I still have a blog??

Yes, I am still alive, there have just been a lot of problems with the internet in my house and I haven´t really been on for any extended time....



HOWEVER, here are the new things that happened in my life in these past 2 months.



First, I have started teaching regular classes at the Institute again, however, during the hiatus, I did three other jobs. The most informal was a conversation group I taught for 2 hours a week in Pasaje, a town 40 minutes outside Machala. This was fairly uneventful and straight forward, I would come with a lesson planned, and we would converse for 2 hours....i just repeated myself...BUT my students in this group are all Jehovah´s Witnesses....so mom and dad, I´m converting.....Out of this and the other work I´ve been doing, I also have translated a couple articles...including one that apparently they´re publishing...with my name as a translator, and I also corrected a couple theses in English, fairly interesting work.

The second course I taught, this one with Katherine, was set up by Jhon Chamba, and was a pronunciation course given to English teachers all over the El Oro province....people came from over 3 hours away to listen to me say "message" and "message" over and over again. This was really enjoyable actually, I´d never taught pronunciation before, which meant that I was learning the symbols and stuff at the same time as my students, but I can now say that I am fairly proficient in phonetics for consonants...we didn´t do vowels....they´re a little advanced....The students were great though, and really connected with us...for example, my birthday so happened to fall on one of the last days of class, and Katherine had told them the day before, so when I walked into the classroom, everyone yelled surprise (and pronounced it quite well i might add) and basically applauded me for being awesome. They had decorated the room and had even bought me presents and a cake....into which they later shoved my face so hard that I had icing way up my nose...This class was a great break from teaching grammar, and I really enjoyed it...

The third thing I did, for two weeks in April, was substitute teach for a private biligual institute. This institute is run by a gringo who came down a number of years ago and has since established himself in the community as one of the top teachers...and he offered me a full time job! Anyways, the two weeks were very interesting, I taught from 7 to 130 everyday, meaning I woke up at 6, which I am happy to know I can do if i want to, but also very happy to know that i dont need to anymore...at least for teh next couple of months. In total I had around 13 different classes that I taught, three classes each of three levels of Literature, and then 3 other classes for the high schoolers. And, being completely modest, I caused quite a stir in the school. The students were very excited to have me as their teacher, especially the girls, who would not stop gazing at me and giggling to each other everytime i walked by...in the teacher´s lounge during breaks the other teachers would not stop ribbing me, talking about how when they would sub for each other on occasion, the students would come up and request that I be the sub instead....in fact, when the regular teacher came back to take over his classes, he later told me that the students were still asking him to give them my number, email, address... I see them a lot around the city now, and i must admit it´s a pretty great feeling knowing that I was able to teach in a way that they enjoyed so much.....oh who am I kidding, it´s only because I´m a gringo...The other cool thing about this gig was that it´s the same school that Alexandre goes to, and I often had breaks when he did.....mutually beneficial, because it gave him street cred (yeah, the big white thing is my friend) and it gave me someone to sit with on my off-time....

Outside that, lets see, what else has happened....I went on a trip with Arlene and her class to Manta, where I went snorkelling, saw the place where the delegates voted on the new constitution, and went paragliding, which was pretty sweet. Then, the next weekend, Katherine and I went up to Porto Viejo to visit Irene and met John Dudek (March volunteer), and we ended up going to Canoa, a great beach town, where we met some serious beach bum surfers, and hung out with them for the weekend, including a sweet bonfire one night and three almost fights the next...

and right NOW I´m in Quito again, because this is the wrap up of Hieu´s two week visit down here to visit....which has been a blast....and one that I will write about later....

March should have more entries...

Ok, so here´s the deal with what´s been going on in my semi-professional life...

My first set of classes lasted from October to the middle of February...out of eight levels of English, I taught levels three and six, which were grammar courses, and seven, which was a conversation course (but which still had some students who should have gone back to my level three class). The classes ended in February, and the understanding was that we would have a bit more than two weeks of vacation and then start intensive classes (five hours a day, every day) for beginner students. And by the way, I forgot to add in the previous entry that Mom and Grandma did get to see me administer my final exam to one of my classes, which was kind of cool... Anyways...that was the plan...

