Thoughts and What I Did Last Monday

Its so nice to write stuff down, to have a conversation with yourself. To pick out the right words and even the right letter, so easy to find on my clean keyboard and just set them down. and letters are tiny, just dits and dahs, its fine to but down thousands and be able to summarize it in a sentance. its not about brevity, its about process and accurate fingers.

What did I do today? I woke up so early, so sleepy to go to class. I ate oat meal with raisins and bits of nuts and i cut a banana into it and there is nothing more holy, more filling, more safe than oatmeal with spoot-cut curves of banana swimming. And acrid coffee and far too sweet melon juice which i poured down the drain. Bus to school, only wanted to listen to David Bowie's Modern Love and Fleetwood Mac's Monday Morning. Good choices. Class was interesting. I'm unable to think on my feet in spañol but I'm still firey.

Spanish class was overload. We just covered so many topics, mostly Jamie and I asking questions. We had a big discussion about the census and I was clear about my ideas, and Andres kept smiling at me and after class he told me he liked argueing with me, that he liked the way I talked. And then he pulled a bottle of maracuya zhumir out of his pants and started drinking walking down the stairs to the bathroom. Ok, cool. Still no teacher for FyF whcih is good because we worked on our project. Then I took the bus home for a million hours and this failed shrimp farmer from Venice who talked to himself also talked to me.

Went to the San Gabriel pool. Paid 3 dollars to get in, traded my censo for a locker key, put on my borrowed bathing cap and started swimming. I am hediously out of shape, lungs and muscles, but I still love swimming. Its so long and easy and soft. Unfortunately, the swim team was practicing in all the lanes but one, so I had to share a lane with an 8 year old boy who couldnt swim more than 10 meters, and a couple that alternated between hugging each other on the walls and arguing about bills. When they did occasionally decide to swim a lenght, they seemed to view swimming as a communal activity, somewhat akin to a stroll in a park, and sidestroked next to each other, taking up the whole lane, chatting quietly. After I literally (accidentally) kicked the woman on the ear, and the next time asked the man to only use one side after kicking his feet, they got the message and stuck to the walls.

I swam slow 50s, a lap each of freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke. I didn't push myself at all, as slow as I wanted. I rested 10 seconds at the wall and hopped back in. 1000 meters in 45 minutes of strokes that have been muscle memory for years. Thats one think I will always have, my fingers cupped and my feet kicking.

Walked literally accross the street to abuelitas house, ate some excellent pizza, got in a taxi and went home. Ate some grapes and finished Desolation Angels. It was an amazing book. I can't wait to type up all my favorite quotes so I can remember them.

Ok, is it ok with you if I go watch TV with my madre? I'm already falling asleep.

Happy Wednesday

Aw yeah, its the end of the day. Well, the end of the school day. The end of a test and an early class and a study session and a mediocre salad. After this, I´m going to take my buses home, lie on my bed for a while, go eat Indian food with my ma and bro, and study some school something with HanHan. I used all that alliteration because I have six classes and there is no way to keep up with all of them. None of them are particularly hard, but its two times the amount of homework I´m used to and I´m constantly forgetting things. I´m also keeping two journals for different classes, drawing daily, and keeping up THIS WONDERFUL BLOG. and taking pictures, though I have no cord to connect my camera to the computer. ´But I´m not a quejumbrosa, which means ¨whiney.¨ I´m cool with the level of record keeping that is going on. It helps me remember, it gives structure to my day.

Stuff that has happened lately...
1. Did an excellent skit in Spanish class that was about wizards and magic queens and used forty vocabulary words and ended with a rap. We got videotaped. Jamie and I are that good.

2. Drew alot in drawing class. My drawing teacher continues to think I am an idiot because I don´t know words for ¨crosshatch¨and ¨non-acidadted drawing paper¨and also becasuse I don´t spend lots of money on art supplies. But I can now draw strait lines, put shadows under drawings of vases, draw Bacardi bottles, etc.

3. Got my pants´zipper fixed and made friends with my local tailor

4. Got sick, accidentally fell asleep at the breakfast table. Watched Grey´s Anatomy and drank some witchy tea my Ecuamama made me and got better

5. I´m planning an Improv in English workshop! This is gonna be great!

6. Went to a horrible Oktoberfest theamed bar. It was Thursday and I was just going to have a glass of beer, but then if we got unlimited Pilsner for an hour, we got 75 cents off! what a deal!!!!!! so I watched my friend win a drinking contest while beer was litterly puddling in his clothes, and then I left. Ok, there is a reason I did not go on study abroad in Germany. No offence.

