Mind your P´s and Q´s!

As many of you already know, I have been suffering for the past few weeks from a difficulty in online communication resulting from an incident involving coffee and my Macbook keyboard (typical, no?). The side effects of this horrendous event have led to many cryptic emails and AIM chats, along with a neglegence in updating my blog. To clear things up for those who are out of the loop: after a traumatizing coffee spill, I was delighted to find that my computer seemed to function perfectly despite the large amount of liquid it drank (maybe it was in need of a caffeine boost after all!) until I logged into Facebook and realized, while leaving a witty message on someone´s wall, that my sentences were missing the letters P, N, Y, and the all important ´?´. I tried everything to fix the problem, but here I am 3 weeks later still ¨sellig thigs fu¨(insert p, n, n, n, n, y). So- I do appologize for not updating my blog very often, but feel that this excuse is better than none! : )

However, I was inspired to update Quitopia after this morning´s events. If anything successfully sums up my experience so far in Ecuador, it is what happened to me between the hours of 8 and 9:30am:

8:00am - deep in sleep, until... *KNOCK KNOCK* ¨Jocelyn! It´s 8 o´clock!¨I awake with a start to Dunc´s morning alert upon realizing that I´m still in bed. My alarm was supposed to go off an hour before so that I could take my time getting ready for class. This week and next I´m teaching an intenstive English review course to kids aged 11-14 before they start school for the year. As of right now, I´m already 30 seconds late leaving the house. Dulce.

8:15am- after inhaling a queso de mesa sanwich and cold coffee for breakfast, pulling on yesterday´s pair of jeans, and grabbing 50 cents for the bus, I´m out the door with Dunc as we head down the hill toward downtown Conocoto. It´s not raining yet, but the possiblity doesn´t look that far off (in Ecuador you never know!)

8:45am- get off the Amaguana bus at the stop closest to the Casa Barrial where we hold our classes. The big main road that passes by the C.B. has been closed for a few days now for repaving, so after getting off the bus we have a 10 minute walk through a stereotypical Ecuadorian barrio complete with stray dogs, piles of dirt and asphault, children everywhere, dangerously uneven sidewalks (if there are sidewalks at all), abandoned houses, small neighborhood tiendas, and people who have been awake for 2 hours running errands and doing chores.

8:55am- arrive at Casa Barrial just in time to meet our first students (most of the time Ecuadorians are consistently late, but we have strategically implemented a point system in our class so that our kids earn a point if they arrive to class on time... This has somewhat backfired as we now are often beat to class by our students). As we walk inside the gate to the property, we notice there are cows all over the field and the playground. Weird, but whatever, this is Ecuador. Upon a second look we realize that one of the cows is GIVING BIRTH. I don´t know if any of you have ever seen this miracle of life from a very large four-legged black and white mammal, but it is not pretty. Some words that come to mind as I recall this event: blood, umbilical cord, swollen utter, blood, cow eating umbilical cord, blood, slimy calf, cow licking slimy calf, more blood and more sliminess. The children are just as fascinated (or grossed out) by what is happening as we are.

9:00am- it is starting to rain now. I take out my keys to open the old lock on the rusty door. The key always gives me trouble, and this morning I am determined to open it quickl. I put all my strength into turning it, and to my surprise, it turns! Looking down however, I realize that the part of the key inside the lock hasn´t turned at all. It has completely broken off. Now, not only are we standing in the rain, with a cow, its slimy calf, and a half eaten umbilical cord, but we can´t get inside of the building to have class because the key is now officially broken in two.

9:02am- Dunc and I arrive at the cooperativa down the street. We explain our situation in broken Spanish to a random employee and ask if he can help us. He makes a few phone calls and returns to assure us that help is on the way.

9:05am- back at the Casa Barrial, we amuse the kids with quizzes on English vocab (ex. Como se dice... ¨We are outside¨??) as we wait for said man to arrive with something that will potentially improve our situation.

9:30am- little old man arrives with (drumroll please...) a saw from the colonial era. Great! He saws away, and within 30 seconds the lock is in two, the door is open, and we are able to go inside. Problem: now we have no lock. Dunc and I leave the kids in the classroom to walk down the street again (in the rain- naturally) in search of a ferreteria. Find one, buy a lock.

9:45am- return to Casa Barrial and our eager students (they really really love English class, it´s awesome). Start reviewing the verb ¨To Be¨and off we go!

Bottom line- working for Manna Project, and living in Ecuador in general, literally anything can happen within an hour´s time. Not a day goes by that I don´t experience something new, am challenged by it, and learn from it. But, so far, there has been nothing that I haven´t been able to handle, and the outcome is always positive and rewarding. That´s all for now, it´s time to go make a quiz and homework for tomorrow´s class (today we leaned past tense!). Miss you all and hope all is well back in the States! Ciao : )