Hostal Macondo!!!!!!

I borrowed a friend's camara to take these minus the family photo, taken by a guy at the hostel.

I'm going to miss the Hostal Macondo soooo much! It is the most amazing hostel ever, I feel like I have been living in luxury and only $12 a night. So worth it to not go to the $4 places for writing ISP and going crazy. 

I'm almost done and just need to watch the documentary another dozen times watching for transitions and bad sound timing - the music keeps moving around and starting in the middle of interview and sometimes the voices go all Kung-fu movie, out of sync with mouths. I really think it was tons harder to do the documentary than writing the paper. I had to write a paper, too, and I thought it would be tough since my Spanish still isn't perfect, of course, but it wasn't bad at all and my advisor really liked it. (She kept punching the air and say "si! si!")

This is my first paragraph:

En este época de crisis económica cuando parece que el mundo capitalita esta en proceso de cambio y la gente le echa la culpa a los bancos, todavía hay unas comunidades trabajando para tener un sistema bancaria local y justo. Hoy el sistema de micro-finanzas es conocido en todo el mundo, especialmente como un sistema designado para comunidades de países en desarrollo. En el Ecuador este modelo se está haciendo más popular recién en las comunidades rurales de la sierra. Julián Hautier, quien trabajaba con una organización de micro-finanzas en Loja, Ecuador, escribió, “El tema de micro-finanzas (o finanzas populares) es relativamente nuevo en el Ecuador, uno de los países de América Latina más atrasado en disponibilidad de servicios financieros orientados a personas de bajos recursos económicos.”[1] Con la adición de unos artículos pertinentes en la nueva constitución, la situación y capacidad de organización está creciendo.[2] Parece que el sistema de micro-finanzas tendrá más y más influencia e importancia en los años que vienen.

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[1] Julien Hautier. Finanzas Locales y Desarrollo Rural: Experiencias del GSFEPP en la Region Sur del Ecuador (Loja: Cooperante CID – GSFEPP, 2005): 14.

[2] La Constitucion.

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AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Cuenca, ISP Madness

We've all been just staying in the hostel all the day, only leaving for five minute snack runs and lunch break, frantically writing ISPs. Mine's going pretty slow but okay, I think. I have to have a written component and then I'm doing the documentary, so it's hard to balance the two, but I'm glad I'm doing it. I just would REALLY like to hang out in Cuenca since I love it and its amazing. I need to get some pictures soon. The picture above is where I am right now and where I've been for the past 50+ hours more or less.

Only 8 days before I go home! That's so crazy, I can't believe it! 

Principal on YouTube!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OcFFpxF0Mk

Watch this!!!! Someone made a couple years ago this in the village I was in!!! I met a few of these women, too. 

Cool picture of Cuenca

I think you have to click on it to see the whole thing, it's a panorama I found on a website.

Back in Cuenca

I am back in Cuenca now where there is internet and cell phone service! I feel like I was in the village for ages but it was only 11 days, which is nothing. I could have spent a lot more time there since I was feeling so much more comfortable towards the end and people were getting really friendly. Some people told me towards the end that they had thought I was replacing the Peace Corps volunteer there and they were sad I wasn't staying to help. They kept asking when I would come back. The last couple days Jessie and I made lunch with two different ladies, and the second one especially was really cool. They made an effort to show us typical food. In my last half hour I stopped by the ladies roasting cuy (guinea pig) over a fire for the fiesta later on that night

, and they asked me if I'd tried it yet and gave me a big plate with some when I told them I hadn't, even though I had just eaten a huge lunch. It wasn't incredibly tasty, but it was cool to eat it right next to the ladies making it. It was sad to say goodbye to my favorite old lady, Justina. 

Jessie (she visited Friday and we left Saturday) and I got back to Cuenca around 6:00 and there were lots of SIT kids at the hostel since its ISP writing week and a few people came to join us at the awesome hostel. So yesterday night we 

all went out to dinner at a really good Mexican restaurant and then went out for a little. Today I got up at 7:30 and got ready and went out to go get a newspaper and read in the main square for a couple hours. It's beautiful, right in front of the New Cathedral, which is soooo amazing. Jessie and I went to go buy some flowers, and I got three huge sunflowers for a dollar fifty to put in my room. My room is really cute and cozy since it's the smallest in the hostel. We went market shopping for lunch and I made Amanda and I really good quesadillas. Later we went to the huge city market with everything under the sun and bought more fresh food to cook over the next couple days. I bought a lot of bowtie pasta since its so cheap, plantains, broccoli, green beans, garlic and honey. There's another market close so I'll probably be doin

g most of my shopping there. It's great to be able to cook here and share the food. Tonight I'm going to go with Jessie to the home for abandoned youth to cook pizza for them for dinner.

Here's a link to a site with our hostel. I don't think it has its own page. http://www.hostels.com/hostels/cuenca/hostal-macondo/4620

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g294309-d315501-Reviews-Hostal_Macondo-Cuenca.html

Oh also, the pictures on this one are just random from the internet since I still can't use my digital camera. 

Friday, May 1, 2009

Today was my last full day here, which is pretty sad since I’ve really gotten attached to the town. I’ve only had a week and a half here, I’d have liked to have had more time. It’s a really interesting place in lots of way. They have more community organizations than most anywhere – they have a women’s cooperative with a garden and a communal bank, there’s an artesian group that sells the paja toquilla work at markets, the cooperative that I worked with that’s kind of a local banking system that specializes in small-scale loans, and there’s the local government, and I never found out much about them but there are church things and a potable water committee. Migration is a really big deal here and the town is mostly women by a lot since so many of the men have left – actually most of them went to Danbury, Connecticut, and nobody’s sure exactly why except that’s where other people from Principal went first. The Peace Corps has been here for eight years, so that’s an interesting example of how the Peace Corps works in a place like this – a good example I heard was one of the first volunteers taught them how to make apple pie since this is such a great apple growing place. They’ve been trying to promote themselves as a tourist destination, without much success so far, but they’ve been working on defining trails and adding signage and promotion with tours. A mining company has been wanting to mine here and the community’s been resisting it since a mining company has been working at a nearby town and has ruined their river, their water supply. They are very into natural farming, but it’s more because they don’t have much use for pesticides than any yuppie organic thing.

Jessie came to visit today and we went to cook lunch with a family. We were there for about four hours. The actual lunch was just potatoes and rice and lettuce with a good dessert of apples cored and filled with suger and butter and roasted, but then later I came other for dinner and the soup was ready. That was with mote, beans, and a peanut broth. The mother had just came back from the Oriente, where the jungle is, and brought back a lot of fruit, so they gave me some really good oranges. 

Thursday, April 30, 2009

I’m getting down to my last days, and Jessie (from the SIT group) is coming to visit tomorrow so today was my last day solita in Principal. I still have a lot to do tomorrow and I set up two cooking things for Jessie since she’s making a cookbook so we’re going to make lunch with two ladies Friday and Saturday and hopefully they’ll make traditional things. The lady on Saturday, Señora Cecilia, is supposed to be the best cook in town. Jessie’s making a cookbook of Ecuadorian recipes from Ecuadorian women and including their personal histories for her independent study project. I’ll finally get some real meals, which will be really nice since I’m starting to get my appetite back. I probably still have a parasite, but its not bothering me so much anymore. I just want to eat a lot of chocolate and potato chips.

