Hanging 'round Quito

Before I get into how I feel about living and teaching in Guayaquil, there’s a lot of stuff from training that I still need to cover. Next up is the PCV Visit.

The PCV Visit is when you go to the site of a current PCV in your program and shadow them to see what they do every day. Selection for who you go to visit is done by drawing names out of an envelope. I happened to draw the name of the one PCV in Quito hosting a trainee (technically speaking there were 2 PCVs in Quito who agreed to host trainees, but one of them got sick the week of the PCV visit so her trainee ended up going to Machala). At first I was bummed about having to stay in Quito. After all, everyone else was getting to explore new parts of Ecuador. Sure, the PCV visit is supposed to be about job shadowing, but I wanted a vacation! However, I soon learned that there were some advantages to staying in Quito for the PCV visit, the first one being the money. Peace Corps is, in fact, a bureaucracy, and like any bureaucracy, it doesn’t believe in nuance (though you will actually find it far more accepting of nuance than many other government agencies). This means that everyone receives the same amount of money to use for the PCV visit, regardless of whether you are traveling to almost-Peru and staying in a hotel for 3 nights or staying at home and commuting on a city bus each day. I basically got to pocket the money that everyone else was using for hotels and interprovincial buses. Where did that extra money go? Probably lunches at Wok to Walk (hands-down the BEST food in the Quicentro food court; pricey, but delicious) and traditional Ecuadorian clothing.

My staycation in Quito began with me arriving half an hour late to meet my PCV spirit guide (or, you know, on-time for Ecuador). We went to the Guayasamín museum, which is a beautiful house formerly owned and filled with paintings by the artist Oswaldo Guayasamín. Afterwards we walked around the city for a bit and went back to her apartment (where I had been invited to stay for the duration of the PCV visit), where I got to meet her adorable cat, Cotopaxi. The next day, I accompanied her to her school, where I got to follow her around to all her classes and see how she worked with her teachers and students. Later in the afternoon, I sat in on her salsa class, and afterwards we went to Quito Beer Garden. It’s a really neat place—there’s beer, food trucks (at that time there was Inka Burger, Waffle City, and Dragon Maya Burritos & Alitas, but the entire space has since been taken over by Inka Burger), and most awesomely, murals of world-famous people dressed as indigenous people from various tribes in Ecuador.

The next day we once again got up at an ungodly hour, went to school, and then ate lunch at Chandani Tandoori, a delicious and reasonably-priced Indian restaurant near the Mariscal. While we were in the area, we popped over to the artisanal market and perused the stalls. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city until we eventually made our way to a brewery called Bandidos del Paramo in a neighborhood called La Floresta. It’s a collaboration between two other breweries in Quito: Bandidos Brewing and Paramo Brauhaus, and the beer is excellent. The fourth and final day, which also happened to be International Women’s Day, I got to experience the weird ways in which Ecuadorian schools, particularly in the Sierra, celebrate holidays or important days. The day began with an assembly in which students read prepared speeches about the importance of women and handed out individual roses to all of the female teachers. Sounds expensive, right? Don’t worry, roses are super cheap in Ecuador; it’s the world’s third-largest exporter of cut flowers. Afterwards, there was a surprise mariachi band. At this point you might be asking, why mariachi? This isn’t Mexico. It turns out that mariachi bands are actually very popular in Ecuador, especially for surprise celebrations. After several songs and lots of awkward dancing, we finally got to class, where my PCV spirit guide was able to slip the topic of women’s empowerment and feminism into her English lecture. Then the school day ended and I found my way back home.

Overall, Quito was more interesting than I expected, but I can’t wait until new TEFL volunteers come in a year and I get to show them around Guayaquil!

Museo Guayasamin

Quito Beer Garden