19th Nervous Breakdown

In direct opposition to the crappy job of blogging I've been doing, here's what happened this weekend. 

Friday Night

• did nothing.


• Called a couple people, they didn't anser


• watched Almost Famous and thought about that for a while


• Host mamita was like "hey do you want to go to the jungle with my son ok cool"


• Made the moral decision not to go to my work thing on Saturday


• Packed furiously


• Finished Almost Famous. 

Saturday 

• Woke up around 5, packed and ate breakfast furiously


• said goodbye to host 'rents who are going to the beach and bringing 6 packages of ham, 3 boxes of tea, and 4 of canneloni. I do not wonder anymore. 


• Found out Diego wasn't coming till around 8, so I slept for a while. 


• Woke up to find Diego in my room ruffling around in his CD collection. He's like come on and Im not wearing pants. 


• We go out to the car and meet the other people with whom we are going to Tena. His ma told me that "Diego, his girlfriend and some other friends" were going. Most of the times I've hung with Diego, we were drinking moonshine on a street corner and listening to punk music, so I was expecting some pretty cool friends. I mean, I'd even shaved my legs for this. At the car, I find his girlfriend, Lora, and a 45 year old man with atheletic socks up to his knee caps. They are listening to Fiona Apple. Originally, I thought he was a bachelor looking for a foreign bride to deflower (uh hem) in some kind of feux indigenous ceremony preformed by bored Schwar teenagers in coconut bras, but it turned out he was just Lora's dad. 


• We drove for many (4) hours and through many (like 5.5) climate zones. 


• Around f10 30 we stopped in Baeza and got trout. I really really love trout around here. It's all either fished by people, like with a pole and worms, that old school , or grown by industrious people in square ponds near rivers. I like both those things, and I like trout. Fried trout, french fried, onion salad, and strawberry juice.


• Oh, also, this is when Pablo began his spree of paying for things. He just got up in the middle of lunch with his mouth full of bread and went to the counter to pay for all of our lunches. I hadn't figured out that he was Lore's dad yet, so this made the sugar-daddy possibility higher. 


• We made it to Tena by about noon, and drove around in the pouring rain for about an hour looking for a hotel. We found called the Pumarosa which I highly recommend. I was still in my double-date mindset and was worried that Pablo (the father) and I were going to share a room and he was going to liquor me up or something, but we each got our own rooms. Can I just expound on how wonderful it is to have one's own hotel room? I'm no Virginia Wolfe here, I just love being able to take up the whole closet and not have to ration towels. Also, not being in an arranged marriage to your friend's friend's dad is good. 


• We got back in the car and drove about half an hour to Misagualli (miss-ah-guay-YEE). This place is great. We only walked through the main town part, but it seemed very sleepy and beachy and nice. We walked to the pier and looked at the Napo River, and they all bought tamarindo and coco juice from this very gregarious vendor who took a long time in getting them change and then refilled the cups when he finally got back. I was terrified about getting sick from water, but really thirsty.


•  River playtime! It was a big wide river with a sandy beach and a strong current but not too many rocks. Pablo rented us inner tubes and I went again and again up to the small rapids and bounced down to the beach. There are some things in life that make me endlessly happy, and rivers and inner tubes are two of those things. Some other's include strong walking bass lines, the flavor of Thai curry, public transportation, and mountains.
  
• Anyway, we played in the river for a long time. It was kind of awkward socially because Diego and Lore were holding hands and cuddling, and Pablo and I were not holding hands and not cuddling and he was wearing something between a speedo and jammers that said "No Diving" on the butt and didn't have any hair on his thighs except for this one ring. 


• The inner-tube-renter took his dog on his belly while he rafted down the rapids. Apparantely he's been featured on TV for this stunt.


• There are a lot of monkeys just running free on this beach and they stole someone's deet and this was a huge deal.


• My thirst overtook me and I went to the coco juice guy and he said "oh I knew when you first came here that you were thirsty, I'm glad you came back, I hate the feeling of being dehyrated. I'm glad a single pretty girl like you is enjoying my beautiful beach." That was nice. 


• We went to a hut and ate maita, which is fish (they call it talapia but I don't think its talapia) cooked over a fire in banana leaves. SO GOOD. but I was feeling nervous about that coco so I just had some boiled yuca, also SO GOOD.