7. Ate at a restaurant called Menestra de Negro. This is their logo. Not sure how to process this.

8. Watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Watched it again. Wow.

9. Found a cheap vegetarian Indian restaurant. This was critical to my health.

10. Celebrated Dia de los Defuntos at abuela´s house with colada morada which kind of is like syrupy koolaid with chunks of peach and ¨babaco¨in it. We also had ¨guaguas de pan¨which looked like more like larvea or fetuses than babies, and had eyes made of green raisins. Ok, cool. Hung out with my 7 year old cousins. Retreated to Malcolm´s room to read sociology when I got overwhelmed.

11. Found out how awesome Google Voice is. ¿How awesome? Really awesome. You can call any number in the US for free awesome. You can talk to your ma and sister awesome. You can activate your bank card awesome. Awesome.

12. Ate empenadas for lunch three days in a row. You can get an empenada and a juice for 2.20. you can share an empenada with your friend! you can bring french fries over from next door! you can get ceviche and popcorn! you can buy beer the size of a baby bottle or the size of a carton of milk! You can buy milkshakes! There are no salads or soup or really any vegetables, but you can get two pork empenadas for the price of one! (still haven´t gotten there)

13. It was my ¨tio¨ Malcolm´s birthday! Happy birthday!

14. Wrote alot of emails.

15. Suddently got really good at Spanish grammar and spelling. I can actually correct my own work now, I don´t have to sit with my Ecuamami like a 3rd grader

16. Learned I am not supposed to be putting my toilet paper in the toilet. Whoops.

17. Loved Ecuador! (also learned the word cursis, which means cheeeeesy)

Yo Soy Una Mujer Sincera

"More and more I realize feminism will save the world. Feminism is for everybody. You can’t start with a fundamental, crazy imbalance like patriarchy. Until we have gender equality we will have crazy social ills. Feminism is a tool for men as well to escape violence and inequality."

Go Ani DeFranco.


Some pictures I like





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Enough political thinking, its the weekend!

Things that are going to happen this weekend:
-Clean room/do laundry
-take a nap
-do all my drawing homework
-do all my biology homework
-do all my sociology homework
-cry
-talk to Eustace
-Have Dia De los Defuntos, which is like the Day of the Dead, where you eat ¨Colada Morada¨which is this purple syrup that symbolizes blood, and ¨guaguas de pan¨(bread babies) to symbolize the babies that died.
-watch (not participate in!) a pro-Correa demonstration
-floss
-take malaria meds

The fun never stops here in the interandean valley.

Thats all for now folks

Today was a Good Day

Today was a good day! Lots of good stuff happened. Right now I´m really stressed out packing for my trip tomorrow, and I´m eating trail mix, and vaguely afraid that a serial rapist is going to get me ( I just read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and pretty cranky. But it was still a great day.

The day started early, at like 6 am. My mom made me grilled cheese and this really excellent juice. Sometimes I hate papaya juice, but today it was papaya-maracuya-orito juice and that was so good! I took a shower and felt really clean. I put on my favorite shirt and shoes. I got on the bus to Cumbayá, and then I got on another bus to a further suburb called Puembo. I went there to get my volunteering project figured out. The bus ride was about an hour, very relaxing. Got to the sub-centro de salud, met my mentor, Dra. Veronica Espinoza, who is about 30 and really friendly and overworked. She was organizing a mission of volunteer doctors who were going door to door asking all the people of Puembo if they had disabilities and what care they were getting.

I watched her orient about 50 doctors for an hour or so, and I chatted with this awesome lady named Dina who may have been a prostitute. She was dressed like one, at any rate. Anyway, she was showing the doctors around, and being like the local guide. She was just really nice and chatty when I didn´t know anyone, and she said she´ll bring me some avacados next week because its avacado season. Cool! Dina left to go lead people around her neighborhood, and I talked to the head nurse in the sub-center. I do not know her name, but she is determined, proud, capable, and excellent. She is going to teach me alot. There is another nurse, and they both showed me around, the file room, the vaccine center, the baby room, the doctor´s room, the kicthen/pharmaceutical storage area. Its very very bare bones, their main job is distributing birth control, vaccines, and preventing malnutricion. Perfect. That´s what I´m looking for. I´m going to work there on Thursdays from 830- 11, and all of January. So excited to learn how a poor rural clinic functions!

