Since my last entry, I have come back to this page many times to write the next one, but without the proper motivation, I just distract myself and stop writing a paragraph into this thing. At this point in the game, some people's parents have flown here and are somewhere in Quito in their son or daughter's company. Some people are staying here without seeing their parents for another couple weeks. Me, I'm flying to Cancun on Monday, this Monday, like, 4 days from now.
I'm sitting here, in my home and bed, procrastinating for the last time of the semester. Today, at 4 o'clock, the 9 people in my group present our DISPs, the final big project of the semester. We will each present for a maximum of ten minutes on this project we began planning over 2 months ago, that we have spent countless hours working on and countless more worrying about and procrastinating on. My paper is 23 solid pages long, in Spanish. It is called "Idioma, Cultura e Identidad: La utilización y falta de utilización del Quichua en San Clemente y otros pueblos indígenas del Ecuador" or in English and just as wordy, "Language, Culture and Identity: The use and lack of use of Quichua in San Clemente and other indigenous towns of Ecuador".
Tomorrow my friend Josh is having his 21st birthday party (just in time for being back in the States) where his real mom and host mom will cook together and host for all the students who decide to show up. Then we are supposed to have a 2 hour meeting at the Pitzer office, though no one really understands what we will do there and after that all of us are going to a nice dinner together, a goodbye dinner because tomorrow is the last official day of the program. I'll be here in Quito for the weekend, saying my goodbyes to the city and eating at my favorite restaurants and of course to my family here.
My family here is beautiful. They are one of the most normal families I have ever gotten to know. There is mom, who does work but always manages to come home and cook lunch and dinner everyday, there is dad who works a lot and is the breadwinner, there is the daughter, who wears too much makeup for her age and probably flirts with boys in school and the older son who is in a band and figuring out which college to go too to study music. I don't have a lot in common with them and they all are busy with their own schedules but they have treated me so well this entire semester, through me exploding the kitchen to me calling last minute saying i won't be coming home for dinner because I'm with friends.
Anyways, I'll have to say goodbye to them and then this experience will be over, in not very many days. There will be no more llapingachos or guanabana juice or buses that cost a quarter or colonial downtown's and churches and no more blog. And that's ok with me. I'll miss all of the above but I'll have home, and that is most important.
jueves, 18 de diciembre de 2008
jueves, 11 de diciembre de 2008
i just nearly choked on a sneeze
in nine days i will have been here for four whole months. i'll also be done with this really big paper thing. i've already written the amount of pages i need but i haven't written everything i need to write, which makes it really hard not to procrastinate. so here i am procrastinating.
alright then, with that i'm going back to work.
alright then, with that i'm going back to work.
jueves, 4 de diciembre de 2008
hot dogs aka jotdougs.
they are delicious, they are american, they are in ecuador. you know as well as i that i am a junk food junkie, or appreciator at least, so know when i say this that i thought about it for a long time before deciding to come public with it via blog.
ecuador can make comparable, if not better hot dogs than the motherland. now this certainly isn't true all of the time, or even most of the time and i'm sure there is nothing like eating a hot dog at doger stadium but i promise, the ecuadorians have made something that was right, righter.
i think what happened was that the hot dog made its way to this country but that the people decided it was kind of boring with ketchup and relish and mustard so they decided to do their own thing with it. at any hot dog stand here, all across the country, if you ask for a hot dog it will come with a hot dog, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pineapple sauce, cheesy sauce, garlic sauce, spicy sauce, tomatoes, onions, pickles and potato chip crumbles on top. all these condiments on top are bigger than the actual hot dog.
i suppose this isn't the classic hot dog but it is incredibly tasty and to be honest, i, the queen of plain foods, don't think i can ever eat another hot dog with just ketchup on top again.
14 days-final project and presentation due
18 days-fly to mexico and see parents
23 days-fly to la and be home
ecuador can make comparable, if not better hot dogs than the motherland. now this certainly isn't true all of the time, or even most of the time and i'm sure there is nothing like eating a hot dog at doger stadium but i promise, the ecuadorians have made something that was right, righter.
i think what happened was that the hot dog made its way to this country but that the people decided it was kind of boring with ketchup and relish and mustard so they decided to do their own thing with it. at any hot dog stand here, all across the country, if you ask for a hot dog it will come with a hot dog, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pineapple sauce, cheesy sauce, garlic sauce, spicy sauce, tomatoes, onions, pickles and potato chip crumbles on top. all these condiments on top are bigger than the actual hot dog.
i suppose this isn't the classic hot dog but it is incredibly tasty and to be honest, i, the queen of plain foods, don't think i can ever eat another hot dog with just ketchup on top again.
14 days-final project and presentation due
18 days-fly to mexico and see parents
23 days-fly to la and be home
lunes, 1 de diciembre de 2008
a letter?
ecuador,
you amuse me sometimes. you frustrate me sometimes. for all your beauty, inside and out, you certainly have your flaws and these flaws make me into a pretentious estadounidense who thinks she knows exactly what's right for you. i can't make you change your ways. any change of yours has to come from the inside, it can't be a superficial or a half-hearted attempt. your flaws are a part of your character, they help make you who you are. so maybe i'm just not right for you but maybe we both could make compromises to make a better relationship.
for instance, what was up with yesterday?
i went to parque carolina to play basketball with my friends jed and ellie who watched from the sidelines and agreed. your people were acting a bit unnaturally unfriendly towards me. i promise it wasn't me, your people were different today. my teammates, your people, didn't play fair with me even though i scored the team first possession at the beginning of the game by making the first shot. they wouldn't pass to me even though i was wide open. one of them in particular would look at me, smile, and pass to someone else or shoot. the old guy on my team was the coolest of them but still, they weren't making shots and when i would steal possession of the ball or on the offhand chance someone would pass to me, i would score more often than not.
jed's team won, which honestly i was glad so that my teammates wouldn't be rewarded with a victory after excluding me even though i was the fourth, very necessary, wheel. for the next game, jed, two of our ecuadorian friends, and i played against the same people who were on my team in the last match. just a second into this game, i had the ball underneath the hoop when one guy, the guy who guarded me in the last game, tried to grab the ball from behind me. i decided to call a foul and when he disputed i said that no hugging was allowed in the game. he replied by saying, that wasn't hugging and then tried to grab me with his gross sweaty body saying he would show me a hug but i quickly stepped out of his grasp and went to the top of the court to start afresh.
the same guy, who was not much taller than me but definitely heavier, drove to the basket and ran into me on the way. i called a charge and he said i fouled him. i tried to explain to him that a charge happens when someone on the offense runs into someone on the defense who is standing still, not moving. that is a charge. you just ran into me when i was standing in one place. that is the definition of a charge. but he and the other one on his team that i disliked simply laughed at the little girl yelling at them and took the ball, starting to play, laughing, before i had finished telling them they were wrong. they completely didn't listen to what i was saying and had a good time at it too.
now i know we all have our bad sides, the sides we try and not let show too often but that little exercise in disrespect really showed your true colors to me. that kind of attitude either comes from a society that doesn’t care enough or one that is not in control of its people. neither is a good characteristic to have.
usually i consider you to be well -behaved, friendly and humorous but today, that was not the case. i went to fybeca, the chain pharmacy store, a lot like rite-aid to pick up pictures i had dropped off to be developed. well on saturday your fybeca employees said to come back on monday afternoon. so i did. and without much friendliness, they told me to come back in an hour, that the pictures were not done yet.
so with ellie in my arsenal, i return, pretty excited for the pictures i was about to have from before and after coming to you, beautiful yet far away land. but the same person who rang me up when i bought the pictures, and who i paid $9.10 to, said that i must pay the rest of the price. 'no' i say, 'you didn't tell me i was going to have to pay more, i didn't bring any money!' and there we began the battle between fybeca manager and ellie and i. apparently it is logical to pay when you turn in photos and when you pick them up. half at the beginning and the rest, which is variable, when you come back. apparently i was supposed to know that from reading the fine print that even he couldn't find. he couldn't even find the sheet where they list prices for developing photos, which weren't on the wall or anywhere visible either. they were willing to give me the photos up to the price i paid, and let me come back and pick up the rest when i had the money.
after a very long winded, circular argument that lasted about 20 minutes, the big time manager came by and said, 'i have heard what this argument is about, we will let you take them without paying the rest of the bill', which, apparently, is an uncommon practice with your businesses but certainly isn't in my country's businesses. it is also uncommon that you pay for developed photos twice.
now maybe this is common practice in fybeca but it certainly isn't common practice everywhere else and i don't know how they think they can get away with charging someone at the beginning and not tell them they will be charged again at pick up time. that seems really inefficient, among other, more vulgar terms.
more generally, you can definitely be really inefficient. the inefficiency in that incident really wasn't an isolated incident. many times your stores don't want to break a 10 dollar bill or even a 5 sometimes. how is that good business if you have to refuse customers because you can't or won't break their marginally large bill?
and also, what's up with your road rage? you have no respect for pedestrians and that is pretty self destructive behavior. you're really only hurting yourself and your reputation.
and speaking of your reputation, it's a good one. you are different, multi-faceted and proud, rightfully so. keep it up, with all the good things you do. i really think you are going in the right direction and i am really happy for you.
but soon i will be going in my own direction, and i think our paths will probably go far away from each other. at least for a while. how about we call it a healthy break? i'm sure when it feels right again that i will come back. but i say we take advantage of the time we have left together. yeah. i'll take your annoying facets and embrace them as quirks and how about you do the same.
well, if i don't hear back from you soon, then i think that's what i am going to do, do everything i can to enjoy you for the time i have left and remember the good times once we split ways. and i hope you can forgive me for my flaws too. i think our time together has been worth it, i wouldn't have done it any other way.
con cariño y un abrazo,
maya.
you amuse me sometimes. you frustrate me sometimes. for all your beauty, inside and out, you certainly have your flaws and these flaws make me into a pretentious estadounidense who thinks she knows exactly what's right for you. i can't make you change your ways. any change of yours has to come from the inside, it can't be a superficial or a half-hearted attempt. your flaws are a part of your character, they help make you who you are. so maybe i'm just not right for you but maybe we both could make compromises to make a better relationship.
for instance, what was up with yesterday?
i went to parque carolina to play basketball with my friends jed and ellie who watched from the sidelines and agreed. your people were acting a bit unnaturally unfriendly towards me. i promise it wasn't me, your people were different today. my teammates, your people, didn't play fair with me even though i scored the team first possession at the beginning of the game by making the first shot. they wouldn't pass to me even though i was wide open. one of them in particular would look at me, smile, and pass to someone else or shoot. the old guy on my team was the coolest of them but still, they weren't making shots and when i would steal possession of the ball or on the offhand chance someone would pass to me, i would score more often than not.
jed's team won, which honestly i was glad so that my teammates wouldn't be rewarded with a victory after excluding me even though i was the fourth, very necessary, wheel. for the next game, jed, two of our ecuadorian friends, and i played against the same people who were on my team in the last match. just a second into this game, i had the ball underneath the hoop when one guy, the guy who guarded me in the last game, tried to grab the ball from behind me. i decided to call a foul and when he disputed i said that no hugging was allowed in the game. he replied by saying, that wasn't hugging and then tried to grab me with his gross sweaty body saying he would show me a hug but i quickly stepped out of his grasp and went to the top of the court to start afresh.
the same guy, who was not much taller than me but definitely heavier, drove to the basket and ran into me on the way. i called a charge and he said i fouled him. i tried to explain to him that a charge happens when someone on the offense runs into someone on the defense who is standing still, not moving. that is a charge. you just ran into me when i was standing in one place. that is the definition of a charge. but he and the other one on his team that i disliked simply laughed at the little girl yelling at them and took the ball, starting to play, laughing, before i had finished telling them they were wrong. they completely didn't listen to what i was saying and had a good time at it too.
now i know we all have our bad sides, the sides we try and not let show too often but that little exercise in disrespect really showed your true colors to me. that kind of attitude either comes from a society that doesn’t care enough or one that is not in control of its people. neither is a good characteristic to have.
