Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Más fotos

More pictures:

Otavalo: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2510676&l=9059d&id=8649013

Cuicocha:  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2510692&l=79385&id=8649013

Monday, January 26, 2009

Week 3/Otavalo

1/20/09

            Happy inauguration day!  In honor of the occasion, Catherine played Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech to start out our biology class, and then we were dismissed an hour early so that we could watch the inauguration on a large screen in the theater at USFQ (with all the other gringos).  I’ve never been a very political person, but hearing MLK’s speech and watching the ceremonies on TV were pretty touching, and I’m very excited to see what will happen in the next four (eight?) years.  To celebrate, a bunch of us went to La Mariscal tonight, and one of the best parts of the night was when I learned that a couple people live in the same general direction as me, so I was able to share a cab on the way back.  I was also able to watch part of the Australian Open on TV at an Irish bar.

Mati had four puppies today, and I was particularly surprised because I didn’t even know she was pregnant.  My parents aren’t too happy because the puppies are mutts, and so it will be hard to find homes for them, but hopefully I can take a few home with me.  I seemed to be the only happy person in the house after hearing the news of the newborns.

 

1/21/09

            About 80% of the students on this program are sick right now, and it’s probably only a matter of minutes until I get sick too at this rate.  A group of seven or eight people went to a restaurant two days ago for lunch, and almost immediately after eating they all felt sick.  One girl has had a bad cold for a while, and another developed a rash that she thinks came from a plant at El Pahuma.  Two people got sick after going out last night.  One girl has E. coli because her host parents didn’t purify her water, but I think she’s recovering.  Two students had to leave biology class this morning because they weren’t feeling good, and three left their Spanish class later in the afternoon. Also, three people have been robbed so far.  Either I’m really street-smart (not likely) or really lucky.

For lunch I had a pizza crepe from the university and an entire package of María cookies (about 40).  Best lunch ever.

            Every day, I become extremely tired at 3pm, which is right in the middle of the time I spend at the daycare.  I always want to lay down on the mattress that’s sitting in the corner of the room, but there’s always about six passed out 3-year-olds piled on top of it, so I would feel kind of awkward shoving them aside.  To keep myself awake, I try reading stories to the children who are also awake.  Today one of the girls asked me why I can’t speak Spanish well, and then she handed me a songbook that was in German, so I was able to attempt two things I’m really good at: singing and speaking in German.  I got through one page but the girl (Michelle…a lot of the children don’t have normal Latin American names) didn’t like it and made me start over.  Then we colored stars in a coloring book.

 

1/22/09

            The kids need to learn how to share- a lot of them wanted to use the swingset, but there are only 3 swings and so many had to wait.  I decided that each kid would receive a certain amount of pushes before they had to get off and let the next kid swing, and each time I enforced the switch, the child forced to leave would start bawling…as if he or she didn’t see it coming.  Also, for the third day in a row, someone on a swing hit Isaac (a boy who Melissa and I thought was a girl until we learned his name, very recently) in the head because he was standing too close to the swinger.  I’m hoping he’ll learn sometime soon to not walk close to the swingset while it is in use.

            Some interesting conversations occurred at the dinner table tonight.  After my host parents found out that I am a lifeguard during the summers in Madison, they wanted to employ me to watch over the maid (Francisca) as she does the laundry, because she’s so short that she needs a stool and a scoop in order to grab the clothes out of the laundry machine and dryer and my parents are afraid she might fall in.  Also, somehow we wound up talking about child obesity, and my dad asked me how much I weigh.  When I answered with 160 pounds, he amusedly pointed out to his wife that it was the same as her weight.  I think I was the only one who felt awkward, because she didn’t seem embarrassed or anything; she just nodded in agreement.  Obesity is pretty much non-existent in Quito (and probably most of Latin America)- I can’t recall seeing anyone who looks obese, and only a couple people I’ve seen are slightly overweight.  I remember coming back to the US from Spain, and noticing immediately the conspicuous increase in people’s weights, so I’m sure I’ll experience the same feeling when I return to Madison in May.

            I have so much reading to catch up on, but I’m going to Otavalo (the largest market in South America?) this weekend so I won’t have much time to read.  Every night this week, after I returned home from the university, I’ve tried to do some reading but each time I’ve ended up falling asleep within about ten minutes.  After dinner, I feel even more tired.  Writing is usually more fun than reading, so I’m able to stay awake (usually), but the amount of reading has been steadily accumulating and I can sense that next week, when we have an exam, I won’t be able to get much sleep.

 

1/25/09

            A LOT happened this weekend- I’ll try to describe it chronologically, but I may switch to thematically.  On Friday, the plan was to meet a group of four or five other students at a bus stop and then walk over to a bus station in order to go to Otavalo, but unsurprisingly I ended up arriving almost twenty minutes late to the bus stop, and no one else was there.  It had begun to pour (this was only the second time that a downpour has occurred since I’ve been in Quito…usually it’s just cloudy and pretends to rain a little bit) so I decided to hurry to the bus station alone, hoping that everyone else would be there.  As I was hustling down the river-like street (whenever cars or buses would pass, a tsunami would pound into my legs), I felt a slight tug on my backpack.  I turned around, but no one was there- instead, a woman (who [whom?] I would later find out was wearing Otavaleña clothing) was a few feet to my right, jogging down the street at a slow pace, with some other women in similar garb jogging a few yards behind us.  At first I thought they were just running because the weather resembled a monsoon, and they were trying to find shelter (the entire crowded street seemed to be in panic), so I kept walking briskly.  The thing that made me most suspicious was that none of the women ever passed me, even though they were jogging.  At that moment I wished I had taken karate lessons as a child so that I could practice my moves on these women, but instead I took the more passive way out and stopped on the side of the sidewalk while I waited for the women to (finally) pass me.  Upon inspection of my backpack, I found that one of the smaller zippers was wide open, but luckily the only items inside that pocket were a blue dry erase marker, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, and earplugs that I bought in Spain 1.5 years ago.  And a band-aid.  Apparently the woman didn’t find anything of value, so I can’t say that I was officially robbed (although I haven’t been able to find a package of Kleenex that I think used to be in my backpack).  However, if my hand sanitizer had been taken, I would have been furious.  I’m pretty confident that if something valuable WAS stolen, I could have easily chased the women down and tackled them, although I’m not sure how socially acceptable that kind of behavior would be.  They weren’t that fast.