• Here's what Pablo ate in the course of about 40 minutes

1. Maito, the whole fish


2. About an arm's lenght of boiled yuca


3. onion salas


4. two glasses of cold guayuca tea


5. a choco con queso (a giant corn on the cob smothered in mayonaisse and shredded cheese


6. An ice cream bar (he was carrying around the choclo and ice cream at the same time and looking like a pig)


7. Three grilled worms on a skewer


8. a quesadilla/pupusa like thing 


9. another jugo de coco.

• During this time we mostly followed Pablo around watching him eat. 


• We got back in the car and drove to this area called Las Sogas which means Rope Swings. It was another bank of the same river filled with people playing including two youth soccer teams who immidieley stripped down to their  little-kid underwear and began fighting in the water, a father and son who shampooed each other's hair, four people with cerebal palsy of varying degrees, and two kids who were throwing rocks at each other until one hit the other in the forehead and he passed out. 


• We jumped off this ledge a lot. 


• Went home, read Los Vagabundos de Dharma (oh man Beat is so good in Spanish) and fell asleep.


• Went to this pizza place called Bella Selva and everyone got kind of freaked out at me for just ordering a pizza with onions and mushrooms and no meat or fruit or corn. It's pretty normal, guys.


• We crossed the bridge to this coctail place and ordered huge caloric beverages. Lore and I had "Ron Coco" which was like a spiked milkshake and could sustain a family of five. Diego had this giant maracuya thing with a lot of fruit. Pablo had a single shot of tequila which they brought with about ten lime slices and a whole ramekin of salt, worrying us that he had accidentally purchased an entire bottle. No, he just enjoyed his condiments, forming a cocaine-neat line of salt on his thumb and slurping it off, gnawing on lime slices before neatly sipping his tequila in four or so minishots as we slurped on our Ron Cocos. 


• Pablo had been paying for everything so far besides the ice cream, so I whispered to Diego and Lore that I would buy us the drinks. WHOOPS i only brought a 5 not a 20. I threw that in but my chivalry was denied.


• Slept. Naked, the benefit of the solo hotel room. 

Sunday. I'm going to cease the bullet points so I don't feel like I have training-wheels on. Woke up, read some more, jittered around, paid for the hotel before Pablo beat me to it. We went to this gringo-oriented place on the malecon for breakfast. I had fried eggs and real coffee and tomate de arbol juice and read The New Yorker which is my idea of best. After breakfast, we went back to the hotel and got suggestions of what to do from the owner.  Pablo searched for his room key for 30 minutes before we found it in his room.

We drove 30 minutes on the highway, than 40 minutes on this dirt road to finally abanon the car in a ditch. We were searching for this hotel Hakuna Matatta and the beauitful beach there about. We made it to Hakuna Matata and found their beach guarded by an Irish man with very poor spanish. Due to Diego and I speaking english, we found out that the beach was 3 k up the path through this community. The community had been "in fiestas" and we had to ask thier permission.

So we continued up this cobbelstone and mud road for a while longer. We hear the community before we see it. It's the Spice Girls, its a techno remix, but I love bass lines and I remember them. As we get closer, it switches to another Kareoke hit of the 90s, that A Little Bit of Monica song that that rapper sang in the Macy's Day Parade.

We see the houses by the time "I'm Blue Daba Dee Daba Die" starts up. They are small board-based houses a little off the ground as they need to be. There are yards with flowers and corn. There are clothelines and chairs and porches. There are people near their houses, and on the other side of the futball field that is the middle of the town, there is the pavillion with the music where people are drinking. 

It's like a Kurt Vonnegut scene: four tourists in water shoes standing on the edge of a beaten field while 10 men and one woman pregnant with hepatitis dance in drizzle and smack empty liquor bottles together. We don't move until they approach us and they do, four of the men and the woman and they all shake hands and don't let Lore and I go for longer than they should. I haven't smelled breath that fermented since I don't want to tell you, I haven't seen eyes that yellow since a client at the homeless services organization was a week from dead. They are celebrating the graduation, they tell us, of the kids from school. They graduated on Friday. The man who won't let go of my hand keeps asking me if I'm a señorita or a señor. I guess it's cool that even drunk people see that I'm queer?

