No Sleep Till Thursday

Its 345 am, my computer charger only sort of works, and I am filled with insomnia and backpain both rare to me. I'm nervous-but-excited for Ecuador. I know that I will get it all once I get there, that things will work out, but there are so many things I need to do to get settled, so many moments and interactions I will need to negotiate. The moment I get off the plane and go through customs won't be that hard, I will just be tired and hating my luggage and clutching my passport. But the moment after that might be hard. I'm not sure if anyone will be at the airport for me. I really should not worry about this, I should be able to land some place and do my own thing, but I've got this vision of thieves seeing that I don't have a hostmama to get me and stealing all my stuff on the sidewalk by the airport and everyone laughing at the lonely gringa. Did you know that I love self pity?

The reason I might not get picked up is Pilar might be busy. I'm not sure of the current situation, but I know that about a week ago, her daughter's fiancee (and father to her grandchildren) had a brain hemmorage. This guy, Santi, is a total saint, a wonderful guy, and the breadwinner for his family. It's scary for numerous reasons; as far as I knew he was in good health and he can't be more than 35. So this is scary beause someone is very sick who no one expected to be very sick, and my mama might not be there to meet me at the airport. She might also be at the hospital or talking care of her daughter and grandsons. I talked to hannah today, though, and she says I can stay at her house that first night I get off the plane before I go to Cumbaya. I really appreciate that, to be able to go to someone I already know and trust. Her mama, Miriam, is another member of the Saints, so I know I'll be well taken care of.

Another moment that I keep rolling over is my travel to and arrival at my house where I'll be staying. Will I go alone or with someone? Who- Jimmy? Hannah? Pilar? If I go alone I'll definitely take a taxi, but if I go with someone I guess we could divide my stuff for the bus...but I've never been there before and I don;t want to wander the streets of Cumbaya with all my stuff. I'll take a taxi. Will I need to act tough? I've got this idea that my dueño will be some Humbert Humbert (LINK) esque fellow who will leave me creepy sexual hints all over the house that I will have to awkwarldy ignore, dumping rose-scented love letters down the toilet and throwing away pink-iced cakes. That could be a little amusing, especially because I;m past the Lolita fashion stage. Or he could be a down right assaulter. But that just doesn't seem likely. I made it clear that I want privacy, silence, and security. I have my own room in a non-high traffic part of the hosue. I have a lock on the door. I'll have my phone on me and Hannah on alert for the police. I can do this. And really, I'm just focusing on this person (the world I'll be using is dueño, which means "owner" but also like "landlord" or "guy from whom I rent") because I'm worried about men in general in Ecuador and how I'll behave around them to keep myself safe. Zak suggested buying pepper spray and I think that's a good idea.

But there's tons of stuff I'm excited for. I'm so excited to see the mountains again, to feel that lightheaded dizzy spin as I lie down. I'm excited to be in public spaces that I love and are so different, like the fruit markets, the grocery store, the pharmacy. I'm so excited to be on a bus again. I took a bus down H St with Michael and it was so great to know how to do it. It was also free because the smarttrip reader was broken, making it the only thing in the US cheaper than in Ecuador. I'm excited to see my favorite parks and little roadside patches of grass with statues. It's going to be so wonderful to recognize things, to remember them and myself and others within them but learn them again in this time and place. i wish I was a photographer so I could capture that feeling of return with images. I'm not, I'll grab it with words. I wil snag it when it finds me because I know what it feels like. It is a combination of many feelings, that sensation of return. It feels like the need to write, firstly, which feels to me like the need to pee but from your fingers. All your carple tunnel muscles ache, but ache to be abused more. My tailbone needs firm contact with something hard, my knees want bend. My head rests on my chin, the perfect posture laptops allow. My arms go weak and my fingers get smart and my sensory percption goes way up. My ears begin to name what goes through them, my eyes search for depth of field. I sniff for clues, I start to drool a little bit. I need to call up every memory linking to anything that's familiar around me while simulatneously suck in all that data for more memory making and more instant and further analysis. It's a combination of entry, processing, and storage and I really love it. For all my vigilance, it;s a very calm sensation for most of my body. I'm being slowly lowered into a pool of blue aloe vera gel and once my head is under my eyes will really open and my lungs will breathe fine. As soon as I reall remember what this place was like, as soon as I really understand where I am at that present second, I'll be with it, so good to go that I'll skip and run to my bus stop or meeting point. When that recognition enevlopes me, I am so strong.

Writer Writer Write Write

I am Dr. Writer McLiterary and this is my famous essay. Please bown in front of my genuis, and yes we may use that as a noun. This is a phallic symbol and you wish your mother had bigger boobs. Adjectives are meant to dangle and dingle ends in "el." Puncuation fits neatly inside quotes which begin with commas and end with "he said." Indugle my metaphor and hyphenate my hyperbole. Both will end up brilliant by the time your eyes notice the footnote explaining my brilliance.

So, I'm not so into writing these days. I'm obviously doing less, and the thing's I'm doing I've done and written about before, but I don't even feel like putting my fingers on the keyboard. When I enter URLs, its with a single finger, filled in automatically on my seearch bar, or I just look through history. I bookmark everything and comb farther and farther back in blogs and archives. Every article published on the priests abusing deaf boys? Sure! The blog the lady who made Juno kept when she was a stripper? All pages, please. Every photo Kelly O has taken of drunk people? BRING ME THE RICHES. I've been following Charlie Sheen and have culled through every page of Sarah Silverman's twitter. I hate them both less.

So I'm learning, even if I don't take note of it, and if its mundane pop cultures stuff I'll only make references to. I will make me more obscure-sounding and erudite and less approachable. That's what I'm going for.

