activity day

activity day was never a good idea.
it is a pr thing for cedei, mainly, where classes are forced to go on stage and show off the english that they have learned over the course of the semester. it is billed as a community event, where parents, doners, and random people off the street who hear the irresistable sounds of the performing cedei students can come and enjoy themselves for an afternoon.
there was activity day last semester, but fortunately for me, i was working in the non-central building and was therefore exempt from the proceedings. the report i received about activity day were not uplifting. bad performances and bad emceeing. still, this meant nothing to me because i didnt have to do it. instead, i went on with my life - went to cartagena, came back to cuenca, bought tickets to go to argentina, ate pig, etc.
however, upon returning to cuenca, the powers that be at cedei decided that because activity day was such a disaster last time, the correct course of action would not be to cancel it altogether, but rather to make it higher stakes. it was so decreed that all classes would have to participate in activity day, and on top of that, that each participation would have to include a performance of some sort - you know, singing, dancing, etc. and furthermore, their performance would count for 10% of their final grade.
now, i worked all those long hard hours online getting my very prestigious tefl certificate. this was so that i could join the ranks of the world changing do-gooders known as efl instructors. this was supposed to be a job consisting of teaching english. now, all of a sudden, i had to become a producer as well.
here is the folly: a cedei semester is 10 weeks long. there is midterm week, finals week, the first week which is spent not doing much, and various short weeks due to holidays etc. this leaves about 2 weeks for doing activity day related work. needless to say, this is not academic in any way, nor is it in any way productive. for example, my class has spent the last week.5 to 2 weeks perfecting our lines for our romeo & juliet puppet show instead of learning how to write a paragraph, or to use the present perfect tense. my other class has spent the last week.5 to 2 weeks perfecting their lines for their axe commercial spoof (which wasnt even aired during activity day because the schedule was overbooked) rather than discussing important cultural differences between this and that.
anyway, point is that it was an unmitigated disaster. theres more i could mention by way of proof, but i dont really feel like writing about it anymore...

instead, i will talk about how this weekend, anna and i decided to go find the pig lady so vaunted and mythological. this is a lady who sells pig, which is the basis for most good ecuadorian traditional food. the problem with this traditional food is that, at least in the center of town, it is impossible to get unless you are eating at the market (which, of course makes it eminently possible to get). the majority of new restaurants opening up seem to cater to tourists, and the traditional restaurants that do exist in town are very much interested in serving seco seco and only seco. which is good too. however, on some special occasions, like independence day, i have seen the sancocho bubbling in pots around town, heard the crisp of the sancocho, seen cuys roasting over open charcoals, etc. but never in town.
my students had told me that there is this one street, don bosco street, where they sell lots of traditional pig oriented food. a couple of weeks ago, anna and i went over to this supposed street, walked along it for about an hour then gave up and went to the mall. this weekend, conversely, we walked towards don bosco from another angle, which took us longer, but in the end was more accrate. so, we spent the weekend eating succulent pig products and being happy about it. then, we decided to not go to a party that sounded like it wasnt going to provide us with any particular emotion. doing that made us happy too.

but to tell the truth, there are some aspects of cuenca that i think i will miss the rest of my life. i mean, i dont know when the next time im goingto be living in the andes is. more than anything, though, i cant wait to get to argentina and see whats up there. there is nothing like the week before a change...
anyway, to makea long story short, activity day is not something that is keeping me here in cuenca and i have to lok past it in order to truly see what great things cuenca does have to offer.

by the way, i may have forgotten to mention the fact that my one class did a video spoof of an axe commercial (which beg for spoofing). it was a good commercial, but we were pretty far down on the totem pole as far as scheduling was concerned and therefore didnt get to go. it was sad, although my students didnt mind too much. their commerical was good. i was hoping for a big teary thing that would have made cedei feel bad, but no such luck.
my other class wanted to do a puppet show of romeo & juliet. they watched the movie, developed dialogue, made puppets out of cloth and panty hose, rehearsed and then totally dropped the ball behind the puppet wall. well, they did alright when they were actually talking, but they spent most of the time giggling into the microphone at each other. they are silly.