i find it funny that the word problema (problem) is masculine even though it ends with -a but that razón (reason) is feminine even though it has an ambiguous ending.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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).

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

dale la patria

imagine voting on a constitution, a brand new, 170-something page constitution that affects nearly every political aspect of the country. would you read the whole thing? see which politicians back it? and if it were mandatory to vote, knowing that you and your entire country are changing its course more than any one specific presidential election ever could. if you agreed with certain aspects, morally but other parts could hurt you economically or otherwise, yes or no to the constitution? or how about if you agreed but thought the system was too corrupt, would it be worth it to see how it turns out?

-si o no?

in ecuador this question divides the nation. si o no isn't si o no to any question, it's huge banners with NO written across in red on the street corner. or SI bumper stickers on the back of a car. it's SI i support the president or NO i think he's an extremist, communist copy of hugo chavez.

as of yesterday, 56% of the country believes in SI. to implement the constitution SI needs to be voted for by over 50% of the ballots, meaning more votes than NO, blank ballots and faulty ballots combined.

as of a week ago, my public health government director dad said SI but i asked again at dinner and he didn't know what he wanted. he strongly agrees with the public health amendments the constitution would implement but thinks that the extra money going into it would really only pay lazy corrupt government workers. my mom has begun to disagreee with president correa's actions recently and so is leaning towards no.

this is the month of SI o NO. it's kind of a big deal here. i really hope that the results from later this month are covered internationally because it's pretty fascinating stuff to be in the middle of.

and you know those stencils or images of obama with HOPE under it that are artsy and all over the place? there are neon green and blue banners, government funded, with a stencil-like image of the president that basically says vote SI for the constitution and for the country. good old fashioned propaganda (like what i consider those hope obama things, but those are at least not paid for by taxes and whatnot).


french manicure-$4.00
delicious nutella crepe-$2.30

an absurdity: minimum wage is $200.00 per month (that's how they do things here) yet they've calculated that a family of 4 needs $506 a month to not be in poverty (education, health costs, food, etc). let's say mom and pop make minimum wage, $106 is a real chunk missing for this nice family when you're talking about poverty as allowed by the government.

i dreamt a dream in spanish and english anoche!!!

sanduches, piña y mcdonalds

i had mcdonalds for dinner last night.

it takes an hour by bus to get to the middle of the world. once there, the big tourist attraction is this disneyland-like place that costs $2 to get in and on sundays there is live music and dancers folkloricos.

the main buses in quito are blue and all look the same. then there are banners on the top front and back with which kind of bus it is (ej. Guadalajara, Mitad del Mundo). mine is the CA-TAR for going to school and most places in the city.

so while a bus is approaching, once you notice what the banner says, you have to look at the lower right hand corner of the bus, where it says, in random order, the different places it goes. My bus needs to say Eloy Alfaro somewhere in the block of street names and places.

once you get on it, there are 2 people running this bus. one is the driver, the other does everything else. this man or woman either asks for the 25 cents (and gives you change) or tells you to go to the back of the bus and you pay later. so then either he or she walks through the bus asking everyone for the money, or hunts you down as soon as you try to get off the bus.

if you want to get off the bus and you're near the back, you press a button (if there is one) and hope that the bus will slow down enough AND open the back door for you to get out. the extra person working the bus will get off the bus if you get off the back and ask for your money while the bus begins its exhaust-filled journey into motion. then this second person runs and jumps on the bus just as it starts to really move fast.

this person also tells the driver when he can start driving once anyone who wants to gets on or off the bus. i've seen a couple people get enraged when this second person asks them to pay because, so they say, they already have. this encounter with the second person is one of the most terrifying possibilites that really frightens me. if it does, hopefully i have enough extra change to give to the person and get it over with.

i just wrote a lot about buses, i can feel myself boring you, beloved reader.


this sarah palin would be a really cool lady if she wasn't such a (fill in the blank) with her political positions.