The woman asks us for a dollar to use the river and Pablo pulls out tens and twentys in a mess from his mesh short pocket and I want to dive at him NO! Currency is capitalism and there is nothing more alluring than spending when you're spent yourself. Money might make it better, but it will only turn her yellow eyes green until she finally falls asleep. There are four of us only, so she technically owes us a dollar. We straggle to her house which seems to have some sort of store attached and she offers Lore a dollar of yoghurt as change. Lore and Pablo insist that they don't teach change, for which a young man mouths "gracias" a them. We shoo off the hand-shakers and cross the field to an audience of drunken, hungover, and children's eyes.

Here's the river

Some drunk folks by the giant rock in the river.

We play in the river for a while, I think big thoughts and am glad I know how to swim. It starts to thunder and lightining, so we walk back through the town in the pouring rain. Pablo wants to practice his english so we finally have something to talk about. He tells me the plot of The Fifth Element: "There is a girl, a very pretty girl. I do not know her name living out of the movie. There are aliens and they want this girl because she knows things. It is very full fantasy and I like that. He is still wearing his speedo. 

We drive back to the hotel shivery and soaking. They appeared to have no check-out time and we take advantage of this and the respectably hot water and shower ourselves. On the road, we drive to Archidona to eat more maito, more yuca, more onion salad, and more guayusa. We fill up the car and it only costs 15 dollars and gas is $1.50 a gallon.

On the way home, we get stopped because they are doing construction and the road is only one-way for a while. At the stop, a woman is selling the guayusa leaves for a whole necklace of folded leaves for a dollar. She's also sleeing fresh damp cinnamon bark and some kind of fruit that smells like rotting meat. Further on, we stop to buy mushrooms from one of the many stalls along the highway. We go into the green houses to watch her cut the six pounds. 

We drive home and I am DJ and I choose all dreamy, trippy stuff. We make it to Quito, drop Pablo off at his apartment and get back to Cumbaya. 

So that was pretty fun. 

Also, we listened endlessly to The Rolling Stones on that long dirt road, so that's the title of this post. Also, I introduced them to The Dodos and Fleet Foxes and they were impressed. This is the first time someone has been impressed with my taste in music since tenth grade or Ryan Douglass

Updates!

Not much has been going on the last few days. After my Cotopaxi Adventure and my Plaza Fosch Adventure I have chilled out a lot at home. Lots of reading, including this book about a doctor my mom gave me, that, you're right ma, is really terribly written. I've gone to abuelas and done the requisite cheek-kissing of everyone in the dynasty, slept on the couch. I walk across the street and swim 1500 meters which is very impressive because it is more than a kilometer. Are you not impressed with my athletic prowess?

After that, I go back to abuelas, drink cold coffee and eat a banana, and take the bus home.

Yesterday, we had ICRP class (surprise!) and no one knew about it so we were actually like 3 hours late. I haven't actually started my IRCP this month yet. I called the nurse on Tuesday and asked when I should come in and she was like "Monday, or Tuesday...whenever you want." So that seems pretty relaxed.

However, I'm getting really pumped up for my SIP and am going to get my ICRP work to work for that. How? The sub centro at Puembo does a great deal of work with birth control distribution and counseling. I could write my ICRP monografia (sort of like a term paper) about access to birth control in Ecuador, especially among indigenous women, and then that could be (or could be close to) my Literature Review for my SIP! Which would be about birth control among indigenous women in Ecuador! I'm not sure if this is cheating or something, but it's what really interests me and your research is supposed to further more research, right?

Not that I've started writing or anything.

The other thing that's happened lately is going out to dinner a lot and eating good food. The Bio/Ecology students went off to Tiputini deep in the jungle on the 6th to do research, so we kept going out to lavish dinners to say goodbye to them.

On the 5th, we went to this lovely asian-fusian restarurant. I had green curry so spicy and creamy it made me tear up. I've missed spicy food so much, jasmine rice, chopsticks. I am going to gorge myself on Thai food when I get back. I also had a sake bomb which I though would be really good because I always read about them. Acutally, it just tasted like rotten beer with some airfreshener in it. Also, trying to get the sake to fall into the glass, it spilled all over me and made a huge mess. This was not worth a drink that tasted like drain cleaner.

The next day we went to this Mexican restaurant that we had always made fun of because there is a guy in a huge sombrero and fake moustache outside waving a menu and yelling "hey you guys! come on in!" over and over. I ordered enchilladas and was hoping to continue my spice dream, but it was mainly a bowl of melted cheese with pieces of chicken and a single corn torilla wripped up on the top. Yum! Not!

