"Bueno, Familia!"

Borrowing a jacket to be janitor twins with Wilmer here.
(Not to be confused with the Wilmer I help teach) Also,
that's definitely the face expressing a desire for a jacket like that.

If you’re a normal human being, you might not have heard about the Miss Universe beauty competition held last night in Las Vegas. The only reason I know about it is because Miss Colombia was crowned queen. And then, she wasn’t. Apparently Steve Harvey, the host of the pageant and owner of one of America’s finer mustaches (runner up next to Poppa Roske’s), said that Miss Colombia had won, when in fact, she had been the runner up. And instead of saying she got second, Harvey said she had won. It wasn’t until after two minutes of celebrating, sashaying and photo shots, that Harvey came back on stage and essentially said, “Holy shit, my bad guys.” Again, most of the world probably doesn’t care. But when you live in the country that got gipped, you find out right away when Colombia was almost on top of the world in something. The point is, where Steve Harvey is now assuredly fired, yours truly recently got promoted.

Oh, the awkwardness: Taking away the sash and crown
from a Colombian and giving it to a clearly uncomfortable
Philippine.

On one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was walking in and out of two different classrooms filled with students taking their English final, answering any questions or clarifying any vocabulary for them. Near the end of the test, the classrooms were nearly empty, with just a few tortured souls trying to come up with anything that could resemble a legitimate answer (fat chance). It was then that one student poked his head in and told me that Vivianna wanted to talk to me. Vivanna is the vice-principal of our school, and whom Devon and I go to if we ever have questions, which is all too frequently. I found her outside a classroom full of soon to be sixth graders in the upcoming school year, which starts in January. She asked me if I could just watch them during an activity, as she had to step out and talk to some students quick. Still normal, I thought.

Shit just got real, folks.

After she finished her short meeting outside the classroom, she came back in and gathered the ever-wavering attention of the preteen horde. She asked, “Kids, do you remember me telling you we were going to meet a friend today?” To which I gave her a quizzical look of “Uhh, what the hell?” After introducing me, she got them started on another activity before asking me, “How would you like to teach sixth and seventh grade English classes?” In my fluster, all I could really manage was a thank you, and that I had been hoping to teach my own classes for a while.

The next day, I was at a computer in the monastery when Padre Nicolas, the school’s principal, approached and asked if Vivanna had told me yet that I would be teaching next year. I said yes, and thanked him for thinking I was ready. He then asked if I would be willing to stay the whole academic year. Since their academic year goes from January to December, this is how I’ve decided to stay in Colombia for a few more months than originally anticipated. But don’t worry, I’ll still be visiting home in June for a couple weeks during our semester break. I can’t let the annual Boundary Waters trip with Dan, Brian, Ari, and Matt be undone.   

So, how’d the job open up? Well, the teacher Devon was helping, Carolina, is not returning to the school, which opened up the spot to teach 10^th and 11^th. What ended up happening was that the other English teachers, Angel (6^th & 7^th) and Wilmer (8^th & 9^th, where I was helping) both moved up, leaving the 6^th and 7^th grade English teaching job open for me. Apparently, the school also thought Wilmer was a good enough teacher as well. So instead of helping Wilmer out, Devon is shifting down to help Angel with 8^th and 9^th grade, where I was.  

Playing tejo with other teachers on Friday night.
It's basically bean bags, but you have a clay incline that
you try to stick mini shot puts into from twenty feet.
Also, those white triangles are filled with gunpowder
and explode when hit. Oh, and you buy beer by the crate.
So, we're throwing weights across a room to explode
in clay while drinking beer. So South American.

So, the other reason there was a large gap between blog posts before last weeks Ecuador one was that I had been doing lesson planning with the other teachers. Yes, it took a lot of time, and balancing it with an online grad school class and trying to blog didn’t make for a restful week or two. But I couldn’t ask for a better school to work at. We were at the apartment of an English teaching couple watching football yesterday, and they mentioned that at their wealthier school, the kids don’t respect them and say things like, “I don’t need this class, I’m just going to take over my father’s company,” or “You’ll be working for me someday anyway.” On the opposite side of the spectrum is my school, where I can’t decide if my favorite times of the day are on the way to the classroom high-fiving kids as we go, in the classroom working with them and see their faces light up in understanding, or hanging out in the teachers lounge where all our desks are and getting to listen to teachers pick on each other.