I’ve been having really good days, especially since I finally met the Peace Corps volunteer here, Anna. With her I’ve been able to see a lot more since they see me as her friend rather than a random American girl with a camcorder. Today the ladies were making chicha (a traditional corn-based alcoholic drink with apples) in huge witch cauldrons since there’s a fiesta this Saturday night, after I leave. It was really cool to see – they just have the cauldrons over an open fire and throw in all these apples and corn stuff and cane sugar and whole plants for seasoning. They stand around it, stirring with big beams, and the smoke goes everywhere. They gave me some to try when it was ready, and it was pretty good, really chunky since they hadn’t strained it yet. It has to stand around for a few days to ferment before it becomes alcoholic.

Today a few people have asked me about the swine flu, and I hardly know anything about it yet. I understand it’s a big deal, but I’ve been here in Principal without television, internet or newspapers, so I’m in the dark. I played with these two girls I met on the street for about two hours tonight, and they were nine and eight and had already heard about the flu, but all they really knew was that it scared them. Evidently sometime yesterday they reported a suspected case in Guayaquil, the biggest city, and that’s only about four hours away from here. I don’t think I’m much more likely to get it here than in the States though so it’s not something I think I should worry about.

I’ve been hanging out on this old lady’s porch a lot. Her name’s Justina and she’s “more than eighty” and she’s lived here all her life and almost never leaves. She’s always on her porch weaving a hat or getting the pajas (the straw things) ready, so I can usually count on her being there if I don’t have anything else to do. She says everything with the diminutive, it’s really cute (like manzana – apple – would be manzanita, casa – casita, pequeña – pequeñito, etc.). It’s actually apple season here and Principal is a big apple producer, and I’ve been given so many apples by random people, it’s amazing. Usually it’s just one or two but I’ve also got to pick some and bring back a bag. They are all natural – they never use pesticides or anything here. The farming here is really interesting. Most people live in “town” and walk out to their farms everyday and some of them are pretty far away, way down the valley. Most people have cows. I’ve been walking a lot on their paths (they mostly just use footpaths since they walk everywhere, but there are gravel/dirt roads in town for cars), and they are always amusing that I’m just walking. They always ask where I’m going.

Tomorrow I have to do everything I haven’t gotten around to yet, like filming a tour of the town and making sure I have clips of people saying the basic facts about the cooperativa since I obviously learned most things just talking to them without the camcorder. I also have one of the lunches set up for tomorrow, and Jessie should be coming around 10:30. She’ll stay in the hostel with me.

By the way, Mommy and Daddy, I saw a map today that had Principal on it, so you might be able to find it on a map if it’s a detailed on of Ecuador or of just this country, Azuay. It’s a little southeast of Cuenca. Find Cuenca and then Chordaleg and follow that road a little further. 

From Principal: Saturday, April 25, 2009

Today was my fourth full day in my village, and I left for the first time for a couple hours. I visited Chordaleg, where they make silver and gold jewelry. This morning I went to a cooperativa meeting about how to govern a cooperative and legal things they have to know. They prepared lunch for everyone, so that was the first real meal in four days, which was nice. I’ve been eating stuff from the little shops like bread and potato chips. A couple days ago I made marmalade with the cooperativa and got to bring some home, so I’ve been having a lot of bread and jam. It’s blackberry-apple and they had to make it really sweet to satisfy the sanitary certification people for a reason nobody understands. It’s very very pretty here even if I’ve been kind of moody and really exhausted. Yesterday after lunch (bread and jam) I walked down to the river and got out on a rock and read for a while. 

From Principal: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I’m going back to writing entries on my computer, putting them on my jumpdrive, and posting them when I can get to internet.

I decided to spend the next week and a half in a little town to make a documentary on their micro-credit organization (cooperativa), so I’m staying here in Principal, close to Sigsig and about an hour and a half from Cuenca. It’s really small and gorgeous, right under an inactive volcano called Fasayñan. It actually has a hostel since there are some awesome hiking trails around, so I’m staying in the hostel – it’s called Hostal Anabel. I was looking at some hiking info and they look amazing, some are to mountain lakes and to the top of the volcano, I’m definitely going to try and do as many as I can. Some are overnight hikes, so I can only do those if I can borrow a tent and sleeping bag, and I have to hire a guide or it’s not allowed. The hostel is empty besides me, which is perfect for me for now, and it will be fun if some other guests come. Evidently there’s been an American Peace Corps volunteer living here for the past two years, so I’m going to try to find her soon.

When I first decided to move from Cuenca I was really excited since it seemed like such a good idea for my project and the place is incredibly beautiful but then yesterday I was kind of depressed about it. Cuenca is amazing and it’s a lot of fun to be with the other students from my group working there. There are five of us in Cuenca, so we met up almost every day. Three of them are living in an amazing colonial mansion hostel for $10 a night, with indoor and outdoor courtyards and wireless and a kitchen, right in the colonial center, called Hostal Macondo. I’m going to live there with them for the last week while I’m editing the documentary and writing, which I’m very very excited about.

Anyway, once I got here last night I got pretty excited again, but it’s still kind of hard to imagine how this will work. I went to the cooperative this morning at 8:00, like I thought I was supposed to, but they told me this woman I’m meant to talk to wasn’t there yet so I should come back at 11:00. I’m still a little confused whether they’ve ever had a foreigner working with them before - I’ve heard they have a while ago, a European student collecting information for a thesis. And I’m worried about becoming a nuisance rather than any help, so I’m going to be very careful about that. I hope I can start filming soon, but I want to make sure everybody’s cool with it first.

By the way, I can’t find my camera battery charger so no pictures for a while. I’m pretty sure I just left it in my Quito room somehow, but that was pretty stupid. So I bought a $22 Kodak automatic camera with film!!!!! I was going to just get a few disposables but this will be cheaper overall and I’ve always liked film more, even though I know digital makes a lot more sense. I hope it works all right, we’ll see. I can develop them in Cuenca and scan them when I get home.

Also, I don’t get cell-phone reception here, which tells you how remote this is since everywhere in Ecuador has cell-phone reception since everyone has cell-phones. I think there is a phone booth place that I can call from. I’m pretty sure there are no internet cafes here, but I can take a bus to the nearest town (about 45 minutes) every once in a while. The church here has a loudspeaker on it, and it seems like they communicate with the town with it, so who needs cell-phones or internet?

In a village

Hello, i had this whole blog entry written and on my jumpdrive and it came up all boxes. I´m in a village without any cell phone service much less internet for another week, so I came to the closest biggish town to call my parents and they didn´t pick up the phone so I will probably never talk to them again. Oh well.

Catching up a little

Cotopaxi, taken from the bus window coming back from Baños

My amazing Quito host family, Pepe, Ligia and Doris

I´m in Cuenca now and its amazing, I love it. It´s an awesome colonial city and the countryside around is it is sooooo beautiful. I´ve been visiting different villages for the past three days with a couple guys from an organization that coordinates a network of the region´s micro-credit institutions.

