Fun and crazy times

It's been pretty busy these past few weeks, with summer school, then getting ready for the school year and now, the first week of classes, so I haven't had much time to do anything other than get home, eat and read a bit before going to sleep.  But here's a bit of what I've been up to. :)  The first one is my friend and I playing around with my hair, it's actually long enough to almost sit on, but we were goofing around and pretended it was short.  The 2nd is the adorable 5 day old son of one of the students at school.  She's made wonderful progress this year, in her attitude (so I hear, I didn't know her at the beginning) and is amazingly mature.  The last is one of my favorites, me riding!!!!  A friend of mine's brother-in-law owns this gorgeous horse and invited me to go riding last Sunday!!!!!  It's amazing how much I'd missed it. :)

Church

Today was quite the interesting day at church.  First of all, I left the house late and there wasn't any taxis for the first few blocks, but I finally saw one that was empty.  Normally it's not a big deal, but leaving the house late and then walking for 20-30 minutes tends to make one REALLY late for church. :)  When I got there there was a group from Canada, doing evangelism in Sucua, a town about 10-30 minutes from here (10 min if you drive your own car, 30 min by bus).  One of the men preached and it was as if I was back at Salem Alliance in my childhood.  We used to joke that the Canadians were taking over the church, since the head pastor, the worship pastor, their wives and all of the high school interns were from Canada. :)  Plus they're from 2 different Alliance churches in Canada, so it was cool to hear someone with a similar background, doesn't happen every day!  They even knew of Salem Alliance, I think, at least they appeared somewhat familiar with it when talking with them afterward.

At the end of  the service, the youth/worship pastor got up and made a few announcements, one of which to let everyone know that the Shuar Bible is now translated and at the end of the month there's going to be a big dedication service for it, in Macuma.  He invited everyone who wants to go to get together and form groups for traveling.  After the service was over, I was talking with a couple who are going with a group of Shuar to the dedication and invited me to go along.  I'd love to go!!!  The entertaining part is that there are only 2 ways to get to Macuma, the fast way and the slow way. :)  The fast way is by a 5 person plane.  The slow way is to take the bus for a couple hours and then walk 3 hours, they're no roads!  Lois, a retired missionary here, was telling us that part of the trail includes crossing rivers on logs and stuff like that.  I think it would be awesome!!  I just have to figure out if the timing will work out.  It's on a Saturday, but it's the Saturday in the middle of getting ready for the school year.  I think it would be absolutely amazing to be able to go! :)  To get to be at the ceremony dedicating the Bible in a new language.  I hope I can work it out.

Then after church, I went out to eat with a couple other "gringos" to a new restaurant.  It has the exact same name as another restaurant in town and serves the same type of foods, but the other place is still open, so I'm not sure what's up.  They're only a couple blocks apart, too, so I kinda doubt that it's a case of franchising or anything, but who knows.  What was really funny was when we got there it was semi full, mostly with Ecuadorians, but there was one table of what looked like gringo tourists.  That still throws me off, since I'm used to being the only blonde person around, it's almost as weird for me to see another blonde, as it is for the Ecuadorians!  I never did figure out if they were from the States or not, though, since I couldn't really hear them speaking, and when I did it was a Spanish with an accent, it wasn't Ecuadorian Spanish, but it didn't have the cadence of a native English speaker, either.  Then about 15 minutes later a group walked up, very obviously tourists, one girl even had an Ecuador guide book!  I'm not quite sure why she had the guide book, though, unless it was for useful phrases, because there's rarely anything on the Amazonian region in the guidebooks, and if there is, it's mostly full of things in the northern jungle, there'd be little to no information on Macas.  Hopefully she figured that out! :)  So, they walked in and were asking for chairs, so that they could all sit around the 1 table that was open.  Then the owner (I assume that's who it was, at least) walked out and had the other group of gringos move their table over (the 2 groups were next to each other).  I assumed they knew each other until I heard someone say, "but we don't know each other".  The guy told them that it didn't matter!  It was sooo hard not to laugh really loudly!! :)  The table next to us only had 1 guy and when he was done, the 2nd group moved over to his table, making me laugh even more.  Those poor people!  At least it provided  me with some amusement at lunch. :)  It was odd though, I think there were more gringos than Ecuadorians there, a first, I would imagine. :)  It's actually getting more common to see whiter people on the streets.  My first year down here, I don't think I saw anyone else, then the 2nd year I came, there were a few.  This year I've seen some, but not too many.  I don't usually see many gringos, unless I'm in Quito or Cuenca.  I probably would when I go to Guayaquil, but I don't hang out in the areas that they go to, so I don't think I have, other than the missionary family at the seminary.

