May-June

May started off busy with work with lots of hours teaching and travelling to the communities.  Rachel and I were lucky to meet some Peace Corps volunteers in Riobamba; it was great to get to know them plus they introduced us to our favorite sushi restaurant in the city!  UNACH's research director also connected me with an indigenous community about 17 miles outside Riobamba near Chimborazo called Pulinguí, where a large number of both men and women are tour guides for the volcano.  Since they mostly work with foreign tourists who don't speak Spanish, they requested some English language workshops which I was happy to lead!  I travelled to the community on Saturday evenings to give the classes (once in a community meeting hall and twice at the local high school) and had a lot of fun working with the guides.  It was also great practice lesson planning for such a niche purpose.  The town is pretty rural, so sometimes transportation there was a little tricky.  Many times, I had to walk around the town asking around to pedestrians and at local businesses to find the community leaders.  One Saturday, I spent all afternoon accompanying the UNACH research director, Dr. Tuasa, who has become a dear friend, to a Kichwa church service and building inauguration in a tiny community south of Riobamba, and he dropped me off in Pulinguí.  As he drove down the bumpy dirt roads in the community, we were both stunned as a woman tried to aggressively cut us off in his nice car by herding several COWS ahead of us!

In mid-May, my coworker Adriana organized a field trip to some local museums with our Intermediate English students, which was a great time!  I learned a lot about Riobamba's history and thought it was an enriching addition to the textbook unit on museums.  I also worked for around six weeks with Reach the World, an organization that matches young people studying or working abroad with US classrooms.  I was paired with a high school Spanish class in Nebraska and was able to share more about daily life in Ecuador, indigenous culture, and volcanoes with them through online journals and Zooms.  If you're interested, here is the link to my blog on RTW, which is public.  I was fortunate to get to work with a great teacher (thanks, Mr. Chvala!) and students and also learn more about rural Nebraska!

 Our UNACH department also held an English spelling bee which Rachel and I got to help coordinate!  We had four participants from each of the eight levels of the language pedagogy major and brought in judges from other schools plus a friend from the Peace Corps.  The UNACH staff prepared adorable decorations, and it was so much fun to see our students succeed!  We were very proud of them. :)

Finally, after a months-long process, my research proposal was approved in June by the IRB at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, a private university in the capital.  I conducted an anonymous written survey to gather teacher perspectives about the use of the Kichwa language at rural schools and was fortunate to carry out the project at three different institutions (the two schools I regularly collaborate with, plus one that is directed by a friend's daughter).  I am extremely grateful to all the teachers who agreed to participate. 

 These past two months, I have tried to squeeze in lots of short trips!  After I found out 36 hours in advance that I had a surprise extra two days off, I took a quick solo trip to Baños (mostly to eat at the most amazing Indian restaurant there twice in one day oops...I have really missed Indian food living in Riobamba).  I then took a bus to Cuenca in the south for a short visit with Riley and Halee, where we hiked in beautiful Cajas National Park and witnessed our "taxi" (kind of...more like a park employee who offered us a cheap ride back to the city) bribe a police officer to let us past a check point even though his car did not have seatbelts in the back.  It was wonderful to spend quality time with Riley and Halee and definitely worth the nearly fourteen-hour round-trip bus ride from Riobamba.  Unfortunately, earlier this year there was a devastating and deadly landslide in a town called Alausí, which apart from being absolutely heartbreaking has buried part of the main highway that cuts through the sierra and connects major cities somewhat expediently (or at least as expediently as you can in this crazy topographical landscape with lots of mountain curves, ups and downs, and agricultural land!).  This meant that the busses had to take an intense 1-2 hour detour on steep dirt roads in which we often came face to face with trucks and busses headed the opposite direction, forcing the drivers to navigate their way past each other alongside cliffs and big mud patches.  I mostly popped in headphones and tuned out what was happening.  Luckily, we made it safely, and I give major props to the drivers! 