Around 1130 I took the bus back to Cumbayá. I ate some mediocre pasta with Jamie and Aracely, and Jamie (look at me with my friends and their blogs) and talked about our rap album. We are both so jazzed, its so fun to be with someone so enthusiastic. Then I went to Improv class. Improv class just rules. We aren´t producing anything to sneeze at, but we are all learning a ton of theory, games, cooperacion, all that good stuff. The class is really starting to bond and work to gether well. We are all comfortable, like, rolling on to each other. We worked our way up to Freeze! today, and that was a thrill. I celebrated by using the phrase ¨give me dome¨immeditely. Classay. My class is having a preformance on Saturday in the Plaza del Teatro Sucre, the main theater in Old Town, and I really wish I could go, but I have to go to Esmeraldas! boo!

On Tuesdays after Improv I have my Exchange student/ICRP class, but I dont on thursdays, so I hung out with some people from my improv class. Really. All by myself. Without Hannah or my brother or anybody. Granted, two of them were gringos, and we spoke english a lot of the time, but I´m pretty aspergers-ly proud about this. Its been so hard to make friends and put yourself out there, but here I was talking honestly, being goofy, telling about the time I got drunk at Passover when I was nine. (but let´s face it, who hasn´t?). We even went to the burger restaurant near school and I got a milkshake, and Maria Jose gave me half of her sanduche (that´´s how you spell sandwich in Ecuador), and I didn´t even care that the main ingredients were American Cheese, ground beef, and potatoes. I was hanging with friends!

But then, I had to go to class. Its art class at4. At 420, the teacher hadn´t show up, so I went home. He might have shown up just as I was leaving campus, but we´ll never know. Took the bus to abuela´s house. Chatted with the approx. 17 people that were there, including: Abuela, the guard Javier, my madre, the guard dog, some new turtles they just got, two gardener people, Diego my uncle, the two kids Diego was toutoring in calculus, my uncle Carlos, my uncle Carlos´patient, Jimmy´s three friends waiting outside for Jimmy to finish working on another friend, Malcolm, and my cousin Moni-Pati. Then I read an article about high schoolers´perception of thier racial identity in Brazil. Yeah.

Malcolm and I had ¨sopito¨which refers to any food you eat after 5 pm. It can also be refered to as ¨cafecito¨or ¨merienda¨which means snack. sopito today was a large bowl of vegetable soup, some cold mashed potatoes with pieces of scrambled egg in them (bad), pieces of chicken, and some cake. Ok, whatever. I had my sopito, and my papaito, and my polloito and my tortito. I went to Jimmy´s office, and he worked on my neck/ jaw for a while. Feels better, he´s good at what he does. He put this adhesive tape on my jaw that is supposed to de-stress my muscle. Its on my face and bright blue and I´m supposed to leave it on for a week. We´ll see.

After that, Madre and I walked a few blocks to this GIANT slightly stalinist church to see the symphony. Admittedly, they are not fantastic, but its the Quito Symphony Orchestra no matter what. We got there early and chatted with my madre´s friend, her exchange student, and the exchange student´s friends, who all spoke horrible spanish, were extremely nice, and probably much much smarter than me. I had a 25 minute crush on the overly aryan boy, we discussed our favorite vegetables. The music was nice, but went on too long as it always does. I fell asleep for a while, even on the uncomfortable church pews. I gave up trying to look cool in front of mr. blond hair.

Took a taxi home and that jerk tried to charge me 2 dollars when it was clearly a 125 ride and he drove badly. I gave him 150 and got out. Yeah.

Now I´m here in my pjs, ready to sleep, but needing to pack some long sleeves and deet first. Excited to see some manglares in real life, not excited to get covered in black fly bites, which itch and hurt and give you malaria. Whoops. Have a good weekend everyone!

Socks and school

Hey faithful blog readers,
Sorry I have been a little shoddy about updating this baby. I also haven't showered for like three days, and I keep wearing the same socks. But I'n not smelly or anything. Just conserving. Oh shoot, the reason I keep wearing the socks is that I don't have any clean clothes, and the reason I don't have any clean clothes is because I hung them up to dry on FRIDAY MORNING and it has rained twice since then and been really windy. My clothes may all have blown away.

Despite being possibly damned to one pair of socks for the rest of the trip, i have to say that I'm doing well. Acutally, I was talking with my ma and sister and skype quit on us, so that;s sort of a bummer, but doing well over all.

Making friends at USFQ, all of whom seem to have somewhat messy ponytails, ladies and pimps alike. and someone who knows gus voorhies. One way I'm spending time with friends is in the computer labs, gringos cluster between classes, furiously checking facebook and sending emails all seemingly titled "Life from one degree south." I know this because the computers have huge screens and everyone can see what you are typing. I have seen three breakup emails so far.