Tuesday was my favorite - we went to a tiny village called Guel and the actual cooperativa was not that wonderful since the woman wasn´t that cooperative, but in the afternoon I went on a walk by myself while they worked, and it was one of my favorite times in Ecuador. I started walking down the dirt road and fell in step with these two indigenous women weaving Panama hats (they are actually Ecuador hats, Panama was just a distribution center) and a little boy with a few sheep, so I walked with them for an half hour. They were so nice and cute. The older lady asked if I would take her to the US so I told her I would take her in my purse, so in case you´re wondering when I get home who that elderly indigenous lady in my bag is, remember this. And it was just perfect weather, perfect light, and the road goes along about halfway up a big hill and then there´s a valley and a mountain on the other side. There are tons of little farm plots right up the mountains at crazy angles. Later I met another lady making a hat and a woman herding some cows thought I was scared of them (they had horns so I was a little) told me they wouldn´t hurt me and laughed at me. The soil there was red, like Prince Edward Island.

Yesterday I went to a tiny town called Jadan and did pretty much the same thing. I interview the director in the morning and walk around in the afternoon while the guys I´m with finish working. Jadan was really cool. A lot of the houses are still made of adobe dirt blocks and there were tons of animals tied up everywhere. I walked some of the not-road paths that they use to walk between each others farms and got very muddy. They were renovating their church.

Today I went to an indigenous village in Cañar and they have a really cool cooperativa so I might go live there next week if I can. They were white hats with puff balls on them and the women wear the skirts. It´s a higher altitude than the other places and has lots of fields and pastures.

One of the ladies I met in Guel, about to weave a hat

Good Friday Procession

Some random pictures since i can´t see them before they go on!!!!!!!!

My host sister in Los Chillos

Stairs I climbed up to get to the top of the Basilica

Cafe on the plaza I ate at, Shrimp, yum.

Another door for Daddy

Plaza of San Francisco

Viernes Santa

Today I went to the Good Friday procession with lots of people that look like purple Ku Klux Klan members in the historic center in Quito.

Favorite picture from the costa

This is a picture I took on a fishing boat visiting an island on the coast during my village stay!

Sorry I haven´t written anything in a long time. 1.) my jumpdrive broke so i couldn´t write at home and post it later and 2.) there is too much to do in Quito to spend much time in an internet cafe, even though there are tons. I just bought a new jumpdrive so i´ll try and write more now. I´m leaving for Cuenca to do my final project this Saturday!!!!!!!! I will be filming a documentary on an awesome little microcredit organization outside of Cuenca, which is supposed to be an amazingly beautiful colonial city, so I´m pretty excited.

This one is my other favorite from the coast.

Church Door in Old Quito

Door Homage to Daddy

Santa Barbara, Napo Province

I took this through the railings at a daycare in the Amazon. We were doing a ¨minga¨, like a community service project that indigenous communities do, painting the daycare and the whole time this group was inside minding their own business.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Breakfast was yummy empanadas with preserves, so good. Then we went to another lodge in the canoe, the Arajuno Jungle Lodge. It was even better than the other one. It’s completely self-sufficient and sustainable, and the owner, Tom, came to Ecuador from Nebraska when he was in the Peace Corps. They had an awesome swing where could go out over the river.

We took the canoes to Santa Barbara, a little community with a school. We “taught the kids math” for an hour, but the kids hardly knew their numbers for the most part. They just knew what sounds came after each other, at least until five. My girl was Diana, and she told me she was three but she definitely was at least five. Some of the other girls said they were three when they weren’t, too, we aren’t sure why. After “teaching,” we painted the daycare with the help of some of the kids. Some kids were swinging from a vine hanging from a huge sable tree. We took a walk around their chacra, their indigenous-style farm where everything grows together, it was really interesting. I tried a cocoa bean.

Canoe trip back to the lodge. We swam in the river, it was the perfect temperature, really nice. There are those fish that swim up you if you pee and you need a big operation to get it out. I built a sandcastle with a couple other people. By the way, the lodge was a pet monkey called Mona.

At dinnertime, the owner put on a Pink Floyd concert DVD and lit a lot of candles on the porch/dining room. There were hammocks, too, and these awesome swinging chairs. For dinner we had quinoa soup, salad with good kind of blue cheesy dressing, pasta with creamy kind of basily sauce, and really really good muffins with passion fruit sauce. Later we put five headlamps on one of the girls and tried to take pictures of her swinging in the dark. We played cuarenta, and later a couple of us stayed up and talked to the cook from Uruguay. I slept in a top bunk like at Wooster!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Pancake breakfast! Then a hike with a guide Franklin through the rainforest, both secondary and primary parts. There were snakes and I ate a termite. After hike we were all dropped off by ourselves off the path and stayed alone for an hour without a watch or journal or anything just to observe and feel connected to the jungle. At first I was pretty relaxed and enjoying it and watching a spider on his web, but suddenly there was a huge crash nearby, probably a falling tree branch, and my heart was racing. Then a bullet ant was crawling right at me, which was weird since usually they’re just going on their way. So for the rest of the time I wasn’t as comfortable, but you’re not really supposed to be completely comfortable, I don’t think.

After lunch, we went on a CANOE TRIP (it was a motorized canoe, but still the coolest thing ever) to the Amazonica animal refuge for animals that used to be pets. They try to recuperate them to release, but a lot of them can’t be ever, especially parrots and monkeys. There was one monkey with an equilibrium problem who was doing tricks, very cute. We also saw the biggest rodent in the world, also cute. There were a lot of European volunteers, our guide was from Switzerland. Then canoe ride back.

Our speaker was the son of a shaman. Interesting, don’t feel like writing about it now.

Night hike! Huge spiderwebs yards high between trees. Frog. Guide made me a plantain leaf crown like Pocahontas and Denise made me a bracelet.

I saw a bullet ant behind my bed!!!!!

Monday, March 9, 2009

This was the travel day to Napo, where we stayed for our Amazon trip. It was a beautiful bus ride through the sierra, I loved it. We drove down four kilometers. Our only real stop was in Papallacta to go to the AMAZING hot springs there, all surrounded by the Andes, soooo wonderful. There were lots of little pools with different temperatures and then the river which was icy cold and left us all tingly to go back into a hot pool. We knew we were going to have a picnic lunch afterwards, but when they told us it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we were all shouting, we were thrilled. We put cheese in them (which is actually tasty not disgusting since the cheese is different here, they put it in hot chocolate sometimes, too).

We got to our lodge, Ariñahui, at dusk and had dinner, which was always really good there. I roomed with Zohar and Denise. I saw a big black bug behind my bed right before we fell asleep so we all freaked out and pushed our beds into the middle.

Sunday, March 8, 2009 – El Día Internacional de la Mujer

This was my last day with the Espinosas before going back to Quito and then to the rainforest. I wasn’t sad at all, I was pretty excited. In the morning I got up early in case they were going to do something and had breakfast. I overheard they were going to church at Camila and Mimi’s school since Cami’s class was doing something so I kind of invited myself since they didn’t seem like they were going to. Just the parents and Cami went. It was a modern-style Catholic church with nuns and communion and everything. The fifth-graders sat where the chorus would be and sang and read some scripture. One boy read a poem for mothers, waving his hands around for emphasis. It was really cute. All the kids gave their mothers flowers, which was funny since a lot of the mothers had been holding the flowers for the whole service and just gave it back to their kid so their kid could hand it back to them.

