La lista de los mejores 10 (o 11) de Ecuador

On Dennis Miller's old show (the one before he went careening over to the dark and, tragically, less funny side), Dennis would end his interviews by asking "What did we learn?" ... from whomever he interviewed that night.

So what did we learn from three months in Ecuador? So many deeper, philosophical things to ponder it would make for an unbearably tedious read. Instead, here are a few basics.

1. The shortest distance between to points is not always a straight line; or, if you are traveling from the Sierra to the coast, and you are anywhere south of Quito, just go through Guayaquil.

2. If you are going to teach anywhere in Ecuador with a whiteboard, bring your own markers.

3. You can buy watches at every market, but no one uses them, so why bother?

4. A frightened sheep will take off at full speed regardless off the rope tied around its neck. 4a. They're not fast enough to do themselves real harm when the rope abruptly stops them.

5. Barking dogs are all cowards. And most of them are morons as well.

6. High tide shifts about 45 minutes per day. This is important to know when planning your runs and your lessons.

7. Buses will pick you up just about anywhere. They will also leave you off just about anywhere, so it's good they pick you up there too.

8. When it comes to almuerzo (lunch) in a market, and you ask what the segundo (second course) is, you are just asking what will be on the eighth of the plate not covered with rice.

9. The climate is cool, the sun is hot. Be prepared for either at any moment.

10. The stuff in the trash can at the front of the bus is going out the window in five minutes. If you have trash, pack it out with you or just throw it out the window.

11. For a country about the size of Oregon, there is a spectacular diversity to the climate, terrain, vegetation and culture. It's well worth three months of your life. Thanks much to Anja, Jim and Magus, Paola, Anna, Donna, Francisco, Lauren, Robert, Alicia, Emma, Jared, Ingrid, Jade, Carlos, Zuzi and everyone else at Pachamama, all the kids (and adults) at Katitawa and Clara Luna, and the thousands of helpful and friendly Ecuadorans (and even the couple dozen who weren't that helpful) for a spectacular time. Back with more posts next year from Central America.

Clara Luna/Cafe de Lenguas

Teaching right at the edge of the ocean can present a unique set of challenges. A high tide crashing up within 10 meters or so of the classroom can make it difficult to hear or be heard, especially in different languages.

But, of course, you are teaching right on the beach, which makes it hard to complain about anything.

Clara Luna / Cafe de Lenguas

The view from the ocean

Parked at the south end of the Malecon in Puerto Lopez, the Clara Luna Language School is as different from Escuela Katitawa as Puerto Lopez is from Salasaca. While Salasaca is made up primarily of farmers and artisans, Puerto Lopez residents almost all make their money from fishing and tourism. The tourism ebbs and flows, but the fish never seem to. (For more on the Puerto Lopez, see the Ruta del Sol entry earlier).

The mission of the two schools is completely different. While Katitawa is the primary school for its pupil, Clara Luna's purpose is to augment the English education the students are getting during the school day. The difference between teaching students who want to learn and those sitting in a class they are required to attend is night and day. Add in the difference between teenagers and youngsters and you have a completely different teaching experience.

The classroom and the library

The school has three different classes at the moment -- a children's class that meets Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Ecuadoran time (which means almost no one is actually there on time and the class begins around 4:30) and two different "adult" classes which meet at 6:30 (Ecuadoran time again). The majority of the adult students are high-school age. The beginners meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, the intermediate group on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The kids' class

The frustrating experience at the Clara Luna School, at least in the three weeks I taught there, was the attendance. Rarely were all the students present and often half or more would not show up, making it very difficult to build upon a previous lesson.

Paola Martinez, the owner of the school, teaches Spanish to tourists during the day, and that's where the majority of the school's income comes from. The English lessons are just $15/month, which works out to just $1 per hour (except that the students never show up for the first half hour of the 90-minute class, so they're really paying $1.50/hour. Still a good deal).

Paola (right) with a student

She is currently building a small house way on the other side of town for volunteers, with the hopes of having it ready by January. At that point she will have room for more English teachers and presumably more classes. For more information, visit www.claraluna.com.ec

Los Voluntarios

Robert, the owner of the Katitawa School, estimates about 250 volunteers have cycled through the school in the past few years.

Since I've been here, about half of the volunteers have been from the United States, the other half from elsewhere. At the moment I write this, we have people here from the U.S., Canada, Czech Republic, Portugal, Holland, Brazil and France. In the past month we've also had volunteers from the U.K. and Australia.

Kevin and Alicia pose while the other Kevin watches Jared practice for music class

Donna (right) works with Francisca in the garden.

