Student Teaching

So I am loving this. This teaching thing is really fabulous, despite the fact that it has made the voice in my head (I pause here, hoping you all have voices in your heads, too) occasionally code-switch into a smooth-talking adolescent Latino boy. Which is, for those of you who might not remember, the demographic on which I spend about 95 % of my emotional and intellectual energy because of my student teaching placement in an urban school where my English as a Second Language class is populated by...well, the latest count was 11 boys and 2 girls, all from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Columbia, and the one girl from Guinea). So about this voice in my head. As I finished dinner tonight, I heard it say, "I am not entirely con-bins-ed that I eshould be putting this cosa in the dishwasher." Which, a month ago, would have sounded a whole lot more like, "I'm not entirely convinced I should be putting this thing in the dishwasher." Either way it's a voice in my head...

Anyway.  I love these kids. Really really. And they're breaking my heart. Call it melodramatic, but it is absolutely true. They are amazing, wonderful kids, and they are swimming against an incredibly powerful cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional current. Two of them are parents, and another is about to join their ranks. Many of them have after-school jobs, and rumor has it that some work full time. One has an undefined disability that means he should be receiving special education support but there are no bilingual special ed teachers available for him. And the one bilingual counselor has been out sick, which is really too bad because there's a kid who's recently been sleeping through most of his classes almost every day. No one can figure out what's wrong, though informal diagnoses of depression fly through the (tiny, windowless) teachers' room. 

So I love them. The reality is that they have probably already changed me more than I will ever change them. I've never worked in an urban school. I've never felt so content in a classroom or so frustrated with administration.  I am glad that I will not work at this high school, but I would love to work more with this population.

How about a profile of one of my little darlings (most of whom are bigger than me, and whose age range is 15 to 20, but no matter).  I will change the names to protect their innocence.

Juan.  If i could use 'street-smart' as a term of endearment, I would use it on him, and liberally.  'Come here, Street-smart,' I would say as he roamed around the classroom, 'Let's try just the first part of this assignment. Just the first part."  I choose Juan because the Rumor Mill says he may no longer be my student next week. Admittedly he is so seldom present that his speculated expulsion would change the class dynamic only slightly. But without him we will be both slightly more focused, and quite a bit sadder.  Juan has a heart the size of his island of Puerto Rico, but he apparently has a temper to match.  The Rumor Mill (whose name is Esperanza and who sits on the right in fifth period ESL) says he was a leader in the clash between races that happened at the metro stop last friday.  And by races I mean ethnicities, of course, because many of my 'Latino' students are every bit as 'black' as the 'African American' students, and when you get right down to it, 'African American' fits them, too...  aren't the Carribean and Central and South America...American?  but there is of course a huge cultural and sometimes linguistic divide between them. It's a complicated social climate, but not for the students.  They know who's on what side of every line.

Anyway, I'm exhausted most of the time, but satisfied. I could get used to this whole 'work' thing...  now if only there were a paycheck attached.

Juan is the one with the yellow shirt.

Ecuador V: Camera-toting Boobies

Amigos y amigas.  As some of you know...

 

I left cuenca on a Wednesday, which meant salsa dancing at La Mesa until 1 AM before catching the 1:30 bus to Guayaquil. I slept soundly. And by 10 AM local time I was in Baltra...

 

I spent much of the last week on the Sea Man (an unfortunate name, I admit) motor yacht, flitting back and forth across the equator and around the Galapagos Islands. There were 15 passengers, myself included, 6 crew members, and Galo, our enthusiastically endemic and moderately hyperactive guide.

 

Each night we got briefed on the next day's activities. For example, the bell sounded at 6:45 the first night, just before dinner, and Galo clapped his hands once everyone was assembled and said, 'tomorrow we going to see the rrrred footed boobies for everywhere! An we going to see the frigate birds an the sea lions.' And we did see them. For everywhere. That's the strange and surreal thing about the Galapagos-- it's like a giant zoo, with strange and unique species confined to specific ecosystems on specific islands. And there are no large natural predators for many of the species, so they have no fear of humans. Their blasé attitude as a band of snapshot-happy tourists comes tramping along is almost disappointing. Where's the thrill of the chase?  I felt vaguely as though we were smut-searching paparazzi and our subjects were porn stars only too willing to comply.

 

 

 

But let's not be too negative. These critters big and small were weird and fun and, in the end, wild (during our last snorkel with sea lions 3 people got bitten. Jackasses). 

 

So there are 3 kinds of boobies in galapagos 'Endemic! you find nowhere else on earth!' (one of Galo's most oft uttered phrases). I personally feel that the rrrrred footed and nazca boobies are brilliant and have gotten shoddy press coverage, but the blue footed ones are certainly proud of their feet.

