What you will not find in the US

I have 4 days left in Bolivia before I return to the United States. While I have gotten accustomed to a lot of things here, I am writing this blog to remind myself of what I won´t see when I return:

· A ten year old kid waiting on me at a restaurant: This has happened a half a dozen times by now—I tell the kid what I want and then he runs back to the kitchen to tell his parents who are cooking. The even weirder part is giving him money.

· Almost no airport security on a domestic flight: I splurged a couple of days ago and chose a 45 minute flight over a 16 hour bus ride. When I went to board the plane, I did not walk through any metal detectors or security. A security person looked through one of the two pockets in my bag, and no one checked what was in my pants or coat pockets.

· A fifty year old woman shoveling a pile of rocks wearing a long skirt and dress shoes: I have no idea why she was shoveling these rocks into a wheel barrel, but this would have been backbreaking labor for a fit twenty year old guy.

· No change, period: I tried to buy 3 mandarins the other day at a market, which cost about 15 cents. All I had was a 75 cent piece (5 bolivianos), and no one would sell me mandarins because they did not have enough change. After being rejected from five different ladies, I gave up.

· A 13,000 foot mountain bike descent in a single day: I rode from 15,500 feet, and below freezing, to 2,500 feet and 80 degree weather, where we spent the latter half of the day enjoying the warm weather by the pool.

· A seven dollar filet mignon wrapped in bacon

The Evils of Silver

Potosi, a Bolivian town colonized by Spain, has one of the most depressing histories that I have heard of. The town´s 120,000 inhabitants live at over 13,000 feet in constantly cold weather, strong winds, and an overcast sky. The only reason why the town exists is because there happens to be a huge mountain filled with silver, zinc, and other precious elements close by.

When the Spanish discovered silver in 1546, the city swelled to a population of over 200,000 and became the largest city in the southern hemisphere. The Spanish, eager to collect as much silver as possible, enslaved the indigenous people. The locals were forced to work in the mines for up to four months without ever seeing fresh air. They were dying by the thousands from a combination of dangerous labor conditions, mercury poisoning in the silver processing, and asbestos and silicon poisoning in the mines. To replace the dying workforce, the Spanish began importing up to 2,000 African slaves annually in 1608. The method proved effective, and after 200 years of forced labor in the mines, the Spanish had extracted over 45,000 tones of pure silver.

Now, the local people have formed cooperatives to work together to extract valuable minerals from their mountain. Fortunately, they all work voluntarily and are no longer enslaved. However, the working conditions have barely changed in 500 years. Men start working as young as 13 or 14 years old, and they work for less than $180 a month. They work in temperatures up to 105 degrees and breathe asbestos and silicon dust. To filter the dust and supply energy, the miners stuff over 100 coca leaves (the plant that makes cocaine) into their mouth at a time. They also smoke a special type of cigarette to get the bad air out of their lungs. Apparently, neither of these methods is very effective, as few miners live to see their 50^th birthday.

Hiking the Inca Trail

The Inca Trail is the famous trail that weaves through the Sacred Valley in Peru and ends in Machu Picchu. It takes four days of backpacking to complete the trail, and along the way are ruins of smaller Incan towns that supported the trekkers over five hundred years ago. My family arrived in Peru two weeks ago to do the trek with me.

I don’t want to mislead anyone when I say backpacking, so let me be more explicit. We had eight porters and a guide to help carry all of our stuff. We ate three course hot lunches every day with a table, chairs, and dining room tent. The porters woke us up in the morning with hot tea in our tents and hot pans of water to wash our hands and face. They rolled up our sleeping bags, packed up our tents, and ran to our lunch and dinner spots with their 55 pound packs in order to have everything ready before we arrived. “Backpacking” the Inca Trail was by far the most luxurious part of my time in South America.

However, the trail was no walk in the park. We were hiking 10 miles a day and climbed up to almost 14,000 feet, which is not a light day for a family activity. In addition, I persuaded my parents that we did not need to hire extra porters to carry our stuff, so I ended up carrying two sleeping bags, two pads, all of my mom’s clothes, and half of our snacks on my back. On day two, one of the porters was curiouos and lifted up my backpack during a break. He came over, shook my hand, and congratulated me on making it so far.

