This weekend, I went to the mountain-hippie-hotsprings town called Baños. By myself. I had a great time. Some pikturz:

this is what was in my backpack

delicious breakfast, a mess of eggs.

bike ride! get ready for lots of scenery photos

I stopped at a tarabita which is a tourist trap combined with a janky cable car-arrangement.

 

that bag is full of fried pork skins cut into sheets. YUMMMno

wadafal

l

hahah ORAL. Nah this is actually for if there was a volcanic eruption and people needed to take shelter. 

see how the vegetation is changing? I was riding downhill into the jungle. I didn't make it or anything, but it was changing as I went down in altitude. 

self timer to show my joy. 

Cable cars, one thing you should not DIY

sitting by a beautiful river

with ice cream

took a truck ride back up the mountain:

and I did some other stuff that day, too, but there was a lot of this.

 

Love from the Andes,

Dana

Today in 1533, Atahualpa was killed. 

Thanks, fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory

Its a little beautiful here

ok so I just had a nice choclo(giant corn on the cob) chat with my host ma. She's not that bad a person. I hadn't realized how much constant talking was part of my upbringing and not other people's. That it might not even be part of this culture, to talk things to death.

but I won't take back that bit about the smile. that's true

Daily Lifes

p>Some people (my grandparents) might be confused about what my daily life is like here in EcuadorSIPWorld. Here's how it happens most days. 

5:40am. Alarm goes off. Snooze

5:50. Alarm goes again. Hate life, worry about how I always end up sleeping on my belly, that can't be good for neck.

6am. actually get up this time. Put on one of two pairs of jeans and one of three shirts. Same shoes every day.

6:15. make breakfast. I boil water for tea, make myself some kind of banana-based smoothie, and some kind of carbohydrate. My host dad drinks oatmeal and eats saltines and watches me in silence. We listen to the Christian radio. 

6:30. get ready for work: fill up my 2 liter bottle with filtered water, get my two little-snack packs of crackers, get my notebook, pens, voice recorder, and money for the bus and lunch

7. leave the house and walk half an hour down the giant hill I live on.

7:30. get to the bottom, wait for the bus.

7:30-7:45. Approximately 17 buses pass and none of them are going to Puembo. Some of them have cool signs on them like this one:

that shows all the laborious tasks the people of Tumbaco can do. but it also makes me think of those images that are actually people having sex. No judgement, plz.

7:45. Get on the Puembo bus. I used to just look the scenery but I just got some headphones so I mostly listen to the Mountain Goats ( Heretic Pride is my Mountain Goats album of the year) and sleep. 

8:15. Get to Puembo. Theres a line out to the corner, about 50 people, mostly Mas and Babies waiting for appoitnment. I battle through and make it to the door on the basis of my scrubs, admire how clean it is in there.

8:45. after I stand around for 30 minutes or so watching stuff that is way too complicated to take fieldnotes on, I go into one of the Drs offices to watch them do their family planning appointments. 

9:40. Those appointments are done, I leave the office to find the nurse swamped in preparing people. Each day, there are like 30 people that come to get the appointment you need to attend school. People do lots of things wrong like not bring the exams we need for the certificate, not bring the 1$ needed for the certificate, not bring the children the certificate is for, or have children that are out of the Puembo district. I spend a lot of time being like "you need an exam of urine AND feces AND blood. Yes. Blood. it's possible to get an exam of blood, its very safe." and "if your child is not going to school, you do not need to get the exams or the certificate." I can say this stuff on the phone too. 

We weigh and measure and take the temparature and blood pressure of so many people. Each day a baby pees on the scale when we take thier daipers off. 

10:30. I watch more appointments with the other Dr. 

11:30. I wait until now or 10 to eat my crackers. It's an obsession. It's a lifestyle. 

here's me and my double chin that has nothing to do with eating crackers.

1pm. Lunchtime with Doña Marcy. We eat chicken, rice, potatoes, and onion salad and gossip. 

1:20. Back to work. I look for files in the hideously disorganized archive room, prepare patients and watch more appointments. 

2:45. The patients are done, Dr. V slaps the giant pile of the clinic histories of the patients she's seen that day, Dr. J pulls out her phone to text in celebration

2:50. Four people come in: one want birth control but is actually already pregnant, one is a screaming child who needs stitches, and one is an over protective mom who wants to vaccinate her 7 year child with vaccines we do not carry and is mad about it. The other is a 27 year old man with some kind of vague ache ("my knee hurts." "I have a rash." "I was just wondering if this bleeding from my ear is normal." "Can you guys remove warts? Because I have a ton of warts and I'd like them removed today if you can.") We help all four of them in the three-quarters way that everyone seems satisfied with. There are a lot of recommendations to just go to the hospital

4:30. We pile into Dr. J's car and drive to Quito. We listen to radio disney very loud, even during the commercials. The Drs talk to very quietly to each or in English to the Georgetown medical student while the Nurse and I sit in back and ask each other simple, repetetive questions like "What is your favorite food? "What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?" "Have you seen The Green Lantern?" "What size shoe do you wear?" 

4:50. The Doc drops me off at the same spot every day and almost forgets every day. I walk up the hill being afraid of getting mugged even though nothing is scary on that walk, ever.

5:15. Make it home, remove horribly sweaty clothes. Eat more crackers. Waste my life on the internet.

8. host parents come home, give me weird foods for dinner. We do not speak but every 45 seconds or so my "mom" catches my eye and gives me a look like  tthat might symbolize love or something.

830pm. I start feeling really bad about not being able to type up the 25 hand scrawled pages into perfect fieldnotes each night. Instead of dealing with this productively, I mostly complain about it to people on Skype. Luckily, my excellent mother was just like "do those in maryland dummy and get enough sleep and don't beat yourself up over it." So I'm going to do that from now on.

