Clarifications

I realized a few facts might be useful in understanding the last post.

1. I am taking Kichwa and it is SO MUCH FUN. Jonathan is the only other American taking Kichwa but everyone else totally wishes they were!

2. Kichwa meets Monday from 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM and Wednesday from 5:00 – 6:30 PM. However, starting this week I will have a FLACSO class which overlaps with the Wednesday section. As a result, I (along with another girl who HAS ALREADY STUDIED LEVEL 1 KICHWA - why is life so unfair?) have a tutoring session with Jumandi on Mondays from 1:00 – 2:30 PM. Tomorrow is the first of these almost one-on-one tutoring sessions.

If I could choose to have an almost one-on-one tutoring session with James Franco or Jumandi, I would hands-down choose Jumandi. If I could choose to have an almost one-on-one tutoring session with Chuck Bass or Jumandi, I would still choose Jumandi. At the same time, Jumandi has the personality of Chuck Bass minus the endearing vulnerability. He is one demanding professor and as a result I have spent the last four days chanting Kichwa vocabulary to anyone who will listen. I have literally had dreams in which I study Kichwa vocabulary. Nevertheless, I’m almost positive that the minute I get to class my mind will go blank and I will be subject to that damning declaration: “Pero es tan faaaacil.” ¡Chuta!

Sumak!

I returned from our trip to Baños to find several emails a Facebook message or two demanding a long-overdue blog update. I now have pictures to post from both Cuenca and Baños, in addition to general updates about my classes, community service, friends, and host family (spoiler alert: I love them all).

Instead, I am going to write about a completely different subject. (Don't worry, the rest will come.) One of my favorite parts of travelling are the characters who make a brief appearance in my life and a somewhat longer stay in my imagination. I met three such characters on our trip to Baños.

1. Family from Otavalo:

Our first morning in Baños we woke up early (7:00 AM!) for a dip in the famous aguas thermales. As it turns out, we would need a lot of encouragement from the locals (some of us more than others) to make our way into the steaming water of the hot pool and then out into a freezing shower piped directly from the nearby cascadas. Apparently this is good for the circulation. In combination with our 12 mile bike ride and hike up thousands of stairs to a statue of La Virgen, I must have improved my cardiovascular health tenfold. (Unfortunately, these improvements are probably canceled out by the lure of fresh bread and happy pancake hour – oh happy pancake hour!). Whenever I have to do anything physically demanding here, my mind always goes directly to what Mrs. Weaver (a teacher at my former elementary school) told me when she heard Quito is located at an altitude of about 9,000 feet: “You’re going to be building so many red blood cells!” It is my mantra, particularly when my knee is aching and my lungs are about to burst: “SO... MANY... RED... BLOOD... CELLS...” Incidentally, I have rediscovered (or perhaps newly discovered) a love for being covered in sweat and sunscreen and dirt and rain. There is something deeply satisfying about being grimy and tired. After our hike in Las Cajas (an adventure I have yet to recount to most of you) I resolved to spend more time in that state. That said, there is also something deeply satisfying about complaining loudly about being grimy and tired with the group. And something deeply satisfying about taking a shower after being grimy and tired. Maybe it has to do with the overall deeply satisfying sensation of being in Ecuador.

To return to the subject at hand: after the hot-cold shock to our systems, we spent a few hours floating in the larger, lukewarm pool of mineral water. While there, I overheard a group of people speaking Kichwa. I turned to Jonathan, whose command of the language is already infinitely better than mine, with an enthusiastic: “Go say hi!” He refused, so I had to take matters into my own hands. I approached the one who seemed closest to my own age and launched with a rapid-fire: “¿Hablas Kichwa? Ñuka shutika Palomami kan.” His response? “Chevere” of course. I made a few mistakes, but overall did well, especially when it came to my age. After literally hours of practice, this is the one thing I can say almost perfectly: “Ñukaka ISHKAY CHUNKA SHUK watata charini!” He was so impressed that he made me repeat it to his entire family.

