Daily Lifes

p>Some people (my grandparents) might be confused about what my daily life is like here in EcuadorSIPWorld. Here's how it happens most days. 

5:40am. Alarm goes off. Snooze

5:50. Alarm goes again. Hate life, worry about how I always end up sleeping on my belly, that can't be good for neck.

6am. actually get up this time. Put on one of two pairs of jeans and one of three shirts. Same shoes every day.

6:15. make breakfast. I boil water for tea, make myself some kind of banana-based smoothie, and some kind of carbohydrate. My host dad drinks oatmeal and eats saltines and watches me in silence. We listen to the Christian radio. 

6:30. get ready for work: fill up my 2 liter bottle with filtered water, get my two little-snack packs of crackers, get my notebook, pens, voice recorder, and money for the bus and lunch

7. leave the house and walk half an hour down the giant hill I live on.

7:30. get to the bottom, wait for the bus.

7:30-7:45. Approximately 17 buses pass and none of them are going to Puembo. Some of them have cool signs on them like this one:

that shows all the laborious tasks the people of Tumbaco can do. but it also makes me think of those images that are actually people having sex. No judgement, plz.

7:45. Get on the Puembo bus. I used to just look the scenery but I just got some headphones so I mostly listen to the Mountain Goats ( Heretic Pride is my Mountain Goats album of the year) and sleep. 

8:15. Get to Puembo. Theres a line out to the corner, about 50 people, mostly Mas and Babies waiting for appoitnment. I battle through and make it to the door on the basis of my scrubs, admire how clean it is in there.

8:45. after I stand around for 30 minutes or so watching stuff that is way too complicated to take fieldnotes on, I go into one of the Drs offices to watch them do their family planning appointments. 

9:40. Those appointments are done, I leave the office to find the nurse swamped in preparing people. Each day, there are like 30 people that come to get the appointment you need to attend school. People do lots of things wrong like not bring the exams we need for the certificate, not bring the 1$ needed for the certificate, not bring the children the certificate is for, or have children that are out of the Puembo district. I spend a lot of time being like "you need an exam of urine AND feces AND blood. Yes. Blood. it's possible to get an exam of blood, its very safe." and "if your child is not going to school, you do not need to get the exams or the certificate." I can say this stuff on the phone too. 

We weigh and measure and take the temparature and blood pressure of so many people. Each day a baby pees on the scale when we take thier daipers off. 

10:30. I watch more appointments with the other Dr. 

11:30. I wait until now or 10 to eat my crackers. It's an obsession. It's a lifestyle. 

here's me and my double chin that has nothing to do with eating crackers.

1pm. Lunchtime with Doña Marcy. We eat chicken, rice, potatoes, and onion salad and gossip. 

1:20. Back to work. I look for files in the hideously disorganized archive room, prepare patients and watch more appointments. 

2:45. The patients are done, Dr. V slaps the giant pile of the clinic histories of the patients she's seen that day, Dr. J pulls out her phone to text in celebration

2:50. Four people come in: one want birth control but is actually already pregnant, one is a screaming child who needs stitches, and one is an over protective mom who wants to vaccinate her 7 year child with vaccines we do not carry and is mad about it. The other is a 27 year old man with some kind of vague ache ("my knee hurts." "I have a rash." "I was just wondering if this bleeding from my ear is normal." "Can you guys remove warts? Because I have a ton of warts and I'd like them removed today if you can.") We help all four of them in the three-quarters way that everyone seems satisfied with. There are a lot of recommendations to just go to the hospital

4:30. We pile into Dr. J's car and drive to Quito. We listen to radio disney very loud, even during the commercials. The Drs talk to very quietly to each or in English to the Georgetown medical student while the Nurse and I sit in back and ask each other simple, repetetive questions like "What is your favorite food? "What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?" "Have you seen The Green Lantern?" "What size shoe do you wear?" 

4:50. The Doc drops me off at the same spot every day and almost forgets every day. I walk up the hill being afraid of getting mugged even though nothing is scary on that walk, ever.

5:15. Make it home, remove horribly sweaty clothes. Eat more crackers. Waste my life on the internet.

8. host parents come home, give me weird foods for dinner. We do not speak but every 45 seconds or so my "mom" catches my eye and gives me a look like  tthat might symbolize love or something.