I really need to do better at taking pictures, but I keep forgetting to pull out my camera in class, and I haven't done anything outside of class to take pictures of, maybe this week, I hope! :)

Church

Today was quite the interesting day at church.  First of all, I left the house late and there wasn't any taxis for the first few blocks, but I finally saw one that was empty.  Normally it's not a big deal, but leaving the house late and then walking for 20-30 minutes tends to make one REALLY late for church. :)  When I got there there was a group from Canada, doing evangelism in Sucua, a town about 10-30 minutes from here (10 min if you drive your own car, 30 min by bus).  One of the men preached and it was as if I was back at Salem Alliance in my childhood.  We used to joke that the Canadians were taking over the church, since the head pastor, the worship pastor, their wives and all of the high school interns were from Canada. :)  Plus they're from 2 different Alliance churches in Canada, so it was cool to hear someone with a similar background, doesn't happen every day!  They even knew of Salem Alliance, I think, at least they appeared somewhat familiar with it when talking with them afterward.

At the end of  the service, the youth/worship pastor got up and made a few announcements, one of which to let everyone know that the Shuar Bible is now translated and at the end of the month there's going to be a big dedication service for it, in Macuma.  He invited everyone who wants to go to get together and form groups for traveling.  After the service was over, I was talking with a couple who are going with a group of Shuar to the dedication and invited me to go along.  I'd love to go!!!  The entertaining part is that there are only 2 ways to get to Macuma, the fast way and the slow way. :)  The fast way is by a 5 person plane.  The slow way is to take the bus for a couple hours and then walk 3 hours, they're no roads!  Lois, a retired missionary here, was telling us that part of the trail includes crossing rivers on logs and stuff like that.  I think it would be awesome!!  I just have to figure out if the timing will work out.  It's on a Saturday, but it's the Saturday in the middle of getting ready for the school year.  I think it would be absolutely amazing to be able to go! :)  To get to be at the ceremony dedicating the Bible in a new language.  I hope I can work it out.

Then after church, I went out to eat with a couple other "gringos" to a new restaurant.  It has the exact same name as another restaurant in town and serves the same type of foods, but the other place is still open, so I'm not sure what's up.  They're only a couple blocks apart, too, so I kinda doubt that it's a case of franchising or anything, but who knows.  What was really funny was when we got there it was semi full, mostly with Ecuadorians, but there was one table of what looked like gringo tourists.  That still throws me off, since I'm used to being the only blonde person around, it's almost as weird for me to see another blonde, as it is for the Ecuadorians!  I never did figure out if they were from the States or not, though, since I couldn't really hear them speaking, and when I did it was a Spanish with an accent, it wasn't Ecuadorian Spanish, but it didn't have the cadence of a native English speaker, either.  Then about 15 minutes later a group walked up, very obviously tourists, one girl even had an Ecuador guide book!  I'm not quite sure why she had the guide book, though, unless it was for useful phrases, because there's rarely anything on the Amazonian region in the guidebooks, and if there is, it's mostly full of things in the northern jungle, there'd be little to no information on Macas.  Hopefully she figured that out! :)  So, they walked in and were asking for chairs, so that they could all sit around the 1 table that was open.  Then the owner (I assume that's who it was, at least) walked out and had the other group of gringos move their table over (the 2 groups were next to each other).  I assumed they knew each other until I heard someone say, "but we don't know each other".  The guy told them that it didn't matter!  It was sooo hard not to laugh really loudly!! :)  The table next to us only had 1 guy and when he was done, the 2nd group moved over to his table, making me laugh even more.  Those poor people!  At least it provided  me with some amusement at lunch. :)  It was odd though, I think there were more gringos than Ecuadorians there, a first, I would imagine. :)  It's actually getting more common to see whiter people on the streets.  My first year down here, I don't think I saw anyone else, then the 2nd year I came, there were a few.  This year I've seen some, but not too many.  I don't usually see many gringos, unless I'm in Quito or Cuenca.  I probably would when I go to Guayaquil, but I don't hang out in the areas that they go to, so I don't think I have, other than the missionary family at the seminary.