And as I'm reading, or talking to a friend (hidden neatly in Maryland's hardwood flooring), or driving home from my uncle's listening to Modest Mouse and bone-crushing volume, I'll get these flashes of verbalization, smart things, reaction, phrases that help me understand what's goin on. These are often innapropriatley timed and awkardly said. For example, I was at a potluck attended by very fancy people, McLean (actually, it was somewhere else, but I can't spell that place) families with art collections. My sister was an an excellent production of Rent taking place in their basement. My Hobo Best Friend's Dad who's been a father figure to me for years asked me why I'd gotten my nose pierced. Its hard for me to explain usually beyond "I like it." But here, with a plate of roasted autumnal vegetables and spanish tapas in my hand on a plastic plate, the words came:

"Well, in a lot of way, having this on my face has freed me from how people view me. Before, I was constatnly worried about not looking strong enough, tough enough, brave enough, bad ass enough. But getting the piercing helped me feel proud in a number of ways. Firstly, It makes me proud that I actually followed through on something that I wanted to do. It's not just a dream for the future, I actaully went through with it. Secondly, it lets me not worry so much about how I look. It's a symbol that I don't take my self too seriously, that I'm not afraid of imperfections that I aquire through my life. Also, It's freeeing. For example, before I got the piercing, I would never wear a cardigan like this. I would feel preppy and fake and not true to my inner strong self, even though I actually like the cardigan. But with the piercing, even as I see the cardigan and know that it's preppy, I don't need to worry about that being my only presentation to the world. It's bigger than that, and there are more symbols involved, more data to make a conculsion. I feel like I am presenting part of my self that I am proud of to the world: parts that aren't scared, that follow through, that are strong and face outwards. It's almost a definition of my sexuality...."

at this point, I realized Hobo's Dad had cocked his head upwards and raised his eyebrows. Those are facial symbols I know and love, the "what the helll is she talking about???" face. And the Armenian music prodegy and her diplomat husband were looking, and the Jewish lady with frizzy hair and her 7 foot husband. Important, but not appropriate.

And I'm saying these things because I'm not writing them. I'm not getting out my long sentances and alliterations and observations on gender roles in my damn computer where they belong and instead am burdening my friend's parents with my inner thoughts about my facial structure. Not so classy, sweetheart.

6 Months?!?!?

I haven't written in days, I know that. I haven't really done anything in days, either, and I know that too. No huge island-hopping adventures, no food poisioning, no hook-ups or break-downs. Just things, small things, ice cream bars and taxi rides. Some days I've gone to school, some days I've woke up with every intention to be productive. I have my coffee, get dressed and fall back asleep for two or three hours.

I turned in my paper and finished school. I'll put the abstract for it (in English) up here in another entry. I don't know, whatever, I'll tell about the little things I did later, when I'm walled in by snow and culture shock.

A lot's been going on in my head lately, but much less anxiety than usual and more static intersperced with these clear, revalatory thoughts. Normally on the bus I'll fret over that they might reject my five-pennies-in-place-of-a-nickel for blocks and blocks. The last week or so I just sit quietley internally and externally, bouncing my foot incessantly. I hand over my five pennies, get grumbled at, and wonder about how fish socialize. So it's been a floaty, detached few days and I'm almost glad. I haven't been hit by the transtitions-mean-the-end-of-the-world notions I usually take up at least a week before a plane flight, and I've avoided the macabre thought that "that could be the last time I do/see/ talk to X!!!!" everytime I leave the house.

But Blanquita just came in and we talked about how six months is a long time and how it passed so fast. And it is, and it did. I came here in AUGUST. August is hot and I could barely speak and I weighed ten pounds less and my hair was short. My mom walked with me to security waving and crying. And then I met Pilar and Jimmy and I listened to conversations and I went to rediculous family gatherings. I rode the bus endlessly and cleaned my plate. I went to sleep so early each night and watched TV religiously on the afternoons when I was alone. I walked in parks and did laundry and struggeled to read academic articles. People langued at me and stared and ignored me. I socialized and sat alone, lonely or not. I wrote more often than I have in years, less whiney than forever, not particularly wonderfully but with words. Used my words that I couldn't and didn't want to all day. Let myself stay quiet in arguements and at lunch because I knew my keyboard was waiting for me. Of course, the stories and the gossip and the questions were still there, but they were easy to swallow when I knew no one else would like it. I developed much better control.

And I stayed in the same place for six months. Sure, I traveled and stayed out late and slept at Aracely's, but my life was in a time span of more than ten weeks, which is something I've beaten out of myself. I acted like a long-term liver, not just surviving from quarter to quarter, living for the next Monkapult show or DOGL or my Poli Sci presentation. I know I've talked endessly about routine but it's almost impossible how little routine my life has at K. Sure, there's the caf and then SusHouseFamilyDinner, there's Monkapult, there was the midnight boyfriendPhoneCall, but those are things that happen. Those are things to put on your calender. But the motivation, the daily life stuff that fell between those appoinments was almost irregular. Things happen often or they re-occur. But for some reason, I feel safer here in this routine even though I don't like the life as much as the fun of K.

And that's sort of shocking to me, but it also makes me understand things better. K is fun, but routine is soothing. I see why people pass up the fun, the excitement of a less steady life for a more stable one. The saftey is worth it. The calm of knowing what comes next is better than the exhileration of not being able to know. I've never really understood that feeling before, and certainly well enough to articulate it.

So we'll see, I guess, weather I can make a routine at K, with more or less fun that before, liking it more or less. We'll see what parts sobresalir as important, what melts away. We shall see how I set up my tiny life in the palm of the mitten, how I teseract home and back, where I go to, how I tell you about it. We shall see.

Nearly

I haven't written in a while. I'll put that off to the big ole paper I had to write to finish up the ICRP class, but that's not that good an excuse. Mostly, I've been doing very little and qualifying it as a lot, hoping to squeeze the final drop of toothpaste out of Quito's tube. I didn't approach the Crest with a very good strategy and there's holes in the plastic and I've still got a bad taste in my mouth but at least I'm trying. I'm hoping for no cavities as what I remember from here.

I didn't make huge travel plans, I'm not going to Colombia or the beach or the USA like some people. My sister isn't coming and I'm not going on some epic Oriente adventure with my host family. I'm watching movies and staying up late and talking spanish. I'm trying to learn how to cook all the things I've come to love. I'm on facebook chat a lot, trying to remember slang and how we communicate. I'm missing my mom. I'm eating a lot. I'm not writing every day, I'm not reading, I don't write down how much I spend, I've started taking taxis over buses and eating french fries.

