three programs, which really wasn’t all that bad. It is much easier to write 15 single-spaced pages of what I have done than it is to write five double-spaced pages about the syntax of Donne’s sonnets or study for one math test. And fear not, reader, I made those reports about as sassy as you can get away with for an actual report with an actual organization. Bibi and I also spent some time last week going over the metrics we collect and the metrics we should collect to evaluate our program effectiveness. We certainly clarified and streamlined what we collect, and hopefully these will be useful changes for years to come.
I was fielded a great question recently of "How did Ecuadorian's react to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize," which is a great question; keep them coming. The honest answer is I don't really know. There was a short article in the paper Saturday (it made front page and continued on) with a great picture of Obama running in suit and tie with an American flag in the background. I will continue to keep asking people about it until I feel like I have enough to make a general response for an entire country, but until then I will simply remark that I do not believe it will be as big of an issue here is it will in America. Did you know that Ecuador was on the road to insolvency before it got an injection from the Inter-American Development Bank?
And that is way more than you could possibly bring up in polite conversation. Luckily, I can simply refer people to here. I only have three grad school applications left, of which I think I will submit two this week (hopefully) and the third STILL hasn’t released theirs yet. Hopefully, once I submit these I will have more time to explore Quito, learn to play the Mandolin, and write blog posts.
Chao,
Chet
Song of the Blog: “Bandera de Manos” by Juanes
I left you last the night before we had our retreat at Sierra Azul, in the jungle. Well, technically Sierra Azul is in the transitional period between the highlands and the rainforest, “el bosque.” Its not quite rainforest, but hopefully I will see that too in the months to come. I have never been in a place so luscious. On our hike, I could only see between five and twenty feet off either side of the trail, depending on how close we were to the river we crossed several times. The lodge itself was great; if you are looking for a secluded place to spend a weekend in the bosque in Ecuador I recommend Sierra Azul. They have a huge recreation room, with a fireplace and couches (to read and play catchphrase), large tables (to play card games), a pool table, foosball table, ping pong, and a dart board. The rooms themselves are cabin-esque, and comfortable, if rugged-natural looking. They have hot water, and I mean hot water; the kind that you have to mix with cold water to make it bearable. This was a great treat after showering with electric shower heads (read: widowmakers) since arriving in Ecuador. The whole place is also run on generators, which makes it bright and inviting until they turn the generators off around 22h30.
.JPG)
I had been informed beforehand that my huge, American feet would be too big for any rain boots they had for us to wear at Sierra Azul. That wasn’t really a surprise, because I’m just too big for this country in general. So, I brought the pair of Merrell “jungle moccasins” (slip on shoes) that I had picked up in the adoption corner earlier this summer, intending to hike in and ruin those if need be. However, after the girls came back from a short hike Friday, they told me that rubber boots were a necessity. Fernando, our guide, thought hiking in these slip-on shoes was also a terrible idea. In a move of desperation, I brought out my chacos and asked if they would be better, and they passed the test. So, while everyone else was in knee-high rubber boots (or tennis shoes and hiking socks in Erik’s case) I walked 13 km through the jungle in sandals. It was muddy. Crazy muddy. At least about every time it went from soothing to uncomfortable, we would cross a river and I would get to rinse off. But overall, the hike was great. The waterfall was gorgeous, my feet held up, and I think it’s a pretty unique experience to walk that far with such exposed feet.
Mike and I joined an Ecuadorian soccer league (most of the girls joined too, but we play on different teams, so I will keep the coverage to me for now). Some of the taxi drivers in Conocoto we have gotten closer to invited us to play. Men’s games are on Saturday; the specific time changes. Our team is part of the liga deportiva “Club Football Brazil,” which has its fields up at punte tres on the autopista (this will all make sense when you come visit). It isn’t the nicest of facilities, but it is already growing on me. I play on equipo Rumiñahui. It’s a family team, with several generations all playing together. The rest of the team isn’t incredible, but they are better than I am. I got to play about 30 minutes in the second half yesterday, and it was rough. I have been running (a little) to get in shape for soccer and the mountains I want to hike, and I apparently have a lot more to do. They ran me ragged. But the team was nice about my performance, and hopefully I will get better as time progresses. It is certainly a unique way to spend some time on the weekends while I am here.