So then we went home and I finished packing. A little later Pati (my host mother) called me into the living room and they were all sitting there. She’d called a little family meeting to thank me for coming kind of and to tell me what she thought and supposedly to find out what I thought. She told me that she thought we didn’t have a lot of dialogue since I was an independent person and in my own world and they wanted to respect that. While I’m not arguing that’s a decent description of me, I had been trying so hard all month to get them to talk to me and do things with me that I felt like they were completely just letting themselves off the hook for not being more welcoming. Of course I’d be independent or else I would have stayed at home, that’s no reason to not talk to me, especially when I’d always be asking questions and trying to include myself and they would hardly respond. And there were Sami and Mimi sitting there who’d hardly said a word to me all month. It was just very awkward and uncomfortable. I thanked them for having me and gave them the present I’d put together with Pittsburgh things and dog toys and marshmallows (they LOVE them, it’s a little gross) and some chocolate and a charcoal pencil for Camila since she likes to draw. They gave me a nice light scarf and a leather bracelet they’d written my name on, and that was the family meeting.

We went to lunch at the Cuena restaurant called Rom Boy. My host mom, who was suddenly acting all friendly, I think because of the dog toys, recommended a typical dish she liked, which ended up being the stomach fat of a cow with sauce and rice. I couldn’t eat it since it made me gag, so I hide a lot of it under the rice. What the girls got looked really good though, so I’ll get that when I visit Cuenca. It’s steak with a fried egg on it with rice and French fries. After lunch we went to the mall and Sami wanted to get her cell phone fixed so we sat around in the cell phone store for a while. They were taking too long so Pati brought me back to put my luggage in the car and we picked up the rest of them on the way to the chapel where the bus was picking us all up to go to Quito. A few people weren’t there yet so we had an awkward almost goodbye time for a while. We took a picture. When we really said goodbye it was fine. Sami kept her iPod headphones in. Pati looked pretty sad all of a sudden though, and her eyes got bloodshot.

We took the bus back to Quito. Some people were a little upset, but they can go back to visit while we’re in Quito really easily. I sat next to Adam and Meredith though, and their families were more or less the same deal. We always felt the distance and never felt totally welcome or comfortable. At least I had Camila, so it wasn’t all that bad. We went to the Hotel Alston, where we always stay in Quito, and I went on a walk with Rachel and Zach before it got dark. Evidently another guy on our program had seen someone get shot in the head when he was in Quito with his host family, so we were a little on edge, but we found the artisan market, which is really cool. I’ll take pictures later.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

We didn’t do much today, so I spent a lot of time playing with Camila, but at night they asked me all of a sudden whether I wanted to go see a music program. We went to the square in San Rafael, the little town I pass on my way walking to school, and they were setting up with plastic patio chairs and sound equipment. (I just realized I never see folding chairs here. They always use plastic patio chairs.) It was the day before International Woman’s Day, so it was kind of for that but way really an opportunity for a local mayor candidate to put on a cultural event. There was an older guy walking around with a 2 liter pop bottle filled with liquor and a plastic cup for people to all drink from. A couple guys sang and then the main feature was this woman singer with her two back-up dancers. The women were wearing dresses that were basically shirts, they might have covered half of their butts. I thought it was kind of strange tribute to the día de la mujer. We left early since I don’t think they liked it very much.

Amazon Week

My first host family!

I don´t have anything written but these two lodges are where I´ve been this past week.

Alinahui: http://www.ecuadoramazonlodge.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=66

Arajuno: http://www.arajuno.com/index.html

Friday, March 6, 2009

This was the last day of classes in Los Chillos and the last day overall of Spanish class with Alberto. I don’t think I’ve written much about him, but we loved him. My Spanish class is high intermediate with five people. We haven’t talked about grammar hardly at all since the second week since we can always convince him to play charades or pictionary instead. We say we hijacked the class. We call ourselves Los Tigres Chéveres (the cool tigers, not nearly as fun in English), and there’s a lot long name involving mountains and nearby cities. Alberto is kind of like a little boy even though he’s in his forties; he giggles all the time and has a really goofy smile and can’t control us at all. Sometimes he does these really long pauses and we think he’s trying to get us back on topic but really he’s taking us even further away with some random opinion. Our class is very different from everyone else’s and I really haven’t learned very much, but we do speak in Spanish all the time so that helps. As a goodbye thanks present to Alberto we rewrote Te Recuerdo Amanda in his honor. (Te Recuerdo Amanda is a song by Victor Jara, who was a new-style folky singer in the seventies in Chile, and it’s our class’s theme song. Jara got killed in the Pinochet coup.)

Our workshop classes all prepared presentations for the last day. Elias is our workshop teacher and the boss of the Spanish/workshop teachers. He wanted us to act out this poem about the huasipungo system during the colonial period. It’s way more serious than anything the other groups were doing. I’m the Spanish guy and at one point I cut off Jessie the indigenous man’s balls with a knife. I also whip her. Everybody but Cecilia dies in the mines. The lowest level class’s presentation was soooo funny, they sang songs they wrote about the debt crisis and the colonial period and other things to the tune of other songs, like the Beach Boys.

After class a few of us went to Crepes & Waffles in the mall for ice cream. I got caramel and mora, so good. Then internet café and home for lunch.

Tonight we had our goodbye party for Los Chillos. All of our families went and we had dinner and dancing, pretty fun. It’s hilarious watching the gringos dance with the latinos, we look ridiculous, almost all of us.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Today we had class until 4 since it was a lecture day (the ethnohistory of the Amazon rainforest, in Spanish). After class I went to the market with Zohar and Denise to find some good rainforest pants – pants that would dry quickly. I didn’t really find any so I got some light sweatpants, but they were only 9 dollars so not bad, I’ll use them. Zohar and I bought guacamole ingredients, and brought them to my house with tortilla chips (which they call nachos here). It turned out pretty good. They only have guacamole here when they eat tacos, which is not very often since its not Ecuadorian at all, so I wanted some with chips. Most of them liked it, but Mimi just ate the chips with lemon juice.

Zohar and I went to visit Amanda down the road, and while we were there the power went out. It was awesome – we had dinner (lunchmeat sandwiches with hot chocolate) by candlelight. Amanda’s host brother walked us back to our house even though it’s less than a minute down the road. The stars were amazing. Usually you can’t see them since we’re in the Quito suburbs and there are tons of lights all the time. The outage was huge – most of us lost power and we’re pretty spread out. At my house I looked at the stars with my host dad and showed him Orion and what may possible have been the little dipper, and my host mom wanted to have us tell scary stories but the rest of them didn’t want to (which sucked, that would have been great and they never do anything like that). I was starving since I’d hardly eaten anything all day, so I ate dinner again with them, rice and hot dog this time, again by candlelight. Lights came back on around 9:30 and we went to bed.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

We had a cuarenta tournament. Cuarenta is the big Ecuador card game, mostly from Quito. It’s complicated in a weird way in that it has tons of little rules but isn’t that hard to pick up. I’ll have to teach it to everyone when I get home. It’s a partner game if you play with four, so I paired with Denise. We won the first round but had to play the second against Adam and Alberto, which wasn’t fair since Alberto is my Spanish teacher, from Quito. So we lost that one but did pretty well. The teachers actually served us shots (canelo I think its called with liquor but not very much) while we were playing, so it was definitely one of those moments when I realized studying abroad in Ecuador was totally different from at home.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Today we went to a local school and taught classes all morning. I got assigned to the sixth grade, so the kids were nine and ten mostly and very cute. At first I was disappointed not to have a younger grade, but with older kids the interaction is more interesting. We planned out three hours of class time. First we taught English. I made a worksheet with English action verbs and their Spanish counterparts, and I had them split into groups of five and play charades with the verbs; they had to guess the verb in English. One group especially was really good and into it.

