no te vaaaaaaaaaaayas, tu eres cheeeeevere

The end is near my friends... just had our despedidas this weekend, new volunteers get in tonight, my last day at Mundo is Thursday, I leave for Peru Saturday, then on August 23rd, American Airlines flight 1455 takes me home to SFO. The past couple months have flown by... still can't believe I'll be in San Francisco in less than a month.

Lots of mixed emotions to say the least. Right now, here, in Ecuador, starting to say my goodbyes, I feel like shit. There's a lot of people I'm going to miss, and that's gonna be a tough pill to swallow these next two weeks. When I think about it, though, I am excited to come home and catch up with all the family and friends I've missed this past year.

I think back to saying goodbye to family and friends this time last year; and that, too, was sad, scary, and very emotional. Sure, things would change over the course of this year, but ultimately, I knew I would be back in San Francisco come August 2011. This time around, though, as I'm saying these goodbyes, I know I'm not coming back. Yes, I will visit--I hope to be back to Ecuador within the next year, and as frequently as possible after that; but I will never live here again--in this community, with these people, sharing every laugh, tear, conversation, good day, bad day, hotter than F, sweaty, normal day.

There's so much that I'm gonna miss about living here. I'm going to miss my friends--miss those experiences we've shared this year, as well as those experiences we won't get to share next year or the year after. I'm going to miss the students I taught this year--seeing them every day, talking to them, laughing with them, playing soccer with them in my slacks and dress shoes, joking with them about who they are and aren't dating, and sometimes just wanting to wanting to tell them to shut the fffront door. I'm going to miss my neighborhood--living on a street where the kids are always out playing and the madres are always inviting me in to eat. I'm going to miss playing soccer with the kids, the hugs and vueltas, high fives and fist bumps, calling each other locos, feos, vagos. I'm going to miss the conversations with neighbors, friends--deep shit about life, family, love, justice, politics, everyday struggles. I'm gonna miss shooting the shit with the guys--playing cards and dominos late into the night, talking shit, calling each other nicknames, telling dirty jokes, and learning every possible word that might in some way have a genital connotation.

I could go on for days (especially about the genitals). There's just so many people and experiences I'm gonna miss here. Deep down, though, I know it's time to go. Kinda like that "enlightened" freshman year of college, I can never go back and do it again--have it all be new. That's the way things go. So for these last few months, I've been trying to live it up as much as possible (hence the lack of blogologue). So many memories I wish I could share. I have a bunch of pictures I promise to put up soon, but for now, here's some highlights from the past couple months:

• Remember Horatio?? He had a good run, but the REAL nickname that has stuck all year is Menendez. Ask me a year ago what I think of when I hear Menendez, and I'll tell you those creeps Lyle and Erik who offed their parents back in the early 90's. Down here, though, Menendez is the blonde haired, blue eyed Argentinian superstar who plays for Guayaquil's pro soccer team, Emelec. My neighbors Don Walter and Don Sergio made Emelec fans out of me early on, so as soon as I got a jersey, everyone started calling me Menendez. Literally Everybody. Anytime I wear the jersey--and sometimes when I'm not wearing the jersey and I'm just being white, blonde, and ridiculously good looking--people will just yell at me: Menendez!!

MENENDEZ!!

While we're on the topic of Emelec (which, by the way is an acronym for the Empresa Electrica del Ecuador, or Ecuadorian Electric Co.), way before Cristian Menendez was the famous white boy on the team, America's favorite ginger-defender, Alexi Lalas played for Emelec for about a month back in '97. Funny thing, though, apparently all anyone here remembers about him is that he was big into the cocaina...

• All night Mother's Day parties... So aparently the Ecuadorian way of showing mothers the infinite gratitude they deserve is to wake them up with serenades on Mother's Day Eve... either with your own voice, with a paid gentleman singer, or with a rented sound system, some salsa CDs, and a microphone that the whole neighborhood can hear. Looooooooovely tradition. Minus the fact that I didn't get any sleep that night thanks to my good friend Edwin (20 something, no more than 5 feet tall, responds to Papi Pitufo, aka Papa Smurf) who apparently got hired to serenade all of South America from his soundsystem 3 blocks away. 

Gina didn't even know that she was in the presence
of an international soccer superstar...

