I realize that it's been over a week since my last entry--perhaps things are reaching a level of routine that doesn't seem to merit daily commentary. But interesting things are always happening, if only I can remember clearly what they are.
Monday brought some disappointment. I didn't feel that the antibiotics had completely killed off the infection in my foot. But I wrote to Dr. Shanley at Stony Brook, as he had invited me to do. I did feel a bit guilty about asking for free medical advice, though. Anyway, he recommended that I extend my 10 day course to 15, so I kept plugging away. By Friday morning, I decided that I had to be cured because my gastrointestinal tract couldn't take any more antibiotic. And everything seems better now. Anyone who doubts the value of science and modern medicine should try and get through a year in the tropics without antibiotics.
Teaching continued to go well, because we were covering numbers, which is something nice and concrete. Also, the larger numbers borrow sounds and vocabulary from the smaller numbers, so things shape up nicely. I made a nice display board out of poster paper, with four rings running from 0 to 9 that allowed me to display the numbers from 0 to 9999. I'm not sure my students know all of these numbers in Spanish, though I know it's something they're learning in the 4/5 classroom. But it all went pretty well.
The evening English classes didn't happen this week. Maybe cold, rainy weather kept people at home, or maybe they don't like the way I teach. I'll never know; people are too polite. In any case, English class is not enough of an attraction to lure people out of their houses, at least not yet. Maybe if I slaughtered a sheep once in a while...
So, without an English class to teach on Wednesday and Friday, I went up to rehearse with the band from the Evangelical church. Jose invited me, with the idea that we would perform a number or two at the AVANTI Christmas fiesta on Saturday. We practiced and practiced, and did improve, but perfection seemed just beyond our grasp. And we put in about 5 hours on Friday night. This is a new experience for me, because I have almost always played alone. It turns out that I have a pretty good idea of what to do with this music, which isn't all that tricky. But for the guy playing the pan pipe, things are more difficult, and he's the most noticeable performer. We also had trouble finding a drummer with the right sense of timing. After we had put in about five hours, it occurred to us that we would probably need some kind of amplification down in the plaza, because we were practicing with amplification in the church. We took a shot at playing outside without amplification, and it didn't carry too well. I suppose it's just as well that we left the situation unresolved. The power was out Saturday afternoon, and we didn't perform anyway.
The AVANTI Christmas Fiesta Saturday was an interesting event, almost as anticipated as the Fiesta de Tolte last month. The AVANTI Christmas fiesta is a big giveaway of all kinds of stuff to the community. The junta directiva got a new refrigerator and two new stoves in the municipal office, the kids all got bags of candy and most got some additional present, and I got books for the library. There were also clothes, which are still being given out today. I was especially excited about the books, because the adult fiction section went from one shelf to two, and the children's chapter book section also doubled in size, or maybe one and a half-ed. We didn't get as many beginning readers as I hoped, but we did get some, and it's a lot more than I had. I also got a big pile of books to read and color, which I'll give away today and tomorrow along with some duplicate books. It's funny, with such a small collection, you wouldn't expect to receive anything you already had, but it did happen. Maybe some of the books were assigned in schools in Quito.
I did hear that not all was joy at the fiesta. This may have been occasioned by competing attempts to figure out how to distribute the gifts among the children, given that there weren't enough to go around. Tempers may have grown short, particularly among the givers. I'm more than a bit skeptical of stuff that looks too much like charity, but the AVANTI gifts are certainly well-loved by the people of Tolte. So three cheers for AVANTI and Carolina, who cooked it up in the first place, because AVANTI has made my presence in Tolte, and the happiness it produces in me, if not my students, possible.