This might also be because my desk is so durn messy:

contents include: external hard drive, Ipod, camera, voice recorder and all thier respective cords, two types of candy, my unused planner, notecards, "South America on a Shoe String" "The Dharma Bums in Spanish," a note entitled "Thing to Look Forward to in the US", Spanish-English Dictionary, a lone earring made of dried glue, broken headphones, reciepts, academic articles, my computer case, and a needle and thread. 

10: there is no context of fieldnotes now, I'm just really sitting around and reading and eating candy that I should have given to other people as gifts or candy that I just bought for myself

11: i go to sleep. Blah. 

Isn't like life in a foreign country fascinating and exotic?!?!?

 

Get Ready for some Writing

Instead of appreciating the creations of other people (movies, tumblr, the newspaper, books, food made by the maid), I think I'll do some of my own. That's what blogging's all about, right? pointing the camera towards yourself? 

19th Nervous Breakdown

In direct opposition to the crappy job of blogging I've been doing, here's what happened this weekend. 

Friday Night

• did nothing.


• Called a couple people, they didn't anser


• watched Almost Famous and thought about that for a while


• Host mamita was like "hey do you want to go to the jungle with my son ok cool"


• Made the moral decision not to go to my work thing on Saturday


• Packed furiously


• Finished Almost Famous. 

Saturday 

• Woke up around 5, packed and ate breakfast furiously


• said goodbye to host 'rents who are going to the beach and bringing 6 packages of ham, 3 boxes of tea, and 4 of canneloni. I do not wonder anymore. 


• Found out Diego wasn't coming till around 8, so I slept for a while. 


• Woke up to find Diego in my room ruffling around in his CD collection. He's like come on and Im not wearing pants. 


• We go out to the car and meet the other people with whom we are going to Tena. His ma told me that "Diego, his girlfriend and some other friends" were going. Most of the times I've hung with Diego, we were drinking moonshine on a street corner and listening to punk music, so I was expecting some pretty cool friends. I mean, I'd even shaved my legs for this. At the car, I find his girlfriend, Lora, and a 45 year old man with atheletic socks up to his knee caps. They are listening to Fiona Apple. Originally, I thought he was a bachelor looking for a foreign bride to deflower (uh hem) in some kind of feux indigenous ceremony preformed by bored Schwar teenagers in coconut bras, but it turned out he was just Lora's dad. 


• We drove for many (4) hours and through many (like 5.5) climate zones. 


• Around f10 30 we stopped in Baeza and got trout. I really really love trout around here. It's all either fished by people, like with a pole and worms, that old school , or grown by industrious people in square ponds near rivers. I like both those things, and I like trout. Fried trout, french fried, onion salad, and strawberry juice.


• Oh, also, this is when Pablo began his spree of paying for things. He just got up in the middle of lunch with his mouth full of bread and went to the counter to pay for all of our lunches. I hadn't figured out that he was Lore's dad yet, so this made the sugar-daddy possibility higher. 


• We made it to Tena by about noon, and drove around in the pouring rain for about an hour looking for a hotel. We found called the Pumarosa which I highly recommend. I was still in my double-date mindset and was worried that Pablo (the father) and I were going to share a room and he was going to liquor me up or something, but we each got our own rooms. Can I just expound on how wonderful it is to have one's own hotel room? I'm no Virginia Wolfe here, I just love being able to take up the whole closet and not have to ration towels. Also, not being in an arranged marriage to your friend's friend's dad is good. 


• We got back in the car and drove about half an hour to Misagualli (miss-ah-guay-YEE). This place is great. We only walked through the main town part, but it seemed very sleepy and beachy and nice. We walked to the pier and looked at the Napo River, and they all bought tamarindo and coco juice from this very gregarious vendor who took a long time in getting them change and then refilled the cups when he finally got back. I was terrified about getting sick from water, but really thirsty.


•  River playtime! It was a big wide river with a sandy beach and a strong current but not too many rocks. Pablo rented us inner tubes and I went again and again up to the small rapids and bounced down to the beach. There are some things in life that make me endlessly happy, and rivers and inner tubes are two of those things. Some other's include strong walking bass lines, the flavor of Thai curry, public transportation, and mountains.
  
• Anyway, we played in the river for a long time. It was kind of awkward socially because Diego and Lore were holding hands and cuddling, and Pablo and I were not holding hands and not cuddling and he was wearing something between a speedo and jammers that said "No Diving" on the butt and didn't have any hair on his thighs except for this one ring. 


• The inner-tube-renter took his dog on his belly while he rafted down the rapids. Apparantely he's been featured on TV for this stunt.


• There are a lot of monkeys just running free on this beach and they stole someone's deet and this was a huge deal.


• My thirst overtook me and I went to the coco juice guy and he said "oh I knew when you first came here that you were thirsty, I'm glad you came back, I hate the feeling of being dehyrated. I'm glad a single pretty girl like you is enjoying my beautiful beach." That was nice. 


• We went to a hut and ate maita, which is fish (they call it talapia but I don't think its talapia) cooked over a fire in banana leaves. SO GOOD. but I was feeling nervous about that coco so I just had some boiled yuca, also SO GOOD.


• Here's what Pablo ate in the course of about 40 minutes

1. Maito, the whole fish


2. About an arm's lenght of boiled yuca


3. onion salas


4. two glasses of cold guayuca tea


5. a choco con queso (a giant corn on the cob smothered in mayonaisse and shredded cheese


6. An ice cream bar (he was carrying around the choclo and ice cream at the same time and looking like a pig)


7. Three grilled worms on a skewer


8. a quesadilla/pupusa like thing 


9. another jugo de coco.

