New Updates!

There are lots of new updates on this page.  I have been writing, but I have found it hard to find time to go post.  Below are my posts from last month.

Here are some new pictures from my trip to Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador.  A bunch of volunteers went to go celebrate Shelby´s birthday.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2526495&l=834bc&id=8301939

 

Also, sorry if the cuy video offended people.  I was just trying to share a part of the culture down here with everyone.  Apparently, the video has caused some people to get pretty upset on YouTube, which I find funny.  Around 1,500 people have watched that video, and some people have left nasty comments.  If you click on the actual video in this blog, it will take you to the YouTube page where you can read their comments.  It`s a different world down here, and as much as people want to chat on YouTube, Ecuadorians eating cuy, or even me eating cuy isn`t going to change any time soon.

Dancing Champion

 

 

 

That’s right.  Yours truly has officially won an Ecuadorian dance competition.  When I came home on Sunday from celebrating my friend’s b-day in Banos, my parents asked me if I had plans for the afternoon.  Predictably, I had saved all of my work for Sunday afternoon, but I accepted whatever cultural event was about to be proposed to me.  It turns out, there was a musical festival going on in a small town on the northern side of Ambato.  My family hopped in the car, and headed over to check it out.

We arrived to the sound of traditional Ecuadorian music being played on a makeshift stage overlooking a basketball court.  On the court, people were dancing to the music.  The side opposite the stage had filled stadium seating, and people surrounded the dancing area on all sides.  I must have been there five minutes when some young adults approached me and asked me if I wanted to do an interview.  Of course I agreed, and was then asked ridiculously hard questions.  For instance, what do you like most about this festival?  Mind you, I had been there for literally, five minutes, and besides hearing the music and seeing all the people, had no earthly idea what the festival was even about.  Then they asked me how it differed from festivals in my culture.  I almost felt like they were asking how Ecuadorian culture differs from culture in the US.  That’s not a question I feel remotely prepared to answer.  I spouted out some answer about more people dancing outside.  I was not about to say we don’t normally have outdoor basketball court dance floors, stages in unfinished buildings, poor sound quality, everyone passing around the same bottle of whiskey, and so many creepy old men walking around.  Oh well, somewhere out there on YouTube I am sure you can find my interview with the Ecuadorians.

After my interview, my padres and I joined the crowd to watch the dancing.  Then I noticed that after every dance, the announcer would give out a prize to the best dancer out on the basketball court.  I looked around.  Yep, I was definitely the only gringa in sight.  I knew this made my chances for winning unbelievably high.  I looked at my padre.  He was game for a dance, so out onto the dance floor we went, ready to take home the prize.  Clearly, I was the center of attention.  This tends to happen when you go to small towns and are the only gringo around.  There were 500 eyes watching me stumble to the San Christi beat.  What I had not taken into account was that the announcer would catch onto the gringa fever.  Sure enough, not a minute into dancing, he started speaking into the microphone welcoming the foreigner, telling everyone to look at me dance.  Great, just what I wanted.  After all, I am continually told that the true purpose of us gringos in Ecuador is to amuse the Ecuadorians.  Disregarding the extra attention, I kept dancing away until, sure enough, the announcer told me to come on up to the stage.  I had won the dancing competition!  I walked up to get my prize.  You guessed it, a box of wine.  And not just any boxed wine, my friends, but peach flavored wine with a Santa Clause hat on the box.  Classy, Ambato, classy.  I would have expected nothing less!  With that, the announcer told the whole crowd that I was from the US and other things with I didn’t understand.  However, I am guessing he probably said something about every old man should come up and ask me to dance because that is exactly what happened next.  Men who were missing teeth kept coming up to my padre and asking if they could dance with me.  Luckily, my look of utter disgust and mumbling, “I don’t like to dance with old men that I don’t know” under my breath encouraged my padre to decline dance offers from my senior suitors.  I must admit that I did have a good laugh when one came up and asked my padre, in English, “Does she speak English?”  Someone else came up to me, apparently trying to practice their English and said, “One, two.”  That was it.  Another day in Ecuador…

 

UPDATE:  My family owns a small neighborhood shop that is attached to the house.  The other day one of my madre’s clients came into the shop with a semi-mysterious look on her face.  She approached my mother and said, “You will never believe what I saw the other day!  I saw your husband dancing with a young gringa last Sunday!”  My mom calmed her down, assured her client that she was at the music festival and that, in fact, Nestor was not cheating on her with some young gringa.  News travels fast in this town!