And let me not forget my two trips into Chunchi in relation to my "invitation" to the school Christmas fiesta, coming Wednesday to a pueblo near me. You may recall that I was invited to buy a sash for one of the retinue of the Princesita de la Navidad, specifically la Nina Confraternidad. By chance Belena, Narcisa's mother, said she was going into Chunnchi on thursday. She had to buy a sash for her son, who was elected to the student government, for the various installation ceremonies. She had mentioned that she had found a place that did it much less expensively than the others, and I followed her deep into Chunchi to find it. They knew just what to do, and it was ready fro me by Sunday, when I went and got it, a mere $15 (more than a day's pay) later. Being invited to a party here can be a bit costly, but I have no complaints.
It occurs to me that I've forgotten to mention the really good news. Belena is the guardian of her granddaughter, both of whose parents are somewhere in the States. Gisela is a very unusual little girl. She seems pretty bright, as far as I can tell, but cannot handle being in groups of other children. On the other hand, she is very attached to me. I have been trying to help Belena figure out what sort of help Gisela needs so she can attend school, which she should have started at least a year ago. Fortunately, through David at the Eastern Farm Workers Association, I was connected to Zully Alvarado, who runs Causes for Change here in Ecuador, an organization focused on helping children with all sorts of disabilities. She and I have been exchanging e-mail about Gisela, and on Saturday, she said that a woman who works part of the time in Alausi would call Belena to talk about what can be done for Gisela. This is the first good news that Belena has had on this topic for a while. Personally, I am interested in the improbable chain of connections that have brought us to this point, from the Farm Workers on Long Island to Gisela in Tolte. And it will be even more interesting to see what comes of the contact between Zully's connections and Belena. I think this will be an ongoing story throughout the rest of this blog--at least, I hope so.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Education Week
I was originally going to entitle this entry "Guayaquil," but after a little more thought, I think this represents the week better. Although I have not really entered the agricultural world of Tolte very deeply, my teacher instincts are starting to pay off in a way that might have lasting value.
The week started with me implementing an idea that i came up with last week: the new rules for computer room access is that you have to read early in the week to have minutes to spend in the computer room later in the week. This frighteningly simple idea resulted in about half of the schoolchildren coming to the library to read--or in the case of k-3, look at pictures in books, which is better than nothing. And the more they came to read, the more they liked it--although they also showed how much they need it. Two girls in the fourth grade took turns struggling through the Spanish language version of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," a book that I would place at the first grade level. One of the most capable seventh graders (the cantonal school president) handled a book at the third grade level, but found a book at the fourth/fifth grade level too demanding. It all goes to show that this is a really necessary project, one that could make a big difference in the lives of the children of Tolte over the next couple of years. I have asked Carolina to link a book drive to the upcoming AVANTI Fiesta Navidena in Tolte, to take place on Saturday, the 17th (yes, that's next Saturday for regular readers of this space.) I don't have enough books for early readers (which encompasses about 95% of the kids) and I don't have any alphabet books. I am trying to teach a fourth grade boy to read using flash cards I made after talking with Nick the Peace Corps Volunteer in Chunchi. Things are sort of desperate.
On the other hand, the program got off to a great start. Over thirty of the 65 school children did some reading, and many averaged half an hour each day. One boy read slightly more than three hours in three days. There did seem to be some positive competition for who could pile up the largest number of minutes, and behavior was surprisingly focused and positive. We'll have to see how long this lasts, but I have high hopes. I have more and better reading material if the kids can cross over to the third or fourth grade reading level.
But the victories didn't end there. This week had me teaching the children to cont in English, generally an easier thing to teach and learn. Most of them could count to 10 already, but 11-15 are genuinely tough. I taught them to play "Bizz Buzz" (okay, so it is sometimes abused as a drinking game), where you count around the group and every time you reach a multiple of 3 you say, "Bizz" and every time you reach a multiple of 5 you say "Buzz," "Bizz Buzz" if it's both. I started with just the "Bizz" portion. The game requires a lot of attention, because if someone messes up, they're out, and the next person has to say what the person should have said. So you always have to know what comes next. The fifth graders repeatedly failed to get past 6, and I realized that this was excellent training for them in general, reaching far beyond an English lesson. It might teach them to pay attention. And, in their final try, they did get to about 15.
