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."

And Just One More

To celebrate the end of school, its time for one more session of precious spanish class memories.

Sample sentances showing our brilliance in Spanish

I fell in love with that girl because she has a car

You look grated

We had some heavy use of a word meaning "dead body":

You look like a dead person because you are skinny

I got happy because I don't have to see a dead person

It's going to be great when the dead person in my mom

To sleep means to shut your eyes and dream of someone sexy

I became poor after I hunted my life

Michael Jackson turned himself into a ghost

When I arrived in Ecuador, I turned into a drunken woman (said by a man)

While in the forest, they stumbled upon, accidentally, some people from the FARC

Finally, I found a naked bar!

And my personal favorite:

The situation turned serious after the pregnancy test turned red

10th Week, Quito Style, Side of Fries

Well, its exam week here in Ecuador, which means I look forward to going to sleep at 9 pm, have huge carbohyrdate cravings and only want to wear soft pants. And the work, oh yeah, the work. Can all the people currently sitting in the Kalamazoo College library take a second and raise your hands the the ceiling, look towards the nearest computer and mutter "hallelulah"? That would make me really happy. Additionally, as you walk down Academy at 145 am and you have no fear of being mugged, can you say "praise be"? And as you only have THREE classes to do final projects for, can you say "damn, I have it good."? Also, you should really take advantage of the caf salad bar, you are gonna miss it when its not close by.

But enough W curve bullsnap, its time to actually write a blog entry...Oh wait. It's actually time to do 5 drawings of feet, 5 of hands, and a science project based heavily on the movie Avatar. I kid you not, Avatar.

So I'll get back to this woefully negelected blog once my bedtime moves past sunset. My b, peeps. My b also for that terrible slang I just used.

Home Stretch!

I´m so close to being done with the semester! A semester is so much longer than a 10 week quarter. Here´s what I have left (not that you are interested=
-sociology paper (english)
-Sociology exam
-Spanish dramatization
-ICRP Report
-Drawings of ten hands and five feet for art
-Unknown other art assignments
-Unknown Flora y Fauna del Ecuador assignments
-Improv Presentation
-Critical Essay on Sweeney Todd (Spanish)

I can do all this. Heck Yes.

Thanks, sometimes the internet is a space to vent/ organize your thoughts

Monday morn

I have a ton of homework to do, so of course I´m writing a blog. Right now, I´m interested in anything besides 1000 words reacting to the Planet Earth videos we watched in my Flora y Fauna de Ecuador Class.

Things that are more interesting:
-Fleetwood Mac
-Cheddar Cheese
-How my ma and sister are coming in less than a month!!!!!
-alternative bus routs home
-swimming
-finding a way to make my hair grow really, really fast
-SIP options
-This amazing video about teaching queer issues in schools
-queer issues
-my feminist blogs
-my vegan blogs
-funny stuff
-Fiestas de Quito which is gonna be so cool!
-where I am going to eat lunch
-The Bill O´Rilley falafel incident. Not adding a link on purpose.
-amazing plans for spring quarter.

Oh, look, its time to go. Nice 1000 words, Dana

Spañol Class

Here are some more gems from our Advanced Conversation class.

¨I began the growing of my infant¨

¨She drank a lot of coffee and now she has jackets¨

¨My grandpa got false teeth as of yesterday.¨

¨As I ran from the police, I thought, ´Aye, Carumba.´¨

¨I had to be a good grandson and help my grandfather find his fake arm!¨

¨She was raised by two potatoes.¨

¨We will go to the game so that we can have a good climate.¨

¨The more you speak, the more I hate you.¨

¨In the long run, I will convert myself into a very genteel man.¨

¨Our plan to visit grandpa has failed because she has skills.....I mean dead.¨

¨I have been taxed these papers upon the copy machine.¨

¨I wish I could stop my own personal vices!¨

¨We lack food so we will have to eat these ten brawny athletes¨

¨I didn´t get along with him well because he is a violent attack.¨

¨This weekend I dealt with guinea pigs.¨

¨This Gucci looks great on my muscular body!¨

and just one from my sociology teacher

¨They say that you can´t mix apples and oranges. Well, you can, and you get a delicious fruit salad of statistics.¨ Any K kids want to pass that one on to Dr. Nordmoe for me?