It's ok, I hope, to do all this. To relish the cheapness and the conjugation while I can. To watch 30 Rock with pilar, to wash the dishes. It's ok that I'm not off having the adventure of my life. It's alright to stretch packing over 6 days of folding and rolling. I'm doing ok, I'm saying goodbye, I'm transitioning in that slow, miserable way that I do.

And it's not all going to be boring. On Tuesday (tomorrow! Only one day to slog through!) I'm going to Mindo with Aracely and her sister and cuñado to zipline and eat chocolate and see orchids and on Thursday I'm going to Otavalo to buy monstrous amounts of handicrafts. And friday? Saturday? Breathing deep, packing suitcases, hugging people, feeling anxious outside at night, and getting ready for that too-long layover that will take me home.

Gender Bender

Written about Monday

Pretty quiet day yestearday, considering how things usually are. In the morning, the Leci and I prepared all the patientes to see the Duk and then went to Yaruqui. When I was first figuring out my ICRP, I was going to work at the hospital in Yaruqui, but its much farther away so I settled on little Puembo. However, its number 14 of the 26 public hospitals in the province of Pichincha. Babies are born by Ceasarian, virus loads are counted, you can go to a psychologist or an OB-GYN. The bus ride there isn't long, you take the Puembo bus out to La Y and then the Yaruqui bus another 30 minutes east.

We went there to drop off spetum samples from the TB patients as well as requests for more mecication and supplies, and to get a new set of Hep B vaccines. It was exciting to be in a larger hospital with better division of labor. A pediatrician, a pharmacist, someone who just works with the endless charts spilling out of thier shelves, they all have thier jobs in Yaruqui. Those postions would be redundant in Puembo, of course, but it would certainly make life easier.

I'm also getting to know Leci better. We talk about our families or learning spanish or english or how hard the job is. She's working in Puembo on her Rural Year too, which I didn't know. She'll be looking for work in May. She hopes to keep working in a sub-centro in a rural area, maybe Latacunca or Ambato.

the most interesting/embarassing part of the day came as I was preparing a patient for the afternoon appotintments. It was a one month old baby and its mother wanted to open up a history and get a infant check-up.

I'll back up a little bit and explain what makes this just so embarassing. On Sunday, sitting in a park in Cuenca, we were talking about how here babies live very gendered lives. Little boys are almost always in blue and girls are in dresses or pink or yellow with lace and they always, always have thier ears pierced. From a very very yongue age. Often its done in the hospital, but we have had a few times when parents march in with a three-month-old and ask for the earrings to be shoved in, sans gun. So earrings are omnipresent among little girls and I was saying I didn't like it. First of all, taking care of your earrings is something we equate with maturity. Its sort of a sign of growing up, cleaning and turning the posts. Second, and most strong for me, is the gendered behavior of earrings. For me, a huge part of how I grew up was being comfortable with gender ambiguity. I know that's not everybody's story and that not everybody wants that, but I also know there was no way I could have pulled that off with gold hoops in my earlobes. When parents pierce thier little girls ears when they are very yongue, they are demanding that thier daughters will act like women the rest of thier lives and that they cannot hide thier gender in profile view.

So that's what I was thinking as this mother brought in her baby to fill out the forms. The admission form in pretty arduous and by the time I get to the easy questions I usually breeze along to give the parents a break "Gender....male....civil status....single." Because at least the last one is obvious for a baby. And I thought the first question was too, for a baby dressed all in blue with unmarred ear lobes.

Of course, I forgot to weigh and measure the patient when I filled out the forms, so it was a good ten minutes before the mom wrestled the diaper and put her child (named Dennis Joannah) on the scale. Little Dennis might only have been a month old, but I know a vagina when I see one, and she was in possession. But still I didn't want to believe it. I didn't believe that a mother would dress her baby in opposition to her gender. I didn't believe that a mother might choose ambiguity, or choose hand-me-downs from an older child, or just like the color blue and the name Dennis.

I still didn't believe it, so I asked for the vaccine card they give you at birth: pink, niña. I had to use white-out all over the admission forms and staple another page on the chart: growth chart for girls, not boys. During this time, Dennis peed herself and the mom put her in a new diaper with trains and airplanes on the front.

For a girl who had short hair for years, for a girl who wore boy's jeans, for a girl named Dana, for a girl who isn't always so into being a girl, I sure made a lot of assumptions about what it means to be a girl or a boy in that office. I started my behavior because I wanted to make the patient comfortable. I've asked grown men and pregnant mothers thier gender and they always react shocked. Of course they do, they are presenting gendered signs on purpose. But this mother wasn't and I didn't give her the benefit of the doubt. Or the benefit of androgyny, or the benifit of just having a tiny baby and leaving it at that.

Thinkin Hard

Its 10 am here in Ecuador! I am under my covers like crazy rich uncle Dana eating a banana with peanut butter, God's Gift to Food, and my head itches mercilessly. Just giving you my vital stats, you know.

As this program winds to a close, I'm thinking a whole lot about time and how it's expanding and snapping shut and shrinking in front of my eyes. For example, in late January at some point in my life, my mom and sister came to visit me in Kalamazoo. I was almost completley sure that that was one year ago, but once I really think about it, it's clear that it was two years ago when I was a freshman. They visited me in Hoben, my friends in Trow, we walked around the snowy campus and I skipped out on my caf meals to eat at Saffron and The Strutt. Last year, late January? We were cuddeled up in the sus house, trying to not turn on the heat. Zak had just gone to THAILAND. ( I tried to find your Thailand blog, Zak, and couldn't) I was taking sculputure, statistics, and beginning to gnaw my way through my independant study.

And three years ago? Slogging through twelth grade, knowing I was going to Kalamazoo, a secret warmth to get through physics.

Five years ago? I'd just started reading Cat's Cradle with Zak for the first time, and we all know how much that book means to me.

But no matter how many Januaries and Julies pass, each morning I wake up and slip on my glasses and pray that I haven't peed my pants while sleeping. It's not an issue for me, peeing my pants, it's probably happened five times since being potty trained but it remains something that I am afraid of having happened when I wake up.

