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?!?!?

 

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. 

 

Culture Shock? More like Culture MOCK!

My internet in Quito was too slow to read most of the webcomics I usually keep up with, so I kept myself to Thursday Savage Love and incessant facebook. But I just spent the last hour and a half reading the last five months of my favorites ( Toothpaste For Dinner, Natalie Dee, Married To the Sea, XKCD, A Softer World, and, to a lesser degree, Questionable Content and SuperPoop)

NOTE: these links have bad words and sekzual references in them. some reference marijuana. Please avoid if this is not funny for you.

Another NOTE: It's much easier to get all this if you open each comic up in its own tap (Right Click, choose Open Image in Another Tab). Just for your help, grandma.

Reading them has really brought back all the things I am looking forward to about my life in our great nation: joys of the English Language, brilliant industrial developments the continuing drug war, liberal nut jobs, immigration reforms.

Things are going to be just great at Kalamazoo, too. I can look forward to classroom dynamics, people who think just like I do , playing games, cooking with my friends, bizarre fashion choices of my fellow students, making things smell good, having a really clean house, hip hop remixes at parties, working on my major, living with other people, yelling at people for eating cookie dough.

and in my own personal life: hypochondria , anxiety, getting at the clothes in my storage locker in Kalamazoo, personal transportation, speakin spañol, chillin out, interacting with local law enforcement, being a vegetarian, making fun of pop music/promoting public health, my own personal brain chemistry, puns, feelin great.

And of course the future: finally getting a Big Brother, havin babies (and pets!), staying in hotels all around the world, craft projects.

Enough links for you? Just one more? Okay. Gotcha with that one, didn't I? It's not all fun and games here in Washington. Now I must smack myself for writing that sentence.

I hope everyone has a nice friday and a good weekend. I'm off to eat breakfast foods, see "the worst movie ever made" and march for women's rights. See you pre-Oscars!

Fwiday

It's Friday and I didn't go to Puembo today and I don't really want to write an entry, but I'm more afraid and embarassed by failure. I told myself I would write an entry every day for this month (its ok if I write it one day and don't post it till the next, or if I write it for a school journal (see everything I write about Puembo) or if it is stupid or a silly list. MUST WRITE EVERY DAY)

Writing writing writing writing gotta pee.

Peed.

Some things that have happened recently

-Went to ICRP class and Galapagos seminar. We all have a lot of angst about our IRCPs and how to get good grades in the class. I'll stay quiet on the issue for political correctness, but I will share this quote

Teacher: So why were whalers so intent on hunting sperm whales in the Galapagos?

Impudent student (me): for the sperm?

Teacher: That's correct!

So it turns out that the word for sperm (esperma) is also a word for whale fat and thusly a word for candle. Meaning I could now say "Blow out the esperma, its getting late" and it would be COMPLETLEY CORRECT. Except in spanglish and I don't really use candles that much. But still!

-Just spent $430 on plane tickets to Cuenca for next weekend. For myself and two friends who are paying me back, but still. I feel like my mom is going to have a fainting spell.

-Speaking of medical emergencies, I tried to go swimming today. I was like 500 m in when I got this horrible cramp in my shoulder. Certain it was a heart attach, in reality gas pain, I kicked with a kickboard for 150 m and then got out and took a really long shower

-Speaking of swimming, I met my CONFIDENTIALLY MAINTAINED friend at the pool and we had a swimming lesson: the frog kick. she's a little scared of the ocean so we are getting ready for the Galapagos.

-So you know how my abuela has the dental clinic in her house? where malcolm lives? And the clinic has a guard to let people in and he has a girlfriend and the girlfriend won her town beauty pagent and we met her today and she is beautiful and totally silent.

-I have a cold and the main symptoms are abundant yellow-orange snot and a feeling of dizziness. It's not just normal cotton head. It feels like a combination of standing up when you have low blood pressure and having the spins when you are very drunk. Advil seems to help for no apparent reason. It doesn't hurt! How could Advil help?!?!

-I watched 3/4 of the Facebook movie and it was actually good and made me glad I left the east coast.

-Tomorrow is the 14th which means have been here for five months which means we barely have a month left. Alpha and Omega.

"""""""""""

"After months of placing it accidentally," she said, "I have finally realized the location of the quotation mark on the Ecuadorian keyboard."

"Oh, yes indeed. Instead of using the ümlat sign placed ¨awkwardly¨around phrases and sometime ïnterfearing¨when words start with vowels, I can instead press ´Shift´and then ´2,´" she crowed.

"And how did you encounter this epiphany?" asked the lady waxing the floors.

"As all brilliant scientists do, by accident! Looking to form the ´at´symbol, I pressed simple Shift instead of the mysterious ´Alt G.´Of course, when I pressed 2, no @ came out, rather the glorious and long saught-after "! What glory! Praises be!"

She muttered herself to sleep.