Last Day of School

Well, I am now unemployed.  It’s a weird feeling considering I haven’t been unemployed since my freshman year of college, but I’m trying to embrace it.

Yesterday was my last day at the school.  I made sure I got a photo with each of the classes I taught and looking at the pictures it amazes me how much I know about each one of those 140 kids.  I definitely know everyone’s name, I know how good they are at English, I know which ones like to eat their colored pencils and I know a lot of their parents.  A school is a fantastic way to feel connected to a community.  I already put these photos on Facebook, but I know people like my mother would prefer to look at them here (and I’m not hip to flickr).

Miss Gladys and the Nursery class. They were hard to pose.

Miss Patty and her Pre-Basica class. Wearing crowns for Sarahi's 5th birthday (obviously).

Miss Erika and her Pre-Basica class. Again, like herding cats here to take a photo.

Miss Marlene and her Primero de Basica class. These kids were exhausting every single day.

Miss Alex and her Primero de Basica class. Crazy how tall I am.

Miss Jime, Miss Flor and their Segundo de Basica class.

Miss Carlita and her Cuarto de Basica class. Wild bunch, but really fun kids.

The teacher’s organized a little goodbye party for me at the end of the school day which was nice.  We had lunch and ice cream and they thoughtfully gave me a going away present.  I was asked to give my “testament” (I think that’s what they were calling it) which is basically supposed to be a little funny speech.  I had to write up something equivalent to a will and name what I was giving away to each teacher.  For example: “I give all my bad students to Miss Marlene.  I give all my blue pens to Miss Patti.”  I was sort of nervous about this because 1) it had to be in Spanish obviously and 2) it was supposed to be FUNNY in Spanish.  However, after much dread, the speech turned out well – people laughed and I managed to get a few sentimental notes in there.

All of my various jobs here in Ecuador gave me a great perspective of the country.  I obviously spent the most time at the school, but I also really enjoyed working with FINCA (to see a modern business setting) and the bread store (to see a local business setting).  I’m still amazed at how much I was able to do given my non-existent Spanish skills when I arrived.  Just goes to show that you can’t let language barriers keep you from trying your hand at something you really want to do.  An eagerness to help translates just as well as words.

Bre and Lindsey will be here this evening (!!!) so I need to wrap up my grades and some loose ends on projects today.  Probably won’t update again until the end of next week when we’re done with our travels.  But I’ll definitely put up a post afterward since I know Lindsey has been eagerly awaiting her debut on my blog.

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