Ecuador Day 13: The First Day of Seminary

The first day of class started with me getting up at 10:00. My logic was that I needed to be well rested for the day. Staying up late might be part of it too. I spent the morning going through my notes and adding some material I had been planning on tossing in for my lecture the next day. Jon and Karen got home in time for lunch. They had spent the morning matriculating more students at the Seminary, buying more books for some of the classes, and shopping for sugar.

The government has decided that since sugar is produced in Ecuador, no imported sugar will be allowed. The amazing thing is that so much sugar is being produced here, people are only allowed to buy two bags of sugar at a time. Granted, these two bags can be 1 pound bags, 2.5 pound bags, or 4.5 pound bags. But you can only buy two of them. This is a problem because Rosario, who is cooking for the seminary, had figured up that she needed about 50 pounds of sugar. Karen's plan was to go see how much sugar she could buy at the grocery store she goes to when she buys food for the food program. She figured that if they wouldn't let her buy enough, us four gringos would just go through the line, each get two bags, put them in the car, and then go through the line again. Thankfully, one of the managers at the store greeted her warmly and instructed a staff member to get her more sugar than she thought she'd need. The seminary won't need sugar for quite a while. I just hope the manager doesn't get in trouble for selling her so much.

After lunch, we headed up to the seminary to set up the projector in the classroom. They had some many students sign up that we realized that there would be 38 students in my class. We started rearranging desks, adding chairs, and bringing in more tables so that we could fit all of the students. We figured that if there were that many students for my class, we'd need room for at least 50 students for Cindy's class.

I expected to be really nervous about teaching, but I actually felt pretty confidant about it. This was a surprise because I'd been pretty nervous for several weeks. Class started with Jon introducing me since many in the class had not been able to be here the night before. We then sang a song that I didn't know, and then prayed. Then it was time for lecture.

The first religion I wanted to cover was Mormonism. The reason for teaching on Mormonism is that it is growing very quickly here. As we started discussing it, I found out that several people in the class have Mormon neighbors here in Quito. I had expected to only get through the history of the religion and maybe a few of the beliefs. After all, teaching through a translator takes at least twice as much time. I was in for a surprise, we flew through everything in just over an hour. This included taking questions from the class and assigning some homework. This was cause for some concern. Material I expected to take almost two full lectures only took one. The plus side to this is that we can cover more material than I had initially expected.

The rest of the day was spent eating supper and then sitting in Cindy's class on communication. Her class runs 5-8:30, which is a pretty long stretch. We ended up having quite a few students from UCL come to the class. UCL is the only Evangelical seminary in the country that is recognized by the government. SETE (our seminary) is working on partnering with them so that we can offer some classes that will count towards a college theology degree for our pastors. Students from UCL were told that they could attend some of the classes here to get extra credit for their studies at UCL.

A student from UCL helps Jon demonstrate an exercise in Cindy's class

We expected only a couple of students to come. We were surprised when nearly 10 students showed up. That means Cyndi has one very full class. It's just about standing room only.

Two students doing a communication exercise

To demonstrate how difficult communication can be, Cindy had students pair up and do an exercise.

Two other students working on the exercise

Because it required talking, she had students spread out all over the building. This struck me as a good opportunity to walk around and get pictures of them working together. I headed up to the top floor to watch the students, and was treated to a beautiful view of Cotopaxi as the sun was setting down. I ran downstairs to grab a longer lens and snap some pictures. I suspect this is the best view of Cotopaxi I'll have all trip.

Cotopaxi as seen from the roof of the seminary

After the classes were finished, we took Jenny (who is translating for Cindy) to catch a bus, and started to head home. We were bemoaning the fact that the paila shop was already closed when the Lamberts pointed out a restaurant that has really great chocolate cake. We got it to go and enjoyed cake with Danny back at the house. It was a great way to end our first day teaching at the Seminary. There's only four days to go!