 Most of the volunteers are in their 20s (I'm the old man by a few years). Most stay for a month or two, though some are here for a bit longer. A lot come right after college or while they are taking a year off. Others like me have quit their jobs and are traveling before finding another job or going back to school. For most this is one stop of many in their travels.

Brinn enjoying her final day at the school.

Lauren gives Eric a ride on her shoulders.

 We all live at Hostal Pachamama (Mother Earth in Kichwa), and for having anywhere from eight to 15 people sharing a house at any given time, I am amazed at how harmonious the group has been. New people are quickly assimilated and pick up the routine, and everybody is very considerate. I'm sure having someone who cleans the house for us is a big factor as well, but it really has been an easy place to live. We have communal dinners and often take weekend trips together as well.

Hostal Pachamama

It takes the kids about five minutes to warm up to new volunteers, maybe less. They are very used to having new people show up and instruct them, so beyond the usual difficulties of getting 6-9 year olds to concentrate on anything, the turnover doesn't seem to faze them.

Francisco loaded down with Kevin and Francisca as Valeria tries to figure out of there's room for her anywhere. No volunteer has ever left Katitawa School without knowing that "Carga me" means "Carry me."

Kichwa

The residents of the community are mostly Kichwa, one of the native "tribes" (for lack of a better word) in Ecuador. They have done a good job of maintain many of their traditions. Many of the people still wear the traditional garments, which for me consist of a white shirt and trousers covered by long, solid black poncho with white stitching around the collar and across the shoulder. The poncho goes down to about the knees.

The children at the school sometimes wear contemporary clothes (like Wamari) while others like Luis come dressed in the traditional Kichwa garb

For women the traditional dress is a white blouse with embroidery around the collar, a black skirt held up by a cloth sash wrapped around the waist. On top they wear a shawl (usually crimson or green) that goes down to about the elbow.

Girls dance in traditional Kichwa clothes (minus the shawls) at the Kulya Raymi festival marking the vernal equinox, which in Ecuador marks the beginning of the summer.

The Kichwa language, which is taught in our school, is spoken as commonly as Spanish. It would be harder to find someone who doesn't speak Kichwa than someone who doesn't speak Spanish, though most speak Spanish at least as well as I do. On a side note, I was informed by one of the young men I am tutoring in the evening that there are three fluent speakers of English in the area and one of them works in the United Nations (the student said was Ecuador's ambassador to the U.N. but I have not been able to confirm that).

Kichwa (also spelled Quichua) is part of the Quechuan language family of languages spoken throughout Ecuador, Peru and Columbia. It has only been written in recent years (not sure how long) and so words are still being changed and it is not uncommon to find multiple spellings of the same word. Salasaca is often spelled Salasaka, for example.

Signs at the school are often posted in three languages.

 The people have a dark, weathered look that may owe more to lives of hard work than genetics. As best I can tell, the most distinguishing feature is they are quite short and have flat noses and roundish faces.

Salasaca

Volcan Tungurahua, and that is steam, not a cloud, at the top. The Volcano has had two serious eruptions the past 12 years and spouts off a little hot air from time to time.

 Salasaca, the pueblo that is home to Escuela Katitawa, is a very spread out community of 2,000 people divided into smaller districts, nestled between Ambato (the fourth largest city in Ecuador) and Baños (named for baths, not bathrooms) in the central highlands. The elevation here is about 9,000 feet, so while it gets warm when the sun is out during the day, evenings are fairly chilly, though not cold.

A woman in traditional Kichwa garb spins wool as she walks, a very common occupation. Often they will spin the wool while loaded down with big bundles of grass to feed the livestock -- multitasking, Ecuador style.

The area is beautiful and the view from the hilltops is incredible, as is the case for much of Ecuador. On a clear day we have a view of the highest mountain (Chimborazo) and highest volcano (Tungurahua) in Ecuador. Both are close to 20,000 feet.

The view (on a rare clear day) from the balcony. Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in Ecuador. Below is Ambato, about 20 kilometers away.

"Central Salasaca" and I chuckle even using that term, is about three blocks worth of shops along the highway. Most of the people live east of the main road, working on farms. There is a second paved road that heads East, and one that branches off from there down a large hill to another group of farms nearer the stream.

This bridge is kind of the designated marker for "Central Salasaca" which is really just the junction of the two paved roads.

Looking down road No. 1, the one that goes toward Baños

This is the other road, the one that heads toward the rest of Salasaca, including the library and the hostel.

Transportation is by collectivo (pickup trucks), and a dime will save you a 20-minute walk down the other paved road to the library where we volunteers spend much of our time (I will describe this in a later post). The rest of the roads are dirt, and we walk on small paths trampled between the farms.

