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.

Coup!

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.

Guaguas

This is mostly for Britta and Tina, but this blog entry is going to be all about babies. I´ve learned alot about how Ecuadorians deal with babies, and there are several in my life. I´m going to tell you about them.

1. Babies are called ¨Guaguas,¨ which is the Quechua word for babies. ¨Bebe,¨the actual word, is only used in hitting on other people. ¨Guaguito¨is also appropriate. You can call people guagua if they are acting immature, or if they are only 19 and you are a mature 20. or if they are virgins. Or don´t have a driver´s license. Which my host mother doesn´t have.....but I digress.

2. The Evil Eye (Mal de Ojo) is big here. Mal de Ojo is when you hurt a baby and make it cranky and sick to its stomach by casting a spell on them with your eyes. Witches can do this on purpose, and normal people can do it by accident. Gringos do it alot, so you have to be careful. There are several things you can do to avoid cursing a baby.
a. Do not look at the baby
b. if you want to look at the baby, you have to touch the baby and then make reassuring eye contact with the madre that you are not cursing the baby
c. the baby is probably going to have a little red string bracelet around one wrist. This is to protect it from evil glances from idiots like you. DO NOT TOUCH THIS BRACELET. the mom will slap you.
d. do not take flash photographs of the baby.


Now that you know how to avoid hurting infants with your eyes, its time to learn how to bring your baby in public.

Its perfectly ok to nurse your baby in public. While I am all La Leche League and everything, it can get sort of awkward, because these women with huge nipples are like leaning on the sidewalk and on the bus. At one point, my backpack had a collision with a breast, but not the woman or the baby. It was that big. Sorry if this is TMI, and I´m glad they are breastfeeding, but I just don´t know how to deal with it sometimes.

Despite the presence of engorged areolas, there are a zillion creepy ads for infant formula and child milk-like drinks on TV, none of which I can find, despite 8 minutes of youtube searching. you know the ones, with the happy, white family doing jumping jacks, and then the mom intently watching her three year old sipping white syrup through a curly straw. There´s even one where they make a graph of brain development, but the only measure of growth they show is a picture of a brain between two axes. Science! I looked for that picture, but I couldn´t find it either, so here is a picture of a cute rat.

There are tons of ways you can carry your baby in Ecuador. One way is draped across your lap, with its feet in the isle, blocking the way of people who want to enter. Another way is tied on your back with a scarf. You can also haul produce this way. Other way is in a cardboard box. This is not a joke. There were two toddlers sitting in a box with their mom on a bus. You can also modify the scarf thing the way my host sister did with her baby, and make this sort of overalls contraption.

Speaking of my host sister, who rules, btw, the craziest baby fact as of yet. She and her husband named their son Ilidan. Aww what a cute name EXCEPT it is the name of the bad guy in World of Warcraft, the best way to get out of the house and make friends. This five month baby, no teeth, double chin, is named after this guy .

Ok, I´m going to go drink some coffee and watch the trailer for Babies, the movie, over and over again, while on silent.

Love you all, happy weekend!

Alive

Nothing blew away, but my madre has one my shirts and I don't know how to ask her for it back.

Going to the clinic to get some malaria medicine I was apparently supposed to have. Nice one, health center.

No malaria, but mosquito bites looking increasingly nasty.

Too much time on facebook.

English is failing, i keep forgetting to say the "th" sound, but spanish has been really good.

Got an A on a paper! that one that i though would be bad!

So sleepy all the time.

I still need to write about my last two weekends. Blog fail.

Making friends, making plans, making dinner.

Getting amazing at riding buses, including the elusive mount/dismount while moving.

Even thought my host mom is kind of crazy, we do awesome things, like, this evening, we are having a friend over, eating cookies, and watching the full moon. How cool is that!

Also, she, my bro, and i fell asleep for two hours last night watching America's Next Top Model.

Love,
Miercoles

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.

¡Vamanos, Diarreah!

It has arrived. The waiting is over. Good thing I don't have much going on this weekend, just seeing some birds on the verge of extinction and my bro's metal concert.

Let's hope it all comes out all right.