usually i consider you to be well -behaved, friendly and humorous but today, that was not the case. i went to fybeca, the chain pharmacy store, a lot like rite-aid to pick up pictures i had dropped off to be developed. well on saturday your fybeca employees said to come back on monday afternoon. so i did. and without much friendliness, they told me to come back in an hour, that the pictures were not done yet.
so with ellie in my arsenal, i return, pretty excited for the pictures i was about to have from before and after coming to you, beautiful yet far away land. but the same person who rang me up when i bought the pictures, and who i paid $9.10 to, said that i must pay the rest of the price. 'no' i say, 'you didn't tell me i was going to have to pay more, i didn't bring any money!' and there we began the battle between fybeca manager and ellie and i. apparently it is logical to pay when you turn in photos and when you pick them up. half at the beginning and the rest, which is variable, when you come back. apparently i was supposed to know that from reading the fine print that even he couldn't find. he couldn't even find the sheet where they list prices for developing photos, which weren't on the wall or anywhere visible either. they were willing to give me the photos up to the price i paid, and let me come back and pick up the rest when i had the money.
after a very long winded, circular argument that lasted about 20 minutes, the big time manager came by and said, 'i have heard what this argument is about, we will let you take them without paying the rest of the bill', which, apparently, is an uncommon practice with your businesses but certainly isn't in my country's businesses. it is also uncommon that you pay for developed photos twice.
now maybe this is common practice in fybeca but it certainly isn't common practice everywhere else and i don't know how they think they can get away with charging someone at the beginning and not tell them they will be charged again at pick up time. that seems really inefficient, among other, more vulgar terms.
more generally, you can definitely be really inefficient. the inefficiency in that incident really wasn't an isolated incident. many times your stores don't want to break a 10 dollar bill or even a 5 sometimes. how is that good business if you have to refuse customers because you can't or won't break their marginally large bill?
and also, what's up with your road rage? you have no respect for pedestrians and that is pretty self destructive behavior. you're really only hurting yourself and your reputation.
and speaking of your reputation, it's a good one. you are different, multi-faceted and proud, rightfully so. keep it up, with all the good things you do. i really think you are going in the right direction and i am really happy for you.
but soon i will be going in my own direction, and i think our paths will probably go far away from each other. at least for a while. how about we call it a healthy break? i'm sure when it feels right again that i will come back. but i say we take advantage of the time we have left together. yeah. i'll take your annoying facets and embrace them as quirks and how about you do the same.
well, if i don't hear back from you soon, then i think that's what i am going to do, do everything i can to enjoy you for the time i have left and remember the good times once we split ways. and i hope you can forgive me for my flaws too. i think our time together has been worth it, i wouldn't have done it any other way.
con cariño y un abrazo,
maya.
domingo, 30 de noviembre de 2008
numbers
this, i maybe should not be thinking about, but since i am i might as well put the info out there:
in 18 days the final draft of my directed independent study project is due.
in 20 days the program is completely and totally over.
in 22 days i will go to mexico and see my parents.
in 25 days it's christmas.
in 27 days i fly home and sleep in my own santa monica bed.
for the last few weeks my feelings on coming home have been swinging back and forth like a pendulum or a bipolar person or i don't know what else. some times i just want to be home now and see my parents and friends and family and i think that i don't need to be here anymore, that i'm not going to learn any more about ecuador or in spanish in the next few weeks so why can't i go home yet? but then other times i realize how unexciting life will be when i get home, and yeah it will be nice to see people but i will sooner or later anyways so i might as well be in a place i have no idea if i will ever come back to. and i think, now, that is the right place for my mind to be in. three weeks and a day till i see my parents. that amount of time is completely graspable for me. three weeks and a day i can tell will go by quick.
this final project is turning out to not be so bad either. it has to be 20-25 pages, including the cover page, the index, any appendices and the bibliography and i already wrote 5 pages this weekend. back to writing now.
in 18 days the final draft of my directed independent study project is due.
in 20 days the program is completely and totally over.
in 22 days i will go to mexico and see my parents.
in 25 days it's christmas.
in 27 days i fly home and sleep in my own santa monica bed.
for the last few weeks my feelings on coming home have been swinging back and forth like a pendulum or a bipolar person or i don't know what else. some times i just want to be home now and see my parents and friends and family and i think that i don't need to be here anymore, that i'm not going to learn any more about ecuador or in spanish in the next few weeks so why can't i go home yet? but then other times i realize how unexciting life will be when i get home, and yeah it will be nice to see people but i will sooner or later anyways so i might as well be in a place i have no idea if i will ever come back to. and i think, now, that is the right place for my mind to be in. three weeks and a day till i see my parents. that amount of time is completely graspable for me. three weeks and a day i can tell will go by quick.
this final project is turning out to not be so bad either. it has to be 20-25 pages, including the cover page, the index, any appendices and the bibliography and i already wrote 5 pages this weekend. back to writing now.
jueves, 27 de noviembre de 2008
dia de accion de gracias
thanksgiving has always been up there as my favorite holiday. when i decided to go abroad this semester i specifically thought about how i would miss going to idyllwild to see family i usually only see once or twice a year. well thanksgiving found its way over to ecuador and resulted in a really pleasant, loving day for me and i'm guessing for all of the people who took part with us.
a friend had all 18 of us pitzer in ecuador students over and we all brought some traditional and non traditional food to share. i brought a fruit pie (for all the good fruit and juices in ecuador, this place doesn't really know how to do a pie) as my entrance ticket while other people brought stuffing, cranberry jello, mashed potatoes, chickens and drinks. the chickens were our mini turkeys and everything was absolutely delicious.
through drunken toasts, everyone said how thankful they were for the food on our plate, the people we are sharing it with, and our families who helped us get here and we all, spoken or not, felt like a strange collective representing something like a family.
after the food we all felt like we had to hold our bellies in so they wouldn't explode, and so a few of us went on a nice evening walk around the block a couple times and stretched on a street corner.
then, a few of us decided it was poker time, so seven of us sat around the now cleared dinner table and with a $1 buy in, started playing. a couple of the people who joined didn't really know how to play and that manifested in one of them making a strategy of betting really high when she had something, anything that wasn't nothing. well, i lost quick because i always seemed to have a decent hand but someone else always could beat it, and the only way any of us could play was with betting a lot of chips so a friend and i ran out and lost first. it was tragic. but i stuck around the table and the person who was bidding so high eventually decided she didn't want to play, so i played for her. well, the people's republic of maya won the game, and we redistributed the dollars back out to everyone so nobody lost.
at this point most people had left and so a couple friends and i hopped a cab and went home. it was so nice to talk to my family in idyllwild and even though i did wish i could have been there, i felt the love enough to make me happy just from talking to them for a few minutes. i hope everybody had a fantastic thanksgiving and thank you guys for everything.
a friend had all 18 of us pitzer in ecuador students over and we all brought some traditional and non traditional food to share. i brought a fruit pie (for all the good fruit and juices in ecuador, this place doesn't really know how to do a pie) as my entrance ticket while other people brought stuffing, cranberry jello, mashed potatoes, chickens and drinks. the chickens were our mini turkeys and everything was absolutely delicious.
through drunken toasts, everyone said how thankful they were for the food on our plate, the people we are sharing it with, and our families who helped us get here and we all, spoken or not, felt like a strange collective representing something like a family.
after the food we all felt like we had to hold our bellies in so they wouldn't explode, and so a few of us went on a nice evening walk around the block a couple times and stretched on a street corner.
then, a few of us decided it was poker time, so seven of us sat around the now cleared dinner table and with a $1 buy in, started playing. a couple of the people who joined didn't really know how to play and that manifested in one of them making a strategy of betting really high when she had something, anything that wasn't nothing. well, i lost quick because i always seemed to have a decent hand but someone else always could beat it, and the only way any of us could play was with betting a lot of chips so a friend and i ran out and lost first. it was tragic. but i stuck around the table and the person who was bidding so high eventually decided she didn't want to play, so i played for her. well, the people's republic of maya won the game, and we redistributed the dollars back out to everyone so nobody lost.
at this point most people had left and so a couple friends and i hopped a cab and went home. it was so nice to talk to my family in idyllwild and even though i did wish i could have been there, i felt the love enough to make me happy just from talking to them for a few minutes. i hope everybody had a fantastic thanksgiving and thank you guys for everything.
some fotos
by the end of our stay, our guide had branded us with all natural jungle tattoos from a random fruit he picked on one of our hikes. find which one is my hand!
somehow this blob of nocturnal bugs is actually well camouflaged from further away.
cool people about to climb really high and see cool views.
where we were climbing to, as you can see, the bridge on the left has a broken wood plank.
our guide for our stay, meyer, showing us some inside out and spiky mushrooms.
me, lianna and ellie on a boat on the river we floated down, notice my cool new hat.miércoles, 26 de noviembre de 2008
junglerainforestadventure!
how to get to the rainforest:
1. take a taxi to the airport at 530 in the morning.
2. take a really small airplane over the andes for 45 minutes.
3. take a bus to a hotel with illegal wild monkeys, parrots and peacocks.
4. take a canoe with a motor for an hour and 40 minutes.
5. take a chiva bus for 2 hours, meaning a wooden bus, without any glass windows so the air blows your hat, food and anything else not firmly held down into the abyss.
6. take another motor canoe for 2 hours, this time in the rainforest rain so that anyone without a poncho immediately accessible got soaked.
the slightly soggy journey was well worth where we found ourselves after the last canoe ride, the tiputini biodiversity station, which is a research station affiliated with the university of san francisco, quito and boston university.
after a surprisingly delicious dinner of spaghetti and tomato sauce and garlic bread, we split into groups of 6 students with a guide, making three groups, and left on a night hike through the jungle.
my group of 6 slightly scared but really excited fellow journeywomen ventured into the darkness with not enough flashlights and no cameras and found something of everything. we encountered frogs (ranas), toads (sapos), lots and lots of different kinds of ants (hormigas and congas), mushrooms and fungi (hongos), spiders (arañas), and of course, trees (arboles).
the frogs were mainly transparent and the size of a quarter, the toads were bigger and brown or green, the ants called congas were probably as long as a quarter, in one spot our guide told us to turn off the flashlights and slowly, glow in the dark mushrooms became speckles of light in the ground, my guide called them stars from the ground and they really did look like a mirror image of the sky. we also found tarantulas hanging out in their holes.
the next morning my same group found ourselves on a 120 foot platform overlooking the jungle. it was beautiful. later we crossed a few bridges, all connected by platforms at the top of the jungle trees. terrifying but beautiful.
on our last full day we took the motor canoe down the river and jumped into the river. in our oversized lifevests we floated with the current followed by the boat. even though the river was brown and caymans are known to live in it, the river floating adventure might have been my favorite.
the next day we took a couple boats and buses and an airplane to get home. and it is nice to be here, with bug bites constantly reminding me of the good times had a few days ago. now i am on my final stretch, with only a 25 page essay between me and the end of my semester in ecuador.
oh and i don't have any pictures, but as soon as i find some i will put them up.
1. take a taxi to the airport at 530 in the morning.
2. take a really small airplane over the andes for 45 minutes.
3. take a bus to a hotel with illegal wild monkeys, parrots and peacocks.
4. take a canoe with a motor for an hour and 40 minutes.
5. take a chiva bus for 2 hours, meaning a wooden bus, without any glass windows so the air blows your hat, food and anything else not firmly held down into the abyss.