I really need to do better at taking pictures, but I keep forgetting to pull out my camera in class, and I haven't done anything outside of class to take pictures of, maybe this week, I hope! :)

Summer school

The first 2 times I came here, I taught the littlest kids' class and had a ton of fun with them, playing and teaching them English.  I loved it and it only helped to reinforce my love of teaching little kids.  So, then I move here and everything gets turned upside down! :)  I started out the year, like any other year, teaching the little kids, although older than I'd had in the States and really enjoyed it.  They were a ton of fun and apart from making me want to pull my hair out from their seeming lack of ability to sit still and listen :) they amazed  me with their ability to learn English from just 40 minutes 4 times a week.  Then, in the third trimester, the schedule changed and I added a class a week for the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th grades!!  It scared me, the idea of teaching junior high and high school, but it was surprisingly enjoyable.  I really appreciated being able to get to know the high schoolers better, they turned out to be really neat to hang out with. :)  Last spring when we were talking about this year's summer school plans, we realized that there weren't any groups coming down and that we wouldn't be able to do the normal Vacational Bible School/English classes like normal.  We were trying to figure out what we would do, if anything and decided to leveling classes to help the lower kids catch up.  Well, that wasn't really so necessary with the younger kids, so it turned out to only be the older kids, junior high and high school age.  Whenever I've been put with a class or group of kids, I've ALWAYS been assigned the youngest group.  Well, this year, I'm with the OLDEST kids, the teenagers who are sophomore/junior age. :)  Slight difference from years' past!!  I was looking forward to the class, only because I already knew who the students would be, having taught the majority during the last trimester of the school year.  I wasn't too sure, though, how well they'd do at learning English, since they're the ones during the school year to not try too hard in class, or do homework or really seem to care, for the most part.  They're sweet kids and fun to talk to, but never really seemed to take school all that seriously, so I had my doubts as to how they'd do with an accelerated English course.  In the 3 days that I've taught them, they've surpassed my expectations by far!!  The first day, at first, they didn't seem to know anything, or remember much from during the school year or the past, but after the first hour or 2, the light bulbs started clicking on and they were getting it! :)  It was an awesome feeling, to watch them figure out what I was teaching them.  One student even told the administrator that she finally understood English for the first time and today several of the girls were asking me why I couldn't teach them during the school year.  I told them that I was going to teach the little ones and so one girl asked me to treat her like I do the little kids, so I started goofing around with her, teasing her. :)  We all started laughing and thus ended recess.  I think what I enjoy the most about teaching them is that, we can joke around and have fun and they allow it, but are mature enough (for the most part!) to settle down when necessary and pay attention.  The younger kids aren't able to do that.  If I joke around with them, they take that as meaning that they don't have to take me seriously.  My goofing around with them comes in the form of coming up with educational games for them or doing things that throw them off, such as messing with the calendar and moving the dates around, that sort of thing.  I love doing it and it's a ton of fun, but I also really enjoy the way I'm able to relate to the teenagers.  It's been a lot of fun finding out about this other side of me! :)  Now, I just need to get pictures.
Here's some pictures I took while in Oregon. :)  Oregon visit and some that I took when I went to the jungle with the administrators of Emanuel trip to the selva

