Daily Life

Today is the first day of the cycle for teachers and students but I have been working for a week and a half already. Today I am going to make potato leek soup and wash some shirts. Then I'll go to work, come home, eat soup, and skype with my auntie. This is daily life living in Quito...

Back to work

After having a wonderful trip home, I'm back in Quito and back at work. Things really built up while I was away, so I had a lot to do this week. I had to set up for and run an activity called "Interclass" which I had never done before and was really nervous about getting right. I spent all of Wednesday afternoon setting up the big room we use for the activity. Luckily, I had some help from some nice teachers who helped me figure out where everything was supposed to go. On Thursday we had the activity, in which multiple classes come together and basically do an elaborate role play to get the students talking. It all went pretty well and I sat down afterward and wrote the instructions for how to set it all up so that I have them for next cycle.

Andres took some vacation time this week, so it's been really nice to see him in the mornings before I go to work. Also, he's been doing all the cooking which has been awesome because I've been so tired from traveling and from work.


Speaking of cooking, I think I want to get back to trying new things, particularly vegetarian meals. This is a little tricky because Andres doesn't like some of the more hearty vegetables that are a good substitute for meat, but I don't want to cook meat or chicken right now because of all the added hassle in thawing and washing up. So we'll have to be a little creative. I think I'll start with trying to make a potato curry and see where things go from there.

Over and out

Cooking!

I have been cooking! Those of you who know me well will recognize this as a big accomplishment for me. I used to say I didn't like cooking because I was always so nervous about screwing it up. Well, thanks to only cooking for myself and Andres (a very supportive eater!), I've been able to experiment more and figure out that I really am capable of following and even, gasp!, modifying a recipe.

There are several cooking challenges that I'm trying to navigate right now. Perhaps the biggest is that I am not in my own country and sometimes things that I expect to be two-second purchases at the grocery store turn into hour long endevors and making things from scratch (read: enchilada sauce). Also, my eczema has been giving me trouble so I'm trying to cut out dairy to figure out if a food allergy might be part of the problem. Giving up cheese was much easier than expected (probably because Ecuador has inferior cheese to Minnesota, Wisconsin's neighbor), but finding recipes that don't use any cheese, mayonaise, milk, butter, sour cream, or cream cheese has proved a little bit difficult. Now, I hear some of you protesting "but there's tons of great recipes that don't use dairy!" And that brings me to my last big challenge, which is finding recipes suitable for freezing. Now that I'm teaching two classes during the week with a sub period and starting coordination on Saturdays, I have way less time (and energy) to cook during the week. So I've been investigating freezer cooking so I can cook just once, on Saturday or Sunday, and have yummy nutritious food all week long.

Last Sunday I made minestrone soup, beef and potato casserole, and enchiladas. It's all been yummy, but pretty dairy-heavy. So I'm looking for alternatives for cooking this weekend. Which brings me to the reader participation section of this post! I invite you to share any freezer recipes with low/no dairy that I can try out! I'm waiting with baited breath!

Help Jerry Get Life Altering Procedure

Dear friends and family,

I just got back from my weekend in Otavalo with my friend, Katie, and we had a wonderful time. However, I will have time for a post devoted completely to that trip later. I want to focus on something more important for this blog post. Many of you probably already know the story of Jerry MacCallister's terrible motorbike accident a few years ago. It left him paralyzed and dashed his life-long dream of becoming an astronaut. You can read the full story at http://www.followingjerry.blogspot.com/. Jerry is hoping to undergo stem cell therapy in Thailand in July, but the costs of the procedure are incredibly high. Therefore, his family, friends, and other supporters are working to raise money for his therapy in the hopes that it will help him walk again. There is currently a gofundme campaign online at http://www.gofundme.com/2t32nw and I would urge all of my readers to consider donating. I know Jerry and his family and they are amazing people. I am donating to help send Jerry to Thailand. Please search your budgets to find a way that you can too.