• During this time we mostly followed Pablo around watching him eat. 


• We got back in the car and drove to this area called Las Sogas which means Rope Swings. It was another bank of the same river filled with people playing including two youth soccer teams who immidieley stripped down to their  little-kid underwear and began fighting in the water, a father and son who shampooed each other's hair, four people with cerebal palsy of varying degrees, and two kids who were throwing rocks at each other until one hit the other in the forehead and he passed out. 


• We jumped off this ledge a lot. 


• Went home, read Los Vagabundos de Dharma (oh man Beat is so good in Spanish) and fell asleep.


• Went to this pizza place called Bella Selva and everyone got kind of freaked out at me for just ordering a pizza with onions and mushrooms and no meat or fruit or corn. It's pretty normal, guys.


• We crossed the bridge to this coctail place and ordered huge caloric beverages. Lore and I had "Ron Coco" which was like a spiked milkshake and could sustain a family of five. Diego had this giant maracuya thing with a lot of fruit. Pablo had a single shot of tequila which they brought with about ten lime slices and a whole ramekin of salt, worrying us that he had accidentally purchased an entire bottle. No, he just enjoyed his condiments, forming a cocaine-neat line of salt on his thumb and slurping it off, gnawing on lime slices before neatly sipping his tequila in four or so minishots as we slurped on our Ron Cocos. 


• Pablo had been paying for everything so far besides the ice cream, so I whispered to Diego and Lore that I would buy us the drinks. WHOOPS i only brought a 5 not a 20. I threw that in but my chivalry was denied.


• Slept. Naked, the benefit of the solo hotel room. 

Sunday. I'm going to cease the bullet points so I don't feel like I have training-wheels on. Woke up, read some more, jittered around, paid for the hotel before Pablo beat me to it. We went to this gringo-oriented place on the malecon for breakfast. I had fried eggs and real coffee and tomate de arbol juice and read The New Yorker which is my idea of best. After breakfast, we went back to the hotel and got suggestions of what to do from the owner.  Pablo searched for his room key for 30 minutes before we found it in his room.

We drove 30 minutes on the highway, than 40 minutes on this dirt road to finally abanon the car in a ditch. We were searching for this hotel Hakuna Matatta and the beauitful beach there about. We made it to Hakuna Matata and found their beach guarded by an Irish man with very poor spanish. Due to Diego and I speaking english, we found out that the beach was 3 k up the path through this community. The community had been "in fiestas" and we had to ask thier permission.

So we continued up this cobbelstone and mud road for a while longer. We hear the community before we see it. It's the Spice Girls, its a techno remix, but I love bass lines and I remember them. As we get closer, it switches to another Kareoke hit of the 90s, that A Little Bit of Monica song that that rapper sang in the Macy's Day Parade.

We see the houses by the time "I'm Blue Daba Dee Daba Die" starts up. They are small board-based houses a little off the ground as they need to be. There are yards with flowers and corn. There are clothelines and chairs and porches. There are people near their houses, and on the other side of the futball field that is the middle of the town, there is the pavillion with the music where people are drinking. 

It's like a Kurt Vonnegut scene: four tourists in water shoes standing on the edge of a beaten field while 10 men and one woman pregnant with hepatitis dance in drizzle and smack empty liquor bottles together. We don't move until they approach us and they do, four of the men and the woman and they all shake hands and don't let Lore and I go for longer than they should. I haven't smelled breath that fermented since I don't want to tell you, I haven't seen eyes that yellow since a client at the homeless services organization was a week from dead. They are celebrating the graduation, they tell us, of the kids from school. They graduated on Friday. The man who won't let go of my hand keeps asking me if I'm a señorita or a señor. I guess it's cool that even drunk people see that I'm queer?

The woman asks us for a dollar to use the river and Pablo pulls out tens and twentys in a mess from his mesh short pocket and I want to dive at him NO! Currency is capitalism and there is nothing more alluring than spending when you're spent yourself. Money might make it better, but it will only turn her yellow eyes green until she finally falls asleep. There are four of us only, so she technically owes us a dollar. We straggle to her house which seems to have some sort of store attached and she offers Lore a dollar of yoghurt as change. Lore and Pablo insist that they don't teach change, for which a young man mouths "gracias" a them. We shoo off the hand-shakers and cross the field to an audience of drunken, hungover, and children's eyes.

Here's the river

Some drunk folks by the giant rock in the river.

We play in the river for a while, I think big thoughts and am glad I know how to swim. It starts to thunder and lightining, so we walk back through the town in the pouring rain. Pablo wants to practice his english so we finally have something to talk about. He tells me the plot of The Fifth Element: "There is a girl, a very pretty girl. I do not know her name living out of the movie. There are aliens and they want this girl because she knows things. It is very full fantasy and I like that. He is still wearing his speedo. 

We drive back to the hotel shivery and soaking. They appeared to have no check-out time and we take advantage of this and the respectably hot water and shower ourselves. On the road, we drive to Archidona to eat more maito, more yuca, more onion salad, and more guayusa. We fill up the car and it only costs 15 dollars and gas is $1.50 a gallon.

On the way home, we get stopped because they are doing construction and the road is only one-way for a while. At the stop, a woman is selling the guayusa leaves for a whole necklace of folded leaves for a dollar. She's also sleeing fresh damp cinnamon bark and some kind of fruit that smells like rotting meat. Further on, we stop to buy mushrooms from one of the many stalls along the highway. We go into the green houses to watch her cut the six pounds. 

We drive home and I am DJ and I choose all dreamy, trippy stuff. We make it to Quito, drop Pablo off at his apartment and get back to Cumbaya. 

