Home!!!

I´m flying home on Friday! I´m really excited to see all of you, be back with my family and my dog, and eat biscuits and gravy.

I feel like I should have updated this more, but I haven´t spent much time on the internet during my stay here. When I am on the internet, I´m usually focused on investigating high-altitude cooking or PhD programs... Anyway, those are my excuses. See me in person for any details you feel like you´ve missed.

The plan for the future is to come back to Ecuador around January 10 and stay until June-August-ish, at which time I´m thinking of studying a PhD or getting a real job. A real job... eh.

This past Saturday evening we had a Thanksgiving dinner and I baked some cornbread as my contribution to the potluck.
Baking cornbread in Quito is not as simple as baking cornbread in Memphis... at least not for me. Even as a fluent Spanish speaker there are some words that just don´t come up too often and it takes living in a Spanish-speaking community to pick them up. So I spent quite a while looking up things like buttermilk and cornmeal.
After the vocabulary comes the issue of conversions. How much is a cup in the metric system? What is 425f in celsius?
Then the issue of how to bake something properly at 10,000 feet altitude. That 10,000 feet changes things. I´ve always baked at sea-level, and recipes are naturally written for sea-level, even high altitude recipes are only written for 3,000-6,000 feet!
I allowed myself enough time to bake two cornbreads, and it was a good thing. The first I overcooked because it still seemed very moist when in retrospect I should have taken it out. I learned my lesson with the second and it received lots of compliments.
I´ve also figured out chocolate chip cookies at 10,000 feet. Lucho (same person as Luis) says I could become rich selling the cookies!

Embarasada does not mean embarassed...

There are a lot of embarassing mistakes that can be easily made in Spanish... I´d like to think that after studying as long as I have I wouldn´t make them, but of course, I´d be wrong. I am far enough along to not use embarasada (pregnant) when trying to say I´m embarassed, but I do still screw things up a bit.

For example, I meant to tell Lucho (a.k.a. Luis) that I don´t have a good sense of smell, so I told him huelo mal (I smell bad). I immediately realized that I´d messed up, partially because I know better, but mostly because he sniffed me and said es cierto (that´s true).

Ecuador photo highlights

The city
The city

The Basilica


The Basilica


The Basilica


One of Ecuador´s biggest exports

Street view

My favorite kids, Eric and Melany

Cotopaxi

and definitely not least, the reason I can kind of dance, the tanguero, Luis

Ecuador highlights

Cotopaxi, the most picturesque mountain


Quito city view


Typical street in Quito


My kids, Eric and Melany


One of Ecuador´s biggest exports


and certainly not least, the reason I can kind of dance, the tanguero, Luis

Fotos

While I can´t upload the new photos from this trip just yet, I thought I´d give you some from previous trips so you could at least see the country. The full link is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/joannakendall/Ecuador

pictures and videos, ugh. And...

I might need to try a different internet café. The videos and pictures don´t want to upload to blogspot or Google pictures.

In other news, Rafael Correa (the presidente of Ecuador) prohibited the celebration of Halloween in public schools. It falls on the same day as the Día del escudo (the shield on the flag). Nobody cares about the escudo when they can dress up as witches and goblins. I´ll leave it for you to decide if it´s good or not.

It sure didn´t feel like Halloween though. I missed the Halloween party because I went to a Quinceñera. That was really fun, and interesting. It´s the 15th birthday celebration for girls, similar in some ways to a sweet 16 in that it´s a huge deal and the traditional idea is that she´s now a lady, to be presented to the public.

The ceremony itself is just like a wedding, though, with groomsmen and bridesmaids (damas y caballeros). I do have pictures which I will upload... at some point. Like I said, they don´t want to upload at the moment.

Otherwise, school is going well and I´m looking for an apartment with a fellow teacher. The place I´m living now is really far from where I work... Wish me luck! I´m going to see what seems like a perfect place in about an hour, I just have to talk her into the dog. Who can protest a 3 kilo, one-eyed, tail-wagging Poodle?