Cultural Musings

*  Noses – Do you remember those blackhead nose strips that Clean & Clear came out with about eight years ago?  Well, imagine that you see people walking around town all day with one of those strips on.  I am not talking about one person.  I am talking about 25% of the teenage population.  Needless to say, I have been very confused about why you would wear a blackhead strip out in public every day.  However, I couldn’t just go up to one of my students and ask them why they had that funny strip on their nose.  Finally, I remembered to ask another WT vol that has been here since September.  It turns out that the strips are to bend their nose cartilage.  It’s like a cheap man’s plastic surgery that takes years to complete.  The sad part, though, is that the ultimate goal is to make their noses skinnier, looking less like the indigenous. 

 

*  Stamina – There is a girl who walked into my class the other day holding a folded handkerchief up to the side of her face.  She held it up to her face for the entire hour and a half.  The next day, she walked in with a scarf tied around her head so that all you could see was her eyes.  She didn’t take it off the whole class period, and she insisted on talking through the scarf.  The following day, the handkerchief returned.  I spend half my class wondering what in the world she is hiding under that handkerchief.  I have to give her credit for stamina though.

*  Buses – Yesterday, I got on the bus to go to a town, Banos, about an hour away.  About fifteen minutes into the bus ride, the bus driver pulls to the side of the road and says that everyone going to Banos has to get off because his bus isn’t going to go through that town anymore.  A good 15 people got off with me, and the bus driver pointed us in the direction of another bus, a much less comfortable bus (think the difference between a greyhound and a school bus).  Furthermore, we had all had seats on the first bus.  On the new bus, there was only standing room or sitting room on the engine hump.  How unjust and rude of that other bus!  I looked around for a sympathetic face.  You know, the funny thing was, not one Ecuadorian complained or even looked upset about the bus switch! 

*  Watches – I regret not bringing a watch to Ecuador.  I thought it might get stolen, and I forgot to pick up a cheap Wal-Mart version before I left.  After a couple of months without knowing the time, I finally broke down and decided to purchase a watch.  However, my gut feeling told me that if I bought a watch from a shop off the street that the next day it would stop working.  I decided to ask two of my students where I could get a good, cheap watch.  Instead of telling me a place, they offered to take me around town shopping.  I was grateful.  The first store we went to, I saw a watch that I really liked.  It was a cheap, $15 Casio.  I assumed since it was a Casio I would have better odds of it working in the long-term.  As soon as I pointed it out to my students, they both shook their heads no.  I asked why not, thinking it was the style of the watch.  They said, “No way.  You can’t get a Casio watch.  You will definitely get robbed.  People will see that on your wrist and rob you.”  I looked at them thinking they were joking.  A $15 Casio watch?  They had to be kidding.  Nope, it turns out that they were absolutely serious.  I heeded their warning, and we continued to shop until I found a $10 no-name watch that suited me well enough.  I woke up the next morning and the watch had lost ten minutes of time.  Great.  $10 on a watch that doesn’t serve it’s one purpose, keeping accurate time.  The next day I tried to return the watch.  Of course I couldn’t, so I decided to take a hammer to it instead.  Last weekend I went to Quito, I went shopping at the mall, passed up the $125 Fossil watches (which normally cost $40) in the states, and bought a $20 Casio watch.  Now, two weeks later, my Casio is running perfectly, but if I get robbed, I’m blaming it on the watch.

Where Does All my Time Go?

Because I am only teaching fifteen hours a week, I assumed that I would have a lot of free time to develop my Spanish skills, read a lot of books, and improve my guitar playing ability. However, I have recently found myself quite pressed for time, even to the point of beginning to really stress out about how I am going to pull everything together. All the things that I plan on doing in a day never get done. My days seem to be eating, preparing for class, class, and more eating. After a mental inventory of how my time was spent, I realized that the reason for my lack of free time was due to the increase in the amount of time I spend with other people. Lunch is inevitably a 45 minute to an hour affair. Dinner generally takes the same amount of time as lunch. However, a few days a week, my madre and I will sit around the dinner table and chat for a few hours, which puts me well into the time when I should start thinking about bed. Plus, I inevitably go out for drinks at least a few times a week with other Ecua professors at UTA. I am always promised that it will just be for one beer. I have quickly learned that one beer really means I should not plan on being home until 1am. This wouldn’t be such a problem had I not planned on doing lesson planning or grading during those hours. In Ecuador, though, my policy is to never turn down an Ecuadorian invitation. These invitations can lead to fond memories and inevitably good stories.