So that was pretty fun. 

Also, we listened endlessly to The Rolling Stones on that long dirt road, so that's the title of this post. Also, I introduced them to The Dodos and Fleet Foxes and they were impressed. This is the first time someone has been impressed with my taste in music since tenth grade or Ryan Douglass

Ya'll can call me Hipster Nurse

Celebrate!

As I now have 29 single spaced pages of fieldnotes, I believe it is time to celebrate with an avocado, some skyping with those I love, and my current favorite songs (judge as you will)

Sie7e's Tengo Tu Love   This opening sounds like John Meyer's Why Georgia, but it gets better, don't worry. I love the product-dropping, the alternate use of the word  "guagua" and the ska-respect. Sie7e is just chillin with his lady friend and taking goofy pictures of yourself, and we've all had weekends like that, or we're waiting for that summer, that beach, that special someone. Also, I like the person who's love he has isn't that super hot and all showing off her sexy bod. She's pretty, sure, but its not about how good her ass is and how he has that. He's just happy to be with someone who he gets along with. When I tenga the love of somebody, I'll be sure to play Sie7e for them. 

 

Plain White T's Rhythm of Love. Ok, this is really embarassing. I listen to Radio Disney a lot here, it's on most buses unless they are playing folklorica or traditional dance music that I must admit is indistinguishable to me from one song to next. the Doc also plays radio Disney in her car as we drive home, and I tried to ask if she knew this song by being like "Sabe la cancion que dice 'play the music sweeeeet and lowwwwww'" and everyone in the car took their eyes off the road to stare at me in bewilderment. 

 

 

Kanye West's Get 'Em High, Ratatat Remix.  In my avoidance of these 29 pages, I've been looking at music blogs that are way out of my level of music coolness, interest, and knowledge. But I know Kanye is cool, electronic music is getting popular, and I understand the drug slang in this one! Also, it's chill and talks about online dating. Also, "I won't give you that money that you asking for. Why you think me and Dane cool? We assholes" Dane Cook is an asshole, but I'ma let the song finish. 

 

The Avett Brother's Kick Drum Heart. Britta will be proud of me on this one. I've always resisted the Avett Bro's appeal but the line got stuck in my head and I found they were inside me the whole time. I've been working on transforming anxiety into anticipation, and there's been moments where all I can do in grin out the bus window and double-bass pedal my heart. Mom's will like this band, more than most of the other ones. 

The Tiny Dancer Montage from Almost Famous. I watched this really sweet clip like four times last night around 11, than Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters. than I listened to Wilco until I fell asleep. I just have a lot of feelings. 

 

Nicki Minaj's Super Bass . I've written elsewhere  about how her videos are, if not groundbreaking, really good at communicating. This is another one about listening to your body being happy and just groovin. In the club. Also, I like songs with onomonopia. 

 

Why Yes, I Did Just Get Catcalled by the Police.

And instead of a “ayyyy nena” or a honk, they just gave me a little “whaaaoooop” of the sirens.

Weekday Update

This is the warmup to my field notes. It is 640 pm on Friday and I just rolled around in the yard with the dogs for a while. There really is no better way to feel loved while getting covered in spit. Besides, like, making out or something. It's been really awesome here! Actually I've been pretty lonely and eating a lot, but the activities themselves have been awesome!

Recap

Saturday, July 2

Had a lot of fun with Hannah in Quito, going shopping at the fruit market, chilling with her family, having the most awkward cake-making experience ever, making fun of Hannah because she forgot the end of the 50 states song, etc. It's so awesome having another gringa here, especially one as great as Hanner. She's doing an awesome internship with a micro-finance organization and her and her host mom have all these brilliant conversations about anti-machismo action. It's very inspirational. Also, she does things like feed me twizzlers and endlessly quote 30 rock, so its a pretty wonderful relationship.

Sunday I went to Quito and saw Jimmy and Abuelita and Abuelo. Jimmy and I watched family guy and A&A were old and talked about that. Abuelo is so old he is just a husk, full of complaints and gas and chocolate cravings. I talked to abuela a lot about how it means to keep loving someone even after they can't love you back.

I went back to Cumbaya on the bus. I love knowing the bus system. I kinda organized my life and wrote a lot, went running, cleaned my room, talked to my lovely mom.

Monday...I went to work, then came home and did some field notes and slept

Tuesday, I went to work as well! At 6 or so I met my friend Carlos in Cumbaya and we had dinner and an awesome conversation. Carlos is one of those people that is so excited about the tremendous possiblities of the internet, really love it, feels himself in code, but is ok with the fact that he's also terrified of Steve Jobs dying and the next generation what are thier inner lives like!??! We have really similar opinons, are both really good with words, but approach things in completely different ways. It's so interesting to get that perspective. He's such a focused conversation-partner. I could talk about how great these three hours of talking were for quite some time.

Wendesday, I went to work as well. Then, after work, I went to Quito again to see Pilar. I took my old buses, my old route through the neighborhood. That place will always stick with me. I bought popcorn and ice cream, then went into the hosue to find no one there and no food. So i turned back around and went to the store to make pasta. While examining the tomato paste, Charito my arch nemisis ran into me. She was up to her ususal tricks: "oh your famous noodle dishes" she crows "They disgust me. Everyone else seems to like pasta, but to me it is disgusting. It looks like worms." "I will wait for you, its not like I have anyhting to do besides watch tv alone. We need to talk to gether. This neighborhood is so dangerous, you're likely to get stabbed walking up the stairs" (that simply isn't true. not awesome, sure, but no one dies).

climbing the stairs to the house. "is Pilar home?"

