There is some nightlife, lots of salsa, merengue and reggaeton.  There are also night on fairly often with rock bands or reggae, but usually covers.  It´s better to go to Cuenca for the weekend if you want to rave.  There is anew law forbidding sale of alcohol at weird times: 2 o`clock am at weekends, but there are places where they will sell you sneaky beers if the police aren´t around. 
The countryside id lush and you can go hiking in Podocarpus national park, which is sierra near Loja and more jungly down by Zamorra.  There`s a little village called Vilcabamba with a really nice climate which is a coolplace to chill for a weekend.  It´s full of gringos and hippies though.
I ahve to go now, anything else you want to know, get back to me,

Alx

Hi,

yeah a tefl course should get you a job at CHC, probably other private schools also, I`ll ask around.  There`s something in the pipeline about needing a degree for state high schools and unis but there is plenty of private work available.  Kallen was teaching members of the coca cola company in Guayaquil.

Loja is a town of about 180-200,000 people and 2100m or so above sea level, (depending on what website you read! reliable information is exasperatingly difficult to come by in Ecuador).  It`s an old colonial town originally but has spread alot so the old buildings are mostly in the centre and the rest is a hotchpotch of rich and poor.  It is actually one of the richer towns in Ecuador and you find a higher than normal proportion of middle class people here.

Having said that, it is a small town socially speaking: everyone knows eachother and half of them seem to be related so you have to check yourself sometimes!  They love gossip and I`ve heard some pretty good stories about myself.  Recently I was (apparently) getting married to someone 20 years younger than myself and moving to Haiti!  It came as quite a shock to here that especially as it was from the lips of the boy himself.

This message is too long, I`ll have to finish in another one.

Hi, glad to hear you want to come to Ecuador, it`s a really beatiful country.  There is some issue with a degree for state run schools, but as far as I know this is legislation going through, so I don´t know the details.  There are plenty of private institutions anyway and you can take private students.  It might be really helpful for your work visa though, they`re a bit picky about those and the law constantly changes.

CHC will help you with a visa if you sign a contract for, I think, a year.  There are other ways to approach the problem... it`s all a bit hard to keep up with but I wouldn`t worry about it.

They have 3 schools, Loja and Cuenca are in the sierra and Machala which is on the coast.  The coast is really hot and humid all the time but the sierra can be either hot and sunny or rainy from morning to evening, because of the altitude.  You have to put up with a fair bit of disorganisation and water shortages occaisionally as its still a developing country; have you been here before?

I`d go form the 120 hour course, the more the better, CHC will give you a job with that as will many other private language schools.

Hey,

Welcome to Chalkboard. Great to see you're interested in teaching English in Ecuador, what has attracted you to teaching there?

To get you started on the site you may want to take a look at the Ecuador group to get a good idea of what teaching there is like:

http://www.onlinetefl.com/tefl-chalkboard/groups/6-Ecuador

Also you may want to have a chat to this member who is currently teaching in Ecuador - she'll be able to give you lots of help and advice on working there:

http://www.onlinetefl.com/tefl-chalkboard/alixm09

Enjoy the site and feel free to ask me any questions you have :-)