Now that the weekend is over, I can get back to writing down details of my life.
Before I start, again, thank you all for the emails, the facebook posts, the comments and all of that. Like I said, its difficult to email everyone back, but I hope that these updates allow everyone to feel connected to whats going on here, and I will start calling home a lot more once I find my piece of paper with all my important numbers...
OK, so I believe we last left off when I was on the bus...
The bus is truly a unique experience, and when you´re ready to get off, there´s a highly complicated process involving many steps. Step one: You yell ¨gracias¨ as loud as you can. Step two: you jump off the bus as it again slows to 60 miles an hour. The bus routes here change like the weather (a lot), and this has led to some interesting unintentional tours of the city, but I have yet to get lost in an unsafe area...however that may be because with the two elephant guns I feel safe wherever I go.
After getting off the bus, Craig, Jon and I have a 15-20 minute walk to wherever we want to go, be it the hotel we have orientation classes at, the school where we teach english, or the spanish school. I´m assigned to teach in the morning, and tomorrow is actually my first day, so before that I´ve been observing my fellow volunteers. Tomorrow I´m teaching sports. I figure it´s the easiest for me, plus if all else fails we can have tournaments of paper football or something. How that will help my students learn english I have yet to find out, but I´ll definitely come up with something.
After teaching/observing, we have hours of orientation classes ourselves, where we learn everything from using audio-visual components in the classroom to how gender and sex is treated in the ecuadorian society. The classes are sometimes interesting, always long, but I guess I´m feeling a bit more prepared for teaching after them, so overall they´re helpful.
In between these classes, from 12-2, we have lunch. And lunch is amazing. Ranging from comida tipica, which is two bucks for a big plate of meat, chicken, or fish, a bowl of amazing soup, and rice and beans or lentils, with juice, to Italian, to Mexican, to KFC, lunch is a very nice part of my day. The other day I got a footlong chili dog, and a double decker burger, and a beer, all for under 5 dollars. Then, since we only take about an hour for lunch usually, a couple of my friends and I have taken to going to a park in the area and playing cards. I have successfully brought capitalism to Ecuador! My host brother says he´s played it before, having learned it from some Brazilians, but clearly that´s ridiculous and false, because ¨capitalism¨ is not a portuguese word.
Then, after orientation, we go to Spanish classes, which I am seriously considering skipping today... The classes are actually pretty helpful, because there´s only four people in a class, all at about the same level, its just that two hours of spanish, especially after a long day like we have, can be a bit much sometimes.
Then after spanish, we head back home, where we have an amazing meal prepared for us, and I am able to maybe catch a bit of a movie before passing out, ready to do it all over again.
Speaking of movies, they´re dirt cheap down here. It´s very possible that I will be coming home with another 100 movies to add to my collection. I´ve already bought 12 so far, including death race, tropic thunder, and batman 2, which havent even come out in the states yet. The only problem is that I never get a chance to watch them.
Ok, I´ve got to go plan for my lesson tomorrow, and figure out whether or not I´ll be going to spanish class....judging by my attendance record at Wake, i think we can probably figure out how this one´s gonna end up.
BRYCE
September! Week 3
15 years ago
5 comments:
Good to hear from you, as always. Just a friendly suggestion: Before attempting to come home with any of those movie DVDs, you may want to confirm whether they are pirated DVDs or not; otherwise you may be doing advanced "masters" studies in a U.S. Federal Penitentiary upon your return in 2009. I can't wait to read your BLOG from there!
Love you long time! DAD
P.S. When you yell "Gracias" on the bus is that a way of saying "thank you for picking my pocket without me knowing it until now" or "thank you for not picking my pocket this time?"
Please tell me that when you leap off this bus that's moving 60mph you do a somersault or something equally cool. Because if you don't, you are completely wasting the experience and jumping off the bus is worthless.
That's going to be how I picture the situation in my mind either way. =)
Love and miss you.
Jenna
Bryce, thanks for letting me know about this blog, found it on ur facebook after mielecki heard that you had been robbed or raped, he wasn't sure, he jus knew that it was one of those r words. I knida wonder if u are actually writin these posts cus they are somewhat funny, yet once i read ur delusional dream of impressing girls at a bar by tellin them that uv had ur ass whooped, I knew that it was the same naive clown ass i had come to know the past 4 years.
By the way after hearing this, I will never travel with u anywhere, u r a curse, criminals must see u and just think to themselves, "jackpot, this will be the easiest mugging/ wild west style robbery of our lives". And jesus don't tell the world how u r contemplating whether or not to go for it with a 11 year old ecuadorean girl, next thing i know i'll turn on nbc tomorow and see you on a special international edition of "To catch a predator". Medical school is alright, its still alot of work like wake but i dont really have the upside of gettin hammered drunk 4 nights a week. And as you can see I am a little tired of studying medical biochemistry so I decided to type one of the longest posts ever. Look forward to hearin from u
peace
joe monti
bear
turtle
p.s. Iv'e had both geno's and pat's steaks but i was drunk both nights so i still dont know which is better
Yo bryce,
I bought a bunch of those dvds when I was overseas and yes I can guarantee your dad that they are pirated. Now here is how you get them across TSA inspectors, do not have them as carry on, but instead have them with your checked baggage. Its a lot easier to get them through that way, also take them out of their pouches, cause that is a dead give away of pirated dvds, also angle them in your bags so that it is less easier to detect, and spread them out over the suitcase and not in a pile. Try to pack your favorites underneath your shirt, they are plastic and won't set off the metal detectors. Otherwise, put them in one big box and ship them home, but ship them to a friend's address or a neighbor's that you know, otherwise the feds might be on to you.
Yours Truly,
'horrible with american idioms'
Remove the DVD's from their plastic containers. Place the DVDs in a cd carrier (the little traveling roladex type thing). Remove the "art work" from the containers. Through the containers away (you can buy a new batch of them in the US for a few bucks). Place the "art work" inside a book to keep them nice and unwrinkled. Go thru customs. Get home and reassemble you movies. By the way - those pirated movies can have really bad quaility, be in a foreign language, be completely unusable due to the format. Sometimes you get what you pay for. . .
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