One of my friends at the school – Sergio, the Phy Ed teacher – comes into the lounge every morning with a loud and exhausted sounding “Bueno, familia!” which, in this sense, basically means, sarcastically, “Well, family, another day of torture has arrived.” Yes, working at the school is exhausting. But people don’t work here for less pay for nothing. At the end of the year party for faculty and staff, the music teacher said that he’s glad we teachers are so close with one another, that we hang out outside of school and support one another. He said that that’s why the students grow up to be such good human beings; because they see how we treat each other, they know love. And if they know love, that’s how they will treat those around them. I'm pretty damn glad I get to work where I do, and that I get to be here longer.

J

Spanish word of the day: it took me forever to figure out what pesebre meant. In Chile, pebre is a sort of salsa made from chopped peppers, onion and tomatos that you spread over bread. But pesebre actually means nativity scene. So there are pesebres set up all over the monastery and all over Bogota. Now you know.

Song in my head lately: I’ve gone long enough without posting a female singer. When I was first getting into music over a decade ago, my sister, Molly, introduced me to a slew of bands I didn’t appreciate at the time but do now. One of them are the Wailin’ Jennys, a group of incredibly talented ladies who can all sing and play a host of different instruments. In Heaven When We're Home, if you can't appreciate the combination of the upright bass, guitar, and violin, along with voices that make you melt, then you probably quit reading my opinion on it a while ago.

Nothing to do with the blog post, except for enjoying
and taking advantage of my time here. Sergio's on the
far right, and the rest are his university friends that
we had just got done playing soccer with.

Ecuador Part 1 of 1: Sibling Adventures

Well, shit. The whole trying to post once a week thing really went downhill there. But I’m going to take a tip from my students and give a slew of excuses on why I haven’t been doing my homework. The first one is that work decided to get real busy, but for a good reason, one that will be explained more fully in the next post (at this rate, look for it in March). The second is that I just recently got over some wicked form of traveller’s sickness where you could only find me curled up, shivering in my bed for a few days with a monster headache and debilitating fever. Getting sick stems from my third excuse: that my sister, Molly, decided to come on down for a visit as part of her Central and South American tour of visiting friends and family before her new job started out in Colorado.

I got about as many excuses as Genie has wish conditions.

This is a map.

Is that her hand or was someone on that beach towel before her?

Our first couple days were spent here in Colombia, showing Molly the sites, sounds, but mostly smells of Bogota. We made it to the classics of any South American city. You know, a church or three here, a plaza or four there. A highlight for me was going to the Botero museum, dedicated to the work of a Colombian painter who’s obsessed with comically large human beings. While we were roaming the halls in honor of our big-boned brethren, I noticed a younger man taking his time to take a picture of almost every painting. I therefore felt less weird about snapping shots of these voluptuous subjects to share with you all.

I finally let this goon sleep on my bed
our last night in Cuenca.

After two short days of monks and teachers finding out how much better my sister’s Spanish is than my own, we hopped on a series of flights to get to Cuenca Ecuador, where we stayed with a Lutheran missionary couple whom Molly had met years ago when she worked in Ecuador. Legend has it that when my sister was first flying to Ecuador in 2008 to do conservation work, she met Lynn, a Lutheran pastor who ran a seminary with her husband and who invited Molly to stay at their place instead of a sketchy hostel. We stayed in the guesthouse of their newly renovated property in Cuenca, their hospitality buoyed by their son’s dog, Sasha, who they take care of most of the time.

We spent most of our days with Molly’s fellow Yale Forestry graduate, Katherine, who she worked with in 2008 and is now the executive director of the Conservation work done in Sangay National Park. So our first full day was spent trudging through remote Andean farmlands. Part of what Katherine does is work with local farmers to define grazing land near or within the park and how to utilize it in a way that doesn’t place too much stress on the environment. 

Let the water go, cows. Let it go.

This day, we discussed different ways to manage erosion of stream banks on one particular farmers land. To put it simply, stream bank erosion is a problem as it washes sediments downstream and creates mini canyons, which becomes a hazard on grazing land because cows need the water and either can’t get it at, or fall when the soil gives way under the weight of their beefy butts trying to reach for it. Picture Indiana Jones reaching for the Holy Grail that’s just out of his reach. It’s basically the same, but cows don’t have Sean Connery telling them to let it go. 