It is common to see mules, bicycles and even elderly women walking down the main road loaded with as much grass as they can carry to feed livestock. Pigs, cows, sheep, donkeys, chickens, roosters and llamas are common sights on the way to school, and dogs roam free.

No, this is not George Clinton. It is a very common sight to see people (more often women than men) bent over under the weight of a large amount of feed they are bringing back to their livestock.

 The houses are made of adobe bricks for the most part and are often intentionally left with an unfinished look on purpose because property taxes are less for a house that is under construction. A one-story house will often feature the foundation of a second story and a set of steps that lead up to a second story, one that the owners never intend to build.

This is a shot from of what I can only describe as a city council meeting in the parking lot of the library. Computers had been stolen from the Salasaca City Hall the night before, and this group was preparing to go around to all the houses in this section of Salasaca to look for them. To the best of my knowledge, the computers have not been found.

The (dis)Organization

For those of you who are teachers, the next post may read like a nightmare. I write this mostly for you, but also to give everyone an idea about the way the school is run. Stepping back, it strikes me as fairly interesting, though it is quite frustrating when surrounded by it.

As none of the other volunteers have taught in Ecuador before, we have no way of knowing what you are about to read is common here or whether this school is, to put it kindly, informal. This post is not a complaint -- all of us are enjoying are time here and I would highly recommend for anyone to volunteer here.

As with much of life in Ecuador, the Katitawa School functions on reaction as much as planning. Unfortunately, that does not serve the kids well. Classes here begin and end on Ecuadoran time, which means they start when everyone gets together and end when the kids' attention span dictates they can no longer retain information.

When I arrived, the schedule was (and still is, for that matter) is broken down into a block of 90 minutes, followed by a half-hour for snack and play, followed by a 2-1/4 hour block, then lunch for 45 minutes. The afternoon consists of a 90-minute block and a 45-minute block. I use the word block even though the schedule dictates each of those should be a single class.

We changed this, at least for the volunteers' purposes, into eight 45-minute (or so) periods. We still teach the same subjects in the same proportions, but no volunteers are required to come up with 2 hours, 15 minutes worth of English or music lessons for children whose attention spans are equal to that of the ferret. The school administrator is completely unconcerned with what we do as long as the kids are being taught something, which is part of the problem, but at least we are not meeting resistance.

As I mentioned a couple of posts earlier, discipline is a fairly foreign concept. Students (most between the ages of 6 and 9) are allowed by the full-time teachers to wander around the classroom and it is not uncommon for a student to walk out of class without the teacher commenting on it.

More pictures of cute kids

Rather than spend hours describing how cute the kids are, instead I'll use this post to appeal for help for the Katitawa School. The school is, at least by United States standards, just scraping by. Pencils, paper, dry-erase markers, art supplies and just about any other types of supplies are always in demand. The best way to help is to bring those things with you when come to volunteer. For more information on how to help, e-mail me, post in comments or visit www.skyecuador.org

Without further ado, more pictures of 

Not really sure who this one is. Probably Kevin, but which one? There are two.

Adriana

Kathy (top) and Cynthia

Ligia, who probably won't fit into my backpack but I will try when I leave.

Los estudiantes

 What is it about kids who are missing front teeth that make them even more adorable? As it turns out, a nice toothless grin can win over a heart in any language.

Me and Cesar, the cutest little terror you will ever meet.

The students at the Katitawa school come with a lot of strikes against them. One of the advantages of the school is it provides a snack and a nutritious lunch for the students. For many, the lunch (usually a potato soup or rice and gravy with a vegetable mix) is the primary meal of the day. They make a lot of food, and students are generally allowed as much as they can eat. With just 35-40 kids to feed (plus hungry volunteers and staff) they don't need a ton of food each day.

Francisca during an impromptu photography class.

 We are in the process of determining how many of the students are illiterate, and we fear most are. Some can read a bit but are self-conscious and don't like to. Even some of the fourth graders have little or no reading ability, which presents an interesting problem for a teacher. The students can all copy the letters off the board, but for how many would random shapes be just as easy?

They are also fairly resistant to discipline. The lack of structure at the school can add to the difficulty as well, but that I will leave for the next post. For now, enjoy pictures of cute kids.

Kevin, Ligia, Raimy and the other Ligia.

Ligia again

Escuela Katitawa

I have kept most of these blog entries rather impersonal up until this point, as a day-by-day or week-by-week chronicle of one's life can be a rather tedious read, one I would not subject anyone to on this blog. I will have to relax that standard in the next few entries, however, as there really isn't that much pure information to be posted, and a mere description of a small school in rural Ecuador would seem out of place next to entries about Quito, Mindo and the like.