"no, not yet"

"let me use your phone then, mine got cut off. Just a few calls"

"its not my house, I can't do that"

"ok I guess you are right."

We part ways and I listen to socialist fight songs on the radio for three minutes unitl she knocks on the door:

"I was thinking about it and I know how pilar gets girls to pay to live in her house and i want to do that too"

"ok, I'll tell Kalamazoo about you"

"no, because pilar only gets girls because she is friends with the teachers becasuse its such a bad neighborhood. no one would live with me because its a bad neighborhood. So we could do it under the table, I would only ask for 300 and pilar asks for 350. Tell all the girls to come to my house."

"Ok, i will, but kalamazoo won't just let people come to your house for free. Besides only ten students are coming this year, so you won't get one"

"Alright, but when your girl firends come to quito, they stay with me"

"ok charito, they stay with you."

Telling pilar, she responds, "I don't think I would want anyone to stay with Charito."

Amen.

We watch Death At A Funeral, the recent one with the rich black family, a movie that didn't irritate me about portrayals of race for once. We start "Friends With Benefits" which is horrible and we talk about our lives instead. I go to sleep at 11 and wake up at 530 and ride three long buses to get to work.

Thursday and Friday, you'll have to wait for. Make your audience drool for more, as the Writing Handbook for Vampires says.

Saturday Night Thoughts

I. I sit out here and I watch it get dark. I can see the mountains in front of me and my warm, light room behind. It's pretty quiet so you can here birds squeak and the spur of thier wings. There's music beyond that, music made by happy people for other happy people who are ready for it to be dark, looking for the company of others, to move easily, to know thier place and not have to worry.

The musicians, too, don't worry- thier fingers know and they aren't embarassed to whoop or shout. They are proud of the music, its patterns and shiny, spinning heaights. There's no need to end songs quickly like the scared white boys in front of guitars do so fast. People are enjoying it, it some thing to adore, so why end?

It's very different here than in Quito. I see only one layer of houses and roofs, trees, no cars or trolleys and no people. Is there daily life here? Is everyone struggling to keep floating and breathing and wear clean underwear? Yes, of course they are, you can tell from the smoke of cooking fire barbecues, from the yelps of musicians, the lights of cars on the highway below. Just as we learned that everybody's pretty much working for the same stuff when we took the bus or on our class fieldtrip to the history museum or on that golden ticket of study abroad, I know it too in Cumbayá. We're close to Quito, but with a mountain and a rainstorm in between.

II. It's not at its most obvious but the earth is most subtle and vunerable at dusk, and humans are at thier brighest on a Saturday night. At 6:35 pm July 2nd on the Equator, you can see the mountains sigh and the people squirm. At this moment, the ground is tired and loosing its sun heat. The plants are squinting critically at their stores of sugar-from-sun, stream keep going but wish they were dry. Light blints but it knows it doesnt have much left before the slide from wave to particle. Hills slope. The earth looks backwards to rest.

But the people- everyone's on the bus, putting on thier best pants, making eye contact, biting their lip dreaming of hamburgers and solace and sex. Everybody's wondering what's coming next on a Saturday night.

That future, that past, that spilling cool darkness.

I Must Get This Candy Out of My Room

I brought 6 lbs of fun-sized candy to Ecuador in my hiking backpack. This stuff makes great gifts, as Reeses, Snickers, Kit Kat and the like are very hard to find and expensive at that. I have it all planned out in my mind who I’m going to give the candy to and how much (150 pieces divided by 5 or 6, depending on how much I want to spread the love). Unfortunately, I don’t have any gift bags and Ecuadorians are pretty big on ceremony for gifts. Actually, I think anyone would be kind of weirded out if you just dumped a plastic bag full of partially melted candies on their kitchen counter. I’m working to find gift bags, but my rout to work and home is much more erudite than it was last time around. There are no cabinas for calling people, no internet cafes, no “bazar-peluqueria-deli-tiendita-minimercado-tienda-de-fiestas-infantiles” that occupied the ground floor of my old rooms.

Besides the awkwardness of giving people gifts after you’ve been hanging out with them for two weeks, the other problem is that I want to eat the candy. I’m still at that point with my hosts of not feeling comfortable walking around the house barefoot and I am constantly apologizing to the maid. I walked into the kitchen and saw she was there with a mop. She and the mop were on opposite sides of the room, but I remembered my mother’s sternness to never spoil a clean floor. I immedietley start apologzing. She’s like “whaaaaa” and keeps washing dishes. I wanted to make myself some kind of non candy snack. I need vegetables, they are usually just as garnish, thin pink slices of tomato and canoes of avocado.

Yesterday, at the subcentro, I had the most disgusting lunch. When I first looked at it, I thought it was some kind of cebiche thing. I’ve eaten raw fish before, and while its not my favorite, it’s paltable. I tasted the sauce, thick and wood colored, little half-potatoes all around. Peanuts. Raw fish and peanut? No, not fish, no blessing of muscle, just the soft give of subcutaneous fat. Oh yuck. Oh god, I’m eating skin. It’s cut into neat squares and there is plenty of sauce and potatoes and rice (yes please, I’ll have some bread with my bread) so I make do, slapping a square between a half-moon of potatoe and a pile of rice. I don’t even bother with the avocado until I’m ten squares in, there is no reason to ruin beauty with this monster of a dish.

I’ve been picking out only the cleanest, whitest squares, not even thinking about thier origin, just looking to get them into and out of my mouth as quickly as possible. As the other doctors enter, including 1 super gringa and 1 medium gringa medical students, I am only mocked for my consumption of, what I now find out, is pork skin. PORK! the dirtiest of animals! The cloven footed sin! The carried of tricknonois and Tay Sachs and botched circumcisions, killer of my people! So recently covered in bristles and rolling in mud. Un cooked, sliced and drenched in peanut butter and mayonnaise. As we are discussing this, I get down to the nastier chunks. Reddish or brownish, they cling together with bits of the skin, or the little tubes and levers that keep us in one piece. I am not eating this. Its time for rice and avocado.

