well
here i am...
i don´t know why it published two of the last entry. i must really be lost.
let´s see...i´m pretty much done with TEFL. tomorrow i have a grammar test, which i expect will be as easy as the first, and then finito. last thursday night was my teaching for 2 hours slot. it went well i think, or rather nothing went wrong. i felt myself learning as i went along, which is a good thing. and i was completely exhausted at the end of it, ready to collapse, which is also a good thing. it means i gave my students energy. one of my observers says she is always hungry after she teaches. tomorrow we have the goodbye party for them. thursday is our goodbye party. tonight i´m eating dinner with the ladies of the office, who have all become good friends in the past months.
oh yes, over the weekend we went out to a small town in the countryside and gave a lesson for two hours. my group did a role play in a restaurant setting and once the kids caught on they had a blast doing it and that was cool-to see them interacting and enjoying it. other than that i´m a little like, why do these people need english? it´s such a small town. the main reason is for those who work in tourism there. which is a credible reason. i don´t know...i´ve got lots of opinions on teaching english.
sunday night i said goodbye to my mom´s sister and she started to cry, which was completely unexpected. so i started to cry too. other than that i´m still trying to keep my mind as far away as possible from the thought that this is all almost done. which sometimes works.
on friday i go to saraguro and i´ll stay there until wednesday. wed i´ll catch a bus to cuenca, eat with and say goodbye to my family and then catch a bus to quito. my plane leaves early thursday morning (the 3rd).
i don´t have much else to say at the moment. i don´t know if i´ll write again before i leave. if i do, it´ll be before i leave for saraguro. so take care everyone, hope all is going well. much love.
lost
first announcement-i changed my profile so everyone can comment, not just other bloggers. i know i was told this a long time ago but it didn´t register until last week. so leave a comment. if you want. thanks!!!
today we talked about social justice and responsibility. i was so overwhelmed by the end of the lesson i couldn´t breathe. i´ve already had a million thoughts running through my head about globalization and immigration, ecuador and the united states, broken families, depressed kids, the disappearance of cultures and language, poverty, tourism, money, etc etc. plus the volcano that erupted here, tungurahua, beginning on friday i think, has affected a lot of people (only one human death so far. only, i say). the middle east, the other tsunami...and then add to that everything that we talked about today, about how we as teachers can be socially responsible, how we can integrate REAL culture talk into our classrooms (not just pilgrims, indians, and st. valentines crap but race, identity, perspective, etc) and how as teachers we affect so many lives and how as teachers of english, we especially have a role in either ignoring what´s going on the world or bringing up these topics and facilitating critical thinking, facilitating action...also our culture of consumerism and how that has affected the world, how everyone here wants "american" brands, how in the US thousands of more dollars are invested in prison inmates than in public school kids...
when i was visiting the school in an indigenous community in Saraguro, i was chatting with a group of girls (age 10) during lunch and one of the first things kids ask me (in general) is if i have a father. (¿tiene papá?) and so it went and i said yes and then we continued with this game, just me and this one girl, and i asked if she had a step-dad and she said yes. do you have a step-mom? yes. where do your mom and step-dad live? in Spain. so you live with your dad? no. where does he live? in Spain also. so who do you live with? my grandpa.
sigh...
aqui pasando la vida
TEFL continues. This week is absolutely terribly stuffed with work. So I´m writing in my blog because I´m unmotivated to finish this horrible "research" paper i started that is incoherent, disorganized, and lacking a purpose.
The trip to the Amazon was okay. It was much more jungley than the trip with the Ohio group. After getting to the Oriente, we drove half an hour by bus and then walked an hour into the jungle to get the cabins. Everything was really cool, I´m not complaining, but it was about 40 people, and just logistically speaking that causes some...problems. But the food was great, we hiked through rivers, waterfalls, jungle, and mud, so...but as much as i enjoyed it, returning to the mountains felt like coming home.
i must say i felt really weird travelling with a bunch of gringos. obviously i did it all the time with ohio, but since then i´ve gotten used to travelling by myself, to riding the national bus lines, to speaking spanish, etc. so it was weird and i´ll go ahead and be stuffy and say that i prefer travelling on my own, or at least in a small group.
yesterday we switched teaching groups and i taught the beginners. woooooooh is it different from the advanced. everything, the whole environment...you can´t say anything. for instance, to transition in the advanced, i could say things like "now that we´ve reviewed this and gotten some more practice with this structure, and covered such and such topic, we´re going to move on to blah blah." but last night, i sat there for a second and then finally just said "next topic!" it was really difficult not to just...talk. but all the same, i fell in love once again with all the students, especially the adults who are highly and intrinsically motivated to learn.
i´ve gone on about that enough...peace.
being in cuenca
well. i can say it´s a lot different from when i was here before. i realized just yesterday that i like cuenca. i do. i feel like i´ve been here forever and i feel like i actually have a life here. therefore, i like it.
this weekend i spent some quality time with my host family, namely my brother and my mom, with whom i really connect. my brother and i saw Cars, which was my first movie all in spanish (exciting!), because it was a kids movie, they dub everything instead of having subtitles. and that was cool because afterward i could explain to my brother all the cultural references in the movie, such as cow-tipping. yeah.
anyway i feel a lot more at peace since the last program. even though the actual program is a bit stressful and intensive, i´m content. i´m so happy that i´ve had the opportunity to stay longer and with my same family because i get to just continue building my relationship with them and i really feel part of the family.
