Saturday, September 30, 2006

Living In Ecuador

I´ve been working with this organization called Volunteering Ecuador for the past month. For $360 dollars a month (plus a $190 registration fee) I lived with an Euadorian family with three other girls because I wanted to learn all about the culture in Ecuador and practice spanish while making the world a better place. It didn´t work out so hot.
I don´t recommend this organization. It´s run by a guy who seems to be more interested in controling people and constantly having young women in his home so he can talk himself up than he is in helping the poor of Ecuador.
After about two days I didn´t really feel comfortable in this guy´s house, and I didn´t appreciate his jokes, ¨I thought she was a seven out of ten...with her blouse off.¨ I decided to move out after three weeks and in one day had found an awsome apartment with my own room for only 100 dollars a month with an Ecuadorian student as my roomate. I had initialy told the director that I would stay for between 2 to 3 months, but I hadn´t signed any sort of contract. I decided to tell the director that I had decided to move out, but I wanted to continue volunteering in Eucador. I didn´t want to be offensive so I just told him it was because of the price of the new apartment I had found. No one can argue with wanting to save money right?
WRONG. He acted like a petulant child. He was rude and offensive and immidiatly told me that I couldn´t continue teaching english and helping out at my school because I wasn´t affiliated with the organization any more. I said that was pretty stupid because his organization didn´t do anything for the school besides occasionally pointing volunteers their way, and there was no reason to take an English teacher away from them just because I wasn´t paying him a pretty exorborant price to live in his house. Well, after that he told me that he didn´t consider me family anymore and I didn´t cry all that hard when I left his house a week later.
You haven´t really gotten the whole story here, but oh goodness, I could go on and on for hours about how unusual and offensive this guy is, and how awkward it was living in his house, and stories about his strangeness, but I´ve already discussed it to death with the other volunteers...but if anyone pulled my arm I could be pressed to share some examples.
The bottom line is that I don´t recomend www.volunteeringecuador.org for anyone wanting to make a difference in the world.

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