Quick last look around

I've started packing, a job I'll have to finish before I go to sleep tonight. I've got to catch an early bus out of here tomorrow morning, so I can get in Quito in time to have a meaningful conversation with Carolina about the past nine months and the upcoming school year. Yes, I'll be back. The job that I thought it would be sort of humiliating not to get didn't even think I was worth interviewing. It's a good thing that being the sort of international development worker that I am means never allowing yourself to admit that you've been humiliated. I'm not sure whether this implies that I will never be able to step up from what I am doing to the professional level, but it's too soon to admit defeat. I've got another guaranteed year here, which should provide enough time and additional experience to work from.

The days since my last entry have been dominated by school and the flu. I was about as sick as I can ever recall being on Monday, after two preliminary days of feeling lousy. Improvement was slight on Tuesday, but I felt almost back to normal by the end of the week. Still, it made it difficult to produce the kind of year-ending wrap up that every teacher hopes for. I did manage to finish reading "The Cat in the Hat" to my sixth grade class, and they enjoyed it very much. We struggled for understanding--it's amazing how you can work for a year to produce broad conversational skills in English and still find that your students lack such fundamental words as "know," "can," "then," and "should." It certainly leaves the door open for "Dave in Tolte Again: Second-year English."

I also was able to give each child a brief final conversation test on Friday, as they were filling their notebooks with the last words we learned this year, in the nick of time. Results were not, overall, thrilling. The best student in the seventh grade did respond correctly to everything I threw at him, which was nice, but not surprising. The second bast seventh grade student did so well that I raised her grade to a perfect 20, which was a little surprising. My sixth grade students, the best as a group, did quite well individually. The fourth and fifth grade didn't provide too much evidence of having learned very much, but I got decent responses out of three fifth graders and one fourth grader. A few kids who I really looked forward to talking to couldn't seem to understand questions they routinely answer correctly in class. Maybe my flu made me hard to understand, since it left me very nasal and hoarse.

The big question, of course, is what they'll remember next September. I'm cutting out a month early on the end of the school year, mostly because I'm needed at home right now, but also because of some confusion as to how many months of salary were available when I started. The kids will have to get by on what's in their notebooks, and speaking to each other in English, for three whole months. If they remember much in September, it will be a big surprise. I'd better start planning my review now.

Just so you know, the Padres de Familia de la Escuela give me a big send-off Friday afternoon, featuring home-made, home-raised chicken soup and, once more with feeling, guinea pig with potatoes. They also gave me a handsome picture of all the school kids, teachers, and me together, which I cannot show here because it's attached to a piece of wood. The meal was washed down with way too much trago afterward, which has slowed my packing progress today (Saturday, June 2). But can it really be coincidence that my last day teaching in Tolte coincided with the first New York Mets no-hitter? I think not--everything here turns up when you really need it.

Time to pack up my computer, my guitar, put my rubber work boots in storage, pack my duffle, and come back to my family for a while. Here are some people things I'll miss when I'm away:

• being called "Naichu Michu." Don't try it when you see me; your accent is wrong.
• Damsio's wit and wisdom. They don't call him "Alcalde" for nothing.
• being invited for 15 cents' worth of trago with my barber, Don Lucho
• playing guitar with Winari
• playing guitar with Don Sauce
• playing guitar with Estasis, better known as "La Banda de Miercoles."
• watching the children's folk dance class
• Chunchi on Sunday
• watching Bryan, a fifth grader the size of an Ecuadorean 5-year-old, play center forward for the kids' "indor" team
• speaking English with Rosalinda, my favorite student
• jogging in the Andes
• exchanging "Buenos Dias," "Buenas Tardes," and "Buenas Noches" with the good people of Tolte. 

It's no wonder I have to come back.