Where's the victory I mentioned? Well, on Friday I had two. The first was that a fourth garder who was my most difficult behavior problem, something that he apparently carried over from all of his previous years in school, won the behavior prize this week. He seemed to make a big turnaround after the Fiesta de Tolte. I described in a previous blog praising this improvement to his mother as she castrated piglets. I actually have a hope that a different child is beginning to emerge. This would be good PR, as my housemate Jose is his uncle. He and I have had a lot of conversation about Sergio, and I think it's paying off. I should add that Sergio probably has the best retention of English vocabulary of anyone in the fourth grade, so this is meaningful effort.
The second big victroy occurred after I taught the sixth graders how to respond to the question "How old are you?" I asked if anyone thought he or she could be interviewed in English. A really great kid named Rosalinda answered the call, and responded perfectly to these questions: Hi, How are you? What is your name? Where are you from? What do you do? What do you want to be? How old are you? It actually sounded something like a conversation in English. Yes, I was excited. Wouldn't you be?
The topper to all of this was the trip to Guayaquil, where a former Village School student of mine, Kelly, had arrrived with her friend Andrew. Kelly graduated from VS about 10 years ago, went on to Nassau and Stony Brook, and then spent three years teaching English to preschoolers (a process that sounds more effective than mine here, but Korea and Ecuador are not the same). She also got to travel all over Southeast Asia and parts of China, and is heading to a teacher certification program in Australia in February. To fill the time until then, she and Andrew have been backpacking from Argentina to Bolivia and Peru, and they reached Ecuador on Thursday. I have been afraid to go to Guayaquil (other than to pass through). It is reputed to be the most dangerous city in Ecuador, with all kinds of criminal shenanigans that sometimes target gringos. But I got the name of their hostel, and made a wonderfully smooth trip from Alausi to Guayaquil in far less time than it took me to get back when I went to Portoviejo. This is certainly because I used the scheduled bus direct from Alausi instead of detouring through Riobamba, which is entirely unnecessary.
So what's it like to see a former student after so much time and in an exotic environment? Startling. I don't have much of an impression that Kelly retains anything I taught her ten or more years ago, but she certainly retains the VS experience, and remains close to here classmates. We did talk about old times and old friends, but I was much more interested in how she had become the world traveler that she is, since this is so close to my own interest. Employment opportunity played a big role, I'm sure, but Kelly's ability to enjoy an unusualy situation might just reflect the VS years, and the sense of the school at the time that life should be an exciting adventure. She does have me thinking more about taking my Chinese friends up on there offer of employment, though I do wonder what my life would be like in an environment where I do not speak any of the local language. But she and Andrew speak little Korean, and managed to find a community of English teachers (There is apparently an army of them in all Asian countries). In any case, it looks like Kelly's high school experiences did her no harm, and probably plenty of good, which is more than can be said for most high school experiences. Maybe I should take some pride in those years, too--they seem to have given me some useful instincts to use in Tolte.
I'll just mention that the ride back to Alausi today was beautiful--little of the heavy fog and overcast of yesterday's trip down. And I got a great $3 haircut in Alausi. Pricey compared to my haircut in Riobamba, but pretty sharp for a guy with as little hair as I have.
The week started with me implementing an idea that i came up with last week: the new rules for computer room access is that you have to read early in the week to have minutes to spend in the computer room later in the week. This frighteningly simple idea resulted in about half of the schoolchildren coming to the library to read--or in the case of k-3, look at pictures in books, which is better than nothing. And the more they came to read, the more they liked it--although they also showed how much they need it. Two girls in the fourth grade took turns struggling through the Spanish language version of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," a book that I would place at the first grade level. One of the most capable seventh graders (the cantonal school president) handled a book at the third grade level, but found a book at the fourth/fifth grade level too demanding. It all goes to show that this is a really necessary project, one that could make a big difference in the lives of the children of Tolte over the next couple of years. I have asked Carolina to link a book drive to the upcoming AVANTI Fiesta Navidena in Tolte, to take place on Saturday, the 17th (yes, that's next Saturday for regular readers of this space.) I don't have enough books for early readers (which encompasses about 95% of the kids) and I don't have any alphabet books. I am trying to teach a fourth grade boy to read using flash cards I made after talking with Nick the Peace Corps Volunteer in Chunchi. Things are sort of desperate.
