a scribble of jo

I like to walk to school. Whether it’s raining or overcast or just downright foggy as mud, I like to walk to school. Walking home, on the other hand, is a completely different matter. First of all, the walk home is uphill. Second of all, the walk home gradually becomes steeper. Third of all, I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t like to rush. I don’t know how to rush. Which is ironic when you consider my procrastinating skills; it would just seem rational that, given the one, I would know the other, but no. I don’t know how to rush. (There were many a time, going to the mall with my sisters, that after a few minutes (that felt like hours) of shopping, I would tell my sisters I’d meet them in the food court. Trying to maintain their clipped pace was too tiring. How am I supposed to hold a conversation when I’m out of breath from trying to keep up?) So this inability to move faster than a snail, it results in a considerably long walk home. Usually, I take a taxi. If I catch one on the corner of Brasil y Granda Centeno, across the street from Pollo Gus, it costs a single buck to get me home in less than three minutes and it spares me the oxygen tank of recuperation at the end. But these days, that dollar carries a lot more weight that I can’t afford to misplace. Certainly something I can look to save in any way.

So, now, I walk home. 47 minutes uphill, I walk home. And as I walked up that hill today, I let myself think of what it means to be a teacher in a Christian high school in Ecuador. What is my job, as an English teacher? What am I supposed to teach them? It’s April. What do I do with the desire to go back to September and start fresh? What do I do with the conflict between the desire to do better and the limitations of being human? I signed a three-year contract with the school. Will there even be a school next year? If there is, will I have what it takes to be a part of it?

I didn’t come up with any answers. Because by the time I reached the top of the hill, as I reached the point where the hill levels off and the skyline of Quito, Ecuador is mine to behold, the questions had exhausted themselves. The questions has exhausted themselves, and I was home. I didn’t need any answers.

Only an oxygen tank.