Yesterday, I went over to Jamie's and he and Scott and I made a pimpin dinner of Macaroni and Cheese with mushrooms, a giant salad and....water. We even set the table and lit candles. Then we watched Star Wars and everybody fell asleep.

Today, I am going to eat some toast Pilar left for me, go to the store with her, hopefully go paintballing, go to Jimmy's concert, and maybe hear from my mom. You know, the regular.

500 Years of Solitude

You probably could have read that entire book since I last updated this blog in any meaningful way. I weep for you, dear blog readers, without the antics of your dear dita and her long stories about linguistics, just as you must have wept for me as I took my finals. Actually, several of my classes were truly able to be classified as "a joke," but still, it was a lot of work.

I'm done now, and I have been since friday, actually. Its christmas time now (just like in the northern hemispere!) so thing's have been pretty busy. We decorated the house for christmas, which entailed setting out 5 different tableaux of things vaguely relating to christmas and closer relating to dolls. Ecuamadre has named each little scene. Here are thier names: The Rich People's Town, The Poor People's Town, The People Dancing Around The May Pole With A Clown, The Animals Going to Jesus, The Nativity Scene of Indigenous People, The Indigenous People, The Chirstmas Tree, and All The Left Over Figurines That Are On The Coffee Table. The cat has already broken four little figures and we all hate her now.

My host family also does something called a Novena for each of the days of advent (is it called Advent? I'm not so good with my religious terms). There are many (9?) siblings in the family, so each day they go to a different sibling's house, sing songs, prey, eat dessert and talk about Christmas. It's a really lovely tradition, everyone seems so happy. And I've learned Our Father and Hail Mary in Spañol.

The other really exciting news is that my family is coming today! Originally, until about 6 last night, I thouth they were coming on Tuesday, but no, it is today. I am going to get them at the airport at 7! I'm so excited to see my ma and Lester again, to show them all the wonderful places I have met, to watch them struggle with the altitude and bus routs just like I did, to hug them and eat good food and go to Baños!

Going to the Baños

Hey, maybe its time to tell you about my trip to Baños! I went to Baños the weekend before last and had a ton of fun. Its about three hours south east of Quito, they call it The Gateway to the Orient. Madre and I woke up really early to get to the bus station in the very south in the city. We both got groped on the bus by this same creepy man and then we gave him such angry looks that he got off. Woman power. Once we got to the station, we promptly waited around for an hour for our friend Jorge. We got on the bus and within minutes the scenery was amazing. I'm normally a watching sort of person and this just made my jaw drop. Green fields with vertical agriculture, tiny stone towns, clean sky and edgy mountains. Sheep! Kids! Old people! Bridges! A very very good bus ride to sit by the window.

And the vendors. It's almost like in Harry Potter on the Hogwarts Express, there's this endless stream of people hopping on the bus selling things. Sometimes they are gross/unwanted (warm coconut milk in a plastic bag, thise mysterious inflatable donut-shaped pillows) but often its tempting and cheap. Madre says she likes supporting la gente but I know she really just wants a snack. The highlights: tiny butterly cookies in that come in plastic re-used from other food products. It's not noodles, its shortbread. More exciting: Ice cream from saucedo, made in a dixie cup with three layers: majority coconut, then thin stripes of mora, naranjilla and taxo. Pale pastel, bumps of seed and flakes, almost unmelting after days in a freezer.

We made it to Baños by 11 or so. We went to the friend we knew, who works at an ice cream parlor. This was a good friend to have, one because she is extremley nice and two because she gave us free ice cream. Welcome to down, Dita, Jorge and Pilar. We decided on our hotel, named unsurprisingly "BACKPACKER HOSTEL." It was about a 15 minute walk through town. The main building was paja (sort of grass/straw) roof, really really dark inside with about five or six stoned hippies lying on the floor and hammocks. Ok, cool. My madre asked for a lighter for her cigarette, and the owner pulled out an onze bag of "Mary Jane" (If you get my drift) and dug a lighter out of the middle of some nugs. Ok, so it's that kinda hotel.