Love,

Ramona

We've all moved in

Andres and I lived for 9 lovely months with his family at their house and were spoiled thoroughly by his mom, Magdalena. But despite all the wonderful advantages of living there, it came time to find our own place and try being Real Adults together.

Andres' brother, Roberto, was looking for a new place for his family and decided to buy the apartment in the upper half of his parents' house from them. That meant that he would be leaving his apartment, just a few blocks away, and it turned out the apartment would be perfect for Andres and I! It's a small, two bedroom apartment with a small living room/kitchen area and one bathroom. The big bedroom is for us and we've made the little bedroom into an office/guest room (you're all invited!). We had to buy all our appliances (in Ecuador, when they say unfurnished, they MEAN unfurnished) but we were able to find a good deal on a small oven/stovetop and refrigerator combo that also included a microwave and tiny grill! Andres' family was really generous and helped us out with the rest of the furniture, most of which was at the house and not being used. The worst part is that it is on the fifth floor and there is no elevator. The best part is the view, which, if you check out one of my earlier posts, you can see three Andean peaks from our bedroom window. Also, the light is wonderful because we have three big windows facing different directions, so we get lots of natural light (I have been collecting house plants, in true McCabe fashion).

So after a little bit of transition time, we were able to move in! We've been here for a little more than a month and we're starting to feel more settled. I have been cooking a lot (Andres does most of the cleaning) which has been a fun adventure. I've actually been really enjoying it and trying new recipes, mostly from pintrest http://pinterest.com/hikingboot/. I'm sure I'll blog more about my kitchen adventures in the future.

Overall, we've been having a lot of fun learning how to be Real Adults together, and I think that I feel a little more relaxed having my own space to be lazy in, or try cooking experiments in, or spend all day on my computer in. I'm very happy.

Reasons why my son is crying, tumblr sensation!

This is hilarious and I'm sure I would appreciate it/groan at it even more if I were a parent. Thanks for visiting me, Mom and Dad!

http://reasonsmysoniscrying.tumblr.com/

Privilege

In American Studies, I spent a lot of time thinking about and analyzing white privilege, but these days I am thinking a lot more about American privilege. One obvious way that I have benefited from American privilege is the ease with which I got my visa to Ecuador (some of you know the actual process was quite complicated, but I was never very nervous that they wouldn't give it to me).

The last couple of weeks I have become aware of another American privilege: that is the privilege of rooting for my country's athletes in nearly every Olympic game I've watched. I feel a little silly for not noticing this earlier, but a lot of countries don't have the money to support their athletes in the games, and as a consequence have nearly no one to root for. Ecuador had five athletes, each of whom paid their own way to the Olympics. One woman was disqualified because she had very old equipment and her country couldn't buy her equipment up to current standards. Needless to say, I gained a much fuller understanding of the privilege permeating the Olympics.

That being said, I also witnessed a truly great Ecuadorian Olympic experience. I went to lunch with my host-sister Lucia (it was lovely to see her and catch up and we have plans to hang out again soon). We ate in a nice mall north of the Mariscal. There was a huge (we're talking giant, here) screen in the cafeteria area with the Olympics playing. At one point, we noticed that everyone in the cafeteria had turned their attention to the screen, and we stood up to see what was going on. An Ecuadorian runner, Quiñonez, from the coastal province Esmeraldas, was getting ready to race in a semi-final running heat. The gun went off and they were all running like crazy. The noise in the cafeteria started to grow; Quiñonez was gaining on the four runners ahead of him; he was passing the third runner; everyone was egging him on; he neared the finish line; the excitement in the cafeteria was tangible; and he crossed in third place! And the entire cafeteria exploded in whoops and cheers! Everyone was clapping and cheering on their feet, and continued to cheer during the replay and for the announcement of the times. It was truly an awesome feeling. I wished that he could have been in that cafeteria right then and know how much energy and faith he had behind him. It just shows how much people love to support their athletes and how much one runner can mean to a cafeteria full of strangers.

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...

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!

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.

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

Fotos!

I've been uploading photos while neglecting my blog, so now you can see all my hard work!
Mona's flickr photos!