Then we mixed geography and English, and taught a lot of geographical feature terms that they will never remember but one of my group members thought was important – words like coral reef and archipelago and mesa and a couple I didn’t even know in English. But it was fun since we had them play Pictionary on the board with the words, and, again, had them guess in English. For more geography without the English, we split them into groups and assigned them a country to learn about from these cards we made up. The group I was helping had Germany and I told them Germany had lots of fancy castles were princesses used to live. We were drawing what we thought the country looked like according to what we learned, so I drew a princess and then I had to draw it for five other girls since they liked it. We were going to have them present after but they were getting rowdy so we didn’t.

After that was break, when they get served some food, usually rice and beans (provided by government funding and padded with 25 cents from each student a week – some can’t pay).

After break we had them write stories with the prompt that they are traveling to any country in the world by plane and they crash somewhere, like in the jungle or the desert or a city. One girl wrote this really cute story about how her mother told her she had to go to Paraguay and she was very sad, but she took a plane there and crashed in Argentina. She saw some different animals and came to a city, and she saw a tall, thin woman there. It’s her mom and her mom tells her she never has to leave again. A couple of the other kids didn’t write anything at all. I think they all had very different literacy levels, and also they don’t seem to have very many creative projects.

After the classes we talked with the teachers, and they told us about problems with funding and parents who won’t or can’t reinforce what’s taught at school. Also, parents who can’t afford to feed them breakfast so they come in hungry and parents who abuse their kids. Mostly we just talked about how it was a good experience.

Later I played with Camila for a long time. We started with bubbles (from Ellie, the best present) and then played hospital (which involved many dramatic death falls) and then I tied her shoes together and chased her around.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Photographic Homage to Linda´s Field Pictures

This entry is extremely long.

This weekend was completely different from the rest of my time here, it was a really good change. On Friday, I hung out with Denise after class and we went to San Luis, the crazy nice huge mall, to go to a movie. I didn’t think I would do much hanging out at malls while in Ecuador but that’s what everybody does here. First we had lunch, and it was great to eat somewhere besides my host house. The food’s okay here, but she’s not a great cook really. It’s usually pretty bland. And sometimes I just want something simple for lunch and here its always a full meal and then dinner is just some bread and tea. So we got really good chicken sandwiches and a fruit salad. I’ve been hanging out with Denise a lot since the cloud forest. She was actually raised in Ecuador and then moved to San Diego.

While we were waiting to go to the movie I finally got to “talk” to Linda, even if it was a facebook chat in an internet café. It’s very surreal to be in touch with home (even though she’s in Scotland) and then to snap out of it and be in this mall next to a games arcade and all these Ecuadorians speaking Spanish. It’s hard to get back into Ecuador mode, especially since I always feel so rushed when I’m in an internet café. But I was soooooo happy to finally get in touch with her. I’m sure it will be a lot easier when I’m in Quito and I need to find or borrow a Skpe headset.

We bought tickets to see Bride Wars (Guerra de novias en español) just since it started at a good time but we heard it was so bad that we asked to change movie and saw Gran Torino with Miles, a guy from the program, and his host brother. We’re supposed to do things with host siblings as often as possible so we speak Spanish. We liked the movie a lot, but its really strange to watch movies in English with Spanish subtitles since there were all kinds of racial slurs since the main character is all rascist and it was funny to us since it was so out there but, for example, Clint Eastwood would say things like chink, gook, spook, paddy, deigo or whatever and in the Spanish subtitles it would just be the politically correct name. And then, again, you walk out of the theater and you’re in Ecuador with all the Spanish and it’s a strange transition.

Afterwards we bought a few pirated DVD’s, which is another thing I wouldn’t do in the states but everybody does here so I don’t really care. They are only $1.50 a disc and they had some really good ones. They even had Blue and White from the Three Colors trilogy by Kristof Kieslowski. They also have movies that are still in theaters and TV series.

Then Denise and I went back to her house, and watched and talked to her host mom a little and drank an herbal tea she’d just made from the leaves, and then watched an episode of House since I’d just bought the first two seasons. (Since Maggie bought a season for like 40 dollars or something ridiculous, and I got the first two for 3 dollars, I thought that was pretty cool.) While we were watching my host mom called and said she would take us to the historic center in Quito since its beautiful at night. I was so surprised since she never offers to take me anywhere, and she had already said she’d take me a few friends to the waterfalls the next morning so this was a very sudden flood of offers to do things that I thought wasn’t going to come. Pretty much all the other families have gone on weekend trips to different parts of Ecuador and little trips around.

So Denise and I went with just my host mother to the old city and walked around for a few hours. In El Rondo, the oldest section of the city, we went to a karoke bar, which are everywhere, and Denise sang – she sings really well. Karoke bars here are for people who can sing; sometimes it’s like the original version of the song is playing, not some random person singing.

The next morning Denise, Zohar, and Zohar’s host sister Katia came over at 9:00 and my host mother drove us down this really bad rocky road to the start of the trail to the waterfalls and dropped us off. The road was so bad that a few times we had to get out of the car so it would ride higher to get past rough parts. The tallest one is 80 meters, I think, and there’s a hike around all these other small waterfalls. This was my favorite day by far, it was so much fun. At first we were all out of breath and stopping every couple minutes since the altitude was wiping us out and we don’t exercise here. The first part was really steep and led to the top of a hill where you could see several volcanoes and lots of pretty farmland. There was a kind of jungle gym, too. At first my ankle was bothering me, since it’s still swollen, but it didn’t give me that much trouble, I just had to be really careful. The trail was gorgeous and there were lots of little wooden ladders and bridges. I took tons of pictures (for me, at least). We got lost towards the end and we were all joking that we were going to die since all we had was one Tango (a little chocolate and cookie thing) that Zohar brought. We sat in the middle of the trail and waited for other people to come and tell us how to get to the big waterfall, which eventually they did. They were a young Ecuadorian couple and really helpful. We walked together to the right trail and the guy kept giving us his hand to pull us up big steps and rough or slippery parts. When we finally found the right path we only had an hour left before the bus left, and when we were almost there we saw the rest of the path was a really steep muddy dirt stairs. We decided to take the easier path to the top rather than the bottom because of my ankle but really because it looked like a death trap and we were all so tired from walking all day. We climbed up a big boulder and had a great view of the valley. I walked a little further by myself and climbed out to the edge of a rock overlooking the waterfall, which I probably shouldn’t have done by myself, but I’m glad I did since I’m the only one who actually got a good view of the waterfall we’d been walking all day to find.

We started walking back and just when we got to the road to walk back up to where the bus stops, it started pouring. We got a ride on the back of a truck and we huddled under my tiny umbrella. It was so crazy, we couldn’t stop laughing. We were totally soaked. When we got to the right place, we saw another girl from the program there with her host brother, which was also pretty crazy. They had found a truck with the back covered so we all rode back in that. One of the driver’s daughters rode in his lap the whole time with her hands on the wheel. On the way we stopped so they could buy some food and there were all these chickens all other the place. We also passed a wedding party. When I got off and asked how much it costs, they told me it was free, but I still don’t understand why.