Reentry

It was hard to come back to Ecuador, for the first time ever, I find myself missing family and friends in the States!  Not that I didn't actually miss people before, but it wasn't much different than when I lived in a different area of the country from them, now I'm much more aware of them not being close by.  It's an odd feeling, and I suppose I should figure out what it means! :)  Coming back wasn't all that hard, other than missing people (and NOT wanting to leave my nephew!!!), I slipped back into life here, as if I hadn't been gone.  In some ways it felt as if I had been gone a really long time and in other ways, as if I hadn't been gone at all.  Other than the fact that there's more humidity here, I wasn't noticing that much difference, I know a lot of people everywhere I go, both here, in Macas, and in Oregon (case in point, I went to the mall in Salem with my grandma and saw at least 10 people that I knew and/or was related to, without planning, I can do the same thing walking down the street here!).  I can cook at both places, talk with people, etc.  Then I got online this morning and was reading some friends and cousins' blogs and heard something out the window.  Reason number one why living in Ecuador is different than living in Oregon:  it's the annual festivities celebrating the anniversary of the virgin's appearance here (at least I'm pretty certain that's what's going on) and so they have a parade.  There's a parade for practically everything here, which is fun, since I love parades, although most are really little or the not so interesting civic parades when all the students and teachers dress up in their formal uniform and then the police and military parade behind the students.  The folkloric parades are MUCH more interesting!! :)  The parade going on right outside my window, right now, is made up of people from every single parish in the country!!!  At least that's what it appears to be. :)  I could be wrong, it's possible a few parrishes are missing, but the ones that ARE here, are certainly from all over, there's some from Quito (7-8 hrs by bus), Guayaquil (10-12 hrs by bus), Loja (10-12 hrs by bus, I think) and everywhere else, too.  Each group has a banner with a saying, either from a Catholic father, or a verse from the Bible, a picture of the virgin, and where they come from.  Each group also has it's own uniform, usually the same t-shirt and baseball cap (think youth group mission trips at the airport ready to leave) and singing a different song from the other groups.  It's amazing the devotion that people show towards the virgin here; it makes me wonder what they would be like if they turned that devotion towards Jesus!  People are incredibly devoted, but it makes me sad that they're putting their devotion into a person, granted a person who (if it really was a manifestation of the virgin Mary, they never actually say that it's Mary, just a virgin) helped change the world by giving birth to Jesus, but she's still human, not God.  Why worship the created, when we can worship the Creator?  He's more powerful!  The parade definitely reminds me why I'm here, to show people about Mary's Son, Jesus, she was His mom, but He's God! :)  Definitely different than in Oregon (of course, that might have something to do with the fact that it's one of the least churched states in the country, at least that's what I've heard), oh and it's really green here, too.  Maybe I should send some pictures of the green to my mom, she's been missing it. :)

Summer

It's been my plan these past couple months to write on here more often, however, as soon as I make that plan, I end up writing even less!!  It probably has nothing to do with the fact that the end of the year is super busy, I was testing kids for next year and teaching high school, along with elementary.  I'm sure it has to do with the fact that I decided to write more often. ;)  Oh, and while I was doing all of that, I was attempting to process the fact that I would fly back to Oregon for a couple weeks!!! :)  When I did think about it, I was excited to see my nephew and to get to warmer weather.  (You'd think, living on the equator, in the jungle that I'd have warm weather, but lately it's been in the 70s and rainy during the day and 60s or lower at night)  So, of course, as I was planning what to pack and where on the plane, I decided on a sleeveless shirt and jeans, along with a sweatshirt, thinking that would cover me for about any weather.  Well, imagine my surprise, as we get ready to land, the pilot comes on and says it's 55 and rainy in Portland!!!  What's up with that?!  I had just taken off my sweatshirt, since it'd gotten cold on the plane, so it goes back on and I get off, to be met by a hug from my grandma and my sister handing over my 5 month old nephew!!!!  He's absolutely adorable and there's only been 1 day so far that I haven't seen him and hung out with my sister.  We're taking him all sorts of places, today we headed out to Canyonview Camp, where we all went to day camp, through our church, and I also worked out at the horse camp.  Soooo many memories and places to take pictures and introduce him to. :)   All in all, I'd say he's pretty cute and we should probably keep him around!!! :)

