getting oriented

so, as it seems by all accounts that my travel partner has abandoned her duties as a blogger, it will be up to me from here on (or until her haedus has ceased) to provide our avid readers with the events and opinions of your favorite, trusted travelers...

we have been in cuenca for almost a week now and we will start working on monday. unfortunately, we do not know who we will be teaching, and we also do not know where we will be teaching. during our first orientation meeting yesterday, we found out that there is a whole entire other CEDEI building on the other side of town that teachers will teach at if they are chosen to teach children. well, since i put in a rather forceful request not to teach children, im hoping that the other CEDEI building will not have to be a part of my consciousness. aside from that request to not teach children, having to work at the CEDEI building across the river would render my new apartment as being all of a sudden not in a great location. if i work in the main building teaching adults, or *gasp&vomit* teenagers, my apartment is only 3 blocks away. other than that discovery, the only other thing that i found out during orientation that was a surprise (aka, contradictory to what i was told during the interview process) was that we may in fact be working on fridays and saturdays. this of course leaving me with a one day weekend, 1/3 the size of what was expected. oh well. in general, however, orientation day no. 1 went well, and the people who i will be working with seem nice and we fun to go out with afterwards. it is an interesting bunch and it is always fun to find yourself doing something random, and gauging the other people you will be doing the random thing with and trying to figure out similarities between yourself and them. in this case, most of the people are women, none with complexions darker than a banana (the inside of one, of course - and this not counting anna who is beautifully bronzed at the moment). but looking past those types of superficial things (though there was an incident where one guy came up to me and told me that i looked like i was ecuadorian - this probably not quite so meaningful for those of you who do not know or remember what i look like, or know what the average ecuadorian looks like - put it like this: i could probably be confused for any race or culture on the planet other than ecuadorian. clearly this was an issue of all darkish-skinned people looking the same to him, and i would have said something to him at some point if he did not begin talking about how if we were going to go out to go dancing, it was really fine because just because you dance doesnt make you gay. for clarification he mentioned that while growing up, his family looked down upon dancing and would probably not approve of him going to salsa clubs. so ok, he is a sad case) and just accepting for a moment the fact that ethnic and 'racial minorities' in europe, america, or australia dont travel this way very often, the people were all nice and i do look forward to seeing what common thread we share that lead us here. cheesy but true.

we sat through a presentation from the leader and founder of CEDEI. american guy who has quite a grand vision for the school. the benefit that CEDEI serves, according to the founder, is to complicate the cultural values of ecuadorians. that is, for example, there was a child he knew - an ecuadorian child who came from an ecuadorian family of lawyers (both mother and father), but yet remarked to his father on one occasion that washing dishes was womens work. being that he came from a family of two successfully professional parents, it must have been invisible cultural values at work that led the child to his conclusion. if these cultural values are complicated and interrupted and made visible (by observing the ways and actions of people like myself and my wonderfully english speaking colleagues), then there may be more occasion to question the cultural values he grew up with and the child will have been given an opportunity for growth probably denied his peers. this 'complication' or 'interruption', you see, does not reflect a value judgement. rather, it is just showing the door that could be opened to a population that may not have otherwise had access to them. he then went on to explain the problems with the educational system here in ecuador - that being that all education is private and usually located only in the richest cities, and public libraries dont exist. then, went on to explain many of the wonderful things that CEDEI does throughout ecuador. these things being starting private schools in various rich cities throughout ecuador, setting up factories for people to work in in their hometowns so as to stop the problem of migration to the u.s. and elsewhere, convincing rural people that they need water filtration plants and that they cannot see the harmful microscopic particles in the water they drink, sending top CEDEI graduates to american universities - all expenses paid (regrettably, he says, most go for mba degrees), and convincing the ecuadorian government that one day the oil supply of the country will run out and that they should have an economic contingency plan. again, this is not meant to be a value judgement of our ways versus theirs - thats what george bush does, not CEDEI - but just a way of interrupting the cultural values that have led to these regrettable situations. he was quick to point out, however, that in the mission statement that the parents of the children see, he leaves out the part about interrupting cultural values. that got a good laugh.

the good thing is that when the day is over, i can return to the lap of luxury, aka, my apartment. the apartment, if i hadnt mentioned it yet, is the most amazing apartment ever built, simply put. you can scream at one end of the apartment and not be heard at the other. there are rooms that i have never even heard of, much less have lived in: have you ever heard of a solarium? we have one. we have 3 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms, the living room big enough to put a tree inside and not even have it be in the way. there is a room for the ironing board. there is a patio and a balcony, washing machine. and though there are some stylistic interior design choices made by the owner (plastic on certain furniture, white table cloth on the dining room table (which anna has already soiled - but dont tell the owner it was anna), fake plants all over the living room (one with a fake bird resting on the leaf of the fake plant), lack of a ping-pong table, etc.) it doesnt matter because there is just too much stuff to complain about any one thing. all this luxury for only $125/mo! now, am i being tacky and classless by using blog space to brag about real estate that isnt even mine? sure. but trust me, its justified. the best part of all is that the apartment comes with 2 kittens. ive never owned cats before, so their behavior is probably more amazing to me than it is amazing, but i find them to ba a constant source of entertainment. the male cat, who ive named 'little lion' because he has a big head and likes to meow a lot - and im sure his meows sound like roars to him - though given the initials of his given name, i have taken to calling him 'll cool j'. the female cat, i am calling 'jaguar'. she is sleek and sneaky. today, we played a game where i was standing in the kitchen and she tried to come into the kitchen and upset the garbage. each time she entered the kitchen, though, i lifted her up and brought her to a different corner of the apartment. so, she would find her way back and try to evade my picking her up. eventually after about 12 times of my winning, she dodged me and proclaimed herself the overall winner of the day. thats ok though...

--
believe it!