830pm. I start feeling really bad about not being able to type up the 25 hand scrawled pages into perfect fieldnotes each night. Instead of dealing with this productively, I mostly complain about it to people on Skype. Luckily, my excellent mother was just like "do those in maryland dummy and get enough sleep and don't beat yourself up over it." So I'm going to do that from now on.

This might also be because my desk is so durn messy:

contents include: external hard drive, Ipod, camera, voice recorder and all thier respective cords, two types of candy, my unused planner, notecards, "South America on a Shoe String" "The Dharma Bums in Spanish," a note entitled "Thing to Look Forward to in the US", Spanish-English Dictionary, a lone earring made of dried glue, broken headphones, reciepts, academic articles, my computer case, and a needle and thread. 

10: there is no context of fieldnotes now, I'm just really sitting around and reading and eating candy that I should have given to other people as gifts or candy that I just bought for myself

11: i go to sleep. Blah. 

Isn't like life in a foreign country fascinating and exotic?!?!?

 

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.

Independent Lady on the Streets of Quito

Written Monday but its not like much has happened since then.

Today wasn't that an exciting day, nothing really to write home about. But write home about it I will.

I woke up early because I went to sleep early, before ten. Jimmy was grouchily eating breakfast and his wound still hasn't healed. I didn't really have to be awake just yet, so I flapped around my room frantically trying to pack with two weeks still to go and no clear plans. I managed to put five books in a box and make a pile of some things under my bed.

Got to school with my laptop safely in my bag all the way. I worked for a long while on my monografia. My topic is...well maybe I'll just give you my thesis. "Voy a explorar la situacion y organizacion de salud publico en Ecuador con focus (palabra?) de la region de la sierra rural, programas de anticonceptivos y la poblacion de mujeres indigenas. " I'm going to examine the situation and organization of public health in Ecuador with focus on the sierra region, birth control programs and the indigenous female population. There's lots of information about this topic from different angles, as well as articles that are really interesting but not really related ( Imagining the Unborn in the Ecuadoran Andes

Author(s): Lynn M. Morgan Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Feminists and Fetuses (Summer, 1997), pp. 322-350

Poor Adolescent Girls and Social Transformations in Cuenca, Ecuador

Author(s): Ann Miles

Source: Ethos, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 54-74

Using Home Gardens to Decipher Health and Healing in the Andes

Author(s): Ruthbeth Finerman and Ross Sackett

Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 459-482 to name a few)

Bri and I met up at noon and ate lunch. Salad and frozen yoghurt, I'm a yuppie even here. I worked for like four million hours on trying to pick out my classes for next quarter, that perfect balance of easy and interesting. Not that there are any really easy classes, CIP staff members who are reading this, but I'm leaning towards Basic Nutrition over The American Jury Trial.

At 230, I had a meeting with my sociology professor who is helping me get my SIP in line. We are gettin that SIP in line, gosh darn! hopefully I'll visit Tingo Pucará some time next week so that I can discuss project details with them. And Lester could come along! (I'll tell you more about this soon, Lester).

I went home after that, or to the laundramat for my lovely clean clothes and then home. It was raining and kind of nasty but I had ganas so I took my usual walk. I take this same route almost without fail, I'm surprised no one has noticed and mugged me. I'm slowly realizing that things will not be as miraculously cheap in the EEUU and am trying to take advantage of this while I can. Of course, no one is going to be spray painting a hot dog stand while customers eat at the counter and no one will be eating french fries out of plastic bags, and umbrellas may be actually water-proof but still! I've just got to get these shoes! They are only 4 35!

I made my usual stops and something at each place. The technical bookstore by the bridge where I usually read my sociology: A 2011 Planner with the theme of "Ecuador is a megadiverse country." 7$. The stand in the artisan market with the really nice ladies: A new nose ring because the other ones always break. 5$. So, cheap isn't always awesome. The woman selling them had a two year old baby drinking morocho who was so cute, I felt horrible asking her to help me put it in. A candy-and-junk stand, looking for my very specific snack goals: Cloretes Masticables (gum), Amor Limon (wafer cookies) and granadinas (delicious fruit you crack against your head). I found them in different stands, at 50, 75 and 25 cents, respectively. The DVD store where the Pirotecha knows me. Gave him a piece of the gum, bought an only-English, special-features-included, excellent-quality-te-juro copy of Burlesque which I totally loved in theatres. 1.50$.

Home, damp, to an empty house. In my planner, I wrote "calientica," which I just learned means "cozy."