Various

Assorted things I have been needing to blog about, worth mentioning:

• Following the bad haircut that made me cry, I had one completely free from the drama or overpaying, not getting what I wanted to, or having to summon the volition to get myself to a hair salon. The hairdresser that does HIV prevention with transvetite sex workers here in Cuenca was in the office for a meeting and afterwards I noticed he was unfurling an apron to give the secretary´s teenage daughter a haircut in the middle of the office. Dumbfounded, like it was almost too good to believe, I asked him if he could cut my hair too. Not only could he, it turned out he would do it for $2. That was about 4 weeks ago and I´m still savoring my good fortune and very happy with how its growing out.
• Going way back, the first week or so I was in my apartment, I half woke up in the middle of the night because there was a mariachi serenade going on, in what sounded like my guest room. It was basically under my guest room, for the house next door, and I would have thought that I dreamed it, except that I got up and looked out the window and saw them in the street. Mariachis are naturally not the least bit Ecuadorian, but they seem to turn up at festive events now and again.
• Helping the kid whose parent run the bakery downstairs translate three paragraphs on Simon Bolivar from English into Spanish. He has no idea how I cool I thought it was. I found out I know, um, less than your average seventh grader in Ecuador knows about Simon Bolivar. The next homework he needed help with was about water supply, which was nowhere near as interesting. A side note about the state of English teaching here, its absolutely wretched. I can´t think of a worse way to teach a language that to translate it from the intended into the one you already know, but no one is asking me.
• Except in my office, they kind of are. I have taught a couple English classes to them and find that my practice teaching workers in New York was good prep for Ecuadorian and Chilean professionals. The two classes I have come up with stuff that seemed to be surprisingly engaging and fun. The first class I taught Woody Guthrie´s Birds and Ships, set to music by Billy Bragg and performed by Natalie Merchant. For about three weeks the white board on the ground floor had my class notes up on it and said. "Leftist" and "This Guitar Kills Fascists" and then had the lyrics. My soul grows stormy/ and my heart grows wild/My love rides a ship on the sea.