The Incas were a civilization that performed technological feats that we still cannot do today. They built homes and temples without using mortar—instead they carved each rock into the perfect shape so it stacked neatly on top of the next. In addition, some stones were so big that today, with all of our technology, we have to break the stones into smaller bits to move them. They built models of cities, experiented with farming different crops in different altitudes, and constructed fountains, drainage, and irrigation systems. Their buildings could withstand earthquakes and the ground sinking underneath. And they did all of this without a written language. 500 years later, with no maintenance, their buildings are still standing.

The Incas were only a couple hundred years behind the Europeans, which in the sceme of human evolution is nothing. The Spaniards wiped out most of their culture when they came to conquer South America. Fortunately, for the Incas and for us, Machu Picchu was never found. To this day, it remains 75% intact and remains one of the best insights on earth of an extinct civilization. Hiking the Inca Trail and ending in Machu Picchu was like going back and experiencing their civilization, and it is a trip that no one should miss.

Lifeless Volcan Cotopaxi

At 19,347 feet there is half of the oxygen than sea level. Nothing lives. Winds are at least 40 miles an hour. The cold seeps into your bones. My friend Tyler and I found ourselves standing on top of Volcan Cotopaxi at this height over two weeks ago after one of the most difficult journeys of my life.

Because of the high elevation, we began a series of acclimization days to prepare our body and lungs for the big day. For those interested, I gave a day by day account for the days leading up at the bottom of the blog. For everyone else, my story begins at 15,800 feet, at 11:00PM, and after 4 hours of "sleep" in the base camp.

We were woken up by our guide. Ty and I slippped out of our sleeping bags and tried not to wake the 40 other people that were attempting Cotopaxi that day. We ate breakfast, went to the bathroom as many times as we could, packed our gear, and by 12:10AM we were out the door. With headlamps on, we began the long, slow slog up the volcano. After an hour of hiking in pitch black, we got to the snow line. We stopped quickly to put on our crampons and rope together. At this height, nothing lived. Snow, wind, cold, and darkness was all we could see and feel. Stopping to eat, drink, or rest was not an option.

Two hours in we found an ice cave, and we needed the rest. We giddley crawled into the ice cave on our hands and knees, and we celebrated the warmth by chomping on gorp, chugging water, and peeing in the corner. After our rest, we trodged along for two more hours until our guide found an ice wall. Our moods were not so celebratory. We crouched next to the ice wall, huddled together for warmth, and ate and drank as fast as we could. Our nalgenes were beginning to freeze. My body started to shiver uncontrollably as it would every time we stopped all the way to the top. In four hours of hiking and climbing up snow, we had climbed to 18,700 feet, almost 3,000 feet of progress. With only 650 feet till the summit, we were feeling pretty good.

They say the last 600 feet are the toughest. The volcano charges straight up, with slopes at a constant 45 degrees. The wind howls. The air feels empty without oxygen. We moved slowly. Take a step. Rest five seconds. Take another step. Rest five seconds. Any unexpected movement, a little slip, a fall, or turning to talk to Tyler, would require a thirty second rest. I was fighting a balance between dissiness, nausea, and slowly putting one foot in front of the other. The wind knocked me over a couple of times. At times I was crawling on my hands and knees.

After two more hours, Ty and I tackled the last 600 feet. We couldn´t believe it. I took my camera out for a picture, and it was so cold that the battery died almost instantly. We got up just in time for sunrise. I would like to say the view was amazing, but Cotopaxi happened to be in the middle of a cloud. We celebrated, looked around, and then quickly started our decent down.

In the light, we were able to see what we had climbed up. We walked over bridges of snow with huge cravasses on either side. Walls of ice rose up to one hundred feet. There were holes in the ground that dropped down to what seemed like the bottom of the earth, and the ice on the sides looked green and blue from the sky. After less than two hours, we were safetly back at the refugio, and celebrated with beers at 15,800 feet at eight in the morning.

Of the fourty people that tried to climb Cotopaxi that day, only 7 people made it to the top. Ty and I were the only foreigners. It proved to be an unforgettable experience, and I am already thinking about my next mountain to climb.

