¨Michael Jackson!¨

My experience so far at Luchadores has been fantastic. The doc there has got us doing a variety of stuff, so I´ve been learning a bunch. Although the sex-ed classes haven´t panned out yet, we did get a chance to do some public health education at the nearby grade school with the help of a group of first year Ecuadorian med students. The first thing that struck me was their immaturity. Med school starts right after highschool here so first year med students are the same age as college freshmen, and it shows.

On our way to the school they´re all flirty, I can discern some of what they´re saying , but mostly I´m oblivious. You can imagine a bunch of teenagers speaking in any language, it sounds the same, nothing makes sense unless you´re ¨in.¨ When we get to the school, we have to work out the candy. The leader of the group brought a bag for the grade schoolers, but the other med students are jamming it away in their pockets.

Tim and I are motioned to follow one group of students as they branch off to all the different classes. As we near the class, we hear ¨Michael Jackson! Michael Jackson!¨in cute little Spanish accents. What the med students don´t know is that we´ve already seen this class to take their height and weight and they recognized us the moment we entered the school. (They didn´t much take to Taylor, and Jackson stuck...). The grade students are all squirly with excitement, waving, and wiggling in their seats. As we start talking about proper bathroom hygiene, the class troublemaker draws a heart on his desk, pokes the girl next to him and then points at Tim. The girl (a sixth grader) turns bright red and tries to hide her face. Tim being a good sport gives her a small wave, which of course makes things worse. She gets out of her seat collects her stuff and just about storms out of the classroom.

On our way back to the clinic we stop at the playground outside the school. The med students hop on the seesaw while I snatch a swing. Another student gets on the broken swing next to me and is sorta half swinging making a big joke out of it. All of a sudden, I hear from one of the students, ¨Better if you fall¨and in the next second *thud* she does. Everyone bursts out laughing immediately, and I have to admit, it was probably the funniest thing I´ve seen while I´ve been here, all at the expense of this poor girl of course. All in all she took it pretty well, I won´t forget that moment.

Un Buen Trabajo

The Physician Assistant on rotation at Luchadores this month wanted to give a special thanks to Doctor Montero the head of the clinic before she left at the end of the week. She figured it´d be easy enough to paint the clinic and paint should be cheap. She asked Tim (another IPSL student) and I if we´d be interested in helping and of course we agreed. Nothing like a little hard work to fight off homesickness.

We started the prep on friday so we could get to the painting first thing on Sat. Only took a few hours but it was a scorcher. On sat we were up bright and early and painting by 9. Nine hours later I stumbled home and passed out. Sun was only 5 more hours. It was all well worth the work, most of the place looks like new but we didn´t have the paint or the time for a few of the offices. The dentist won´t leave us alone about painting her office. I told her we´ll do it if she pays us (I don´t like her much because she doesn´t do any work and is always descansandoing).



Edit: Photos: We did all that blue :D

Announcing New 2008 Olympic Games Event: Guayaquileño Bus Jumping!

It´s taken me a little while to work out my system of transport to and from the Luchadores foundation, but today I finally figured it out. Sort of. It´s easy really, I can catch a Selectivo ($0.25) bus on the main street near my house and take it straight to about two blocks from the foundation. No problem. Except for one thing. Buses in Guayaquil don´t stop. Wait, that´s not quite true. Buses in Guayaquil don´t stop for men. ¨What?¨you may ask. It´s no lie, men are expected to swing onto and jump off of moving buses as they near their stop. Sure, the bus stops a little, I mean, the conductor does put his foot on the break and everything but by no means does it reach a near stop. I attribute it to the machismo of Ecuadorian (and all of Latin American) society in that men are expected to do manly feats on a regular basis to reconfirm their masculinity. And heaven forbid you make someone wait while they´re riding a bus, I mean it´s not like everything else in this country doesn´t take twice as long as it should anyway.

So as I´ve been watching this cultural phenomenon in my first week and a half here I´ve been dreading the moment when it´s expected of me to do the same. That moment came today on my way home from work. I asked the bus driver to stop, and sure enough, he puts his foot on the break for me, in a gesture of good faith. So I go for it, fling myself out the door and go running down the street, so as to not fall over. To my credit I didn´t fall over, but I´m pretty sure that I pulled something in my leg because, boy, about four hours later it had completely stiffened up and has been just killing me ever since. I don´t know how they do it, I hope I get better. I gotta admit though, it was awefully exciting. But lets be honest, is it really worth it? I guess I´m asking a bunch of gringos and gringas... you guys wouldn´t understand.