6. take another motor canoe for 2 hours, this time in the rainforest rain so that anyone without a poncho immediately accessible got soaked.
the slightly soggy journey was well worth where we found ourselves after the last canoe ride, the tiputini biodiversity station, which is a research station affiliated with the university of san francisco, quito and boston university.
after a surprisingly delicious dinner of spaghetti and tomato sauce and garlic bread, we split into groups of 6 students with a guide, making three groups, and left on a night hike through the jungle.
my group of 6 slightly scared but really excited fellow journeywomen ventured into the darkness with not enough flashlights and no cameras and found something of everything. we encountered frogs (ranas), toads (sapos), lots and lots of different kinds of ants (hormigas and congas), mushrooms and fungi (hongos), spiders (arañas), and of course, trees (arboles).
the frogs were mainly transparent and the size of a quarter, the toads were bigger and brown or green, the ants called congas were probably as long as a quarter, in one spot our guide told us to turn off the flashlights and slowly, glow in the dark mushrooms became speckles of light in the ground, my guide called them stars from the ground and they really did look like a mirror image of the sky. we also found tarantulas hanging out in their holes.
the next morning my same group found ourselves on a 120 foot platform overlooking the jungle. it was beautiful. later we crossed a few bridges, all connected by platforms at the top of the jungle trees. terrifying but beautiful.
on our last full day we took the motor canoe down the river and jumped into the river. in our oversized lifevests we floated with the current followed by the boat. even though the river was brown and caymans are known to live in it, the river floating adventure might have been my favorite.
the next day we took a couple boats and buses and an airplane to get home. and it is nice to be here, with bug bites constantly reminding me of the good times had a few days ago. now i am on my final stretch, with only a 25 page essay between me and the end of my semester in ecuador.
oh and i don't have any pictures, but as soon as i find some i will put them up.
jueves, 20 de noviembre de 2008
life on a farm with some indigenous folk
this is the result of 10 days in a rural indigenous town where all the women where this getup, with variations only in the color of the embroidery and skirt.
sábado, 8 de noviembre de 2008
not ecuador
dead women's pass
this is day two. day two is the hardest. day two is the hurdle, the mountain. two mountains, actually, for day two. day two gets you to day three, though, so i have to do day two. day three gets you to machu picchu so i have to just get through day two.
knowing the hardest part of the hardest day is called dead women's pass is a bit disheartening when you know you have a couple thousand meters of elevation to gain left (which takes an average of 5 hours) to get there and and couple thousand meters to descend afterward (which takes 1.5 hours) before lunchtime.
our group of 18 quickly changes from a group of excited kids joking around together into solitary soldiers dedicated to the mountain. it actually doesn't seem so bad at first, there is uphill and flat, more uphill and flat and that isn't too bad. after an hour and fifteen minutes where the first break is, i know if it's more of the same than this dead women's pass will have been overrated but i know that this isn't the case. starting again is another uphill, some downhill, some uphill and this is the point where the uphill doesn't stop. the uphill obviously becomes upmountain.
from the shrubbery and trees and cool nice temperature i ascend to a more tropical zone, with a stream and some butterflies and large trees with moss growing on the sides. here the stairs begin. here you round a corner and see more stairs, probably about a hundred in sight until you round another corner or get through the trees blocking the view and see another hundred stairs. this pattern got old very quickly. two hours later i reach the next official break.
so i hear, this last part was the hardest and it only gets easier. the next part is less steep, then it's the top. alright. i start walking up and there are no stairs, score! i keep going up, though, and when i round the corner the reality of dead women's pass hits me. i see the 20 minute walk i just took continue in front of me and then make a right hand turn and continue and make a left around the mountain into the abyss.
here we begin to enter another type of climate. this uphill, which is starting to add the occassional stair, starts to be inside of the clouds far above where i began this day. i can see the people ahead of me become the size of toy soldiers turning the corner a ways in front of me and a ways above me. this is where there isn't really enough air and i have to stop every minute or so to catch my breath even though i wished i could just keep going. eventually i round the corner and leave the group of people i was silently walking besides. the end is in sight and i can see the dark profile of people's heads moving around the top, mistakable for a tree if someone was standing without moving.
this part gets a bit more steep. i keep going. i see ellie but can't spend any energy on yelling a hello to her at the top already though i hear my name being cheered by the ellie. i keep going. i pass a friend who won't respond to anyone speaking to her. i start the last tier of stairs. i'm in a cloud. i keep going and i get there with some good friends to greet me and congratulate me.
we came from the lowest part. we ended at the highest part. you can see people just about to finish on the right and how the trail led us there.
reaching dead women's pass is an accomplishment and we all did it.
saksay waman
i'm in peru. cusco to be exact. after waking up at three thirty in the morning (morning is a debatable word to describe three thirty) and taking an airplane to this place, we explore the very old very high town of cusco. eventually, finally lunch time comes and it seems as though everyone is dropping like flies. after lunch we have the option of going to an archaeological site called saksay waman (not sexy woman, everyone's favorite joke) but only five of us students make it, along with the two program leaders.
saksay waman is something like a fortress. somehow the pre-colombian people got a bunch of rocks, some probably ten to fifteen feet tall and the same width, and put them side by side and stacked to make a really beautiful wall. behind the wall were other rock groupings of similar styles.
a lot of rocks made their way up here.
across the field on the other side was a playground of sorts. a humongous rock bulges out of the ground and is so smooth that it looks in some ways like it could be a petrified wave out of the ocean. the rock becomes a slide at one part, so smooth you can ride down it from probably thirty feet above the ground and your butt only becomes slightly sore afterwards.
the rock slides.
saksay waman is quite a place and also quite a song. which we learned in my quichua class and has been stuck in my head ever since then (saksay waman pi/pukuy pukuycha/imashamanta/kanpash wakanki...).
day one
this is the real beginning of the real purpose of my trip to peru. going off the impression cusco gave me, i had no real problem waking up at 430 the next day because of the excitement of the even bigger things to come.
so after some diddle daddling, we are finally on the trail and on the trail we continue, for about four hours until we hit the campsite where we are supposed to eat lunch.
only problem, this is november second, dia de los difuntos in many parts of latin america, including peru. for this reason, the agency that sent us our guides and porters for the trip made a deal that some of the porters could start this first day halfway through the day because they refused to go earlier.
one of the many ruins, this one was actually on the third day.
i'm very glad that the porters who requested to celebrate this day got some time off but really, they should have given us packed lunches or warned us ahead of time because i don't think i'm being too picky when i say that it is not acceptable to let people hike for four hours after having breakfast at five in the morning and not give them lunch at a decent hour. because we were missing the essential porters who made us every meal, we hiked for another two hours after reaching the lunch campsite, where we were told we would eat lunch, and ate over twelve hours after our last meal and after six hours of backpacking.
inti punku
day three is the last real day of backpacking. day three is the most beautiful. i thought of it as the reward we all deserved after day two. we passed many things beautiful and kept doing so for many hours. we went through cave tunnels and past a big river at the bottom of whatever mountain we were on top of that day. a butterfly attached itself to me and let me carry itself for several minutes.
the view we woke up to on the third day, the day we reached inti punku.
this was the day where we would finally be formally introduced to machu picchu. after lunchtime we began the last big stretch and we hiked flat and uphill terrain for a couple hours. after a good amount of time and when the trail really began to get steep i could feel how close we were. i suddenly had a bundle of energy and happily kept going, telling a friend behind me when i could see if the trail kept going flat, up or down.
the last stretch was wide. i kept going until i could see through the trees to the top. i saw inti punku, the sun gate, where stones had been placed and where the sun was shining on it just perfectly so that these thousands year old stones shined bright and yellow while the surroundings were shady from the trees.
a happy camper having just reached inti punku. machu picchu is in the middle at the end of the road where buses take people from the village below.
here is where i got my first impression of machu picchu and it was a good one. machu picchu is large and charming yet modest. the obligatory photo shoot with everyone's cameras followed and then we descended the last 30 minutes and were actually really finally there. it was around four thirty and the place was nearly empty and so quiet. the sun was just beginning to set and gave a soft light and glow to machu picchu. a llama walked by but before leaving the first few people there, posed for a camera.
the great awakening
the third day was election day. i tried very hard to keep it out of my mind and actually could for periods. at dinner time, around eight thirty we still really had no idea. after an internal debate i decided i would go to sleep after dinner instead of staying up like a bunch of us were doing until news found itself into the program leader's blackberry inbox.
the program leader's inbox got an email around eleven which lead to him poking his head out of his tent to announce the news to the vigilant and slightly drunk students waiting in the center of where all the tents were.
at this moment some screaming woke me up, and unlike most backpacking situations where i would be concerned to hear such screaming so late at night, i knew immediately the reason and laid in my sleeping bag with a smile, absorbing the moment, in light of the situation, the beauty i was in.
machu picchu
the locals, the quechua speakers pronounce machu picchu, machu pik'chu.
a closer view of machu picchu.
the town down below, where everyone goes through to get to the site is called aguascalientes but is trying to change its name to machu picchu.
no one knows for sure what machu picchu is but it was empty before the spaniards arrived, possibly because of a malaria epidemic.
machu picchu has a sun temple that lets the sun shine through it just perfectly on the summer solstice.
when it was found again by academic herman bigham in 1911 it was completely covered in trees and grass and took a long time to find out how epic the place actually is.
machu picchu is special. gorgeous. highly impressive.
machu picchu has a sun dial.
lima
i love the grand city of lima, peru.
it is a coastal city and everytime i remembered i had the ability to, i would breathe in a nice breath of salty chilled coastal air.
i walked by myself to a starbucks, bought a chai tea latte and felt completely comfortable, even more than i do after two months in quito.
i really loved lima.
the only picture of lima i have.
lima doesn't have the constant beauty of cusco, where every building looks like it belongs more a couple centuries ago than in this age. lima is a city's city. it has character.
it also has one of the most impressive central plazas i've seen in all of peru and ecuador.
i will go back to lima one day more certainly than any of the other places i've been to so far this semester.
lima was my last impression of peru.
san clemente
tomorrow i go to an indigenous village called san clemente for ten days where i will do many things i probably won't do ever again. more details on that in about ten days.
this is day two. day two is the hardest. day two is the hurdle, the mountain. two mountains, actually, for day two. day two gets you to day three, though, so i have to do day two. day three gets you to machu picchu so i have to just get through day two.
knowing the hardest part of the hardest day is called dead women's pass is a bit disheartening when you know you have a couple thousand meters of elevation to gain left (which takes an average of 5 hours) to get there and and couple thousand meters to descend afterward (which takes 1.5 hours) before lunchtime.
our group of 18 quickly changes from a group of excited kids joking around together into solitary soldiers dedicated to the mountain. it actually doesn't seem so bad at first, there is uphill and flat, more uphill and flat and that isn't too bad. after an hour and fifteen minutes where the first break is, i know if it's more of the same than this dead women's pass will have been overrated but i know that this isn't the case. starting again is another uphill, some downhill, some uphill and this is the point where the uphill doesn't stop. the uphill obviously becomes upmountain.
from the shrubbery and trees and cool nice temperature i ascend to a more tropical zone, with a stream and some butterflies and large trees with moss growing on the sides. here the stairs begin. here you round a corner and see more stairs, probably about a hundred in sight until you round another corner or get through the trees blocking the view and see another hundred stairs. this pattern got old very quickly. two hours later i reach the next official break.
so i hear, this last part was the hardest and it only gets easier. the next part is less steep, then it's the top. alright. i start walking up and there are no stairs, score! i keep going up, though, and when i round the corner the reality of dead women's pass hits me. i see the 20 minute walk i just took continue in front of me and then make a right hand turn and continue and make a left around the mountain into the abyss.
here we begin to enter another type of climate. this uphill, which is starting to add the occassional stair, starts to be inside of the clouds far above where i began this day. i can see the people ahead of me become the size of toy soldiers turning the corner a ways in front of me and a ways above me. this is where there isn't really enough air and i have to stop every minute or so to catch my breath even though i wished i could just keep going. eventually i round the corner and leave the group of people i was silently walking besides. the end is in sight and i can see the dark profile of people's heads moving around the top, mistakable for a tree if someone was standing without moving.
this part gets a bit more steep. i keep going. i see ellie but can't spend any energy on yelling a hello to her at the top already though i hear my name being cheered by the ellie. i keep going. i pass a friend who won't respond to anyone speaking to her. i start the last tier of stairs. i'm in a cloud. i keep going and i get there with some good friends to greet me and congratulate me.
we came from the lowest part. we ended at the highest part. you can see people just about to finish on the right and how the trail led us there.reaching dead women's pass is an accomplishment and we all did it.
