Livin' la vida Loja: teaching and living in Loja, Ecuador: A very dizzy Christmas

I haven't written much in my blog recently because it was simply too depressing to write about the situation while it was still ongoing. Now that I'm feeling better and things are just about back to normal I feel I can write about it with a bit of distance and perspective.

So what happened? On Thursday 19th December, after the last proper teaching day of that year, we had the Christmas party of the business empire (that's right, business empire. Bet your secondary school wasn't part of a business empire) to which our language school belongs. The previous evening we'd had our own lovely little teachers' party in a fast food chicken restaurant - where else - and given out secret santa presents and the sort, but this party was rubbish. It was for 40 employees and took place in a pizza restaurant which had one stone oven which fitted four small pizzas at a time. Spot the problem there... After seemingly endless ceremonies to crown the prince and princess of the school, which involved each one of the 10 candidates giving two laborious speeches about the message of Christmas, we heads the joy of witnessing a secret santa gift-sharing between 30 people which weren't a part of and which went something like this: the person who just received a present stands up, says 'my secret santa is a person who I just meet recently, seems very nice, blah blah blah... the person is revealed, gifts given, they stand up and the whole thing continues. For 30 people. Of course whilst all this was going on the one person trusted with making pizzas for 40 people with a small oven was chatting away to his mates and drinking beer. When the ceremonies were finally over after 11pm he finally started to prepare (!) the pizzas. Needless to say we left that place in a bad mood having been fairly inadequately fed...

When we got home we had to make ourselves some tea. After i put my basket of staple foods (2kg sugar, 2kg rice, 1kg pasta, bottle of tommy k, packet of biscuits, tin of peaches, packet of sweets, fair play) in the corner of the kitchen, I stood up, hit my head on the cabinet, and fell to the floor. I distinctly remember thinking 3 things down there: 'what am I doing on the floor, this is pathetic', 'I need to move my glasses so I don't crush them with my head' and 'oh, I can't move. Or speak'. The situation was so innocuous that my housemate Oliver 'common sense' Reynolds told me to wake up because I can't sleep on the floor. I recovered the power of speech and movement after a few minutes and trotted off to bed.

I expected that I had a bit of concussion but bravely dragged myself into school because my kids needed me for their big Christmas performances, and to be fair I was looking forward to my starring role as well. We had 'The Night Before Christmas' with the 7-9 year olds, climaxing in Santa and Rudolph spectacularly 'flying' off into the night from the swings in the playground, followed by a comparison of Christmas in Ecuador and Christmas in the UK, where we mostly discovered that it is in fact disappointingly similar. So that was fun. Even played a bit of charades and watched Wallace and Gromit with the one adult who showed up to my evening class, and I have to admit I feel slightly bad that he had to pay for that dubious pleasure.

I was meant to be leaving the next day for a big Christmas/new year trip around Ecuador, but had to keep putting it off due to feeling dizzy whenever I tried to walk anywhere and generally feeling low on energy and crappy. The situation continued until I gave in and found myself in a hospital clinic on Christmas Day being prescribed nausea tablets by a doctor who confessed to knowing very little about matters of the head. Those made me even more dizzy, but didn't stop me enjoying a lovely Christmas lunch with some English blokes and their friends. Roast turkey, roast potatoes, bacon stuffing, yorkshires, cauliflower cheese and gravy. Top stuff. That and the various packages from home (and a charming Rudolph hat from Korea, see below!) and being able to watch literally every Christmas special on iPlayer on my tablet (even the queen's speech!) at least did something to quell the homesickness of my first Christmas abroad and alone and sick.

It was clear that I had to see a specialist, and 3 days later I was going through one of those massive body scanners and having my head and neck xrayed. The upshot was that the bang on the head caused a swelling in my neck which was causing my spine to bend somewhat at the top and also restricting the blood flow to my head, hence the dizziness and all that. I was given pills to increase blood flow, relax the muscles and injections for my bum (good that I have a lesbian friend who used to work in a pharmacy) and a neck brace to wear for a month. Party on.

To be fair the neck brace isn't such a big deal, I only need it when I'm out and about and it gets me plenty of sympathy which let's face it we all enjoy. It's the biggest hindrance on hot sunny days and when doing any strenuous exercise, when the thickness of the material leads to some serious sweaty neck syndrome. It's also allowed me to reduce my hours at work, and having the one hour off in 6 makes an incredible difference.

I still managed to celebrate new year's, albeit in Loja and not on the beach in the party capital of Ecuador. They have some interesting customs here. In the week before people buy dolls dressed up as various hated famous people or make their own with their own personal figures of hate, presumably bosses or little sisters.

On the night itself I saw boys dressed up as girls stopping the traffic (literally, not figuratively) and demanding money, along with little boys and girls doing similarly who may or may not have been actual beggars. At least the town felt alive for once. I spent the evening with my Venezuelan friends eating hallacas (corn dough filled with a three-meat sauce, and a little bit of each of egg, pepper, olive, broccoli, ham, carrot... then wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled) which we'd prepared the night before. At quarter to 12 we headed to the roof to see the fireworks all over the town, and then at 12 the dolls, which had been stationed in front of the houses were set on fire across the whole town. This gave an appearance of some kind of hell on earth, which some might say is fitting for this place. Well it looked cool anyway. Then came the questionable tradition where all the kids have to jump 12 times over the fire for good luck. Not sure about that one.

Right I've talked enough. I promise to make the next post a bit jollier. Seeya then.