Finally, holidays - Today is Day of the Dead, yesterday was All Saints´Day, the 31st was Day of the Shield, Saturday is Mama Negra in Latacunga... I don´t know anything about Mama Negra at this point except that it´s supposed to be really fun and I´m almost definitely going.

and next weekend is Fiestas de Tena!! That´s right, I´m going back to the jungle. Whitney - buy a flight and come visit already! Davidcito and Jairo miss us. ;)

First photos!

These are the first pictures on the blog, but certainly not the only I´ve taken so far. I need to get with it and post some more! Especially the videos that prove I have learned a little bit about dancing!

The picture below is with Melany, Eric, and Walter. The picture to the right is with Miguel. They are all students in the Carmen Bajo school where I am volunteering about once a week as an English teacher.

it´s getting better all the time...

Things are much improved at work! Friday was excellent and today went pretty well. This weekend was also lovely.

Friday a couple of the teachers threw a house-warming party which I made for just a few minutes before Luis took me to a peña, which is a large party organized to raise money for a particular cause. Normally they are to benefit a sick family member but in this case they were raising money for another party! It was in a huge banquet type room with tons of people. We talked with his friends and danced quite a bit. Yes, I was dancing, in public, in front of latinos. And it´s not as if I blend in here. It took quite some courage and, to be honest, Luis had to drag me to the dance floor for the first dance. As the night wore on however I started asking him to dance, especially the cumbia.

Saturday afternoon however Luis invited me to a baptism.
Baptisms here are not the same as in the U.S. Although everyone does attend the church service to observe the baptism, in Ecuador there´s an after-party - with lots of music and dancing. I as dancing salsa (poorly), merengue and cumbia (surprisingly well), reggaeton, and música nacional - traditional Ecuadorian music. Everyone got a big kick out of the white girl dancing the nacionales, even me.
It was also quite fun when I was offered an alcoholic drink. The host offered me a glass with just a very little bit of alcohol in it, so I accepted and said thank you (gracias actually). He said, no, salud, so I said, oh, salud! He said, No, por favor, at which point I finally realized you´re supposed to drink it all down and pass it on!
Oh, toda a la vez? (all at once?) I asked, and everyone laughed. Pobrecita (poor thing) they said. Hah.

Then today I went to Carmen Bajo! For those who don´t know that´s the school I worked in briefly where the kids I just adore attend. Yes Whitney, I saw Angelica and Margarita! and everyone asked about you. To Brooke, I met Miguel and he is just precious.
It was amazing to see the kids again.

So all in all a really fabulous weekend and a wonderful Monday!

Good news, bad news

I have a place to live with a good friend, Sonia!
She´s from Ecuador so I get to speak plenty of Spanish. We´re also talking about cooking quite a bit... hope we don´t get fat! The house is a good hour from school, from doorstep to doorstep, but the neighborhood´s a bit safer and I´m also closer to my other good friend, Luis, who´s giving me Tango lessons.

My first day did not go as well as I would have liked. My expectations and the reality just didn´t quite match up... at all... trying to keep positive so I´m not going to dwell here.

I´m thinking of traveling this weekend to give myself a little vacation (a whole five days of work is just too much! haha). I´ll probably be in Banos (jungle town with natural hot springs) or in Tena (jungle town with awesome kayaking).

Tango

I´m now learning tango! and I´m not quite as terrible as you might imagine! It´s a lot of fun actually and maybe one day I´ll find the rhythym.

I´m here!

I made it to Quito about 11:00 last night safely, soundly, all that. My friend Luis picked me up from the airport - aren´t friends wonderful? I´m staying with his family until tomorrow when I´m moving to a hostal closer to school.

Otherwise I´m just hoping to find an apartment soon with a nice roommate and being reminded how amazing the food is!

Leaving Monday...

and I'm not ready!! But there's still time - - four whole days.

Anyway, this will be my blog on mi vida ecuatoriana, my Ecuadorian life.

The basics:
Monday I fly out for Quito, Ecuador, South America. I'll have a couple of days to see friends and see the city before the teachers' meetings begin Thursday. Over the weekend I'll hopefully get settled into an apartment somewhere and Monday the teaching begins!

I'll be teaching at the Escuela Politecnia Nacional in the center of Quito until December 14 when I fly home for my graduation ceremonies. Then I return to Quito to teach January through August, 2008.

After that? Who knows.