Home Sweet Home...

Long Island Memorial for Asho

I’m back in Cuenca, after having spent over 3 weeks on the east coast of the U.S. in August.  Highlights of the trip included two lovely memorial services for my mother, Asho Craine, who passed away in May.  The first gathering, on Long Island, was a wonderful reunion for the extended family.  The second memorial took place in Northern Michigan at the family cabin on Douglas Lake.  This memorial took the form of a campfire with neighbors, accompanied by a spectacular sunset and finished off with s’mores.  Our family has been spending summers at the cabin for the past 50 years so it’s a place of special meaning for all of us.

Family at Douglas Lake

One of my favorite parts of my trip was spending 5 days in NYC with Daniel, Elise and Daniel’s girlfriend, Emily, who has a charming apartment in Greenwich Village.  Emily was a great tour guide!  I was treated to the Broadway musical, “Once”, lots of great food and a visit to the 9-11 memorial.   My first time in NYC in 20 years!

Daniel and Emily had visited me in Cuenca earlier in the summer.  I loved every minute of their visit!  Here’s a photo I took of them at the hot springs, just outside of town, after our mud bath.

To top off my whirlwind trip to the U.S., my dear friend Sue MacDonell met me in the Atlanta airport on the way back to Ecuador.  Together we flew to Quito, where we spent 4 days, and then on to Cuenca for almost 2 more weeks.  What a treat it was to have her as a traveling companion!  In addition to seeing some of the sites of the city,  Sue helped me fix up my apartment to make it more livable.
We also toured many of the marketplaces, stocking up on great produce.  At one of the markets, Sue had a "limpia"--a psychic cleansing involving being whacked all over with herbs, rubbed with an egg and finally spit upon.  All for $2.00!

Unfortunately, the week Sue was in town was the coldest on record.  We didn't see the sun all week.  Good thing we had our matching water bottles to take to bed with us.

We escaped the cold by taking a quick trip to beautiful Vilcabamba, south of here.  Vilcabamba is a great place to chill (there isn't much else going on there.)  Our hostel had beautiful views of the valley and its sunsets.

This past Monday I started teaching again.  I have 3 classes of rank beginners, most of whom are teenagers.  I find this level the most challenging because the students’ vocabulary is so limited.  But it is also the most rewarding because they make progress so quickly.  I’m teaching at a different campus this term, about a 30-minute walk from my house.

In my spare time, I’m taking yoga and another fitness class along with my regular Spanish classes.  I continue to appreciate this beautiful city and the relationships I’m building with some of its residents!

Lunch with Patricia and Eulalia.  Patricia was my "host mother" last fall when I attended language school here.

Happy to be "home" in Cuenca!

Riding the City Bus

In Cuenca, the king of the road is the city bus.  Motorists give way to any bus, while pedestrians scurry when a bus approaches since busses seem to slow down for no one.  I can believe the rumors I’ve heard that a couple of people have been killed by busses in the last few months.

These mammoths of the roadways spew disgusting black exhaust as they roar down the city streets.  I try not to breathe as they pass by.  There are plans to replace them with energy efficient vehicles, but I doubt I’ll see this happen in my remaining months here.

Narrow downtown streets weren't designed for these monsters

Despite its drawbacks, bus transportation is cheap and reliable.  Most days I take advantage of the 25-cent fare that will get me downtown in 10 minutes.   And busses are plentiful--I rarely wait more than 5 minutes for my bus, except after 8 p.m.

My local bus stop

The city bus provides a great opportunity for people watching, both inside the bus and out.  I’m a bit shy about taking photos of people on the street, but I find that it’s easy to inconspicuously snap photos of people waiting at a bus stop from the bus window.

View from the bus window

An additional benefit to city bus travel—at times a couple of musicians will board the bus and serenade the passengers with a song or two before they pass the hat.  I always contribute, in honor of musicians world wide (including my son!)

Great Andean music!

At the major intersections in town, we’re often treated to a street performance by jugglers or baton twirlers.  They have to work fast; after a minute of performing, they run up and down the line of stationary cars, collecting contributions.  I always wonder how much money they make in a day’s work.

A street performer doing her act -- quick before the light changes!

The times I spring for the $2.00 cab fare, I realize how much faster a taxi can get me places and I wonder why I take the trouble of riding the bus in order to save $1.75.  But I do feel that my daily rides give me a view into city life I would never see from the comfort of a taxi.

