silent night? PLEASE?!?!

So downstairs in the living room there is an infernally tacky fake Christmas tree. Watching Enrique screw in each plastic branch was beyond hilarious for this girl, who grew up in the woods. The lights flash, the included ornaments are all the same, and the thing PLAYS MUSIC. If you can call it that-- it has a repertoire of six or seven Christmas songs, and plays no more than one chorus of each before seamlessly moving on to the next, all in that horrible a-rhythmic style of electronically synthesized monophonic crap. This thing plays constantly from dusk until bedtime-- or if Enrique falls asleep watching TV or listening to the radio, it never gets shut off. Mind you, it is a full two floors below and a whole house across from me, and I can't get "Jingle Bells" out of my damn head. UGH.

esa cosa que me hiciste, mami, me gustó

Wow, I have been really terrible at blogging. Whatever.

Got back from the Galápagos yesterday, and WOW. Tons and tons of animals, and the most stunning landscapes I've ever seen-- on ISLANDS, no less. You can see why I liked it. Puerto Ayora reminded me so much of MDI, except with that unmistakable Ecuadorian flair. More than anywhere else in Ecuador, I really want to figure out a way to go back for a long time. Of course, the Galápagos are the hardest place to be allowed to live... I guess I never have tried to make things easy on myself.

Quito life is definitely old, but I'll be out of here in twelve days. And I'll miss a lot of things it when I'm gone, I'm sure. Salsa class, for one. We've gotten good enough that I think it'd be feasible to go to a salsateca and not look like complete fools, so I think that'll be a project for the next twelve days.

For the past couple weeks I've been teaching English at an educational recovery center for kids with learning disabilities or behavioral problems and are therefore in danger of needing to repeat a year of school. At first, we had six- and seven-year-olds (who can't read or write yet in Spanish, much less English, and were complete terrors), but those were replaced with entirely manageable nine- and ten-year-olds, and a pack of hilarious thirteen-year-old girls. It's pretty intense sometimes, but such a valuable experience.

Two side benefits of teaching at that school: walking past the cafe with the best cappuccino in Ecuador every morning, and discovering a place with eighty-cent haircuts. I am intrigued, and my hair does need cutting. I think I'm going to go tomorrow after teaching at the school. This ludicrously cheap haircut could turn out horribly badly, but if so-- I'll be home in under three weeks and can get it fixed. Wish me luck...

changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

Well, shit. It's been a while. Highlights of the past... almost month. Jesus.

-Panama: Robbie and I flew out of Quito after braving Latin American bureaucracy yet again (how did we think that everything was going to go smoothly?!?). Spent the night in glitzy Panama City, and watched the Sox game in a Colombian restaurant/bar. Next morning, we flew to Bocas del Toro, Panama, on the Caribbean coast, where my dad was hanging on a 82-foot catamaran owned by a friend of his. My dad thought he was coming down to help set up a charter business or something of the sort, but his ludicrously wealthy friend just kind of wanted a vacation buddy, apparently. So we hung out in Bocas del Toro, where it was gloriously hot and where there was endless water. My first time in the Caribbean, and I could totally get used to it. Made me even more sure that I have to spend at least a couple years of my life bumming around on boats. It's like the regular traveling we do by bus, but you have a safe place to keep your shit, a bed to sleep in every night, and a guaranteed mode of transportation. Swimming, snorkeling, sailing, lounging, chilling with my daddy... it was quite the fantastic weekend. Due to plane shit, we decided to delay our return by a day. Quito wasn't stacking up so well against living on an obscenely large boat in the tropics.

-We were in Quito for a grand total of 40 hours before hopping on a bus to the Amazon region. It was way cool, and made me hate oil companies even more than I already did. We saw these former oil pools operated by Texaco that are just oozing toxic shit into the environment because Texaco didn't fix them, just threw a bunch of grass and trees on top. Cancer rates are skyrocketing. The weirdest part is that within Parque Nacional Yasuní, there's an oil company drilling. All of the security going into the national park is for the benefit of the oil company. Not sure how oil exploitation and preservation of nature are compatible, but, hell, it's Ecuador, and nothing makes sense.

-Marcelina, the empleada in my house, went back to the Oriente. Apparently this was because her mother is going blind and needs extra help, or something. More like, as my host grandpa reminded me, "She was really young... not even fifteen yet." Uh, yes, I noticed; are you surprised that child labor backfired on you? The family is supposedly looking for another one, but good empleadas are hard to find if you want to pay them almost nothing and have them live in a closet attached to your house. This means that I've been getting hot dogs for dinner almost every night. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I even used to like hot dogs-- they were my favorite food as a little kid-- but these are horrible. The other option for dinner is Kraft macaroni and cheese, something I'd had maybe once or twice in my life before coming here (we're an all-Annie's family back home). The artificiality is a bit disconcerting, but it's a billion times better than those godawful hot dogs with french fries.

-Salsa lessons have been going spectacularly, and it doesn't hurt that our teacher is absolutely adorable. Last week we learned a bunch of slightly off-color pasos. Among the names: Yogurt, La Verde, El Blanco. Drug or sex references all, and hilarious. Salsa class is definitely a highlight of Tuesday nights.