With that confession over, I guess I could start actually start making sense here. What I mean to say is that no matter how time stretches and rips and gets tangled up on itself and in my mind, there are some things that stay constant. My anxiety about silly things definitely counts as something that's been there for me forever, and it's probably going to be there until my end. Sometimes, often, its no fun, it holds me back, it keeps me in my room writing furiously or imagining my death via food posioning.

However, the strength of the anxiety does help me remember parts of my life that might have faded otherwise. The churning stomach, the paralyzed brain, tight fists and though loops provide strong, clear points of recognition that might have gotten smoothed over it the physical fear wasn't so strong. And now, in a part of my life that's less riddled with anxiety, I can look back and learn from it.

For example, when I was little, I had this big thing about loosing teeth. I felt so miserable, like a part of me was dying or had abandoned me. I remember being six or seven and loosing a big tooth near the back. This seemed worse than anything, I was crying so hard. My mom, genius that she is, gave me a little potted plant from the drug store to help me feel like life was still going on even though I lost a part of myself.

Yesterday, quietly flipping out about how Ecuador is coming to an end and I'll never travel again and I don't know what I am doing with my life and have no friends, I rewound back to the lost tooth and the little plant. Its the same worry and solution all over again: loosing what is yours, the only thing you can identify and grab onto in the messy world, soothed by the reminder that the universe is larger than your bloody mouth, and that this giantness and variety can be a comfort.

So I keep losing teeth, knocking them out, they fall out while I'm sleeping or in class or at a party. And sometimes they hurt, and sometimes I don't notice until months later, but I always miss them, and I can't resist running my tongue over my bare gums.

But then in my backyard, under my bed, in my notebooks and friendships and heard in my conversations, are a million tiny trees, ferns and bonsais, dying or dead or growing strong, moments that I remember the bigger world around me, stop crying over my teeth, and just chill out and go with it.

So yesterday I lost a tooth and today I found a tree: the sounds people make when they are togehter. I heard in in my house growing up, Ma and her friend having coffee at 8 on a weekend morning. Later as I entrerd the teenager-sleep-forever phase, Ma and Lesters talking artifically loud to wake me up at 11.

"SHOULD WE HAVE FRENCH TOAST, DEAR DAUGHTER WHO DOES NOT SLEEP TILL NOON?"

"WHY PERHAPS WE SHOULD LOVING MOTHER! IF ONLY THERE WAS A THIRD PERSON HERE TO MAKE THE COFFEE!"

"ALAS, YOUR SISTER HAS JOINED THE CONVENT OF HER BEDROOM AND WILL NOT ROUSE HERSELF"

The Sus House bickering and disecting of what happened last night, or the frantic key-board and pages turned as an all-nighter winds down.

And now here, with Pilar and Jimmy, just this morning

"Ma, we have to go!"

"Ok, I just have to find my toothbrush. Did you take my toothbrush?"

"Ma, why on earth would I take your toothbrush?"

"Well, you took my hairbrush yesterday."

"That's different. We both have hair that we need to brush"

"We both have teeth my son. And I am going to brush mine before we leave this house"

My teeth make me cry and my trees make me giggle, and both of them help me remember my complicated, boring, wonderful, thrilling, scary, adventuresome life.

In Guayaquil, Full of Angst

Written Wednesday Night

Its the first time I've been under an air conditioner in months, and its the very end of December. I'm here in Guayaquil in Stefano's grandmother's house, on a fold out couch bed with my backpack next to me on the floor. There's 71% battery, I have stiff legs and a headache. Yesterday morning my mother and my sister left, cought a taxi to the airport, leaving me to lie in the still-paid-for hotel room watching three consecutive episodes of The Big Bang Theory and eating wafer cookies from christmas that had somehow already gone stale.

Hannah's parents took us all out to lunch and I had a chicken salad sandwhich because all I seem to want to do these days is eat various forms of chicken between types of breads. Usually, mayonase should be involved. Aracely came over and immedietley conked out for a two hour nap on my bed, only waking to ask if she could get under the covers.

I lay with the sweet centimeters below my knees in the sun and read Mary Karr's Lit, one of those books that pricks your consciousness, makes you think the way she does, see things with her crossed eyes. I can't wait for some dialogue to come up soon so that I can leave out quotation marks just as she does.

Its wonderful to have somone so smart and well spoken take up temporary residence in your skull, but it can get awkward when her values start sitting down on your own. Anecdote? Of course, so glad you asked.

Much of Karr's memoirs deal with her own and her family's struggles with alcoholism, and Lit is no exception. In The Lair's Club, pages and chapters are sobbed about her mother's heavy drinking coupled with knife-weilding mental illness, as well as her father's reclusive constant alcoholism. There's also aquaintence rape, bigamy, and cancer people get from oil wells. Not a cheerful set of essay prompts. So I read The Liar's Club and I thought, Well damn, my life is a piece of peach pie. She's bareley got a can of cool whip.

I was so stressed out from The Liar's Club, and just from seeing the cover of Viper Rum, her book of poetry, that I decided to skip her second memoir, Cherry and stick to the backs of cerael boxes for my reading. But for christmas in Baños, sitting on a hammock with my sister, my mom passed me Lit with its accolade-slobbered cover and those neat looking fake cuts down the front. There's a lot going on on the cover of that book, it took me a while to recognize Mary Karr, our lady of Perpetual Suffering/Southern Texas. What the heck, nightmares can make you stronger or hold Feudian clues to what's wrong with you.

It's a great book, once you start reading. Each chapter is as strong as an essay and very presentable or discussable, but the book hangs to gether as a story. Of course it does: Its her life. Her marriage and its failure, her child and his raising, her spiritual life and literary success. And her drinking and how she stopped.

So when a person who does have a drinking problem sneaks into your head, a 20 year old having a beer with dinner, and she starts muttering and throwing down adverbs that you haven't heard in months, due mostly having your main conversation partner being a hispanohablante dentist who prefers to watch TV, its easy to get distracted from outside and fold yourself into your ears ad fall into the anxiety hole. And no matter if you're on vacation, no matter if there's eggplant lasagna coming, no matter if you're with your friend you haven't seen for a while, no matter if you've been taking your medicine more constant than you check your facebook, Mary Karr can talk really, really loud.