Case in point, last weekend was Mother’s Day. Now in the US, this usually means that the family has a nice dinner and serves mom on her special day. I had no idea that the tradition was quite different in Ecuador. First, no one served my mother on Mother’s Day, which I thought was odd. She prepared all the meals as she normally would and went about the day like nothing was special. Plus, no one gave her any gifts. Now on this weekend of celebrating mothers, I made the mistake of leaving all my grading and lesson planning for Sunday afternoon. I had assumed that we would have a nice lunch, and I would be left to my own devices for the rest of the day, so I could get some work done. Wrong. Lunch began at 1pm. I didn’t leave the dinner table until 7:30pm. This was because after the family had finished our nice meal, my dad got out a Pilsner, the Ecuadorian equivalent to a Budweiser, and started pouring glasses. When we finished that bottle off, and he went for a second bottle. I knew that I could refuse to drink any more, go to my room, and get everything done, or I could stay at the table and see what happened. Clearly, I chose the latter, and have no regrets for doing so. There was some great family bonding, and discussions that I know I would not probably have otherwise had. After finishing a case of beer between my mother, father, and I, my madre suggested that we bust out a bottle of whiskey. Now, you have to understand my shock at this. I had maybe seen my host parents drink an occasional beer, so I was a bit taken aback by the suggestion to start the hard liquor after downing a like fifteen beers. But sure enough, out came a bottle of Grant’s Whiskey. Out with the whiskey came my guitar, stories about my mom’s first marriage, and discussions about how jealous Latin men are. I got absolutely no work done on Mother’s Day and ended up scrambling to pull a lesson together for 8:30 am the next morning. But that’s just the way life works around here. People seem to have a bit more time for other people and for their family. People are way more flexible when they have to be somewhere or start something. I am trying to adjust and really invest in that quality time with people. While I may not be achieving measurably highly productive goals, I relish the fact that I have the time to cultivate meaningful relationships.

Ecuasick

Today I feel like death. I have decided that the worst place to be sick is anywhere away from your “home.” For me, away from my home is Ecuador, less because of the place, and more because of the language. When you are sick, all you want to do is have someone sympathize with your pain. However, when you are looking for sympathy from people you have only known for a few short months, it gets a little hard. Moreover, all I really want to say to everyone is that my throat hurts, I have a headache, my whole body aches, and that I am utterly exhausted. Instead all that comes out in broken Spanish is, “I hurt. I hurt. I hurt a lot.” Now imagine someone walking around for a week and every time you see them all they say is “I hurt.” That has been me for the last week. I think I may have been a bit annoying.

Update:

Because I hadn’t gotten better after a week, and because I felt death was approaching, I decided it was high time that I go to the pharmacy and see if I could pick up some sort of cure-all medication. One of the positive things about Ecuador is that you don’t need a doctor’s prescription to get medication. You simply go to the pharmacist and ask for what you need. Plus, you can buy just the amount of pills you want without having to buy the package. In hindsight, I probably should have given a little thought to vocabulary words that I might need before I decided to go tackle the pharmacy head-on. However, when you feel like death, sometimes your mind is a bit cloudy. In Ecuador, there is a pharmacy on practically every corner. I just meandered around town until I found one that looked semi-legit. I happened upon a pharmacy called Health Health. “Yes,” I thought to myself, “ I need health!” I entered, walked straight up to the counter and said, “I need medicine.” This is when some foresight into Spanish vocab words might have been helpful because the conversation proceeded in the following form: Man: What kind of medicine do you need? Me: Stop me hurt. Man: Where do you hurt? Me: Me hurt here, said while pointing at my throat, then my head, then my nose, then my whole body. Man: What are your symptoms? Me: Hurt. Man: What? At this point finally a useful word popped into my head – Mucus. Me: Mucho mucus. With that, the man behind the counter typed something into his computer. Lord knows what he was typing. I think it must have been some sort of algorithm that he entered in and the computer solved it. 1 GRINGA + HURT + MUCUS = 32 cents. After about thirty seconds he looked up at me and said it would cost 32 cents a pill. I asked to see the box of the pills that I was about to bet my life on. Of course, there were no directions about how to take the pill or about side effects. On the side of the box was simply written “Made in Ecaudor” and the name of the drug, MUCOXIN. Now the words “made in Ecuador” would normally make me quite nervous, but I was desperate. I decided that MUCOXIN sounded enough like Mucus and Toxin that indeed, this would surely either kill all the mucus in my body or at least take me down in the process. I’ve been talking the pills for a day now. I still feel like death, but at least I’m not dead yet.

