Its Sunday afternoon and I’m just chillin out at home. I have a horrible hang nail on my left pinkie, so any As, Qs and Zs I type really hurt. Mostly As actually. Man, the left pinky it not very used in typing.
ANYWAY, I know I haven’t updated el blog for a while, so I thought I’d talk about how orientation week went, because that’s what I’ve been doing this week. Here’s the general schedule of how the last five days or so went.
545 am. Wake up needing to pee from overhydration and needing to blow nose from cold. It is already light out. Crawl back into bed and hum Bob Dylan songs to self until fall back asleep
630. Wake up to dinky alarm on dinky cell phone
635. Take semi-warm shower. Do not wash hair. This seems to be socially acceptable. Scrub face to remove remnants of daily sunscreen application.
645 Dress self. I’m constantly torn in my clothes choices between the preppy, bright colors and clean fashions everyone at USFQ seems to favor, the bland, loose style of your average person on the street, or my own choices. Usually, no side wins and I end up in non-matching, but very warm clothes.
700. Make bed. My bed is so large (some sort of irregular queen sized thing) that it doesn’t actually have sheets, just these large pieces of soft printed cotton. I think it's a pretty good idea for cheap sheets. Also, I’ve got to arrange the three woolen blankets and the comforter over my giant bed.
705 Eat breakfast. Breakfast always has coffee. This is the joke about coffee in the house: J says coffee is for the week. P and Dita say coffee is for the strong and mature. HAHA HAHAHH we tell this joke every day. Breakfast also always included jugo, fruit and water thrown in a blender. Sort of like a thin, foamy smoothie. Some of it is delicious, sometimes it tastes like thick Tang (stay away from jugo de naranjilla). J either comes to the table in a black long sleeved Tshirt for a ‘90s metal band, or his uniform for physical therapy school, celeste blue scrubs. On those days, his mom braids his hair for him. P always makes breakfast wearing torquoise track pants, water shoes for children, and a T shirt for the Galapagos with a red chopstick in her hair. During breakfast, P will say contracictory and confusing things like “eat more bread Dita,” and “I only want to eat half a roll today. I don’t want to get fat. Its easy to get fat when you eat bread.”
725. Remind P that I have to leave by 730. She begins twenty minutes of whatever, dressing or whatever, and I begin 20 minutes of filling waterbottles, taking medicine, feeling bad about my clothes, etc.
745. Leave house. Either walk alone about 10 blocks, or have P walk with me. When we walk together, we walk through the park instead of around it. While we do this, she warns me of the dangers of the park, including muggers, rapists, and people who will hand you drugged pieces of paper.
750. Arrive at bus station. Kiss P goodbye, pay 25cents to enter raised bus station in the center of the road. Take bus 30 minutes to another bus station. This bus goes down the Avenida 6 de Deciembre, the day of Quito’s independane. It makes stops at its terminals about every four blocks. The stations are cool because they are just named after their street intersections, but they have these cool icons for each station, like the Jipijapa stop is a hat, the Eloy Alfaro stop is a profile of Eloy Alfaro, the Casa de Cultura stop (that’s mine) is the Janis faces.
8:10. Arrive at Rio Coca bus station, where most bus lines begin and end. Leave Ecovia area through a turnstyle, enter the other station. I’m not sure what it’s called, we just call it “the place with the green buses.” Run up to bus with a sign for Cumbayá, hop on and grab a seat.
8:15-845. Giant tour bus making hair pin turns on mountainous highways with oncoming traffic. Rare application of breaks or appreciation for traffic control devices. Nice view of the city.
845. Arrive in Cumbayá. Run across a street, past a bank. Arrive at San Francisco.
850. Enter Spanish class 20 minutes late. Deep look of shame. Our teacher is an ex-pat from Cuba, and she is really into talking about how much she freaking hates Cuba. But she’s lived in Ecuador for 15 years, so she’s great at teaching things specific to Ecuador and Quito. Our class is a combination of grammar drills and worksheets, short readings, interactive stuff, and miserable discussions like one after reading about Sor Juana: “Are men the cause of women’s problems?” aka “are you a feminist?”
1030. break from class. Stand on patio and talk like middle shcoolers for half and hour. Drink cold bottle of tea madre has given me.
1100-1230. More Spanish class. Learn a few things.
1230- 1300 (wow look at me using military time!) Line up in front of the school’s cafeteria, file in to get lunch. Realize that this is the third world when your request for more soup is denided. Eat lunch with 7 year olds in an English language camp. Trade meat for soup.
1300-1400. Free time. Walk to nearby gringo-oriented stores, take a nap on the grass, gossip, etc.
1400-1630. THE MOST BORING THING POSSIBLE. We all sit in an auditorium and listen to power points about things we are not allowed to do. And things we were supposed to do and forgot to, or need to pay a lot for now. Draw a lot. Annoy Jamie. Constantly be both very thirsty and needing to pee.
1630. Its around this time that everyone starts go do crazy. People start muttering, tapping feet rhythmically, or just standing up randomly. There is so much bordome in the room. Can’t really describe this, but its horrible.
1645. Bus back to Rio Coca. Usually we create a gringo swarm and talk loudly across the isles about how the racist country is. Well, some boys do that. I talk about shopping or waking up early or how is your digestive system doing?. Or I sit quietly.
1715 (that’s 5:15 if you are starting to get lost). Arrive at Rio Coca. Take other bus, with less gringos, still having fun.
1730. Feel jealous when all my friends get off the bus because they live less far away
1745. Arrive at my parque, El Ejido (its from Arabic, no idea what it means.) Walk home, doing small errands, like buying gum from this indigeneous lady on the sidewalk, or trying to put ten dollars on my cell phone but giving the guy at the store the wrong number, so some stranger has ten dollars and I paid 15$ to get only 5$ of credit.
1800. Get home. Unlock doors successfully. Feed cat. Drink a lot of water. Crave sugar.
ALTERNATE EVENING: take bus home with Malcolm to either of our houses. Sit around tiredly and are force fed reheated food.
1830. P gets home. Magically produces some sort of casarrole thing that I had no idea was around. The refrigerator looked almost empty, but now there’s a salad! And jello! And chicken! She puts food on a plate, and I think its for her, because she was just talking about how hungry she was, but the she is like “no, this is for you.” VERY AWKWARD. Eat in semi-silence and semi-dark. Oh, its already pitch dark outside.
1900. Drink coffee in P’s bed, watch TV. Our favorite programs are Grey’s Anatomy, Will and Grace, and Discovery Channel documentaries about manufacturing or natural disasters. She is a woman after my own heart.
2230. Wake self up as a loud commercial comes on. Kiss P goodnight, put dishes in sink. They will be magically done by the kitchen fairie soon. Floss, brush teeth. Drink half a liter of water. Do not wash face because the water is just too damn cold. Put on hoodie, long underwear and socks. Write or read. Listen to Wilco. Sleep, waking up gasping as my dreams integrate the lack of oxygen.
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