You're drunk she says. You're drunk and your making a fool of yourself.

I'm not drunk I say. I'm tired. Did you spent 4 hours today in the Quito airport? I think not. I bet you were eating fondue in Maine or something. Or spelling every word correctly. Or praying. Whatever, something cool.

You are a fool, an Immature fool. She says. You should stick to your own language and begin attending self help groups immedietley.

Could you shut up, Mary? I ask as my lasagna arrives. Stefano is approximately 1/2 through his small beer and i judge myself to be at 5/8. Oh shoot, she's right. Out drinking a boy who'se been at college? This could be a bad sign. Or maybe I just have a bigger mouth-capacity than he does. How would that be calculated? Would it make my face look fatter?

Look at this anxiety Says Mary, her hair perfectly stright, bangs that will never happen for me. Why aren't your working on this? You should be in meetings every night!

But I haven't done anything wrong! I jab my fork into my food, which turns out to be at least two thirds cheese. Should I feel guilty for eating such a large amount of cheese? Should I quit while I'm ahead and just give up all dairy, or should I eat this hulk of mozerella, get gas, feel fat, and then learn my lesson later to never ask for lasagna in Ecuador?

Mary doesn't know, and I don't either. But I know that beer, cheese, and fear are a filling but bad-tasting dinner.

Sabaday!

Saturday was so fun, probably one of the best days I have had in Ecuador. I slept nice and late and by the time I had really roused myself, Madre was back from work at the Consultorio and she had brought Tio Malcolm with her. we were all in a great mood and went to the Centro Historico. Its so nice to take the Trole there, to walk up the streets with narrow sidewalks. We stopped in the Indian store again, and this time I had enough money to buy the green dress I wanted last time. But then I spent my money. as you will see. We stopped at a little electronics store, one of a thousand, and bought a memory card reader for me and a new phone shell for Malcolm (its somehting that sounds like "carcass.") So that means there are now photos for me, for facebook, and for the wide world of blogging! if I had known it would cost 7$ for a card reader and not 35$ for a cable, i would have done this alot sooner.

We ate lunch at this Vegan Hare Krishna place, 1.50$ for a huge bowl of bland soup, brown rice, a celery-sort of vegetable, guacamole with corn, spicy lentils, bizarre juice, and apgar-mora-jello stuff. Vale la pena. My madre has already picked out my future husband among the Hare Krishnas present.

My madre bought me lunch, so she told me I should buy her coffee. We went to this old plaza that the Catholic (obviously) church owns but rents out to business to make money. The coffee shop was called "Cafe Fraile." (Friar). Yes. this place is owned by the church. Malcolm got Chocolate con queso which is very rich hot chocolate with heavy wipped cream and pieces of fresh cheese that you drop in and they melt but keep thier sweekyness and flavor....totally not vegan but insanely good.

We went home and my madre went to "un bebay eshowur" and Malcolm and I made about a cubic meter of popcorn in a pressure cooker and watched MTV for a few hours. We do this periodically, its very theraputic. Madre came back and we ate ravioli (weekend pasta) and we took the bus to Malcolm's and a taxi to Nick's and a Taxi to the Fosh.

I've got to say, I'm getting a little sick of going out to the same place over and over again. I like my friends and all but in alot of ways the thrill is gone. Usually going out for me is a way to find that socialy contact that overwhelms and thrills a part of me that doesn't want to be paid attention to during the week. Pati Smith says "I went to the protest to rub against people." This isn't sexual the way I see it, its desiring the random contact that crowds provide. You can get that at protests, always, and K parties often, and I used to be able to get it here, but I'm too surrounded by people and places I know. I never get asked to dance, I get tired early, the people there to bump against are too flimsy or hit back hard. Its an existential crisis when I dont want one. If I want to freak out about my place in the world, there better be a keyboard at my fingertips or a paper and pen in my pocket, not a beer in my hand.

So we got out of that club pretty fast, took those same taxi's home, those same fumbelings for the keyes, the same glasses of water before the same sleep.

An Interesting Weekend (Long but hopefully worth it)

(All the photos in this entry are Aracely's. Thanks!)
This weekend, we went to the northern coastal province of Esmeraldas. Specifically, we went to the small island of Musine in the Canton of the same name. I’m going to go over the main points of what happened, expanding in the Analyze, Describe, Interpret, and Evaluate format that this assignment calls for.

