It’s been a week now since I have arrived in Machala (El Oro Province). Was mentally prepared so it wasn’t much of a shock. The city looks like a poor city and as usually in SA, there are paradoxes hitting you at every step: four star hotel and slums, people living in wonderful apartment buildings vs people living in poorly constructed houses, without electricity or water, stray dogs, rehabilitation clinic for drug and alcohol addicts, a market, huge shopping centre that can compete with any European shopping centre, new development areas, danger zones where nobody should be caught out at night, safe places and dangerous places (e.g. the neighborhood of Porto Bolivar, where everyone knows drug smuggling and traffic take place) etc.
There is nothing cosmopolitan about Machala though. Seems to be good old Ecuadorian fashion all around. People are slow, lazy, not very alert, but generally friendly.. Mosquitos, flees and whatever other crawlers are ruthless and repellent is a must, especially as it is one of the high risk zones for Dengue fever.

The house I live in is beautiful, I am sharing an upstairs apartment with a colleague from the U.S. (Ryan, 29). The house belongs to the director of the school we are both going to work for. At least we have a nice place to come back to after school. The heat and humidity are the two things I am finding the hardest to cope with. We have 36-38 degrees Celsius at 8am. Around 2pm it gets unbearable. I haven’t been able to mobilize and motivate myself to go out again once I’ve come home.
School starts on the 4th April. At the moment we go in for “seminars” and supposed lesson planning. I have never seen so much laziness, lack of interest and disorganization thrown together so far.. We waste about half the time out of the 6.5 hours we are in school. Not going into details, would just be a waste of time. They are still undecided as far as my assignment goes, so I still don’t know for sure if I will be teaching primary or secondary. In any case, for any foreigner working here a change in attitude is needed if you wish to survive. If you are German, think twice before taking a job here :)..
I have met a few locals through Ryan, they all seem perfectly nice but I am not holding my breath and prefer to be rather cautious and observe for the time being.
There are a few attractions around, like the petrified forest and Jambeli island (actually a peninsula). We went to Jambeli at the weekend. The beach used to be very different, but with the tide moving in closer every year, plus earthquake, tsunamis etc. it’s now damaged and part of it is deserted. It still has a lot of potential and there are a few nice hostels around. But not only is the beach damaged, it is also polluted and the water seems to be polluted too. I am sure if you look up pictures from about two years ago and now you would see the difference.