Livin' la vida Loja: teaching and living in Loja, Ecuador: How i ended up here, literally and figuratively

¡Hola! Thank you for taking the time to read my humble little blog - I hope to repay you handsomely with anecdotes, advice and a healthy dollop of cultural awkwardness. To cut a long and rather dull story short, I managed to make a pretty substandard graduate job in Skipton, North Yorks even less palatable by getting seriously ill just before starting it, and after a shoddy 9 months I decided it was time to up sticks and start teaching English in The Canadian House Centre in Loja, Ecuador. Because that's what normal people do, right?

So after giving myself about a week's prep time for starting my new life, I toddled onto a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Madrid on September 18th, rain jacket pockets stuffed with underpants, deodorant and duct tape. I arrived at my hostel in Madrid city centre covered in sweat but praising my own hindsight for having packed clean underpants in such a convenient place. My 4pm flight to Guayaquil gave me the chance to soak up some of the language and the culture (I sneaked in a cheeky morning visit to see Picasso's Guernica and a museum with a garden growing on its wall), before it was time to touch down on thoroughly more latin soil.

Expect from the airline staff refusing to accept my story (and official letter from the school) that an English person might be going to teach English in Ecuador and thus forcing me to buy a 500€ ticket out of Ecuador, the journey passed without a hitch, I settled into my first night in Ecuador by going out with a Chilean bloke for Worcester Sauce, pepper and chilli seasoned beers in a bar in the hillside. Verdict: surprisingly tasty but watch for the burn as it makes its way down your gullet.

After savouring the fresh watermelon juice provided by the hostel and posing for some suitably cheesy tourist shots with a few fellow travellers, (see below) it was time to embark on the final leg of my journey and get over to Loja. I thought I'd given myself enough time by booking a taxi (a footnote from the taxi journey: it's clear that the road markings in this place are more there as guidelines, not as hard, fast rules) to arrive 30 mins before my journey started, little did I know that I'd be departing from a gigantic multi-story headfuck of a bus terminal/shopping mall. Somehow after sprinting up and down various escalators carrying two backpacks I found the ticket window for Loja, and even more miraculously my Spanish was sufficient to book the correct ticket. Sample dialogue: "una billetta para las unas y diez a Loja" "sí, ¿nombre?" "sí, soy un hombre".

The bus ride itself was surprisingly comfortable, and the sights out of the window and in the bus itself made me glad I didn't pay through the nose for a flight over to Loja. Before we set off, various vendors came on offering me porn magazines and ice cream, only to be set down some time later at the side of the road and be replaced by more a few miles later. Generally, despite the distraction of the hilariously inappropriate django unchained playing on the TV in front of a mother and her 3 young children, I spent the whole journey gawping at the changing countryside out of the window. Urban sprawl gave way to hours of banana groves as far as the eye could see, before we spiralled into the mountains which sprung out of the otherwise pancake-flat landscape, stunning tree-lined vista succeeding stunning tree-lined vista.

In stark contrast to this natural beauty were the conditions that the vast majority of locals found themselves living in on our journey. Now forgive me for sounding like a sheltered first-worlder, but the dusty streets lined with mile after mile of houses which amount to little more than a pile of bricks or wood with a tin roof for the lucky ones really brought home to me how poor Ecuadoreans as people generally are. Children playing football barefoot in a dusty gutter seems like something from a far-fetched rags-to-riches film for many Brits, but this is how the country folk here live. I even saw some outhouse-style buildings with the words 'sex club' daubed on the grubby outer walls - I really hope that whatever goes on in those buildings is not as grim as I imagine it.

This is not to give this blog a depressing note, for the positive, laid back and fun attitude of the people here is perceptible most places you go, and I really look forward to experiencing more of it to get the last traces of Yorkshire bile out of my system as soon as possible!

The journey ended with me getting picked up in Loja by Rene (the man who hired me) and Oliver (fellow Sheffielder/English teacher/housemate) at 9pm on Friday the 20th of sept local time, 60 hours after leaving the warm bosom of my home in north yorkshire. After going for pizza and witnessing the festivities for la virgin de cisne (the virgin of the swan) I retired to my room for a little cry and a sleep before getting down to the real business at hand here.