the replacement

Last June I wrote about a rather important document that I had lost, my Ecuadorian residency card, and how I worried about leaving the country without it. I finally got around to replacing said document last week--I'm not leaving the country anytime soon, so it wasn't high on my list of priorities. But with last weekend's trip to the beach, I felt like I should replace my card so that I could carry it instead of my passport.

Replacing a document (or doing anything semi-important for that matter) is rather complicated here. Last Wednesday, I went to the police station and stood in line in a small back room to make a denuncio--an announcement--that my card was lost. This involved me being given a form that I had to take to the copy stand in the entry and pay to have two copies made, then returning and filling out the form with the exact events of the lost document. I started to write the wrong date on the top of the form, scratched it out, and then was told to take the mistake-free copy back to the copy stand and ask for yet another copy. (Mistakes--not even scratch-outs--are not allowed.) Then I had to present my correctly-filled-out form to another person at another desk, and wait for them to stamp my paper.

Thursday afternoon, I took my passport and my denuncio to the Office of Immigration, where I was given a number corresponding to the document I needed. I made a copy of my visa and the first page of my passport at yet another copy stand, and finally my number was called. After all the runaround, the actual replacing of the residency card was fairly easy. After two days, five copies, a lot of waiting in line, and one very unflattering photo, I finally had my new residency card.

I guess I can leave the country now.

beach take two

Yet again, we went to the beach for a three-day weekend.

I really wanted to go back to the beach we visited over girls' weekend last June, and so three friends and I spent the weekend in Santa Marianita, a small beach village just outside of Manta. The beach is famous for kite surfing, in which we did not partake, but we did have beautiful weather and really nice accommodations (hostel with a pool and restaurant right on the beach.) We read, walked the beach, swam a bit, ate lots of fried seafood, and played cards. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend.

Erica, Hannah, and Marjorie in the midst of our euchre playing

our hostel

Erica and Marjorie watching the sunsetHannah at sunset

snacktime

I know, I've been a delinquent blogger. Here's a new tidbit for your reading enjoyment:

Students at my school don't eat lunch. Lunch, here in Ecuador, is the main meal of the day, and is eaten in the middle of the afternoon, usually when students return home from school. Therefore, my students snack a LOT all throughout the day, especially during recesses. Snacks can be anything from a sandwich to fruit or a salad, or the little containers of beans that are mixed with dried crunchy corn kernels (think Corn-Nuts.) Today, as I passed a group of my eighth grade students seated at a picnic table in front of the music building, I stopped to say hello and noticed they had a more unusual snack. When I asked what was in the package, they told me, "hosts"--as in communion hosts. They told me they could be purchased at the big chain supermarket (Supermaxi) but that they were better with Nutella or Arequipe (a type of caramel sauce.)

Perhaps I could petition the Pope to consider changing from communion wine to communion Nutella?

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!)