Our acclimization days:

Day 1: We climbed Rucu Pichincha, a volcano at 15,400 feet. We took a tram just outside of Quito to 13,400 feet, so we were able to do the climb in under five hours. When we got to the top, we stayed for 50 minutes to try to get used to the oxygen for as long as possible. We got great views of Quito and it was an easy, non technical hike. There were a couple of out of shape locals who tried trading us their whisky for our water about an hour up, and unsurprisingly they did not make it.
Night 1: Slept at Otavello, 9,300 feet, which was a small town outside of Quito known for its markets and beautiful surroundings. We woke up the next morning, toured the markets, and went on a two hour up and twenty minute down mountain bike ride.
Night 2: Slept in PapoGuyo, a hostal run by our tour company at 10,500 feet. They gave Ty and I the option of camping outside or sharing the matrimonial room...
Day 3: We climbed Volcan Illinizas with a guide, a volcano at 16,800 feet. While the climb was relatively non technical, we needed a guide to keep it that way. There was some very tricky route navigation that we would not have been able to figure out with the best contour map. Volcan Ilinizas was the highest I had ever climbed.
Night 3: Immediately after Illinizas, we jumped in a car and drove to Quilotila, a small community of 150 people and at 13,000 feet. We slept right next to a crater with a lake in the middle so we could expore it the next day. Look for Quilotila in a future post.

Night 4: We did not think PapoGuyo, at 10,500 feet, was high enough, so we were driven to the bottom of Volcan Illinizas to camp at 12,800 feet. They dropped us off at the base of a mountain with a tent and sleeping bags, and Ty and I were able to stay warm until they picked us up the next morning.
Day 5: After getting all of our gear (ice ax, crampons, boots, and snow pants), we met our guides and went to lunch. After lunch, we were driven to the base of Cotopaxi, as far as cars could go, at 14,800 feet. We hiked with heavy backpacks (Ty and I carried 5 liters of water, 6 liters of gatorade, and 4 beers before counting the rest of our gear) to the refugio, or base camp, at 15,800 feet. After an hour of hiking, we made it to the refugio around 3PM. After claiming our matresses and unpacking, we began to eat. We ate everything in front of us and drank tea until dinner at 6:30, where we ate more. By 7:30PM, we tried going to bed, as we would have an early start the next morning.

Volunteers in the Bull Pitt?

Tyler and I took a night bus to Quito, and at 8:30AM we arrived well rested and ready to tour the city. After running around the city all day finding as many churches to see and Basilicas and hills to climb, we stumbled upon a semi free bull fight that night. Although these fighters were amateurs, we were constantly surprised how close they could get the bull to goring them. It was a great event with the community, and we thought we really learned something about the culture.

After all of the fighters had their chance with the bulls, the announcer started to wrap things up. He said that the bull fighting was over, but then he asked for volunteers. Ty and I got ready to get up and leave, but after looking around, we saw that not one person in the audience was planning on leaving early. Okay, so the volunteer thing must be pretty intertaining, but what could it be?

The announcer got two teams of five guys each to volunteer. One team was the jovenes, aged from 20-35, and the other team was the viejos, men from 35-50. They stood at opposite ends of the ring, and they set up two sets of cones like they were about to stay for a soccer match. Ty and I thought about leaving again, but everyone in the audience remained in their seats. The announcer then did something that shocked the hell out of me. Remember, we are not in the United States, so there is no such thing as liability here. The announcer brought out a bull with the volunteers in the ring! The game was for the volunteers to try and get the bull to chase them through their goal. The team that could get the bull to run through their goal the most would win.

What happened next was one of the scarriest and most hilarious moments in my Ecuador experience so far. We watched grown men run out into the ring, try to attract the bull´s attencion, and then run back to safety behind the boards as fast as they could. We watched the bull run after unarmed men, and if the bull was close to gorring a guy in the butt, we would watch the man leap over the wall and fly headfirst into safety on the other side. Just imagine a 40 year old, slightly overweight, Ecuadorian man running as fast as he can with a bull on its heals and then soaring over a wall only to land face first on the other side. Remarkably, no one got seriously injured, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

After six weeks

After six weeks, I felt like Montañita was home. After six weeks, I could no longer wake up without my mom knocking on my door. I started to expect breakfast with fresh squeezed juice and coffee. I began to think that men really were incompetent in the kitchen. After six weeks my stomach realized that the butter, grease, and sugar diet was not going to stop. My skin got used to the salt water every afternoon and sometimes cold showers afterwards. My brain was thinking in Spanish more and more.

