Teaching!

Today I finished registering for TEFL, which starts on September 10 (about a month after I start teaching, for those of you who are keeping track). I also picked up my teacher's book, which has made me feel much better about my impending doom. It's full of activities and definitions of what a phrase is and that sort of thing. So all in all, I'm trying to relax and prepare as much as possible, but not worry about being a perfect teaching right out of the gate.

teaching!

Omg I am going to teach Academic 1, which is the first level above advanced! Crimaninny, I don't know English that well!

Mona Uses a Pressure Cooker even though no one reads her blog

This evening I had to make an important decision: keep cooking the most stubborn beans in the world or give up and throw them out. It was a tense moment until we discovered a pressure cooker! ta-da! Don't worry, Dad, I read on the internetz how to use it... And now the beans are merrily cooking away (15 min in the pressure cooker) and nearly done! Happy days!

Beans....

So when I set out to cook dry beans, I forgot a crucial new factor in my bean cooking adventures: I am now living at more than 9,000 feet and stuff takes FOREVER to cook up here.

We're now going on hour 7...

News of the Day

In today's news from Quito, I still don't know what level I will be teaching, I've decided to start recording some of the new Spanish words I'm learning, and I am making a huge pot of black beans as we speak (type).

New words (!)
Cachete -- cheek
cachorro -- puppy or baby animal
sarten -- frying pan

more to come I'm sure.

Reading List!

Today is an interactive post! Woohoo! But this means that the tech savvy among you need to participate (I'm looking at you, people in your 20s). I am looking for book recommendations. I want to try reading something in Spanish, but I haven't had much luck finding the books I've been looking for. Therefore, I think it's time to broaden my search (also, at this point I would even like to find one in English to enjoy). Does anyone have recommendations for nice summer reading? I'm open to any suggestions!

Fieldtrip to Cayambe

I have so many new things to tell! First and foremost, I made Mexican pulled chicken this evening and it was delicious and everyone liked it! I am so thrilled and surprised!

In lesser news, we went on a little day trip outside of the city on Sunday and it was super fun. Andres' brother, Roberto, and his wife, Sylvana, and their daughter, Camila (Cami) age 3, took Andres and I to Cayambe. We ate really delicious food at this fancy cafe and Cami got to jump around in a giant balloon thing on a pond (see video below). For now, I am quite tired and I have to go pick up something to register my visa early in the morning, but take care! I miss you all!

Call for recipes!

So, who wants to help me learn to cook?? There are some restrictions though. First and foremost, the oven is broken and not likely to be fixed. I have a lot of beef, chicken, rice, and potatoes to work with.

Catherine, bless her, has already given me a few ideas. Broccoli beef, stir fry, quinoa...

And I am looking for more help! Some simple sauces and simple combination ideas would be awesome! Let me know what you think :). I have the comments set so that people with gmail accounts can post and you can post "anonymously" without an account.

Visiting the Mariscal

The Mariscal is the downtown party district of Quito and the best place to go dancing. Andres and I like to walk around there and people watch/eat ice cream. Today we went out to lunch at "Crepes y Waffles" and then had a beer in the main plaza. Here's a little snippet of us amusing ourselves. Clearly I should be a TV personality because I am so dynamic on camera...

Andrés playing the guitar

This is a video that Andres was going to send to me a while ago but couldn't get the computer to cooperate, so I've decided to put it on here in order to brag about him. It's called "Capricho Arabe."

http://xkcd.com/181/

Cooking in Quito

Tonight Andres and I continued on our saga of cooking adventures. Neither one of us cooks very much (him less than me if you can believe it) so pretty much every time we turn on the stove it's a gamble. Tonight we tried to make chicken burritos, which doesn't sound very hard, but you'd be surprised. Cooking in a strange kitchen is a difficult task in its self, but add to that that it's a foreign country with unexpected ingredients and you have me cooking in an Ecuadorian kitchen. The chicken was in big frozen chunks with bones etc, so we defrosted it in the microwave and attempted to cook it on the stovetop. After cooking for a while we took it off to see if it was done (it wasn't) and to cut some of the bones out. What we ended up with was a tiny pile of chicken meat and a huge pile of bones. So on to round two. This worked out better because by the we had lots of teeny tiny pieces of mostly cooked chicken (we'd also cooked up some less boney chicken at this point) and proceeded to double-cook all of our chicken. We ended up with a great many dishes due to all the chicken fandangos, but thankfully we also managed to make some very tasty burritos, huzzah!

I like to think we are getting better at cooking, but seeing as we cook the same three things every time, its hard to say. I will keep you updated on further cooking fandangos which will surely prove to be silly, frustrating, and hopefully at least some times delicious.

http://xkcd.com/148/

more about blagging

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I've arrived!! The plane flight was long and grueling. My observations are as follows: TACA is nice because they still show free movies and give out pillows and blankets and food. El Salvador is pretty and green at least what I could see while landing. The Lima airport big and impersonal. Andres is awesome and I can't say how happy I was to see him after such a long day of travel. Now I am recuperating from travel and caffeine withdrawal (drinking coffee isn't something most Ecuadorians do everyday so I've decided to quit to make it easier, but in the shortrun, did anyone else know caffeine withdrawal can make you nauseous? the internet knew.) I am settling in well and all of my stuff fit into the drawers! Which, I admit, I was a bit anxious about. Hurray and tata for now!