            When I finally arrived at the bus station, not only was I Kleenex-less, but I was also soaked and still couldn’t find my friends, so after assuming they left without me, I hopped on the next bus to Otavalo (if I had waited about ten more minutes, I probably would have seen them).  I met an old Ecuadorian man who had lived in St. Paul for five years, so he could speak English decently.  I wanted to practice my Spanish, but every time I tried asking a question, he would answer in English.  Apparently he is the head of some important environmental/economic agency, and right now he’s working on a project to improve the irrigation system somewhere in northern Ecuador.  It seemed like an interesting internship possibility, but I’m pretty sure I will do my internship in the rainforest.  And northern Ecuador (near the border with Colombia) is supposed to be extremely dangerous (even more dangerous than that street by the bus stop).

            The most unforgettable event of the three-hour bus ride was when we were approaching Otavalo, and the bus began slowing to a halt.  It was dark outside, so I couldn’t see much, but I could hear shouting, and hordes of people were gathered in a semicircle around the street.  As the bus approached the scene, I glanced down and saw that a man’s body was lying in the middle of the opposite lane, face-down and motionless, with blood trickling down his arms.  Although I didn’t see it happen, I was shocked and felt like the wind was knocked out of me for a few seconds.  Except for a few funerals, I had never seen a dead body before and even as I’m writing this two days after it happened, the image is still vividly engraved in my mind.  As the bus left the scene, we passed ambulances heading towards the victim.

            When we arrived in Otavalo, I was surprised with how easy it was to find the hostel where we made our reservations.  The town is so small that I only had to walk about five blocks (and more importantly, I only had to stop once to ask for directions).  It was called Valle de Amanecer, and definitely ranks within the top two hostels I’ve ever patronized (I really liked the hostel in Granada, Spain…and the one in Barcelona was cool too except for the drunk Kiwi who stayed in our room and almost urinated on my brother, but caught himself and proceeded to go on the wall outside our room instead).  Valle de Amanecer was a hippie-themed hostel, with incredibly nice employees, an open courtyard in the center, hammocks tied underneath shady trees, and no showers—actually there were showers, but no one used them because we didn’t bring towels.  Most importantly, breakfast was complimentary, and each morning I ordered pancakes with fruit (banana, papaya, and pineapple).  Another benefit of the hostel was its two-block proximity to the street market.  But anyways, after arriving, I checked in and the man behind the desk told me that a few other gringos had just left to go eat dinner, but they weren’t the ones I was supposed to meet at the bus stop in Quito.  Unwilling to go out alone to find them, I went into my room and began feasting on Maria cookies (clearly a better choice than going out), but about ten minutes (and 7/8 of a package of cookies) later, I breathed a sigh of relief because from my window I could see my friends checking in at the desk.

*All this talk of Maria cookies initiated a craving, so I just ate the last eighth of the package.  I’ll need to go shopping for more tomorrow.

            After eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant, we tried looking for a bar but Otavalo was surprisingly quiet even on a Friday night.  We heard music coming from down a desolate street, so we followed our ears and although no one was in the bar, we stayed there the rest of the night (later, however, a few people trickled in and out). 

            The next morning, we experienced the Otavalo market in all its glory.  The main plaza was just two blocks away from our hostel, but Saturdays are the big days, so tents and other craft stands were spilling into streets many blocks away from the plaza.  The artisans and their crafts lined both sides of the streets, and wide streets contained three rows of tents.  Some streets, however, were so narrow that there was only room for a two-person wide aisle in between the rows of tents, and there were so many people filling every square inch of street that body-surfing would have been a more practical mode of transportation.  The colors amazed me the most- the majority of the merchants were selling clothing, blankets, or hammocks, and each tent was filled with a plethora of color, like a deliciously tempting bowl of Trix.  The food tents were equally as amazing.  Fruits of every color were arranged in intricate pyramids, whole pigs were roasting over grills on the street, and I must have seen thousands of bananas.  Meanwhile, the Otavaleños were shouting how much we as customers needed their products, or how happy our parents or siblings or girlfriends would be to receive a gift.  A split second of eye contact with an artisan could kindle a fifteen-minute conversation about their product (and perhaps fifteen more minutes of bargaining) involving taking down or unfolding every single blanket in their table-high stack and forcing the customer to feel each one, and they would not accept no for an answer.  If I could describe the market in three words, they would be bustling, exhausting, colorful, jackhammer…alpha male.

