Home for the Holidays?

I keep thinking that life will be less complicated tomorrow. Or next week. Or month. Or year. The next time, I can organize myself. Or get ahead financially. Or prove my self to people.ç

But every day as I figure out a little more, something else pops up that I have no clue how to deal with. The day I finally accomplish some big task, something happens like... surprise, I need to change my visa before next school year year... and getting an apostille for the process is 70 bucks just to ship to the US. I guess that is what it means to be an adult. Nothing else changes. We all stay immature, clueless, ucertain, and someone is there to hold our hand and get us through it. But then comes the cuttoff point. 

I finally bought a Christmas tree. it´s been sitting in my living room until we finally put it up last night. Of course I had to make gingerbread. Diego was... skeptical about the whole tree thing period. But in the end he had fun. But the woman I bought the tree from didn´t put the connector in the box, so we couldn´t get the two halves together. So we used two paintbrushes as a splint and wrapped it up in packaging tape. It´s kind of lopsided- but so are natural trees. 

This week at work has been suspiciously quiet so far. Knock on wood. This grading period seems much shorter than the first one. There are only 18 teaching days let before two full weeks of Christmas break. In which I plan to Skype my mom, drink numerous frozen cappuccinos at Crepes and Waffles with Adrienne, and  maybe get away from the city for a few days. I keep myself motivated my playing the Kenny G Christmas album in my classes. The kids actually get more work done while listening to Jingle Bell Rock (a song that I personally have never enjoyed, but a jazz version without thats womans obnoxious voice is much better.) That and Sleigh Ride are their favorites. I won´t argue with 24 9 year olds as long as they are on task and semi- quiet. I don´t care how many times I hear the same song. We are planning a class party and hopefully I can pull off some decorated sugar cookies to take in. I had the worst tie finding a baking sheet. I´m currently using a disposable aluminum pizza sheet. It actually works really great and the cookies slide right off without even a spatula. And it´s great for rolling the dough on, too. I´m glad I discovered this because there are no baking sheets in Ecuador that fit into my oven. And not many period. Baking at home is not a big thing here. 

I just try to make my cold, sewage-scented, ocassional-giant-spider-infested apartment seem like home. I didn´t mean to cheat on Thanksgiving, but everyone else already had their tree up and it was depressing not to. So... cultural peer pressure. (Is that even a thing?) 

The Scarlet Letter

So apparantly in Ecuador it is illegal to write with red pen on a students paper.
In the meeting we were all left begging the question ¨Why the heck not?¨.
The bigger question: why are they telling us now as opposed to almost three months ago? There is now a whole grading periods worth of work brazenly scrawled upon with marks of shame.
Oops.

THEN we also found out that even if a student makes ZERO effort they get ten points and not... ZERO? What? And its not as if we are only mean in the US and give zeros. Because Canada and Colombia use them too. And so does everyone else that doesn´t alow kids to squeak by with no responsibility.

And then there was the bank fiasco. Someone forgot to send our sponser letters when four of us went to set up bank accounts. Sooooo only one person walked away with an account. Huge waste of time and money. But at least afterwards we got Papa Johns. Which is amazing here.

Today I hope to consume at least one frozen capuccino at Crepes and Waffles and buy a cookie sheet and bread pan so that I can make gingerbread cookies and  and pumpkin bread in the upcomming weeks. I also figures out how to make molasses. You have to buy a hunk of raw cane suger and melt it until it burns slightly, and also throw in some cloves. For my friends back home, Id recommend just buying a bottle. Hah.

Lately I have been trying to find ways around the fact that so many thing are either completely unavailable or break my piggy bank. Like pizza sauce. A tiny jar is like 4 bucks. And when you can buy a weeks worth of food for 30, you almost puke at that price tag. And its not even good sauce. However, you can but tomato paste and add an assortment of spices and make a legit, custom marinara that knocks your socks off. I also plan to make barbeque sauce and cream of mushroom soup. Campbells is 2 dollars a can. I cant justify it. Its amazing how many things we thing are their own entity and cant be made. But the truth is that almost any flavor is composed of the same set of natural spices and herbs and vegatables in differet combinations and amounts. So. Thats good news. Because I really want to make barbeque chicken with some paprika potatos.

Sooo thats pretty much it.