FRIDAY
Our trip started early. I was out of the house by ten to six on Friday morning, looking for a taxi. I finally found one, driven by an ancient man drinking a Pilsner out of a can in the passenger seat. Drinking and driving here is totally a non-issue. I said to him, “so you are drinking beer?” and he responded “claro que si” and took a sip. I got to Quicentro mall safely, though, and he charged me fifty cents less than I had expected. We all met on the steps of El Español, cranky and half asleep. Most people didn’t have rubber boots, so we freaked out about that for a while. We met our guides, Giovanni and Andre.
The drive was long but we all were sleeping for the first few hours, getting out of suburban Quito, the desert by the Mitad del Mundo, and the cloud forests. We started waking up around Mindo, and stopped for snacks and bathroom. The bus drive passes slowly. We slowly lost altitude, it got wetter, the roads less well paved, and the houses got poorer, the people sitting on the porches waved more intently, the children wore less clothes, the men wore rubber boots. We saw palmacultura, farms that grow African Palms in long, crooked, furry rows for the little red berries that make cheap cooking oil.
We stopped for lunch in Atacames, a nice-ish beach town about an hour from our destination. We ate at the restaurant Oh! Mar! Aracely and I ordered a civeche and a seafood pasta to share. The civeche was great, I’d never had it before. The pasta was a different story. Let’s go to the DAIE format to work over lunch. Describe: a mixing bowl full of pasta, surrounded by lettuce and lemon slices. On top of the pound of pasta lie several prawns larger than my hand, unidentified pieces of muscle tissue, creatures that can only be described as “mini squids” (bright purple), normal sized shrimps, cloves of garlic, and chunks of tomato. I’ll admit it; I shuddered when I saw the eyes, arms, and heads of the prawns, and the baby squids. Aracely and I locked eyes, and she bravely took the prawns off, and started sawing away.
Now let’s analyze. The easy point: I’m afraid of seafood. I’ve been a vegetarian for five years or so, but I started eating meat in Ecuador so I wouldn’t be a hassle, and also so I could learn about parts of the food culture, like seco de gallina and ceviche. Overall, its gone pretty well, except for my cholesterol levels, I suppose, but this was the exception. I was shocked to have to eat something so recently alive. Most of the meat I’ve eaten here has come pre-cut, cooked, and served. I haven’t bought my own meat from the supermarket, haven’t cooked it up myself. I’ve been enjoying the tasty parts of being an omnivore, but not the mammalian truth; I’m killing something most times I eat lunch. It was hard to face that, and embarrassing to have to do so in a restaurant in front of friends all happily chomping away on shrimps. My behavior wasn’t appropriate, it’s not good to dissect your food, form a discard pile full of mini shrimps and things with identifiable eyeballs, but its what happened. My behavior was in line with my morals, my ethics, and my conundrum about eating meat. I just wish I hadn’t left Aracely having to eat three enormous prawns, when their faces freaked her out too.
Time to interpret. I wonder why the restaurant gave us such a preposterous amount of food. It was too much for two people; we barely got through half of it. Were we supposed to order just one item for our family of five? Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in Ecuador, but we'd barely eaten anything that day and we still barely made a dent in the pasta. The restaurant was clearly catering to tourists, so maybe they were fat hungry tourists who wanted to sample the bounty of the sea. Also, it did cost 11 dollars, which is huge for Ecuador (thought not huge for seafood), so maybe the goal was to get your money’s worth. I really don’t know.
Finally, I’m going to Evaluate. I’m glad, overall, that I didn’t just slurp down shrimp eyes with my linguini. I’ve been feeling pretty unsure about how to approach the eating-meat situation, and this incident really made it clear that I need to put more thought into it.
Enough of that, back to the story. After lunch, we wandered around the town, mostly on a side street filled with small stores selling bathing suits, and leering men. We bought ice cream and walked on a small stone bridge over a dirty green river-channel of the sea. I watched a woman watching us on the bridge out of her house by the river. The house was made of cement, stilts holding up the back. She was wearing a slip with holes in it. It fully filled my image of a backwater brothel. She was so sad and observant, just sitting by her window.
After we started driving again, the sadness didn’t stop. By the time we got to the Congal research station, I couldn’t stop looking out of the window. The houses were all wooden, small or larger, on the ground or with porches, or on stilts. Wide windows to let in ventilation, so you can fully see into family life. Women cooking, kids playing with dogs, a man drinking a beer, clothes drying, spanking babies, the minutia of daily life that you can keep private when you have curtains.
I really liked the station at Congal. It was down a very muddy track, 4 k off the main road (glad I brought my boots!). We stayed in simple rooms with bunk beds and cold-water showers. We immediately found a giant spider on our door, which we were very brave about. There were hammocks, a dining room, and a tree house like place for permanent volunteers

We took a walk to the nearby town, Bunche. It was very, very poor. Very very. Part of the problem is that the town is very close to the ocean, which has very strong tides. So the streets flood twice a day, covering the town in silt, mud, and salt. The people were extremely friendly, several people just came up and introduced themselves, but it was hard to see a town in such a desolate location. After Bunche, we walked to the beach.

It was raining a little, but the water and air were warm, and we had mud fights and played tag. It was very fun, very group bonding.
We walked back to the station and had dinner (shrimp rice! My favorite!) with the other volunteers, mostly gap-year kids from Australia, USA, or Germany. They were very friendly and eager to speak English to people they hadn’t spent every day with for the past two months.
After dinner, we went to Freddy’s houses. Freddy lives between Bunche and Congal, in a house whose bottom story is empty except for a motorcycle and several dogs. Once you climb the ladder to the second floor, you find five or six hammocks, a table and chairs, and a television. The whole thing looks like a porch and is covered in graffiti. We watched the soccer game for a while, and then walked to the beach to have a bonfire. It was great, to watch Freddy build a fire that was protected from the wind with coconut husks, to talk with other motivated kids about Ecuador, to just sit on the beach in the dark and watch the fire. We went back around ten, scared by some pigs and horses on the road, and fell asleep instantly.

SATURDAY
We woke up at 530 to go see some monkeys. That was unpleasant but do-able. We rode the bus to the harbor of Muisne, and then got onto a large motorboat.

We rode through manglares channels, squinting in the morning, dozing off, eating the fruit salad we brought. After about 40 minutes of travel deep into the manglares, we stopped and walked along these banks by large shrimp ponds into the forest. We walked a long ways into the forest (a rainforest, not like a pine tree forest). Then we found some monkeys!

There were five or six very high up in a tree, some with babies on their backs. We watched them for a long time, and then they started to get mad that we were there, and started peeing on us. So we left the forest. To leave the forest-shrimp pond area, we had to retrace our steps, but the tide had gone out, so instead we walked through this man’s house that was nearby, walking messily on his porch, climbing up a ladder to the giant generator which pumps water to the shrimp pond, and back down another ladder to the boat.

