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....