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Mi primer día en Ecuador.

I’ve been in Ecuador for just over 24 hours now and my first impressions are mostly positive.  I haven’t had that big “culture shock” moment yet, but I’m sure it will come along sometime soon.

Here is a recap of the past 24 hours…

Yesterday I flew from Charlotte to Miami to Quito.  The 2 flights, for the most part, were uneventful.  During the flight to Ecuador though, there was a strange young man on board.  He was American, in his early 20’s and was just…. weird.  As he got on the plane, he sat down in a exit row seat, you know, the one with extra leg room.  Soon enough, the actual passenger who was ticketed that seat came along.  The strange guy checked his ticket and got up, then moved 4 rows back to a center seat of a three seater.  He still at this time had his carry on bag, a large roller than I assumed would barely fit in the overhead bin.  He meandered to his correct seat and then began to work on putting that carry on in the bin above.  Do you ever get that feeling you know something bad is about to happen?  Well I felt it.  I KNEW he was going to drop the luggage.  And he did.  On the head of a lady.  Who had a baby.  She was really nice about it though, and didn’t seem to have been hurt at all.  Baby was fine too.  Ok… one more incident with strange guy – about half way through the flight, he got up and pulled his carry on back out, sat it in the middle of the aisle, squatted down and was there for the next 20 minutes.  Passengers and flight attendants alike were crawling over and around him.  Apparently, he was taking some medication – for 20 minutes.  On the floor.  In the aisle.

Moving along, I got to Ecuador at 7ish last night, made it easily through customs, got my luggage and then headed out to the lobby area where someone from the school was supposed to be waiting to pick me up.  An HOUR LATER, and no one is around.  I checked inside and out, then finally settled on a taxi.  I speak very little Spanish of course, so the taxi driver ripped me off and overcharged me for the ride to my studio, but the school said they’d pay since they screwed up.  Seems that some emails got mixed up and they thought I was coming in tonight, not last night.  No matter, I made it to my studio safe and sound.  I checked in with Alanna and the kids and went to bed.

This morning, the lady who owns my studio took me on a quick walking tour of the local area.  She showed me some little places to eat, etc, and then took me to Supermaxi.  Yes, I know… make your funny jokes.  Supermaxi is a large supermarket chain pretty much like you’d see in the states.  It is not a really absorbent feminine hygiene product, although those are sold there as well.  The store has a good mix of American and Ecuadorian items, though the American stuff seems to be marked up quite a bit.  I bought some simple groceries, then took a taxi back to my place.  Its a 15 minute walk uphill with groceries at 9000 ft.  I’m not quite acclimated to the altitude yet, so I’m getting short of breath easily and I have a mild headache most of time.  Should go away soon though.

This evening, I took a taxi to a local mall just to get out for a bit.  They have a KFC there, so I chowed down on some southern fried chicken.  I shopped for a bit, mostly window browsing and then headed back to the studio to call it a night.

Tomorrow I’m meeting some of the new teachers for lunch, and then we’ll start working on Wednesday.  Everything is pretty good so far but I do really miss my family.  Its going to be a long 2 months without them.

Ok enough for now.  Here are some random pics…

The view from my bathroom.

A tree in the middle of the road.

This dude had a 23 on his shirt.  So I took a pic.

In case you forget that this is still a third world country, here are some kids playing in the trash.

Abigail Lane Staton

Abby!

As I said in my last post, we’re getting down to the nitty gritty.  One major event that was greatly anticipated was the birth of my second child, a daughter – Abigail Lane Staton (Abby).  I am happy to say my little angel successfully came into the world at 2:19pm last Tuesday weighing exactly 8lbs and is as healthy as… well whatever something healthy is.   Since I’m a man, I won’t tell you the story “push by push”, but here’s a link to my wife’s blog with all the cool details…

Wifey’s Baby Story

So now we’re down to just over a week before I fly to Ecuador.  A few things left to do – I have to finish up my last week at Medieval Times, my last show on Aug 7th.  We have to pack up the house on Aug 5th.  I’ll drive to NC on Aug 8th, spend  few days with my parents, and then I’m off to South America.

