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.