Parades

I don't think I've ever been to as many parades in one year as this year!  Most of the parades here, in Macas, are civic parades, which means that all the students dress up in their nicest uniform and march down the streets, with the police marching behind them, similar to the old military parades that I remember seeing pictures of in my history book (yes mom, I'm making fun of how old you are ;) ).  However, these past couple weeks, there's been a number of parades to celebrate Macas Days (las fiestas de Macas) and they were much more interesting!!  Everyone kept asking me how I liked it and if there was something similar in the States and I said that there wasn't.  The first 2 parades were folkloric parades, and about the only place you can find people dressed up celebrating their culture or someone else's culture is at a Native American pow wow or at a festival specifically for people of that descent, it's rare to find it in any other place, so it fascinated me! :)

To open up the festivities we had the Pregón, which I think basically is the little kids' parade, since it was mostly little kids that don't participate in the others.  Emanuel decided to represent all cultures taking care of God's creation.  To do that all the kids were assigned a different culture to dress up as, both from Ecuador and around the world.  The teachers walked with the kids, keeping them in order, reminding them of the steps and making sure no one took off. :)  To have more fun, they also decided to dress up too!  A week or so before, one of the teachers asked me if I'd do her a favor.  I wanted to know what it was and she said that she wanted me to dress up as a Shuar, the local indigenous group, who used to be known for shrinking the heads of their enemies (nope, didn't tell you that before I came down here, mom :) hehe).  As you can see from the picture, I did.  It was hilarious!!!!!!  The kids and parents were all shocked when I walked out of my office, after changing.  You don't see too many pale, blond Shuars around Macas, so it was a bit of a shock to them. :)  Then the cameras started appearing out of nowhere!  Everyone wanted their kid's picture taken with the crazy English teacher dressed as a Shuar.  During the parade we all danced to different songs, with the same song between each culture's turn.  Every couple steps another camera was out and someone was taking a picture of me!  It was crazy!!!!  One of the teachers told me, the next day, that no matter what I did, they took pictures!  Definitely one of the more fun parades I've been in. :)  Not because of all of the pictures though!!  Although, the reactions were fun, I enjoyed it mostly because I wasn't just walking down the streets, those parades take forever!  I was in charge of a group of 5 yr olds and dancing with them, it went much faster! :)

The next parade was the folkloric parade where the older kids, from each school, and adults in various town governments dressed up as from different cultures and performed typical dances of the culture they were representing.  That one was really fun because I got to watch the whole thing instead of participate! :)

The last parade was a typical civic parade where all the teachers put on their new uniform, including heels (2nd or 3rd time in my life for me!!!!!!!!) and marched down the streets.  At least I had 1 entertaining parade! ;)  Here's a link for more pics on Facebook :) Pregón pics

Keys

I was talking with a friend of mine, who lives in the States, the other day and I realized how funny my key chain would have looked to me, when I got here the first time, several years ago.  I was trying to describe how many keys I had and it's a lot and I actually need to add at least one more!!  I open the door to my apartment and have to open a gate, kinda like a screen door, but without the screen.  So that's one door I need to lock and we need to get a padlock for the gate (the at least one more key that I need to add).  Then, because I live on the second floor, I go down the stairs and unlock the door at the bottom.  After that door is the gate in the wall around the house, which has a padlock.  Then I either walk or take a taxi to the preschool (depends on how tired I am and how early I leave the house!)  At the preschool, I have to unlock the padlock at the gate, then unlock the front door.  I also have the key to the back door, which leads out to the patio for recess time.  When I'm done at the preschool, I walk the few blocks over to the main building.  At the main building I have to unlock the gate and then the rest of the doors are unlocked by the time I get there, but I have the keys for them.  The front door to the school, the gate leading to the stairs, the door to the office floor (off the stairs) and the door to my office/teacher's room.  I also have the key to my bedroom door and the filing cabinet at school, on my key chain.  All in all, I have 13 keys (I think) on my key chain!!!  Actually, I also have another key, but nobody can figure out what it goes to, we've tried it in all the doors and cabinets that we can, both at the apartment and at school, but it doesn't fit anything.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it doesn't go to a door that we have somewhere, but it could be that it's just a really bad copy. :)  Oh, I also have the key to the library, but that's kept separate from the rest, although I'm not really sure why. :)  I really don't have all that many, compared to many people that I know, but it sure seems a lot compared to what I had in the States!!  There I had my apartment door key, my car key, the key to my classroom, the key to my parents' house and the key to my grandparents' house, nothing else!
Before I ever came down here, to Ecuador, I never really thought about something as simple as keys being a cultural difference, but it truly is, or at least appears that way to me.  Every single door has a separate key, and different kinds of doors use different kinds of keys.  Metal doors have a long key, with a rounded head, while wooden doors have a long key too, but the head is more like part of an octagon or some other multi-sided shape and the padlock keys have a rounded head, but are really short.  Apparently random little details fascinate me. :)  I'd be silly and take a picture to put up, but my memory card for my camera is being a stinker and not downloading to my computer so I can't transfer any pictures over, till I figure out what the problem is. :(