The plan started faltering somewhere around the middle of January. At that point we had only been paid for October and November, and it was a little less than our contract stated we should have been paid. How the money situation works here is that we get around 365 dollars a month, two hundred of which goes to our host families for rent, so I´m living here on a monthly salary of about 165 dollars. Laughable back home, but here, where you can rent a nice fully furnished apartment for a little more than 200 a month, where you can buy a lunch for 2 dollars and a 15 minute taxi ride only costs three bucks, it´s definitely doable...especially when your expenses consist of buying movies, Chex Mix, and Cranberry Juice.

Anyways, we hadn´t been paid for a month and a half, so we, and by we I mean Katherine, who took point for most of the financial conversations with the Institute, began to ask more and more about when we were going to get paid. Laura, the director at the Institute, is a wonderful woman, but as an administrator, she leaves much to be desired. I don´t remember if I wrote this before, but in talking with Lizette, she told me that when she studied English there, they were using the same books that her father had used when he studied there....that should give you an idea... Anyways, we were finishing up our classes and still not sure about when we were getting paid...and then Jhon Chamba came into the picture.

Jhon Chamba (no, that´s not a repeated typo, thats how he spells his name) deserves his own paragraph...He is a loud, always impeccably dressed, funny, and hardworking Ecuadorian, who teaches at the Institute but also has a number of other teaching jobs in the province, including his own academic office. We met him at the Institute, where although Laura is the Director, he seems to run a lot of the show. He was also one of the judges in the spelling bee that we put on for one of the elementary schools in the area...Jhon is especially liked by the gringos that he´s worked with, he has a very positive opinion of the US and of its people, and goes out of his way to help us out whenever he can. In fact, with the delay of payment (the FIRST delay of payment, when we were paid for October and November....in December), after weeks of talking with the office, Katherine said something to him offhandedly about not being paid and he immediately called the higher ups and was fairly crucial to us getting our money when we did. His love of the US is transferred into his taste in movies; his favorite movie is Legally Blond....and he is completely and utterly unashamed of this...and is able to talk for a fairly extended period of time about said movie. Now, while most gringos like him a lot, the opinion of Ecuadorians seems to be mixed. Many people do like him, and his hardworking attitude as well as his relative fluency in English endear him especially to students and some other professionals. My family, in general, does not like him, although that´s primarily through the fact that Lizette doesn´t like him...as she is the only one who has had any type of mentionable contact with him, but, as many of you already know, she has an absurd amount of influence with some of her opinions....Other people who have problems with him have mentioned the fact that he at times goes out of his way to make money, cramming 40-50 students in one class in order to profit off their registration fees. They also say that his helpfulness to gringos is not always shown with the same enthusiasm to Ecuadorians. This I cannot say, as I have not been witness to that, but in any case, I´ve found that in terms of Jhon Chamba, everyone with whom I have talked has a strong opinion, either positive or negative. He is quite a character, to say the least.

Anyways, in our state of ignorance as to our payment situation, and preparing to teach the five hour intensive hell...I mean class...in March and April, John Chamba says one day "guess what, you guys might have two months of vacation!" While some might have looked on this with emotions other than despair....i mean, it´s two months without work...allowing me to watch movies and do puzzles and hang out....without having to work.....

.......

.....this was clearly not our reaction.......

