January progress

Percentage of Spanish I understood this week – 84%

(This might not have anything to do with my Spanish fluency, but today I thought it would be an excellent idea to make a puzzle challenge to review “to get” and make it a little competitive. The idea was to have definitions of the “to get” verb. For example, “to become sleepy” is a puzzle, and the puzzle piece would be “to get tired.”

Anyway, about a month ago I started working with a new counterpart, and I have a feeling she thinks I’m a bit of an airhead, so I’ve attempted to bring out my creativity in order to counterbalance that notion. Hence, I got a little too Jackson Pollock–y for the design of the puzzle (picture below), and somewhat airheady of me hadn’t assumed that the easiest thing for kids to do would be to just match up the intensely different shapes of the puzzle pieces to the base puzzle.

During this, my counterpart and I had a mid-class sidebar like, “You see what I’m seeing, right?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but after we’ll be able to go through each individual puzzle and review each form of ‘to get.’” I really was just trying to save face, hoping I might be able to get a lively discussion out of the students after. However, it was 7:30 in the morning, and the lively discussion never came.)

In the famous words of Limp Bizkit,

“One, two, three times two to the six.”

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What’s been going on recently, you ask?

Well, that’s a great question.

About a month ago I started working with a new counterpart, and it came with one of those,

“Hey, it’s time to get your shit together!”

Not saying I didn’t have my shit together before, but I was getting a little too comfortable floating by. With any job, including Peace Corps, complacency is easy to come by. Going to school, taking a midday nap, waking up and going to the gym, cooking dinner, and repeating daily until you’ve found that you’re 11 months into service, and those clubs you said you were going to start and the grant proposal keep getting moved to tomorrow—and then whenever you bump into that one important decision maker at lunch…

Before I started working with my new counterpart, I think I may have lesson-planned once. That’s not a knock on my previous counterpart; she has some serious rapport with the students, and our teacher–co-teacher dynamic flowed in a way that could fill in some of the gaps of not lesson planning.

However, when I started working with my new counterpart, I could sense that the expectations for me were higher, and it would be best to get on that bus as soon as possible rather than later. It was a rough transition. I had lost all my whiteboard markers, my chihuahua ate all my papalotes, and it is insanely hard to do anything from two to three-thirty.

I drank a Red Bull, threw out the socks that don’t have a match, bought some new ones, drank a second cup of coffee for the vibes, and asked ChatGPT to create a flyer for an English club for Tuesday at 3 p.m. at a new cafeteria that’s equidistant to my house and the colegio that serves cappuccinos.

I then printed those flyers a day later, enjoying my final moments in the cocoon of contentment. Finally, I put those bad boys up in all the classrooms and made little announcements to each of the classrooms, saying that the club would be starting the next Tuesday.

All’s going well. I’m satisfied with my efforts, doing a little free-period lesson planning, making the rounds around town, proud of myself for my journey out of the cocoon of contentment.

The next Tuesday happens. I make a lesson plan for the club—a few games are prepared—and ah, only one child shows up, and he’s the son of the owner of the café.

Rats.

I thought I’d have my loyal gym bro students, at least one of my octavo groupies, and maybe a kid forced to come by their mom.

I was frazzled, discombobulated, a bit worried, and a bit tired.

One time, when I was working at PNC, I once tried to partner with a guy that called himself a franchise broker, and the thought was that we could partner and bring people into the bank. We planned a series of small business seminars at a bank branch in Brandon, Florida. I did some out-of-pocket catering with poke bowls, given it was a lunch seminar, and waited back in my chair for the people to come.

Nobody ever did, except for one elderly woman who just wanted a poke bowl. I had tried convincing my manager if I could do more, but the next day Silicon Valley Bank failed, and priorities shifted dramatically, with no further seminars occurring.

(Also, a seminar hosted by a 23-year-old who knows nothing about small business, and a guy I met by getting his number off a Chamber of Commerce website and aggressively cold-calling over Christmas, is crazy work.)

Given that I had more tangible ways to success, more knowledge on the subject of English, and hadn’t put myself in the hole for poke bowls, I found this was my great do-over.

The group activity radically changes into a mano-a-mano English investigatory session, where we went leaps and bounds over the usual TEFL starter kit of “Can you say who you are, where you are from, and your favorite food?” to talking about things in the future and in the past. I’m thinking this kid has great potential to succeed to a (hopefully) much larger future version of Jack Mosey’s Zumbi English Club Inc™.

I had a friend in a new place, and he was willing to advertise the benefits of English club to his friends and potentially support his mom’s small business through ice cream sales. We were in business.

The next English club, five people came, and as the weeks go on, we’ve grown steadily and maintained a positive trajectory.

Additionally, an opportunity appeared from this that had not been counted on previously. I had gained the trust of the café owner, who asked me if I could do two more clubs—one for adults and one for children ages 7–12.

These have only been going on for three weeks, but our progress is steady.

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A thought on Los Guayacanes

So last Thursday my host parents asked if I wanted to go to a town called Zapatillo to see the guayacanes trees change color for the weekend. It was my birthday weekend, and I originally had some other plans, but I could see there was something different in the way they spoke about this place and how much they wanted me to experience it.

I agreed to go, but deep down I wanted to be disappointed. I have spent all my life in Pennsylvania and seen the trees change to fall colors almost every year.

We get in the car for the adventure drive—seven hours to Zapatillo—and as I’m looking out of the car windows, I’m trying to find a cynical, contrarian thing to think about it and confirm my preconceived notions on fall. At first, there’s a massive line of cars all waiting to drive through a really large loop. It was like going to see Christmas lights at Hartwood Acres for my Pittsburgh people. I have some fond memories of my brothers, cousin, and grandma waiting, sharing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and awing at the Christmas lights, so it gave really wholesome déjà vu vibes.

Getting out of the car, I thought I saw a yellow leaf laying on the grass, so I picked it up and was confused to see that it’s a flower with a rich yellow texture resembling more of a hydrangea than a leaf. There are rows and rows of these trees, and if you are lucky, you can see a view of the surrounding area where it’s just nothing but yellow. I’ve never been to Japan, but I have played a fair share of Ghost of Tsushima, and it kind of reminded me of the blossoming cherry trees.

On the aspect of food and beverages, Zapatillo borders Peru, so in town you can get Peruvian beer and ceviche, which are both delicious.

If you ever find yourself in the area during January to early February, it’s a 10/10—you have to go.

Of course, I also want to express that the content of this blog is my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Ecuadorian Government.

Keep on swimming people