La Última Graduación

I told you I'd be back on the blog soon! I want to tell you about one of the highlights of my year so far. If you can remember back to October--you know, when I was blogging somewhat regularly--I told you about the 14 seniors I taught English to in the Fall (see previous blog here). Well, not only did they all pass my class (come on, could you really see me failing a 2nd semester senior??), but they also all graduated this past January! Now I've been to a few graduations in my day, but nothing will ever compare to this one. I don't even know how to describe it other than that it was a really really special day for everyone there--even the gringo English teacher who had only been in country six months.

First of all, there's all the emotions of any high school graduation--from the high of accomplishing something you've strived toward for years, to the bittersweet goodbyes and realizing you won't be seeing your best friends every day anymore. Then you consider that this isn't just any high school, this is a K-12 full scholarship foundation whose students have to show a dramatic family need just to attend, and they have to maintain a B+ average every year in order to stay,--all while still living in that dramatic family need. Starting with 60 - 70 kids in Kindergarden, then seeing only 14 students graduate, you start to realize how significant of an accomplishment this really is. Most of these kids grew up in cane houses, were lucky to have one parent with a steady income, and shared that 1 bedroom cane house with 4 or 5 brothers and sisters. That's a big generalization and not necessarily true for all my students, but I'd say it's the par for the course--some had better situations, some worse.

On top of all that, Nuevo Mundo is phasing out the last 3 years of high school, so this was the last class high school graduation ever from the Foundation. Two years ago, the Fundación Nuevo Mundo decided to offer scholarships to the top 10 students from the 9th grade to finish 10th - 12th grade in the IB program of the Colegio Nuevo Mundo (the expensive private school that essentially subsidizes the entire foundation school). So while this is a very exciting transition for Nuevo Mundo--especially for those students who get the scholarships--it was also sad realizing that this would be the last group of students to ever graduate high school from the Foundation. So the entire Nuevo Mundo family--faculty, staff, students, alumni, family, and friends--was there to celebrate the impact Nuevo Mundo has had on these 14 graduates and the hundreds of other students over the past 25+ years.

Like I said before, I don't know how to describe it, but it was an emotional day. I'm not a crier, but I was fighting back the waterworks all afternoon. Pat McTeague and Sonia Rendón--the two women who founded Nuevo Mundo over 25 years ago, literally live at the school, and still run the day to day--both spoke, and I can't begin to tell you how inspiring they are. One of my former students, Saira, gave a beautiful Valedictorian speech, and the sincerity with which she thanked her parents and Nuevo Mundo for the opportunities she had been given is something I will never forget. Even the commencement speaker who I had never met before, an alumnus from the class of 2001 (coincidentally the same year I graduated high school), got me feeling all awkward and emotional inside. The impact Nuevo Mundo has on all its students--from the opportunities it offers to the incredible maturity the students develop over the years there--is unlike anything I've ever experienced.

OK, I'm starting to feel kinda like that A-hole friend who just saw a stand up comedian and is failing miserably at retelling the jokes... I don't know what else to say other than I guess you just had to be there. I did record a little video from the graduation, though, so maybe if you watch this you can kinda see what I'm talking about. At the very end of the graduation, all the alumni came to the front of the stage to join the 14 graduates in signing the official Nuevo Mundo theme song...

Yes, that was the sensual voice of Mama Cass singing her 1970 hit "New World Coming" (fun fact this song was also featured several times in Seasons 2 and 3 of the hit ABC drama "LOST"). I also posted a bunch of pictures from the graduation on my Picasa site (where you can also see all the other pictures I've posted from this year). Enjoy!

click here to see my pics of the Class of 2011!!

El Invierno! Spanish for The Invierno!

Allright I'm not gonna beat around the bush here. It's been a while. I feel awkward. You feel awkward. We used to be so close, and now look at us. Here I was, blogging regularly about what I'm doing down here, sharing my thoughts, emotions, struggles, triumphs, etc., and then 4 months passes and all you've heard from me is that I've got a mean side part goin on and the kids think I look like David Caruso.

Shit, for all I know, you've been reading someone else's blog the past 4 months. Who am I to assume you're even still intereted in me? I hope you still are, but I don't want to assume that I can pick right back up where we left off. How about we start with something light? Maybe the weather? See how things go, and then hopefully we can get back to the real stuff our relationship was built on... you know political upheaval, teaching English, and getting E.Coli (by the way just took my quarterly poo test and not only do I have giardia again, but I've also been blessed with both worms and fungi growing in my gut... not to worry though I'm getting treated and I feel fantastic).