saksay waman
i'm in peru. cusco to be exact. after waking up at three thirty in the morning (morning is a debatable word to describe three thirty) and taking an airplane to this place, we explore the very old very high town of cusco. eventually, finally lunch time comes and it seems as though everyone is dropping like flies. after lunch we have the option of going to an archaeological site called saksay waman (not sexy woman, everyone's favorite joke) but only five of us students make it, along with the two program leaders.
saksay waman is something like a fortress. somehow the pre-colombian people got a bunch of rocks, some probably ten to fifteen feet tall and the same width, and put them side by side and stacked to make a really beautiful wall. behind the wall were other rock groupings of similar styles.
a lot of rocks made their way up here.across the field on the other side was a playground of sorts. a humongous rock bulges out of the ground and is so smooth that it looks in some ways like it could be a petrified wave out of the ocean. the rock becomes a slide at one part, so smooth you can ride down it from probably thirty feet above the ground and your butt only becomes slightly sore afterwards.
the rock slides.day one
this is the real beginning of the real purpose of my trip to peru. going off the impression cusco gave me, i had no real problem waking up at 430 the next day because of the excitement of the even bigger things to come.
so after some diddle daddling, we are finally on the trail and on the trail we continue, for about four hours until we hit the campsite where we are supposed to eat lunch.
only problem, this is november second, dia de los difuntos in many parts of latin america, including peru. for this reason, the agency that sent us our guides and porters for the trip made a deal that some of the porters could start this first day halfway through the day because they refused to go earlier.
one of the many ruins, this one was actually on the third day.i'm very glad that the porters who requested to celebrate this day got some time off but really, they should have given us packed lunches or warned us ahead of time because i don't think i'm being too picky when i say that it is not acceptable to let people hike for four hours after having breakfast at five in the morning and not give them lunch at a decent hour. because we were missing the essential porters who made us every meal, we hiked for another two hours after reaching the lunch campsite, where we were told we would eat lunch, and ate over twelve hours after our last meal and after six hours of backpacking.
inti punku
day three is the last real day of backpacking. day three is the most beautiful. i thought of it as the reward we all deserved after day two. we passed many things beautiful and kept doing so for many hours. we went through cave tunnels and past a big river at the bottom of whatever mountain we were on top of that day. a butterfly attached itself to me and let me carry itself for several minutes.
the view we woke up to on the third day, the day we reached inti punku.this was the day where we would finally be formally introduced to machu picchu. after lunchtime we began the last big stretch and we hiked flat and uphill terrain for a couple hours. after a good amount of time and when the trail really began to get steep i could feel how close we were. i suddenly had a bundle of energy and happily kept going, telling a friend behind me when i could see if the trail kept going flat, up or down.
the last stretch was wide. i kept going until i could see through the trees to the top. i saw inti punku, the sun gate, where stones had been placed and where the sun was shining on it just perfectly so that these thousands year old stones shined bright and yellow while the surroundings were shady from the trees.
a happy camper having just reached inti punku. machu picchu is in the middle at the end of the road where buses take people from the village below.here is where i got my first impression of machu picchu and it was a good one. machu picchu is large and charming yet modest. the obligatory photo shoot with everyone's cameras followed and then we descended the last 30 minutes and were actually really finally there. it was around four thirty and the place was nearly empty and so quiet. the sun was just beginning to set and gave a soft light and glow to machu picchu. a llama walked by but before leaving the first few people there, posed for a camera.
the great awakening
the third day was election day. i tried very hard to keep it out of my mind and actually could for periods. at dinner time, around eight thirty we still really had no idea. after an internal debate i decided i would go to sleep after dinner instead of staying up like a bunch of us were doing until news found itself into the program leader's blackberry inbox.
the program leader's inbox got an email around eleven which lead to him poking his head out of his tent to announce the news to the vigilant and slightly drunk students waiting in the center of where all the tents were.
at this moment some screaming woke me up, and unlike most backpacking situations where i would be concerned to hear such screaming so late at night, i knew immediately the reason and laid in my sleeping bag with a smile, absorbing the moment, in light of the situation, the beauty i was in.
machu picchu
the locals, the quechua speakers pronounce machu picchu, machu pik'chu.
a closer view of machu picchu.the town down below, where everyone goes through to get to the site is called aguascalientes but is trying to change its name to machu picchu.
no one knows for sure what machu picchu is but it was empty before the spaniards arrived, possibly because of a malaria epidemic.
machu picchu has a sun temple that lets the sun shine through it just perfectly on the summer solstice.
when it was found again by academic herman bigham in 1911 it was completely covered in trees and grass and took a long time to find out how epic the place actually is.
machu picchu is special. gorgeous. highly impressive.
machu picchu has a sun dial.
lima
i love the grand city of lima, peru.
it is a coastal city and everytime i remembered i had the ability to, i would breathe in a nice breath of salty chilled coastal air.
i walked by myself to a starbucks, bought a chai tea latte and felt completely comfortable, even more than i do after two months in quito.
i really loved lima.
the only picture of lima i have.lima doesn't have the constant beauty of cusco, where every building looks like it belongs more a couple centuries ago than in this age. lima is a city's city. it has character.
it also has one of the most impressive central plazas i've seen in all of peru and ecuador.
i will go back to lima one day more certainly than any of the other places i've been to so far this semester.
lima was my last impression of peru.
san clemente
tomorrow i go to an indigenous village called san clemente for ten days where i will do many things i probably won't do ever again. more details on that in about ten days.
martes, 28 de octubre de 2008
in two months i will be in my comfy little home in santa monica. i will have eaten in n out, slept in my very own bed, and on the 28th of december i will have to call into the superior court of los angeles hotline to see if i have jury duty the next morning or not. at that point i will have spent four days walking the inca trail to machu picchu, some time in the ecuadorian amazon and i will have written a 25 page paper in spanish on sumak kawsay and the government's most recent promises to the indigenous peoples of ecuador. i will probably be in some ecuador appreciation group on facebook. my hair will be another inch longer (hopefully).
i am really far from home and in some ways and on some days i want those two months left to be a lot less. my life in the last two months and the next two months consists of some pretty cool situations and things that i need to remember. ecuador has colada morada y guaguas, fruits like guanabanas and naranjillas and uvitas and tomate de arbol and guayaba which all make fantastic juices and batidos, ecuador has quarter buses and loving families and kisses on the cheek and weather with character and presidents to meet and waterfalls and many many new experiences for me.
even though on occassion i buy a hot dog or french fries i know that once i'm in the states i will be craving ecuadorian food for the rest of my life and any ecuadorian restaurants i find will never ever compare to what i eat here.
phase one of my semester abroad is over after tomorrow. phase two, the study trips, starts friday and ends at the end of the next month. phase three is the three and a half weeks with nothing to do but write a 25 page paper in spanish and say my goodbyes to ecuador.
i am really far from home and in some ways and on some days i want those two months left to be a lot less. my life in the last two months and the next two months consists of some pretty cool situations and things that i need to remember. ecuador has colada morada y guaguas, fruits like guanabanas and naranjillas and uvitas and tomate de arbol and guayaba which all make fantastic juices and batidos, ecuador has quarter buses and loving families and kisses on the cheek and weather with character and presidents to meet and waterfalls and many many new experiences for me.
even though on occassion i buy a hot dog or french fries i know that once i'm in the states i will be craving ecuadorian food for the rest of my life and any ecuadorian restaurants i find will never ever compare to what i eat here.
phase one of my semester abroad is over after tomorrow. phase two, the study trips, starts friday and ends at the end of the next month. phase three is the three and a half weeks with nothing to do but write a 25 page paper in spanish and say my goodbyes to ecuador.
viernes, 24 de octubre de 2008
new experience of the day: meet president
today was a good day.
maya having a good day.
some reasons why i had a good day:
1. i learned the happy birthday song in quichua:
sumak wata paktay
sumak wata paktay
sumak wata _____ charichunmi
tukuykun munanchik!
maya having a good day in front of an amazing mural in the presidential palace.
2. i sat in a yellow room for two hours listening to the ecuadorian president speak about what he did this week (on wednesday at 8:30 after breakfast i had a meeting with...) while occasionally having a camera stuffed in front of our faces for the press conference's showing on national television tomorrow morning.
maya having a good day inside of the yellow room of the presidential palace with the president, a breathtaking guy, hannah and camille.
3. after all the blah blah blah finished, our little group got a photo op with the tall, broad-shouldered president who has the most beautiful eyes and delicious cologne out of all the presidents i have ever met. "Con cariño para Maya, RC, 24/10/08" is what this president wrote on my copy of the new constitution and when we sadly departed, he gave us kisses on the cheek.
still having a good day while looking at the presidential sash in the yellow room of the presidential palace.
4. after the adrenaline of being with mr. president wore off we went to calle la ronda with the man who made the night happen, professor and translator jose, to eat good food with good company.
maya having a good day with her signed constitution in bag and unsigned good people surrounding her.
maya having a good day.some reasons why i had a good day:
1. i learned the happy birthday song in quichua:
sumak wata paktay
sumak wata paktay
sumak wata _____ charichunmi
tukuykun munanchik!
maya having a good day in front of an amazing mural in the presidential palace.2. i sat in a yellow room for two hours listening to the ecuadorian president speak about what he did this week (on wednesday at 8:30 after breakfast i had a meeting with...) while occasionally having a camera stuffed in front of our faces for the press conference's showing on national television tomorrow morning.
maya having a good day inside of the yellow room of the presidential palace with the president, a breathtaking guy, hannah and camille.3. after all the blah blah blah finished, our little group got a photo op with the tall, broad-shouldered president who has the most beautiful eyes and delicious cologne out of all the presidents i have ever met. "Con cariño para Maya, RC, 24/10/08" is what this president wrote on my copy of the new constitution and when we sadly departed, he gave us kisses on the cheek.
still having a good day while looking at the presidential sash in the yellow room of the presidential palace.4. after the adrenaline of being with mr. president wore off we went to calle la ronda with the man who made the night happen, professor and translator jose, to eat good food with good company.
maya having a good day with her signed constitution in bag and unsigned good people surrounding her.5. getting to what is definitely now home at a decent hour at a decent price with more than a decent friend accompanying me on the ride home (awwww).
jueves, 23 de octubre de 2008
new life experience of the day: i got stung by a bee! and an ecuadorian bee at that. the bee tried to nest in my luscious, cozy hair and felt my head to figure out what i was feeling, it stung me in the finger.
and it's always surprising what a difference a slip of the tongue, the letters a and o, b and v can make when explaining something in spanish, like getting stung by a bee. bee is abeja in spanish but when ELLIE tried to explain what happened to her maid, she said that an oveja (not abeja), a sheep, had stung me. which is incorrect but humorous nonetheless.
so in other, slightly more important news, I'M MEETING THE PRESIDENT OF ECUADOR TOMORROW. yup. that will be my new life experience of the day for tomorrow. meeting a president, i really didn't think that would be something i did in my life.
and it's always surprising what a difference a slip of the tongue, the letters a and o, b and v can make when explaining something in spanish, like getting stung by a bee. bee is abeja in spanish but when ELLIE tried to explain what happened to her maid, she said that an oveja (not abeja), a sheep, had stung me. which is incorrect but humorous nonetheless.
so in other, slightly more important news, I'M MEETING THE PRESIDENT OF ECUADOR TOMORROW. yup. that will be my new life experience of the day for tomorrow. meeting a president, i really didn't think that would be something i did in my life.
domingo, 19 de octubre de 2008
once on here i said that it rains in quito but never pours. that was incorrect.
a beautiful day full of adventures and historic center venturings and watching friends play basketball and delicious food. that's chapter one.
chapter two. a friend and i begin the walk home, more or less a 45 minute venture total for me because we walk to his house and then i walk to mine. three minutes after we leave the rest of our friends at the warm and cozy quicentro, a very modern, very large mall, the rain begins, and not the normal splashing friendliness with the sun still shining through.
cars splash us, i worry about my ipod and school stuff i have on me. my friend has a rain jacket and of course i do not. i get to his house expecting the rain to simmer down but not. it only gets worse. so i decide to start the trek home, borrowing his umbrella he left at home. his umbrella went inside out on three separate occasions and by the time i got home it really didn't matter if i stepped in the newly formed puddles or not, my feet were sloshing around in my shoes anyways.
