Teaching in such a place gives me a new sense of responsibility unknown to me in my previous traveling experiences. I wake up every morning thinking about what I will plan to teach, and thinking about how the students will respond to what I attempt to teach them. Schedules have changed from my first two weeks here; summer school is no longer in session and I am teaching two English classes for high school students. And the eagerness that these children bring to learning is in itself a reason to wake up in the morning. I don´t know how keen these kids are in other subjects, but I daily get to stand in front of 5 twelve year olds who are awake and ready to learn, an anomaly in the world of middleschoolers as I learned from my months of substituting back home. And the past couple of days these students have been asking for class to end a half an hour later...such a gift!
And I continue to be enamoured with Salasaca, Ecuador, the town I´m living in. Every day I walk down the road to school and am greeted by a number of smiling faces, some dirty faces of young children, other toothless grins of older women, others with thick, leathery skin gained by decades working in the fields under a relentless sun. Salasaca is a unique place in many ways, from their interesting history to the ways they treat the world and community. Prior to the invasion of the Spaniards, when the Incas where the conquerors of this land, the Salasacans were pushed out of Peru and exiled to this area. So they share the Quechua-Andean lifestyle, diet, and dress. Their language, the common first language for most Salasacans, is Kitchwa not Quechua. Shielded by the towering enclaves of the Ecuadorian Andes, this town has grown up solitary and continues to hold strongly onto it´s cultural identity. Wearing long, thick, black skirts with a flowy white blouse covered by a vivid wool shawl, the women usually don't leave home with out their sigsig, a drop spindle type instrument they use to spin outrageously thin yarn. And that yarn is in turn given to the men to weave into intricate wall hangings, shawls, or ponchos, the latter of which most men wear over their street close; long, sweeping black ponchos.
And last night my fellow volunteers and I were invited to a going away party for the brother of Fabiola, a women who works with this school and cleans the volunteer house. Nights here drop like thick dark blankets leaving the earth dark, cold, and damp within moments, so the family sent a truck to pick us up. Huddled together in the back, we zig zagged through corn fields and up windy hills to Fabiola´s parent´s house, who ushered us in to their property. Houses here pop up from the ground in clusters, not in one cohesive unit like back in the states. So, the kitchen house, the bed rooms, and other buildings sit huddled together surrounding the common outside area (think court yard of dirt) where the family does their daily chores. Fabiola´s father and brothers are weavers, so their looms dominate their home, and have the biggest room dedicated to them, which was the only place big enough to house the hungry volunteers. Anyway, soon after marveling at this place, we were fed our feast: Chocolo con queso (corn and fresh cheese), potatos with hot sauce, chicken, chicken soup, and, for us lucky ones, cuy (guinay pig). It was lovely.
Ok, I know I need to post more info, I´ll try to give you all a detailed update on my weekend soon, I went a socialized with volcanoes!
No comments:
Post a Comment