It was about 4:30 when I got back and I was so wet and tired and dirty and hungry. I took a shower and ate lunch and watched one of movies I bought in my room. I didn’t have any clean pants left until about a minute ago when my host mom did my laundry after the cloud forest and then the hike. I’m really glad Zohar brought her host sister; she was great and I hadn’t met any Ecuadorian girls my age who didn’t seem all girly and spoiled and obsessed with boyfriends. I’m jealous Zohar got such a good host sister, I want to steal her. It was also good since we spoke Spanish most of the time. Zohar’s Spanish is hilarious. She only has three semesters, too, which was the minimum, but she’s in the lowest Spanish group. She makes up her own words for a lot of things using her French and Hebrew. (Sometimes I realize that a word I thought was Spanish is actually a French word that I say with a Spanish accent.) She’s studying drama and designed her major, which I can’t remember her name for, but is about directing and organizing plays with political or social themes. It’s like those plays in Africa that dramatize how having HIV shouldn’t mean someone’s an outcast and how to prevent it. I think there’s a scene in The Constant Gardener about that.

So I slept very well last night and this morning my oldest host sister made us omelets for breakfast. They mentioned something about me cooking lunch but I think it was kind of a joke. I’d like to cook for them but I don’t think I could cook anything I usually do with their ingredients. I should buy some. I’m also not sure they would like I lot of the stuff I like. I think this afternoon we are going to a museum in Quito. So overall, this weekend was a lot better than anything before. I actually got out of the house and got to be with other people. My ankle is still annoying but I’m figuring that its not going to get worse so I can kind of ignore it and just elevate it every once in a while. I’m excited to move to Quito though and find out who my other host family is. We only have one more week here.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009: Cloud Forest Trip

Yesterday I got back from the excursion to Intag, where the cloud forest is. It was wonderful, so beautiful. We stayed in cabins and it was like camp. I got closer to some of the other girls since there was a lot of girl talk in the cabin at night and we were all together all the time. I loved the cabin, I want to build one like it in the Canadian wilderness somewhere. (Canada is still my favorite country. Even though evidently they don’t have good environmental restrictions for their mining companies and so they go all other the world and mine irresponsibly to get rich quick and then leave behind all the things bad mines leave behind, like drainage problems in the water supply and ecological losses.)

The only bad part was I decided it would be a bad idea to go on the hike if I ever want my ankle to stop being swollen, so I missed out on that. I still think it was the right thing to do though, especially since I did some other hiking that I shouldn’t have done. However, my ankle did get me a burro ride to the bus, which was awesome. I was the only one who was allowed to ride one, everyone else had to walk. Some people were jealous.

The place grew and roasted its own coffee, which was good, but it also had amazing hot chocolate that I liked better. I’m still bringing home some of the coffee beans though.

A few people from around there, like indigenous women groups and anti-mining activists and an American lady who’s lived there for a long time came to talk to us. It was all pretty interesting and a lot of Spanish. Some ladies who make bags and things out of a fiber they make from a kind of cactus came and explained how they made everything and used natural dyes and we bought things.

On the way back we stopped in the famous Otavalo artesian market and got to do a little shopping. It’s one of the places everybody goes if they’re in Ecuador. I got a couple things and ate at a pie place (which is noteworthy since for the most part they don’t eat pies here but it was an amazing pie place).

I’m trying extra hard with my host family. I wish they could be a little more welcoming like pretty much all the other families so I could relax a bit and not always be worrying about making sure they like me and talk to me. I play with Camila though, so that’s good. I also talked to my older sister for a few minutes about her school, which was a break-through since usually she doesn’t talk. I’m hoping in Quito I get a host sibling closer to my age, like everyone else has. Most people got a host sibling within a year of their age. Mimi still has hardly recognized my presence in the house at all. Sometimes I try to talk to her, but she only gives one word answers so it’s not worth it. My host mom’s been a lot better lately. Most of the time she’s fine, it was just the ankle thing and the doctor that she didn’t seem to handle well at all and made me angry. I am so tired, it is bedtime but it is only 9:08.

Friday, Feb. 20, 2009: Cloud Forest Tomorrow!!!!!!

The past week has been really weird because of my stupid ankle. Yesterday was the strangest and most frustrating day I’ve had so far. Our classes went to Quito to visit museums, so I had to do a lot of walking. It was hard, especially in the museum since I had to put most of my weight on my good foot so it got really tired. I was limping but not that bad. At the same time, I knew that it was not going to help it heal at all for me to be walking around on it all day.

When I got home I was all frustrated since I was worrying about going to the Cloud Forest with a sprained, swollen, bruised ankle. I’m sooooo excited about hiking there and swimming and everything, I don’t want to miss out on anything. I was upset and crying a little when my host mom came in my room and asked me about my ankle. She told me I should go to the doctor, so I said that’s fine and she said she’d take me when she got back from doing some errands. She got back around 8:30 and we went to the clinic.

I actually don’t think I’ll write about that experience here since it was so frustrating and uncomfortable and I just want to get over it. Anyway, I got an X-ray and it’s an extended ligament, so no big deal. But the doctor kept going on about how I shouldn’t go to the cloud forest and if I did I would have to get a cast on my leg sometime in the future, and none of it made any sense. It’s just a sprained ankle. I’ll give it some rest and it will get better. I had to buy all this stuff and it was like $70 that I don’t think was necessary at all. I think my program will pay some of it back after I get home but I was hoping not to have to get out more cash for a while yet and $70 could have been two month’s spending money pretty much. I have an Ace bandage on and I have anti-inflammatory pills and a spray that probably doesn’t do anything. The only cool part is that I got to keep my X-ray, which is the best souvenir ever.

So after everything I was all depressed and angry but my host mom finally offered to take me back and forth from classes, so that was good if a little belated.

Today I was in a bad mood because of yesterday, but I’m getting out of it now since it is an extremely nice perfect weather day. My window is open so I can get a breeze while I enjoy elevating my ankle. I gave my host mom a chocolate so I think we are okay again. She’s thinking about driving me around Old Quito tonight since I shouldn’t walk, which would be great. I’m hearing a lot more about other people’s complaints about their host families, which makes me feel better about not being all lovey-dovey with mine. At least my ankle has made my 13-year-old host sister pay more attention to me, but only because she thinks its really disgusting. She comes in my room to look at it and says “que feo” which means basically “ew, how ugly.”

A woman who seems to be a maid is here now. At first I thought she was a friend since she came over to help set up for the party, but then she didn’t stay so I figured she wasn’t. She looks more indigenous than the family and friends. My sheets are changed and I think she’s going to wash my laundry.

Something weird that happened today and is not related to my ankle is that while I was waiting to get picked up with a few other students, an Afroecuadorian from Esmeraldas started talking to us. We asked how she was and she answered, “Estoy muriendo” (“I’m dying”). I think she has some kind of infection, but she was moving around easily. She came to the school to ask the Father for money but he said he didn’t have any.