• So my little sister Gina just graduates magna cum laude from Georgetown (no big deal, I'm not overly proud of her or anything), the whole damn world is at her fingertips, and where does she decide to go less than one week after graduating? Fuckin Ecuador to visit big brother. What a gal. After almost 11 months of choppy internet phone calls from the cyber cafe, finally getting to spend some real human time face to face with my flesh and blood was pretty awesome. I took her around AJS, Arbolito, Veintiocho, out to Nuevo Mundo, down to Guayaquil's touristy Malecón 2000, and up to the historic Las Peñas district of Guayaquil for a night on the town. Despite my best efforts with this blog, it's been really tough to put into words all the experiences I'm having here. There's a lot of "you had to be there," or "you had to see it," or "you had to know him/her" kind of stuff, so getting to share even just a few days of this with Gina was really special.

• What do you get when you put 10 teenage boys from well-to-do Cincinnati suburbs in a barrio in Ecuador with no running water, no meat, no cell phones, TVs, video games, iPods, facebook, etc? Lots of soccer, bilingual card games, unflushed shits, penis-carved soap bars, and of course, life changing experiences. One of the ways Rostro de Cristo gets its funding is by hosting high school and college retreat groups from the states. Between the 2 houses in Arbolito and AJS, we've had 26 groups this year; I led 2: Cabrini College in December, and St. Xavier High School in June. My role was part spiritual director, part tour guide, and part babysitter... it was a long week to say the least, but the guys were great, and I think they all got something out of it.

me, the St. X boys, and Oso

• Right after my retreat group, the Rostro de Cristo Board of Directors came down to visit and inaugurate our new retreat house in Mount Sinai. So what do you get when you put a bunch of middle aged white people in a barrio in Ecuador... juuust kidding. Nothing like the high school kids. All the Board members were super interesting people, all with incredible backgrounds in Latin America; so it was really cool show them what we do down here and talk to them about some of the higher level foundation decision making that goes on back home. Who knows where life's gonna take me, but I'd love to get involved in decisions like that someday.

• Did I mention I'm learning to tejer? That's right. Crocheting. Wellington has been teaching me how to make hammocks, and Pastora helped me make a little monedero last month. It's frustrating as all hell at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's really quite relaxing. And it's awesome when you finally have something to show for all your work.

• Saw Transformers with one of the kids from my neighborhood a couple weeks ago. 2 observations: 
1. While Optimus Prime is unstoppable no matter what tongue he speaks, the Spanish speaking Optimus Prime doesn't quite have the stage presence that his English speaking cousin does. 
2. Hanging out with a 12 year old boy with no filter is awesome no matter where you are. Hanging out with a 12 year old boy with no filter from Duran in a "1st world" movie complex/shopping mall is extra awesome. While we were waiting for the movie to start, we cruised the toystore, people watched, and judged the shit out of all the upper-middle class people walking around like their poo doesn't stink. Granted, I was very aware that I was inherently laughing at myself (this mall very easily could have been the San Francisco Shopping Centre, and these people could have easily been me and my friends), but it was still pretty ridiculous. Living in a neighborhood for a year where the average income is $2 a day really puts things in perspective when you walk around a toy store looking at $80 lego sets and $500 Playstations.

New volunteer orientation starts tomorrow morning, Peru with Chris F-ing Peterson the 13th-22nd, then back to the fog (oh how I miss thee) August 23rd. Unless we have another coup or something monumental like that, I can pretty much guarantee this will be my last blog from Ecuador. If you play your cards right, maybe I'll get it together to do one last blog when I get home; but for now, I'm signing off. Thanks for reading. It's been a hell of a year. Hope to see everyone when I get home.

If you've made it this long, I thank you for your commitment. I reward you with one spanish translation: no te vayas = don't leave! ugh... hurts everytime I hear it.

The New World!

Pocahontas had no chance

No, not the shitty Colin Farrell movie... I'm talking about the school I teach at, Fundación Nuevo Mundo! Thusfar I've blogged about a bingo and my secret love affair with mayo, an attempted coup, a weekend in paradise,  a 7 year old's birthday party, and more info than I'm sure anyone cares to read about Rostro orientation, potential work sites, and after school programs... how about a normal day in the life of a 27 year old accountant teaching English in Ecuador??

Most mornings start around 7am with a community prayer. We have a pretty liberal interpretation of prayer (gracias a Dios), so it can be anything from a traditional prayer to a song, poem, or excerpt from a book or speech (like for example when Celso enlightened us all with the Emancipation Proclamation one morning... nothing like a little Honest Abe to start the day!). After prayer I usually take Oso (our dog) for a walk, say hi to some neighbors, and finish up any lesson planning or grading before heading in to work.