i guess that's my two chapter adventure of the day. life is good.
a beautiful day full of adventures and historic center venturings and watching friends play basketball and delicious food. that's chapter one.
chapter two. a friend and i begin the walk home, more or less a 45 minute venture total for me because we walk to his house and then i walk to mine. three minutes after we leave the rest of our friends at the warm and cozy quicentro, a very modern, very large mall, the rain begins, and not the normal splashing friendliness with the sun still shining through.
cars splash us, i worry about my ipod and school stuff i have on me. my friend has a rain jacket and of course i do not. i get to his house expecting the rain to simmer down but not. it only gets worse. so i decide to start the trek home, borrowing his umbrella he left at home. his umbrella went inside out on three separate occasions and by the time i got home it really didn't matter if i stepped in the newly formed puddles or not, my feet were sloshing around in my shoes anyways.
i guess that's my two chapter adventure of the day. life is good.
sábado, 18 de octubre de 2008
my brother is blasting i want you (she's so heavy) by the beatles. it's 9:15 and i am about to eat hot dogs for dinner. i have contracted ADD while in ecuador. public libraries don't exist as far as i know and the major university libraries are really low on updated resources.
i just ate dinner. my dad got drunk at a cousin's house with my mom and came home a complete goofball. my sister is getting bad grades and my dad threatened to not let her play soccer anymore (which is more important to her than school).
i went to a casino for the first time last night. i lost two dollars in the penny slot machines but was handed a tall glass of beer while playing as some form of encouragement to continue. ellie and i both lost two bucks while the three guys who came with us won money. one guy won $35, one $6 and one $5, all in the same kind of machine ellie and i were playing at. lady luck doesn't like the ladies.
i'm just about halfway done with this experience. yup.
i just ate dinner. my dad got drunk at a cousin's house with my mom and came home a complete goofball. my sister is getting bad grades and my dad threatened to not let her play soccer anymore (which is more important to her than school).
i went to a casino for the first time last night. i lost two dollars in the penny slot machines but was handed a tall glass of beer while playing as some form of encouragement to continue. ellie and i both lost two bucks while the three guys who came with us won money. one guy won $35, one $6 and one $5, all in the same kind of machine ellie and i were playing at. lady luck doesn't like the ladies.
i'm just about halfway done with this experience. yup.
jueves, 16 de octubre de 2008
i love quito, i really do. i enjoy this city life, the weather and the people here but there is a definite dark side to the city.
with the generally accepted fact that we are not in claremont any more comes the understanding that, like in any big city, we need to take extra safety precautions. i don't take my laptop out of the house just because it would not be worth it to have it stolen. no walking alone after 8 or 9, especially in certain parts of town, and the buses stop running around then, too, so the only other option for us is to take a taxi. inconvenient but worth it. big city life but, again, worth it.
there are other things that happen here, which i do not know what i can attribute them to that i doubt happen in places like los angeles; certainly not as frequently as i have experienced them here in the last month and a half.
several weeks ago, i walked down to eloy alfaro, the street where i take the bus to class every morning, and crossed it to get to the side i needed to be on. on the median of this street, which has trees and grass and brick paths to cross it, i found also had a dead dog on top of a pile of filled garbage bags. i crossed the median as quickly as possible and did my best to not look at it hoping to never see it again.
the next day i walked down to eloy alfaro, crossed the street to get to the other side, and realize that the dog, on top of the plastic garbage bags, is still there. a bit taken aback, i hop on the next bus and head over to my community service.
the next day it is still there.
so i walked down the block where there are police officers directing the traffic every morning and told him of what was still lying there on the median of my street, after 3 days. the next day it was gone.
two weeks ago, again walking on eloy alfaro after a quichua study session, i cross the street, unnecessarily expensive ipod in hand, and i realize that, 10 feet in front of me is a man lying on the ground. he isn't just lying on the ground, he is unconscious on the ground, the lower half of his body splayed on the street while the upper half on it's back on the sidewalk.
he wasn't obviously injured. i told myself he had just had a bit much to drink at four in the afternoon on a sunday. i felt, at that moment, like the most useless human. i didn't think i could do anything as a small, white girl from the usa, would i tell someone else to do something? kick him? so i just stared as others walked by like he was a filled garbage bag, of no importance, and i just kept going in the direction of my house.
today i was walking up a different street to meet up with my friends to start our research at a university library. a beautiful day and then i find a dirty dead cat to my left on the sidewalk. keep walking, that's my routine, my motto.
several hours later as i walk at night to the bus stop on that same street i notice a long rectangular box near where i found the cat earlier today. there were paws sticking out of the box.
those have been some of the most physically disturbing, bothersome experiences of my time here but really, they shouldn't be. every day i see mainly afro ecuatorian preteens to teens juggling in front of cars stopped at a red light to try and earn a bit of money while not going to school. i watch these guys go up to every driver's side window and knock on it while the drivers of bmws or benzs ignore them or look right through them.
ever day i see indigenous women dressed in indigenous clothes, sitting or standing on a sidewalk with a basket of candies, cigarettes and gum, selling any of it for 20 cents a pop. sometimes i see a wiggle coming from their backs and i realize they have a newborn they are trying to feed.
the easy thing to do is to ignore it all. honestly there isn't much i or any one could do unless they wanted to buy something off of every street vendor or give change to every kid ditching school to support themselves or their families.
this is my dilemma. i don't know what to do. all i know is that i would rather see a million dead dogs on the sidewalk then have to live with the guilt of knowing what little i could do to help these people i don't actually do, i usually keep walking, hiding my ipod under my jacket so it doesn't get stolen.
with the generally accepted fact that we are not in claremont any more comes the understanding that, like in any big city, we need to take extra safety precautions. i don't take my laptop out of the house just because it would not be worth it to have it stolen. no walking alone after 8 or 9, especially in certain parts of town, and the buses stop running around then, too, so the only other option for us is to take a taxi. inconvenient but worth it. big city life but, again, worth it.
there are other things that happen here, which i do not know what i can attribute them to that i doubt happen in places like los angeles; certainly not as frequently as i have experienced them here in the last month and a half.
several weeks ago, i walked down to eloy alfaro, the street where i take the bus to class every morning, and crossed it to get to the side i needed to be on. on the median of this street, which has trees and grass and brick paths to cross it, i found also had a dead dog on top of a pile of filled garbage bags. i crossed the median as quickly as possible and did my best to not look at it hoping to never see it again.
the next day i walked down to eloy alfaro, crossed the street to get to the other side, and realize that the dog, on top of the plastic garbage bags, is still there. a bit taken aback, i hop on the next bus and head over to my community service.
the next day it is still there.
so i walked down the block where there are police officers directing the traffic every morning and told him of what was still lying there on the median of my street, after 3 days. the next day it was gone.
two weeks ago, again walking on eloy alfaro after a quichua study session, i cross the street, unnecessarily expensive ipod in hand, and i realize that, 10 feet in front of me is a man lying on the ground. he isn't just lying on the ground, he is unconscious on the ground, the lower half of his body splayed on the street while the upper half on it's back on the sidewalk.
he wasn't obviously injured. i told myself he had just had a bit much to drink at four in the afternoon on a sunday. i felt, at that moment, like the most useless human. i didn't think i could do anything as a small, white girl from the usa, would i tell someone else to do something? kick him? so i just stared as others walked by like he was a filled garbage bag, of no importance, and i just kept going in the direction of my house.
today i was walking up a different street to meet up with my friends to start our research at a university library. a beautiful day and then i find a dirty dead cat to my left on the sidewalk. keep walking, that's my routine, my motto.
several hours later as i walk at night to the bus stop on that same street i notice a long rectangular box near where i found the cat earlier today. there were paws sticking out of the box.
those have been some of the most physically disturbing, bothersome experiences of my time here but really, they shouldn't be. every day i see mainly afro ecuatorian preteens to teens juggling in front of cars stopped at a red light to try and earn a bit of money while not going to school. i watch these guys go up to every driver's side window and knock on it while the drivers of bmws or benzs ignore them or look right through them.
ever day i see indigenous women dressed in indigenous clothes, sitting or standing on a sidewalk with a basket of candies, cigarettes and gum, selling any of it for 20 cents a pop. sometimes i see a wiggle coming from their backs and i realize they have a newborn they are trying to feed.
the easy thing to do is to ignore it all. honestly there isn't much i or any one could do unless they wanted to buy something off of every street vendor or give change to every kid ditching school to support themselves or their families.
this is my dilemma. i don't know what to do. all i know is that i would rather see a million dead dogs on the sidewalk then have to live with the guilt of knowing what little i could do to help these people i don't actually do, i usually keep walking, hiding my ipod under my jacket so it doesn't get stolen.
lunes, 13 de octubre de 2008
it's been a while
pictures are of the crew on the train, 2 views from and of the train and 2 pictures of cuenca. and they are ellie's.
i love walking through the rain and seeing my breath without actually feeling cold and i get to do this almost every day. the weather here is unpredictably predictable yet i still never bring an umbrella with me when i go out. when i come back to the states it will be a disaster for me when it reaches the 80s or 90s. oh and i'm just barely starting to get used to the metric system and celsius. a healthy person has a temperature of 37 degrees celsius.
this weekend i ate like a queen and as usual, for less than 5 bucks for a royal meal. at many restaurants, ask for el almuerzo, lunch and they give you their lunch for the day, usually a soup, rice and some kind of meat, fresh juice and maybe some dessert. ecuatorianos know how to make pizza, too. i went to cuenca, the third biggest city in this country and ate their traditional dish, mote pillo, which is some delicious corn cooked with eggs. i could eat that every day. and the ice cream, oh the ice cream i would breathe it if possible.
i took a train on saturday at 7 in the morning. i sat on it's roof and watched ecuador for 7 hours. i saw many variations of the color green and some brown everywhere and all across the hillsides which looked like quilts sown into the ground, just as beautiful as useful. we saw snowcapped mountains in the distance which looked like white camoflouge hidden in the openings of the clouds. i forget how big space is until i do something like descend the nariz del diablo, nose of the devil, and see a panoramic view of what looks like an entire world of canyons and rivers and delapidated buildings and railroad tracks that go farther than the actual train goes.
cuenca is magical. that is all there is to it.
the life is good and it keeps on going that way.
here i will briefly outline the rest of my semester for your reading pleasure:
in three weeks, halloween to be exact, i will fly away to peru to see what is machu picchu with my own eyes until the 7th of november, exactly a week later. then on the 9th, a sunday, i go a couple hours north of quito to san clemente, an indigenous town where i will live with an indigenous family for 10 days, waking up early and farming and experiencing something truly new in my life. then, a couple days later, a friday, i am off to the jungle, the amazon to be exact from the 2st to the 24th. then i begin my 3.5 weeks of intensive research which will hopefully conclude in a 25-page paper on sumak kawsay, or buen vivir, or good living, which comes from quichua. this phrase appears in the preamble to the new constitution and is similar to the idea of the pursuit of happiness except for that they are using an indigenous word. my very large (hatun) paper will focus on what that phrase means to indigenous people, what the constitution says it will do for them, and what they think will, if anything, actually happen for them as a result of the constitution.
martes, 7 de octubre de 2008
i ride a bus twice a week and at one specific intersection there is a huge line on the sidewalk from both sides of the main street trying to turn onto a smaller street that is barricaded off to cars every single time i ride by it. last time i caught a glimpse of the building they want to enter, and it is the spanish embassy.
this weekend i went to a touristy place called baños and rode a bicycle 40 km down the ruta de cascadas until reaching the big mama of waterfalls, which lined both sides of the canyon our road/trail/highway was on.
ellie ate a guinea pig and got sick.
this weekend i went to a touristy place called baños and rode a bicycle 40 km down the ruta de cascadas until reaching the big mama of waterfalls, which lined both sides of the canyon our road/trail/highway was on.
ellie ate a guinea pig and got sick.
jueves, 2 de octubre de 2008
yesterday i went to my first latin american soccer game. the sport usually bores me but being in the stands is something else. the teams were, liga, the quito team and one of the best in south america versus boca junior, a team from argentina. the stands were open seating and where we ended up, general north high, was where they were putting all the boca fans. they did this by asking what team you were for and directing you in once direction or the other. in between the two sides was a buffer zone ten feet wide at least, police lining it by standing on every other large step in full riot gear.
this was the occassion where i learned lots of very creative curses in spanish directed at the other team or the refs that me and my american friends would repeat to each other and translate and laugh. the guy friends yelled just as insulting words in english.
ther were lots of team chants that the audience would arrupt into, but none of us caught any of the words. the only chant we could sing along to was the most basic and most familiar, "ole, ole ole ole..."
things that interest me these days:
sumak kawsay-buen vivir-good living
political graffiti: "Uribe fascista y narcoterrorista"-"Uribe (prez of colombia) is a fascist and a narcoterrorist" "¿mineras: seguro que tenemos futuro?"-"miners: are we sure we have a future?"