I’m getting excited.  This is how it works for me.  My wife gets nervous/anxious/excited IMMEDIATELY when news happens and stays that way through the fruition of the event.  I stay pretty mellow initially and then a week before, every crazy though begins to kick in – I’m leaving Medieval Times, I’m moving to a foreign country alone, I’ll be without my family for two months, I’m teaching drama to Ecuadorians, I will miss Chick-Fil-A.

I’m ready for everything though, which thankfully makes things much easier on my nerves.   I’m still nervous, but I’m ready for my new adventure.

Nitty Gritty Time

Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile.  We’re not technically in Ecuador yet, so our mundane daily NJ lives aren’t that interesting to write about.  I am now under a month until I’m off to South America though.  Last week we hit up the Ecuadorian Consulate in Newark and (after 3 hours of sitting around), we got our visas.  So now I’m pretty much set for the move.  The little things like packing, both my suitcases and the house, are coming along slowly but surely.  Its also a bagillion degrees here in NJ right now so that doesn’t make ANYTHING easy.

Did I mention we are having a baby soon?  Yeah, little Abby should be popping out any day now.  That’s our last big step in NJ.  The wifey is in the miserable stage of the pregnancy and the hot weather makes it even worse.  The baby seems healthy though so hopefully she’ll just fall right out with no pain at all.  That’s how it works, right?

Some important dates –

July 29th – Abby arrives by induction if she doesn’t come early.
Aug 4th – Last skydive in the States for awhile.
Aug 5th – Load ALL of the house into Pods for transport to NC.
Aug 7th – My last show at the castle.
Aug 8th – Drive to NC to hang with the parents for a few days.
Aug 11th – Fly to Ecuador!

Alrighty,  I’ll update again when the little girl arrives, and then right before I leave.  Adios!

When Lyrics Hit Home

There are many times I turn on the radio and and think, hey, that’s a catchy tune.  It happened recently for Darius Rucker’s delightful cover of Wagon Wheel. I’ve always liked Mr. Hootie, mostly because he’s right in my wheelhouse as far as his voice range goes, so it’s easy to sing along to his music.

Since moving to NJ, I’ve mainly only listened to the local ESPN talk radio station.  I’ve flipped over to that 100 FM station now and then, but most of those songs sound like they’re written by 5 year olds with auto tuners.  Recently though, NYC got a country music station.  Being from the south, country music has always had a special place in my heart.  It makes it easier to enjoy my southern accent when I belt out some acoustic guitar and banjo heavy song.

Anyway… back to Wagon Wheel.  Like I said, it’s a catchy tune.  When I really like a song, I usually end up going home, finding it on Youtube, then also Googling the lyrics so I can figure out what in the heck the guy is saying.  I did this for Wagon Wheel and was simply amazed how easily I could fit the song into my own life.  Right time, right place I guess.  Since brevity is the soul of wit, I will be brief in describing how it correlates with me, but I’ll post the the song and lyrics if you want to go jam out to it for yourself.

Basically, the song talks about a guy who has had a little trouble in the North, and is now hitchhiking down the east coast to get back to his lover in Raleigh, NC. Its easy for me to sort of insert myself into the song.  We took a gamble moving up north, it didn’t pay off and now we’ll be moving back south.  Not back to our home state of NC, but a little further.  Another continent actually.  But I can already picture myself singing this sound for 9 hours as I drive home to NC in early August before flying out days later from Charlotte to Ecuador.  It just feels right.