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009: my ankle

Ahhhhhh. I haven’t been doing very much the past couple days since I sprained my ankle on Wednesday. It’s not that bad for a sprained ankle, which is great, but its still swollen and bruised. Pier, in our group, leads outdoorsy things at his college and part of his training is “mountain medicine” for climbers, so he’s been checking it. I’ve been trying to keep it elevated and iced a lot, but it’s so hard since it’s very very boring to lay here with my foot up for hours. I think it makes me more tired too since I’m worrying about it.

Tomorrow we’re going to Quito with our class, and I’m a little nervous since we’ll be walking around a museum, and I don’t want to make my ankle any worse. We’re going to the cloud forest this weekend and it sounds like the most amazing place ever, so I don’t want to miss out on anything, especially hiking. They have an organic garden and excellent food and, according to one of our academic directors, “the best guacamole south of Chiapas” if the avocados are ripe. And there are waterfalls and lots of rare birds. There’s not much electricity so it’s really basic but that’s just what I would like for now. I thought the valley would be a lot more rural, I’m a little disappointed it is so close to Quito. One of our workshop things is something like “observation and painting” so I’m really excited for that.
I’m soooooo upset with myself for doing this to my ankle. It was so stupid, too. We were playing Simon Says in my Spanish class and we had to run around the building and the floor was slippery so I fell. It wasn’t that bad, but I guess I twisted my ankle weird. It didn’t hurt that much at first, but I thought I was going to faint a few hours later. I still walked to the bus but I shouldn’t have. I wish my host mom would offer to drive me sometimes but she only offered the first morning and even then she didn’t end up doing it. I like my host mom, but I’m definitely jealous of some other people’s host families. Mine has already had so many host people that it’s not so personal anymore and I’m not very interesting for them, especially with the language barrier. Some other people’s host families are hosting for their first or second time and they take their students to cool places and talk to them all the time and make them feel really welcome. Also, most students have host siblings that are within a year of their age and my closest is 17, which seems really young to me since she’s still in high school.

Friday, February 13, 2009: El Viernes

Hola hola hola hola hola. I’m watching an old movie on the Turner Classics Movie channel. It’s in English and the girl says “you’re all cock-eyed, Johnny, you’re all cock-eyed” and the Spanish subtitles say “you’re wrong, Johnny, you’re wrong.” Now she’s singing in a nightclub in Montevideo. “Mother Nature was up to her old tricks” in English is “Mother Nature is guilty” in Spanish subtitles.

Today was interesting. It was a shower day, so I got up early, and then Amanda and I caught the bus at 7:30. We’ve been doing it later every day and always getting to school at the same time. Today I only had juice for breakfast – very good juice, I think guava – so I stopped at a panadería on the way and got a hot roll. They had donuts, too, I want one!!!!

Spanish class was pretty boring today but it was only two hours instead of four. For our Ecuadorian history workshop we did a kind of Jeopardy game with three sets of questions worth 50, 100, and 150 points. It was fun, but very strange because whenever neither team got it right, our teacher (who’s the director of the program, we’re lucky) (my group is 5 people, by the way) would ask us a question like “what color are my shoes?”, and “how many meters am I?”, “who can pronounce my name the best?” There was a lot of “what number am I thinking of?” too. Our team guessed his shoes were brown, and he gave it to us, but was like “but they are really more like wine.” We didn’t count up the points at the end.

After the workshop we did Ecuadorian games. Each of the five Spanish classes taught a game to the whole group. Our game was “el baile del tomate,” and it was basically just dancing in couples with a tomato between their foreheads, which is pretty awkward and hilarious. When the tomato drops, you lose. We also did the wheelbarrow thing and musical chairs, so it wasn’t totally Ecuadorian. We called it the effects of globalization. At the end of musical chairs there were two guys left and Elias, our workshop teacher who’s about 60 years old, was like, “do a sexy dance now!” and so they had to sexy dance around the last chair for a minute before the music stopped.

After class, a bunch of us went to the restaurant of one of our group’s host family. They serve food from Cuenca, the third biggest city. It was really good, so now I am going to Cuenca. I wanted to anyway, its supposed to be one of the prettiest colonial cities in South America. (The dog just started moaning again.) I had a cheese empanada, cream of spinach soup, and I shared fried plantains. When Amanda and I left it was pouring rain and we were very very lucky to find the right bus right away. We got soaked walked from the bus stop anyway though.

This afternoon I helped out getting reading for the party tomorrow (my host mom’s birthday) and played with Cami a lot. I washed chairs and helped set up the patio with my host parents and Sasa (his nickname, I think, a family friend). My host dad was making a fire in their new outdoor oven, and it was so funny, he just kept pouring on the lighter fluid. He tried putting a candle in and waiting for a log to catch. When it finally did keep a flame for a while he said “I’m such a boy scout” with the “boy scout” part in English. It’s been raining all day. I also peeled a lot of these grain things called chocho, I think, with my host grandma and helped take the hairs of the corn. I also chased Cami around the house a lot since we were playing who can get the bouncy ball. I showed Cami my family picture book, I haven’t shown anyone else yet since they haven’t asked me much about my family. Cami started showing me her photo book, starting with pictures of her mom in the hospital right after she had Cami, but then she had to go to bed.

Now I am going to bed, I’m getting all tired. It’s only 11:00 but all week I’ve been going to bed around 10:30. Everyone’s in their beds by 9:30 usually.

Thursday, February 12, 2009: El Mercado de Sangolqui

Today we had another long day of classes, ending at 3:30. Afterwards a few of us decided to go to the market in Sangolqui, the biggest close town, just a few minutes down the street by bus. We asked a few people and found it – there are several streets all lined with stalls. Some of the vendors just carry their stuff around in bags and call out at shoppers. One guy even spoke to us in English, something like “good shoes, American, buy, babies.” (Actually, earlier today a guy on the bus to school said “excuse me, thank you” when he got off since he had to go by me. So far people have only tried their English on me when I’m with other SIT students though, and not many Ecuadorians know much besides basic elementary school English.)

Sangolqui also has a big church. It has a lot of gruesome Jesus statues and the walls and ceiling are blue. The candles people donate money to light (I can’t remember what the word is) are thin long ones that they just place on a metal tray. They only stand up since they are melted at the bottom. I haven’t seen that before; usually they are votive candles (is that what you call the little ones?) or there are candle holders.

Today was my first day taking the bus home by myself and it was fine. I talked to the guy next to me about what I was studying and things.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009: Un Buen Día

Today was really good, the whole day. I didn’t take a shower in the morning, which was nice since taking a shower is stressful, and breakfast was really good and I got to eat by myself, which is kind of a luxury since I can just relax and not speak Spanish. Breakfast was a bowl of milk, bananas and a wonderful honey-y cereal with one of the amazing juices that they mix with condensed milk. It wasn’t quite the one where they mix plantains with milk, I didn’t recognize it. The juices are very sweet but naturally, not with sugar. I met Amanda, and we took the bus together.

The bus was totally full so we had to stand right by the door and smush ourselves into the walls when someone had to get out. The door is always open (sometimes, if you’re a guy, the bus doesn’t really stop when you get off, it just slows down for a second and you jump), so it was pretty exciting trying not the fall out. We missed our stop since we were concentrating on not blocking the way or falling out of the open door, but we didn’t realize until I asked the old man beside me. We got off right away and backtracked to the mall, where we were supposed to get off, and then walked to classes through San Rafael, a cute little town with a mosaic statue/fountain of a boy drinking water. We were still on time, arriving just at 8:00.

