Friday Morning Fever

It's friday, ten thirty, and I cannot wait to get out of here. I'm going to a "pizza party" at the PhoneBank at 1230, and if my boss doesn't show up before then, well, I guess I won't get to say good bye.

I thought I'd talk a little about the phone bank, and the town its situated in, just go give you a better idea of things.

I work in Langley Park. Langley Park is not a city, or a town, or a municipality. It is a "census designated place" located on the edge of Prince George's County, with streets and neighborhoods extending accross the boarder into Montgomery County. It is .8 miles square, and has the largest population of Salvadorians outside of El Salvador. DC has a huge immigrant population, but there's really nothing like Langley Park, where apartment blocks stretch for miles, wilted courtyards and barred window eerily tenement-like, the MS-13 presence impossible to ignore, the laundrymats and Western Unions and ESOL classes overflowing.

Despite the "Little _____" community feeling, called Long Distance Nationalism, articulated really well in this NPR Clip and patiently explained to me by my fabulous teacher Espelencia Baptiste (she just got tenure!), there's alot of diversity and contextual understanding that comes with knowing how to navigate Langley Park. For example, there's the case of chicken. Chicken should come from your home, and be wrapped in tin foil, boiled with the skin off, unless it comes wrapped in a seven-eleven sandwhich or a silver-truck styrophome container. However, this all pales in comparison to "Pollo estilo peruano." Peruvian chicken is chicken elevated. Look at that charr on the perfectly done flesh. Also, vegetarians, notice the corn on the cob, neatly cut into third-of-a-cob lengths, the yucca fries (not pictured), and the many napkins that will be filled with grease scattered around your paper plate by the end of your "Journey to Peru."

Its strange that Peruvian chicken is so popular in this area. There are peruvians in the area, but nowhere near as strong as the Central American and Mexican population. And its not like most of the people in the area have been to Peru, like, on vacation or something. Not that one quote proves a point, or anything, but my when my Hondure

finishing this later.

boss is here

Yay!

No cavities!

Powerless

Its been a good weekend, and it just got longer.

I went to southern Maryland, by the bay with Zak, and it was just great. Constantly at least 99 degrees, but just wonderful.

Highlights include:

-an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet to saturated in fat that at some points, returning to the heat-lamp, sneeze-guarded hot-tables, I actually gagged. One main hit was a dish called "Seafood Stuffd." Also on the menu was "Nugget Chicken" and "Cheese Pie."

-Made Matzoh Ball soup (the classic mid-summer dish)

-went kayaking and saw a lot of cute/awesome wetland animals, like redwinged black birds, blue crabs and WAY TOO MANY JELLYFISH, which are not supposed to be in wetlands at all, but it was their mating season or something so they had totally inundated the bay and the creek that led to it. We were in three feet of muddy, brackish water, going upstream, and a two foot long jellyfish would come floating past. Apparently they get washed up the creek by the tide, but it was still creepy.

-Went to a farmstand and made a cobbler out of fresh blackberries. Had to borrow flour from someone who we may have saved from throwing herself off the cliff by knocking on her door and asking for flour.

-Watched Insane Clown Posse Videos, including this little number.

As we were driving back, this insane storm passed over the area. Most of my county lost power, as well as Montgomery County and northeast DC. I ate dinner outside, read on the porch, enjoyed my yard and talked to my neighbors, who started making fun of me for lighting a candle outside. Little do they know I understand their Spanish taunts.

As night fell, the temperature in our bedrooms rose to at least 345 degrees. We all camped out in the living room, which was fun. Also, my mom has one of those radio/flashlight combinations that is powered by a crank, and we discovered that we can charge our cellphones and other USB things on it. Its so cool and not back to nature!

Anyway, because there was no power in most of the area, my work was cancelled....or so I thought, until my boss called me at noon, telling me to go to another place to work. I declined. Viva the revolucion. This was sweetened when my electricity came on soon after, so I have been lying on my back eating vegetarian "chicken" patties all morning. I hope my boss doesn't read this. Viva la internet privacy.

I'm going to the dentist in about half an hour. To prepare for this, I have been flossing for about a month, out of fear of my dental hygienist, a rotund Salvadoreña named Rose. I'm getting really scared of her yelling at me, like she did monthly for the three years I had braces, so I have flossed twice since waking up. I think I should go gargle again. Whatever, its not going to make much of a difference. I'm totally reasonable about my sugar intake, I rarely drink soda or eat candy, I drink a cup of coffee a day, I've smoked like 15 cigarettes in my life, , and I brush all the time, but I always have a ton of cavities. I don't know why!

Bout to give a shout out to by boys (and gurls) who have started blogs, even before going on study abroad. What go getters! check deez kids out.