Wagon Wheel

Lyrics

An introduction

Hello.  My name is Rob.  I’m a 30 something year old guy living in NJ, about 10 minutes outside the Big Apple that is NYC.  I have a lovely wife of 5 years, a beautiful 3 year old boy, and a tiny little baby girl who is due to join us in this world in early August.  Everything sounds great, right?  Well right now, it is… for the most part.  We’re about to change all that though and turn our family’s world upside down.  In August, we’ll be moving to Ecuador to start a new chapter in our lives.
Let’s rewind for a moment…
Since 2003, I’ve lived in Concord, NC, Myrtle Beach, SC, outside of Chicago IL, the Middle East, and now I’m in NJ.  You could say my family and I get around a lot.  I could easily blame my wife for all this… travel.  She isn’t much for settling down and gets a bit of an itch for something new every few years.  Truth is, I’m pretty much the same way.  It’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with her and consider myself such a happily married man.
Things aren’t always peaches and cream…
To put it mildly, since moving to New Jersey in the fall of 2010, the family and I have had a few rough spots.  Here’s a quick recap – We moved here in a blizzard in which I crashed the moving truck into the side of our new apartment.  There have been 2 Hurricanes, one of which was the devastating Sandy, an earthquake, more blizzards than I can count, a Thanksgiving Day kitchen fire, the loss of our unborn child, oh… and ANOTHER fire in which we lost 75% of everything we owned.  Now I know things could have been a lot worse and I am forever thankful for what I have, but you might see how we haven’t quite felt our time in NJ has been well spent.
The house fire was last September and both the wife and I have never quite gotten over it.  To be honest, we wanted to run home, to the beach, anywhere other than NJ the day after it happened.  We kept our sanity for the most part and put on a brave face.  We stuck it out here for as long as we could, which in August will be almost 3 years, a year since the fire.
We did begin actively looking for other options in early 2013.  And by other options, I mean anywhere other than New Jersey.  I thought at first that I would transfer with my job to one of our southern locations, but nothing really seemed to fit.  I LOVE my job, but it does keep me away from my family on nights and weekends. My wife… let’s call her Alanna.  It’s her name anyway.  Alanna has a teaching resume that the most seasoned educator would be jealous of – she’s a veteran of the classroom both in the states and internationally in Ethiopia and the UAE.  I also have bit of experience in teaching and international travel.  So Alanna put her smart cap on and soon enough she had found an open position for a teacher matching my skill set in… Ecuador.  Most people I’ve talked to don’t even know where the country is.  If that’s you, don’t be ashamed, I probably couldn’t have pointed it out on the map before this month either.  Ecuador is a lovely South American country on the west coast nestled in between Colombia and Peru.  The Equator runs smack dab through the country, and well… that’s where the title of the blog gets its name.
I sent in all my information, resume, cover letter, etc and bingo… I immediately got an interview.  The next week I was speaking with officials at the school over Skype and the next week, after a few weeks of intense research, discussions with my wife and hopes and dreams, I accepted the position.  So here I am, getting ready to move to Ecuador in 4 months.  This blog will serve as a journal of my experiences both leading up to the move, as well as my day to day life in South America.  I am in no way a seasoned writer like my wife, but I hope you’ll enjoy the reads now and then.

Down to the Wire



We’re getting down to the nitty gritty – the last few weeks until our summer break back in the States.  I, for one, am getting excited.  You know it’s too hot here as I’ve stated quite frequently in my blog.  I’m also getting cabin fever because we can’t do too much.  So in just 15 short days we’ll be in London… and Nottingham, and Bath, and Stratford-Upon-Avon, oh… and Wales.  We’re gonna sneak over there for a little bit too.  So excited.

We’ve had something going on pretty much every weekend in June.  The first weekend we went to Dubai and made our way up the World’s Tallest Building – The Burj Khalifa.  The second weekend was my drama student’s production of Hansel and Gretel.  They were smashing.  This past weekend we had a quick mini vacation in Sharjah with a MAJOR side of Geocaching thrown in for me.  Here is an in depth (Well as much as I feel like writing) review of June so far…

The World’s Tallest Building.

We’ve wanted to do this trip for months.  It opened in February, but we wanted to wait a little bit and let the newness wear off first.  We made our reservations a week in advance.  Yes, you have to make reservations to take an elevator up to an observation deck.  It cost us about $60 total( for the two of us), but it’s a once in lifetime experience to say you’ve been in the tallest building on Earth, so we felt it was worth the price.  Driving up from Al Ain, you can see the Burj Khalifa a LONG way before you get anywhere close to

Logan takes in the view

Dubai.  It almost looks out of place as it is easily twice as tall as any other building around it.  The world’s largest mall (by total area), the Dubai Mall, is at the bottom of the Burj, so we got there early to have some lunch and shop around for a bit.  We finally made our way over to the building, which you can access without leaving the mall.  We handed over our tickets and moved into a waiting room.  There were lots of folks standing around taking pictures of a scaled model of the building.  We popped a few pics there, then made our way through security – x-ray machines and all just like the airport, and then took a short stroll through some hallways that told us all about how the building was constructed, blah blah blah.  We got to the elevator and hopped in.  The walls of the elevator are covered in TV screens that show neat little tidbits about the building as you make your way up to the 124th floor (1450 ft) at a blazing speed of 40 mph.  My ears popped a few times for sure.  The 124th floor is a large round room with windows everywhere so you can have a 360 degree view.  The observation deck is also here, which we hit first.  I expected it to be hot out there, but no no, the deck has two large AC units that pull air from above and keep the deck nice and cool.  The views were amazing.  The buildings below looked like tiny models that you could build yourself.  It was a VERY impressive sight.  We took a ton of pictures so Logan can remember being there.  All in all, it was well worth the price and I’m very happy we got to go.