High School

Well, I've taught the high schoolers for about 3 weeks now and so far I really enjoy it!! :)  It was a shock to me how fun it actually is, because I always said that I like to teach the little ones because of how much love they give, all the hugs and being excited to see me.  The high schoolers don't usually come up to give me hugs, but they look for me when they're not in class to talk to and appear to enjoy having me in their class once a week.  I also discovered how much fun I have joking around with them.  It's made going to youth group a little more interesting/different, because much of the youth group is composed of Emanuel teens, so that puts me in sort of the same level as my students.  Youth group here includes anyone from 14 or so until you get married, but the church here has started to divide the group into 2 when we have the teaching time.  The singing and games are still all together, but during the teaching, the teens are in one group and the young adults in another.  That's been really nice, especially now that they're my actual students and not just older kids in the school I teach at!

I'm really enjoying getting to know some of the high schoolers better, several girls have been bugging me to teach them cookies, so I need to figure out a way to fairly do it, so the others don't get jealous of me spending time outside of school with some of the girls, maybe rotate or let anyone who wants to come.  I'm not sure yet, once I figure it out, I may be making more cookies than ever!  Either that or having willing "slaves" to help me mix the cookies for selling at the teachers' booth during the soccer games. :)

One thing I was worried about before I started, and it hasn't been that big of a deal yet, is the respect issue.  Never having taught older kids before, aside from camp counseling, I wasn't sure how it would be gaining their respect.  I get the younger kids' respect because I'm older than them (it's truly entertaining to ask little kids to guess my age, apparently I look anywhere from 10-65!), but the teens aren't THAT much younger than me, although I do forget sometimes that it really has been 10 years since I graduated from high school!  So far, though, I haven't had any trouble with it, aside from the kids in octavo (equivalent to young US 7th graders) and that grade is notorious for having issues, we think it has something to do with hormones or something. ;)  That class has about as many discipline issues as my younger kids, but without the excuse of still learning the school rules!  They've gotten better the past couple of weeks, though, so I do have hope! :)  All in all, I'm actually enjoying it, when I can take a moment to breath!!! :)

Trimester

Nope, this blog has absolutely nothing to do with being pregnant. :)  The school, here, is on a trimester schedule and we just started the 3rd.  This year is flying by!!!!  I can't believe it's almost over already!  I've really enjoyed my kids and classes this year, some being more difficult than others, but all enjoyable.  Funny thing, though, the most difficult class keeps changing, it never stays the same. :)  Now that it's a new trimester, though, I get to add a few new classes.  Actually, to be more accurate, I should say that I'm adding a few new grades, to the classes I'm teaching.  I'm going to be teaching 1 day a week high school, in addition to preschool and early elementary!! It'll be a "bit" different than what I've been used to, but I enjoy talking with the high schoolers and have been in and out of their class doing observations during English time, so we'll see what happens. :)  I never wanted to get bored! :)