Juan Leon Mera
medicine
the doctor i work with at my community service is slowly convincing indirectly to want a career in medicine. he was doing so indirectly by saying it's the most rewarding job, it's universal, it can be done anywhere, you really help, etc. today he asked me a few questions like how i handle seeing blood and whatnot and afterwords said, matter of factly, "you are qualified for medicine." and inside i went"yes!"
the doctor is a bit of a diva. he doesn't remember my name even though we talk for at least an hour after seeing patients everytime i go. today when i walked into the office he said, in english, "give me a pen" and after the second it took to process this was english and understand through his accent, i got him his pen.
after seeing the first patient he told me to take the blood pressure of the next guy and walked out the door. i did so (135/76) but the doctor didn't return for 20 minutes. he drove off apparently, picked up his daughter from who know where, returned and gave the kid to someone who works there to take care of her.
every single time he explains something to the patient he acts patronizing but not in a way that i dislike and asks, "do you understand?" and usually the patient is too intimidated to respond with words. sometimes they nod, sometimes they do nothing but the doctor continues anyway, not actually paying attention to the response.
this was the occassion where i learned lots of very creative curses in spanish directed at the other team or the refs that me and my american friends would repeat to each other and translate and laugh. the guy friends yelled just as insulting words in english.
ther were lots of team chants that the audience would arrupt into, but none of us caught any of the words. the only chant we could sing along to was the most basic and most familiar, "ole, ole ole ole..."
things that interest me these days:
sumak kawsay-buen vivir-good living
political graffiti: "Uribe fascista y narcoterrorista"-"Uribe (prez of colombia) is a fascist and a narcoterrorist" "¿mineras: seguro que tenemos futuro?"-"miners: are we sure we have a future?"
Juan Leon Mera
medicine
the doctor i work with at my community service is slowly convincing indirectly to want a career in medicine. he was doing so indirectly by saying it's the most rewarding job, it's universal, it can be done anywhere, you really help, etc. today he asked me a few questions like how i handle seeing blood and whatnot and afterwords said, matter of factly, "you are qualified for medicine." and inside i went"yes!"
the doctor is a bit of a diva. he doesn't remember my name even though we talk for at least an hour after seeing patients everytime i go. today when i walked into the office he said, in english, "give me a pen" and after the second it took to process this was english and understand through his accent, i got him his pen.
after seeing the first patient he told me to take the blood pressure of the next guy and walked out the door. i did so (135/76) but the doctor didn't return for 20 minutes. he drove off apparently, picked up his daughter from who know where, returned and gave the kid to someone who works there to take care of her.
every single time he explains something to the patient he acts patronizing but not in a way that i dislike and asks, "do you understand?" and usually the patient is too intimidated to respond with words. sometimes they nod, sometimes they do nothing but the doctor continues anyway, not actually paying attention to the response.
domingo, 28 de septiembre de 2008
sorry guys i felt like writing in spanish i have a feeling only 1 person reading this will understand
El si gano con mas que 62% pero en Guayaquil se perdio con solo 42% por el si. el alcalde de Guayaquil dijo que si el si no ganaria, el pais tendra problemas muy serios de una division muy fuerte de las ciudades y provincias mas grande del pais. posiblemente problemas tan grandes como los que tienen bolivia con santa cruz. Guayaquil y Quito tienen una historia muy larga de una seperacion de ideologia y de partidos politicos. Guayaquil es el centro de negocios para Ecuador y por eso son mas conservados politicamente y ellos no les gusta al presidente Rafael Correa.
libertad es ser respetoso a cada otro
s
today is voting day, where everyone mandatorially votes on the constitution. from what i've heard, everyone seems to know it will pass. my dad voted null (marking both yes and no) and my mom voted no.
Adventure Crew 2008: Papallacta Edition (insert adventure crew music)
llapingachos! Hot Springs! Donkey! Jurassic Park (without dinosaurs)! Sugar Cane! Ley Seca!
There was much to be found in the town of Papallacta with a population of 600 people, more or less. The main attraction are the hot springs, which come from LAVA somewhere and bubble up from the underground into perfectly temperate pools.
llapingachos (which always make me think of yelping cats) are an ecuadorian piece of art. that is, mashed potatos with cheese, fried into a nice, orange mound. Fried eggs on top. sausage/chicharones.
There were probably more cows, donkeys and chickens combined than humans. this place was seriously empty. kind of like the beginning of a scary movie where all the oblivious kids get eaten by zombies.
Then we went on this mini hike on a mini nature reserve where i was expecting to see a dinosaur come around the corner any second. It was like the setting of jurassic park, the show lost and kind of like jumanji all wrapped into one.
Will you guys let me know if this ecuador constitution thing is being covered in the news or not? i would be very interested to know if the u.s. news outlets care about this.
jueves, 25 de septiembre de 2008
NO somos ovejas
i would not be surprised if my ecuafamilia thought i was dumb, or maybe even special. i got home today just in time for lunch and my mom asked if i was ready to eat. i said i just had to use the bathroom and then i would be, and so started walking towards the bathroom. she said, your sister is in there right now, use the other one, and pointed towards the living room.
-there's a bathroom over there???
-you didn't know there was a bathroom over there????
-um, no.
-(after some laughter) you found a new bathroom after a month here (jajajaja)
at least i didn't explode anything today.
tomorrow i'm off on a bus to visit a fine town called papallacta. these ecuatorianos pronounce their lls exactly like js. this is the town of natural hot springs and great hikes in mountains. four of us are going just for a night to return for the ELECTIONS on sunday. maybe it will be interesting, probably it will be like any other election day in the states where the excitement won't begin until the results start aflowin' on everyone's constantly-on-no-matter-what tv sets.
my professor says that it's a known fact that the new constitution will be voted for. we'll see.
-there's a bathroom over there???
-you didn't know there was a bathroom over there????
-um, no.
-(after some laughter) you found a new bathroom after a month here (jajajaja)
at least i didn't explode anything today.
tomorrow i'm off on a bus to visit a fine town called papallacta. these ecuatorianos pronounce their lls exactly like js. this is the town of natural hot springs and great hikes in mountains. four of us are going just for a night to return for the ELECTIONS on sunday. maybe it will be interesting, probably it will be like any other election day in the states where the excitement won't begin until the results start aflowin' on everyone's constantly-on-no-matter-what tv sets.
my professor says that it's a known fact that the new constitution will be voted for. we'll see.
martes, 23 de septiembre de 2008
la poesia esta en las calles
so, what did i do today?
-community service (the good doctor gave an older woman like 10 shots in her hands for her rheumatoid arthritis)
-ate delicious lunch including strawberries with homemade whipped cream
-studied for a quichua quiz (paykunaka urku urapimi kankuna: they are under the mountain)
-EXPLODED THE KITCHEN (apparently there was a glass cover that goes on top of the stove but that i had never seen in use before. it was there, and a pot was on top, i assumed they added it because the burners don't hold pots and pans very stable and it was a recent and untold addition to the kitchen. with a friend, josue, by my side, i turn on the stove to boil some water for tea.
while talking about nothing i can reme-KABOOOOOOM! there goes millions of shards of glass all over the kitchen. EVERYWHERE. under (ura) the fridge, behind (washa) the stove, on top of (janak) the counters, EVERYWHERE. even in the other room. SO MUCH GLASS.
"MAKI" i shout a couple seconds later, while still in shock that i had created and EXPLOSION in the kitchen. she runs over and does the spanish language gasp and i run and get shoes while apologizing and saying i have NO IDEA what just happened " NO SE QUE PASO! AY LO SIENTO!"
basically a half hour later, maki, josue and i have finished cleaning with fingers feeling like they just picked up thousands of pieces of glass.
i was supposed to remove the cover made of glass with pretty decorations before using the stove. yeah. i forgot that glass doesn't always do well with fire.
and parents: don't worry the company is coming to replace it free of charge tomorrow)
i really can't think of anything that should or could follow that little adventure.
-community service (the good doctor gave an older woman like 10 shots in her hands for her rheumatoid arthritis)
-ate delicious lunch including strawberries with homemade whipped cream
-studied for a quichua quiz (paykunaka urku urapimi kankuna: they are under the mountain)
-EXPLODED THE KITCHEN (apparently there was a glass cover that goes on top of the stove but that i had never seen in use before. it was there, and a pot was on top, i assumed they added it because the burners don't hold pots and pans very stable and it was a recent and untold addition to the kitchen. with a friend, josue, by my side, i turn on the stove to boil some water for tea.
while talking about nothing i can reme-KABOOOOOOM! there goes millions of shards of glass all over the kitchen. EVERYWHERE. under (ura) the fridge, behind (washa) the stove, on top of (janak) the counters, EVERYWHERE. even in the other room. SO MUCH GLASS.
"MAKI" i shout a couple seconds later, while still in shock that i had created and EXPLOSION in the kitchen. she runs over and does the spanish language gasp and i run and get shoes while apologizing and saying i have NO IDEA what just happened " NO SE QUE PASO! AY LO SIENTO!"
basically a half hour later, maki, josue and i have finished cleaning with fingers feeling like they just picked up thousands of pieces of glass.
i was supposed to remove the cover made of glass with pretty decorations before using the stove. yeah. i forgot that glass doesn't always do well with fire.
and parents: don't worry the company is coming to replace it free of charge tomorrow)
i really can't think of anything that should or could follow that little adventure.
a couple nights ago i had my first home made burrito. when i figured out what was inside it hit me like a big lightning bolt of culture shock, maybe more than anything previously had. it was a burrito alright, but it was a burrito with a hot dog inside with melted cheese. it was a strange fusion of american cultural food, knowing that i love mexican burritos, and the ecuatorian distance from both cultures.
large sanduche and a drink: $2.35
on sunday i saw a policeman reading the constitution booklet that has been widely distributed while standing in front of a church. this sunday is the big day, where everybody must go to the city where they are currently registered and vote. si o no. there is this thing called ley seca, dry law, where no one is allowed to buy or consume alcohol on saturday or sunday so that everyone votes with a clear head. if you get caught drinking, my professor warned us, you will be put in jail.
ecuatorianos do things different here. that's my lesson from these events.
large sanduche and a drink: $2.35
on sunday i saw a policeman reading the constitution booklet that has been widely distributed while standing in front of a church. this sunday is the big day, where everybody must go to the city where they are currently registered and vote. si o no. there is this thing called ley seca, dry law, where no one is allowed to buy or consume alcohol on saturday or sunday so that everyone votes with a clear head. if you get caught drinking, my professor warned us, you will be put in jail.
ecuatorianos do things different here. that's my lesson from these events.
sábado, 20 de septiembre de 2008
the storm perfecto
adventure crew, in much smaller form, came out today to do the good deed: adventure!
this is how it went down. yesterday, today and tomorrow there is this quitofest going on in a park a pretty good hike uphill with many musicians from all over south america and mexico. it's kind of a big deal. thousands of people go.
a friend, josue cafe and i live close to each other and decided to take the bus over to quitofest and check out the music. we got there around three and we both were impressed by the location the kinds of people and the music playing.