After six weeks, I had made many close friends, between profesoras, a couple foreigners, and my family. And after six weeks, it was surprisingly difficult to leave. I took all of the profesoras out for lunch on my last day, and they all promised me that I could practice my Spanish on Facebook when I got back to Los Estados Unidos. But to leave my family was the most difficult. Statements like "you should change your travel plans to stay in Montañita longer" or "when you come back, find our family, and you are always welcome to stay in our house (for free)" made it hard to say goodbye. The time eventually came, and after hugs and tears, my mom Belhika did her last motherly thing. She waited on the street with me, flagged down a local bus, helped me put my bag inside, hugged me goodbye, and put me on the bus. Next time I find myself in Ecuador, I will see my family again.

Fortunately, my close friend Tyler had come to Montañita two days before to begin our adventure in Ecuador. So off we were, two young "adults" with all of the clothes on our back and no plans. The next two weeks proved to be quite an adventure. Ten different places in the first 10 nights, a bullfight, over 19,300 feet in elevation, volcanos, camping, biking, bird watching, kayaking, go-carting, waterfalls, and plenty of local bus rides kept us entertained over the next several weeks. Read the next posts for the highlights of the trip. I apologize for the mast posting all at once, so take your time over the next couple of weeks to read them one at a time. I won´t have time to write again for a couple more weeks after this.

Night Fishing

Plenty of the locals live off of the sea. They head out in their fishing boats just before dark, and if the fishing is good, they fish all night and come back at 6AM in the morning. Boats of all sizes go out-- from the size of a college sailboat to a small pirate ship (and they look like them too). I was bored and looking for a cultural experience a week ago, so I weasled my way onto one of these boats. I arranged everything through a friend of a friend in Spanish, and I really had no idea what to expect.

I showed up in a tiny pueblo at 5PM looking for Don Pedro. I was the only gringo in the town, and as I walked down the street heads turned. Apparently everyone knew to look out for me, and almost immediately after getting off the local bus, I found a friend and he took me to Don Pedro. After an intense argument with an older man about how homosexuals are normal people and should be treated normally (I have no idea how the convo started), Don Pedro pulled me away for us to go fishing.

After seeing the boat, I debated leaving immediately. It was an all wooden boat that was a little smaller than a rowboat. It was sitting on the beach. And it had no motor. We pushed the boat as close as we could to the water, got in, waited for a big wave to come, and then pushed off the sand and rowed furiously. Thankfully, after a couple minutes of rowing, we got to a boat a little bigger, sturdier, and with a motor. For those of you on the NU Sailing Team, the boat was about the same size as the crashboat we use for practice.

The four of us motored out to sea, anchored, and waited till dark. Once everything was pitch black, they lit lamps on either side of the boat and watched the fish come to the light. Through a combination of fishing with fishing line (no poles) and a net at the end of a stick, we caught about 20 small fish from 7PM to 10PM. At 10PM, we moved locations to fish for the bigger fish with the smaller fish. If the fishing is good, they can catch 20-30 big fish, between one and a half and three feet long. When this happens, the boat is literally full of fish, and they stay out until 6AM. That night the fishing was horrendous. We only caught three large fish, and by 3AM we gave up and motored in. I slept that night on the guys couch, woke up early the next morning, hitchhicked back to Montañita, and made it home 15 minutes before my 8AM class.

These guys do this every night. With a little bit of gas, some line, and bait for small fish, these guys can go out there and catch enough big fish to make a living. While it was a great experience, I am very grateful that it is not my nightly routine.

How to not get pregnant

After living in Montañita for five weeks, I thought I knew enough about the people that nothing would suprise me. I was wrong. After talking with one of the profesoras, I learned some shocking "safe" sex practices that are widely believed and people still use. All of the practices listed below are used by at least one friend of the profesoras, despite their repeated warnings.

• Immediately after sex, jump up and down several times so the sperm cannot swim up and impregnate the woman
• Immediately after sex, scoop out the semen before one impregnates the woman
• Pull out before ejaculation
  

What is more surprising is what some of the profesoras believe about condoms. Because condoms can break, they are not an effective way to prevent pregnancy. They are only useful in preventing STDs and therefore are not commonly used in Ecuador. Unfortunately, it was surprisingly difficult to argue against this, and their opinions remain unchanged.

Near Drowning (not me!)

