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...