Class was more serious than yesterday. We always start talking about something important and grammatical and then get way off subject and suddenly come back again. Today we were talking about prepositions and somehow got on the subject of teenage pregnancies and abortion and rape, I’m still not sure how. Our teacher is kind of shy and not machista AT ALL. Sometimes he does this little nervous laugh that I think it really funny. He has two daughters and he and his wife are lawyers living in Quito. Most of our class is just us talking amongst ourselves while he listens and laughs at us.

We have a thing about sarcasm because all of us use it all the time without thinking and Ecuadorians don’t understand it at all. Pier, in my class, is the worst (he blames it on being from New England, where it is the base of society) and he’s always trying to joke with his host mom. Like he had his bag on him and she asks him if he’s going out so he says, joking, “yes, I’m going out for the night, see you,” and she goes, “no. you can’t. don’t do it. It’s dangerous.” So he has to explain to her that he was joking and she seems to get it, but then a few minutes later she comes back and says, “Really, you’re not going out all night? Don’t.”

My host mom, who’s always crazy busy, forgot to pack me lunch since she had to go to Quito early this morning to do things for her mother, who’s losing her memory, so Anneke and I walked to a shop called “Kosas y Kositas” (which is cute since cosas means things and cositas, the diminutive, means little things) to buy a croissant, juice, and a bag of plantain chips. The bread here is really good and there are panaderías everywhere; you can sleep them wherever you go. When we were in Quito, Gina and I bought pan de yuca, which they heated up for us – it was sooo good. Yesterday I had a little bun with cheese in the center, which was also very good, but I think I should buy one and heat it up when I get home next time.

This afternoon we had to stay until 4:00 to have a lecture from Leonore, one of the academic directors. We were talking about gender relations, and at first it was interesting since she started with the historical background, like how the conquistadores came to the “New World” without their women, and how, unlike the English who brought their own poor women, the Spanish found it natural to be attracted to indigenous women since they were dark like the Moors, who had ruled Spain for so long. But after the interesting things there were kind of condescending things that I would rather figure out for myself than have to hear about all the generalizations, like in what ways latinos are usually machista and how Latinas react in shaping their own general identity. Afterwards I talked to Karina, the assistant who speaks mostly just Spanish but sometimes changes to English mid-sentence, and she thought it was weird, too, since she’s standing there as the only real Latina in the room hearing all these stereotypes about her.

Anyway, afterwards a bunch of us went to the humongous amazing mall to get ice cream since Gina’s been raving about their chocolate ice cream. The ice cream place is called, strangely, Crepes and Waffles, and they did have amazing ice cream. I’m not usually big on chocolate ice cream but theirs was the best ever. I hadn’t had chocolate in a week, so it was especially good. Afterwards Gina and I went to the internet café, and then we walked home instead of taking the bus. I bought a newspaper on the street but I can hardly understand any of it. I can get a lot of the Spanish but I still can’t understand it since most of it is continued political and economic stories that I don’t know the background for. My host mom said that we should be getting wireless soon so then I should be able to catch up with the newspaper website.

One of the dogs is howling, I’ve never heard a song like it, it’s very strange.

I got home around 6:00 and sat with my host mom and Cami for a while. Cami was playing with her bouncy ball so we would bounce it to each other and the dogs would try to get it. Then my host mom, Cami, Mimi and I played Jenga, which they pronounce /henga/, and I won the first game and made it fall the second time. Afterwards, Cami and I competed making jenga block towers. First it was how high and we stole blocks from each other and then it was how pretty. Then we made houses and drew things to put in them, like my house had a dog, cat, snake, girl, food, and flowers. Cami’s pet was a sea, and she made window curtains, which I was impressed by. Cami’s keeping all our drawings to play with later.

Then we had dinner, and after Cami and I practiced writing with our opposite hand and upside down. She was really surprised I don’t have two last names like everyone in Latin America so now my name is Laura Anne Kuster Walker since it goes first name, middle name, father’s last name, mother’s maiden name. We passed a piece of paper back and forth writing notes. It started off like “hola, ¿cómo estás?” and ended up with “which do you like better, dogs or cheese?” and “which do you like better, books written by cats or dogs?” Her last words were “No me gusta leer” – I don’t like to read. I also have several Strawberry Shortcake stickers now.

I started my homework, and my host mom helped me. I had to figure out what happened in Ecuadorian history or holidays on a list of dates. She dug out this third grade history book from 1954, it’s WONDERFUL. I love it. There are things like: “A veces sentimos frío. Hay ocasiones en que el calor nos sofoca. También podemos darnos cuenta de que algo está tibio o ardiendo. Pero solo el termómetro toma con exactitud la temperatura.” My bad translation of that would be, “Sometimes we feel cold. There are occasions when the heat suffocates us. Also we can realize when something is tepid or burning. But only the thermometer takes with exactness the temperature.” And there’s a picture of a thermometer. And then there are all the historical figures and all about independence. It has the old book smell, too, which is good since all the books I brought are relatively new.
I’m glad today was good since yesterday I didn’t really feel comfortable and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Like, lunch was silent with just the older sisters and a family friend I don’t know, and later Mimi was cutting things out of a magazine so I ask her what she’s doing and she goes “nothing” and then I ask her if its for school and she just says “yes.” So not much I could to there. But today was good so I’m happy.

Monday, February 9, 2009: Starting Classes

Today was the first day of normal classes. By classes, I mean Spanish since that’s really what we have right now. A couple times a week or so we’ll have history/culture/politics/economy/development lectures in Spanish, but everyday we have five hours of Spanish lessons. I got up at 6:15 and got ready and met Amanda, who lives a couple houses away, to catch a bus. We went with her host brother, who helped us get off at the right stop and walk the rest of the way to the school.

Classes start at 8:00. We’ve split into Spanish levels and I am in the group that our professor calls either high intermediate or low advanced, whatever we prefer. I have by far the least Spanish experience in the group so I’m kind of surprised I’m there but I think its good, I’d rather be in as high a level as possible to go faster. In class I feel like I’m doing pretty well but I can still hardly say anything to my host family and can hardly ever understand them unless they slow down a little for me. Like, I can’t eavesdrop to find our more about them because I can’t understand if its not face-to-face. My family seems to talk faster than a lot of other people, but its probably just because they are close.

The two inside dogs hang out on my bed a lot. It’s good since I like them but sometimes they are kind of dirty. The white one hangs out with me all the time but right now the black schnauzer is with me, she doesn’t usually jump up on my bed.

Classes are over at 1:00 and so I hung out with Amanda and Gina for a few hours after class. Otherwise I would just be doing nothing here all day. Amanda and I walked over to Gina’s neighborhood about 15 minutes away, and we tried to find each other at the entrance but there are three entrances and we went to all three. Amanda’s house is huge and fancy – there’s a little balcony looking over the living room and they have fancy red patterned living room furniture. When you walk in there’s a huge sweeping staircase like movie mansions. Some of the things are a little tacky, but it’s a nice house. Gina’s house is on top of a hill in one of the gated neighborhoods. They have huge paintings everywhere. In the living room there are some nice ones of Old Quito.