Montañita is a popular place for tourists from Guayaquil (the capital of Ecuador) to visit. For less than $40 per person, someone can get to Montañita, spend two nights here, party and hang out on the beach, and return home. That includes transportation, lodging, food, and booze, and there is quite the weekend warrior crowd. Surprisingly, not everyone that comes here knows how to swim. More surprising, people that do not know how to swim like to play in the waves. Several times a month one of these people gets picked up by a wave and taken out to sea. As far as I know, no one has died yet, but there have been plenty of close calls. Usually there are some surfers in the water and they quickly save the drowning tourists. If not, the town is so small and word spreads so quickly that a hundred people have time to run to the beach and watch the whole episode. Yesterday I was lucky enough to be on the beach, and it was a pretty funny sight. A couple surfers had saved the victim, but word had spread in the town so fast that about 15 "macho" local guys came running on to the beach to help out. Two of them stripped off their shirts and went dashing into the water like a scene from Baywatch. It didn´t matter that the victim had already been saved by surfers. When they got to her, she was already back to waist deep water, yet they dramatically carried her in.

As a side note, I tried running to the end of the beach yesterday evening. After an hour and fifteen minutes, I gave up, went to a road, and took a local bus home. Mi padre informed me over dinner that night that the beach continues at least 80 kilometers from where I started to a town called Las Salinas. I won't be running to the end any time soon.

While my family is well off, cashflow is a constant problem

I have been learning a lot more about my family as my Spanish has been improving and I have been living with them longer. Below are a couple fast facts to help understand their lives:

• University is free, but Jason had to wait three years until his family had enough money to send him. It is a $1.50 bus ride each way, five days a week, and he has to pay for computer use and food while he is there.
• Clara celebrated her 18th birthday a couple of days ago. She is the one that is five months pregnant and is with Jason, mi hermano. I made the mistake a week ago of asking when they got married.
• Clara went to the doctor because she was having problems with her stomach. She had to spend 15 dollars on medicine (I think it was a whole bunch of vitamins), and the financial tension at the table was so great that I left the table.
• A couple weeks ago Belhika asked me to borrow $20. I explained that while I wanted to help, I did not want to start that kind of a relationship with her.

I don't want to dwell on the negatives, so to end on some positive notes:

• Mi abuelo is Belhika's father. He is 90 years old and is still enjoying life. I see him wandering around town, walking on the beach, and watching the surfers.
• The family is meeting a lot of foreigners and learning about their culture through these homestays.
• A pastor from Brazil came to the local church last night. My entire family went, sat through the three hour sermon, and all said that they had learned a lot.
• Pedro enjoys his work. Belhika is always joking around with everyone. And she wears the pants in the family.

¿Where are the teachers?

On Wednesday, I finally had a class to myself. The teacher had to go to a meeting, so instead of leaving the kids unsupervised, she told me to go entertain them. With no lesson plan, no idea of what these kids already knew, and no warning, I was standing in front of 20 seventh graders who were not sure if I was supposed to be there. I first asked them what they wanted to learn. From the kids that were paying attention, the general consensus was that they wanted to learn about animals. Great, I had something to go with. I shut the door, explained to the kids that I would be their English teacher for the next hour, and was going to teach them about animals. Remarkably, everyone got quiet and listened to me.

Once I had their attention, I needed to keep it. So I told them that we were going to play a game, but first I needed to make sure they knew all of the animal names in English. What game, you may ask? I had no idea, but I knew I had some time to figure it out. I wrote 20 different animals on the board. We reviewed each animal and how to change the word from singular to plural. Try explaining why there is one mouse, but two mice, or one fish, but two fish. After I felt that most of the kids knew most of the animals, and after I thought of a game, we moved to the next stage.

The game was very simple. I asked one of the kids "what sound does a (animal name) make?" If he or she could make the right sound, s/he remained in their seat. If not, the student had to go over to the reject corner and wait until the next round. I changed the questions several times. Act like a (animal name). In English, what color is a (animal name)? Spell (animal name). If there is one (animal name), there are two....? Each time I changed the question, I wrote the new question on the board, explained it to them briefly in Spanish, and gave them several examples in English.

How well did the game go? The kids loved it. They behaved like normal American students. They learned a lot of animals. They practiced understanding words in English, which was much more difficult for them than recognizing words on a chalkboard. They worked on their spelling. They learned a couple new colors. There was very little Spanish. And after an hour and a half, I finally had to leave. I walked away from the class that day feeling like I had taught the students something and really made a difference.

