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.