Of course, my suffering is not over. We have to listen to the two gringas complain and be grossed out, discussing the minutea of the texture as I feel it swim in my stomach. I ate in silence, they push food around their plates with complaints and I want to bolt out of there and throw up in the corn plot behind the house. The dentist (who I think is kind of an alcoholic) and the Doña’s husband (the Don) are drinking beer and they offer me some. There’s the perfect 3 once juice glass filled with amber Pilsener, bubbles rising. As I accept the doctor and nurse launch into long rants about how it is deeply irresponsible to drink on the job. My glass sits in front of me untouched, my sociology textbook humming in my ears about gatekeepers and cultural customs, the pigs are flying in my stomach.

Tina's First Day of School

I am glad that it is societally acceptable to be scared of bugs, because I am scared of bugs. There are bugs in my bathroom. I don't even want to describe them. I guess 400 meteres down really does make a difference.

However, today was, if not fun, at least extremely productive, which is odd for first days and definitely for Ecuador.

I met my dueña, Tamara in the parking lot by the supermarket by school. She took me to the house which is like 2 k up a mountain from the highway. This will be my form of exercise, I will call it "adventures in urban hiking." The house is really excellent, except for these bugs. It has lots of exposed roof beams, little alcoves (hiding bugs, I bet), uniquely bending staircase, a balcony by my room, and an avacado tree. This is all I could ask for. Additionally, I am in love with someone in the family but I don;t know who. My room has some stuff in it from the rest of the family, including a cabinet filled with at least 300 cds, all of which I already love or want to listen to or have never heard of or forgot I was obsessed with. And these are not burned disks on a spool, no, they are in thier cases with booklets and coverart. There are boxsets of Wilco, Dylan, Bowie, Green Day. This is audiotory heaven. And the bookshelf! My current forrunners are "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" but Murakami, "Please Kill Me: An Oral History of Hardcore Punk," and a Patti Smith book, all in spanish. Now that's what I'm talkin about. There are also biographies and coffee table books of Lou Reed, The Clash, and Mafalda. Someone had ganas and disposable income. And behind me are at least 40 dvds: Bottle Rocket, seasons of the simpsons, T Rex, Pavement, and Sigur Ros concerts. You know. Just bragging. So I will not even complain a lick about those bugs in my bathroom.

So after seeing the wonderful house, I went to school and did some computer stuff. Then I went to Puembo and surprised everybody. Spent a lot of time with Doña M and her kids who both love me and I like them. They are very down to earth and happy. I am impressed. They have puppies and a new room. The doc still thinks I am weird, I think. There are two medical students that are also assisting/watching, one from Venezuela and one who actually goes to George Washington U and UMD for undergrad. Small world.

Anyway, we all ate lunch, but me and the kids second b/c there wasn't enough space. After lunch, I went back to La Primavera, where I live. Tried to find a telephone cabina, but there were none. Pilar had told me she would be at the hospital with Santi (the sick guy) at 3 and it was like 330 so I decided to walk to the clinic. It was my first adventure in urban hiking! I walked uphill for 45 minutes, stopping twice to ask directions and once to cry. I got to the clinic and Santi was sleeping and his mom was there and she called Pilar who told me to come to the consultorio. SOOOOOO I rode the bus for another hour then go to Abuela's house (where the consultorio is). Sat around for 2 hours, chatting with: Abuela, Diego, Monika, Paulina, Carlos, the Cuban physical therapist, someone with a baby. Gaby came, went to the hospital. I didn't need to wait there for so long because pilar had given me the keys, but I really didn't wnat to get a taxi from the house for myself, I was worried it would cost like 30 dollars or at least 13. So after a long time (including a really weird session with abuelo, I'll go off about him later), Piliar, Ilidan and I left the house and ran into Miguel, the taxi driver friend. He took us to Pilar's house, Jimmy helped me carry my stuff down, and the Miguel and I chatted all the way to Cumbayá and I didn't have to worry about getting murdered. It all only cost $10.

Around 8 Tamara and Alberto came home, and we ate locro, choclo, chicken, and salad. Note to self do not eat empanadas and bread at abuelas house, you will be well fed at home. I like my new dueños, they are friendly and are giving me a ride down the hill at 645 tomorrow. Maybe only one session of urban hiking a day.

24 hours in Ecuador and I've already:

-Taken 2 taxis, 3 car rides, and 8 car rides

-eaten chicken organs, pork cutlets, empanadas, white rolls, sugar-not-corn-syrup-cola, big-kernal corn (choclo), and mayonnaisse-based cream sauce, national foods of Ecuador

-been whistled at three times

-made a goofy error ("They laid down" instead of "they were assaulted")

-forgotten everyone's name

-gotten sunburned.

-checked my pocked for my money 456,878,874 times.

-rode a llama (jk lolz)

Made it to Quito!