At that point we were assuming that no work=no pay, and like I said, we have to pay our host families 200 bucks a month, and I want to go to grad school... What had happened is this: I don´t know how much of you follow Ecuadorian news, but a couple months ago, Ecuador ratified a new constitution. Under said constitution, most (all?) universities are now free for students, and are given money by the government. To start this process, the Institute had to give all their money back to the government, and then submit a detailed budget to request the money that they would need for the year. This meant that until the Institue receives its money from the government (which as far as I know STILL hasn´t happened...meaning the other Ecuadorian professors still haven´t been paid since at least December) it is completely without money. And clearly, when someone doesn´t have money, they can´t give said absent money to people working for them...IOU´s don´t do nearly as much nowadays. With no money, that explained the reason we weren´t getting paid, and also meant that the Institute couldn´t afford to give classes in March and April (which would have been outside the regular school year anyways, here the summer months are Feb, Mar, and Apr), and had to wait until May to resume normally scheduled classes. However, they had said nothing of this to us, we only got it through Jhon. In fact, we heard the office a number of times telling students that the next set of classes would start in May, while still not telling us anything. It took our fearless WT Director Katie calling at least 10 to 12 times to get us all the facts. And by all the facts I mean that basically she negotiated our working schedule with Jhon Chamba for the month of April...assuming that we were being updated on a regular basis by the university. I tell you...it´s astounding the number of emails we got from her that said "I´m probably just repeating what you already know", which was then followed by completely new information for the both of us.

Coming soon....the three non university jobs I´ve been working....including (gasp) waking up at 6 in the morning????

Did YOUR mom and grandma come see you in Ecuador?

And thus ended the first day...

and thus started the second day: We woke up at some ungodly hour (the mornings consisted of my mom and gma waking up especially early to go eat breakfast....i know, I don´t understand them either...) and headed off to Cuenca via minivan. The 4 hour or so trip was one through the mountains, including some of the heaviest fog I´ve ever seen, literally you could not see 15 feet in front of you, and while you´re passing people on two lane two way roads, and taking curves over which you know there are giant drops into the abyss....well it was an interesting trip. In Cuenca, we saw the center park, ate lunch with my host sister and her husband that live there (including grandma getting a sampling of the typical food, which she bravely ate....everything except for the morcilla, which is basically blood sausage), and then searched and successfully found a movie store that sells US TV seasons!!! So I have now rediscovered my love for West Wing (as well as my desire to be Josh Lyman) and have decided once and for all, after giving 24 a second chance with the 2nd season....eh, it´s not for me. I´ve also started watching two and a half men... We then continued with a double decker bus tour, where we were three of a total of five people, which made for a very intimate time with the tour guide... We saw most of the city that way, the broken bridge which remains from when the city flooded years ago, the lookout on the top of the mountain where you can see the whole city, etc. etc. Also, it was the first double decker ride where we had to literally duck under our seats so as to not be decapitated by low hanging power lines...that´s not a joke....

We then returned to the wonderful city of Machala the next day, where my two families met and I was immediately thrust into the role of translator...who worked pro bono... We had ceviche, toured the city with Katherine....which took all about 20 minutes (really the only places to go in Machala are the shopping mall...called Shopping....the port, the center park, and the Nice Cream Ice Cream store, the only place I can get good mint ice cream).... and played tubes (a card game) with arlene and Carmen. We also headed out to Jambeli, the beach island that you have to go by boat to visit. One of the best things about the trip was that we all were there for my host nephew´s birthday party. This was nice because my mom and grandma got to see something other than the touristy stuff in the cities that we visited; they were witness to a real live traditional children´s birthday party...complete with a clown and party games, a DJ blasting (and I mean BLASTING) reggaeton hits and salsa, and a bunch of kids and their familes, some of which Alexandre didn´t even know... Overall it was a good small visit to my city, complete with Mom and Grandma getting a purse and a "Panama" hat... After Ale´s party, we headed back to Guayaquil, where I shared some rum and cokes with my mother (another first) and saw them off back to the US. Great to see them, and I had a really great time touring. And THEY liked it too! So, if you just needed a success story to come down, there you have it: we took busses, didn´t get robbed or assaulted or kidnapped, and no one got severe stomach cramps! COME ON DOWN

So, it´s been over a month since my last post, I really do apologize for that, so lets catch everyone up on recent events.

-Soon after my family came down, Katherine´s parents came down, and as is the Machala tradition, we went out for Nice Cream Ice Cream... It was a good couple hours visiting with them; they were down for a bit longer than mom and grandma, so they got to see a fair amount of the country, including Ecuador in Carnaval, which is their version of Mardi Gras, complete with throwing water balloons, squirting water guns, and general making gringo´s feel like gringo´s...(although some might say that last one´s typical of any day in Ecuador). Katherine´s parents also brought me a shirt from Santa Cruz, which has quickly jumped to one of the top three tshirts I own, so thanks again Mr. and Mrs. Hamby!