 

It had been a while since I'd snorkeled and I'd forgotten the strangeness of it.  'Abort! Abort!' my instincts screamed, 'You can't breathe under water, fool!'  But after a bit i was feeling mermaid-esque with my speedy flippers and underwater grace.  then i saw the sea lions. And it occurred to me that if the ocean is a circus, they are the acrobats and we are the clowns.  They dip and dive and twirl around each other as we pedal awkwardly out of the way, all plastic edges and goofy face-masks.

 

I'm in Quito now, going to Baños for some near-death experiences (I hope) before coming home in a week.

Ecuador IV

Hola everyone once again.

An abbreviated version of the Life of Haley.

I have one week left in cuenca before (fingers crossed) bopping off to the Galapagos, then meandering to Quito before flying to boston may 30th/31st, and arriving home to Maine June 2nd.

I will miss cuenca.  I've found a nice routine here, and Ecuadorian and gringo friends. Yesterday, after trying for two weeks, I finally started my volunteer work at an art school for mentally disabled people in a suburb of Cuenca. So now I have spanish class in the morning, lunch with Teresa or Emma or sola, and homework and volunteering in the afternoon. And tonight it's lady's night at a fancy bar before trying my salsa skills on the floor at THE salsa place in town. Gotta pack it all in before I pack my bags...  I still haven't been to the major museum here to see the indigenous displays and the shrunken heads. But it's on the list...

There is so much to report since last week...  the Salsa and Ceviche night with Teresa (Teresita!) et al, hiking with Emma to a wild and violent waterfall outside of Cuenca. Spanish lessons trip along rather well, but there's still so much to learn... 

Also, this happened: I was purified with an egg.

Ecuador III: Building the Ark

The animals line up outside my door.  Pairs of them, and patient. 

 

I exaggerate.  It does rain with gusto every day, but there are stretches of sun that can be really convincing before they´re squelched by purple storm clouds....

 

Sunday afternoon I went for a ride with my roommate Rubén and a few of his friends in the countryside outside of Cuenca. There was jacobo (que estaba bien volando), who swears like a sailor and dresses like teenage Eurotrash (it´s actually rather endearing.  he looks about 12 and uses so much gel that his hair looks like it was glued in place as one cohesive unit). Then there was Maira, a lawyer who draws on her eyebrows with admirable precision and was trying her damnedest to include my stammering Spanish/gibberish in the conversation. Then Rubén, my roommate, a portly dude who enjoys laughing, and his little girlfriend, Antonieta, who is from the coast and speaks as though her tongue´s just received a shot of Novacaine.  And me, feeling very blonde and very nauseous.

 

Ya. So we drove around, beautiful countryside, etc, until we found a tiny little town with a bar, which had ´one old soldier every died´ written ominously over its colorful purple and red door. We had no money, but the bartender ushered us in anyway. He looked exactly like an aged Che and his other patrons were two prostitutes and their johns drinking shots of whiskey at 3 in the afternoon. There were saddles on the barstools and blocks of wood to sit on around the tables. And the walls made no attempt at hiding the daylight seeping in between their boards. The whole place was strangely cheerful in spite of itself. The five of us split a beer and chatted with the...locals. One of the guys asked me where I was from and when I replied ´near Canada´ he asked, ´Maine? Portland? Lewiston? Bangor?´  I almost fell out of my saddle. Lewiston?!  

 

In other news, the population of 19-58 Calle Luis Cordero has grown. Antonieta, Rubén's sassy chaquita girlfriend, who visited last weekend, was back again on Friday.  On Monday when I asked her if she would still be around at the end of the day, she said, 'I´m here until may 12'.  Hm.  News to me.  later that night a guy named Enri(que) stopped by to drop of a computer...  and tv...  and his clothes...  'Enri's going to live with us now,' said Rubén, cheerfully.  ¡Que bueno!  more people to torture with my Spanish...  actually, Enri is usually absent and when he´s here is so quiet that I barely notice him. He´s maybe 40 and I don´t even know what he does... 

 

That's all for now, so chao.

Ecuador II

"Desayuné jueves con café", I wrote in my notebook.  "I ate Thursday for breakfast with coffee".  Huevos= eggs.  Jueves=Thursday. Oops. Another language learning highlight was when I was eating lunch and a guy asked me what I was drinking.  "Jugo de niña" I replied, smiling.  "Girl juice". He looked awfully confused, then said, "ahhh, hugo de piña".  Pineapple juice.  Double oops.  The salsa lessons aren´t going much better. The only lesson since last week came from a diminutive guy who insisted on dancing with me at one of the beach bars this weekend, poor boy. Luckily i had bare feet so I didn´t injure him. Eventually he gave up on the salsa: "Bailas como quieres," he begged, "Dance however you want."