            What better way to end our Saturday than with a cock fight?  We were told that every Saturday at 7pm, cock fights were held in a nearby arena.  I’ve always been opposed to most types of animal cruelty (I love eating meat, and I think bull fights are fine…unless you watch amateur bullfighters trying tirelessly to kill an exhausted bull who slowly gets weaker and weaker until it just gives up and falls over), and Saturday night reconfirmed my beliefs.  After waiting about three hours, the fights finally began around 10:00 (I guess Ecuadorian time is amplified in Otavalo).  We only stayed around for three fights, none of which lasted over 6 or 7 minutes, but the worst one was the third.  One of the roosters was clearly losing and it knew it didn’t stand a chance against the other, so whenever its owner would set it back on the ground, it always tried to jump back into the safety of the owner’s arms.  Since that didn’t work, a good half of the fight was the weaker rooster trying to run away from the other one.  Top three gruesomest parts of the last fight:  the losing rooster accidentally stabbed its own eyeball with his hind talon; the owner would place the entire rooster’s head inside his mouth to suck off any blood; all fights end when one of the cocks can’t stand anymore, but for the last one the rooster clearly couldn’t stand and yet the fight continued for about thirty more seconds.  Olé!


The next morning we woke up early again and went to Laguna Cuicocha, a lagoon situated in a volcanic crater.  We had to take a bus and a pick-up truck (my third time this month riding in the back of a pick-up truck- they’re becoming my preferred method of transportation).  Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy and we couldn’t see past the mountainous edge of the volcano, and so we couldn’t see the snow-capped Cotopaxi in the distance, but what we could see was beautiful.  The lagoon was dark blue and clear, and two dome-shaped islands sat in the middle (they reminded me of Lost).  Beyond the volcanic mountains lay miles of rolling pastures, which now seem more of a nuisance to me (deforestation sucks).  We hiked part of the way around the lagoon (the entire hike would have taken five to six hours), but turned back early in order to return to Quito before nightfall

Thursday, January 22, 2009

pictures

Here's some links to the pictures of the first two weeks:
Week 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2503983&l=0f86c&id=8649013

Week 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2507669&l=77fcd&id=8649013

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

1/12/09

            Running in Quito makes me feel like I have the lungs of a two-year-old.  I’ve ran in Colorado before, at elevations very similar to the elevation here (around 9000 ft), yet Rocky Mountain running feels easy in comparison to Andes running.  Maybe it’s because I’m not as in shape as I was during the Colorado vacations, since those occurred in the middle of track seasons.  This morning I tried running to Parque Carolina (apparently many Ecuadorians run through this park in the mornings…I’ve seen a total of two Ecuadorians running since I’ve been here), but I couldn’t even make it that far since I live so far away.  The multiple stoplights at every street corner didn’t help.  Quito is situated in a valley, and my house is on the sloped edge of the city, so the beginning of my run felt fine since it was all downhill…but on the way back I considered stopping by a nearby department store to ask if I could purchase an oxygen tank.  My legs felt fine, but my lungs felt super constricted, as if they were about to implode.  Running was also a mental workout, since I had to remain focused on the ground and my surroundings the entire time- there is no such thing as a flat sidewalk here, and you can’t always trust cars to obey traffic signals.

            I tried talking to a volunteer coordinator at USFQ today, but she was at a meeting so I think I may just stay in the new Spanish class.  Our professor arrived over half an hour late since she didn’t know where to go, but she seems pretty cool so far…although she talks a bit too fast for my liking.

*EMERGENCIA!- We have no more purified water in the house.  I hope my host parents realize the direness of this situation.  If there is no clean water in the jug by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, my run will be ten times worse than it was today.

 

1/13/09

            When I stumbled down to the kitchen this morning, there was a huge jug of water waiting for me on the kitchen table, and I almost collapsed with relief.  My run went a little better today, but by the end I felt as if I only had half of one lung left, with air pollution saturating every last alveolus.  Is that a word?  The recovery feeling after the runs makes it worth it, though.  Although I won’t be able to run in the rainforest, I heard that there are good running roads in the Galápagos, so I’m excited to run in pollution-free, low-altitude conditions…in two months.

            Spanish class update: I decided to drop my Spanish class in order to volunteer at a daycare center with two other students, Melissa and Caleigh, about a 20 minute walk from USFQ.  Today we went to talk with the director (after asking dozens of people along the way how to get there), and when we finally arrived we were asked to sit on the miniature chairs that were made for 3-year-olds, so that my knees were almost above my head.  I had forgotten how tiny 3-and 4-year-olds are!  I’m not sure if the director will have specific activities for us to help out with, or if we’ll plan our own activities, but I’m really excited…mostly because I’ll probably be able to understand and communicate with the children easier than with faster-speaking adults.

 

1/14/09

            The picture of my banana/nutella crepe is now the background on my laptop, but that was probably a bad idea because I’m starving right now…and I just brushed my teeth.  Speaking of food, my taste buds are experiencing sensations they have never experienced before.  Aside from the heavenly juice that I am fed each morning (I had mango today- I’m going to try to find some mango seeds to take home with me to harvest in the garden of my backyard), I’ve also been presented with spinach soup (it looked cooler than it tasted—dark emerald green—but it was still good and it reminded me of the split pea soup that the ants eat in The Rescuers Down Under), artichoke (when I entered the kitchen for dinner last night, there was what seemed to be a medium-sized plant [bromeliad!] growing on my plate, but it was actually an entire artichoke.  Vegetables are so much more fun to eat when they’re in their original form- I had to pull off each leaf, and I could only bite off the bottom of it after dipping it in some sauce), and guanabano yogurt (after classes today, I went to a yogurt/ice cream store, where I was tempted to get the banana yogurt since bananas complement EVERY type of food, but Ecuador is the place to try new things…so I tried the fruit that kind of sounds like “banana”).