Puerto Lopez Vacation

Last week I spent a few days on the Ecuadorian coast with two fellow English teachers, Barbara and Reena.   Although I had spent 5 weeks on the coast in February and March during my English teacher’s training course (CELTA), I was happy to go back and experience it in a different season. 

Our destination was Puerto Lopez, a fishing village about an hour’s drive north of Montañita where my course had taken place.  We stayed in the nicest hotel in town—Hostelería Mandala.   It was a complete pleasure to fall asleep to the sound of the surf and to awaken to bird song (and no car alarms, barking dogs, beeping cars or blaring school loudspeaker!)

View from our patio

The coastal weather I had experienced in February and March had been incredibly hot and rainy.  Some locals call it “summer” because of the heat.  Others call it “winter” because of all the rain.  Don’t ask me what season it is now, but it is much cooler and usually overcast.  It is also the beginning of whale season, when the humpbacks return to Ecuadorian waters from farther south.  We got to see several on our day trip to Isla de la Plata.

Our traveling companions

Isla de la Plata (Silver Island) supposedly got its name from the hoards of silver that Sir Francis Drake buried there, although another explanation is that the guano-covered cliff glisten like silver in the sunshine.  It is nicknamed “Poor Man’s Galapagos” since you can see many of the same birds that are on the Galapagos—e.g. blue footed boobies, frigate birds, albatross and pelicans—for a fraction of the cost.  Since I had experienced an 8-day tour of the Galapagos last December, it felt a bit like déjà vu.

Elvis might have been singing about these shoes...

Another day we visited the inland community of Agua Blanca where we enjoyed a dip in a sulfur hot springs—and gave ourselves a mud bath.

Natural beauty treatment

Refreshing in a sulfur-smelling way

Later, we went to Los Frailes Beach.   This was the beach that Peg, David and I went to each weekend during the CELTA course.  Unfortunately, we discovered that just as it is whale season, it also seems to be jellyfish season.  Reena and I were in the water no more than 10 minutes before a jellyfish attacked her.  Within a couple of minutes, a German girl down the beach also got stung.

Poor Reena!  She  had gotten hurt earlier when her hammock broke and dumped her on the patio floor.  And we all survived a small earthquake one morning.  It was nothing more than a mild shaking, but it added a bit of excitement for a few moments.

Once again, I was reminded of what cultural, linguistic, climatic and geographic diversity there is in this small country.   I also realized that, although I managed fine traveling alone last fall, it is much more fun to have traveling companions!

En route to Isla de la Plata

Teaching English in Cuenca

I can hardly believe I’ve been teaching English in Cuenca for 10 weeks!  I gave the last final exam on Saturday.   Now we have a 2-week break before classes resume on July 3.  I am really looking forward to my vacation and I also know that I’ll miss the relationships I’ve established with my students.

I’m teaching at CEDEI, www.cedei.org.  At it’s 20^th anniversary celebration last week, I learned that it was originally set up as a non-profit dedicated to promoting intercultural understanding.   But because they need to run it as a business, tuition costs unfortunately prevent the majority of Cuencanos from attending.

CEDEI building in downtown, with typical traffic jam

Most of my students probably represent the 1% of Ecuador.  I'm guessing that their parents perhaps pay $3.00/hour for English lessons—not much by our standards but far out of the reach of most Ecuadorian families.  One of my students told me that he and his family are traveling to Europe this summer.  A couple of my other students will spend time at their home on the beach—coincidentally, the same beach where I spent several days after my English teachers’ training.  One of the members of this beachside community is a former President of Ecuador who spent his time under house arrest in his luxurious seaside home.

Despite the fact that I’m teaching a lot of rich kids, I do enjoy my job!  My favorite class has been a group of young adults, all in their 20’s, who are eager to learn and always ready to laugh.  After the last class, they took me out for pizza!

Class taking a break in the CEDEI courtyard

At the other end of the age spectrum has been my class of two 11-year old boys.  Because one was quite hyperactive, I had to keep things lively.   I hope that between games of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Tic Tac Toe they might have picked up a bit of English.  

The most challenging has been the 4-hour class Saturday morning made up of 6 teens who would no doubt prefer to be in bed at 8:30 am.  Over the past 10 weeks, they gradually warmed up to each other (and to me) and they actually got a bit rowdy toward the end.  Here we are celebrating the end of class at a popular ice cream parlor downtown.

