Hola!

I have arrived

After a rather stressful week and a 15 hour plane flight, plus a very boring 4 hour stop over in Texas where I could barely keep my eyes open, I finally arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador around midnight on Sunday evening. John (my boss) was thankfully there to meet me - though there had been some question as to whether this would be the case as he had stopped replying to emails. I have since found out this was because he´d gone away for Easter weekend.) Anyway, I am currently staying with him & his wife, Maria Elena.

They are both very welcoming and Maria Elena has even taken to helping me learn a bit of Spanish. (She is actually an English professor at the University here, but she taught Spanish for a while a few years ago when they lived in the UK for a few years). Today we did numbers, meeting people... and I can cook Spaghetti Bolognaise in Spanish! Of all the useful things I could know!


First Impressions

By now, most of you know the story of when John first rang me for an interview;

Jenni & I were sat in the kitchen laughing & joking as we usually do. We´d been discussing my time in China, for whatever reason, when the phone rang. So, for a joke, I answered the phone in a Chinese accent saying,

"Herro, yoo haf reached da Sheara´ househol´ how can I help yoo?"
"Hello, this is John Warren calling from Ecuador for Amie Shearer?"

It´s safe to say I was stunned into silence & totally mortified that this should be the one phone call that I should answer in a stupid voice.

Anyway, luckily, it didn´t hurt too much as I´m here in Ecuador. However, on Sunday night, my plan was to take a quick shower & go to bed for a much awaited sleep. Nevertheless, as I got into the shower I managed to pull down the shower curtain rail which, if it wouldn´t have been embarrassing enough, made a tremendous crashing sound. John called through the door,

"Amie? Are you ok?" Cursing at this point that I could possibly do something so stupid, I call back rather sheepishly,

"um, well, actually, er, I´ve sort of pulled down you´r shower railing..." (I didn´t know what else to say!) He explained that it was actually on suckers & happened all the time (thank god!). All was well - until I pulled it down again getting out of the shower, though at least now I knew how to put it back up - & I went to bed.

There is only one upside to this that I can think of; I have possibly given the worst first impression possible after all this & so things can only go up... touch wood.


Guayaquil

John & Maria Elena live on the outskirts of the city in a modern ´compound´ type place. You wouldn´t think we were 10 minutes outside a 3 million people city as it´s surrounded by luscious green rolling hills covered with trees, ivy and other random looking vegetation I will never recognise!

The city itself is vast. I haven´t been in the centre yet but from what I have seen, it seems to me like a city which has had another ring of roads and building built every few years and so it´s sort of like an onion... for want of a better analogy! Where we were on Monday is simply mall after mall after mall of shops and restaurants. I suppose it´s the coolest way to shop here but that´s all there seemed to be!

We went to see Maria Elena´s niece who is also 19, Adriana, on Monday too and she lived in ´the 70´s area´ apparently. This was smaller white buildings with little multicoloured balconies, though it looked like it needed a bit of TLC. Also, the giant two-story high gates bolted shut in front of every house were particularly welcoming...

Adriana is very nice, and speaks reasonable English which is good as until I learn some Spanish, conversation would be a bit stilted otherwise! She´s actually invited me out this weekend to her cousin´s birthday in a club, or ´disco tech´as she calls it. (I didn´t like to say that a disco in England is for 11 year olds!) Apparently here the main type of music in clubs is ´reggae-ton´ which sounds like RnB with reggae beats, which I can cope with :) It´s more the sound of the style of dancing which I´m worried about! I think it´ll be an interesting night anyway!


Will keep you posted

I don´t have a whole lot to report as of yet as I haven´t started properly teaching yet & obviously haven´t seen a whole lot either. I´m teaching a class of ´false beginners´today (which means they have basic understanding & that´s about it) but that´s partly just to fill my time and also filling in for John as I have nothing better to do.

Once I have more to say I´ll be back!

Love to all,
xx

A Disappointment Before it Even Begins

Just a quick note to say that I am no longer going on the trek as unfortunately, they didn't have room in the accommodation for me even though there was a space on the trek. It's safe to say I'm pretty bummed out by this. I might do it at a later date, maybe at the end of my stay in South America. 

Instead, I'm now looking to enroll in a Spanish course for a week maybe to get me started (as I speak literally no Spanish as it stands) but we'll see what happens. 

Will keep you posted, as ever,

xx

The Adventures begin again...

Hello all once again!

The time has (finally!) come for me to be off on my travels again. 

In January-February, I qualified as an Teacher of English as a Foreign Language after 4 grueling weeks of sleep deprivation & a lot hard work lesson planning & writing my assignments. I've been working in London where I trained for a few weeks to gain some experience. However, this week, I have confirmed a position in Ecuador & I leave on March 23rd. 

Everything feels as though it's happening very fast but then again, if life wasn't fast paced I'd

 get bored!

So what exactly will I  be doing?

This is a very good question - I don't have many details myself yet! I'll be living & working in Ecuador's main beach holiday destination, Salinas. This is approximately two hours away from Guayaquil, one of Ecuador's bigge

st cities. 

I've been told that I'll be working in a public school & a private school though this is all I know at the moment. I'm also hoping to learn Spanish whilst I'm out there (to some level or another). It has been said by some *shifty eyes* that I only made a half hearted attempt to learn Chinese so what will be different about Spanish? Well, to start, Chinese was a completely alien language & I it took me a month to learn 1-10, let alone anything of much conversational substance! (And I can already count to 10 in Spanish, so I'm one step ahead of my Chinese skills!) Also, I learnt French at school which has some (though not many) similarities to Spanish which I'm hoping will help a bit. 

However, before I start work, I will be in Peru for 8 days. I have signed up to do the Lares Trek from Cuzco, through the Inca region to the Machu Picchu. I'm very excited as I've never really done anything like this before but the Inca region seems a very interesting place, not to mention the rich history behind it. You can see the route we'll be taking below on the map & afterwards, I'll upload all my photos of "breathtaking beauty and scenery". 

After the trek, I'll fly back to Guayaquil (April 5th) to begin work on April 7th in Salinas. 

I'm assuming I'll be able to update the blog regularly as I did when I was in China, but obviously I don't quite know what to expect at the moment. 

Wish me luck!

xx