holy rollin'

As I have changed residences since the last school year, I've spent the past week trying to decide which school bus is the most effective for getting me to and from school. (The school has over 100 buses that run daily routes all over the city, and students and teachers both travel by school bus.) I've spent some time riding different bus routes and timing them to see which bus gets me home the quickest. One thing I've observed on all these buses (as well as my buses from last year) is the quantity of religious items the bus drivers have on the bus. It's very common to see rosaries hanging from the rear view mirror, or stickers or figurines of saints displayed in the front of the bus. My favorite, however, were the multiple glow-in-the-dark figurines of Jesus as a child that one bus driver displayed. In a very Catholic country, these things are not so uncommon.

who turned off the lights?

Yesterday I came home to an apartment without electricity. I walked in the door and five minutes later the power went out. As this is not an uncommon occurrence here in Quito, I opened the door to the hallway to see if the hall lights were on. They were, and I could hear a television playing in another apartment. I went downstairs to report the outage to my doorman, and he handed me a slip of paper from the electric company stating that my service was disconnected due to lack of payment. I was outraged--the previous tenants in my apartment had failed to pay last month's bill, and then when the bill came this month, I missed it due to the fact that I was checking the wrong mailbox. Therefore, I ran like a madwoman up to the office for the electric company (after stopping by the atm in the mall) and stood in a line that wound outside of the building to pay my overdue bill. Then I went to the customer service office, took a number, and waited to speak to someone about reconnecting my service. The lady I spoke with assured me that someone would be by to reconnect me by 7 pm that night. However, at 7:30 I still had no service. I then called the number the lady had given me in case this happened--and I called multiple times just trying to figure out the stupid automated menu--and was told that the technicians did not work past 6 pm, so my service would be restored tomorrow. By now, I was in serious need of pizza and beer, so I went out to dinner with my friends and then came home to a dark house. I had enough hot water left in my tank to take a hot bath by candlelight and then went to bed with wet hair, hoping it would dry by morning. And I most certainly took my curling iron to school with me this morning and fixed my weird slept-on-wet hair in my classroom.

only in quito

This has become the school year that will not begin.

Originally, at my school teachers were to begin work on August 25, and students were set to begin September 1-3 (secondary students on the first, and primary students on the third.) A few months ago, the Ministry of Education here in Ecuador decided to mandate the date for the start of the school year as the first Monday in September, which this year happens to be the 7th. My school petitioned for an exemption around this mandate, but we found out two weeks ago that our petition was denied. Therefore, our start date for all students was moved to September 7th.

To complicate matters, we found out this past Thursday that the mayor of Quito decided to stagger the start date of students, as to avoid having some 48,000 students on the road all on the same morning. So now our beginning dates are as follows: Prekindergarten and kindergarten students begin September 7th, primary students begin September 8th, and secondary students on the 9th.

And as if this wasn't enough, due to all these changes we have now lost two days of Christmas vacation and a week of spring break (leaving us with only one week of break in April instead of two.)

Now the impending question is whether or not we'll lose days to the H1N1 virus.

It's never a dull moment here...

new place

Tobey and I are finally settled into our new place. I ended up going with a previously-undisclosed third option in the same building as the apartment with the oven. This apartment has neither oven nor washer, but it does have a bathtub--something neither of the others had. It was also slightly cheaper that the other options, which helped in the decision as well. My building is located on what is kind of like the Park Avenue of Quito, and it's a GREAT location--lots of restaurants and cafes close by, plus my favorite bakery and ice cream shop are just around the corner! I'm going to try and post some pictures of the front of my building and my street in a few days, but here at least are the inside shots of my apartment.

entry/kitchenkitchen/Tobey (loving the granite countertops!)

dining area

sitting area
"Tobey's" bathroom
my bedroom
my bathroom

It's small but enough for just Tobey and me. There are still a few touches that I'd like to add, but for the most part it was ready to go when I moved in. After last year's "colorful" apartment, I'm quite enjoying the white walls in this one. It's also very nice to have space all to myself (and Tobey too!)