            My favorite part of the bus ride to/from school is when the bus rounds a hairpin curve that overlooks a cliff, with the walls steeply dropping into a rapidly-flowing river that cuts through Cumbayá.  For some reason, the driver always thinks it’s necessary to accelerate at asteroid-paced speeds, so that the bus is almost on two wheels, and the lack of any shock absorption makes me feel like I’m in the air more than I am in contact with the surface (either the chair or the window) of the bus.  My second favorite part is hopping off when it’s still moving.

            Today was the first day of volunteering at the daycare center, and although we were only there for two hours, I was exhausted by the time we walked back to USFQ.  If I understood the director correctly, the children do more educational activities in the mornings, and more recreational activities in the afternoons, so we got to play with them the entire time.  I tried to teach them how to draw certain animals using sticks in the dirt outside the building, but some were more interested in seeing how much dirt they could spray in others’ faces.  Earlier I had mentioned that I was excited to work with children because I’d be able to understand them better…but I was wrong.  Many of them mumbled and spoke really softly, and when I could hear them, they used many words I had never heard of.  However, their curiosity, playfulness, and lack of any inhibition make me want to take them home with me.  A child and a mango seed.

 

1/15/09

            Today at the daycare center, we helped the kids paint a picture of a Hummer (I think they’re learning modes of transportation) with finger paint.  After each one made his/her contribution to the painting, I helped him/her wash his/her hands in the sink…but there was one girl who became psychotic when she got her hands on the soap, even more than Clancy becomes when he sees a tennis ball.  Her eyes would become wide open and with a huge, devious smile she would begin to furiously rub her hands together with the soap against the bottom of the sink.  When I took the soap away, she found another bar on a nearby ledge and repeated the process.  I had to literally push her out of the bathroom.  But about five kids later, she magically appeared again on the stool near the sink and grabbed the soap.  I never knew how exciting soap could be.

Money problems of the day:

-I paid almost five dollars for a tiny meal which consisted of minuscule empanadas, which were more like frozen bite-sized hot pockets, while my friends paid about $3 for a valid, filling lunch including a mango ice cream cone.

-The cashier at a department store had to call my credit card company because my card wasn’t working, so I was almost unable to buy rubber boots that I’ll need tomorrow when we go to El Pahuma Orchid Reserve.

-Photo Express would only accept cash for the photos I needed for my censo, and I was $1.50 short since I spent all my cash on unsatisfying empanadas at that lunch restaurant.  Luckily I was with Melissa who had a few coins to spare.

-I had to spend my shiny new Montana state quarter for the bus ride home from the university.

            I experienced my first blackout in Quito this evening- my brother said it was because of the rain, but my dad said it was because of President Correa’s two-year anniversary since his inauguration…which is longer than many past presidents have been able to hold office here.  That seems like a dumb idea to shut off all of the city’s electricity, though.  I wonder how many car or plane crashes it caused.

 

1/18/09

            It’s only about 9pm, but I’m exhausted since we just arrived back to Quito (from El Pahuma) a couple of hours ago.  El Pahuma is an orchid reserve situated in a montane forest ecosystem, and I didn’t know that a forest in the mountains could be so jungle-like- I seriously can’t imagine what an actual rain forest will be like now (except that it probably has less or no steep inclines, and is overflowing with tarantulas), since El Pahuma (I just fell asleep for about 10 seconds) is covered with deep green moss- and epiphyte-covered trees, and since it rained for the entire first 24 hours we were there.  The large, fully sprawled out bromeliads, drooping mosses, and knobby tree branches made the site look prehistoric, like a scene from Jurassic Park.  Too bad I didn’t see any pterodactyls.  During the trip, I realized how much more I’m able to learn when I’m actually outside in the field looking at and handling different plant species.  Last week in the USFQ biology classroom, we were learning a few of the different plant families, and after the lectures I had no idea how to identify plants.  But after one day at El Pahuma I can almost easily identify the plants in all of the families we learned (which isn’t that many…we know 8 or 9 of the 365 families so far…but it still makes me feel like a botanist.  We also learned some bird names, too.  And I saw a toucan!).  However, one of the MOST important things I learned this weekend was that Maria cookies exist in Ecuador.  The first time I had Maria cookies was in Spain a year and a half ago (they’re like Graham Crackers, only in cookie form- they almost replaced Honey Bunches of Oats as my favorite food.  In fact, one of my first Facebook profile pictures shows me eating one), and the last day in Madrid, I tried to find a store that sold them so that I could bring home a box.  But it was Sunday and most stores were closed!  So I came home empty-handed, fearing that I would never savor their taste again.  On the way to El Pahuma, we stopped at a gas station, and when we got back on the bus I noticed something familiar sitting on a fellow student’s (Rita’s) lap—Maria cookies!  I restrained myself from pouncing onto her lap and instead asked politely for a couple, and later I learned from Mark that the cookies are sold in almost every supermarket (and smaller tiendas) in Quito.  How could I have been so blind?  Since my plane ticket back to Madison is scheduled for a Sunday, I will make sure to not make the same mistake I did 1.5 years ago, and I’ll buy a few boxes before my departure date.

            Another important achievement made on this weekend’s trip was the first steps of my acclimatization to spiders.  No matter the size, spiders would always make my life difficult by…being present.  Last year, as I was going over advantages and disadvantages between possible study abroad locations, spiders were definitely high on the list of disadvantages for this program.  However, after spending hours hiking through narrow, cluttered trails in the depths of the montane forest, I began to realize that I was putting too much energy into being afraid—energy that I could use for more important things, like fearing a type of fungus that grows in your brain and eventually kills you (but I think that can only happen in certain types of insects).  I got so used to seeing spiders and walking through their webs during our hikes that I was even able to take a few pictures.  I’d still probably have a heart attack if one was on me, but their proximate presence no longer causes me to sprint in the opposite direction…unless it’s a tarantula.