-Evelyn left for Chile. My host sister who lives in Cuenca headed down a couple weeks ago to start a two year scholarship down there, she´ll be joined by her husband in about six months. It was sad to see her go, I got along really well with her and their weekend visits were always fun. In tandem with her leaving, Carmen and Federico took a two week trip down to South-er America, visiting Chile and helping Evelyn move in, and then also heading to Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru. They actually also brought me back a shirt from Uruguay which, as fate would have it, has jumped up there very close to my Santa Cruz shirt in I-like-it-ness, so that means that the vast majority of you have never seen two of the top 5 tshirts I own...I feel that a reanalysis of our relationships might be in order...

-I finally got paid...but that story takes a bit longer to tell, and since I promised Kenneth E. Chadwick Esq. of Chadwick Washington etc. I´d put something up tonight, I will leave you with that tantalizing tidbit and hopefully have something up in the next couple days telling you of the recent developments with my job and financial situation...

Oh, and since sometimes it takes a while to get mail from the PO box that we have down here, here´s Katherine´s address so if you want to send letters or such you can send them to her to give to me...she´s already agreed, she´s terribly generous....

Ciudadela Ceteoro
8 Sur y 17 Oeste
"Familia Piedra Manzo"
Machala, El Oro
ECUADOR

And just a reminder, not that I´d expect this from anyone, but do not send money via post, it´s illegal and they´ll take it...instead send it to my parents and they´ll deposit it into my Wachovia account...

My comfort foods are running out....

I just finished watching Phenomenon for the first time, and one of the special features was movie recommendations, you know, "If you liked this film, then you´re sure to like...." Only, the suggested movies for people who liked Phenomenon (a family drama) were: Ransom with Mel Gibson (action/suspense), Tombstone (western), Nightmare Before Christmas (kids movie), and.....Scream (horror).... I am for the life of me trying to figure out what these movies have in common that they would be similar enough to recommend to fans of Phenomenon...please help...

Also, I cannot tell you how comforting it is that even in a different hemisphere, in a country that does not speak english, or any asian language for that matter, that they still sell Cup of Noodles....

So, as many of you know, on February the 3rd my wonderful mother and HER even MORE wonderful mother, came down to this wonderful country of Ecuador for a wonderful 5 day visit. Marking the first visit from someone from back home, it was so incredibly great to see them. I took a minivan from Machala to Guayaquil, where they were arriving from Miami, Tuesday night, and then took a taxi to the Hilton, because for some unexplained reason my mother went completely against her nature and reserved a room in what is close to the most expensive hotel in Ecuador. I arrived there first, as their plane was delayed, and it was a slight shock to my system. When I travel around Ecuador, I am used to spending my nights in hostels or hotels that at the very top of their game are two stars....and these are ecuadorian stars, which are scientifically proven to shine brighter due to their proximity to the equator, but merit less when it comes to judging things. To stay at a five star hotel, with a shower that had BOTH hot water AND good water pressure, well lets just say I believe I´m going to be experiencing a bit of a cultural readjustment when I come home for good...because I was very aware of the luxury that we were experiencing.