Climbing into my top bunk to look at the slanted ceiling painted with an acid-trip storm at sea, I scraped my leg on this screw. I got this weird three pointed cut and probably an advanced case of tetnus. Luckily, there was no time to enferm because Jorge had a bike ride in mind. We rented bikes, he and I at five dollars a day. Pilar stayed behind because she is afriad of being hit by a car. So we started on these bikes with poor breaks, no helmets, the regular. We go about 10 kilometers downhill. Its gorgeous and plesent, theres mountains all around, we are crossing bridges and the sun is shining and without the helmet the wind is in my hair.

But its straight down hill and Jorge doesn't stop. Not when I plead scared, tired, lost, a girl, weak, young, a pulmonary disease, dehyrdation. Jorge is like "nah nah its cool, lets just keep going."

Finally, after we go through these industrial-revolution era tunnels and end up in front of a powerpoint, I put my foot down. I'm going back. he can follow me. I start walking my bike up this mountain. Jorge seems really happy in first gear. he shows his happiness by constantly lapping me. I see other happy tourists with thier bikes in the back of pickup-truck taxis, on buses. I ask Jorge if we can do that. "That" he say "is bad. It is weak. We went down, we can do up." I cry a little bit. I buy some water. People stare at the sweating gringa. Two hours later, we make it back to town. Pilar is irate at the lack of pick up truck use (perhaps because we were not supporting the local economy enough? She has bought several bags of local taffy, some men's shorts, and a pair of sandals). We search for a restaurant with salad to make me happy. Pilar understands that salads can sooth me at my worst. We go to a restaurant and I order asparagus salas. They are out of asparagus. We got to another restaurant with no vegetable dishes on the menu. She and I spilit a lunch because we don't have enough money and I eat aproximately 2/3 of a chicken. I also eat all of Jorges rice because we though we each got a dish and it turns out we had to share. Tooooooo bad.

A while later, we go to the waterfall that is fed by the springs that Baños is named after. Its very pretty, very slippery, very trecherous. Pilar and I huddle in the only dry spot which also happens to be occupied by a couple deep in making out. We all politely ignore each other.

At 5, we get in line for the baths. The baths close between 4 and 6 and its apparently very important to be the first ones in. Ecuadorians are almost always late, except when a line is to be formed. And line behavior is very orderly. there is no butting. While waiting in line, we meet the other people who have come to Baños for this birthday party. Three of them are Pfizer employees, mostly accountant. This sounds lame but they are funny and awesome. One is a metal head with two tattoos and a shirt containing the word "Dismemberment." It's cool to be an accountant and live with your mother in Ecuador.

Six comes and we get in the baths themselves, which are eyebrow-raising hot and apparently clean. There are alot of obese people and old people that move very slowly down the stairs. Jorge insists I stand for 30 seconds in the ice-cold pool. Sure thing Jorge, you never led me wrong before. We paddle around in the pools, melting slowly. We jump in the cold pool and yell and writhe. At nine we leave, go back to the hotel and shower and go eat pizza at a local chain called "Garfield The Cat." Guess what their logo is! We are joined by another person, N, who's 20 like me, studying art, and extremley stupid. She didn;t understand how antibiotics work, what natural selection was, or what a relay race was. She also didn't know the differnece between automatic and manual cars. Not transmission. Cars. So we eat pizza, and we go back to the ice cream shop to start the party. We are supposed to get in a chiva, which I've already described, at around 10. At 11:30, after a lot of dorito eating, the Chiva shows up.

For the rest of the story, you will have to stay tuned until I write it! But I gaurentee that it's going to involve trecherous roads, public urination, more things that that dumb girl doesn't know, lots of potatoes, and a city called Ambato. This sounds like book 14 of A Series of Unfortunate Events

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.

This Weekend I Ate Alot

This was the fin de semana of pasta. Or food in general. But a lot of that food was pasta. I’ll go by anecdotes, but its going to end up just describing meals because that’s what mainly happened this weekend.




On Friday afternoon, I had spaghetti on the brain. I stopped at a store on the way home from the bus stop to see if they had tomatoes to make a sauce. They were out, and I was all sad walking home until I went into the kitchen and found….marinara sauce! Just what I was hoping for. Jimmy and I both took naps, and when I got up there was a nun in the living room. I felt like Ke$ha, “wake up in the morning and there’s a nun at the table, grab my glasses Im out the door I’m gonna hit this…stable….” OK maybe not Ke$ha. I’d never actually met a nun before, so I was sort of scared but she was mostly very deaf and silent. She had been a nun since the month before my Ecuamadre was born, more than 53 years. Wow. She is my madre’s great aunt, she’s not just some random nun.