Hansel and Gretel

We had our End of the Year concert on June 10th at the Intercon Hotel.  All the students performed from their fields of study, including my drama kids.  We were one of the last groups of the day.  We had a quick, final rehearsal, then I spent half an hour getting

Last minute direction

them into makeup.  Putting kids in makeup is not always fun, I can tell you that.  The performance went as well as could be expected.  The kids did a great job, the audience loved it, and I came out looking like the greatest children’s director of all time.  It’s a pleasure to work with the little rascals.  Special thanks goes to my lovely wife Alanna who helped me make the props and masks.

Sharjah

I planned a little two day vacation for us in Sharjah.  I would get to Geocache and Alanna would get a nice hotel with a pool and a beach.  Works for both of us.  Sharjah is the Emirate (think state) above Dubai.  It’s only about 15-20 minutes north and a less busy.  It also provided a nice starting point North for me to hit a bunch of Geocaches.  We stayed at the Radisson Blu Hotel.  We enjoyed the place.  The staff was nice, the room was fine and the breakfast was superb.  The pool was nice and refreshing – even a little cold though it was 110 degrees outside.  Logan had a fun time splashing around and all of us got a little sun.  I left early at 5:30am the next morning for a day of solo Geocaching.  Alanna and the little man stayed at the hotel and relaxed the day away.  I had planned a total of 20 caches.  My goal before leaving the UAE is 75 caches, so I needed 17 to put me there.  I figured I’d give myself a few more in case I missed some along the way.  The morning started off great.  I found my first 10 caches rather easy, really didn’t get lost and visited 3 Emirates in the process.  Number 11 screwed me though.  It was near a beach and I tried to drive over some stand and… for the 3rd time since we moved here I got the rental stuck in the stand.  Thankfully it was only 10am so it wasn’t too hot yet.  I hiked back out to the main road and soon a nice Omani man came along and helped me.  He even went and bought some rope so he

Inside the hotel - we had breakfast under those trees

could pull me out.  I’ll say it again and again – the Omani are an amazingly giving and friendly bunch of people.  After getting unstuck, I decided to continue on and not let that little setback discourage me.  I continued heading north, almost to the tip of the UAE, then turned around and took a slightly different route back to the hotel so I could grab a few more caches.  The day’s totals – 15 caches, which put me at 73 total caches, quite a number of cuts and scrapes, shoes full of sand, 1 car stuck.  I had a great time though.  It was just as neat to see all of the countryside as it was to find the caches.  Now I’m left to find 2 more before I leave for the summer, but I’m already sure I’ll get more than that in the coming weeks.  I’m so addicted to Geocaching.

Alrighty folks, be looking for me in the States.  I’ll be in NC on July 12th and HOPEFULLY in Chicago around Sept 4th.

More pics…

Logan REALLY likes TP
I think he won
Old abandoned plane? Nice spot for a cache
Sunset in Sharjah

Diapering 101

Reflections on the 10 things Rob has learned about diapers in 9 months.

1. Never think you have witnessed the worst.

2. Never put it on too loose.

3. Don’t let them see you take it off.

4. Make sure they are finished before you open it, for the love of God.

5. There is no such thing as too many wipes.

6. Get another one under that butt ASAP.

7. Never ever try save the clothing with an explosive mess.  It just spreads the mess in places it shouldn’t.

8. Don’t expect any one color when you open up that diaper.  It can be anything from soft light brown to  glow in the dark green .

9. Don’t tickle them when the diaper is open. They may not be finished and it might go off.

And 10. The lesson of the day – Don’t under estimate a one year old’s curiosity of the feel of fresh poo between their small fingers.

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