 

The beach? Yes, the beach.  A 9 hour bus ride down 7000 feet to the Pacific.  10 gringos went to the beach this weekend to celebrate two gringa birthdays.  Unfortunately Emma had to work, so I was a stranger among strangers.  I didn´t know any of them, and it felt like the cast of The OC.  Wow. These girls were prepared! Two days at the beach, and each one had a hiking backpack full of tequila, 14 serongs, 6 cute outfits, jewelry, gigantesque sunglasses, and a complete set of cosmetics. I was fascinated. 

 

Montañita.  It´s a tiny town on the ecuadorian coast north of Guayaquil that has been entirely usurped by surfers who came for a week and never left.  Dude.  To say that the atmosphere is laid back is a gross understatement.  I had a great hummous and eggplant sandwich.

 

In other gastronomical news, I have been slurping down ceviche like it´s my job--it´s seafood marinated in citrus until it´s ´cooked,´ with onions and cilantro... mmmmmm.  Expensive, though, at $5 a pop, give or take.  A lady in my friday night conversation class said she´d teach me how to make it.  And did I mention the avocados.  My god.  They are like butter.  And the ripe plantains... que rico.

 

Last night I was walking home and a tantalizing whiff of street meat caught my nose. I couldn´t resist.  "Am I going to get sick?" I asked Rubén when I got home.  He grinned, "wait two or three days."  I´ll keep you posted.

 

In other news, my other housemate Karen went to Peru and they didn´t let her back into Ecuador because she had used up her 3 month tourist visa plus 3 one-month extensions.  Chuta.

 

So it goes on this side of the equator...

Ecuador

¡¿How are you?! ¡I´m fine! ¡¿Who knew upside-down punctuation was so much fun?!  ¿Can your keyboard do this: ¡!¡!¡!¡!?

Enough.  My one-week update:

I am in Cuenca, a charming, laid-back town in the Andes at a mere 7000 feet.  The mountains rise around the town and play ping-pong with the clouds.  It rains every day, anything from a few gotas to downpour, with sun splashes in between. Unfortunately there´s no daily weather schedule, so at any given time you have to be prepared for everything from chilly driving rain to sun that reminds you that you´re at the world´s waistline. 

Because of the mountains the town is fairly isolated from mass tourism, which is lovely.  I haven´t seen a tourbus yet, but maybe that´s because your conventional tourist doesn´t necessarily plan a trip to Cuenca in the rainy season.

The architecture here is colonial, with neo-classical details painted green, blue, pink, whimsical and charming. And they have a system of numbering addresses that´s really quite ingenious. The city layout is a grid and each address has the number of the block AND the number of the building, so if you´re at 7-13 Mariscal Sucre Street, and you have five minutes to get to 2-13, you know you have 5 blocks to go and are going to be late for your Spanish lesson...

Speaking of which, I´m taking lessons one-on-one with a lovely lady who decided in the middle of class today that we would leave the past participle and have a salsa dancing break.  Frankly, I´m more comfortable with past participles, but I´ll take the cultural lesson, too.  Watch out, Blue Hill, I´m gonna come back all sassy and hip-swinging.

(Speaking of coming back, for those of you who haven´t been updated, my plans have changed and I´ll be home for only 2 weeks before heading off to grad school at Boston University in mid-June. No summer in Maine, but kate and I will carpool for weekend visits!)

As for my living situation, I´m sharing a flat with a beautiful view of the town (which means it´s way uphill from...everything (good for the cardiovascular system) with an Ecuadorian guy named Ruben and a Brit named Karen. He does graphic design and marketing and she teaches English. The rent is 90 bucks a month including cleaning service once a week and internet. Unreal.

 View from my digs

¿What else?

My Spanish is crap still, but I´m learning...

When Paula was still here we went to Cajas National Park on the weekend with Emma, which at 12,000 feet kicked all of our butts. Strange Andean flora and swampy landscape. We hitched a ride back to Cuenca on an empty school bus, and all fell asleep.  When the lady woke us up we were back in Cuenca and mightily confused.  Why are we on this school bus? Why is there a bunch of plantains next to me?

We also visited the jewelry shops of Chordeleg and the market in Gualaceo, where we passed up roasted guinea pig for roasted regular pig, which was delicious.  I suppose some day I´ll try the guinea pig, though I haven´t heard rave reviews...

 

There´s loads more to tell...  but I´ll leave it at that for now.