I also took a trip to the Quilotoa Crater with my dear friends Jenny and Santi!  Quilotoa is a volcanic lake in a 3km (in diameter) crater known for its turquoise waters and stunning views.  I stayed over at their house the night before, and in the morning we made pancakes and they took care of their many farm animals (including one llama whom they had to chase around the yard!) before we made the three-hour drive north.  There were probably hundreds of homeless dogs lining the road up to the lake, which was heartbreaking to see.  Once we made it, we descended down on the path to the lake, where Santi and I kayaked (although someone had warned me about whirlpools in the center...which luckily we didn't encounter) and the three of us enjoyed a relaxing picnic along the shore.  On the way up, I knew that the altitude and steep path were not going to leave me feeling good, so I decided to hire a mule named "Canela" (cinnamon) to ride up after deciding that the money would support a local family and the animals looked healthy.  Jenny and Santi helped lead Canela up the hill, but I think the mule wasn't too happy to be walking apart from his brother and decided to stop every five steps or so on the hour-long journey up.  Eventually, we made it to the top and enjoyed tea at a local cafe to round out a memorable trip with fantastic company to one of Ecuador's most colorful lagoons!

After attending a beautiful ceremony in Quito to celebrate this year's Ecuadorian Fulbright grantees who will be going to the US to complete a master's degree or PhD, I made the bus trip north to the city of Otavalo.  I was supposed to spend summer 2020 in Ecuador as an English as a Second Language intern for the Tandana Foundation, an amazing non-profit which coordinates education, clean water access, healthcare, and responsible, sustainable cultural exchange initiatives in Ecuador and Mali.  Due to the travel restrictions, I worked remotely with Tandana for a year and knew I had to visit in person during my time in Ecuador.  I met up with Gaetan, Tandana Ecuador's new director, at the bus terminal, and we started off our visit by meeting with some students I had tutored virtually at a cafe.  It was so great to see them in person, and we then grabbed a traditional lunch and headed over to Tandana's office in an indigenous community outside the city of Otavalo to meet with some more staff.  I also got to meet a lovely couple who were my "virtual host parents" during my internship experience.  Overall, this was one of my most favorite and special days in Ecuador, and I am truly in awe of Tandana's work and the roots the organization has in the area.  Gaetan is also an incredible person who has lived all over the world doing development work for years, yet the empathy and concern he has for the people he works with remain fresh and authentic!

After visiting with Tandana, I spent the weekend touring Otavalo, which boasts South America's largest outdoor market of its kind!  I wandered through the colorful tents for hours and even got lost in the labyrinth at one point trying to retrace my steps.  I really had a field day with gift shopping!  I then visited the nearby town of Cotacachi, known for its interculturality and expat population, with my friend and fellow ETA Jonathan who lives nearby, and we took a hike around the stunning Cuicocha Lake.  I ended the evening having dinner with a very nice retired Australian expat at an Indian restaurant and taxiing back to my hostel, an eclectic place called The Flying Donkey.  The next morning, I took a very quick trip to the Peguche Waterfall on the outskirts of the city before beginning the long bus journey back to Riobamba.

The past two weeks have been full of goodbyes, and processing that I'm leaving has been emotional.  The groups at UNACH organized surprise going-away parties for me and showered me with extremely generous gifts!  I am so thankful for the opportunity to work with and learn from such great people.  The faculty from our department also set up a lovely goodbye dinner at a local restaurant, where they brought many many gifts and shared some favorite memories of our time together.  It was also hard to say goodbye to the research director, Dr. Tuasa, who has connected me with so many indigenous communities and gone out of his way to make my experience here special and educational.  I am so sad to leave the UNACH community but know that we will stay in touch and that this certainly isn't the end of our friendships, just the start of a new chapter.