They arrived around 1230 or so, and then they gave me gifts. This was not nearly the most important part of getting to see them, but it is important enough to warrent a sidebar on the food down here: Yes, they have cup of noodles, as well as strawberry and cream cheese toaster strudel (which for those of you who know me is HUGE, that´s really the only way I eat breakfast down here)...however, a couple things that I am missing in terms of normal everyday US food are as follows: Anything from Valentinos, Chipotle burritos, Arby´s beef n´ cheddar roast beef sandwiches, Duangrat´s spring rolls and that amazing sauce, anything from Cookout, and of course Ishi´s hibachi chicken with their amazing shrimp sauce. However, mom and grandma did not bring me any of those, altho I still hold that it would have been completely possible to bring me a Chipotle burrito... More generic, non-specific to any restaurant foods that I am missing are: Pumpkin pie with Cool Whip, barbeque of any kind, Lay´s KC Masterpiece BBQ chips, chili, Miller High Life Lite, Root Beer, Butterfingers, and Altoids. Again, they didn´t bring any of these things either. HOWEVER, what they DID bring, which is probably more important than the majority of anything already mentioned, was.....drum roll please....TWO kinds of beef jerkey, spicy and sweet oriental and teryaki nuggets, as well as a bag of fritos honey barbeque flavor twists, which ever since they discontinued the texas grill fritos, is my favorite chip. And, as the title of this entry suggests, even though I´ve been trying to save and ration and not chow down on those delicious snack foods, I am almost out of them all. Now, I would never do anything as crazy as request that these foods be delivered to me just out of the blue by wonderful family members and friends, however, if you are ALREADY sending me a package and there is space...well, I´ll leave that up to you....

Anyways, to more important things, like the reunion of the 30 year club...that first night, I got my grandma to stay up till 2AM, something she said she hasn´t done in many many many years...which I consider quite an accomplishment. The next day we headed down to see the center park, headed over to the iguana park, (I may have mentioned this before, but I find it fascinating that because of the differences in the climates or biomes or whatever, in a park filled with iguanas, a single squirrel causes everyone´s head to turn. You know what someone told me the other day? SQUIRRELS are considered an endangered species here in Ecuador....if I brought anyone back to Heywood Glen on any given day their head would explode), we continued with the Malecon, Ecuador´s version of a sweet boardwalk, and then, for dinner, we ate sushi at the San Marino Mall (which also features a TGI Fridays) with Craig and Carrie, the WT Volunteers in Guayaquil, and finished it off with a nightcap back at the hotel. That was the end of our first day.

Oh, and for those of you who didn´t catch the 30 year club reference, mom´s 30 years older than I am, and gma´s 30 years older than she is, i know, it´s cute, we planned it that way....

I´ll post this now so people don´t complain about the length of my entries, the rest of the trip will be coming soon...

I CAN GET MAIL HERE!

So today I was sitting at lunch, and the doorbell rang and when Arlene came back she was holding 8 letters for me! Apparently the address that has been going around, which is quite possibly the most intricate address in existence, is for a PO box, and the family here doesn´t ever check the PO box, they have someone come and bring the mail when it´s full....clearly they don´t ever receive anything important via mail to that address... The point is tho, that unless it´s time sensitive, you CAN send me mail...talk to my mom (or apparently my brother...but i HIGHLY doubt he still has my address) in order to get the address, because it´s completely too long to type out, and the letters are all the way upstairs and I really don´t want to get up right now... BUT thank you to Mom and Dad, Lorraine and Glen, Cindy and Keith, Granny Jean, Krissy, the Shedlocks, Uncle Dave and Aunt Karen, and Grandma for the letters you guys have sent, it was really really good to read all of them today!

A couple weeks ago we had our WorldTeach Mid-service retreat, which was at a little private beach owned by the hostal we all stayed at, south of Puerto Lopez. This was an awesome experience, the hostal was more like a resort, with a pool, pool tables, ping pong (yes, we played beer pong AGAIN!!!), a bar, and instead of rooms it had three person cabins where we stayed. And the cabins had HOT SHOWERS! (for those of you who don´t know, there is no hot running water in Machala, or at least not in my house, so showers here are a bit like easing into the pool, where i first let the water touch my feet, then my legs, then my thighs....stop thinking about me naked...and then after mentally steeling myself for the cold....I jump under the water, moving my arms really fast over my chest with the idea that the friction will warm me up just a bit....i´m not sure it works really well) And they had mosquito nets!! (of course, Andrew kind of defeated the purpose by allowing a mosquito into the "safe area" before sealing himself in....he woke up the next morning with approx. 1500 bites) And I was paired with Andrew and Craig...which was one of the best pairings I could ask for...