We traveled back out of the manglares and onto a big sand bar/beach, where we had breakfast round two: wonder bread and cheese and cold cuts. This was seriously one of the best meals I have ever had. Unfortunately, we ran out of sandwich fillings, so I had a mayonnaise sandwich, and everyone made fun of me. We just played around on the sand for a while, jumping across tide pools and playing in the quicksand we found by accident.
We got back on the boat and went to a shrimp farm. Shrimping used to be the second biggest industry in Ecuador, after petroleum, and people could get rich overnight harvesting shrimp. However, in 1998, there was “the great shrimp bust of ‘98” which sounds funny but isn’t. People tried to import tiger prawns from Asia, and the tiger prawns were immune to this disease that South American shrimp are not. Almost all the shrimp in this area died. People lost their lively hood overnight, the price of shrimp dropped, and all these expensive, manglar-destroying, and complex shrimp farms were abandoned. It was a really bad time. As the shrimp are starting to gain immunity, there are larger crops, but the price of shrimp is still at half of pre-bust levels.
We also tried some hot peppers growing by the shrimp pond, which literally made me cry and sneeze for ten minutes. We walked into the manglares (mangroves) and learned all about the different types of trees and the lifecycle of a mangrove. Some of the trees there have roots that stick up above ground to get more oxygen because the soil is so dense.
We took the boat back to the bus, and that’s when things started to get weird. We needed to change into our swimsuits, but only the girls, so we asked the men to get of the bus. Everyone did so, except the bus driver. We asked him to get off of the bus, in very polite Spanish, but he remained sitting in the front seat. He said “no lo veo,” but it was clear that he could veo, because we could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. It was uncomfortable, but we dealt with it. After we got off the bus, we took a boat across the river, and then rickshaw-motorcycle-tricycles across the island, grinning at how absurd it all was. We ate excellent lunch at a restaurant by the beach, drinking Inca Cola, the king of drinks. We played in the water, found sand dollars, built a sand castle, and watched a soccer game. We lacked a few hours before we had to go, so we sat back at the restaurant and played with a very cute little kid who wanted to play. Sometimes kids who are by themselves can be just so social and goofy that you can’t help but play along.
We started walking to the town, away from the beach part of town. The little kid followed us, but Andre told us that everyone in the town knows each other and that the kid would be well taken care of. Muisne was like Bunche in that everything was covered in mud. There are about 8000 people in the town. The main island is coverd in cement buildngs, none with glass. Many people in our group had to go to the bathroom, so Giovanni lead them away, and Andre talked to us about the water situation in Muinse. Currently, people mainly buy and refill large bottles on the mainland, or they drink the contaminated brackish water and get diarreaheal diseases. A student from Yale who worked at Congal tried to work on setting up a reverse-osmosis system, but the local government was so corrupt that all the funds went missing. I thought about this for a long time, analyzing how this could have happened. Maybe he didn’t outline the program properly; maybe the student didn’t plan properly. Or maybe you can interpret this as a lack of respect for government, a lack of respect for foreigners, or just plain desperation and need for money. Whatever the reason, it can be seen as a waste of resources to try to help Muisne if any external funds are just going to get doled out individually. Unless individual economic assistance is the goal.
After a long time, we decided to find the people who went to the bathroom, and found them playing pool. So we played pool for a while and ate candy. I played with some little kids. Little kids are the same everywhere, except they asked me for my cigarette, even though they couldn’t have been more than six at the very oldest.
We stood on a corner of the town, eating ice cream and watching the people pass by. It was very depressing. It’s hard to describe it, but I just felt like there was this air of total desperation and repression going on. I imagined if I lived here, and honestly I thought about how I would probably move away or kill myself as soon as I could. I thought about how I didn’t see a single book for sale on the island, no bookshelves in the houses, only a church and it’s bible. How hard would it be to learn about the outside world if you literally lived on an island made of mud?
At six, we walked to the marimba presentation. The landscape of Musine changed as we walked away from the center. The original houses are built on solid ground, but the outskirts of the town are not actually on the island. The houses are on stilts with ramps or ladders leading down to the ground. When the tide is low, you can walk across the mud to your house, but when it rises, you are stuck either in or out. There was a sidewalk constructed the same way, and we walked along that to Muisne’s most hopping dance club: a cement room filled with 50 children and a marimba band. Some kids did a marimba dance, and then asked us to do the dance. That was fun. But then things turned bad. So you know how slavery inspired dancing can be really sexual? Well, this was. The boys laid down on the ground, and the girls thrust themselves at their faces. Then the girls laid down on the ground, and then the boys assumed the push-up position over them and thrust wildly. Young kids, too, no older than twelve. They were laughing, but it was definitely sexual. But then, they asked us to the dance too. So I lay on the ground while a seven-year-old boy thrust at me, and my 6 foot six friend had to get on top of a twelve-year-old girl. Most of my other girl friends said that they put their hands in front of their faces or closed their eyes, but with my dance partner, we made eye contact and laughed the whole time.
What happened here? It’s hard to analyze this part. What happened was kids were using adult traditions to impress foreigners? Was shock part of the goal? It certainly was accomplished, but were they going for it? Was it just a normal part of culture, or was it meant to be extreme. It makes me uncomfortable that young children were doing sexual things. I know, especially as anthropology major, that all cultures have value and that little is definitively good or bad, but this just seemed wrong. Part of safety is some freedom, at least as far as I know, and children deserve some freedom from adult pressures. One of these is freedom from acting sexual before they want to. Maybe these kids were ready, maybe they wanted to, but I doubt it. And we gringos certainly didn’t want to. It was a situation of sexual pressure, which is never helpful or empowering. Why was that there? Why didn’t we say no? Why did they set it up like that? I don't know.
After the dance, Andre said to us, “now you know why they have such high teen pregnancy in Muisne.” I think it was supposed to be a joke, but it wasn’t for me. If there is no other option besides marriage and reproduction, if you know are valued for nothing besides your sexuality, if there is no option to use your brain or strength in useful ways (and there aren’t, on an island with no jobs), it makes sense to turn to sexuality, even at a ridiculously young age. Maybe the teenage girls that talked to the boys in our group weren’t prostitutes. Maybe they were looking for a way out.
We took the bus home in silence, grateful and shocked. I read for a while in a hammock, Mike and Stewart and I reading passages of our books that we liked to each other. I slept and had scary dreams.

SUNDAY
We woke up later, ate many many empanadas for breakfast, and then rode on the bus for ten hours. Lots of singing, yelling, picture taking, studying, game playing and general bonding. A good time. Got home at 830, took a taxi home. No beer this time.

Civil Society

Written Friday Afternoon

Today has been an awesome social-science sort of day. And its not even 4 pm. I was just out in the world, looking at people, thinking about stuff, being part of civilization.