I also baked two apple pies for my friend, Jenny, who previously worked in Canada and loves them, plus my friend Janeth's family who has been so wonderful to me throughout this whole experience.  Some of the ingredients were a little different, but I was pretty happy with how they turned out!  For my last class at UNACH, the theme was US and British cultures, so I brought s'mores ingredients to class to celebrate with students.  We obviously didn't have a campfire, so I brought a bunch of matches--despite some close calls, nobody burned the building down!  It's fun to think that (among many other tasks of course), the US government is paying me to do things like this with students! ;)

The indigenous community school, Columbe Grande, that I have been working with since November also organized a full-day celebration for me and Rachel.  We kicked off the day with a soccer match with the high school girls that the whole school watched before enjoying dance performances from each grade level!  The middle schoolers did a "bailoterapia" (dance therapy) routine to some fun reggaeton music, and the elementary schoolers performed a bull run dance with the most adorable costumes.  Lots of parents from the community came to see our "English Class Graduation" where we gave certificates and candy to each student individually to celebrate them, and then we were blown away by their generous gifts.  I received a traditional shawl made from Merino wool, and one of the teachers from the school took four months to weave two "shigras" (traditional bags) for both me and Rachel, one with the school's name (Estanislao Zambrano) woven into the design!  It was an emotional goodbye and beyond generous of the community.  Working with these schools has been one of the absolute highlights of my grant.

I am now in Quito for one final day before my flight leaves tomorrow.  I've been able to say goodbye to some friends here and have been enjoying thinking back on all this experience has taught me.  Working in a different country has certainly been more intense than studying abroad, and I am truly grateful that each day has provided me some kind of invaluable learning experience, sometimes big and sometimes small.  I would be lying if I told you that everything went smoothly and that I handled everything perfectly--I am grateful for an amazing support system that helped me through difficult times or moments when I felt like I wasn't equipped to handle challenges.  It will be an emotional goodbye tomorrow, but I know that I will do everything I can to come back to Ecuador to see friends and hopefully (if I am so lucky) to continue doing research on the bilingual education landscape here!

 In the spirit of reflection, here are ten (less to more serious) things I have learned in Ecuador:

1. No matter where you are going, always pack toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and filtered water, just in case.  Make sure to chew gum and drink water when ascending or descending in elevation because airplane ear is not fun.  Put on (and re-apply) sunscreen even when you don't want to!

2. Soak your fruits and veggies in generous quantities of vinegar for longer than you think you need to.  Try to cook most everything you consume.  Avoid garlic preserved in plastic bottles like the plague.  Do not play roulette and guess whether or not the water is filtered or boiled...just ask.

3. For a family or friend gathering, expect to arrive fashionably late (or risk being the only person there), and be prepared to stay for a lot longer than you might think.  Get-togethers are taken very seriously here and will probably involve LOTS of food (which may be tricky to politely navigate for my fellow vegetarians), lots of conversation, and a slow-paced appreciation for just spending time in one another's company.

4. If you ever find yourself applying for an Ecuadorian visa, particularly a volunteer visa, buckle up for a wild ride in which you will become fixated on government documents, spend cash like it's burning a hole in your pocket, and check your mailbox obsessively.  It will probably work out, even if the consulate only responds to 5% of your email inquiries and answers their phone 2/100 times (it's that intermittent reinforcement that keeps you dialing)!

5. Learning means different things in different contexts.  Don't approach the classroom with such a narrow focus of what SHOULD happen...still make your plan, but ultimately listen to your students and learn to view teaching as a reciprocal exercise in which you are both facilitator and student yourself.

6. Know that living (and especially working) in a different culture will leave you feeling clueless and/or confused a good chunk of the time and that you will probably never have it all figured out.  This is what forces you to grow--try your best to see this as a fun challenge rather than getting hung up on feeling silly or less than.

7. Don't be embarrassed about your language skills.  Mess up at inopportune moments and make countless dumb mistakes...without this, it's impossible to learn.  When someone puts you down, brush it off and reflect on the thousands of hours it took you to get to this point.  Allow yourself to relish those rare yet delicious compliments that I know will come your way.

8. Gratefully embrace invitations to weddings, birthday parties, afternoon coffee chats, and more.  Savor the friendships.

9. If you're anything like me, you will probably have days where all you'll want to do is eat gummy bears alone in your room.  You will probably feel ugly emotions and find yourself obsessing over your mistakes or frustrations.  Embrace this as part of the journey--the range of emotions is what makes the ride colorful and exciting.

10. Reflect and be grateful.  I am not the same person I was when I arrived.  Gracias, Ecuador...jamás te olvidaré.