My favorite part of the conversation, all conducted while drifting through the mineral water, was when he asked where I was studying the language. I mentioned Jumandi and his younger brother’s ears perked up. “You know Jumandi? He’s famous!” However he declined to tell me and Jonathan (who by this point had made his way over) exactly why Jumandi is famous in Otavalo, leading us to believe that he may in fact be infamous. (For those of you who don’t yet know, Jumandi is our Kichwa professor. He’s 23 and began the first class with chankar, a term similar to spooning that is a particular favorite among virtually all ecuatorianos.) Over the course of an hour, we learned that our new friend (also ichkay chunka shuk) works as a mechanic in Spain, where he lives with his wife – a fellow ecuatoriana whom he met while studying in Madrid. We also learned that he can hold his breath under water for 1 minute and 19 seconds, an impressive feat. I came in second with 49 seconds, way ahead of all the other gringos. Being tired and hungry and pruning from overexposure to the water, I was bordering on grouchy, a rare thing here. The competition, silly but fun, snapped me right out of my impending bad mood. Thanks, Otavaleño guy whose name I never quite caught!

Side note: As I’m typing this, I’m starting another cup of instant coffee. My host mother has just announced that I’ve officially cleaned out the supply that they’ve had for years. She is considering learning how to make real coffee (here called pasada, filtrada, o esencia) because instant just doesn’t seem to satisfy my caffeine addiction. I'm not sure how to feel about this.

I have ton of homework left to do (or rather start), so for the moment I’m going to leave you all hanging in regards to the other two Baños characters: Paxton from Kentucky and José the fire juggler. To be continued!

P.S. The title of this post, sumak, is the Kichwa version of chevere. If you haven't already memorized the meaning of chevere (cool, awesome, neat) please do so now because I am going to be using it for the rest of my life.

Dirty Dancing: Ecuadorian Afternoons

The girls and Jonathan have decided to join one of Universidad Politécnica Salesiana’s cultural groups, Danza Tropical. Anna and I arrived to our first lesson dressed in our ropa deportiva, just as Marco instructed us: spandex and sneakers. As far as I can tell, the primary function of this clothing was to make us that much easier to identify among the well-heeled students. We were awaiting Marco in the hallway outside the cultural center when two boisterous guys sporting tight-fitting t-shirts and cigarettes rolled up to us with delight: Ah, here are the gringas! Before their arrival, Anna had confided that she was nervous to dance with the more rhythmically-inclined Ecuatorianos. Me, I hadn’t put too much thought into it, save fleeting visions of Diego Luna in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. But these guys are not of the same ilk as Diego Luna with his perfect bone structure and halting smile. They’re built more like football players than anything else. And they’re my height. Sure I’m a gringa with absolutely no experience and an injured knee, but for the fleeting minutes in which we collected audio equipment from a dank basement and trucked it over to the cafeteria, I was sure this going to be a cinch.

In Ecuador, the ability to dance is absolutely crucial for dating success. In fact, so much so that I didn’t have to work hard to convince my host brother to taking extra salsa lessons with me. He knows he needs them if he’s going to have any real prospects. I imagine that it’s for this reason that even burly guys like these can shake their hips like nobody’s business. Marco began the lesson with some easy moves for those of us who, and he didn’t mince his words here, can’t dance because we’re from the United States. After a few jumps, my knee was aching but I was grinning with that dumb smile that seems to make an appearance so often here. All my hard work learning jazz squares for my eighth-grade performance of The Music Man was finally paying off. I could do this. Then the real dancing started. Everyone partnered up and I was paired with David, the burliest and of course the best dancer of the group. Perhaps forgetting that I am indeed a gringa (they had all smiled when I said my name) he attempted to lead normally at first. Then he took a step back and showed me the rhythm. Twice. Three times. After the fourth attempt this way, he spun me around, grabbed my hips, and attempted to physically guide me through the motions. From my many viewings of Dirty Dancing I knew to expect this kind of close contact and remained calm. For a few minutes at least. However, unlike Romola Garai’s character, at no point did I start to get the hang of the moves despite his best efforts. Finally, I had to face him and announce that I am not, in fact, Shakira. And this was the first time since we had been partnered that he cracked a smile. Despite my Argentine heritage, I will probably never be able to tango. But my fiery Latina personality will make up for it. Right?

Even more embarrassing was the fact that we were practicing in a room made of glass. The glass functioned like a mirror, so I could see from every angle just how awkward I really was. And so could the group of 20 or so students that had been playing basketball in the adjacent court. They spent what felt like hours standing outside the huge windows with wry smiles. Luckily, Jonathan and I had to leave early for a meeting about our Kichwa class. When we returned, Anna and the rest of the group were doing some incredibly complicated circular dance that I couldn’t even follow visually. I was enjoying a sense of relief that I would have week to practice in front of my mirror at home when Marco announced that we would all be meeting up Saturday for conditioning. This includes lunch, rugby, capture-the-flag, sprinting, and swimming. I’m slightly concerned that I may spend most of my time here in Ecuador on crutches. But I’m also delighted for another chance to hang out with this affable and open group.