Conservation work can tend to get glorified a bit these days, since what essentially commenced was hours of discussion with the landowner about what plants to plant where that would take root and help prevent erosion while also presenting a boon for his animals instead of endangering them. It might not sound fun, but how often do you get to walk along mountain streams talking conservation with local farmers in the Ecuadorian Andes while dodging runaway pigs and dogs? Also, the farmer gave us shots of his own blackberry moonshine, which, besides being half sugar, wasn’t too bad.

 

Doing science, sort of.

Obstructing the view from Diana and Mauricio's Quito pad.

We then made our way to the hilly city of Quito. We stayed with Diana, the sister of one of Molly’s best friends in high school (Emily), and her husband, Mauricio. Originally from Cuenca, Mauricio made the journey to the states when he was nineteen, the only valuables he took being the baggies of cash to bribe police and immigration officers at various checkpoints along the way. He had some wicked stories ranging from seeing friends arrested to getting unexpected help from complete strangers, and I’m sure there were some stories we were not privy to. He found his way to Minnesota, where he worked in kitchens until meeting and marrying Diana. I’m not clear on all the details, but shortly after, it was discovered that his documents weren’t in order, and the two were forced to move back to Quito while his papers get reprocessed. In the meantime, they both teach English at different schools in Quito and live in a very nice apartment with a beautiful view of the entrance to Quito, volcanoes in the background.

Mauricio's cheesin' makes up for
my sad attempt at a smile. Also, fanny pack. 

Since we were in Quito for less than 48 hours, we just wanted to see the... well, the must-sees. That meant a few more squares and a few more churches. But most of all, I enjoyed chatting with Diana and Mauricio. Since the four of us know Spanish and English (yours truly clearly on the lower end of that totem pole) our conversations flowed between the two languages, depending on the native language of who was getting the most riled up talking about religion, politics, race, immigration, all the things you’re supposedly not supposed to talk about over dinner. But through those discussions, as well as those with Katherine and her friends in Cuenca, I probably learned more about Ecuador than I know about Colombia.

Oddly enough, included in the highlights of Quito was a particular cab ride we took. Molly and I had just visited an art museum of Oswaldo Guayasamin, an Ecuadorian who painted huge paintings about human suffering, slavery, race and religion. We hailed a cab a few blocks down the road and were unsettled by a few things. First, the dude didn’t turn on his taximetro, the counter that keeps track of the cost of the ride. If drivers don’t have it, that’s a good sign that it’s not a real cab and they’re likely to charge you exorbitantly since you don’t know better. Also, when Molly finally convinced him to turn it on, it was green instead of the regulated red lights, further unnerving the gringos aboard. When we finally got out, it was about a dollar. But the dude hit a button on it and it jumped to $1.45, after I had already started to hand him a dollar. If you know my sister at all, you know she didn’t take kindly to the driver insisting that the minimum for a cab ride was $1.45. And if you know me at all, you know I just shrugged at the driver as if to say, dude, this is a battle you won’t win. Now, I know what you’re thinking. And yes, we argued over forty-five cents. Later, when he was cooking some extravagant dinner for us, we asked Mauricio if there was indeed a minimum cab charge, to which he responded, oh yes, it’s $1.65. When he turned back to the stove, I looked at Molly and we exchanged another sheepish shrug. Woops.

Spanish word of the Day: Going with a tricky verb here. Conocer has quite a few meanings, but we'll stick to the most common. Firstly, it means to know, but with regard to people or places. Yo conozco JJ would be "I know JJ" and nosotros conocemos Quito would be "we know Quito" but in the sense that we've been there, not just that we know of its existence. This last one I didn't figure out for a while, and I always thought it was strange that people were asking me if I know of places in Europe, Asia, or the states. Now people probably think I've travelled everywhere.  

Song in my head lately: I don't listen to a lot of Bronze Radio Return, but when I do, it's usually Shake, Shake, Shake. It's a pretty short song, so I try to pay for a longer one at the Middy. But if this song doesn't at least get your head bobbin', you don't like music.

J.

We also hiked Cajas National Park, Ecuadorian Middle Earth just outside of Cuenca.