Public school is expensive...

Public school is supposed to be free right? I mean at least for the most part? That was the impression I was under, but I'm being proven wrong, ever day.

During my junior year in high school I wrote a nineteen page argumentative essay/research paper about the benefits of educating girls and some of the major reasons that girls don't get educated. I focused more on cultural prejudice against girls as the primary reason for the lack of female education, but I did include high school fees as a reason. I'm now getting first hand experience with those kinds of school fees, and I can absolutely understand why school is such an economic hardship for low-income families in countries where school fees are high.

In the US, at least in my experience, you have to pay a small fee at the beginning of each school year and then you have to buy your own school supplies. Here, and I suspect in quite a few other countries, you pay for everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Since arriving I've spent money on uniforms (one daily uniform, one P.E. uniform, and two pairs of shoes to go with), 6 textbooks (at about $16 each they don't seem expensive to me, but that's a lot of money here), curtains and a water jug for our classroom, a separate basketball uniform for the in-school competition, ten cents every day to put towards the class trip in June, notebooks, folders, and other school supplies, a set of protractors and rulers (that we have used exactly zero times), some of my tests (sometimes the teachers bring printed tests that we have to pay for in order to take), copies of a random assortment of other things (it costs about 10 cents to print of make a copy of anything), posters and supplies to decorate said posters for class presentations, and other small things that are hard to recall. There's even a third uniform that all of the girls in my grade have to wear on Mondays that I got out of buying (exchange student perks!). None of it is particularly expensive on its own (besides the uniforms), but it adds up in the end.

I've been noticing how everything adds up in the last week, and while I've got enough money to pay for what I need, there are girls in my class that say that they don't have enough money for all of the textbooks. It's so strange to me to have to pay for so much. When I told my friends that all of our textbooks are given to us and that we can print/copy as many pages as we want for free, they were absolutely shocked. No uniforms also cuts down on school costs by a ton. Going to school in Ecuador has made me appreciate a lot about American schools, especially how much is just given to us. Maybe I'll get into all of the other things I appreciate now in another post.

I'm here to learn all about Ecuadorian culture, so I figure its a good thing to tell you all about all of the cultural things I'm noticing now that I don't spend the whole day thinking "God, everything is so different here." AFS loves the analogy that culture is like an iceberg, you can't see about 90% of it. I've definitely gotten into noticing the 90% of culture here that you don't see right away, and its fascinating :)

Lets go back to school: Somehow, the girls in my class manage to insult and laugh at each other constantly, while also being close-knit. Its taken a while to get used to all of the names that they call each other and the fact that no one gets offended. When my friend asked me what the equivalent of "gordita" was in English, I had to explain that the closest thing was probably "chubby" but that it's not an affectionate thing to call someone the way it is in Spanish, it's more of an insult. Also, the girls in my class are constantly yelling. During class, during break, before school, after school, all of the time. A few people start to talk, then more people start talking, so everyone talks louder to hear each other over everyone else, until the whole class is yelling to be heard. This happens a lot when a teacher calls on someone to answer a question and they don't answer right away. Everyone else takes it upon themselves to answer the question at the same time. The volume escalates at record speed, its kind of incredible.

Tests taking here was also really strange for me at first, and still seems odd sometimes. Not only do you have to pay for some of the tests, but everyone whispers (audibly) to each other to ask for the answers they don't know. The teachers halfheartedly tell everyone to be quite and to not copy, but every test is a class collaboration none the less.

In the country materials AFS gave me before arriving in Ecuador, it said that in school, you don't argue with or question the teachers because it's considered disrespectful. While no one questions the validity of what our teachers teach us, there is certainly a lot of arguing with the teachers. My classmates argue about when homework should be due, what exactly the homework should be, when to take tests, what the questions on the test should be, whether or not tests should be graded or retaken, when projects should be due, and so on. When these kinds of discussions break out, the noise level skyrockets. Now that I think about it, it's a lot like waiting in line here: there is no line, you just try to push your way to the front, or be the loudest to be heard over everyone else. I cant quite tell if the girls in my class are really convincing or if the teachers don't mind changing due dates (even though we're "behind" in quite a few of our classes), but either way, the girls usually get their way.

School work always has to be immaculate. Everyone has a borrador (eraser) notebook where they write down notes from class and then later they re-write those notes in their notebooks for each class. There is also an unwritten rule that everything has to be colorful. Notes, posters, homework assignments, ect. I'm not really a fan of this, it seems like a lot of effort for something that doesn't exactly further your learning. But, what can I do, except to try and keep my notes clean, color coded, and organized?

My family here makes me wish that my family in the US didn't live so spread across the whole country. Here, all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and everyone else lives in Guaranda. I eat lunch with my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins every single day. I never missed that kind of geographic closeness in the US because I never had it with my family, but having experienced it so much here, I know its going to be one of the things I miss when I come back. It's so nice to be around so many family members all at once, and so often too :)

I get along really well with the girls in my class and the other AFSers in Guaranda, but I'm not one to confide and open up to people quickly, so I've been missing my best friends lately. I miss not thinking about what I'm going to say, not having to try and explain my way around words I don't know. Its jolting to go from seeing the people you're closest to all of the time to only chatting on Facebook and Skype occasionally. Its hard, especially when there are so many thoughts that go through my head on a daily basis that I either don't know how to express in Spanish, or don't know who to tell here.

Sunday marks my seventh week in Guaranda, and once again, I don't know where the time has gone. If people ask me how long I'm living here, my automatic response has been to say ten months, but I'm trying to say that I'm here until June now, because I wont be here for ten months, at this point its only about eight and a half. I don't want that to be true, it seems like so little time, so I try to take my best friend Olivia's advice and celebrate every day that I'm here, because I'm going to want to come back even before I leave. I was telling my friend from school about saying goodbye to my family and how I cried on the plane and then I was explaining how its going to be so bittersweet to leave here. I know I'm not going to want to leave or say goodbye to people, but that I'll also be excited to see my family and friends in the US again. Who knows though, I definitely plan on bringing my family here to Guaranda, and I think I've convinced my whole class to come and visit me in the US sometime. I don't like goodbyes, so I'm determined to not make my goodbyes this year permanent.

Life goes on here, mine and everyone else's. I've reached the point that days just seem regular now, nothing all that special (except for the whole I live in Ecuador thing...). I watch, I absorb, I try to learn as much as I can now that I'm not constantly shocked by everything. I like being in that position. The world is a really interesting place, and I love that I have the opportunity to experience it first hand!

Hasta Luego,

Elisa