Okay. Running out of blogging steam, so there's what's been up with me.

all the women who're independent, throw your hands up at me

So Ecuador is great, in general. BUT-- I never realized how much independence I'd be giving up by coming here and living with a host family. I always thought that studying abroad would be a great exercise in GAINING independence: living in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, learning how to navigate a foreign culture. I'm doing all of those things, but I still feel like I'm back in middle school.

Part of it is living at home with a family and going to classes at a university during the day. Ecuadorian kids don't leave home until they get married, usually, and sometimes not even then, so dependency upon parental units is extended for much longer than we're used to living in the US. College here is simply an extension of high school and is not the leaving-the-nest experience it was for me going to Wes. Not living with a couple thousand people my own age is quite the switch. The family life in general is mostly fine-- my family basically lets me do where I want, and I can come home at night whenever (since they're always asleep anyway and have no idea when I come in), which is better than the situations some other people on my program have.

The most difficult aspect is food, and the total lack of agency over what and when I eat. I think I violated some huge taboo by offering to help out with dinner or with washing dishes afterward-- that's the domain of the fourteen-year-old empleada, Marcelina. Being waited on by a fourteen-year-old is beyond awkward. As soon as I finish my food, I always leap up to bring my dishes to the kitchen, so that my host grandparents won't yell for Marcelina to come into the dining room and clear my place. Without fail, my grandmother Olga tells me to just leave my plate, and chuckles ruefully when I insist on bringing it to the sink myself.

And the food itself... I certainly couldn't have done any better when I was fourteen, but it's not usually particularly appealing. I also can't serve myself what I want to eat, I'm just presented with a plate heaped with eight types of carbs, some funky meat, and, if I'm lucky, vegetables. "¡No quieres comer nada!" says Olga, indignantly, and... right. I don't want to eat most of this food, but I do, to be polite, and because it's free. Breakfast is equally befuddling, because I usually find a cold scrambled egg waiting for me when I come downstairs. Why I can't scramble my own goddamn egg--if I even want one-- is beyond me.

What's more, the Ecuadorian concept of nutrition is laughably tenuous. Once at lunch, Olga asked me what I felt like eating for dinner that night, and I told her that I had really liked the spaghetti with veggies we had eaten the night before. "But it'll make you fat!" she said, although I've never once mentioned being concerned about my weight. "Doesn't matter," I replied, chomping on the pancito (a roll made from white flour) that my grandpa Enrique practically force-fed me, claiming it was "rico" and wouldn't make me fat because it's made from water. "But you also like hot dogs and fries, right?" RIGHT. Because hot dogs and fries won't make me fat, but pasta with veggies will? Okay. Papaya, they claim, is good for my brain and will make me smarter.

Eating out as frequently as possible alleviates some of this frustration: the simple act of selecting what I feel like eating is a joy. Even better is actually COOKING my own food. At Juan's house on Friday morning, I was elated to sautee veggies and scramble eggs. Sunday evening, it felt amazing to chop carrots for a real salad. Juan, with all of his international-man-of-mystery worldliness, was still surprised by all of us creating such a feast. "¡La cocinera!," he exclaimed, clapping on me on the back as I poked at a chicken kebab on the grill, commending me for my domestic skills. Um, okay, thanks, but none of this is actually difficult, and I'm certainly not a good example of a domestic goddess. I know I make a mean s'more, but seriously. Ecuadorians just don't particularly seem to care about doing things for themselves. I, on the other hand, really do, and I'm going to have to figure out a way to be a more active participant in my own feeding before I go crazy.

ode to the perfect footwear

I've decided that Chacos are the absolute perfect footwear for South America. I bought them on a whim near the end of the summer, since I had been making money, damn it, and they were just so COOL. Well. Great idea, because these shoes do everything, including come out of a spectacular bike crash unscathed. In Baños I nearly died while biking in a downpour through a tunnel-- didn't know there was a drainage ditch on the edge of the road inside the tunnel, and there were no lights, and we couldn't see anything at all, and I rode my bike into aforementioned drainage ditch and went flying. As I was doing damage assessment, my friend Beth (biking behind me) started yelling at me to get out of the way, because a huge truck had just entered the tunnel, without headlights, and couldn't see me sprawled in the middle of the road. I aborted damage assessment, figuring that I'd find out soon enough whether my extremities were all functional, and hauled my bike and myself off to the side of the road, averting disaster. I was very minimally hurt (scrapes, nothing else), and it's a great story, so I think I won. I guess that the accident doesn't actually have anything to do with my footwear, except that I was shocked that they didn't even get dirty, and it was great that I was wearing sandals due to the abominable weather.

And I've gone on many an impromptu hike over uneven terrain and through waterfalls in these bad girls-- hell, even walking along Quito city streets practically requires hiking footwear, the sidewalks are so unpredictably uneven-- and they've been fab. They also look pretty freaking snazzy when clipped to the daisy chain on my Cotopaxi pack with a carabiner. Heh. Wonderful.

almost a month, holy shit!