Luchadores del Norte

Today I had my first day at work at Luchadores del Norte, a small clinic in the very poor barrio near my house. I was excited to finally get started working. Upon arrival, the place was packed, kids and mothers were streaming in and out and I could tell that the doctor that was going to train us was very busy. After the initial introductions he showed us how to take the height and weight of the patients and then took me outside for the eye exams. He wanted to use me as an example to show how it was done. Unfortunately I had slept on my glasses in Montañita and can´t see much of anything. As he goes down the sheet I kept shaking my head and the children (and some of their parents) started laughing at me. When I took over I had the kids stand in the right place with a piece of paper over their left eye first then their right. I began to realize that the hardest part is keeping everyone quiet. It seemed that half of the clinic´s visitors were reading along with the student that I was giving the exam to. Some of the parents were doing it without even noticing and when I scolded them they held their hand over their mouth in embarrasment. Needless to say, everyone was scoring very well and it appears that some of the poorest kids in the city have got the sharpest eyes.

Montañita

This past weekend I took a trip to the town of Montañita on the coast with my American friends. All of our families had warned us that it would be cold but none of us believed them because we thought that the Ecuadorians clearly had a different scale for heat than we did. It was an adventure from the start. We thought we´d get a cab but realized that none came to the area we were in and instead had to hop on a bus with the guy hanging out the door announcing ¨Terminal, Terminal¨where we were headed. After bumbling our way through the bus terminal and finding $5 tickets to Montañita we enjoyed the onboard movie El Hombre Cero Cero Siete or more commonly known as 007.

We were in for quite a surprise on arrival. It was cold. The wind off the ocean and the dark was enough to make us all reach for longsleeve shirts (of course only to find I didn´t bring one..). We found a place off the main drag to stay the night for $2. It was rustic to say the least. (Hopefully I´ll figure out how to post photos soon)


The next day it was overcaste but the water wasn´t cold and the waves were plenty big for some great body surfing. I don´t think I got any color though. I tried my first Ceviche Mixto which is a dish of fresh seafood and green onions ´cooked´over lemon. Johnny, our director at UEES had warned us about the bacteria and parasites in the food here, but what would be the excitement of listening to him? Well, I´m paying for it...

We had a great time, and I was glad to get to know the other students better. We have a lot to talk about and it was good to escape from all the Spanish for a bit.

Matagringo

I met a great group of Ecuadorians through the International Students Club at UEES where I´m taking classes. They´re all very friendly and invited us Americans to a party last Thursday. I wanted to go and called the other Americans who each gave me an excuse for why they couldn´t come. Not to be discouraged I grabbed a cab, negotiated the price of $2 like a good traveler and arrived at Frutabar. I didn´t see the people I was looking for and was about to leave when one of them spotted me. I tried to explain to them that the other Americans didn´t want to come and as I struggling through some haggared sentence one of the girls laughs and says to me, ¨You know we speak English right?¨ Doh... Needless to say I was going to try it in Spanish and the other´s were more helpful.

La Fiesta
After frutabar we went to Chapus the discoteca next door. The first time I had met the group at UEES, I told them that I wanted to learn to dance so they wouldn´t let me sit and chat. It turns out I´m pretty good at dancing Reggeton which is very popular here now. It´s easy because it has a heavy beat and is a lot like rap. They got a kick out of my dancing anyway and I enjoyed the attention. The party at Chapus was winding down but the Ecuadorians weren´t tired yet (although I may have been) so we headed to Skyy Lounge named after the vodka. The Ecuadorians wanted to get me a drink that they called a matagringo in order to slap the whitey right out of me. It came in a flaming shot glass that the bartender dropped into a glass of Pilsener (the local beer). ¨Todo?¨ I asked incredulously, but unwilling to disappoint I chugged it down and got laughs all around because of the look on my face. They loved it and I had a great time. I caught a cab with one of the students that lives in my ciudadela and when I got home I drifted off to sleep with the reggeton beat pounding in my head....to wake up to the pounding of a chuchaque in the morning.