No Class Today

This morning I was waiting outside of my classroom, going over my lesson plans. There was an awful smell about the halls, but considering there are strange smells all the time, I ignored it. One of my students walks up to me and asks, “Are we going to have class today?” I reply with a confident affirmative, and a strange look as to why my student would even ask if we have class. Out of a classroom near me walks one of my friends, Daniela, who teaches at UTA (University Technica Ambato). She asks if I am going to have class today. I say, yes, of course. She recommends that I cancel class. At this point, I am thoroughly confused and ask why. She replies, “Because there is a strike going on by the university students, and if you have class, other students will probably come into your class and make you stop teaching. There isn’t any physical danger, but it is probably better just to cancel class.” Figuring that her assessment of the situation is much better than mine, I cancel class. Sure enough, I walk outside the school and find the source of that awful smell, a burning tire. I’m glad I cancelled class. Apparently, the students were protesting the rise of bus prices from 20 cents to 25 cents because it affects how they can get to school. I don’t know students in US universities that get that passionate about any change in policy. I have heard of people pulling fire alarms to avoid taking an exam. But here, students, if you want me to cancel class, just burn a tire.

How I Got a Crack in my Crack

If there is one thing that I have learned in Ecuador, it’s that if someone offers you the chance at adventure, you take it. Stories are guaranteed to follow. However, this weekend, I learned a few more lessons that should qualify any adventure plans. On Saturday, Katie, a fellow volunteer, asked me if I would like to join her, Aubrey, and two of her students, Diego and Richard, on a caving trip. Apparently, one of her students is an outdoor adventure guide. Without asking too many details, I gladly accepted her invitation. I was told to bring a flashlight and a change of clothes. We would be driving an hour and a half to a place near Puyo (in the jungle) and then have a thirty-minute walk to get to the cave.

Lesson #1: Ask for more details. Firstly, what was supposed to be an hour and a half ride to Puyo turned into a two-hour forty-five minute excursion. Now, this may not have been bad in an SUV, but crammed three across in the back cab of a Ford Ranger, us girls were wanting of comfort. Of course, we had to stop at a grocery store for food, pick up one of our guide’s friends, another Diego, and make a stop in a random town for a spoon. Aubrey had the excellent idea of making tuna and Ritz crackers for a snack. However, we were lacking a spoon to mix the tuna and mayo together. We were not about to pay a dollar for plastic wear (yes, Ecuador makes you that cheap). Never fear, about twenty-minutes from the grocery store, on the road to Puyo, we stopped and waited for Diego to talk to someone in a house by the road. Diego returned to the car with a spoon, and we were on our way. In a town called Manta, we turned off the main road and started down dirt roads. Judging by the looks of the locals’ faces at the sight of gringos and the fact we were turning onto completely unmarked back roads, us gringas demised that we were not in Lonely Planet territory anymore. Finally, we found a small opening to a path through jungle foliage, parked our car, and were off. Thirty minutes into our hike I was informed that we actually had another hour of hiking to go to get to the cave. I knew I should have asked for more details. This brings me to lesson #2.

Lesson #2: When trekking in the rainforest, spend $5 on a pair of goulashes. I got the first inkling of trouble when we parked our car and our guide pulled out a pair of rain boots. I looked down at my Nike running shoes. Surely these would be enough, right? Wrong. What I had failed to take into account was the fact that regardless of how hot or dry it may be outside, the rainforest is always wet and muddy inside. The first part of the journey I stayed clean because we were walking on a logged path that kept us above the mud. However, whoever made that log path got lazy because half-way through the trip, the logs stopped, and the true adventure began. I spent the next forty-five minutes trying to walk so as to avoid the mud and keep my tennis shoes in a semi-wearable state. In true form, I was the first in our group to miss step. I stepped on what looked like solid ground but ended up planting myself ankle-deep in mud. And so the next forty-five minutes went. Our guide, armed with rain boots, trekked fearlessly through the mud. I followed, frequently misjudging the ground’s solidity. Katie and Aubrey elected me to go first behind our guide. I am pretty sure this was so that they could watch me find all of the soft spots and plaster myself with mud, but avoid the mud themselves. All I know is that by the time we finally got to the cave, I was covered in mud and Aubrey and Katie were dusting off their shoes.

