Being a teacher is hard.
All the seemingly "difficult" things are done for me: I don't plan lessons, I don't write objectives, I generally don't take work home. But I'm a teacher. I
teach students regardless of the duties I may have outside of the classroom. Plus, I often assist other teachers with some of their planning, I've written a few objectives for them and for our English department, I've volunteered to help with research and with grading. I may not have much room to talk, but planning, writing objectives, and all the other work that comes with being a teacher
isn't, at least for me, the hardest part. Seeing the students' devastated faces right after taking a quiz or a test is hard. Trying to cope with the students' psychological problems is hard. Hearing that one of your students has a degenerative health issue is hard. Not being able to help a student is hard. In all, being a teacher makes me feel so helpless sometimes. Not all the time. But sometimes.
It may just be that it's exam week and that tensions are running high at school, but this week has been a bit chaotic. With students
and with teachers. Testing week brings out the worst in people. The way we do testing here is weird. Every big test a class takes has to be done during a testing period similar to what we know as finals week, but it's not necessarily for the end of the term; it's just for the end of what they call hemiquimestres at Atenas comparable to the 6-week periods we did in grade school. I don't get it. In my opinion, this puts so much unnecessary stress on the students. Having finals twice a year was nerve-wracking enough…I can't imagine having to study for 10 tests every. single. time. I had to take tests.
That said, I still love teaching. And I love teaching here in Ecuador and at Atenas. And I love my duties as a teacher. I guess stress and dislikings and bad weeks have to come with anything you do.
… … …
ON A
MUCH HAPPIER NOTE:
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| Montañita, Ecuador |
My roommates and I went to the beach last weekend during our 5-day vacation for Día de los Muertos and Cuenca's independence day. It's generally a 6-8ish hour drive, but since we took a bus, we left at 5:45 a.m., stopped way too many times, had to switch busses, missed our stop once, took a taxi to the right station, got on the right bus, and arrived to Montañita a short 12 (ish) hours later. I slept the
entire way. Thank goodness I don't have any problems sleeping on busses; it's airplanes I've always had problems with. The beach at Montañita was beautiful. When we got there we made our way to our hostel, located directly on the beach. It had a gorgeous view. Montañita was supposed to be crazy, but we're lame, so we were in bed by like 11 or midnight at the latest.
After our days in Montañita, we made our way north to Puerto López, another town on the coast. Montañita was definitely prettier -- the beaches were a lot cleaner. Right after getting there, we went to Los Frailes, another beach, and then to Agua Blanca, a site of Manabi archeological ruins. It was nice visiting both those places, but definitely not the highlight of the long weekend.
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| Los Frailes, Manabi |
Alright, so last Saturday was my 23rd birthday. Those of you who know me well know how important that number is to my life. My golden, or lucky, year was supposedly when I turned 5, but I don't remember much of when I was 5, so I'm self-proclaiming this year, my 23rd year, my golden year. So far it's been pretty great. I started off the year by running into the Pacific right at midnight. Then we walked down the beach and made some friends with people that had a bonfire cause I really wanted a fire. That day, we went to La Isla de la Plata, also known as the poor man's Galapagos, on that Saturday. It was dry season so everything that should have been green was pretty dead. And we didn't see too many animals on our hike through the island, but we saw
plenty of blue-footed boobies. We also came across a few other bird species, including red-footed boobies but those didn't want to show their feet. After our 2-hour hike we went snorkeling in the Pacific and saw a bunch of coral, some beautiful fish, including a zebra fish!, a blue starfish, some eels, and more. It was pretty amazing.
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| Sulfurous Lagoon in Agua Blanca, Manabi |
Disclaimer: just in case you didn't notice, I feel so unmotivated to write right now … my trip to the beach was SO much more eventful exciting than this post makes it sound like. My apologies. I'm glad you're still reading though.
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| Blue-Footed Boobie at Isla de la Plata |
Loveeeee!
Steph