Unfortunately, the kids are on holiday for the next week and a half, which only leaves me with a week left of volunteering once they come back. Hopefully I will get the classroom a couple more times without the English teacher.

Whales, Birds, and Models

On Saturday I went to a fishing village 2 hours north of Montanita and then took a 2 hour boat ride to the "Poor Man's Galapagos." The port that we launched from was in the heat of the business. The fisherman, after fishing from 6pm to 6am, returned with their nightly catch, dumped all of the fish onto the beach, and then cut it up to sell to locals. The attached picture doesn't even expain it all.

On the ride to and from the island, we saw whales. The first time we were unlucky because the whales we saw were only 14 meters long. They did jump completely out of the water less than 200 feet from the boat, so we got plenty of good views. On the way back, a pack of 6 whales decided to play with our boat. They got so close that we were forced to turn the engines off and wait so we wouldn't run them over. While these whales didn't jump out of the water, they were coming up for air less than 1 meter from the boat, and I could have jumped on one if I really wanted to!

When we got to the island, we took a guided hike around and saw a couple of different birds. One of the birds, the frigate bird, defies common sense. It lives on an island and will drown if its feathers get wet. The bird feeds exlusively on fish and must use clever and cruel ways to satisfy its hunger without touching the water. The bird plucks dead fish out of the water, snatches food from fishermen's ships, and best of all, steals food from other birds after they have eaten it. A frigate bird will find a bird that has just enjoyed a meal and, while in the air, beat him up until the bird pukes. The frigate bird gracefully picks out the bigger pieces of vomit as they are falling to the water.

Some birds, when they see a frigate about to kick its ass, fly into the water to avoid the whole scenario. This is a big mistake, as the bird cannot stay in the water forever. More frigates will come and circle the area until the bird in the water decides that he eventually has to fly home. When the time comes, he takes off, gets pummelled by the birds, pukes, and then returns to his normal business.

Besides their ruthless feeding habits, the frigate bird has an red pouch that he inflates for mating. It takes days to inflate this pouch, as he has to fill it with air and slowly stretch it like a balloon. See the attached picture-- there is one bird with a fully inflated pouch and one with a half inflated pouch. Also, look at the picture of the blue footed boobies (the birds with the blue feet)

On Sunday, I convinced 4 of my friends to rent cheap bikes and bike to a waterfall that none of us had been to. After an hour of biking, ditching our bikes, hiking for an hour and crossing about 15 rivers (or the same river 15 times), we made it to the waterfall. There was a professional model in the middle of a photo shoot (just the model and photographer), but they were nice enough to stop taking pictures long enough for us to swim and grab a photo. It will probably be the best photo of the trip-- the model jumped in the picture and the professional photographer set it up!

How Teachers Facilitate Cheating

Last week, from Monday to Friday, all students in the school had testing. I went around with the English teacher to help administer tests, answer questions, and prevent cheating. There are several problems with the English tests. The tests are written exclusively in English, and no one understands what they are supposed to do. The kids have an hour to take a fifteen minute test. Kids share erasers and pencils. Students are constantly getting up to ask teachers questions. When students finish, they remain in the classroom, walk around, talk to their friends, and help out the slow test takers. The most frusterating part is that if I was the sole teacher, I would be able to control the classroom much better, but I have to work with teachers that accept this low standard.

I have tried to explain a couple concepts to Marina, and while I have been able to communicate effectively in Spanish, and while she sometimes agrees with me, she feels uncomfortable about doing anything differently. Some of my "novel" ideas were...

• Students that don't know an answer will not benefit from more time. It just encourages them to get help from one of their peers.
  
• If several students have the same question, it is less disruptive to make an annoucement and present the question and response to the class than have to go to each student, listen to the question, and answer it 15 times (I do get better at explaining pretty quickly).
  
• Students should remain in their seats and raise their hand if they have a question. What happens is people jump up and push through the mob of students to ask her a question. It is a great opportunity to compare answers with friends as they are waiting for their questions to be answered.
• Marina should not tell students if their responses are right or not. They are pretty smart kids, and when they realize that the teacher will do this and I will not, they stop asking me for help.
• If you make a test too hard for everyone in the room, writing hints on the board is better than giving hints to some students and not others.