Hello Dear Kitty,
(guess who just bought The Diary of Anne Frank in Español? This guy)

My neck is feeling way better so I thought I’d update you guys on my fascinating life. Actually, its been pretty lively. I’ve still managed to sleep like fourteen hours a day, but get a lot done in the small time I’m awake.

Last Wednesday, we had the English Improv workshop. I actually have to write three pages in Spanish about this experience, but I’ll spare you the minutea that I’m going to get into, and just do an overview. The first part, where we did warm-up like games in the middle of the quad-like-place on campus went really well. People were watching and staring, we really caught the attention of the kids just laying around. It was also really good to work with my partner, Maria Jose. She looks like a typical USFQ student, with a blackberry that never leaves her hand, designer clothes and a perfect body. But she was actually really proactive and responsible in planning. She was a little embarrassed to play the games, but she totally got into it, and didn't seem to mind that her partner for all of this was a gawky gringa with bad hair.

The second part of the program, well, it wasn;t a failure. We were expecting some sort of audience, but no one sat down to watch and all my gringo friends left after five minutes to go eat lunch. So our audience was Sharon, our program coordinator, two professors, Maria Jose’s cousin and my friend Danny. Only Danny speaks English. Whoops. Additionally, we had The Drumming Guy join us. The Drumming Guy exists on every college campus, but seems particularly out of place at USFQ with his dreadlocks, tie-died linen pants, giant djembe drum, and belief that he, personally, was brought from Mars. So The Drumming Guy decided he wanted to be part of the games, which we totally supported, but he only wanted to participate through drumming. Which is not very helpful in non-musical games, or in musical games where The Drumming Guy does not know the song and keeps playing the same stoned rhythm over and over. So yeah, that was The Drumming Guy.

The English didn’t really stick, and that was fine. It was pretty comical, actually, to see people start sentances in English and then burst out in Spanish, “I want to…viajar el mundo contigo en un moto solo los dos de nostoros, amantes pro siempre.” Lord knows I wish I could use English when I get excited, so I was just happy to see people get excited.

Thursday was pirate day. In some sort of spirit week/homecoming/Halloween conglomeration, USFQ decided that Oct 24 to 26 was Pirate week. This didn’t seem to include anything except a film festival called “Non Pirated Movies about Pirates” (A pretty clever name, I’ll give them that) and some posters about the upcoming census. But Thursday was pirate day, and all the girls wore too large blouses and stripes. There was a fake ship mast in the lake at school (yes, there is a lake at school) and a hunt for treasure in the afternoon. Teachers were either irate at the festivities or joined in and cancelled class. Students were either apathetic, enthusiastic, or just used the day as an excuse to drink rum out of water bottles.

Thursday night, the school had a Halloween party. R Kelly (my pseudonym, not her’s) and I dressed up like 80’s babes and went down town, where we found fourty of our classmates drinking in an alley. After a while we got on a chiva, which is like a flatbed truck with a roof and railings but no walls. Its decorated and has a bar and a stereo system and its incredibly dangerous and the coolest way to party in Quito, apparently. We were divided into two chivas and drove around downtown at ten miles an hour for fourty five minutes, singing along to US pop songs, smashing into each other at stop lights, waving at people on the sidewalk, and being offered canelazo (think apple cider with moonshine) out of waterbottles by a guy in a bear suit. It was pretty fun and completely ridiculous. It was fun to ride around Quito at night, but I felt totally ashamed to be part of this drunken mass being driven around the streets and throwing their cigarette butts in the gutter.

On the chiva, the most ridiculous thing happened. I’m going to talk about it even though its embarrassing because I want to get it out there. So, you know at parties, how you sort of just meet random people and introduce yourself and start dancing and stuff like that? Well that was the case on the chiva. There was a guy who joined our little circle of dancing, a guy from Jaimito’s class, and we started dancing and that was fun. While we were dancing, he was like “oh yeah, you want this, you want me,” stuff like that. I figure other people like to talk as much as I do, so I just sort of let that slide. But then! I asked him what his name was, and he told me that he would tell me after we had sex. Smooth move, Sinatra. That’s really going to get me to leap into bed with you. I feel like names are personal but they are also completely public, you have a right to know the name of everyone you interact with. Especially people “con quien tienes relaciones.” Ehem. I’m embarrassed I didn't slap him and walk away then and there, but staying gave me the second best quote of the night, “Wait here, I’ll come back for you, my goal is to make out with five people tonight.” From my observations, and its hard not to keep tabs on someone when you are both on the same flatbed truck, he got to at least three.

