Wednesday, October 13, 2010

You never know what´s coming next...

Last Thursday the director of Worldteach (Kate) came to talk to CECAMI about some problems. As it turns out, CECAMI doesn´t seem to care that there are problems. When this became clear Kate had a big decision to make and has decided she might close down the site. It was weird how the meeting went from being about problems that were fixable to problems that weren´t fixable. And now Shari, Natasha, and I are facing a real possibility of having to change cities. It was a crazy day...

The options from here:
  • Cecami fixes itself and gets enough students of the right age and we can all stay
  • Cecami only fixes itself to sustain 1 or 2 teachers and 1 or 2 of us have to change sites
  • SECAP in Ibarra (another school) is willing to take 1 or all of us so we can stay in Ibarra
  • We move to new cities (my least favorite option)

I really love Ibarra and I´d hate to leave. But CECAMI is not nice and doesn´t care. I understand why Kate is feeling the need to shut it down. I guess in Ecuador you never know what is coming next...

On Saturday I went to Quito to hang out with a bunch of people from WorldTeach. The people in Ambato were in Quito for the weekend and so we all went out. About half the group of 33 was there and it was great to see each other after a month of teaching in our cities and experiencing new things. Ambato seems like a really cool place and I can´t wait to go there and see it. We all went to our favorite Indian place and then went to the bar that has the beer in the boots. The guys decided to have a boot chugging race and one got a nosebleed and two others threw up. I wonder if I´ll ever understand boys and intense drinking games...

Now I´m back to teaching this week. It´s going pretty well and the students seem to be understanding. I think the test last week scared away a lot of the students who never studied and never paid attention. Now I have 15 in my basic and 5 in my intermediate...

Shari, Natasha, and I are going to start passing out flyers in the center of the city in hopes that we can get more students at CECAMI. We have to pay for the flyers ourselves because CECAMI of course doesn´t care.

That´s all for now. I think on Friday I´m headed to Quito again with the rest of the people from Ibarra to meet with Kate. We might also go to Mindo again on Saturday. But then again, I´m in Ecuador and never know what tomorrow brings...

Lots of love!

2 comments:

  1. oh my! that sounds stressful. gosh, what a crazy week. keep us updated, buddy!

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  2. Soooo cutie ... how are things looking????

    ReplyDelete