            El Pahuma is beautiful, and if there were some way that I could study primates there, I would definitely consider the reserve for my month-long internship.  The family who lives there and maintains the trails (and act as guides for local and foreign tourists) are incredibly nice, and the food they made for us was particularly delicious.  I tried tea for my first time and discovered that it’s best with 3.5 heaping spoonfuls of sugar.  So far, for these first 2 weeks I’ve been in Quito, I have loved all the food I’ve been served.  However, one food shouldn’t exist: fried bananas.  Normal, ripe, fresh bananas are already so good, so why do they need to be modified, and therefore lose their sweetness and some of their nutrients?  The only times bananas should be heated is when they are mashed up and made into banana bread, cake, or muffins.  Mentioning the toucan earlier in this post is making me crave Fruit Loops right now.  Speaking of food, I will segue to beverages and praise the drink I had for dinner tonight- vino hervido.  Apparently, red wine mixed with orange juice and sugar can be heated, and it tastes like an intense version of warm apple cider.  I hate wine, but I could easily drink this forever.  Nonstop.

            Hasta mañana.

 

1/19/09

            Today was a good day.  Not only did I buy some María cookies at Megamaxi (which is “about the size of UW,” as a student put it.  However, they did not sell books of crossword puzzles, one of the things I miss most—other than Clancy and The Office—about life in Madison), but I also returned to Crepes y Waffles for lunch and ordered a banana/strawberry/chocolate fondue crepe and a banana/Nutella waffle.  Each was served with a scoop of ice cream and large dollops of whipped cream.  In the waffle, each square had been smothered with Nutella, and the fruit was perfectly ripe in both plates.  I had time to go there today because class was cancelled (so that we could pick up our passports from the Extranjería and go get our Censos from the Policía de Migración).  Short post (and about half of it was in parentheses)!

Monday, January 12, 2009

First week in Quito













Hey everyone,
I've been gone only a week but I feel like so much has happened so far.  Here's a description of my experiences in Quito from this past week.  I took way more photos than what appear here, so I'll send those out soon.

Day Uno- 1/5/09:

So far, Quito seems like one of the coolest cities I’ve ever visited, in terms of its appearance (I can’t really make a judgment about the city as a whole yet).  It reminds me of Granada, Nicaragua, times ten.  The mountains that surround the city are lushly green and usually there is some surreal cloud cover, making it seem like the densely-grouped houses and buildings were stuffed in the valley, out of place.  I really enjoy the bus ride to and from the university (USFQ) because a), the cliff-filled scenery of green vegetation mixed with the orange and brown architecture is amazing when the bus descends into Cumbaya, and 2), the bus ride is under 15 minutes (while others on my program need to ride 3 buses lasting over an hour).  My goal is to learn the Ecuadorian art of getting off the bus while it is still moving.  Perhaps when I reach that goal, it will offset my physical non-Ecuadorian appearance of blonde hair and blue eyes, and I will be accepted as one of the locals.

Tomorrow we have our Ceiba orientation, but it’s not until 1pm so I don’t feel bad about staying up late to write this, although I may pass out from exhaustion at any minute.  The day before I left for Ecuador, I stayed up until almost 4am (probably because I didn’t start packing until after midnight…but I was busy doing other important things earlier that day/night such as saying goodbye to friends, ice skating, watching part of a movie, looking at some of my high school writing samples as I was trying to clean under my bed, playing with Emily and Clancy on the ice-covered street, and uploading pictures on Facebook) and woke up at 5 to run (very dificil on the ice).  My plane arrived in Quito about an hour later than expected, at 11:30pm, but after going through customs and driving home, I didn’t get to bed until about 2:30am.  However, I wasn’t able to fall asleep for at least another hour probably because of the altitude- if I didn’t inhale mucho, I felt like I was suffocating.  I woke up at 7 to go to our first orientation meeting at USFQ with all the other international students (about 150), and the campus is amazing and seems like an oasis.  Although it in no way represents the normal Ecuadorian population or style of living (it is NOT a synecdoche…one of my new favorite words), I am very excited to be a student there.  We had a tour of the campus (my white, dread-locked guide is named Mook), and I don’t remember where anything is but at least the campus is small enough that I probably won’t get lost for longer than a minute.

I’ve slowly been meeting my family members, one by one, over the past 24 hours and I really like them.  My host sister and brother (Carla, 28, and Esteban, 25) picked my up from the airport last night and took me home.  They apologized for the “freezing weather,” which was probably no less than 65 degrees F, and were shocked when I told them how nice it felt.  Carla is a psychologist who has studied in the US and lived in Mexico (and may have studied there, too), and Esteban works in ecotourism, which he said is kind of a freelance job since they call him when he’s needed.  He also likes soccer a lot, and there are many medals hanging in my room from soccer tournaments…but they may be those of my other host brother, Nicolas.  It was kind of unnerving when Esteban drove me to school this morning and expected me to get back on my own on the bus, but his directions were easy and I only missed the correct bus stop by a few blocks.  I met my host mom (Consuelo) this morning and she is also really nice.  I feel like I’m able to understand Spanish here a lot easier than I was able to in Spain and Nicaragua, but I realized that it’s probably because they speak slower and don’t drop the s’s on the ends of words.  My speaking still lacks any type of competence, though.  I’ve given up hope on trying to roll my r’s, so I’m trying to focus on verb tenses and masculine/feminine articles instead.  After I returned from USFQ, I met my host dad (Cesar, but I’ve heard my mom and Carla call him Chino) who is a mechanical engineering professor (I think at USFQ, but I’m not sure). 