Anyway, so we ate spaghetti, my host mom, my metal head brother, our maid, this nun and I, and drank tea and ate canned peaches. That’s just how things go sometimes.



Wario and Vampira, my girlies, came over, and we went shopping at the cheap import stores near my house, lay around and chatted. We drank mocha and coffee and I discovered yet again that I really can’t drink milk. It really hurts me. We went downtown and sat around at this bar that actually serves those giant fishbowl drinks they warn you about before you go on Spring Break in Miami Beach or something. Instead of paying lots of money to get into clubs, I ate the best hamburger I have eaten in my life. Granted, that number is probably about a dozen, but this was so damnably good. It wasn’t a meat thing at all, it was the fried onions and mustard and perfectly toasted bun. A culinary experience, that burger. And even better given that it was 11:45, I was sitting on a lawn chair in downtown Quito and the fishbowls were going swimmingly.



That night ended late, but I managed to get myself up by 9 and have some fruit and granola and horrifically sweet yoghurt. I drink a lot of yoghurt here, and some of it is good and some of it is bad and bright pink. I went running in Parque El Ejido, which actually meant jogging fast for like 12 minutes and then powerwalking to the playground. They have the best playground in Parque El Ejido! There is a slide that is like two stories high and a zip line and this giant round swing. Everyone should go. I got home and watched some Sex in the City. For some inexplicable reason, we have disc two of season six, so I watched all of that. I didn’t understand the plot lines when I started and now I’m left in suspense. I need to find discs one and three!



At that point, it was time for lunch. My mom has a friend that makes pasta, so we boiled up some of her spinach raviolis and made pesto: basil, spinach, olive oil, garlic, and nuts in the blender. Bright green. We also made a salad with some ancient lettuce, red onions and a whole perfect avacado. Balsamic vinegar and sesemae oil dressing. Perfect. Ate a ton with my ma, chilled out and watched Jimmy and his girlfirned eat a ton. Raviolis are just perfect to pick out of the bowl.



A couple of hours later, I went over to my buddy Mike’s house for dinner. Mike is a big guy, a big Italian guy, and he misses good cooking and big meals, so he had about ten of us over and made pasta. When I got there, they were pouring in the third cup of heavy cream into the pot, and were glad I had brought the vodka. For vodka sauce. Let me tell you, it is really classy going to ask your local bodega owner for the “cheapest, smallest vodka.” You tell them its for cooking, and they don't believe you.



But it was for cooking, and the sauce was excellent. Rediculously rich and excellent. We had salad with dressing Hannah brought from Michigan and this amazing pasta and ridiculously created cookies a la Scott and Dita. We just threw ingedientes that we recalled are in cookies in a bowl and baked little lumps. We also almost added a cup of salt, because Mike’s family likes to keep salt in a jar labled “sugar.” They turned out really tasty, if texturally bizarre.



We sat around for a while, then decided to take a walk. We made it about ten blocks away to near Malcolm’s house, to a giant fluorescent panederia that would make the Beat Generation blush with nostalgia. Madre is sure it is a money laundering place, and I sort of believe her, and sort of just think she is judging the owners for being Colombian. We ordered cookies and coffee and sat there till they closed the place down at ten. We all went home to sleep off all that heavy cream.



The next morning, I watched I Heart Huckabees, which isn’t as good as the first time. Oh well. I ate a pretty bad omlette. Oh well. My madre and I walked near abuela’s house to the big weekend market. The last time I went there, it was my second or third day or something and I was so completely overwhelmed that I think I blocked the memory or something. This time, my Spanish was better, my propreoception less acute, and I was in an overall better mood. We bought fruit for juice, and that was awesome because I got to pick, so no diaretic-papaya juice this week, oranges, bok choi, beets, and eggplants. Ecuadorians have no idea what to do with eggplants, my madre couldn’t even think of the name for it. The lady selling was like “good thing your gringa knows what to do with these, its hard to sell them.” Anytime, old indigenous lady. Another old indigenous lady gave me a fruit so acidic and stringy I knew it wasn´t meant for human consumption. You got me there, second old indigenous lady.



We went to a baby clothes store and bought some really cute little romper things for Madre’s friend who is having a baby in like 3 days. I bought some underwear that say “100% intelegente” on them. Sometimes, its worth the 1.50$.