Hannah

Jon

Hutch

(although their blogs might be more popular than this one)

And of course,the already-adventuring Britta

Ok, going to go floss again ("Brush 'em till they bleed!" as my grandpa always says). See you later!

You Learn Something New Every Day

Buenas Dias! That is how you say "I'm hungry" in espagnol, the language they speak in Ecuador. I will be teaching you a word a day in espagnol from my bible and favorite book, "Spanish for the overweight businessman who wears ugly shirts" !!! This book has helpful illustrations, and I know if I keep reading the comics at the beginning of the chapter, I will be fluent in spanish by the end of the week. Another useful phrase I learned is "mucho gusto," which means "I am being kidnapped, please help me escape using your concealed weapon." This will be useful, because there is alot of crime in "La America de South" and I need to be able to ask for help. Interestingly enough, some words are the same in spanish and english, like sopa, the word for soap, and embarasada, the word for ectopic pregnancy.

I am so glad my vocabulary es grande!

Got Dis Blog

I made this blog. It's called Quito Fever because I am going to Ecuador for 6 months, and at some point I will probably get sick. Its also called fever because that makes people think of hot things, which is true about Ecuador, a country named after the equator, but also other hot things, like classy clubs where people are dancing. Not that I'll be in clubs all the time, mom, but that things will be awesome and smokin'. But not that kind of smokin, mom.

So I'm not leaving for Quito for three weeks, but I do have a pretty boring internship where I have nothing to do all day, so I thought I'd start this now and get into the swing of things. Hopefully, if I get into a pattern of updating this often, I won't abandon it three weeks and four and a half posts in, how it usually happens. If it does, forgive me, if I keep this going, sing my praises.

So my work is at an organization for latino and immigrant rights. Its a very good NGO, very active and successful, its just that my personal job is not so interesting. It involves talking to people on the phone a lot. This is horrible because as soon as i pick up a phone, I can no longer speak spanish. Yesterday, I forgot the words for "to ask" and "to need," which is a little more than pathetic. Because I get so nervous and clam up, the people I am taking to get confused, and say thigns to me like "do you speak English or Spanish better? You are pretty bad at both." This does not improve morale in an office where the majority of the clients are at risk of deportation.

Luckily, I find things to do. One of my favorites is researching medical anomalies on wikipedia. Did you know that if you have spina bifida, the really bad kind, that your vertebrae actually protrude from your back? like, outside of the skin? sometimes, they are in a cyst/sac thing filled with cerebro-spinal fluid. I am going to be the best nurse ever.

Another part of my job, one I actually get paid for, is working on a telemarketing campaign, calling people in Kansas, Florida, and Utah and asking to connect them to their senators, asking them to ask him to co-sponsor the DREAM Act. This can be really stressful and people yell at you alot, but the people are nice, and I make good money. Because we are connecting people to their politicians, I do a lot of wikipedia research on Republican Senators. Actually, that's where the genetic anomalies stuff came from. Florida Senator Brownback --> Terri Schivo Case--> Comas --> Cerebro Spinal Fluid Dynamics --> Cerebral Shunts --> Hydrocephalus --> Spina Bifida. Man, i am sort of sick when it comes to these things. But did you know Florida Senator Le Mieux ...

Nevermind, I thought there was some scandal about him and his wife, but I couldn't find it. Whoops.

Another thing I do while I sit at work is freak out about Ecuador. Its nice because most of the people here are either immigrants themselves, or have dedicated their careers to helping immigrants, so everybody knows stuff about living in other countries and can give me tips like "don't do illegal things," "go to Baños" and "get a lot of sleep." Sounds good to me. I've also started planning my classes. So far I have signed up to take a Spanish Conversation class, Rural Sociology, an acting class called Voice and Movement, Ethnography, a public health seminar, and Arabic. I'm into all this stuff, but I just have this feeling that its all going to change and I'm going to end up in advanced french and econometrics or something like that. Or maybe an art class. That would be good.

Not much else is happening here. I hang out a lot with Zak and that's nice. Emily and I make fun of everyone we see. My mom goes to work, then comes home and turns on the air conditioner. My sister went to Mexico. She is also all fashionable. Just a shoutout to my gurl.

I hope the intelligence level of this post was acceptable. I'm not sure I'll be able to rise above this point on the bell curve, especially while I spend 4 hours a day repeating myself to red-state citizens on badly connected phonelines.

Well, see you later,

Dita

(Oh! that's an important point. Dita. I am calling myself Dita in Ecuador, because Spanish doesn't really have the long "aaaay" that makes the first a in Dana, and being called "Danna," with the "ahh" sound for the first a really annoys me for some reason. So it's going to be Dita, which I think is cute.)