Another big activity I have recently attended was the Ecuador-Uruguay World Cup Qualifier last weekend (Oct 10). Ecuador lost 2-1. They then lost to Chile on Wednesday, so they will not be in the 2010 World Cup. But just because we lost didn’t mean it wasn’t worth going. I bought my ticket for $13.50 off of the old PDs, who had bought a package. On game day, tickets were about $35 for general admission (which were were in). Still, $35 for international sports-play? Sounds like a deal to me, even though I am no longer even willing to pay $1.50 for a DVD.
The game was at 5pm. Our Ecuadorian friend told us to leave the house by 10am, which we did more or less. The Ecovia was closed off one stop before the stadium, so we had to get off early and clear a police checkpoint (only those with tickets were allowed in) where entire blocks were fenced off before the stadium. The security line for our section of general was about two blocks long, and it was pretty slow moving, but we were still in the stadium by 12, where we then got to wait for 5 hours with the same three songs about Ecuador playing. Here is another example of the type of inefficiency that makes me want to pull my hair out (read: making me spend 1.5 hours physically going and paying the water bill in cash), perhaps if all of the seating wasn’t general admission so much time from all the fans would not have been wasted. But the time passed, and we even made friends with the people sitting by us. One man had his face painted like the joker; Mike asked to have his picture taken with him in the security line and he must have taken a shining to us. He came over and told us that we had picked bad seats (too close to the fence) and that the fans might come crushing down and punch us; needless to say, we moved over. One nice thing about sporting events here is you can bring in food; Erik had rugby practice until early afternoon but in return for saving his seat he brought in a 3 liter bottle of Coke and 40 dumplings from our favorite Chinese restaurant, which was the perfect greasy meal/snack. This stadium is set up much like the coliseum, where it is just one tier and quite wide. By game time, I don’t think I have ever seen a more electrified crowd. EVERYONE was in yellow Ecuador jerseys. It was as loud as or louder than a game in the Allen Fieldhouse, and this was an open-air stadium, not a limestone building. Ecuador lost 2-1 on a penalty kick in stoppage time, which is too bad because they really did play well. The fans, which had been so electric for the game, were not happy. They probably threw bottles on the field for half an hour after the game. Our friend, the joker, came to the rescue. We had great seats, probably 5 rows up from the corner of the field. He and his friends told us to just sit down and wait, and eventually as the stadium cleared out put us in a single file line and marched us out of the stadium to a relatively clear spot in the parking lot outside. We took an uneventful public transport ride home.
I spent the past two nights watching Benecio del Torro's "Che," the epic two part film that came out recently. Recuerdas, I don't do history, but I thought they were great movies and a great introduction to the kind of terrain that is in Cuba and Bolivia (I guess, and Bolivia isn't very high on my list of places to be sure to go to while I'm here). Put them at the top of your netflix queue. And that is my free time recently; on to programs.
Everything is running pretty smoothly. Adult (and teen) English continues to have people inscribe. I don’t know if my teaching has improved any, but we are definitely getting better at doing in-class evaluation of the material taught. We gave our first quiz Wednesday (which, at an hour and over pretty much everything we have covered, was much closer to a test) which will hopefully be a useful tool in evaluating our teaching. We still lack a good curriculum though; I have been fabricating lessons as we go along. While empowering to me, I worry the class lacks continuity. At least we have three heads planning the classes, which are a real asset to designing evaluations, vocabulary, worksheets, and a song of the day (all of which we have every class; two hours is a long session). I also have some leads to more permanent curriculum we can use now and in the future, hopefully they will pan out. Stay tuned. Originally we planned to have a one week break between classes (which would occur next week) but because of the week we will get off at Thanksgiving, we are just going to roll straight into the next one.