I have tons more to update about classes and I’m working on posts about our adventures in Cuenca and thoughts about Quito, which I’ll try to put up as soon as possible. But I just had to share a bit about Danza Tropical, or as I like to refer to it in my head Dirty Dancing: Ecuadorian Afternoons.

Mindo

Hi all. I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post - we have been very busy! I'm heading to Cuenca with the four other Americans this weekend. It's Ecuador's third-largest city and supposedly the most beautiful. It's also about a 10 hour bus ride through the Andes. We're leaving tonight, so I won't have a chance to update for most of the weekend. I promise I'll put up some more general reflections regarding the country and the people soon, but for now I wanted to post a few photos from our last trip, to Mindo - two hours north of Quito, in the cloud forest. Classes and service-learning start next week. In between salsa lessons, museums, and nights out on the town I don't know how I'll ever manage to fit them in! WOW! Anyway, here are the photos:

Okay, so this photo is not technically from Mindo. Instead, it was taken during a lunch Juan's house. Juan is our program director. He lives in Guapalo, an older part of Quito located on the side of a cliff. As a group, we concluded that his backyard looks like the Swiss Alps meets ancient Greece meets, well, Ecuador of course. It's absolutely gorgeous. I love this photo of us and I loved the lunch, a traditional coastal meal shared with high-ranking officials of Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS), one of the universities where we'll be taking courses. We had the chance to discuss not only potential courses and extracurriculars, but also favorite Ecuadorian slang. I lamented the fact that everyone drinks instant here and one of the women promised me coffee anytime I drop by her office, fresh from her husband's organic coffee farm on the coast.

Me and Anna on our way to our hotel in Mindo.

One of the many great cloud forest views from the cabaña I shared with Anna and Mariel.

The main lodge where we lounged in hammocks during the day and played candelit chess at night.

Anna and Maribel walking to our cabaña from the main lodge.

Philip showing us all how to get a butterfly to eat banana from your fingers. The woman in the background is Jimena, one of the awesome-incredible-fantastic-amazing-there-aren't-enough-superlatives-in-the-world-to-do-justice program coordinators.

And me with a beautiful ojo de bujo!

Avi, me, and Anna.

This photo was half an hour in the making. Butterflies are beautiful, but so very fickle.

This is the garden adjacent to the lodge. All our vegetarian meals came fresh from here!

Our guide, Fernando, taking us on a short hike to learn about some of the most common cloud forest plant species.

Covered in mud, but having a great time: Johnathan, Lolo (another program coordinator), and Mariel.

Survivor: Ecudaor.

Our guides were amazing! They somehow managed to navigate six novices down the rocky Mindo River – and trust me, it looked like hard work.

Tubing in the Mindo River: So. Much. Fun. There's really nothing more I can say.

About to zip-line! I didn’t realize that Philip was taking this photo, but I’m glad he did because I can recount the conversation verbatim. Me: I’m not going to die? Fernando: It’s not your time. Me: Promise? Fernando: I promise. Me: ¿Estás segura? Fernando: Seguro, por favor. I can’t translate the last two lines without some explanation. I was so nervous that I could barely talk and I accidentally referred to him as female. His response made me laugh and I felt better about jumping off a cliff with nothing but a single cable for support.

Here I go!

Please note that Philip is not wearing shoes.

Fernando is 22, but one of the other guides teased him for acting like a kid on the ropes. In this photo, he's is doing all kind of ridiculous acrobatics while adjusting his harness mid-air. You know - just chilling.

Posing in front of the final line! In the background, you can see Lolo is already on her way.

iPero qué chévre!

I’m in laying in bed, and for once it’s quiet. No festivals for carnaval. No dogs barking incessantly from nearby rooftops. No one playing basketball in the court below my window. It has finally rained and Quito is calm. When I first saw the view from my window, I was sure it had to be one of the best Quito could offer. I’m on the third floor of a very narrow but cozy house. My host sister and I are the only ones who occupy this floor, although aside from our rooms and a bathroom, there is only about 30 square feet of floor so to speak. The view from my window is of rolling green mountains with dramatic gorges, and a small waterfall here and there. And all up the sides, like some new species of tree, or at night light like thousands entrails of light, are houses painted in pink and blue and green pastel colors. The windows occupy a little over two-thirds the length and half the height of one wall. Every time I walk into my room, I am shocked by the view. But I have come to realize that breathtaking vistas are around virtually every corner here.

