Life in Far Away Places: Cuenca, Ecuador
After college I spent four years traveling and living in the developing world. A few months ago I returned to Long Island and started working for the Smithtown Messenger. This is the first installment of an occasional column about those four years abroad.
A few days after I graduated college, completely unsure what I wanted to do with my life, I went back to my parent’s home in Kings Park and celebrated Christmas with them. The next day an earthquake half a world away created a tsunami that killed over half a million people and devastated tens of millions more. As I watched the non-stop TV coverage an idea began to form in my head; I wanted to go to Southern Asia and help, do whatever I could to help. I contacted dozens of aide groups, hoping to get on a plane and physically help the people I was seeing on TV. One organization after another told me the best way I could help would be to write a check, and no they were not accepting volunteers. This surprised and discouraged me, but it didn’t destroy a growing urge to spend some time out of the country before settling into any post college permanence in the United States. By chance I stumbled upon a school in South America that was looking for English teachers. I had no experience, teaching certification, or knowledge of Spanish but I applied anyway. Things happened quickly from there. A week later after a long distance interview over the phone I had a job and a destination. I was going to Ecuador.
A few weeks later, I arrived in Cuenca, Ecuador and began my new life. I knew almost nothing about the country and absolutely nothing about the city just a few weeks before when I had applied for the job, but I was learning quickly. The locals seemed to be extraordinarily friendly, despite the fact that we did not share a common language.
I got a cheap hotel room and wandered around the city those first days of mine in Cuenca, waiting for the school to open. The city was a decent size; about a quarter of a million people calling it their home. It was also beautiful. Cuenca literally means “river basin” in Spanish and the city was named after and built where a number of small rivers converge. The city is nestled 8,000 feet high in a valley between soaring peaks in the Andes. Its elevation and proximity to the equator mostly cancelled each other out and everyday felt like spring. When I first arrived I thought I had happened to catch good weather but later found that it was always like that. After awhile the whole place just began to take on a sense of permanent spring for me; everything seemed like it was just beginning, everything seemed new and exciting. I had never been at such a high altitude before and felt out of breath in the thin air as I climbed up rows of cobble stone stairs that dotted the mountain city. I stopped to catch my breath and admired the view, it was an odd sensation realizing that I really was about to start a new life in a foreign land.
When I finally made it to the school I would be working out I was impressed by its size and modern appearance. The dozens of teachers that worked there were trickling in at the same time as me, and all of them were foreigners. The private school only hired native English speakers and recruited them from places like England, South Africa and of course the United States. I sat down with my new boss, from Ireland, and before we even discussed anything work related she gave me enormous assistance in getting me settled into my new life. The next day I carried my bag out of my hotel and started renting a room in a large house for $70 a month. The house was full of other foreigners including two teachers from my new school. Cuenca was overflowing with Europeans and North Americans living and working there and my new school and house were at the center of this community. I met interesting people from around the world on a daily basis, and almost all of them spoke English.
I had gotten to the city early so I had a week to prepare for my first class, and once more the school was a great help. I would be teaching two small classes of children at a very basic skill level. “But, I don’t speak any Spanish” I said nervously to my new boss. “Don’t worry, Spanish isn’t allowed in the classroom” she reassured me. The school also had binders of worksheets and lesson plans that past teachers had collected. The book I used was very simple and easy to follow. There were even a number of seminars held by more experienced teachers in the week before classes to give us helpful pointers on teaching English as a foreign language.
I spent a lot of my free time sitting in the park, reading and observing everyday life. I made some local friends in the park and other places, but in the beginning most of the people I interacted with were from my house, school, or otherwise connected to the ex-pat community in Cuenca. Even in the bubble of that community, I was still learning about living in a foreign land. I walked or used public transportation, I showered in water heated by electricity that would shock you every now and then and I cooked rice almost everyday. Halfway through my ten week teaching commitment I even got to live through a real life revolution. For a week there was a general strike in Quito and also in Cuenca (which is the third largest city in the country) and protesters constantly streamed past my front door. I walked around with an adventurous Scottish girl I lived with and took it all in a few times. Walking past burning tires and wafting tear gas was surreal, as if out of a movie. Finally the president fled the country and his government fell; and almost as if nothing had happened we started working again the next day. My life was never so full of intriguing experience.
As my time in country progressed, I became more and more fascinated with the local culture and my surroundings outside of home and work. A friend I made in the park one afternoon invited me to her house in the country and it soon became part of my regular routine. Every Sunday I took a bus into the countryside and hung out in a small, mostly indigenous community that didn’t understand a word I said but smiled often and took me on long hikes to milk cows on steep mountain sides. When the school went on vacation and my commitment to them ended I took a few weeks to travel around the small country, visiting both the Galapagos Islands and the Amazon, two places I had fantasized about since I was a child.
I choose the city and job because it was the first one that took me, and I got lucky. The transition was easier than I had expected it to be, the people friendlier and my experiences mostly positive. Everything was new, which sometimes was difficult, but mostly it was exciting.
Four months after I had left, I flew back to New York, with a new taste in my mouth and a new appreciation for the world. I wouldn’t stay in New York for long.