Fortunately, testing ended on Friday, and I will start shadowing her in the classroom again. My hope is to recruit a couple more volunteers from the school to come with me so we can break the class into small groups of five to give them more attention. Unfortunately, Marina does not want more than one volunteer at a time. We'll see what next week brings.

Look out tomorrow for whale watching, a fish market, and birds that are naughtier than pirates.

¡¿Teaching español to 200 chicos?!

First, for those that don´t know, I got a buzz 2 hours before I got on the airplane to Ecuador. It was one of the best decisions so far since it cuts my cold shower time in half. See the attached photo. The photo was taken at a port where a couple friends and I went scuba diving. And yes, all of the boats in the photo are still in use, and they took us into the middle of the ocean in one that was similar to the white boat with 3 stars. I was glad I knew how to swim. Now for the blog...

I went to the school for the first time on Thursday, and then again on Friday. The situation is a little more than overwhelming. There are around 200 kids that are divided into a whole bunch of grades and classes, like a normal school. But there is one English teacher, Marina, who pops in and out of classes for 40 minutes at a time trying to teach kids English. Depending on the grade, she makes it to their class 2-4 times a week.

There are several problems with this arrangement. First, the English teacher does not speak English. I communicate with her exclusively in español over shouting kids. Second, she has no control of the classroom. When Marina comes into the class, the normal teacher leaves to go on his or her break, and the kids go crazy. When I say loose control, you must be thinking of what happens in a normal American classroom when the teacher looses control. Let me give you some examples. It is a struggle to

• keep all of the kids in the classroom
• make sure that no one is fighting too much with anyone else
• get a child to understand you in Spanish during the chaos

And that is before we try to teach them English. In the 40 minutes of each class, we gained control of the kids for about the middle 20 minutes. During this time, most of the kids were in their seats and were not talking very loudly. However, Marina has really only been teaching for 3 months, and she is not the most organized with her lesson plans. Once the kids are listening, she does not keep their full attention for very long as she has to spend time preparing/thinking about what to teach them once they are kind of quiet.

I have a laundry list of suggestions for her that would be difficult enough to tell her constructively in English. Hopefully by the end of this week I will be able to communicate a couple in Spanish. The school has their week of testing this week, so I have been going in to help administer English tests and answer questions. Look out for the next blog about how they do/don´t prevent cheating...

¿What is Montañita?

I came down with my first stomach flu on Sunday. After a day of eating and drinking nothing but tea and water, I recovered. Due to my sickness I was not able to start volunteering or surf on Monday, but things have been worse. I did not start working in the school until Thursday because of logistical reasons, and I'll write about it in my next blog.

A couple of people have asked me to write about where I am living. Montañita is a small surfing town on the coast of Ecuador. Everything is at most 5 minutes away from everything else. I live 3 minutes walking from the ocean, and my Spanish school is on the way there. Around a thousand locals live in the vicinity, and the closest city, La Libertad, is an hour and a half away. I am constantly surprised by what Montañita does not sell- most food items, books, watches, and light bulbs. Locals are constantly taking the public bus to go to La Libertad for their grocery run. The town is a strange mix of locals that live off of the sea, international tourists on the weekends (mostly from South America), and a couple washed up hippies that are growing their dreads, walking around barefoot, and selling their crafts.

As I said in my last blog, mi madre runs a laundromat out of the kitchen. Yesterday, I made some advertisements for her to put in the Spanish school and around some of the local hostels. The family seemed really excited about the advertisements, and I spent 10 minutes before dinner explaining to them what it said. I have attached in in my email for those that are interested.

Other than that, I have been hanging out a lot with the Spanish instructors. They only speak Spanish, are all female, and are very affluent compared to their peers. They have been a fun group to hang out with. One took me surfing to a different beach yesterday, and we were the only people on the 2 mile long beach!

Hasta Luego.

Mi Familia

My family here seems to be very well off, but they work hard to make it so. My mom, Belhika, runs a laundry business out of the kitchen. We have 2 washers and 2 dryers right next to the sink and stove. She has been so successful recently that she has another woman come help her with the chores (washing clothes, cooking for the family, cleaning the house, etc.) She married the father, Pedro, when she was 15 and had her first kid at 16. Pedro is a plumber, meaning he constructs buildings and installs the water pipes. Right now, he is building a new room next to the house for the laundry machines. See the picture that I sent out in my email.