*side note- I always used to think that if I spent a lot of time writing about what’s going on during my trip, it would signify that I’m homesick...but I'm actually writing because I like it so much already and I fear that I might forget tiny details that fascinate me now, but that I’ll take for granted later.  However, we were warned about being on this initial “traveler’s high,” so I’ll probably be bawling from homesickness in a day or two.

            I have another host brother, Nicolas, who is 22 and closest to my age, but he is spending time in Bolivia (I think) with his girlfriend for another week.  My entire host family was vacationing in Peru and Bolivia during the holidays, and Carla showed me pictures (about 1500 of them…seriously).  In Peru, they went to Cuzco and Machu Picchu and now I NEED to go there later in May, after the exchange program officially ends.  Transportation and finding a guide seem like they will be very hectic and expensive, though.  The pictures from Bolivia were also very cool- the family went to an area (I don’t remember the name) that was covered naturally in salt.  It looked like they were standing on an ocean of flat, solid whiteness that in some places looked like clouds, and in others looked like desert.  They stayed in a hotel that was made from salt, including all the furniture- only the seat cushions and blankets weren’t made of salt.  After viewing the photos, Sebastian (Carla’s boyfriend) offered to play ping-pong with me sometime soon since they have a table in the attic.  Should’ve brought my paddle.

            Wow I’m tired.

 

Dia Two- 1/6/09:

            Since the Ceiba orientation didn’t start until 1 this afternoon, I was able to sleep in, which was fortunate because I’m still adjusting to the altitude.  Sleep deprivation caused by the altitude is quantized!  Two consecutive hours of sleep was the maximum amount of time I was able to remain sleeping, and I didn’t fail to wake up at 2am, 4am, 6am, 8am, and 10am…each awakening being almost exactly two hours apart, give or take a few minutes.  After my last awakening, I ate a breakfast consisting of Corn Flakes and a banana (one of my worst fears before coming to Ecuador was that I wouldn’t be able to eat cereal for an entire semester. I almost cried with relief when I saw the box of cereal waiting for me on the kitchen table.  Cereal and bananas probably made up at least 50% of my U.S. diet), and then Esteban took me on a walking tour of the neighborhood.  There’s a lot of construction going on near the cliffs that face Cumbaya, and one of the construction workers let Esteban and I into an almost-completed apartment building with a good view of the valley and Cumbaya.  I found out that the rent will cost $300…less than what I paid last semester…so I’m probably going to live there when they finish construction.


Our orientation at the Universidad that day ended up being cancelled since about half of the students from our program never showed up, probably because everything having to do with USFQ has been slightly unclear and disorganized so far.  So we were dismissed early, and a bunch of us decided to go to a park in Quito called El Metropolitano.  The park seemed more like a trail through a forest that wouldn’t stop ascending, so after about 30 minutes of climbing we were exhausted and went home.  But at least I got to see a cow, a donkey, a horse, and a grasshopper.  Speaking of animals, I forgot to mention that my host family owns two dogs, Wait (no idea if that’s how it’s spelled…it sounds like a Spanish equivalent of Wyatt) and Mati (short for Matilda).  They greeted me and kept me company for a while when I was locked out of the house today (my key didn’t work).

            In the US, I was always excited about going to bed because I knew I’d be able to feast on Honey Bunches of Oats when I woke up, but now I’m more excited about waking up because of both the cereal AND the juice.  All the juice that I’m served is always freshly-squeezed, pulpy, and deliciously sweet.  I’m salivating right now just thinking about it.  My favorite so far is naranjilla, which looks kind of like an orange but it’s not citrus.  Ahora necesito dormir.

 

1/7/09

            The juice here is amazing.  Fresh-squeezed strawberry juice?  Seriously?  I’ve also had jugo de naranjilla and arbol de tomate- both are sweetly flavorful and thick.  The process of obtaining a censo here seems like it’s going to be worse than the process of obtaining a visa in the US.  I made copies of about 528392 documents today (actually, only 8), so hopefully there won’t be any problems when I begin the registration process tomorrow.  Classes began today and everyone in my program takes the same courses.  For this first month we all take conservation biology and Spanish.  So far, both seem ok, but I’m not sure I’ll survive the 3-hour long lectures for each class.

            Esteban took me on a car tour of some parts of Quito after dinner (we ate dorado, a type of fish- my mom told me it’s like the Southern Hemisphere’s equivalent of salmon [Quito is about a half hour drive south of the equator]), and then we went to his friend’s house.  

            I thought this semester was going to be easier in terms of workload, but at least for this first month, we have a ton of reading to do, from like 5 different texts, and other articles will be assigned throughout the month.  I need to learn how to read fast.

 

1/8/09

            Happy birthday Jeff!  If you were here, I’d let you take me out to spend a brotherly night on the town, since I still have no idea where anything is, but you probably do.  I’m writing early tonight (7:30) because I’m going to La Mariscal (a district full of bars/discotecas…it’s also known as Gringolandia) tonight with the other exchange students, and I’m not sure when or if I’ll make it back.  La Mariscal, along with the downtown area and pretty much every other barrio in Quito, is supposedly dangerous and everyone is supposed to take extreme caution.  But if every place in Quito is dangerous, what’s the point of trying to stay safe?

*bus update: today I was able to step off the bus while it was still moving!  It was going only about 2 mph, though.  The turtle will always win the race…?