Another thing that's been happening is improving my vocabulary. For my spanish class, we spend an hour each class talking about verbs and how they are complicated.
EXAMPLE:

Acabar- to end
Acabar de- to have just done
Acabarse- to run out
Acabar con- to be done with
Acabar en- to end up.

Also you have to conjugate acabar and thats a struggle in itself.
Other verbs I use a lot, without really understanding their full context.

Gastar- I think this means to waste, but I use it whenever I talk about money
Ganar- this means to earn, but you can also throw it infront of any other verb and make it like "I was wanting to," or "I had motivation to." Not so sure
Hacerse- this is like, I want to turn myself into something. Like a job. Or a life of delinquency. Its got to be something that requires work and time, not just suddenly. If you become emotional, its ponerse, if you become ˆsuddenlyˆ emotional its volverse, if you like transform into a lamp, its convertirse. Are you there, God? Its me, Margaret? When will I convertirme into a woman? Also, Spanish is not into commas, especially Oxford commas. This is a shame, as I almost always refrain from self-injury during paper writing because of the existence of commas. Another thing that is really frustrating is that alot of the computers at school have weird punctuation arrangements of their keyboard. for example, I wrote an about seven pages using umlats instead of quotation marks. And there was no "Find and Replace" to be found.

We, the gringos of the computer lab, find it totally acceptable to yell you "hey, how do you make the 'at' symbol?" or "where is the damn exclamation point?" at any point, and the Ecuadorians, who all seem to be using ms. Paint to design menus for Italiam restaurants glare at us. Various gringos offer various key combinations, and usually the concerned party ends up copying-and-pasting from a website. Also, the internet goes out for like 7 minutes ever hour, at which point, the entire room sighs quietly and ejects their flash drives.

I'm going to go wash my hair really intensely and nap and eat some pasta. Pretty normal sunday stuff.

What is this Day?

Written last night.



What is this day? What is going on? How did I get here?

Let the days flow by, let the water hold me down. Talking Heads. Breathe.

Woke up at 6, showered, felt depressed about my hair. Madre didn’t want to wake up quite yet, so I started making the juice. I put in some defrosted melon, some pineapple chunks (oh no, this means fermented pineapple-rind juice in a couple days), and some very squishy fruit from the coast called arasai. Which had worms in it, a little meal worm that I felt on my hand, so I had to throw the arasai away and we just had very watery juice.

Going to school, I encountered a boy in my improv class. He read the bible, I slept. Sociology, we had a substitute who asked us why we are taking this class. Why do I take any class? Why do I study sociology? Why am I in Ecuador? Why am I awake right now?

Drank coffee with the ladies. It was pouring rain and I couldn’t get alert, no matter how much we rehashed our gossip. Went to a computer lab, worked semi-diligently on my sociology paper. However, it still has big sentances in English like “en comparision de los dependistas, los que siguen la teoria de sistemas mundiales THINK THAT COUNTRIES SHOULDN’T INTEGRATE MULTILATERAL SYSTEMS INTO THEIR SOCIAL PROGRAMS.” Stuff like that. Real smooth right now. I also talked to Terry and Jon and Max, and that was nice.

Tried to get lunch with Mike and Jamie, but we were all weird about where to go. I realized if I want to have coffee and ride the bus and eat lunch, I can spent $3 on lunch. Whoops. So its basically Chinese vegetarian restaurant or snacks. I was all enthusiastic about my new life eating only from the Chinese vegetarian restaurant that I ordered a new dish, Tallerin Tai Pen. It was salty, soupy, lacking in vegatables, and gave me horrible gas. Well, not particularly worse that “the fartiest day in history” (see Otavalo entry), but still pretty bad.

Best part of the day. Maybe. I went to the library and found “The World According to Garp,” my second favorite book, in English and Spanish. I checked them both out. I have read it in English so many times I can read it in Spanish easily. I’m on page 30! Went to Spanish class, which produced some real gems of sentances, like “she abused our friendship when she stole my money,” and “the storage closet took advantage of World War II.” We also discussed the topic “Is religion good?”

Next up came Flora and Fauna of Ecuador. Woooo boy that class is dull. Its just powerpoints that are like “this is the cloud forest. Here are some pictures. Here are some plants that live in the cloud forest. Here are their pictures. Here are some animals that live in the cloud forest. Here are some pictures. This is the swamp......etc” for an hour and a half. I did a lot of the Garp reading during this time.