well, after five minutes, really not more than five, it started to rain. no biggy, i brought a paraguas. we both take cover under it while talking to several ecuatorians about punk music. ok well then the lightning and thunder came. and it began to really rain. we ran with the umbrella to this big red bull (it gives you wings!) tent along with probably a couple dozen newly wet souls.
and then it started to hail. the painful kind of hail. it almost completely covered the trampled grass with perfectly round miniture ice cubes. the tent selling ceviche to our right unhinged itself from the ground and uncovered 3 people with quite surprised looks on their faces. our tent began to look vulnerable and some people were making a dash to the crystal house, a public building made of glass that was already filled with people avoiding this little episode of rain.
we realized it wasn't going to get any better so, josue with my umbrella in hand and i started the 200 meter dash to the glass house with people staring out at us. the umbrella betrayed us and flipped its curvature out in the opposite direction, like in the movies.
the door is closed! there's at least hundreds of people inside this building, watching us and the pending storm and no one is letting us in. so we stand right against the glass walls on a bit of a ledge and under a bit of the roof so that we aren't really getting rained on. we talk to some teenagers in spanish while they talk to us in english.
we get inside and start trading slang words and customs from our homelands. for an hour. it keeps raining, but no more hail, for an hour. it won't get any better any time soon so we decide to begin the journey home with five minutes of live music under our belt and over an hour of seriously complete soaking wetness attached to us in the form of our clothing. so we walk down the 265 stairs (with the fixed umbrella) and make it to pollo campero, our favorite fried chicken fast food place here.
it took 12 minutes to make popcorn chicken.
we walked to a bus stop, got on a bus and realized it had stopped raining when we got off, a half hour later.
viva ecuador!
this is how it went down. yesterday, today and tomorrow there is this quitofest going on in a park a pretty good hike uphill with many musicians from all over south america and mexico. it's kind of a big deal. thousands of people go.
a friend, josue cafe and i live close to each other and decided to take the bus over to quitofest and check out the music. we got there around three and we both were impressed by the location the kinds of people and the music playing.
well, after five minutes, really not more than five, it started to rain. no biggy, i brought a paraguas. we both take cover under it while talking to several ecuatorians about punk music. ok well then the lightning and thunder came. and it began to really rain. we ran with the umbrella to this big red bull (it gives you wings!) tent along with probably a couple dozen newly wet souls.
and then it started to hail. the painful kind of hail. it almost completely covered the trampled grass with perfectly round miniture ice cubes. the tent selling ceviche to our right unhinged itself from the ground and uncovered 3 people with quite surprised looks on their faces. our tent began to look vulnerable and some people were making a dash to the crystal house, a public building made of glass that was already filled with people avoiding this little episode of rain.
we realized it wasn't going to get any better so, josue with my umbrella in hand and i started the 200 meter dash to the glass house with people staring out at us. the umbrella betrayed us and flipped its curvature out in the opposite direction, like in the movies.
the door is closed! there's at least hundreds of people inside this building, watching us and the pending storm and no one is letting us in. so we stand right against the glass walls on a bit of a ledge and under a bit of the roof so that we aren't really getting rained on. we talk to some teenagers in spanish while they talk to us in english.
we get inside and start trading slang words and customs from our homelands. for an hour. it keeps raining, but no more hail, for an hour. it won't get any better any time soon so we decide to begin the journey home with five minutes of live music under our belt and over an hour of seriously complete soaking wetness attached to us in the form of our clothing. so we walk down the 265 stairs (with the fixed umbrella) and make it to pollo campero, our favorite fried chicken fast food place here.
it took 12 minutes to make popcorn chicken.
we walked to a bus stop, got on a bus and realized it had stopped raining when we got off, a half hour later.
viva ecuador!
viernes, 19 de septiembre de 2008
NO porque yo amo a dios
my whole family is eating dinner at the dinner table in the kitchen. the tv is on in the background while we discuss why my 14 year old sister should not get her belly button pierced. my dad says no, mainly because that will impede the current of an energy flow/chakra of some sort. then, barely audible, "GOL" comes from the bedroom with the tv. my brother, sister and father run, really, run in the middle of dinner to the tv to see who scored. classic toledo family behavior.
i have 4 more weeks of classes before i go on 3 weeks of adventures and then another 4 weeks of my DISP project.
it started raining as soon as i got home today and it hasn't stopped.
today we learned a new song in my quichua class but i don't like it as much as the old one.
it seems to me that i'm going to wake up one morning soon and this love affair with quito will be ending. i absolutely love this city. i haven't had any spiritual or cultural or personal revelations of any grand proportions, but i still feel my brain and my heart (but not my lungs, the air is ugh) expanding and it makes me very happy.
i'm reading the constitution and understand it fairly easily.
lluvia lluvia, vete y
regresate otro día
this is interesting to me, every morning when i wake up my mom asks me "¿como amaneciste?" which i had never heard before instead of what i guess is its equivalent, "¿como dormiste?"
a handful of people are turning 21 while in ecuador, which has absolutely no special meaning in this country.
my here mom used to be a radio dj person with her own show.
whenever a popular song comes on the radio the whole family starts singing it aloud and fearlessly even if they don't have the most complimentary voice. this makes me smile.
this weekend there is an even called quitofest going on in a park. free live music is this weekends occasion!
i have 4 more weeks of classes before i go on 3 weeks of adventures and then another 4 weeks of my DISP project.
it started raining as soon as i got home today and it hasn't stopped.
today we learned a new song in my quichua class but i don't like it as much as the old one.
it seems to me that i'm going to wake up one morning soon and this love affair with quito will be ending. i absolutely love this city. i haven't had any spiritual or cultural or personal revelations of any grand proportions, but i still feel my brain and my heart (but not my lungs, the air is ugh) expanding and it makes me very happy.
i'm reading the constitution and understand it fairly easily.
lluvia lluvia, vete y
regresate otro día
this is interesting to me, every morning when i wake up my mom asks me "¿como amaneciste?" which i had never heard before instead of what i guess is its equivalent, "¿como dormiste?"
a handful of people are turning 21 while in ecuador, which has absolutely no special meaning in this country.
my here mom used to be a radio dj person with her own show.
whenever a popular song comes on the radio the whole family starts singing it aloud and fearlessly even if they don't have the most complimentary voice. this makes me smile.
this weekend there is an even called quitofest going on in a park. free live music is this weekends occasion!
martes, 16 de septiembre de 2008
some pictures (that belong to other people) and not necessarily described in the right order, (i cant tell where they will go!): josh, me and jed after winning a game against ecuadorians. me at the cascada de peguche. my mom, me, ellie and her mom (who is my mom's aunt). me eating PIE for the first time, with a brand new ($2) scarf and lovely camille (and her new panama hat).
pollo campero: kfc's competition here in ecuador (yes, kfc has made its way here). so you order some popcorn chicken and fries to go, awesome and delicious, right? right but when you open up the little baggy with condiments and you find ketchup, mayonnaise (just as popular as ketchup with the same things you use ketchup for), a napkin and cheap plastic gloves for your convenience.
the buses really fascinate me. if you ride one for at least 20 minutes someone is bound to hop on and makes a speech about cds, dvds, or vitamins they want you to buy off them. once a musician jumped on and played a couple songs on guitar and then went around with his hands out looking for some appreciation in the form of money. he's the only person i've given money to. these vendors or many assortments don't have to pay to get on the bus, either.
young boys will follow you down a block trying to convince you to get your shoes shined by them, even if you are wearing sneakers, saying how dirty they are and how they need to be cleaned. young girls sit on corners with their moms selling lollipops to cigarettes to phone cards. they all have dirty faces.
everyday i notice more and more political graffitti, some as simple as SI or NO. and even if itn't directly about the constitution, it still seems to have a position on the matter, now that i understand the underlying politics to a certain extent.
it rains almost everyday but it never pours.
bad ceviche can make you hallucinate.
basketball is a no contact sport in ecuador.
today the doctor gave a shot in a female patient's rear. he explained to me how to find the right spot to do that in (thumb at the hip bone, spread fingers diagonally inward and that's about right).
lots of women lack iron (hierro).
domingo, 14 de septiembre de 2008
comi un hot dog para almuerzo.
i had a hot dog for breakfast.
ayer, jugue basketbol con tres amigos y ganemos en un partido contra ecuatorianos.
yesterday, i played basketball with three friends and we won in a game against some ecuatorians.
aunque nuestras pulmones se dolieron, vamos a jugar otra vez hoy. que chevere!
even though our lungs hurt, we are going to play again today. sweet.
por nuestra proyecto final (DISP), necesitamos hacer una investigacion y escribir 25 paginas con nuestras conclusiones.
for our final project (DISP), we need to make a research project and write a 25 page paper with our conclusions.
no quiero hacer una investigacion tipica, ahora estoy pensando escribir una cuenta, similar de on the road de jack kerouac usando mis experiencias con las personas y el pais como my investigacion.
i dont want to do a normal research project, now im thinking of writing a story, like on the road by jack kerouac using my experiences with the people and the country as my research.
i had a hot dog for breakfast.
ayer, jugue basketbol con tres amigos y ganemos en un partido contra ecuatorianos.
yesterday, i played basketball with three friends and we won in a game against some ecuatorians.
aunque nuestras pulmones se dolieron, vamos a jugar otra vez hoy. que chevere!
even though our lungs hurt, we are going to play again today. sweet.
por nuestra proyecto final (DISP), necesitamos hacer una investigacion y escribir 25 paginas con nuestras conclusiones.
for our final project (DISP), we need to make a research project and write a 25 page paper with our conclusions.
no quiero hacer una investigacion tipica, ahora estoy pensando escribir una cuenta, similar de on the road de jack kerouac usando mis experiencias con las personas y el pais como my investigacion.
i dont want to do a normal research project, now im thinking of writing a story, like on the road by jack kerouac using my experiences with the people and the country as my research.
viernes, 12 de septiembre de 2008
la canción más bonita
this song is the most beautiful in quichua, with a traditional guitar, and loses is perfectness the more it is translated (you should learn quichua!)
ñuka shunkuku
maypitak kanki
ña mana ushamichu
maypitak kanki
rik chari, urpiku
rik chari ñuka shunku
ña mana ushamichu
maypitak kanki
mi corazonsito
¿donde estas?
ya no puedo más
¿donde estas?
despiertate, tortolita
despiertate mi corazon
ya no puedo más
¿donde estas?
my little heart
where are you?
i can't do this anymore
where are you?
wake up, little turtle dove
wake up, my heart
i can't do this anymore
where are you?
ñuka shunkuku
maypitak kanki
ña mana ushamichu
maypitak kanki
rik chari, urpiku
rik chari ñuka shunku
ña mana ushamichu
maypitak kanki
mi corazonsito
¿donde estas?
ya no puedo más
¿donde estas?
despiertate, tortolita
despiertate mi corazon
ya no puedo más
¿donde estas?
my little heart
where are you?
i can't do this anymore
where are you?
wake up, little turtle dove
wake up, my heart
i can't do this anymore
where are you?
jueves, 11 de septiembre de 2008
the doctor directs a woman, 53, to lie down so that he can examine her painful abdomen. she does so and rolls her shirt up to above her navel so that her belly becomes a hill above her jeans and shirt.
'what a stomach!' says the doctor to the woman, he looks at me and says, 'isn't that a big stomach?'
'no yes i mean yes sure yes doctor, sir.' i say, not knowing how much i have to kiss up to the doctor that has taken me under his wing like a frightened first year resident in any of those american medical shows on television.
he quickly moves on by prodding her stomach in several places and explaining the six different sections of the belly, 'hiper-gastronimo, meta-gastronimo, hipo-gastronimo...' the patient looks awkward and he finds exactly the points to push to make her squirm in pain. he pushes them while explaining to me what happens to a post-menopausal woman.
he walks back to the desk without a word and the patient assumes she can cover herself up again and takes a seat in front of his desk. he diagnoses her, gives her a prescription for calcium-something-or-other and every other sentence says, very sternly like a principal, 'understand?'
my third co-patient leaves.
as i watch my mom cook and eat the food, it kind of, almost, makes me want to learn how to cook and eat delicious food all the time. meals at home are one of the things i look forward to everyday, where i wonder what will be served and how much of it i can eat.
good times.