All the students went to the Direccion de Extranjeria today to register our visas and get a stamp on our passport, which won’t be ready to pick up until Monday.  When the passports are ready, we have to then take them to another location to obtain a censo, which acts as an Ecuadorian ID.   But before doing that, I need to get 2 wallet-sized photos of myself.  Maybe I can just draw a picture of myself, since I’m not sure where to have photos taken.  The most exciting thing that happened to me this morning was that a bird pooped on my hand.

*side note- I always try to be conscious of how many times the word “I” appears in my sentences, in order to not sound self-centered, but it’s hard to eliminate that pronoun.  If I were completely fluent in Spanish (subjuntivo!), I would definitely be writing in Spanish because the Yo pronoun is usually optional.  So, sorry if I appear to talk about myself too much, but just keep in mind that if I were smarter and more fluent in Spanish, I could avoid that problem.

            Strawberry juice is like the ambrosia of the Ecuadorians- I just had some for dinner a few minutes ago and it tastes like a thick smoothie…but better.  Back to my day- we only had Spanish class today because our morning was free to go begin the censo process.  The Spanish class has the potential to be extremely boring because the majority of the time, we just work out of a workbook.  However, we also do some more interactive activities, like recite a short play or draw a picture using only certain shapes.  Gotta go catch a taxi.  Adios.

 

            Ok I’m back.  Gringolandia is the place to be.  Earlier today, the other students from this program had planned to meet at Coffee Tree, a restaurant/bar in La Mariscal, between 9:00 and 9:30pm, so I told my host mom that people were meeting around 9, so she called a taxi at 8:20 so that I could be picked up at 8:30 and therefore arrive punctually.  However, my host mom’s conception of time was an anomaly in Ecuador and I guess everyone else’s host families had them dropped off way past 9:30.  So, promptly at 8:55, I was dropped off in one of the most dangerous places in Quito and I couldn’t find anyone from my program, so I walked around a little to try to get an idea of La Mariscal’s milieu (I synonymed “environment”; I didn’t know what milieu meant before).   After walking around a few blocks, I just decided to wait at Coffee Tree for anyone to show up.  I was getting so worried that I started coming up with excuses to tell my host family for coming home early, such as “I ate food from a street vendor, and now I feel sick,” or “the taxi driver that picked me up from the house realized that he didn’t know where La Mariscal was, and just drove me back home instead,” or “after the taxi driver dropped me off at Coffee Tree, I was held up at gunpoint, but I used my charm and running skills to escape the situation.”  But finally, at 9:30, I recognized John, a student from my program, and within the next half hour, 8 more people showed up.  I vowed never to be early or on time to anything ever again.

            I just realized it’s an hour later than I thought it was, since I was looking at my computer clock, which I never adjusted.  That makes me mad.  Every minute of sleep counts- at least I got a half-hour nap after the visa/censo viaje.  I’ve been a lot more tired than normal here so far, even though I’ve been getting a lot more sleep than normal.  Maybe it’s because my running pattern has been skewed (thanks to pneumonia for hindering that aspect of my life).  The neighborhood I live in isn’t very conducive to running, since the main running park (el Parque Carolina) is pretty far away, so I’m kind of fearing that I won’t find a good, socially acceptable place to run that doesn’t involve solely a long, steep hill, like el Parque Metropolitano (which is pretty close to my house).  OK I’m going to bed now.  In conclusion, happy birthday to Jeff.

 

1/9/09 (actually it’s the 10th right now, but I’ll keep it as the 9th for simplicity)

            La Mariscal, round 2!  Almost everyone from the program went out tonight, but it wasn’t as fun as last night, maybe because our group was so big (I don’t do well in crowds).  We definitely let our Gringo presence be shown by joining about 8 tables together at the bars we went to, but eventually our group split up and it became easier to maneuver through the gente-infested streets.  For the past two nights, I have successfully avoided having to attempt any type of dancing, so I’ve been pretty proud of myself (although there was an awkward moment a few nights ago when a friend of my mom tried to teach me how to salsa).  The thing I dislike about going to Mariscal is the taxi prices.  I probably live the farthest away from La Mariscal, and none of the other students live by me, so I have to ride alone and therefore pay higher prices for the taxi rides.  However, I had a nice chat with my driver on the way home tonight so I didn’t mind the higher price.  And who am I to complain about paying a few dollars extra to use the transportation services?  Seeing parents with their 5-year-old children trying to sell gum and cigarettes in the most dangerous area of Quito at midnight made me want to gag.  It’s sickening to think that I went out with my American friends tonight to spend money on transportation and beverages, but I didn’t give a penny to the people who need money the most.  My host parents told me not to give out money, but I still feel bad nonetheless.

            On a happier note, Ian’s Pizza must have ties with Ecuador, since a pizza place across the street from USFQ serves the biggest slices of pizza ever for a very reasonable price ($1).  Although the pizza has no sauce, I almost prefer it to Ian’s since the dough is so tasty…and more importantly since it’s cheap.  I have yet to try eating lunch at USFQ’s cafeteria, but the pizza across the street is so good that I may never eat anywhere else for lunch.  However, the pizza may have been the reason I felt sick later that afternoon.