We went home and started making lunch. Madre gave me detailed instructions on how to make cibeche and I wrote them down in my notebook. Maybe if you are lucky, I’ll make it for you. She worked on the soup, boiling a whole chicken, feet and head included, although she strained those out so that you can put them in when you want them. She claimed the stomach and a food, and left Jimmy the head. Her very very pregnant friend came over and claimed the other foot. I was glad to be left out.



Soup and civeche isn’t really a meal, so my madre was like “COOK THESE EGGPLANT please.” I did some quick internetting and made eggplant parmesian, fried in a skillet in palm oil. Madre, pregnancy Doris and my evil neighbor Parilla were fascinated by it. They were aquainted with the bread crumbs-egg dipping process, but the idea of brining the eggplant, the idea of the eggplant in general was totally foreign. They were like “what could we eat this with?” “what culture does this come from?” “Is this healthy?” At one point, Parilla was like “This would be so good with cheese! And catchup!” She was close.



Malcolm and another friend of Madre came over, and we had lunch. The cibeche was the best I’ve had, the fish tender and flakey, the onions really crunchy, the broth perfect. Of course, we put popcorn and banana chips in it. Two months ago, if you told me I'd be eating blanched fish in orange juice with pop corn in it, I’d have gagged. Today, I just wished for more.



Then we had soup, fresh chicken broth with pieces of ginger, parsnip, and bok choi. Wow. So simple and safe tasting. There’s more of that, and I’m having it for breakfast.



Then we had the eggplants. They were pretty greasy but I got the proper crumb consistency without too many burnt spots or hard middles. It was so funny to see them eat it. My madre refused to eat the skin. Her other friend scraped off all the breading to eat after the eggplant, and the third friend tried to eat it with guacamole.



After that, we just sat around eating the guacamole with banana chips, which is, in my humble opinon, a better guacamole-carrying apparatus thatn the tortilla chip. I know that's pretty sacreligious, but stay with me on this one. We sat around the table and talked about, among other things, urine therapy (that's where you drink your own pee) and how madre’s one friend put her grandson’s urine on his face to cure some sort of white marks he had on his face. She would get him to pee in a cup, and then like wait fifteen minutes until “he’d half forgotten that he’d gone pee” and then “go up to him with the cloth already wet to wash is face.” It made the white marks go away, though. Apparently, the gunk the baby it covered in when it gets born is really good for wrinkles, and both madre and friend are mad they didn’t get it from their kids. Pregnant Doris had no comment.



Then I watched like three hours of MTV and did my homework. Madre and her friend the urine obsessed went for a walk, and when they came back, they were Hari Krishna crazy. Apparenty there are Krishnas in the Old Town on Sundays, and they gave them all this information about healthy vegetarian eating. I’m down for that, so we talked about ghee and baba ganoosh and how to get protein from legumes for a while. Then we had coffee and a some horrible chocolate cake. The weekend was coming to an end. But the cherry on the sundae? From some hippies selling them in Old Town, my madre brought Jimmy and I some aphrodesiacial choclate cookies. I think I’ll save that till later.

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.

Doing Fine

Hi guys,
That last update was pretty scary, right? Well, I´m glad to report that everything is going fine here. The police are still off duty, and there´s an increce in crime, but nothing really chaotic is going on. Yesterday, I went an hour outside of the city to some hot springs called Papallacta, and that was AWESOME. we just lay around in these thermal pools and relaxed. We ate cheap food and looked at the beautiful mountain scenery. It was very relaxing and restful, a nice break from school-grind and hearing automatic weapons.

Details of coup: police threw a tear gas canister at Correa, then took him to the police hospital to get treated, where they held him hostage for a few hours. The military is back on the Correa side, and attacked the hospital. 88 people were wounded and two or three were killed. Correa escaped and was recovering at an actually legitimate hospital. There might be more activity later, but its going ok now.

Civilian life is pretty normal. Alot of stores are closed or close early, so that´s sort of a hassle. When stores are open, they often have thier metal gate-doors up, so they ask you what you want and get it for you. This takes a long time but isn´t bad. Today I´m going bike riding down Amazona Avenue, a normal Sunday traditon. Just wanted to tell everybody that I´m doing ok and things are fine

Coup!