I don't ever regret going out. I think this means I should do it more.

Juan's party last weekend remains the most ridiculous gathering I've been to in a very very long time. There is really nothing more to say, so please investigate the photos on Facebook. Same with the orange-throwing parade in Guápulo. Ludicrous. And I was propositioned by a clown, for the first and probably last time ever.

Last night at dinner at Mango Tree, I was thrilled beyond belief to eat a good salad with real, non-iceberg lettuce, and CUCUMBERS. Cucumbers are by far my favorite salad component, but somehow here they're not considered standard. It's amazing how some lovely green leaf lettuce totally made my night. I don't get nearly enough raw vegetables.

El Bungalow made my night all over again, by playing their usual mix of hilariously bad/amazing pop from the United States with late 80s and early 90s hits (ahem, "Sweet Dreams"). Jodie got us in the door immediately, without cover charge, by appealing to the bouncer: "Pero venimos cada miércoles, y NUNCA tenemos que esperar!". Fantastic. I've studiously developed my ability to give off Very Unapproachable Vibes while dancing alone, because the vast majority of men in clubs are horribly sketchy, and not even interesting, and I definitely don't want to dance with them, but it's usually impossible to decline politely.

Went to the gym at Hotel Quito, the fancy hotel and casino that's closer to my house here than Freeman is to OutHouse. Convenient as it could possibly be, which is a Very Good Thing, because I've resolved to kick my ass this semester and return to the team faster than ever. I guess the gym at the hotel is really more of an excercise room, but it's housed in this funny tropical cabana-type building next to the outdoor pool. There is a very rickety staircase to a tiny loft where the ellipticals and stationary bikes are, and the free weights, treadmills, mats, etc., are all downstairs. E! Entertainment Television is on the TVs, and Latin club mixes are on the radio. There are cubbies. It's sunny. I like it. What I don't like is the dearth of oxygen way up here in the mountains, because I sure as hell should be able to do more than 20 minutes on the elliptical without getting totally winded.

Tonight, at the free jazz concert at Teatro Sucre, Courtney and I befriended a group of mildly drunk guys who nevertheless were incredibly nice and surprisingly non-creepy. They were passing around a fifth of what seemed to be the equivalent of peach schnapps, except they had it wrapped up in a little black plastic bag so that the label couldn't be seen. I asked them about this, and they said it was so that people would maybe think they were drinking whiskey or something more manly than peach schnapps. Heh. The music itself was hilarious, both because Quito's symphonic band just can't swing (I was really quite disappointed, I was hoping that the legendary ritmo latino would translate into jazz, but apparently not), and because they played everything from "Spain" (Chick Corea) to "Sing Sing Sing" (Benny Goodman) to "Zoot Suit Riot" (Cherry Poppin' Daddies) to "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) to that country song where the guy has a fiddle duel with the devil. It was such a bizarre confluence of styles, but the Ecuadorians didn't bat an eye, just like they think queso fresco is actually good.

Seriously, that cheese. As we like to say, it tastes like goats smell. And that's just no good.

Heading to Baños tomorrow-- I'm psyched to have planned this trip mostly myself, but we shall see how it goes. Doubly psyched about using my new 40L Cotopaxi pack, which cost all of $30. Yes.

sometimes i can't catch my breath, and it's not just the altitude

Wooo, time flies.

Going to the beach (Same, in Esmeraldas province, on the Northern coast) was by far the most relaxing thing I've done in years. I had literally nothing to do for two and a half days, and that itself was beautiful. And the Pacific Ocean! My first time ever in that particular body of water, and I think I'm a fan for life. Unlike the horribly cold, violent Northern Atlantic, the Pacific at that particular part of the Ecuadorian coast is wonderfully warm and gentle, with absolutely ideal waves for body surfing. I let the salt and sand accumulate in my hair all weekend, wanting somehow to take the ocean with me back to the dry Andes.

The place we stayed was a hilarious mix of impossibly gorgeous and run-down. Non-functional lights in our room, a pool without water, mosquito nets with gaping holes, but-- thatched roofs. Coconut trees. Sand. HAMMOCKS. Oh, the hammocks. I spent hours in a hammock by the ocean, reading, writing, and dreaming the day away. Glorious.

Also, classes at PUCE started Monday-- so far, so good. I'm particularly thrilled about Socioetnolingüística, which is every bit as esoteric as it sounds, as well as being fantastically namby-pamby in that an objective of the class is to seek the development of true interculturality, where various cultures are valued as integral and necessary parts of a collective national consciousness. Yes.

Tonight was the first meeting of the year of el club de andinísmo at PUCE. It's an outing club, but hardcore as all hell. I'm psyched. They have a super cool meeting room decorated with worn-out gear, Tibetan prayer flags, maps, and posters of mountains signed by famous mountaineers. And at the end of the meeting the leaders asked if anyone had any unrelated announcements, and one woman stood up to tell everyone about what sounded like a composting workshop next weekend. Clearly I have found my group of people.