            During our conservation biology class this morning, Joe (the professor) told us that our Spanish classes weren’t actually required on this program, although it would be a good idea to take it because the material we learn will come in handy during our internships at the end of the semester.  There are about 5 of us, though, who have taken enough Spanish classes already to make the class here be solely review.  So, I think it would be a lot more beneficial to drop the class and instead volunteer somewhere in the city, or work on an independent project, or just do something more useful with my time.  I’d really like to volunteer at a hospital (preferably a children’s hospital, since they speak slower and don’t have big vocabularies, and I could make a fool of myself and not be too embarrassed) or a veterinary clinic or a zoo.  Apparently, however, volunteers in Ecuador are increasingly being required to pay a fee, and the time spent training volunteers may be so much that the opportunity wouldn’t be worth it.  After all, we’re only going to be in Quito for three more weeks, and then the travelling begins.  So on Monday, I’m going to talk to a volunteer coordinator from USFQ to see if anything would be doable.  Otherwise, a more advanced Spanish class is being arranged, and I would take that instead of volunteering (I’d really prefer not to be in a class, since I don’t need the credits, and it would be more valuable to learn the language by speaking it to Ecuadorians in an Ecuadorian environment than to learn the language in a classroom, and it would be extremely cool if the volunteer work could incorporate something health-related).

            Goodnight!

 

1/10/09

            Things I learned today:  one in every ten plants in the world is from the orchid family.  Quito’s airport runway is the shortest in the world.  Dense fog has caused two plane crashes into buildings in the same neighborhood in the city within the last decade or so.  My host family is really good at knowing what I’m trying to say, and they’re usually able to finish sentences for me if I hesitate (which I do a lot).  The 10th of August is Ecuador’s independence day, while the 6th of December is Quito’s independence day.  Quito is over 40km long, and growing.

We went to the Quito Botanical Gardens today, in Parque Carolina.  I’ve never taken an interest in plants before, but after listening to Catherine and Joe (the program directors/professors/leaders/coolest people ever) talk about the plants at the botanical gardens, I’m beginning to feel more passionate about them.  Their diversity and adaptations to survive in almost all environments on Earth amaze me.  My new favorite tree is the monkey tree.

After the garden tour, we went to Crepes and Waffles, an awesome restaurant near the park.   I’d like to go there sometime soon and order every single dessert crepe (which 

probably be under $10)- I had the banana nutella crepe today and experienced the most pleasurable orgasm in my mouth ever.  Later in the afternoon my parents and Carla took me to downtown Quito so I could see the churches, plazas, and historic streets.  A huge statue of the “Virgin of Quito” was built on a hill overlooking the downtown area, and it reminded me of the Jesus statue in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro?).  I finally bought a map while I was there, so now I think I’ll be able to plan out some running routes.

Later in the evening, I met a few more of Consuelo’s relatives—

*I forgot to mention something really important: Catherine looks EXACTLY like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.  I wonder if she could pull my eye out.

            --including her sister (Anita?) who is extremely animated and likes to throw in English phrases whenever she exclaims something (like “Happy New Year!” or “It’s my birthday!”…which is on January 31st, and apparently I’m her 81st guest and she’s excited to salsa with me.  I didn’t tell her that I’m going to a cloud forest that weekend).  We then went to Consuelo’s brother’s new condo, where I probably made a terrible first impression since I declined his offer of wine, denied having his 7-year-old son’s gameboy game in my possession but then watching it fall off my lap when I stood up, accidentally spit up some water when I coughed and drank at the same time, and leaving without saying a proper goodbye (I thought I was going to come back after riding with Carla to drop off Esteban at a bus stop, but I ended up going home instead).  I’m going to get over 7 hours of sleep tonight!

 

1/11/09


I visited La Mitad del Mundo today with Eric, Melissa, and Teal- it’s about half an hour north of Quito, where the Equator passes through the country.  The equator was labeled with a large line and an impressive monument by a French explorer from the 1700s, but he was 240m off.  Hundreds of years ago, before the Incas invaded present-day Ecuador, the indigenous people had labeled the actual equator, since their astronomy and mathematical skills were so advanced.  It really bothered all of us that the actual equatorial line wasn’t marked (or if it was, we couldn’t find it), but we enjoyed taking picture of ourselves on the fake equator line anyways.  Apparently, the indigenous people (I forgot their name) had built structures on the nearby Catequilla Mountain that marked the exact equator, and other formations represented the sun’s position during the solstices, and tons of artwork and architecture incorporate symbols derived from this astronomical discovery.  But these symbols were used in many different cultures, including Aztec, Inca, Maya, and Egyptian (I think), so distant cultures must have discovered the same phenomenon as the indigenous people of Ecuador.  All of the indigenous religious temples in what is now Quito were built in such a way that they can be connected with a line that passes through the formation on Catequilla.  When the Spaniards conquered the Incas (who had conquered the indigenous people), all the temples were razed and Catholic churches were built over them…so unbeknownst to the Spaniards, some indigenous influence still existed.  During the solstices, light enters through the church windows at certain times and fully illuminates important pieces of artwork, such as Jesus’s head and the Virgin Mary.  There was a ton of really interesting information on that topic. 

Our guide then took us to the top of a nearby volcano (Pululahua), which was equally as amazing.  In the cloud-filled caldera (is that the correct word?) was a spread out farming village of 25 families, and that number is decreasing as people try to move to Spain to find work (I’m not sure why the majority of them decide to go to Spain…it seems a bit inconvenient).  We descended the crater a tiny bit, but our guide said it would take about an hour to go all the way down (and then about 2 hours to come back up, since the path was so steep and rocky).  Muy chevere.  After returning (and getting lost near the Centro Historico), I met the final member of my family, Nicolas, who just got back from Bolivia.  Apparently he did a 4-day-long bike ride down a mountain, starting at an elevation of around 13000 feet.  Maybe I’ll ask him for some triathlon tips. 

I’m going to run tomorrow!  Need to sleep.