i do miss being in saraguro, but feel like i´ve finally settled in to cuenca. took long enough. i´m not thinking about leaving.
on wednesday i´m going on a trip with this program to the oriente again, although a different part than where i´ve been. i´m excited, even though it´s with a really large group, which if you know me, isn´t exactly my favorite thing, it´ll be cool i think. so i won´t be writing for a week. until then!
trial by fire
is what this TEFL program is like. TEFL is teaching english as a foreign language, which yes, is different from english as a second language, or can be.
so my day-i have class from 830 to 1230 then i eat lunch, then i lesson plan usually all afternoon, then i teach from 6 to 8 pm and then we have a review session afterwards with our observer.
and this is how it´s been since day 1. that´s right, our first day of this program we met our students and the next day we were teaching. which is why i say trial by fire because they just sort of throw us into the classroom, not knowing a whole lot. at least for me, i haven´t had any of this theory, and teaching spanish for 1st graders once a week is a lot different from teaching ecuadorian advanced students of english every day.
so, classes are so-so, it´s hard to pay attention sometimes. my favorite part of all of this is talking with my students at night. and i´m learning about who i am as a teacher and discovering that i might be more comfortable in the role of "tutor" than of actual stand in front of the class teacher, although there are a thousand different ways to teach, as i´m finding out. but i ADORE my students. right now i´m teaching advanced, next week i switch to beginners, and in this class we have a range from a 14 yr old to i would guess around 45. it´s a blast getting to know them, their personalities, their lives, what they like, etc. it´s a shame we have to switch...i get attached real fast.
so that´s the program. it´s intense, which has advantages and disadvantages to it. i´m usually exhausted at the end of the day. but i know this is the right time for me to get this certificate, so...i keep at it.
the other return
i´m catching up on my blog. soon, very soon, we will be caught up.
last weekend i returned to saraguro and went to the Oriente with 4 other people from the foundation. there is a hike from Saraguro to the Oriente and they are developing this to offer to tourists so we went to the first stop in the Oriente, a tiny town called Tutupali to present the idea of community tourism to this town.
we traveled by car through Loja, in the south, and then into the oriente and took the road until we could, because then it was blocked by some machine. then we hiked down to the town and had dinner, and i discovered another delicious cheese! ecuador really has a great variety of cheese but only if you travel. for instance the cheese in cuenca, i don´t like. the cheese in saraguro, if i haven´t talked about it, i looooove and is my favorite cheese in ecuador. and now the south of the oriente contains my 2nd favorite cheese.
anyway then we had a meeting with some people of the community. for those who don´t know, community tourism is being developed by indigenous communities as a way for the community itself to participate in the tourism, and of course for themselves to get the money, although you can´t say it makes them rich. but it´s a way of sharing their way of life, their culture, and a way helping them maintain and be proud of their heritage. so you can stay with families, do activities with them, and you eat what they eat (if you want to of course) stay more or less where they stay and can see artesans, music, dance, etc. the reason i´m a fan of this is because it´s what introduced me to saraguro, and more than anything, it´s a concept of sharing life, of sharing culture.
we had the meeting, conversed for awhile, and in the morning we left. it was absolutely beautiful, everything. and i returned to cuenca, back to life here.
next entry will be about this tefl program i´m in and how i´ve been feeling here in cuenca. until later!
inti raymi
is the festival of the sun, or of the harvest. and i returned to Saraguro for a week to see and participate in this festival, after my mom had left from her visit in Cuenca.
it was about 3 and half days of festival, food, dance, music, rituals, and community. i stayed with one of the families i had stayed with before-with the father i mentioned earlier. and this was great because i got to know the family better and i just love them...there are 4 young kids and they are shy and cute and great, but opened up to me as well and i love them. and the mom is first of all, an excellent cook, and whenever she laughs at something i have to laugh, it´s contagious.
my favorite part of the festival were 2 rituals that i participated in, the first was of fire, which was very early in the morning but beautiful, and the second was a bathing ritual, which was very late at night. the water was absolutely freezing, freezing, but it really does have the cleansing effect and feels great afterwards.
after the festival ended, i spent two mornings in the school in the community. these children are beautiful!!! they are so open and well mannered and curious and it´s all part of the education this community has been developing over the years, actually based on principles some german guy brought over to Saraguro a couple decades ago. as well i worked some more in the foundation with the tourism branch.
maybe the best part of all this was my last night, although i cried a lot, my famiy made guinea pig for me, which is only for special occasions, and i learned a bit how to cook it. and then after dinner, the father told me stories, fables i mean. i love stories and i think culturally, stories are one of the most important factors in a society. first, i was happy because i could understand everything he said. but more importantly, i felt so privileged that he shared with me these andean fables that he had grown up with, and he would ask me at the end if i understood the moral, and sometimes i needed it explained :) but anyway...i can´t describe how i felt.
Saraguro has also given me another specific reason that i learned spanish. my philosophy has developed over these couple of years about learning languages and for me, learning the language is by no means the end. it is not my goal, but rather it is the way...the way to see through a culture and learn who other people are. learning spanish has let me learn about saraguro, because nobody there, thank god, speaks english, and about a people completely different than anything i would have known, and in a much more real way than from a textbook in a classroom.and for that, i am so thankful.
