I have officially been in Quito 11 days. The time has completely flown by. It's been a great experience thus far. I arrived in Quito at 12:45am on Thursday August 13th. The passport control was WAY too long and then you had to put your luggage through a security scan after you picked it up. So it took about an hour and a half to get all the way through. As I exited, I immediately spotted a woman with an "Einstein Teachers" sign. In case I haven't told you, my new school is called Colegio de Alberto Einstein. I walked over and said, "Hey! I'm one of them." There were a few adults slouched in chairs sleeping and a couple of them standing up. Sandy, the woman who was holding the sign and who I had been in contact with before I came, introduced me to them all. I didn't retain a single name and they were too tired to remember mine. We waited for one more new teacher to get out who had actually been on the same flight as me. Sandy led us all to two taxi vans. All of our luggage went in one and we went in the other. It was a pretty long ride to the hotel, about 45 minutes or so. For awhile, the van was full of the chatter of small talk amongst my new co-workers and I. I was very happy to hear I was on the same page as most of them. They didn't have experience with PYP (the curriculum used at the school) and some of them didn't have any Spanish at all. I wasn't as behind as I thought I might be! We arrived at the hotel and were each assigned a separate room. Inside each room was a welcome basket of fruit, chips, beer, water, and cookies. This is where I would like to stop and compare my experience in Turkey and my experience in Ecuador:
Turkey:
Arrive 12:30 am. One piece of luggage lost. Call company that is supposed to pick me up and that supposedly speaks English. They hang up on me because they are only speaking Turkish. Finally get it straightened out and am told a driver is waiting outside. No driver is outside. Long conversation using my hands with a man that doesn't speak English. Finally he calls the company and the driver shows up. Driver gets lost. Am finally dropped off at another teacher's apartment who had to stay up until 3am for me to arrive. She was told the day before I had to stay with her.
Ecuador:
Arrive 12:30 am. No luggage lost. Someone waiting for me right outside the door. Other teachers there to get to know. Taxi doesn't get lost. We are dropped off at a very nice hotel that is paid for by the school. Snacks are in the room from the school saying, 'Welcome to Quito'.
Sometimes you have to go through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff.
There are 7 other new teachers besides myself. We became like a family those first four days. We walked around and got a lay of the land, shared all our meals together, swapped life stories, and bonded. Monday morning we started our first official week of school. However, we didn't actually have to see students. It was full of touring the school, meetings, and putting together classrooms. I have never had so much time to adjust to a new city and new school before having to see students. I don't actually even see any students until Thursday. I feel very spoiled. So we spent a busy week of taking in WAY too much info and going around looking for apartments. Originally a girl asked me to share an apartment with her, so we spent a good amount of time looking at apartments together. But after about a week she decided to live by herself so I was stuck at square one. Therefore, today, I am the only one left at the hotel. :( Everyone else slowly moved out over the course of the week. I did look at an apartment today that I think I'm going to take though. It's a little more than what I wanted to spend but it's nice, I'll be by myself, and it won't break the bank. I will give pictures as soon as I have some.
One other super awesome thing the school did was take all of the new teachers on a city tour yesterday. It was 9 1/2 hours! It was exhausting, but so much fun! We toured two different churches first and got to go up on top of the church. No one else is allowed to do it, but our tour guide had a good relationship with both churches so they let us. Quito is an absolutely beautiful city! Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes and colorful houses. It was amazing to get up and see the city from the church tops. We were also taken to a really nice restaurant for lunch where our bowls of soup came out over salt that was on fire. It was really cool. We also got to see how chocolate is made in Ecuador and taken to a unique ice cream shop. They had flavors of quesadilla, avocado, quinoa, and even caca de perro (dog poop). It was all super delicious. In the afternoon we got to go to a church that was decorated with gold on the inside. Absolutely the most beautiful cathedral I've ever been in, and that's saying A LOT! You guys have to come visit me and go see this cathedral! Towards the end of the tour, our tour guide said she had a special treat for us. We were all exhausted and just wanted to go home, but we couldn't be unappreciative, now could we? So we followed her to the top of a government building, all wondering what in the world we were doing. She pulls out a colorful paper lamp and she said we were going to fill the lamp with our hopes and dreams, light the bottom, and send it off into the air. Ok, cool, right? Maybe not... She asked for a couple of the guys to help her and after they lit the bottom, they all just kind of let go, expecting it to fill with air and go. It didn't. It stayed close to the ground and flew towards some of the teachers. They all scattered and it flew up onto the roof top of the next building, caught on fire, and burned up. Thank goodness the building was made from bricks! We all looked with wide eyes at the burning lamp and kind of busted out laughing. "Well, there goes our hopes and dreams," someone said. Then the lady pulled out another one! We tried to convince her we shouldn't do it again, but she insisted. This time they tried to hold on to the lamp for a bit before letting go. But the flame got too big and started burning people's hands and then the side caught on fire. They dropped it on the ground and had to stamp out the fire with their feet. Apparently the tour guide has ZERO experience with lighting these kinds of lamps. Our first week in Ecuador and we almost became accomplices to burning down part of Quito. Thank god nothing caught on fire.
Now I've once again rambled on for too long. I'll give you an extra big hug next time I see you if you actually made it this far. Hopefully next time I can update you about a new apartment! Love and miss you all!!
Cheers from Quito!