I thank the blessed entropy (not my phrase, her's) that got me here, and the wing-flaps extending that got me to stop. Flying over the valley, I thought of Saskia's feeling that Kenya was part of the earth as a woman's body. If I were to force that metaphor, I think Quito would be the thumbprint. Jagged, green and smoothed but harsh faults and mesas from a chemical erupbtions under the skin. Flying over, circling the city, I felt the thrum of joy as I reconized the Rio Chicha, the Parque Metropolitano, and the curves and nadirs that make up the outskirt suburbs. We swooped so low that I could see the cars of Avenia Naciones Unidas, see a bullfighter practicing with his red cloth in the taurion stadium (I am not making this up), Jamie and Scott's apartment building, the Unicorn statue I'd shoot past in pre-dawn taxi rides. Everything I see remindes me of some silly K joke. Those really funny videos of pratfalls and pranks we watched on the way to the galapagos? They are called Just for Laughs, they are produced in Montreal, and they are available on the back-of-the-seat LAN tvs. The shuttle we sat on for like 45 minutes that one time? Tourists are still trapped there. That rediculous hamburger stand? Still hilarious. I'll have to get his under control.

I am here, I am safe. I can still speak Spanish and people understand me and do not laugh at me. This feels so good. I got to get a taxi, remember street names. I got to greet my grandmother. They asked how my family was doing, asked by name. Asked if "my mother was still a psychologist" which isn't really a transient state but is still really nice. Illidan, who was like a 4 month old baby when I first met him, is a year old and in that stage where he just wants to walk around holding other peoples hands and throwing balls under the table.

I called Pilar at the airport, million pounds of baggage on my back. The phone call cost 30 cents. Took a taxi to abuelas house- 6 dollars. Ecuadooooor, and the financial situation is easy. Abuela gave me cafecito and stale bread and delicious butter. I was offered ancient, sweating cheese handmade by an aquaintance. The best way to avoid this is to pretend you don't see the cheese and that the person offeirng it to you is just talking about cheese in the abstract. We got a ride through gridlock traffic from Aunt Monica. Luckily, we made ourselves a third lane (baby Ili on a lap in the front seat) and made it home fast.

The baby is staying with Pilar while Santi is in the hospital, sometimes Benja, the 8 year old, does too. He's scared without his mom who has super attachment parenting parented him. He misses "la teta" and thinks the bottle is a poor substitute. But he liked being naked without his diaper, and liked playing with his little penis and laughing at his own body. We updated each other on gossip. i gave her the thrift store shirts (this is more awesome than it sounds) and I think she liked them. Ecuadorian gift giving is something I'm really bad at. I just didn't want to give her them in front of people. Oh SNAP I forgot a hostess gift for my dueños. But! I have been assured that the dueños are awesome, non creepy people. It's a mom and a dad and I'm meeting her in the Supermaxi parking lot of Cumbaya tomorrow at 9. Hallelulaja! Everything worked out just as well as it could have. And I think I'll be asleep by 8:30.

It is such a cool feeling to return to a place. It's very strange to have the memories still be fresh but stored in long term memory. I walk into the kitchen and feel that it's morning, I need to make breakfast but at the same time awash with how things have changes slightly. But the conditioning is still there. the house has a water filter with two switches you turn to get the clean water. It's run by electricty and the circuit was making it electrocute you when you switched it on for like two months. I've still got my Pavlovian fear of the switches.

Here I am. I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm writing so much. I can't believe it. I never thought I;d really come back. I never thought my spanish would stay, that people would recognize me, that I'd rememmber words and pictures. But I did! It was worth it, i think, just to be able to listen to someone listen to the radio. I'm not writing very coherently, this won't go n the blog. i am so happy to be back in this big bed. It's very odd, because what was familiar about the bed was it's not-my-bedness and now this same unfamiliar bed is what I feel a connection to. Has the subject become the object? Have the colonized become the emperors? Has my graphomania continued unabated? Is it getting hot in here or do I just have a QUITO FEVER!!!

Miami Fieldnotes- PART TWO (family worries)

Things have gotten a little more itchy since my battery hit 8% and I stopped writing. It was 10 then, and I hustled over the the LAN counter because that is when they were opening check in for the Quito flight. LAN was its typical 45 minutes late which I didn't mind. I'm reading Gary Schyngart's Super Sad True Love Story which I really like so I was just sitting on the ground chillin. Of course, I also took an hour nap between 430 and 530 on the floor of gate C8 in BWI, so its not like I'm one for ceremony. I have this little beanbag pillow but its in a normal sized pillow case, so I can sleep on that and wrap the excess fabric around my eyes. I clutch my backpack and put my passport inside the front of my pants. Hobo 4 lyfe.

Anyway, I checked in and all. People (namely, the LAN clerk, the Dunkin Donut's clerk, and this silly Argentinian family who almost forgot thier passports in security, have been speaking to me in Spanish and nodding and giving me coffee with milk when I ask for coffee with milk and generally not laughing at me or slapping at me for cultural apropriation or anything. It's very satisfying to feel like I retained some semblance of fluency. Of course, I don't think I could say "It's very satisfying to feel like I retained some semblance of fluency" in Spanish, but we'll get there. I can ask for coffee with milk and that's a lot more useful.

One thing that is not useful at all is the pay phones in the Miami airport. I need to call two people:

1. my grandparents. I really need to do this, and I am feeling guilty and stressed that I am not. I know I could send them an email or call them tomorrow, but I feel like they are really depending on this for thier happiness or something. This might be one thing I need to let good

2. My mom to see if Pilar wrote on my wall saying she was coming to the airport or not. So, if there was a damn intternet cafe in this place, I could do that myself, but that is apparently too passe in this world of iphones and äppärät (thats a Schyngart reference for you).