The retreat was great because we got to see almost everyone, most of whom I hadn´t seen since the end of orientation in September. Out of the 40 volunteers, 37 came to the retreat (one had to leave for good because of medical problems, one was still in the states because of another medical reason, but she should be back any week now, and one was sick with pneumonia...ironically he lives in Vilcabamba, where legend has it everyone lives there until they´re 120, it´s supposed to be the healthiest city in Ecuador and he´s been sick more than anyone else in our group...) out of those 37, I had only seen 16 of them since coming to live in Machala, so it was really good to see everyone back in one group. Especially good was getting the mandudes back together, and we did very manly things, including hitting rocks with bamboo poles, playing football and ultimate frisbee, and making sexist jokes and belittling the weaker gender.

The retreat consisted of a couple classes on how to improve, as most of us are going into or are already in our second cycle of classes, other teaching strategies and suggestions for better and more fun activities. The most important thing about these classes was that they didn´t take up much time...and therefore we got to hang out at the beach, or in the pool, or do other things that were fun in our free time.

We also had the first annual WorldTeach olympics. We were divided up into our phone tree teams, meaning I was with the Coastal group, later dubbed "the monos" (there´s a pretty intense rivalry inbetween the Sierra and the Coast, and the Sierrans call the Costeños "monos", or monkeys, and the Sierrans are then referred to themselves as "longos", or hares...I dont know, dont ask.) The events were as follows: First event, the sandal on head relay, where everyone had to run down and back with their sandal on their head without touching it with their hands. This event was won by the Monos. The second event was "find a butterfly paper clip buried in the sand. This was a stupid event and was won by a different, insignificant team. The third event was the wheelbarrow race....which was a wheelbarrow race down the sand, but it was like 100 yards. This event was won by Quito North, the team who had Andrew, a ex wrestler, who did this for practice everyday for years....the competition was slightly tipped in his favor... The fourth event was "make the highest human pyramid"....we had the tallest guys, and the tallest girl BY AT LEAST 6 INCHES, and she stood on our shoulders....but somehow we ended up losing this event to the Quito North team...there were some seriously shaky measuring methods used here, and we feel still that we were robbed. The fifth event was the "who can hold the most ocean water in their mouth. Craig was a champ at this, and while everyone else was trying to kneel down in the ocean and daintily splash water into their mouths, Craig backflopped into the ocean, and came up with one huge mouthful....and the monos won this one by a landslide. The next event was the leapfrog relay, and lets just say we were robbed again and Quito North stole yet another event from us with the help of seriously faulty judging. Finally, we had to make a cheer, and ours was awesome but because we (I) were (was) obnoxious, no one gave us the points we deserved. We came a close second to the Quito North group in the final standings, but all us monos know we deserved gold...

Other than that, there was card playing, good food, good drink, one heck of a campfire where I may have surpassed my waterfall badass picture with one of me posing in front of the fire, and a lot a lot a lot of laughs. Mid Service was a complete success!

I´ll talk about Mom and Grandma´s visit in the next entry, but I´m in the process of uploading more pictures, so feel free to check out the photobucket site: and I´ll have up to 50 new pictures added tonight!

http://s390.photobucket.com/albums/oo350/brycechadwick/

Check them out and enjoy!

Recent Happenings

So, lets get everyone caught up....

NEW YEARS- New years was a crazy four day event in Montanita, Ecuador. Montanita is this little beach town about 5 hours up the coast from Machala, really only 2 main streets that are a couple blocks long....but this place is PACKED with people. All different types of people too. They say that Montanita is one of the places in Ecuador which is "gringolandia", in other words, the population there was at least half foreign, there on vacation or to surf or whatever. I actually met a couple different people who had come down for a year-long program like what I´m doing, went to Montanita, and decided to stay and had now been living there for up to 5 years...almost all of them who live there are hippies, backpackers, rastas, (I´ve never seen so many blonds with dreadlocks in my life) but there also are a lot of people who just go there for vacation, some who seem straight out of a college brochure, and I swear I saw a sigma pi tshirt when I was down there. The interesting thing is that there is a huge mix of nationalities among the gringos there. Yeah, there are a decent amount from the states, but even more are from Europe: Germany, France, England, Ireland, Austria, some of the Eastern European countries, and Portugal as well. This means that altho there are white people all around...the language everyone still uses to communicate with people they don´t know, even gringo to gringo, is spanish, because that´s the one language everyone assumes people know...I mean, you´re down in Ecuador right? Anyways, it´s a fairly interesting social case study they´ve got going up there.