Art is art. The kids love it. We are about shin-deep into “Fun with Shapes Month” after a successful “Animals Month.” I really do hope this month will be a good way break down some of the barriers to creativity and rampant copying we see; so far we have had mixed success on this front. On the past Thursday we had our first paint project. Sonia and I cut potatoes into basic shapes, which they were supposed to use to draw more complete pictures like rubber stamps. They had a lot of fun stamping, but we didn’t get many complete pictures. They were also done 20 minutes into our hour class. Luckily, we could just send them back to the library, but it was still a definite learning experience. However, we spent about triple the amount of time setting up and cleaning than the kids did painting.
I still see big things in the near future for Microfinance (sadly, I also say this about Vanderbilt football). We had the training for the business class all set up, and it fell through on CIDE’s part (recruiting was “complicated”). However, we have the next class set up for the 26th. I fully expected the first class to fall through, working with another organization. However, I also expect this one to go through. Erik and I also plan to start shadowing/volunteering with EPV one morning a week. We have brought up the idea with them and they were okay with it, so it is about time for us to set that up for real. I also need to start my search for additional funding and grant writing.
First Quarter reports on program progress were due last week. I drew the short straw and got to write the reports for all three programs, which really wasn’t all that bad. It is much easier to write 15 single-spaced pages of what I have done than it is to write five double-spaced pages about the syntax of Donne’s sonnets or study for one math test. And fear not, reader, I made those reports about as sassy as you can get away with for an actual report with an actual organization. Bibi and I also spent some time last week going over the metrics we collect and the metrics we should collect to evaluate our program effectiveness. We certainly clarified and streamlined what we collect, and hopefully these will be useful changes for years to come.
I was fielded a great question recently of "How did Ecuadorian's react to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize," which is a great question; keep them coming. The honest answer is I don't really know. There was a short article in the paper Saturday (it made front page and continued on) with a great picture of Obama running in suit and tie with an American flag in the background. I will continue to keep asking people about it until I feel like I have enough to make a general response for an entire country, but until then I will simply remark that I do not believe it will be as big of an issue here is it will in America. Did you know that Ecuador was on the road to insolvency before it got an injection from the Inter-American Development Bank?
And that is way more than you could possibly bring up in polite conversation. Luckily, I can simply refer people to here. I only have three grad school applications left, of which I think I will submit two this week (hopefully) and the third STILL hasn’t released theirs yet. Hopefully, once I submit these I will have more time to explore Quito, learn to play the Mandolin, and write blog posts.
Chao,
Chet
Song of the Blog: “Bandera de Manos” by Juanes
Thursday, September 24, 2009
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
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
Friday, September 4, 2009
CIDE update and another bill story.
Buenas noches friends, family, and most importantly donors,
I wrote about paying a bill last time because I thought it was a novel experience. As I write this today, I wonder if perhaps every bill I pay here will be an experience. But in order to stick to my rigorous belief in chronological cataloguing, first I am going to tell you about team Microfinance’s meeting with CIDE Thursday morning.
I mentioned about a month ago, during that official programmatic update, that we had met with CIDE, this organization through ESPE (a local university) to run another set of small business classes. I’m pretty sure I also mentioned that they told us to call back in September, because they were about to go on vacation. Well, we waited a month and then gave them a jingle jangle on Tuesday, September 1
. They set up a meeting for 10am Thursday. The night before, Bibi, Erik, and I met to discuss what we really wanted out of this meeting. We had talked about undergoing training to be certified to teach instructors. However, we had had zero (0) luck recruiting people with college degrees or people actively seeking college degrees who wanted to take 40 hours off to do a small business training course and assumed that CIDE had done zero recruiting as well. We decided to go in asking if it was still a feasible class, but still feeling comfortable ending up simply enrolling in a small business class and taking good notes to replicate in the future.