When I woke up this morning, it didnt seem like a politically tumultuous day. It is, however.

This is a good CNN article explaining what´s going on as of now. The police and the military are striking for some sort of benifits and pension. They took possesiion of the president Correa around 10 this morning andthen they tear gassed him. He´s already in not such good health because of some recent knee surgery, so that´s worrysome, as it the pictures of him in a gas mask. He´s currently circulingthe city by helicopter, unable to land. Scary stuff.

On the homefront, things are fine. I didn´t have class until 1, so I was just hanging out in the house, when my madre called me and told me not to go to school or out, and to go buy rice. I didn´t understand what was going on. She came home a while later, and then some of her friends who i absolutely love, and we all ate mexican food and watched Ïnto the Wild¨I went to the farmacy to buy my malaria pills, and it was 70 cents for14 pills. What?

People are rallying in support of the president in the big plaza by my house, but its sort of dangerous, and also, if I were to get caught, I would end up getting deported or in Ecuadorian prison, neither of which is desirable.

Food we bought at the store to prepare for an emergency:
-Five pounds of rice
-instant noodles
-a bag of eggs. eggs are sold in bags?
-a half gallon of peach yoghurt
-band aids
-12 chicken wings.

Ready for anything!

We´ve just been watching TV and laying around all day. We went to the store down the street, and identified three groups of thieves on the way. Its going to be a long night, and there is smoke in the distance, but right now we are doign ok. So that´s the news from Quito, now I´m off to play rummy and drink yoghurt.

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.

Socks and school

Hey faithful blog readers,
Sorry I have been a little shoddy about updating this baby. I also haven't showered for like three days, and I keep wearing the same socks. But I'n not smelly or anything. Just conserving. Oh shoot, the reason I keep wearing the socks is that I don't have any clean clothes, and the reason I don't have any clean clothes is because I hung them up to dry on FRIDAY MORNING and it has rained twice since then and been really windy. My clothes may all have blown away.

Despite being possibly damned to one pair of socks for the rest of the trip, i have to say that I'm doing well. Acutally, I was talking with my ma and sister and skype quit on us, so that;s sort of a bummer, but doing well over all.

Making friends at USFQ, all of whom seem to have somewhat messy ponytails, ladies and pimps alike. and someone who knows gus voorhies. One way I'm spending time with friends is in the computer labs, gringos cluster between classes, furiously checking facebook and sending emails all seemingly titled "Life from one degree south." I know this because the computers have huge screens and everyone can see what you are typing. I have seen three breakup emails so far.

Another thing that's been happening is improving my vocabulary. For my spanish class, we spend an hour each class talking about verbs and how they are complicated.
EXAMPLE:

Acabar- to end
Acabar de- to have just done
Acabarse- to run out
Acabar con- to be done with
Acabar en- to end up.

Also you have to conjugate acabar and thats a struggle in itself.
Other verbs I use a lot, without really understanding their full context.

Gastar- I think this means to waste, but I use it whenever I talk about money
Ganar- this means to earn, but you can also throw it infront of any other verb and make it like "I was wanting to," or "I had motivation to." Not so sure
Hacerse- this is like, I want to turn myself into something. Like a job. Or a life of delinquency. Its got to be something that requires work and time, not just suddenly. If you become emotional, its ponerse, if you become ˆsuddenlyˆ emotional its volverse, if you like transform into a lamp, its convertirse. Are you there, God? Its me, Margaret? When will I convertirme into a woman? Also, Spanish is not into commas, especially Oxford commas. This is a shame, as I almost always refrain from self-injury during paper writing because of the existence of commas. Another thing that is really frustrating is that alot of the computers at school have weird punctuation arrangements of their keyboard. for example, I wrote an about seven pages using umlats instead of quotation marks. And there was no "Find and Replace" to be found.

We, the gringos of the computer lab, find it totally acceptable to yell you "hey, how do you make the 'at' symbol?" or "where is the damn exclamation point?" at any point, and the Ecuadorians, who all seem to be using ms. Paint to design menus for Italiam restaurants glare at us. Various gringos offer various key combinations, and usually the concerned party ends up copying-and-pasting from a website. Also, the internet goes out for like 7 minutes ever hour, at which point, the entire room sighs quietly and ejects their flash drives.

I'm going to go wash my hair really intensely and nap and eat some pasta. Pretty normal sunday stuff.