Afterwards, I hung out with Aracely and we decided to talk only in Spanish. She was knee deep in explaining her feelings towards a specific person, very personal feelings I may add, when we realized the patio we were sitting on had gone completely silent. Sometimes, when you concentrate on remembering words and conjugating, volume control sort of goes out the window. At least she can project well.

I rode the bus home and made a friend. We just started talking on the bus, his name is Javier and he studies architecture. He seems semi boring but possibly interesting. I’ll take all the friends I can get. He doesn't constantly correct my grammer or actively hit on me, meeting my two requirements. He may, however, play the pan flute, which is sort of iffy.

Got home, feeling brave and happy about making a new friend, and I was very happy to talk to an old one. Not old in age, like we have been friends for so long. You may know him as Eustice. Great to talk to him, to really be honest, to talk to someone who knows me outside of this crazy month in the sounhtern hemisphere. And it has been a month, one month yesterday. Five to go!

There’s a free jazz festival each night this week in the plaza of the teatro sucre, so we went, my madre, mi, our neighbor Dani (girl) and Jimmy. It was really cool, about 400 people in a plaza rockin out to semi-good smooth jazz. J immedielty got lost in the crowd, so we watched some people do some very sexual acrobatics. There was a big line infront of the teatro, and all of a suddent it began to move, so we joined it and went in the teatro. It was a very grand style of theater, like the Kennedy center or something, but not very large, maybe 350 capacity. Sat around for a while, speculated about what we might have signed on to see. It turned out to be part of an experimental theater festival. Chevre! We couldn’t figure out the name of the play, but it consisted of a woman, wearing a slip, smoking and drinking and rolling around in a chair while orchestrial music, gypsy ballads, and Edit Piaf songs played dramatically. A giant wedding dress was in the corner. There was also a table that rolled around.

The play was very good, well blocked, lit, costumed, etc but I was just too tired. I have big days and I’m not sleeping so well (all the farting?). Also, she never talked, so the music just put me to sleep. When I woke up, she was in a clown suit with blood all over her legs and these fake breast things by her face….we left.

Rode the trole home, Jimmy gave me one of his earphones so we could rock out to metal, that was nice. He went to get his gf from the train station, and then my madre just let it out. She was like “did you get the message of the play?”

“no, well not really, I was asleep.”

“I was like that. Smoking and drinking and waving my arms to get the pain outside. It was horrible. It was the worst time of my life.”


wooo boy sometimes you just can´t deal with things. That was one of those times. I went to bed.

All These Things That I Have Done

-Went rock climbing in the country, a town called Conocoto. It was very beautiful and I took a lot of pictures and re discovered my love of rock climbing/ physical challenge / heights/ nature

-avoided eating cuy. But its just a matter of time.

-lost my cell phone. Whoops. Jimmy just got me a new one. Thanks!

-Got kicked out of my Translation Spanish class. Via note at the end of a homework. Classay.

-Found a new Spanish class that’s actually way better.

-Found a new bus route to school that's much faster but more crowdede

- Kept flossing

-Went to a state-run facility for young people with disabilities. It was very amazing. Most of these people were abandonded by ther parents or just found in the street. They were between like 10 and 25. Many had cerebal pasly, mental retardation, Downs syndrome, or had been in traffic accidents. They were very heavily medicated, but still quite independent and functioning, despite really big disabilites. We played witht them and sang. I helped one boy in a wheel chair get out, and carried him around to slides and swings. I sat with one woman while she washed dishes. She told me about how her left side didn’t work very well but she worked hard. I found out later that she had been raped several times and had two children. Woah. I think I might be an occupational therapist. I just want to help people be able to move the way they want

-still have a zillion infected mosquito bites.

-saw John Dugas! And his cool wife! Yeah! I hung out with his wife, Larissa, at that ceremony thing before I got drunk at school. Yeah!

-Learned that “you speak such good Spanish” is most often a pick up line.

-Other pick up lines attempted “Let’s have relations!” “you should move here. You could get married,” and my favorite, just a grunt.

-Went to the old historic center at night, listened to live music, drank canelazo, ate empenadas.

-watched a lot of Ecuadorian Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? where you only win 50,000. And the questions are real stumpers like ¨Green consists of what two colors?¨

I'll Have the Usual

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It was a normal sort of afternoon, as common as they get during the Kalamazoo Study Abroad Experience.

