"Winter" in Ecuador!

I guess there's no real winter break for me this year.  Which is fine.  Going to work (along with the almost 70-degree weather) make being away from home during the holidays a lot more bearable.  In fact, it hardly even seems like the Christmas season at all.  Atenas employees worked all week last week, and this week we're working until Thursday.  So I guess in total I have 2 days off, this Friday and next Monday.  Still, I think we should have had a bit more time off.  And our students only got this week off.  Oh well, Christmas has passed and the new year is right around the corner.

I spent Christmas Eve over at one of my coworker's houses.  It was really nice to spend the day with her and her wonderful family.  Our dinner was quite late, but tasty nonetheless.  While some families are accustomed to eat turkey and ham for dinner, we had chicken.  They also make some Ecuadorian tamales which are typical of this time of year, but I don't like them.  Individually, nothing is offensive, but once you mix it all together…tooootally offensive to me.  My roommates and I were talking about it, and it reminded us of that one Friends episode where Rachel makes the Thanksgiving desert and Joey says: "Custard, good!  Jam, good!  Meat, good!"  Right, Joey, maybe everything tastes good individually, but once it's all put together…eh, not so much.  No offense to anyone who does like these tamales I'm talking about, though!

Anyway, my roommates all work at another school, and since they actually did get vacation time, they all went on trips.  Becca and Mark went to Chile and Argentina, and Emily went back home to Michigan.  We're all meeting up in Quito this weekend to commence this new year!  I'm excited to see all of them again!  I'm also going to, hopefully, go visit my host family at some point.  Yayy!  It'll be a great start to this 2012 year.  Still can't believe that 2011 is almost over.  I never thought graduation would ever get here -- in fact, I remember getting my "Class of 2011" shirt freshman year of college and thinking to myself, "this day will never come," and now it's come and passed.  Oh boy, I'm getting old.

Also, this blog post is starting to drag on and not really have a purpose, so I'm going to stop it right there.  I probably won't be updating this thing until next year, so talk to y'all then!

Lot of love and hugs and kisses!
Stephanie

THE CUTEST THING EVER...

Do you know what it is? DO YOU? Well, you may not agree with me, but little kids dancing and lip synching / singing in their second language is pretty damn cute! This past Friday, my school (well, more specifically the English department) held Atenas Idol, a contest for pre-k - 7th graders. There were quite a few participants that went all out and dressed up like celebrities and got up infront of a lot of people and sang their hearts out…something I wouldn't even dream of doing. We had a couple of Michael Jacksons, some Beatles, a few Selena Gomez's, a Ke$ha, a little Biebster, and we even even had Korn and Aerosmith. This event was definitely stressful to plan, coordinate, and run, but it was so worth it because it's one of my favorite things I've gotten to do so far.


I helped out with decorations and with getting the kids ready for their turn on stage. Originally, I was supposed to be a judge, but that didn't work out because my help was needed elsewhere.  At first, I was a little bummed that I wouldn't get to judge, but, in retrospect, I'm really glad I didn't have to do it because I actually got to enjoy the show and I didn't have to stress about picking 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places. This program, like any program ever put on, had its problems, many of which the parents were not content with -- but it is what it is.


Remember when I talked about the difficulties of being a teacher? Well, I still stand by those words through and through, but I also know that there are things that make being a teacher worth it. All of this may sound extremely cliche, but I like helping students and seeing that precise time when they have their voila moment. This program forced the students to work with the language in a fun way.

So, all the technological issues aside, this program was such a success! It was awesome! And it was definitely the cutest thing ever! (:

Ignorance is Bliss.

At some point last week, I was waiting at my bus stop when the the fire department's alarm went off. I looked into the garage and the firemen were barely moving at all. I had the urge to go in there and yell at them to hurry the (expletive) up. The firetruck had not left the station when I got on my bus at least 5 minutes later. Well, this morning when I was at that same bus stop, I saw an ambulance making its way out of there. It was barely moving, though! So I'm going to go ahead and pretend that the alarm that went off last week was merely a drill that all the firemen tested foully on. And that ambulance this morning was only going out for a maintenance check. In fact, that was why it was moving so slowly: there was something wrong with it.

I like pretending that some things are better than they actually are.

You can call it ignorance, but sometimes not being aware of something can make life easier and a lot less stressful. Volcano Tungurahua is currently erupting. My roommates and I were made aware of this fact by someone in the States. In. the. States!! We're here, in Ecuador, about an hour and a half away from the volcano, and even we didn't know about it until we were told. We went through a whole day of eruption before we knew that we were living by an angry volcano. That said, today has been a lot more stressful than yesterday. Whenever I look out the window to the place where there's usually a perfectly cone-shaped landform, there are just clouds. Only, they're not just clouds…it's smoke and/or water vapor and/or volcanic ashes. My head is very creative, let me tell you, and it always thinks of the worst-case scenarios. Meaning that when the lava spurts out from it, I'm going to die. I know that I'm overreacting (especially because I was told by several people that Ambato is not in any sort of danger), but volcanic eruptions are things that I'm not at all used to. And as cool as it might be to see lava spewing from the volcano, I'm more scared than curious.

Just FYI, I wrote the above sometime in late November…I wrote it when I had no internet access and I had completely forgotten about it, oops.

This is what an angry volcano looks like.
Photo credit: Mr. Google Images…I didn't take it.

P.S. That is what Volcano Tungurahua supposedly looked like 3 days ago (as in, 12/8/11)...

P.P.S. Don't worry…I'm not in any danger.

Loveeeee!

Steph