At 12:15 every day I teach English to the 14 graduating seniors at Nuevo Mundo. The school year here is from March - December, so these guys are deep into 2nd semester senioritus. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a challenge trying to keep their interest, but I just keep reminding myself of how much fun I had senior year in high school (and how little I remember from the actual "school" part of it). They're all great though, and I admire the hell out of all 14 of them. Just to graduate high school is a huge accomplishment here, and all of these guys are going to college next year, and I know they're all gonna do great things with their lives. I gave them a writing assignment a few weeks back to talk about what they want to do after graduating (I billed it as practice speaking in the future tense, but it was more for my own curiosity than anything else), and they talked about wanting to be doctors, dentists, engineers, business people, and teachers. A couple of them are hoping to get scholarships to study in the States, and literally all 14 of them mentioned something about wanting to start a foundation or give back to the Ecuadorian people in some way.

It's a great testament to the type of education they get at Nuevo Mundo. A lot of schools in the States value community service and teaching social justice (probably the main reason I'm here now is what I learned in high school and college), but it just rings so much truer here because poverty and injustice are part of everyone's daily life. There are plenty of historical/societal factors to blame for the injustices here, but instead of focusing on the blame, Nuevo Mundo empowers these kids to make positive changes in their world. It not only provides them with the tools, the education they would not otherwise have, but the mission of Nuevo Mundo is also to inspire the heart to use these tools to create change.

Bieber fever is rampant here

So after the seniors, I teach 2 classes of 7th grade English. No matter where you are in the world, pretty much every teenage year is hilariously awkward, but 7th grade has to be up there as one of the funniest. You're definitely not a kid anymore, you kind of think you know everything, but you're still trying to figure out the whole social dynamic and how you fit in, and to top it all off, hormones are going crazy! Haha it's definitely a challenge to teach this age, and just as the seniors give me a hard time with senioritus, the 7th graders give me a hard time with whatever you want to call being 13 years old. They've been learning English since Kindergarden, but they are definitely beginners compared to the seniors. They constantly try to talk to me in Spanish, which is pretty hilarious because my Spanish is barely better than their English. They're all awesome though, and we usually have a great time in class.

The 7th grade classes are at different times every afternoon, so in between and after classes I usually work on lesson plans, grading, etc. (aka my least favorite part of teaching). Also, Celso, Caitlin, (the other 2 Rostro volunteers who teach at Mundo) and I each spend a couple afternoons a week tutoring the sophomores and juniors who have scholarships to attend the morning school. A couple years back, the afternoon school decided to phase out the high school (the seniors I teach are the last class left), and instead offer scholarships to the top 10 students from the 9th grade to finish 10th - 12th grade in the morning school's IB program. I talked a little bit about this in my earlier blog about the different work sites, but the morning school, known as Centro Educativo, instructs the wealthier students of Ecuador, while the afternoon school, Fundación, allows the poorer children to utilize the same facilities as the morning school. Half of the classes in the morning school's IB program are taught in English, so we help the becados (scholarship kids, from beca, which means scholarship... not to be confused with pecados, which means sins!) to make sure they're understanding everything in their classes (History is a big one because there's so much vocab they've never heard before).

The becados probably have the most interesting social dynamic because they all come from poor neighborhoods like Durán and now have scholarships to attend high school side by side with the wealthy elite of the Puntilla. Cliques and normal high school social dynamics are tough enough as it is, but this adds a whole different challenge to everything. They taught me a word the other day, pelucón, which is a common word for the Ecuadorian bourgeoisie. The literal translation is hairy, and refers to the old wigs French aristocrats used to wear in the 17th and 18th centuries (think George Washington, etc.). Ecuador's liberal president, Rafael Correa, has popularized the term often using it to refer to people with money who represent the old political practices/parties of the country.

The last class gets out at 6:10pm (remember, the pelucones use the school in the mornings, so the foundation school doesn't start until the afternoon), then I take the yellow school bus with the foundation kids back to Durán. I usually get home around 7pm, have a lovely dinner with my roommates, then wrap the night up with some more planning/grading, hanging out with the neighborhood kids, reading, and/or journalling. Oh and random Ecuador fact while I'm on the topic of daily routines... the sun sets and rises at the same time all year on the equator. Sunrise around 5:30 - 6am and sunset around 6 - 6:30pm... 12 hour days all year.