I had to wake up early, and I’d stayed out late the night before, so it wasn’t the best early morning. My madre has a friend from Guyaquil staying for a few days, and she insisted on turning on the TV to some sort of tele-bendiction, that had a lot of loud singing and yelling and an unmoving image of Jesus “hanging out” HAHAHA sorry to be sacreligious. I think it was from clip art or something. Sorry clip art is sacrilegious. We drank this insanely acrid juice that I accidentally described as bitter, but at least that got me out of drinking most of it. We also had yoghurt, and a long discussion about how there is a lot of sugar in yoghurt, and how splenda isn’t actually good for you. Look! Nutricion! Also, to stop my vamanos! Diarreah! I’ve been taking this stuff called intero-germina, which looks like those eye-drop capsules grandpa uses, and tastes like old water. It has like 3 billion bacteria in it. Also, the word for billion in Spanish is mil milliones. A thousand millions. Look! Linguistics!

Took the bus to school, as usual. Have I described the bus to you? Its not so complicated. I walk four blocks north to “la funeraria.” Most of the buildings are funerary plazas, creamatoriums, insurance offices, and flower shops. There is also a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a porno theater. I get on “La Latina” bus, which is usually croweded and then gets less crowded as we pass the Park Elijido, a whole bunch of high schools, and the general hospital. Eventually, we near my stop near the sports complex, and everyone starts yelling “gracias!!!” which means “I want to get off the bus.” I hop off with everyone else and we go wait in line for the next bus. The second bus is called “TransFloresta” and it is a tiny small, green bus. It has to be so small because it takes these twisty, winding roads up and down the mouantin. They are all cobblestone. But, because its so small, there is huge rush to get in, and ends up really crowded. Its very orderly getting on, though. We all line up by this one tree on the sidewalk and wait for the next bus. If you want a seat, you have to wait your turn, but after the seats are filled, people who are running late rush out of line to stand in the aisle. Look! Group Dynamics! I always wait for a seat, its my morning luxury, and contemplate buying an empenada.

Get on bus. Tiny seat. Always window, always left side, always as close to the front as possible. These buses have no shocks, so the back row is a trip to the chiropractor. Ride bus. Get to school. I only have one class on Fridays, and its Rural Socialogy from 8-9. Not really worth the trip to school, but its how it is. We’ve got a lecture about migration and how it effects the rural sector. Main point- remittances are way important. Other point- Europe sucks for not letting Africans immigrate after they totally colonized the continent. This is demonstrated in an emotional and badly put together slide show featuring paintings from the Harlem Rennaissance (?????).

I’ve got about an hour to kill, so I sit with Hailey and we look at our facebooks. Jon Posner talks to me about body modification. Look! Sub cultures! Hailey carefully words a wall comment. We drool over vegan French toast recipies. Look! More nutrition! We go downstairs to get coffee, which for some reason I get for free. I was like “I am going to pay now” and the lady was just like, “no, don’t worry, go sit down.” Ok, cool. Chat with my gringos about last night. Look! Youth behavior! Storytelling patterns!

I’ve got an appointment with my sociology teacher to discuss a volunteering project for January. Its actually an amazingly useful meeting. We are going to get me set up working with older adults who have diabetes in the area of Yaruqui. This is so cool! Not totally sure what I’m doing yet, but I’ll keep you updated. Slash just put my project proposal up here as a blog entry. It was great to really be thinking about social research skills, and to have Prof. Waters mention “when you do your own Fullbright.” Yeah, sure, lets do this.

Bus ride back home. On the way home, the bus is awalys full and I stand. The first bus that comes by, I usually try to open the doors and end up crushing some old lady, the bus is so full. Eventually, the third one I get on, wedge my self in the isle, put on the talking heads, and hold on. Its not a fun ride, curvy and uphill the whole way, making way too much physical contact with your neighbors, getting angry looks from those with seats, although they were in your position this morning. Latina again, a perfect running entrance and seat-grabbing.

I get off the Latina a little early. I want to have lunch near my neighborhood instead of the pricey places in Cumbayá. The mariscal is where all the bars and clubs are, and in the evening its lit up and smokey and loud, but in the afternoon its just a run down neighborhood with more places closed than open. It nice to be there in daylight, to have Spanish instead of drunken Midwestern be the primary language, to just have one reggaeton song blasting per block, to be able to read signs properly. Its somehow more threatening now. Maybe that’s the Zhumir talking.

I found an English bookstore and spent half an hour there, looking at all the romance novels. I found a bunch of books, including Briget Jones’ Diary and Midnight’s Children, but decided on one of those comic book textbooks for introducing linguistics. Look! Linguistics! It was good to speak English.

I found this restaurant called Uncle Ho’s or Tio Ho’s, Ho’s something, “Fresh Asian Food” and now I’m going to tell you about my delicious lunch. It was so good! I ordered the executive lunch, which is like the special that almost every restaurant has. It has soup, juice, main plate, and sometimes dessert.

The soup was really Ecuadorian, which I was trying to get away from, but really good. Little noodles, dark beef broth, pieces of onion, little pieces of chewy beef that tasted so good to this protein-deprived lady. It also had that awesome quality soup sometimes has when you can tell that there is fat in it, it really fills you up and warms you.

Next came the main dish! I ordered vegetables and tofu with noodles. It was sort of odd. The vegetables were semi-raw zucchini/squash on a skewer. It tasted pretty bad. The tofu was also on a skewer but was awesome. It was crispy and sweet on the outside, and then soft and plain in the middle. There was a lot too. The noodles were like vermicelli noodles that were in this thick sauce that might have been marinade. There were also raw cucumbers and whole peanuts. It was good but super strange. There was also pineapple juice, without the three inches of bitter foam that usually come when you make pineapple juice. Then there was deseart, which was a half of a banana deep fried. I wasn’t expecting that, but it wasn't like I was complaining. All for five dollars. I was the only person in the restaurant, so I left a 50 cent tip. Its way nice and totally unexpected to tip in Quito, so I feel good Samaritan.

I walked home a different way, feeling full and happy. Its so cool to be in another country, to hear Spanish and understand it, to learn new things. But really, what's most amazing is just seeing people. Watching men argue, an old couple cross the street, children pay attention, pickpockets plot. People try so hard to sell things, to keep themselves healthy, to meet the expectations of others. And you can see all that stuff everyday on the street, in a lobby, anywhere.

Gotta give my madre the computer and go make spaghetti. So glad to have a world and eyes to see it with.