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????