'what a stomach!' says the doctor to the woman, he looks at me and says, 'isn't that a big stomach?'
'no yes i mean yes sure yes doctor, sir.' i say, not knowing how much i have to kiss up to the doctor that has taken me under his wing like a frightened first year resident in any of those american medical shows on television.
he quickly moves on by prodding her stomach in several places and explaining the six different sections of the belly, 'hiper-gastronimo, meta-gastronimo, hipo-gastronimo...' the patient looks awkward and he finds exactly the points to push to make her squirm in pain. he pushes them while explaining to me what happens to a post-menopausal woman.
he walks back to the desk without a word and the patient assumes she can cover herself up again and takes a seat in front of his desk. he diagnoses her, gives her a prescription for calcium-something-or-other and every other sentence says, very sternly like a principal, 'understand?'
my third co-patient leaves.
as i watch my mom cook and eat the food, it kind of, almost, makes me want to learn how to cook and eat delicious food all the time. meals at home are one of the things i look forward to everyday, where i wonder what will be served and how much of it i can eat.
good times.
miércoles, 10 de septiembre de 2008
todo es mas intenso
something i've been meaning to comment on. peugeot is a kind of car here and there is a dealership on the main street closest to me. on the window is a big image of 2 ladybugs, one on top of the other one, which is belly up, and above it says, 'todo es mas intenso', everything is more intense. this makes as little sense to me today as it did when i first saw it.
i really try not to focus on the negatives but, seriously, mexican food is bad in ecuador. i think many people in the united states, you and me included, take mexican food for granted as a dependable source for a delicious meal, cheap and everywhere.
in otavalo i ate a chicken quesadilla which very much so tasted like tortilla sandwich of chicken in alfredo sauce, it was dripping and everything. negative one point.
i just got back from 'the coyote', a mexican restaurant that really looked like it took traditional decorations from texas, horse shoes and stuff like that. it looked like a western bar. also, i didn't even recognize what most of the food was, so i went with a chicken burrito. it came open-ended on both sides and had lots of lettuce instead of rice. i don't know how to describe it, it was just unlike any burrito i had ever eaten.
while we were driving there, my ecuadad was thinking aloud of what his son would eat there before we had picked him up. he didn't know the word burrito! he said burro, and i had to ask if he meant a burrito. which he did but he had forgotten exactly what it was called.
i have become a homebody, and several nights in a row i have opted for staying in my little room over seeing my friends. i think i see a family trend of antisocialness emerging in me.
abrazos
i really try not to focus on the negatives but, seriously, mexican food is bad in ecuador. i think many people in the united states, you and me included, take mexican food for granted as a dependable source for a delicious meal, cheap and everywhere.
in otavalo i ate a chicken quesadilla which very much so tasted like tortilla sandwich of chicken in alfredo sauce, it was dripping and everything. negative one point.
i just got back from 'the coyote', a mexican restaurant that really looked like it took traditional decorations from texas, horse shoes and stuff like that. it looked like a western bar. also, i didn't even recognize what most of the food was, so i went with a chicken burrito. it came open-ended on both sides and had lots of lettuce instead of rice. i don't know how to describe it, it was just unlike any burrito i had ever eaten.
while we were driving there, my ecuadad was thinking aloud of what his son would eat there before we had picked him up. he didn't know the word burrito! he said burro, and i had to ask if he meant a burrito. which he did but he had forgotten exactly what it was called.
i have become a homebody, and several nights in a row i have opted for staying in my little room over seeing my friends. i think i see a family trend of antisocialness emerging in me.
abrazos
lunes, 8 de septiembre de 2008
this is one of those time that there is so much to write about you have no idea what to do with yourself.
ok so i did this waterfall thing in a place called peguche and the waterfall was cool and everything but what really was wonderful was when me and a few friends climbed above to a magical fairy land that belonged a couple hundred years in the past. lots of uncut grass, a family lying on some of it, picnic style, and cobble stone floors, also some pretty exquisite and long views of this middle earth. apparently if we had kept walking we would have hit the san pablo river, a place we will have to return too. on this trek above the touristy waterfall we crossed paths with a campesino who spoke quichua. so we all talked to him in the language and the whole thing couldn't have felt more surreal/unreal.
enter stage right, maya and lianna, into a normally empty field, a couple acres by another couple wide. the smell of dirt roads and animals makes them realize this is actually happening. maya gets bumped in the leg and looks around to see a wiley pig disobeying its owner by trying not to follow him. alright. to her right, a barb wired fence about 4 feet high is the only thing between her and an interesting sale taking place. she notices that an ecuadorian, smile in tow, is haggling a vendor for a duck. they decide on a price, he pays her, and like all normal salespeople, she picks up the baby duckling from the couple dozen in the pen and stuffs it into a paper back.
-paper or plastic for your live duck, sir? she imagines.
after another minute of walking further, they see to the right that a pickup truck has it's back open. inside the small space are a cow and pig, ready to go. the truck owner and 2 others help him push and carry the second cow into the trunk. they succeed, close the back and the driver gets in his seat, to take his fresh pickings home.
$1.50 for a ham, salami and cheese sandwich as big as your face.
$2.00 for a bus ride from quito to otavalo
$9.00 a night for a shared room with a friend.
on the bus ride to otavalo i thought about what i would write about in my blog when i got back, and also that i didn't tell anyone i would be gone for a weekend. well at one point of the bus ride i thought i would write about how this breakup i did a couple weeks ago is still affecting me and how i need to just deal with it but i now realize that that would have been doing completely the opposite of what that post would have been saying i should be doing, which is living in this very moment at this very moment but still i figured i would find a way to get that in there even now, 3 days later.
i also thought i would write about how beautiful this otavalo is, how special and different it is compared to quito, but i think you people can understand the differences between a major metropolitan city and a small town which has a market overtake most of the historical downtown every saturday. instead i'm writing about what i thought i would write about just not in much detail and sharing a couple of cool stories. and being self-reflexive, which i do too often.
sushi in quito is more expensive than sushi in los angeles.
katun ñukaka kushilla mi kani. ñukaka ishkay llamatami kani.
otavalo is colorful. my family is colorful and wonderful and i really felt like i was coming home after my weekend away for the first time.
i've only been in ecuador for 2 weeks and a little more.
maow magadow is the noise of a cat meowing, apparently.
the sprite i'm drinking was made in ecuador.
OJO: after this week, polls aren't allowed to measure how the upcoming election of the constitution is going. the last poll said that the 55% of the population believed in SI.
chao.
ok so i did this waterfall thing in a place called peguche and the waterfall was cool and everything but what really was wonderful was when me and a few friends climbed above to a magical fairy land that belonged a couple hundred years in the past. lots of uncut grass, a family lying on some of it, picnic style, and cobble stone floors, also some pretty exquisite and long views of this middle earth. apparently if we had kept walking we would have hit the san pablo river, a place we will have to return too. on this trek above the touristy waterfall we crossed paths with a campesino who spoke quichua. so we all talked to him in the language and the whole thing couldn't have felt more surreal/unreal.
enter stage right, maya and lianna, into a normally empty field, a couple acres by another couple wide. the smell of dirt roads and animals makes them realize this is actually happening. maya gets bumped in the leg and looks around to see a wiley pig disobeying its owner by trying not to follow him. alright. to her right, a barb wired fence about 4 feet high is the only thing between her and an interesting sale taking place. she notices that an ecuadorian, smile in tow, is haggling a vendor for a duck. they decide on a price, he pays her, and like all normal salespeople, she picks up the baby duckling from the couple dozen in the pen and stuffs it into a paper back.
-paper or plastic for your live duck, sir? she imagines.
after another minute of walking further, they see to the right that a pickup truck has it's back open. inside the small space are a cow and pig, ready to go. the truck owner and 2 others help him push and carry the second cow into the trunk. they succeed, close the back and the driver gets in his seat, to take his fresh pickings home.
$1.50 for a ham, salami and cheese sandwich as big as your face.
$2.00 for a bus ride from quito to otavalo
$9.00 a night for a shared room with a friend.
on the bus ride to otavalo i thought about what i would write about in my blog when i got back, and also that i didn't tell anyone i would be gone for a weekend. well at one point of the bus ride i thought i would write about how this breakup i did a couple weeks ago is still affecting me and how i need to just deal with it but i now realize that that would have been doing completely the opposite of what that post would have been saying i should be doing, which is living in this very moment at this very moment but still i figured i would find a way to get that in there even now, 3 days later.
i also thought i would write about how beautiful this otavalo is, how special and different it is compared to quito, but i think you people can understand the differences between a major metropolitan city and a small town which has a market overtake most of the historical downtown every saturday. instead i'm writing about what i thought i would write about just not in much detail and sharing a couple of cool stories. and being self-reflexive, which i do too often.
sushi in quito is more expensive than sushi in los angeles.
katun ñukaka kushilla mi kani. ñukaka ishkay llamatami kani.
otavalo is colorful. my family is colorful and wonderful and i really felt like i was coming home after my weekend away for the first time.
i've only been in ecuador for 2 weeks and a little more.
maow magadow is the noise of a cat meowing, apparently.
the sprite i'm drinking was made in ecuador.
OJO: after this week, polls aren't allowed to measure how the upcoming election of the constitution is going. the last poll said that the 55% of the population believed in SI.
chao.
jueves, 4 de septiembre de 2008
que dios le paga
fundacion jonathan. it's a clinic for young people and 'ancianos' sin mucho dinero. it costs $2 to see a doctor of any kind (i think the different types of doctors come on specific times and days and people come depending on which doctor is there) and while you wait they feed you ham sandwiches with a soda. some people come to just the comedor with their fundacion jonathan identification and a large plastic bag which is filled with large amounts of donated and sliced bread, more other kinds of bread, uncooked sausages and some cornmeal.
que dios le paga.
i'd never heard that before until i was giving people food today. so thei version of thanks was 'may god pay you'. does this imply that they prioritized for me that i be paid back for my service by god than i be blessed by god? so it's probably just custom but i don't like it. i suppose the 2 options could be the same thing but i'd rather be generally blessed by god than repaid in whatever manner for my helping them out.
quote unquote pickup lines/words/noises in ecuador:
hola
hola princesa/preciosa
*hola mujer
(the noise you make when trying to sound like a mouse or rat)
i walk by a car dealership to get to the bus and one specific guard, dressed in guardsman getup, gun and hat sometimes picks flowers and holds them out for me or says one of the above lines and i laugh and he does too and that's our relationship, it happens every time i walk by him.
white printer paper is called papel bond. keep that in mind.
a bunch of different kinds of paper are hanging out at a bar when toilet paper and photo paper get into an argument. someone, and i won't say who, threw a punch and from there cardboard paper joined as well as colored paper and construction paper until another paper came and all by himself, broke up the fight. toilet paper asked him after it was all over, 'so who are you?' and the paper responded 'bond, papel bond'.
jajajajajjaajjaja.
que dios le paga.
i'd never heard that before until i was giving people food today. so thei version of thanks was 'may god pay you'. does this imply that they prioritized for me that i be paid back for my service by god than i be blessed by god? so it's probably just custom but i don't like it. i suppose the 2 options could be the same thing but i'd rather be generally blessed by god than repaid in whatever manner for my helping them out.
quote unquote pickup lines/words/noises in ecuador:
hola
hola princesa/preciosa
*hola mujer
(the noise you make when trying to sound like a mouse or rat)
i walk by a car dealership to get to the bus and one specific guard, dressed in guardsman getup, gun and hat sometimes picks flowers and holds them out for me or says one of the above lines and i laugh and he does too and that's our relationship, it happens every time i walk by him.
white printer paper is called papel bond. keep that in mind.
a bunch of different kinds of paper are hanging out at a bar when toilet paper and photo paper get into an argument. someone, and i won't say who, threw a punch and from there cardboard paper joined as well as colored paper and construction paper until another paper came and all by himself, broke up the fight. toilet paper asked him after it was all over, 'so who are you?' and the paper responded 'bond, papel bond'.
jajajajajjaajjaja.
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