First, the facts. I have been teaching the past month or so at the Katitawa School in rural Salasaca Ecuador. It is an alternative elementary school with between 35-40 students ranging from kindergarten to grade 7. The guys who runs the school, Robert (I still don't know his last name) is 79 years old and began the school as a low-cost ($10 per year) option for families in the area.

Kindergarten classroom on the left, storage shed on the right.

The main building, with four classrooms and the administrator's office

The lunchroom.

From the beginning, the school has had a heavy emphasis on English, and Robert has brought in a number of volunteers to help with the teaching. At the moment, the school has a full-time teacher, an administrator provided (to Robert's chagrin, I might add) by the Ecuadoran government and a rotating cast of volunteers. Robert teaches the oldest children himself.

Robert

 The volunteers are asked to teach classes in English, poetry and reading, music, art, some science and physical education. The paid teachers take on Spanish, most of the science, math, Kichwa, history and geography.

The second-grade classroom at the school.

 There is so much to describe about the students, so I will hold that, along with some truly adorable pictures, for next post.

Ruta del Sol

Montañita

The inappropriately named Ruta del Sol (route of the sun) must be some sort of gimmick to draw tourists, because in a span of five days the sun appeared for about two hours. The locals say there is more sun during the rainy season, oddly enough, because the rain comes for a few hours and then the clouds part. During the dry season, however, the area is usually covered by the thick blanket of clouds those visiting Pacific Northwest beaches usually face.

Montañita again

The towns here are a bit warmer than those beaches, though nothing too terribly hot. Air conditioning is not usually needed and the humidity, while more than the central highlands, is manageable.

The beaches are nice and soft and generally free of rocks. Some have spawned development, like in the town of Montañita, a small party village, while others like in the larger Puerto Lopez up the road are more geared toward the fishing industry.

The scene every morning on the beach at Puerto Lopez

Fishermen prepare their nets for the next morning in Puerto Lopez

Puerto Lopez, larger than Montañita (15,000 residents vs. 1,000), has geared its tourism more toward whale watching and tours of the Isla de Plata, an island with a large assortment of birds. The beaches in town play host to a number of species as well.

Birds and crabs along the beach at Los Frailes

North of Puerto Lopez is a small park called "Los Frailes," which morphs from a hike through almost deserty conditions to a series of several beautiful, rocky and nearly deserted crab-covered beaches. From these beaches more so than the towns it is possible to see humpback whales and a pair were playing off the first one (playita), jumping and frolicking. Unfortunately, my camera was too slow to catch them midair.

Blow this up and there really is a humpback whale's fin out there, trust me

Otovalo

About two hours north of Quito, Otovalo is a city most famous for its market. The Otovalo market covers a city block with vendors offering a stunning array of ponchos and other clothes made from wool, often alpaca, as well as Incan masks, trinkets made or carved, as well as jewelry and art. 

Sights at the Otovalo Market

The market is at its most bustling on Saturday mornings, when the live animals market is open as Vendors spill out between the markets to fill the streets for blocks surrounding the central market as well. Bargaining is expected -- many of the vendors will explain the price is "20 dollars, but we can bargain …" The vendors can be pushy and at times grumpy. Try a couple ponchos or scarves on and then making no purchase will sometimes send the seller off in a bit of a huff.

The town itself has about 40,000 people and is quiet busy and bustling at the center. There are a couple European-style churches and a town square, as well as some small grassy areas. The area around Otovalo is stunning. The rolling hills above the city are rural farmland, primarily used for grazing livestock.

Around Otovalo

The farmland above Otovalo

Mindo

The cloud forest just outside Mindo

The area northwest of Quito drops sharply from nearly 3,000 meters to just over 1,000 by the time it reaches the town of Mindo, a tiny, quiet town nestled in the middle of cloud forest reminiscent of areas like Monte Verde in Costa Rica. It is a little hard to access by bus, which probably helps keep it quieter than other locations.

Up near the path to the waterfalls.

A few kilometers up the road, across a valley that can either be crossed rapidly by a tarabita (hand-powered cable car) or more leisurely through a gorgeous stroll, is a series of five waterfalls. None of the waterfalls are spectacular, but the sheer number make the walk quite scenic.

Part of a series of five waterfalls a few kilometers from Mindo

Another in the series

 Mindo is also home to a large number of birds, very colorful and ranging in size from hummingbird to large birds of prey. The area is also home to butterfly farms. The town itself is just a few square blocks.

A second late from a great shot.

A cool, abandoned building that used to be a hostel