On the other hand, the program got off to a great start. Over thirty of the 65 school children did some reading, and many averaged half an hour each day. One boy read slightly more than three hours in three days. There did seem to be some positive competition for who could pile up the largest number of minutes, and behavior was surprisingly focused and positive. We'll have to see how long this lasts, but I have high hopes. I have more and better reading material if the kids can cross over to the third or fourth grade reading level.
But the victories didn't end there. This week had me teaching the children to cont in English, generally an easier thing to teach and learn. Most of them could count to 10 already, but 11-15 are genuinely tough. I taught them to play "Bizz Buzz" (okay, so it is sometimes abused as a drinking game), where you count around the group and every time you reach a multiple of 3 you say, "Bizz" and every time you reach a multiple of 5 you say "Buzz," "Bizz Buzz" if it's both. I started with just the "Bizz" portion. The game requires a lot of attention, because if someone messes up, they're out, and the next person has to say what the person should have said. So you always have to know what comes next. The fifth graders repeatedly failed to get past 6, and I realized that this was excellent training for them in general, reaching far beyond an English lesson. It might teach them to pay attention. And, in their final try, they did get to about 15.
Where's the victory I mentioned? Well, on Friday I had two. The first was that a fourth garder who was my most difficult behavior problem, something that he apparently carried over from all of his previous years in school, won the behavior prize this week. He seemed to make a big turnaround after the Fiesta de Tolte. I described in a previous blog praising this improvement to his mother as she castrated piglets. I actually have a hope that a different child is beginning to emerge. This would be good PR, as my housemate Jose is his uncle. He and I have had a lot of conversation about Sergio, and I think it's paying off. I should add that Sergio probably has the best retention of English vocabulary of anyone in the fourth grade, so this is meaningful effort.
The second big victroy occurred after I taught the sixth graders how to respond to the question "How old are you?" I asked if anyone thought he or she could be interviewed in English. A really great kid named Rosalinda answered the call, and responded perfectly to these questions: Hi, How are you? What is your name? Where are you from? What do you do? What do you want to be? How old are you? It actually sounded something like a conversation in English. Yes, I was excited. Wouldn't you be?
The topper to all of this was the trip to Guayaquil, where a former Village School student of mine, Kelly, had arrrived with her friend Andrew. Kelly graduated from VS about 10 years ago, went on to Nassau and Stony Brook, and then spent three years teaching English to preschoolers (a process that sounds more effective than mine here, but Korea and Ecuador are not the same). She also got to travel all over Southeast Asia and parts of China, and is heading to a teacher certification program in Australia in February. To fill the time until then, she and Andrew have been backpacking from Argentina to Bolivia and Peru, and they reached Ecuador on Thursday. I have been afraid to go to Guayaquil (other than to pass through). It is reputed to be the most dangerous city in Ecuador, with all kinds of criminal shenanigans that sometimes target gringos. But I got the name of their hostel, and made a wonderfully smooth trip from Alausi to Guayaquil in far less time than it took me to get back when I went to Portoviejo. This is certainly because I used the scheduled bus direct from Alausi instead of detouring through Riobamba, which is entirely unnecessary.