I hope he was unsuccessful. I hope someone finally pushed him away. I hope she learned his name.

Idiot Grin

here are some nicely stupid things I have said recently.


papanicolau is not the word for "Papa Nicholas," even though they sound the same. It means
pap smear. whoops.

The word for a snobby rich person isn't peluquero, its pelucon. Peluquero means
barber. so I was calling kids at my school hairdressers. What an insult.


And then everyday for class we make up sentences with our vocabulary and verb lists. Some of the funnier results.

"She abused our friendship when she gave my money"

"The closet took advantage of World War II"

"The all fled from the happiness of the restroom"

"When I went to touch the rat I looked for a package that was not dead."

"He really worries about the criminal system while resting at night."

"Your BMW tastes good always"


"facebook was discovered in one thousand, two hundred and four"

As I'm sure you all understand, we do it for the lolz

Talky Talky

Here are two interesting/funny anecdotes relating to linguistics from the last two days.

1. I read one of those comic-book style textbooks about linguistics. It was really interesting, but then I caught myself applying Chomsky´s rules of language acquisation to my life! BF Skinner said that childrne learn language through correction and positive and negative reinforcement through their parents. Chomsky said that this isn´t true, that kids don´t just make random guesses at words, they create rules. Today, I felt myself create a rule. In spanish, coverings for things often have the prefix ¨sobre¨and then the word. I was looking for the word ¨Pillowcase¨ (and a pillowcase itself), and I called it a ¨sobrealmohada.¨ Even though that´s not the word (its almohadón), I felt my logic-brain think of how Spanish views coverings for things and what they call them. I´m learning!

2. This one is funny. We were in improv class, and we had a reading to do in English. the teacher was explaining some words in English that people might not know.
Teacher: (Spanish) Ok, so one word is ¨Joker.¨ Who knows what joker means?
Student 1:(English)Batman´s enemy
Student 2: (English)¨WHY SO SERIOUS¨
Student 3: (English) The late Heath Ledger won an Oscar for his preformance in The Dark Knight
Student 4: (Spanish) Heath Ledger died, you idiot!
Student 3: I know! That´s why I said the late
Student 2: He passed away!
Student 4: So ¨Joker¨means ¨dead¨?
Teacher: (Spanish) Ok, let´s move on. Theater of the Oppressed was founded by a Brazillian, Agusto Boal, who actually died about a year and a half ago.
Student 2: What a joker

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!

Un Ratito

So, my buddy Daedal is studying in Greece, and he wrote

dana, in my ethnography class today we got to talking about ecuador and how they used to have the same sense of time as the greeks in that it is event-based rather than time-based. apparently a few years ago the government decided that they were going to change this and make it so that meetings and other various things always started right when they said they'd start. i'm wondering if this was actually successful and if it's changed or if you find that the culture is still event-based instead of time-based like the US? let me know :-). blockquote>

I wrote back,

its really a mix. I also learned about the event based thing, but not in relation to the greeks. I learned about it as a ¨polychronic¨vs ¨monochronic¨which are such totally greek terms. Anyway, so most of western culture is monochronic, but Ecuador +Latin America + ancient greece were polychronic, so they are really into multitasking and not worring about time things, partially due to the fact that there are no seasons, so there´s no real rush to make it through the hard part of the year like there is when you have a winter.

Acutal manifestation of this: the word ¨un ratito¨ is super common. it means ¨in a little bit¨and its totally appropriate to say it to anyone, in a business meeting, on the phone, whatever, and just ignore the other person to do something else. So un ratito is still in effect, but classes, meetings, importatnt stuff starts on time, and my teachers get mad if you arrive late. However, dinners, going out, casual stuff is usually late. Usually things start on time, but end up running over so the second parts start late. Like my friend George came over when he said he would, at nine, but we didn´´t actually go bikining until 945. Its just less stress about 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.

I'll Have the Usual

<
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.