I have tried to use numerous payphones. Twice, they have eaten my dollar that it now takes to make a long distance call. Twice for my Grandparents and twice for my mom I've gotten the busy signal which seems oddly coincidental unless they are talking to each other. I'm so hesitant to try again because its very hard to get change and I don't have my many dollars in quarters on me. I keep going into these recursive magazine and candy stores and asking for change from these grouchy cuban ladies and of course they say no. Of course, I don't want to buy chips or magazines, I've got too much already, calories and stuff to carry. I bought some chapstick with a 20 and that got me like 17.50 in change, but it's down to a five and a ten now, and I'm back where I started. I'm so hesitant to use those phones. Did you know the little coin return cover has a lip that catches quarters? That is a manufacturing feature that is just evil. Why would they design something that is supposed to return your money to catch your money? Its impossible to get out if you have fingers of normal lenght, too. Believe me, the passengers on the 12:40 to Ottawa as my wittness, even if you jab your middle finger in there (the longest and most brash finger), you can't get those quarters out, even if you squat and mutter to yourself. Not even that helps.

Well, I've got two and a half hours before my flight leaves and an hour till I board. The next conundrum: buy a 7$ fancy ass sandwhich that will probably be bad or a 2$ McDonald's sandwhich which will also probably be bad. I do not even know in this situation.

I'll try calling each family member once more and then give up. Ma and grandma and grandpa, if I do not make contact with you, I sincerely apologize. I am safe in the Miami airport, keep on keeping on.

Miami Fieldnotes- THE FIRST

Miami airport is strange, that can be confirmed, especially when you are wandering semiaimlessly for 5 hours with 45 pounds of technology and magazines on your back.

Flying in, the delicate breakwater islands and the skyscrapers, i wanted to live here, maybe. There'd certainly be work in interpretation or teaching or whatever. It's overcast and humid and about 90 degrees and I know there's no respite of winter, but the red roofs are uniform, the buildings are low, football fields are frequent. There's something poetic about living on a land so flat and so close to the sea. So close to drownding. The city is filled with huge puddles, most desguised as golf corses. Hide the sinkholes with sand traps. The square blocks of water might be shrimp ponds.

Inside the airport, I realize that this place was shocking when I we got back last time because it is a shock. People coordinate thier movements in ways that you'd never see elsewhere- 45 boyscouts all searching the leg-pockets of thier cargo pants as their leader commands them. two old men, four adult sons and one little boy all wearing matcihng "white guy on vacation" shirts, printed with blue leaves. Did all the wives stay home? Were they banned because they wanted to wear non-matching capri pants? A family of five each pushes a luggage cart in perfect synchrony, identicle bad posture and hung heads.

Types of transport I've seen:

Cops of bikes, segways, feet. Carts ranging from single perosn golf carts to mini buses. Endless umbrella strollers. A woman in a wheelchair with two children on her lap.

People look at me bad in the airport bathroom when I scrub my neck with paper towels (packed the soap) and wash out my toothpaste with warm automatic facuet water. What? Can't a girl take an acidopholous pill at a waterfountain without getting flack about it? You're the one who's plucking your eyebrows and leaving the extra hairs all over the edge of the sink- what is this, my co-op house?

There's lots of iterations in the airport. It's shaped like a giant U but badly explained, so I ended up out of security immeditely and outside more than once. There's so many men in construction vests, so many help-staff in absolutely hideous shirts. It's seriously the ugliest shirt design I have ever seen. They must look tacky on purpose. At every check-in station there are workers in black jumpsuits with neon green patches, vigeriously spinning baggage on these steel lazy-susan like aparatuses and wrapping them in the same bright color of plastic wrap. It makes sense, its a useful thing to do to an overstuffed or flimsy bag, but their work is so rapid and repetitive that it looks like that of manufacture rather than maintinece and prevention. Chuck Klosterman sees the airport, especially international airports as huge working bodies. Acutally, he sees them as purgatory, but I see them as cells. These wrappers of TrueStar SecureBag perform some important function. They are the rhizozomes, producing goldgibodies. Maybe they are some organ that makes the cellulose to keep the cell wall strong and with its gifts for the folks unstolen. As soon as the bags are coated they are thrown on the conveyor belt, into the nucleus.

I forgot to call my grandparents before I left, earning major bad family karma. I left my cell phone at home because I only would use it to make this call. I'm bouncing back and forth between businesses to get quarters for the pay phone. Hudson news lady tells me to buy something. I find nothing under 2$ which is a real monopoly they have, let me tell you. My great grandma would creak out in russian tones "Zhey take advantaj!" So I go to starbucks, coffee is 2.30, the barrista tells me they have a change machine. I wander around, doing that drunk-esque walk where you just slam from one foot to the other turning rapidly. I go to the infromation desk, a lady who I thought was maybe African but she speaks in spanish to a janitor. I ask if there's a change machine, there isn't, I explain the situation. I go back to Hudson news, store of dissatisfaction. I put my backpack on her desk to check for quarters.

"I let you use my phone."

"What? No, I can't do that. I don't want to abuse your job"

"Not my job, not thier phone. Just use my phone"

"Are you sure? You shouldn't do this if you don't want to"

She picks up this early model black berry in one of those bulky plastic and fabric cases and slides it down the counter. I pull out my pink notecard: US Phone #s. Call G&G. As I punch in the 513 area code, the phone pulls up lots of names that start with Fe....but my grandparents aren't in her contacts.

No answer. "It's still early in texas."

"Do you want to try again?"

"No, I'll wait a while. Thank you so much."

"When I'm in texas, you let me use your phone."

"Of course. Thank you"

"I'll be here until 3 if you want to come back."

"Thank you"

I walk towards my terminal (still unsure if its J or H), no longer doing that zig-zag scissors walk. Now I'm a drunk reformed, back straigt under weight, feet forward. I might just be faking it until I get out of her motherly gaze, but I really do want to make her proud. I'm glad my grandma didn't answer- to slip her the $1 I would have for using her minutes would have been tacky and destroyed my interaction with the culture, my participant observation in how this supercell works.