So what's it like to see a former student after so much time and in an exotic environment? Startling. I don't have much of an impression that Kelly retains anything I taught her ten or more years ago, but she certainly retains the VS experience, and remains close to here classmates. We did talk about old times and old friends, but I was much more interested in how she had become the world traveler that she is, since this is so close to my own interest. Employment opportunity played a big role, I'm sure, but Kelly's ability to enjoy an unusualy situation might just reflect the VS years, and the sense of the school at the time that life should be an exciting adventure. She does have me thinking more about taking my Chinese friends up on there offer of employment, though I do wonder what my life would be like in an environment where I do not speak any of the local language. But she and Andrew speak little Korean, and managed to find a community of English teachers (There is apparently an army of them in all Asian countries). In any case, it looks like Kelly's high school experiences did her no harm, and probably plenty of good, which is more than can be said for most high school experiences. Maybe I should take some pride in those years, too--they seem to have given me some useful instincts to use in Tolte.
I'll just mention that the ride back to Alausi today was beautiful--little of the heavy fog and overcast of yesterday's trip down. And I got a great $3 haircut in Alausi. Pricey compared to my haircut in Riobamba, but pretty sharp for a guy with as little hair as I have.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Rubber Boots
Again, the most notable thing about this week has been the sudden and drastic change in the weather as we enter the rainy season. A dense layer of cloud settles into the river valley every night. Although the day dawns clear, as the air mass heats up, the cloud layer rises, just the way you learned in science class, and envelops Tolte. Rarely in my life have I see fog so thick. It can be difficult to see the houses across the street.
Naturally, this means that everything is wet. If you are lucky, and your timing is good, you can get your laundry dry in a couple of days by shifting it to a covered location when the fog closes in, then out to a sunny spot in the morning. Socks are a particular challenge, made as they are of a thick tube of water absorbing cloth. I haven’t tried to wash any jeans lately; that just seems futile. I have been told that this wet, foggy period is part of the beginning of the rainy season, and that as it starts to rain more frequently, the sky will open up a bit.
But we did have rain Friday, and, as promised, the plaza filled up promptly with water. It was around this time that I realized that I couldn’t continue living here with just my one pair of sneakers and my crazy barefoot running shoes, which I cannot use because the road is simply too rough and rocky. Today I went o Chunchi and bought a pair of rubber boots of the kind that everyone here wears at the bargain price of $8.50. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to use them, but it does make it possible for me to visit someone’s farm in this weather and not worry about the mud. I can just rinse it off later, or walk through a couple of deep puddles.
On a slightly scarier note, my right foot became infected on Friday. I’m not sure how this happened. I imagine a piece of dirt got into my shoe and embedded itself in the sole of my foot. Fortunately, the wise travel doctor I saw before I came down here gave me a prescription for a couple of rounds of doxycycline. The primary reason was to hold off a malaria attack if I was unlucky during a visit to the Amazon, and buy me some time to get more complete treatment. But doxycycline is a broad spectrum antibiotic, and I was told it can be used for all sorts of nasty wounds. It’s sort of a nuisance to take, because you have to take it on an empty stomach, which requires some planning. But it is working quite nicely on the injury to my foot—no one need worry. I only report this as part of the complete picture of living here in Tolte. By the way, if I weren’t allergic to penicillin, there are antibiotics in the municipal office that would have worked fine. There may be no doctor here, but all is not lost. And there is a Centro de Salud in Chunchi.