So, yeah, a lot's happened in the past 4 months, but I'll keep it simple today and tell you about how much winter sucks down here. Not in the cold as F way it hits back in the states, but in the hot as F way it hits down here. I recently realized invierno (winter) is 2 letters away from inferno, which means hell, and I thought that would be a funny and witty thing to throw in my blog... then I realized that was kinda lame and not that funny... but here I am sharing that little titbit with you anyway. Sorry!

Anyway, as if it's not already hot as hell here, things just got exponentially nastier starting in Diciembre, coming to a hot sweaty climax in Febrero. Winter means higher temperatures and more rain, and more rain means more standing water, and more standing water means more mosquitos. So not only is it in the 90s and 100s every day (nights too... I don't think it even dropped below 80 on most nights), but now the mosquitos are out day and night, and even going inside doesn't really help cuz those bastards are everywhere. I think the entire month of Febrero my beautiful calves were tainted with bites, scratches, and scabs from scratching. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable.

On top of the sweaty weather and mosquitos, Guayaquil has this annual plague of grasshoppers that has got to be some of the weirdest biblical shit I've ever seen. Supposedly every winter once it starts raining, millions (maybe billions I really have no idea) of grasshoppers just appear out of no where and annoy the shit out of you for 3 weeks. They don't bite or sting, but there's literally so many of them that they just fly into you all the time and sneak into your house and eat your clothes. OK they didn't actually eat any of my clothes, but they're known to do that and they were in every corner of our house, so I moved all my clothes back into suitcases and kept that shit zipped up all the time. After a couple weeks of having dirty grasshopper sex and laying eggs for next winter, they all die off, and one day you realize "Oh, the grillos are gone." It's weird.

Don't get me wrong though, there was a lot of good stuff in the winter, too. And all that hot, sweaty, mosquito, grillo stuff really wasn't that bad, either. I just have to make it sound tough and exotic down here sometimes so you guys don't think I'm just sittin around sippin cervezas in my hammock (which does happen from time to time). I've been having an unbelievable time, and I can't believe it's already been 8 months.

One of the highlights of winter was playing in the rain with the kids in our neighborhood. Since it's so damn hot down here, it's not that weird to go outside in the middle of a tropical storm (I'm no weatherman and I don't see any news down here, but when it rains so hard that the streets flood six inches deep, I think it's safe to call it a tropical storm). There were a couple nights where it just dumped rain for multiple hours and we went outside to play with the kids in the middle of it all. Brought the waterproof camera to the last one, so I'll let you check out the pics. Needless to say it was a great time.

una tormenta tropical

That's all I've got for now, but I will be back in the cyber soon--I promise. Got some great pics from Carnaval, Nuevo Mundo, and Valdivia I've been meaning to show you. Hope all is well back home! Can you believe I'll be back in less than 5 months?? Wierd...

Horatioooo!

So for some reason nicknames are a big deal down here. Not sure why, but they just are. Most people get generic superficial nicknames like gordo (fatty) or chino (anyone who is and/or looks even the least bit Asian), negrito (black/dark skinned), fea (ugly)... you know, real nice endearing stuff like that. If you're lucky, you might get a more specific nickname, like Papi Pitufo (Spanish for Papa Smurf... one of our buddies who is no more than 5 ft tall gets that one all the time), or Ricky Martin (again, not exactly a compliment).

Not all the nicknames are demeaning, though... some people get cooler nicknames, like El Gato (my neighbor Daniel who has some awesome cat eyes), or El Matador (Jhonny, the badass security guard for Nuevo Mundo).  I've gotten Marco, Marcos, Marcooos, Markito, Perlite, flakito (from flaco, which means skinny... got that one after I lost about 20 pounds that first month). I've always been a fan of Markito, but anyone named Marco can get that, so it wasn't that big of a deal (the ito/ita suffix is pretty standard in Spanish--kinda like the 'ie' or 'y' in Markie, Johnny, Tommy, Paulie).
 

Lt. Horatio Caine on the scene

So anyway, we're on summer break from Mundo and I've been spending my afternooons helping out with our neighborhood after school program Valdivia. Shortly after my triumphant return to the futbol cancha (our cement soccer field... not to be confused with the potentially vulgur concha with an 'o'), a couple of the big kids, Charlie and Christian, started calling me Horatio--a reference to CSI Miami's Lt. Horatio Caine, played by David Caruso.



recent pic from Valdevia rockin the sidepart

CSI is one of those syndicated shows that is huge down here for some reason (other favorites include The Simpsons, anything on the Disney Channel, and Fear Factor). Anyway, I haven't cut my hair since I've been down here, so I've been rocking a pretty mean sidepart recently (see picture--->). Caruso's got carrot red ginger hair, but he's white and also has a legit sidepart, so I guess that's enough to say we're iguales.