This meeting was much less about the when/where logistics of the course to be taught and much more on the “which course?” discussion than I had expected. We actually spent most of the time talking about prices. CIDE had told us at the first meeting that they were recently turned into a public institution, which meant that they couldn’t say no to anyone but also had no funding. A professor for this course charges $15 an hour. Other than that there are some modest materials costs. The capacitación de capacitadores class would be 20 hours; 4 hours a morning 5 days a week. The simple capacitación is 40 hours, 2 weeks of four hours a day. While the following may be a readily apparent fact, the capacitación de capacitadores class would cost half as much as attending the basic small business class. While they also encourage about 15 students a class, there didn’t seem to be a lower bound as long as they get paid. I am a little hazy on this point; while I understood almost all of this meeting, I was unable to ask this question in a way they understood (which was a little embarrassing; I really did have the feeling that they would think I was a lot smarter than I was if I could just keep my mouth shut). In fact, they suggested recruiting about 20 people to lower the cost of the basic small business class.
So where are we now on these classes? The honest answer is still more up in the air than I thought we would be after this second meeting. But this meeting wasn’t exactly bad news. It sounds to me like Erik and I can get certified to train instructors for $300 and some nubbins. This sounds pretty good: it is half the time and half the cost of the other option. Sure, recruiting others is almost impossible, but if we don’t really need others for the class to happen than it doesn’t matter. Things like certificates and certification are very, very important here. Our flyers for English classes say something to the effect of “we are certified gringos” (Enseóado por licenciados nativohablantes) which makes very little sense when you think about it. The money to fund these courses is a problem either way we decide, though.
But money isn’t as big a problem as it might first sound. I’m not sure if I have said this yet, but thanks to my donors, I have actually met my fundraising goal and actually raised a little beyond. So a very, very big thank you is appropriate for all of you. We actually get a little lee-way with how any money we raise over our goal is spent (but not too much lee-way, it still has to be spent in a way that makes it a legally tax-deductible donation.) and I can think of few things more appropriate for me to spend my surplus on than paying for the training to bring small business classes to the communities I work in. And when team microfinance talked about where exactly we stood walking out of our meeting, I said just that: I think $300 is a great way for the guy who came down really interested in microfinance and small business classes to be trained in useful small business class techniques (Erik can come too; and actually, anyone else we can find who is interested in this class). This sounds like a pretty reasonable game plan (estrategia). It hinges on two major factors: this being a reasonable (and legal) way to use my surplus, and CIDE saying “sure, all we really care about is your money, two is great!” I think we can win this one, but there is no telling right now. But the bottom line is I think the class that will make us more qualified in half the time for half the money is probably the better deal. Stay tuned for the next exciting segment of small business.
I returned home to the house with mixed feelings about our meeting with CIDE, but still overly optimistic. There were two surprises waiting for me when I got home: Seth was home from the Galapagos and there was a $305 water bill on the table. It was great to see Seth again, and he had only been gone a week. I have several phrases, in both English and Spanish, to describe a $300 water bill, and none of them are blog appropriate. Water is cheap here. How, on Earth, could we owe $300?
Well, as it turns out, we didn’t pay last month (worst bill transition ever, right? I know, I’m thinking the same thing. At least I know phone and electricity were, in fact, taken care of.) when we consumed out record high of 124m3 of water (up 40% from our previous high in the 80s). Tack on a late fee to a $130 bill, add 200m3 of consumption this month (whoops) and a $50 charge for wastewater and some other small taxes and you end up at around $300. You also have a bill that needs to be paid immediamente so you don’t have your water shut off (which trust me, in this house would not be nearly as traumatizing as losing internet access). After stressing out about this even though I have very little to do with it (arguably, less than 1/10 when you factor in all the old PDs and all our August guests) and even fewer tools at my disposal to fix this though ways other than paying, we talked to some of our Ecuadorian friends and came to the conclusion that this was, in fact, too high.
So this morning Bibi and I went to Triangulo (a town over, though you couldn’t really tell) to pay this bill. I left the house with $345 in cash and a knife, met up with a Bibi, and took a taxi to Triangulo. The house binder had pretty clear directions on how to find the place; incidentally it is the store in the mall closest to broken change machine number two from my last hunt for bus change. As a quick aside, the change machine was very much in working order this time and while we waited to talk to a desk worker about our bill (about 45 min), I was able to successfully turn 5 twenties into a substantial weight in my bag. When we finally got up to the desk worker, she also agreed with us that the bill was way too high. They are going to send someone out to our house sometime on Monday to examine the meter. The report should be filed by Thursday morning. I’m going to go back Friday to see what the haps is and probably pay them a substantial chunk of change (I‘ll actually pay them in 20s, change is too useful here). In any case, we have until Sept 14 before they shut our water off, so no big deal right?