I started grinning stupidly on the plane, the type of grin that you just can’t wipe off your face, and it’s made the occasional appearance ever since. The families are so welcoming to all the students and know how to have a good time. I love talking with all of them, whether about intellectual pursuits or why failing to look someone in the eye will result in bad sex for seven years. They’re always making jokes, and they dance like crazy. And the weather is amazing. Every time my host family traces out a route for me, I think, “Oh, this is going to be terrible in the winter.” It’s a long-ingrained habit formed by inherent pessimism and cold climate. Then, with a start, I realize: No. It IS winter. It’s always like this. Even the rain is beautiful. When it rained earlier today, I could see how the clouds descended upon the mountain and houses. I’ve only ever seen clouds and drops of rain. But here, I could see the entire transition, how wisps of clouds touched the ground. I never knew.

I have a bad habit of comparing it to Argentina in my mind. It’s definitely different. Some of the words I use don’t translate in Ecuador. People are more punctual (although certainly not punctual by any standards in the United States). They eat dinner around 6:30 or 7:00 PM. They drink agua sin gas. But some things are similar. Greetings are one example. When you enter a room, you must greet everyone individually with a kiss on the cheek. If you don’t, you are maleducada (badly educated). The same goes for when you leave a room. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of life in Ecuador. There is no such thing as slinking in late or making a quick getaway. You have to interact. The same goes for meals: eating seems to be only an excuse for long conversations that can stretch hours into the night. People are much closer to their families here. My host brother, Miguel, is 31 and studying to be a diplomat. He lives at home, and it’s just a given that he will continue to do so until he is married. And maybe even afterward, if there’s room. Children are enormously affectionate with their parents, holding hands, stroking hair, sharing plates of food, constant kissing. At first it made me a little bit uncomfortable, but it’s really just another way of expressing familial bonds.

There are a ton of adventures and experiences to share already. I’m listening to Radiohead’s “The Tourist” and reminding myself to slow down a bit. There will be plenty of time to try everything. Since I can’t possibly explain everything we’ve done and seen, I will share just a bit through pictures.


The view from my window! You can’t tell in the photo, but I can see the volcano Cotapaxi in the distance.



Me with my host sister, or ñaña in quichua. Her name is Maribel; she’s 24 and studying to be a pediatrician. We’re in Parque Ichimba, a hill which overlooks much of the city and has some nice foliage and birds.



Maribel and me with my host mom, María Luisa. To the right you can see the famous statue, La virgin del panecillo. La colina (hill) is shaped like bread – hence, panecillo. My host dad, Miguel, says that this was an important religous center for indigenous groups prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who claimed it as their own.



The whole group of study abroad students at the equator. From left to right are Avi, Mariel, Anna, Jonathan, and me. Anna is standing directly on the equator. Avi and Mariel are in the Northern hemisphere, Jonathan and I are in the Southern hemisphere.

Mariel and Anna experimenting with the lack of gravity!



Cuy vivos.



Cuy muertos. Delicacy!

Me at the equator again, with the world in the palm of my hand.

Anna and I celebrating carnaval! Random strangers spray you with carioca (a colored foam something like soap) and attack you with bottles of water. This is still at the Mitad del Mundo, and we were listening to Trio Colonial, a famous group that plays traditional Ecuadorian music. The guy in the background is Phillip, Jonathan’s host brother. He’s the only host sibling that hangs out with the whole group of us... and such an instigator. He ran out of water, so he dumped an entire glass of beer on me. Afterward, we went directly to Mariel’s host family’s house for a dance party until about 9:00 PM, so I was sticky for HOURS. But I’m a big fan of Phillip – all the girls are. ;-) I'm also a big fan of his dad, Carlos. Everyone calls him Carlitos. He’s so much fun! I have had lots of good conversations with him about linguistics and Ecuadorian politics. And he’s such a prankster. He told all the college students that he wanted them to feel comfortable at the party, so he suggested beer pong. We all got really quiet and he said, “Oh you’re right, we don’t have beer. Wine pong!!” We didn’t play wine pong, but they made us a delicious drink with wine, honey, and spices – heated.

Almost everything here is delicious! Yucca, and all kinds of fruit that don’t even translate into English. There’s something they call the golden berry, because it’s so healthy. It looks a little like a yellow cherry tomato and tastes sweet and sour at the same time. And there's granadilla, which seems to me like a pomegrante-kiwi-orange hybrid. Love it.

The dogs outside are at again and I'm exhausted, so that's all for now. Besos a todos en los EEUU.