I was familiar with CSI and David Caruso (of former NYPD Blue fame), but I decided to do some research to find out some more about this nickname I had earned. So I look up Caruso and Lt. Horacio "H" Caine, and I find out that David Caruso is a) kind of a creep, and b) the Nicolas Cage of the small screen (Yes, Nic Cage is a terrible actor. You know it, I know it, he knows it. And don't bring up The Rock, because everyone knows the City of San Francisco and Sean Connery carried that movie). But I digress... I guess H Caine's signature move is dropping a cheezy line whilst putting on his wire framed sunglasses. Check it out:

A small sampling of the plethora of anti-Caruso blogs out there:

http://davidcarusorevealed.blogspot.com/

http://carusothemanwhore.blogspot.com/

http://davidcarusoandme.blogspot.com/

http://uglycreatures.blogspot.com/



So part of me is a little butthurt that I got nicknamed after such a no talent ass clown, but the other part of me says F that noise. My nickname isn't Caruso, it's Horatio. And while there may be entire blogs devoted to Caruso bashing, Lt. Horatio Caine is a badass ginger detective who solves crimes on the regular and probably parties with hot Puerto Rican chicks in Miami all the time. Now I don't watch the show, but I also imagine he drives a sick sports car top down with a teal v-neck and a white blazer, Don Johnson style. And not only was Don Johnson a badass in Miami Vice, but he also made crime his bitch as Nash Bridges in the best city in the world, San Francisco. And who was Nash Bridges sidekick? Cheech Marin.



So yeah, I'm cool with the nickname Horatio.

matando parasitos, tirando machetes, y haciendo pecho

Killin' parasites, throwin' machetes, and doing chest...

E. Coli - not just from tainted beef anymore!

Well, they finally got me... los parasitos. It had been over 4 months down here, so last week I took a test for the hell of it to see what was crawlin around inside me. E. Coli, Giardia, and some other ameoba that had a less memorable name. No biggie though... the E. Coli was a distant cousin to the one that kills people, and I got them all treated with a series of pills over 3 days.

 

Giardia - smells like roses!

Funny thing, though, I didn't notice any symptoms. Giardia is known for extra stinky farts and poo, but I've been showing those symptoms for years. Anyway, went ahead and took the pills, was feelin fresh, and then last night after our Christmas Party, I woke up at 3am with the uncontrollable urge to vomit. So I donated my half digested rice and lentils to the septic tank, went back to sleep, and did it again a couple hours later. One 7-UP, two gatorades, and a few hours later, I'm back to zero bloggin about it. Not sure what it was, but I felt like $2 for the majority of this morning. All is well though. I'm feelin fresh again, and I'm gonna stop by the clinic for another test Monday to make sure everything's okay.

Don Maximo laying on the glue

In other news, I was throwin around a machete last week with our guard Maximo. Just carving up some cane to make our año viejo monigote. Down here, the tradition for New Year's Eve (they actually celebrate the Año Viejo, the old year, instead of the new year), is to make a monigote of something from the old year, stuff it with fireworks, and burn it down on the 31st. Some people just buy a premade generic one (there's a lot of Buzz Lightyears getting sold out there), but Don Maximo is known throughout Durán for his monigote crafting abilities. Last year he made a huge piojo (lice--one of the volunteers got bird lice around this time last year) and a life-sized replica of one of the volunteers. This year, we're working on a life-sized Chevy truck (modeled after the oldest member of the Rostro fleet, which has already suffered two crashes in the past 4 months--thanks Celso and Caitlin!), and a paloma (pigeon... I thought I left my pigeon woes back in SF, but there's at least a dozen that have taken up residency on our roof. www.nomorepigeons.org/whynot?).

And finally, haciendo pecho... brought my camera to the gym the other day because my 16 year old neighbor Kevin wanted to post a video of himself crushing out some bench press. The place is called Biceps Gym, it's on the 3rd floor of a concrete building, costs 50 cents/day, has an open wall facing the street, and some of the finest equipment from the early 90's.

Kevin doing biceps at Biceps... not sure what the bald eagle/American flag picture is doing in the middle of Durán, Ecuador, but it inspired me to crush out a couple more reps

I posted a bunch more pics of the monigote and un dia al gymnasio in my AJS photo album from my last blog. There may or may not be videos of Kevin and I dominating the bench press...

mi barrio

click here to check out all my pics from AJS!