And one more thing. Last night, Jose took me along to the Evangelical Church, where Juan, the guitar maker, and his brother Pablo, the carpenter, were working on some music. Jose’s job is to beat the big drum. This was the first time I had brought my guitar with me when they were playing, and I had a good time. Juan has enough sense of what he’s doing to be able to tell me the chords to play. In other situations, I have to guess along by ear, and there can be a lot of uncertainty on everyone’s part as to what is actually happening in the music. So I got to participate in learning a couple of Andean Evangelical songs, which might not be my first choice in music, but it did introduce me to some of the chording and sounds of Andean music in general. I was also a big hit, because I could remember the chord changes pretty much form the first run through. Of course, there was a rhythm that gave me fits, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I need to work on if I’m going to get a feel for the local sound. I’m pretty sure they’ll let me come back, especially because I was able to use my limited knowledge of music theory to show Juan the easiest way to change from a D major to a B minor chord on the piano. Juan and Pablo can switch easily from guitar to Cherengo to Pan Pipe to piano. As a “guitar only” guy, I’m certainly impressed.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Rainy Season
I think there’s been sort of a gap in my blogging. I don’t think I mentioned the Fiesta de Yuquillay, which I attended on Saturday night. I had wanted to go earlier, to see the futbolistas from Yuquillay, a talented group of younger players, face off against Ambato, a city north of Riobamba. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a ride until after 7 PM, by which time Ambato had been defeated. But I still wanted to show up, partly to see another town in the Tolte zone, and partly to show people from other places whom I had met in Tolte that I cared enough to visit where they were form. Apart from Fernando and the other Yuquillay players, I also ran into Ivan and his crew. The usual drinking ensued, with fairly severe illness on Sunday.
I didn’t feel anything like normal until Tuesday, so it was a good thing that I didn’t have to teach English Monday. The other teachers decided to show a movie, which spared me having to accomplish anything. I did make some helpful visual aids to teach professions and careers, but I didn’t have to whip them out until Tuesday.
Of course, Wednesday was another day without classes, as the student government had a local installation ceremony. I’m not sure whether the student government merits this much school disruption, but that’s the way things are. The ceremony lasted an hour, and substituted for five hours of school, which isn’t a bad trade from a personal effort point of view.
More interesting, in many ways, was the PTA meeting held after the ceremony. The first surprise was that I am among the “invitados” to the school Christmas fiesta. Being invited means that you are expected to make some kind of financial contribution to the event, and I think it shows increasing comfort with my presence that I could be invited. I’m to provide a “banda” or sash, for the “Princesita de La Navidad” or one of her entourage. Details will emerge. Obtaining the sash involves a couple of trips to Chunchi and about $14, from what I understand. $14 may not seem like much, but I earn about $12 a day. Of course, other people were hit a lot harder during the Fiesta de Tolte, so I’m certainly not complaining. Heaven help the family of the child who is chosen “Princesita de La Navidad.”
Also interesting were the comments of the other teachers in reference to the computer room, for which I am partially responsible, and my desire to mount a pro-reading campaign. The teachers of grades 4-7 have been offering extra help to their students, who are all somewhat to greatly below grade level in all subject areas. As with my English classes for adults, no one has been attending. Instead, the kids have been going to the computer room or playing in the plaza. This made me a little uncomfortable. On the other hand, they did mention my desire to encourage reading, and that this was very important. I got the chance to say that from now on, children would need teacher permission to use the computer room, and that children should read at least half an hour every day. I offered to lend library books for this purpose, and the teachers seemed very happy with all of that. Later, I cooked up the idea of opening the library on Mondays and Tuesdays and clocking the kids reading time. For every minute they read, they can have an equal amount of computer time on the other three days of the week. My guess is that no one will read, and no one will use the computer room, but we’ll have to see. Again, the teachers liked the idea. Of course, now I really need to get more books.
But, outside of the world of school, I now live in an entirely different environment. The rainy season seemed to arrive a couple of days ahead of schedule on Sunday, and the Tolte I have been living in no longer exists. The days of bright, hot sunshine piercing the mountain air are over. I now live in a place that resembles the Scottish Highlands, a land of heavy mist and fog, punctuated by periods of rain. Visibility this morning was less than 100 feet. In some ways, the town seems even more enchanted than before, a place existing in a tiny bubble of light surrounded by cloud. On the other hand, drying my laundry has become extremely complicated. Nothing dries outdoors on the line anymore, and I haven’t figured out a functional indoor system yet. I imagine the bathrooms will have an important role to play, or perhaps the upstairs balcony. But at 100% humidity, it’s going to be a slow process.
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