On the way home from school

Just a few things in Quito look different than what I’m used to in the States. Here are a few of them that I see when I walk home from school (a little less than 3 km downhill to the trolley-sort-of-bus station, which I take the rest of the way)

This bus/room is just around the corner from our school. Our director called it a “former Ptomaine Palace;” I think he doesn’t hold it in the same esteem that I do. I’ve already fantasized about getting my students involved in a “Save the bus” campaign if it is ever in danger of being torn down.

This very neat graffito shows W wishing he were sucking face with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, with the caption, “The Love of Oil.”

Further down the street, near the cemetery and my trolley stop, this appears to be the floral deal of the century. Forget a dozen roses for your sweetheart - how about 25?

On the way to school

Everyone at Academia Cotopaxi (myself included, despite what Joy might suggest) has been working hard getting ready for the first day of classes on Monday. There are scads of workers painting, installing new tile and counters in the bathrooms, and who knows what else. Will they get it all done? The school is lovely, getting lovelier by the minute, and the teachers all seem dauntingly bright, charismatic, and talented (I’m not sure I’ll pass muster). Luckily, they’re a friendly lot as well, and seem to be giving me the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

(click to enlarge images)  L. The view outside my classroom door.  R. My lab in an early stage)

There is a tremendous amount of work being done around the school by the administration at what seems to be the 11th hour. Tomorrow is our last work-and-training day before school starts, and they are still finalizing the schedule, some of the policies, the student handbook, and the class lists. This also meant that our training on how to use the electronic gradebook today (including taking attendance) had to be aborted because the class lists weren’t loaded. Will they get it all done? Will I ever learn the thousand mysteries of my fancy telephone?

As you might well guess, with all the last-minute goings-on, my style of thrill-seeking-through-procrastination, having stood the test of time in several domestic and international settings, is fitting right in. My personal plan? To take off for the weekend with Joy and our friends to Ibarra, Ecuador, site this year of the World Junior Rock Climbing Championships!

Marketing in Quito

A few things distinguish certain marketing efforts here in Quito. First, like most houses here, you can’t get anywhere near our front door because there is a gate at the street. This poses an additional challenge for door-to-door salespeople. They buzz the intercom connected to the front gate and when you pick up the handset, you get a barrage of Spanish. The most memorable so far was our first Sunday here. Read it very fast for full effect:

A very good day to you. Excuse the imposition; we are the people who juggle fire on the street corners. Sunday is a very slow day for us, so we are asking for a small collaboration, as little as 25 cents.”

Second, there is no “do not call” list.  Like in the states, telemarketers talk very fast and barely let you get a word in edgewise. The difference is that they talk in Spanish, so fast-talking, phone-talking, nearly unintelligible Spanish-speaking marketers are somehow easier (for me at least), to hang up on without feeling responsible for what I imagine to be that blow to their self-esteem, that death by a thousand cuts that made me leave my only telemarketing job after just one day.

So it was that we got a call at 9:00 AM yesterday morning (telemarketers on Sunday morning? - how rude!) from a woman saying something about $40,000 (actual U.S. dollars, since that has been the official currency here since, I think, 2002). I interrupted in Spanish, “We are not interested,” and hung up. Amazingly, she called back within seconds - wow, talk about tenacious! Her next words and insinuating tone got my attention: “Why then did you put an ad in the paper?” After going back and forth a bit, it turned out that someone placed an ad about a loan for $40,000 and someone got the telephone number wrong.

All day we were fielding these $40,000 calls, and after just a few we got pretty good at it. I even wrote a script for Joy, “I’m sorry, there was an equivocation in the announcement in the press” (she changed equivocacion to error for ease of pronunciation, but I stuck doggedly to the bigger word. No surprise there). After a while curiosity got the better of me and I asked a caller to tell me more about the ad in the paper. This person couldn’t be sure, from the way it was worded, whether the ad’s intent was to loan you forty grand or to borrow it from you.  Sounded like one screwed-up classified, in more ways than one.

Finally at 8:30 PM, our perpetrator finally called, admitted it was his ad, blamed his secretary for switching two digits around, and asked if we could please give any callers the correct number. I also asked for his name. “Dr. Osvaldo Loza Andrade; I am a lawyer, at your service.” Hmmm. On the one hand, he probably owes me several “billable hours” for us answering his ad all day long. On the other hand, lets just say our first experience with the good doctor didn’t inspire confidence in him and his staff.

Extra pic and captions

I’ve added a picture of our master bedroom and captions to the pictures of our house from the other day.  Scroll down to experience them again with these bonus features in all their digital glory.

Achachay!

The first day of new teacher orientation was a warm welcome, a nice tour of the campus (give me a map please!) and good info about Ecuadorian culture, but it richly deserved the Quichua description achachay. Quichua is the local version of the language of the Incas, known in Bolivia as Quechua. Someone suggested to me that the differences between Ecuadorian Quichua and Bolivian Quechua could be compared to the differences between, say, Italian and Spanish. Works for me.

Achachay counted among the 6 or so words that our guide on a city tour last week told us that all Ecuadorians (at least those from the Sierra, or highlands) know, regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic class. Achachay means “cold” or “it’s cold.” I actually heard an indigenous woman saying this word under her breath this afternoon as she scurried past me across the street. I humbly suggest that achachay has onomatopoeic roots in teeth chattering (so, probably, does “chattering” now that I think of it!). Inca words have been known to come from imitating sounds: the very commonly-used Quichua word for baby is Guagua – pronounced WaWa. Tell me that’s not derived from auditory experience!

It was achachay because it was cloudy all day and the room at the school we met in is in the back and is always cold. I had on an undershirt, long-sleeve denim shirt, and a light jacket, and by the end of the session I was freezing. Some folks came without jackets and others with sandals and no socks — Achachay! It was probably just in the mid-60s, but chilly for a sedentary person sitting on a metal folding chair. Turns out that the classroom I am assigned is also in this back part of the school. I need to get a thermometer to leave in my room.