As a final observation about this experience, I don’t know just how long you have been able to pay a bill without going to an independent location in
I also bought some plants for my room. I feel like they go a long way towards lightening up the mood. I’ve gone ahead and attached pictures now in case something happens to them. And yes, the big one is planted in a bucket. It was WAY cheaper than buying a pot. I think we are going to hike Pichincha tomorrow.
Chao,
Chet
Song of the Blog: “Not a Drop of Rain,” by Robert Earl Keen.
The rainy season should start any day now.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Life is different here...
Buenas Noches Friends, Family, and most importantly Donors,
Sometimes, other than the fact that everyone speaks Spanish, it is hard to remember that I am living in a place wildly different than where I grew up. Other days, it is painfully obvious. I have two stories about that for you now.
MPI ran a medical clinic in our community this past Friday and Saturday partnered with an organization called Healthechildren (pronounced healthy children) and Aliñambi. The five girls who compose the medical part of this year’s set of Program Directors worked their tails off to get ready for this: meetings to plan how the clinic would be run, making t-shirts, staying up illustrating Ecuadorian food pyramids and preparing charlas (read: talks) on brushing and flossing. We (being the non-medical PDs) had more to do as well, though ours wasn’t as much fun: we had more cooking and cleaning, more library time, time spent advertising the clinic on busses (Erik and I can put a flyer on the interior of a bus on average every three minutes), and fewer hands to go around for the summer camp in the mornings. Overall, with all their hard work the clinic seemed to go really well. I spent some of Friday afternoon and some of Saturday morning being around to help facilitate things and keep children entertained. Friday there were no children, so Mike and I kicked the soccer ball around and solved a 300 piece puzzle (which in Spanish is referred to as a “broken head”). Saturday morning there were a lot more kids, and I got to play 3v4 soccer with them. Two months in, and the air is still pretty thin up here at 9000 feet if you are going to try to run around. My team lost 4 to 5, but I promise you it was only because I let them win. I also got to spend a little time Saturday morning helping in the pharmacy.
This brings me to the first thing you can’t do in the states: administer prescription medication without at least being a pharmacy tech. The clinic was staffed with actual doctors. The pharmacy was stocked with actual medications, some of which were labeled “donated, not for prescription in the
The second thing is paying the bills. I understand that my bill paying experience in life is really quite limited. I pay most of my meager number of bills online, whether I’m at home, at school, in
We play by different rules in
So cash it is. Well, cash is legal tender for all debts public and private in both the
Talk about luck, it is only about a 15 minute walk with $100 in cash on me up to the nearest Banco Pichnicha. The line was the shortest I have ever seen inside there, with the line of people only extending to the end of the velvet ropes that swerve drunkenly around the first half of the lobby. It only took about half an hour to get up to the window. The only eventful thing that happened in my wait was my realization that one of the security guards had a picture of the Virgin Mary over his heart in his little clear picture-holder. It was probably for the best, because that vest looked neither bullet nor stab proof. I left an awful lot of blanks on that deposit slip (efectivo) blank, but the teller said she had everything she needed from me. And that is how you pay a bill in
Don’t get me wrong, I like the leniency in bill pay here in
As a further quick update, the Microfinance team (read: Erik, Chet, and Bibi) will meet with CIDE Thursday to iron out the details on us becoming certified to train small business class instructors. Hopefully it will go well. The first art class will probably make egg crate caterpillars (next Tuesday).
Chao,
Chet
Song of the Blog: “Punk Rock Princess” by Something Corporate
PS: That is a picture of the monument at Mitad del Mundo (read: Equator). Its not technically on the Equator, its actually off by about 200m, but you can't blame them for giving it the old college try.
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