I got to school around 11, said hi to about a third of the people I know at the school (25), and went to Casa Tomate, my nth home. Casa Tomate is salmon colored, hard to get to, and is home to the international programs. I know at least three people who have cried there already. Tania is there, and she is the boss. She is German-Ecuadorian, about 6 feet tall, and pregnant. We do what she says.

She took me to the registration office to get my class situation sorted out, and that almost lead to me being the fourth person to cry; there was just too much going on in that office: Pop music, Spanish chatting, three phone calls, and two computers shared between two people, and me being asked to recite numbers in Spanish.

Finished that up, took some deep breaths, and went to have lunch at the Vegetarian Place. You go in, order “el menu” and for $2.80, you get soup, juice, and a plate full of macrobiotic vegetables and brown rice. There’s always some fake meat with peppers, something raw, and something like potatoes in a gelatinous sauce. The juice and soup are usually the best parts.

At one, I had class, improvisation class, which is really awesome, and a great opportunity. Shoutout to my Monkapult foos. We started playing games with words, though, and that was hard. Two kids got up in front of the class and just started talking about nothing. There is no way I can do that! My conversations have clear subjects, questions to answer, vocabulary words to use. They can be about the time of an appointment or weather Amedenijhad has a mental illness, but I need to focus my mind on what I’m going to say at least 25 seconds before I say it. Whoops, this could make spontenaity a little difficult. But its still an awesome class, and the kids in it are funny and nice. One of the other norteamericanos is actually from Chantilly, so we talked about that, and how he was a truck driver for the Girl Scouts (??)

By 2:30 I was sitting on the front steps of the school with my gringos, talking about how much we hate USFQ. Well, not all of it. We just feel like we’re in 9th grade, and feel the glances down rhinoplastied noses. Its made me even more determined not to shave my legs, but even more embarrassed to show it. Most of my friends went home, so I went to the library to do my Drawing homework: drawing lines. Horizontal and vertical lines with a variety of pencils. Did that for an hour and a half. Re-discovered my love of The Squirell Nut Zippers. The Ipod is a pretty important part of my life right now.

I had drawing class at 4. The class is 10 well adjusted, goofy, talented freshmen, and me, who doesn’t know any words for art supplies, and doesn’t have any of them, anyway. Because I didn't have “tinta china” (is that a racially-charged word for “black ink” or what?), he felt the need to draw me a map of the town of Cumbaya, highlighting the way to the art store. Ver Humiliating. The project for the day was cool though, using the ink and brushes or pens (didn’t have those either) to make pointillism drawings with varities of textures of ink. Here’s my drawing, not done at all.




And here’s one of just me, in case you missed that sultry smile. Sunburned? But of course.

Art class done, I took one, two, three buses to the Consultorio, where I met up with madre et al. Its so odd to kiss my uncle hello as he wears a surgical mask and someone’s mouth is open two feet away. Sanitation is not a worry. Kiss my madre’s patient hello, random man hello, etc. Go say hi to Jimmy, who is giving a massage to an anonomous shirtless skinny person. Go say hi to Malcolm, abuela, and Diego, who are eating geletin and watching Hercules dubbed into Spanish. Guess who is also playing online chess? The person who is always playing online chess, Diego! There are also personal ads scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen, which is weird.

My madre has called a taxi driven by her friend Miguelito. We drive across the city to visit her daughter, Gavi. We are bringing her things. We drive forty minutes. We arrive at the house. Items brought: diapers, toothpaste, some tomatoes, and fish food. Are those things not available in the West part of Quito? Maybe there is an embargo. Gavi rules, though, and so do her husband and kids.

We drive back, disussing the best way to make sangria. The car is divided on weather soda is a good addition.

Back at the house, Madre and I stare depressed at the refrigeratior while the cat humps our legs. We decide to make a “tallerin” which means any sort of noodles and a salad. It actually turns out awesome, she cooks all these wilted vegetables in seseme oil and we put these noodles on it….I stick to plain wilted lettuce/squishy tomato salad. Its also pretty good. Madre offers me a drink she calls “geletina tibia” (lukewarm geletin.) I keep the vomit down and politely decline. She shows up at the table with a beer stein filled with acid-green liquid that she is now calling “Jello On the Rocks.”

Hole away in my room, shutting the door from the evil cat. Jimmy and his gf just got home. I’ll probably watch some TV, and then pack for our trip to Otavalo. All the K kids are going one hour north to this market town for the weekend. I’m looking forward to buying woolen goods from industrious indigenous people, taking a really good shower, and not feeling guilty about speaking English.