We stayed at the hotel montezuma...knocking wood constantly in order to avoid his revenge...and since there were six of us staying there we got the penthouse...which meant only that it was the room at the top of the hotel. Montanita is realllll laid back, and so they expect everyone else to be too...meaning no housekeeping, paper thin walls, and only one fan to cool down the sweltering room in the daytime. However, making up for all that, it had a deck and also two tables and enough space for us to play island pong! The only other time down here that I´d played island pong was with scooby doo cups (and my host nephew...who´s six...and don´t worry mom I drank half of his beer for him...) so to play with people who had recently graduated from an American University, and with cups that didn´t make you feel like you were at a elementary school birthday party....it meant a lot...

Montanita was also the best beach I´ve ever been to in terms of the ocean. The water was perfect, no jellyfish, no seaweed, no shells or crabs or rocks or driftwood spars or sharks, the waves were absolutely amazing...I´m talking HUGE for a while, then the sea gave you a break, absolutely perfect for bodysurfing...and real surfing...which I did not get a chance to try yet....AND, I saved a guy who could have drowned...not kidding, weak 30 something guy trying to swim against the current until finally he started yelling "ayuda" which for those of you who don´t know spanish means "i´ve really had enough of this swimming business and I´d like to return to dry sand please"...That incident also got me thinking, and now I´m looking out for opportunities to be especially heroic so that I get a story in the paper, and the only thing I´ll say is "I want a phone call from Obama", and then I´ll be sitting in my room watching west wing (Cuenca has US tv shows on DVD!!!!) and get a phone call and it will be the President and in the 15 minute phone conversation that ensues I will convince him to give me a job when I get back. My job hunting strategies are solid...

New Years was absolutely wild there. First off, it´s a party town anyways, so the beach clubs and bars are the most common things there you can find. Add New years, add the crazy traditions of burning lifesized dolls and surfing naked at midnight, add no covers and free drinks and amazing strawberry banana smoothies....and you have the beach completely filled with people at midnight, everyone chanting and singing and dancing....it was wild. And by wild I mean, clubs were still packed and open from the night before at 1 in the afternoon the next day...wild.

Note to self: Midservice and Mom and Gma´s visit in next entry....

Hope everything´s going well back home!

Random Observations

-People here use their horns way more than they use their blinkers. By that, I mean that I have not seen one blinker in my time here in Machala, but horns are used almost constantly when people are passing, or see pedestrians ready to cross, or just feel like a power trip...However, in a side note, I have also never seen an accident here, nor the after effects of a car crash. The closest thing I´ve seen to that is a old old taxi overheat and burst into flames. I don´t know which is better, but does that mean that Ecuadorians are safer drivers than us in the US?

-Because of all the rumors and the stereotypes that fly around about the machista society here, I asked my host sisters what percent of the men here they would think cheat on their wives or girlfriends. Arlene said 60%. I thought that was a ridiculous exaggeration, but after hearing the number of people that I know here who have cheated, plus the fact that she´s recently said that she´d like to change her answer to 80%, I´m thinking 60% is not that far from the truth...which is ridiculous and sad. What do you guys think the % is for the US?

-I may have mentioned this before, but the attitude for meetings and going out and times that you have to do something is completely relaxed to the point where I´ve realized if someone says we´re gonna go out at 9, as is what happened last night, I don´t need to start getting ready until 930. This has made it a bit difficult with enforcing a no tardy policy at school, but is a nice an relaxed way of doing other social occasions, especially since everyone is like this here.

-I had school cancelled yesterday because of rain. It rained incredibly hard from around 3 to 9 (of course, I slept right through it) and when we went out the next morning, a number of the side roads in my neighborhood were like canals, and the institute was apparently under water that went past your shins. This marks the first time I´ve ever had school cancelled for flooding...