Inside the cave was an amazing experience. Most of the time, we were on our hands and knees, crawling through crevices that I thought impassable. I was surprised at how much strength it took to maintain a push up position for even ten seconds. I resorted to crawling on my belly and back, although this was quite painful and complicated given that I was sliding over rocks, not a smooth surface. And there were bats. You could hear them shrieking and fluttering about, but mind you, this is a dark and scary cave. All I had was a flashlight, so the only way I could see the bats flying above my head was to shine my light at them. However, if my light was up, then I couldn’t see where I was crawling. Pressing on, I realized that there was fluttering above my head. Then I felt a sudden wind in the cave. No, it’s not the wind, it’s bat wings right beside my head. Then felt something brush my arms. Yes, you guessed it, bat wings. I’m not going to lie, it was definitely pretty scary, especially when I was in a crouched position and the bats were flying all around me. However, the bats were only the second scariest thing in the cave, the first was the water.

Imagine voluntarily going into freezing cold water, in the dark, trapped in a small space. That’s exactly what we did. Somehow, our guide managed to scoot through a watery pass on his feet, waddling through. Granted, even thought he was also probably 5’5” and sixty pounds lighter than me, how he managed to maintain an upright position is a mystery. I chose to swim. I got in a seal-like position and pushed myself through the water to the other side. I still have no idea how our guide made it on his feet because my head was almost scraping the top when I was doing the seal-style swim. We all emerged soaking and freezing on the other side of the pass but invigorated at having conquered the crevice.

The watery entrance lead us into a large cave where we could stand up and walk around. It was full of stalagmites, which were beautiful. I felt like I was in Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio, except this time I had been one of the first discovers of the cavern. After walking around a bit, we turned our lights off and spent a minute in silence and darkness. While I have done this activity before, its effect this time was just as powerful. Needless to say, I like the light.

Lesson #3: Plan your escape route wisely. After puttering around a bit, we headed out of the cave, which proved more taxing than the way in. Even though it was the exact same path, I think that by this point my body was exhausted, and the push up position proved quite a task. Finally, though, I was showered in the light of the cave’s entrance. One last challenge remained, getting out of the cave. There was a steep, slick rock face which we had to climb up to get out. Our guide, similar to Spiderman, easily scaled the rock face and waved from the top. Of course, being the guinea pig, I was next. Knowing how exhausted my body was, and my history of falling, I asked Aubrey to get at the end of the rock to break my fall in case I came sliding back down the rock face. Up the wall I went. Now, I use the term wall cautiously. A better description would be a rock slide that was slick and had no possible grips. I easily grabbed the first handhold and foothold which were off the slippery rock face. Then the guide pointed out a small elevated portion on the rock face where I should put my other foot. I put my foot on this upraised region and grabbed the waiting hand of my guide to help pull me out of the cave. But as I shifted my weight and searched for one last foothold, I slipped, turned over backward, landed with my buttocks on the one foothold that was elevated in the rock, and slid down the rock face. Luckily, Aubrey was there to break my fall. I just lay there, stunned for a few moments, not able to hold back the tears. Ouch! Being stubborn, I sucked it up and tried again, this time making it safely out of the cave. Once everyone was safely out of the cave (of course, no one else seemed to have any problems traversing the wall), I surveyed the damage. My arms were pretty well scratched up, my back was bleeding a little bit, and I knew by the pain in my lower back that bruises were already beginning to form. However, besides a lot of pain in my lower back, there appeared to be nothing broken or damaged too badly.

We started walking back to our car. This time, considering we were entirely filthy, we embraced the mud, getting calf-deep in the good stuff. Then, the rain came. Whereas on any other trip this probably would have been a huge pain, it came as an utter refreshment, making for a cool walk back to our car, not to mention an amazing life experience. However, back at the car, we had a problem. It was still raining, so we could not get dry and change our clothes. We hopped into the back of the pickup truck and headed to Rio Tigre, to warm up in the sauna, take a shower, and get back on the road toward Ambato. It was here, in the midst of changing, that I realized my rainforest wound was a bit more serious than I originally judged. After going to the bathroom, I wiped and realized that there was blood on the toilet paper. Knowing there was no biological reason for that to be happening, I thought for a second, and realized that when I fell of the rock, my butt crack had landed right on the foothold in the rock. The rock must have cut me open. How I managed to fall perfectly so that I cut myself perfectly in my crack, I have no idea. Luckily, the wound does not interfere with any of my bodily functions, but now I have a crack in my crack.