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.