The oldest son, Jason, is in his early 20´s. On sunny days and during the tourist season, he sells clams, oysters, and other seafood on the beach. He finds them by snorkeling at 6 in the morning and grabbing them from the sea, which is somewhat dangerous when the waves are big. At night, Jason takes an hour bus ride to go to la universidad. He is married, and his wife Clara lives with us and helps around the house. I don´t think she is 20 yet, and she is 4 months pregnant. The yongest son is around 15. Mi madre has a daughter too, but she lives in Guayaquil, 3.5 hours away by bus. She cried when she told me that her only daughter left her to marry someone in Guayaquil. My American brother is 30, just finished his first year of med school, and is staying a week longer than me. We have already become really good friends. There are constantly cousins, neices and nephews, and random family members in and out of the house to watch TV or drink soda, but I honestly cannot keep track of them all.

The sun came out for the first time a couple of days ago (usually it is cloudy in the winter), and I hope that never happens again! The beach was packed. The waves were crowded. I could feel the sun burning my skin and sucking out my energy every minute. One of my friends that was in the sun all day with a rashguard and suntain lotion was as red as a lobster by the next day. Ironically, the sun makes me want to stay inside and in the shade!

I now own my own surf board, and I am still surfing every day. I got caught in my first rip tide a couple of days ago and got dragged out to sea. It took me about ten minutes to paddle back. Hopefully with more experience, I will learn to avoid them!

I finished my first week of classes, and someone hosted a party for the students and teachers. I have been working one-on-one with two different teachers every day. One teaches me grammar for two hours in the morning, and the other teaches application for two hours in the afternoon. I didn´t learn until the party on Friday night that neither of them speak English, and I was shocked! It was fun, and very difficult, to speak Spanish in a party setting with loud music and people dancing all around.

I am going to start volunteering at the local school tomorrow teaching English, so look for details in the next post.

Gringo in Montañita

I graduated from college. Wow. Less than two days later, after packing up my room, packing for Ecuador, partying with my friends, and making a quick pit stop in Atlanta, I arrived at my new home in Montañita, Ecuador, a small surfing town on the coast. The first 24 hours were a whirwind. I had two intense one-on-one Spanish classes. I rode my first waves and got thrown around by the ocean. And I spoke more Spanish than in the past 5 years combined. Now, after being here for three days, I feel like a local and a part of my new Spanish family.

Random power cuts, cold water, houses built with concrete cinder blocks, tin roofs, wild dogs, and the list goes on. When I went to Nepal, it took me three days to get over the culture shock that people in poorer countries don´t have the things that we always take for granted. But this time, everything feels strangly normal. Ecuador is in the deepest of winters, as the locals say. At night, it drops to a cool 70 degrees, and I debate wearing something other than shorts and flip flops.

I am staying with a homestay family and experiencing the most intimate details of their lives. They do not speak a word of English, so my Spanish is improving extremely rapidly. When I try to talk at the dinner table, mi madre makes everyone stop talking so I can form my thoughts and spit out a few coherent words. I call her mi madre because she has literally taken over as my mom. I did not bring my cell phone to Ecuador, which in the US doubles as my watch and alarm clock. So ironically, I have no way to keep time or wake myself up in the mornings. Imagine me not being able to keep track of time. The closest place to buy a watch is an hour and a half bus ride each way, so I´m not going to have one for a while. Every morning, mi madre wakes me up in time to eat breakfast and arrive at my Spanish school on time. She also asks if I will be home for dinner so she knows to expect me or not!

My family is huge. I have a grandpa, mom and dad, 2 brothers, a cousin, and an American brother. One of the brothers has a wife that also lives with us. And there are always cousins, nephews, and grand nephews stopping buy to hang out with the family. Mi madre already makes fun of me for asking them so many questions. Fortunately, it seems that because of the cultural differences, I can get away with asking them anything! I guess they are used to foreigners speaking very bluntly when they are learning Spanish.

I´ve been surfing every day, my Spanish is improving rapidly, and I have gotten used to the lifestyle here. Look out for the next post on details of my family to get an understanding of the typical life for a local. And I start volunteering teaching English in a local school next week!

Chao.