I am reminded how much I love teaching!  I could be the grandmother of most of my students and sometimes feel a bit motherly (or grandmotherly) toward them.  I gather that there is a lot of pressure put on them to get into the right private high school and to achieve.  My hope is that they leave this English school with a positive experience learning English –and the confidence & desire to continue studying it.

Next week I'll be traveling to the coast for a few days with a couple of my fellow English teachers.  We hope to see some whales on our day trip to Isla de la Plata also known as "The Poor Man's Galapagos."  More about that later!

My mornings in Cuenca

The excitement of living in Cuenca is wearing off and I’m settling into a daily routine.  Thought I’d share a bit about it.

I’m living in a 3-bedroom apartment in a residential section of this city of 500,000.   My apartment is upstairs, above the apartment of my American friends, Peg and Mike.  Here's a photo of the apartment with Peg and Mike outside our gate.  We are well fortified against "ladrones" (thieves.)  Like most Ecuadorians, we not only live behind a locked gate, but the downstairs windows are barred and each apartment has two locked inner doors as well.

We live across the street from a public elementary school and around the corner from a private school. The first thing I become aware of in the morning is the sound of children’s voices as they gallop down the street or pile out of cars and into their schoolyard.  Yesterday I watched a taxi pull up in front of the school and eight children emerged from it!   

The kids in this school wear a uniform of sweat pants and athletic jackets.  Other schools have more formal attire, typically plaid skirts & sweaters for girls and pants & blazer for boys.  There’s one school downtown where all the students look like little doctors because they wear long white coats over their clothing!

School starts at 7 a.m. and school traffic noise must begin a good half hour before that.  If I should happen to sleep through the noise of cars and kids, the P.A. system will surely wake me up.  The entire school seems to gather in the courtyards for morning announcements which often go on for a half an hour.  I can barely understand a word—due to the terrible quality of the broadcast system more than my elementary Spanish.  Occasionally, a tiny squeaky voice comes on.  I figure it must be a prize student whose reward for good work is the privilege of addressing the student body.  I always smile when I hear this child’s voice first thing in the morning.  Here's a view from my window of the rather dreary school playground.

The school play yard is nothing more than a muddy field with one moveable soccer goal.  I’m reminded of the great creativity of kids as I watch them running around chasing a ball with no semblance of structured teams, or throwing the ball over the goal as if it were a volleyball net.  They all seem to have a great time.  Interestingly, the private school around the corner has a manicured play field with well-maintained playground equipment.  A visual reminder of class differences.

At 7:30 am, without fail, I hear a new sound—seven car beeps in a row followed by about 4 seconds of silence. I’ve learned that this strange Morse Code of Ecuador signals the arrival of the gasman.  Most houses, ours included, heats our water with gas canisters that are hooked up to “on demand” water heaters.   When we no longer get hot water we know it’s time to flag down the gasman to get a new canister.  He hoists it on his shoulder, practically runs up the stairs with it and carries the old off to be refilled.  The only problem with this system is that I never know when the hot water will stop functioning.  I keep fingers crossed it won’t start running cold when my hair is full of shampoo!

Speaking of plumbing (one of the essentials of life, of course), it took me a few days to master the art of shower taking.  Found out that in order to get hot water in the shower, you have to run the hot water in the bathroom sink at the same time.   None of the plumbing in Ecuador is up to the task of handling toilet paper, so all of us gringos have to develop a new habit of putting TP in the waste basket.

I don't start teaching until 3 p.m. on weekdays, so I usually can have a leisurely start to my day.  My morning routine includes making myself a cup of coffee using the ingenious invention of a "coffee sock"--a reusable cloth coffee filter on a metal frame.  Here's a photo.

Until yesterday, I was making due with a tiny apartment-sized refrigerator, but Peg and Mike have just improved my life immensely by buying a full-sized one for this apartment.  I cook using a 4-burner hotplate, but so far I haven’t really missed an oven.  As I do my morning dishes, I can look out the back window and observe the activity of the mini-farm behind the house.  Our indigenous neighbors keep busy tending their chickens, calves, sheep and lovely golden retrievers.  They make a little extra money running a car park for teachers of the private school in the empty lot next to their house.  Here's the view out my kitchen window.

So that's how I start the day!  I'll write more about my teaching experience in my next entry.