Antonio Jose de Sucre is a small cooperative of about 3 square blocks in Duran, Ecuador. Rostro de Cristo has held a strong presence in this community since 1994. The property has two buildings; the first is the Rostro de Cristo retreat house that houses about 13 retreat groups a year. The second building serves two functions: the first floor is a day care center/preschool run by Nuevo Mundo, and the second floor is where I live with the other year long volunteers--Beth, Tasha, Celso, and Jessie.

Antonio Jose de Sucre is an older neighborhood than El Arbolito and therefore in many ways more progressed. This small barrio already houses a casa comunal (community house), a cancha (cement soccer field), a playground, a Nuevo Mundo medical dispensary, and continued improvement of paved roads. However, the poverty is still rampant: residents have no running water, there are frequent power outages, standing dirty water in the rainy season, as well as many families who still live in cane houses.

So that's the official AJS background from the Rostro website. Rostro has had a long history here (year long volunteers have been living in AJS for 16 years), and we were incredibly lucky to already have those relationships when we came here. From the first day, all the neighbors have been incredibly hospitable to all of us volunteers--inviting us over for meals, birthday parties, or just to talk or watch TV. I tried to caption most of the pictures, so rather than ramble on here, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!

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.

Puerto López and Isla de la Plata

click here to see the pics from my trip!

After almost 3 months here, I finally got to see some sights! Last weekend I went with Tasha, Christina, Jon, Caitlin, and Tierney to the beach town of Puerto López, a little beach town about 3 hours northwest of Durán/Guayaquil. Our buddy Wacho runs a taxi service, and he picked us up at 5am Saturday to catch the 5:30 bus out of Guayaquil. Wacho convinced us to pay the extra $2 for the scenic route along Hwy 1, and it was tooootally worth it. Felt just like cruising Hwy 1 back home! Amazing views of the Pacific, and we got to drive through Montañita and some other beach towns along the way. Definitely going to have to make it back to see some of these other towns!

So we got to our hostel in Puerto López around 9am, and were quickly convinced to take a boat ride (leaving immediately!) out to Isla de la Plata (known here as the poor man's Galapagos). On a volunteer's stipend, the real Galapagos just isn't in the cards, so we came to Puerto López/Isla de la Plata hoping to at least see some of Ecuador's most famous attaction. Instead of the multiple day, multiple hundred dollar trek out to the Galapagos, we each paid $35 and got more than our money's worth in one day at Isla de la Plata (which by the way gets its name from its history as a secret pirate's lair for stashing loot--plata means silver, or money). That included our admission to the national park, breakfast, a 2 hour walking tour of the island, lunch, some snorkeling around the reefs, and the hour and a half boat ride each way. Isla Plata doesn't have anywhere near the biodiversity of the Galapagos (honestly it's pretty arid and not much lives there), but we got to see a ballena (whale), a delfin (dolphin), some tortugas (sea turtles), and bastante piqueros patas azules (a shit ton of blue footed boobies). I took a bunch of pictures and uploaded them to the album above.

Oh and on our way out of Puerto López, we passed the morning fish market (apparently Puerto López is the county's biggest fishing port), which consisted of dozens of fishing boats unloading human-sized sharks and fish onto the beach to be trucked into town. Kind of disturbing seeing all these huge dead animals just laying on the beach (I assume sharking is legal?), but impressive at the same time. We were all so thrown off by the whole thing that I didn't even think to get my camera out until we were almost done walking through it all (click the picture above to see the album... I got a couple pics of some sharks and then some pics of the market as we were in the boat on the way to Isla de la Plata).

We got back from Isla de la Plata around 6pm, cleaned up at the hostel, and went to a little restaurant called Carmita's across the street from the beach. I finally had my first Ecuadorian ceviche, and it was DE-licious! I'm pretty food ignorant, but this stuff was great--an assortment of raw shrimp, fish, and other sea-meats in an awesome lime sauce with some garlic patacones (mashed then fried plantains) to complement.

Sunday we hitched a ride in the back of a truck to another national park just north of Puerto López. There's some pics in the album above and here's a map of the beach... I don't remember the name, but we practically had the whole beach to ourselves. We went on a little 30 minute hike up to a vista point where we could see the whole cove and another equally amazing cove to the north. After the hike, we just relaxed and enjoyed the beach before heading back to Guayaquil that night. Other than a few sing alongs that came on the radio that literally everyone on the bus except us knew, the bus ride home was pretty uneventful. All in all a good weekend, and I'm looking forward to my next trip!