Couscousi

Googled myself and found this blurb I wrote for Viva Travel Guides:

How I ended up making couscousi in Naima’s kitchen is crazy, but so was life in Tunisia. My Austrian roommate Andreas, working as a soldier-extra on a Roman movie filmed in Carthage, met a loony Tunisian named Dali, whose mother Naima did industrial embroidery for big name Italian fashion designers (or maybe rip-offs) in a studio attached to their house in Soussa. Andreas, whose attempt at managing a café in Tunis had just buckled, decided to develop a line of windsurfing clothing instead. Naima would help him network in the textile industry. Andreas spoke English well, and some Arabic, but no French. I was therefore along for moral support and French-English translation. Naima adored Andreas, but when I showed interest in Tunisian cuisine, he was all but forgotten.

We were to prepare couscousi (couscous), the most typical of Tunisian dishes. Couscousi refers both to the granular pasta and the traditional dish that integrates it with vegetables and meat or fish cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. We had a gas burner, a couscous pot, and two giant headless fish. Couscous pots are aluminum and bulbous. This one was two feet tall and topped with a six-inch tall aluminum couscous steamer, the principle being that steam rising from the sauce in the pot cooks the couscous. 

We began with the steamer set aside and an inch of oil in the pot. Naima seized the first of a dozen long, shiny, dark green peppers. “Cut them like this,” she said, slitting the pepper lengthwise and dropping a pinch of salt inside. Eleven peppers later, she reached in gingerly to turn them as the skin blistered. When they softened she fished them out, dodging splattering grease.

Into the oil flew fistfuls of onions I’d sliced with teary eyes. She laughed at me, and the kitchen filled with the lovely aroma of frying onions. When the onions softened it was time to add tomato paste mixed with water, a ubiquitous ingredient in Tunisian cooking that must be handled carefully lest it overpower. She added chopped ripe tomatoes and a spoonful of powdery red pepper.

Our attention turned to making the couscousi moist and fluffy and ready to be steamed, hopefully avoiding the creation of a cohesive one-kilo mass of starch. “You,” said Naima, eying me pitiably, “will need to add a bit of olive oil so it won’t stick to itself. We begin very young learning to do this.” She sprinkled salted water over the top of the couscous. “With the hand like a fork,” she said, raking her fingers through the couscous over and over, “until the couscousi makes dough when one does this,” she squished a few grains together and they stuck. The couscous steamer settled into its place above the pot.

Into the pot went an outrageous quantity of chopped potatoes and fat chunks of orange squash. Finally Naima tackled the two slick and shiny headless fish that had been waiting in the sink. She wielded the serrated steak knife, her only weapon, and started scraping. The shimmering scales turned to gray sludge and dripped into the sink. I had never seen a fish cleaned, and her blunt instrument gave the process a kind of brutality that made me want to keep Naima on my side in a fight. After stripping the scales she attacked the dorsal fin, sawing until it relented and broke off. She then slit the belly and pulled out the purple and red guts.

“When will you return to the United States?” she asked me.

“In two weeks.” She looked up and her eyes flashed betrayal. She was hoping for a friend.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” She sawed away at the fish with furrowed brow, cutting narrow steaks from the head end, and wider pieces near the tail. She scaled the second fish and removed its fins. “Give me your phone number in the United States,” she said finally. “You must call me when you make couscousi for your friends.” She smiled as she gathered the innards and dropped them in the corner for the cat.

Naima coated the fish steaks with crushed garlic, salt, cumin and coriander, then found an old mayonnaise jar in the cupboard and started filling it with the red pepper used in the sauce. “Take this back with you,” she told me, “I dry the peppers and take them to the spice grinder. He brings them back to me like this, like powder.”

“But you have almost none left,” I protested.

“Every year I dry new peppers so it will stay fresh. Please, take it.” She added several pieces of fish to the sauce, and when the squash and potatoes were cooked she pulled them out. When the couscous was done she poured it into the serving dish and the sauce followed; it was brimming. As the fish fried on the burner, she integrated the sauce into the couscous until together they glowed orange. She flipped the fish steaks and arranged the squash, potatoes, and green peppers on top of the couscous. When the fish was done she added it to the display. “Taste a bit,” she said, and disappeared. I extracted a sauce-soaked piece of fish and slipped it into my mouth. I closed my eyes and felt the tomato, the warm red pepper, the musty cumin and coriander, and the mild white fish. It was all of Tunisia in one bite. Suddenly Naima was in the doorway chuckling. I cast about for the right compliment, but she didn’t need it. She had a necklace in her hand, painted with the symbol of protection from the evil eye: blue, white, and black. “Take this,” she said, “my daughter never wears it.” 

“Shukran, merci, and thank you,” I said, and the corners of her eyes crinkled before she turned away saying, “Bon, I suppose you should call the boys.”