x-posted at my livejournal:
I just HAD to record this conversation (and remember this is all taking place in Spanish):
Today I was sitting on a very, very tiny child's chair today at the day-care for mentally disabled children and one of the employees looked at me and said, out of the blue: "Sarita, I like your thighs."
There was a long, long pause, as I tried to sort out what I had just heard. "What?"
"Your thighs."
Awkward smile. "I don't understand. My thighs?"
"Yes!"
I looked down at my jeans. My legs looked like...legs. Normal. "...what about them?"
"I like them."
"You like my thighs. Um. Why?"
She beamed at me. "Because they are so big and round! My thighs are so skinny, it's terrible. I wish I had thighs like yours."
"Uh, thank you? You know, in my country, it's much better to have thighs like yours. Only skinny is pretty."
"Fat isn't pretty??????"
They were truly surprised. Now granted, being huge isn't attractive here, but there is definitely the mindset that a little meat on your bones is a good thing. This is why, when I first arrived in Ecuador, my host family used to exclaim: "Eat more! You're too thin, you look sick!" and months later, when they saw me again and I had gained at least 10 pounds, everyone had to say: "You gained weight! You're mas gordita! How wonderful!" and pinch my stomach.
(And here I'm inserting the obligatory clarification: I am not fat, or overweight. I am a nice, normal size, which in America means I could stand to lose 10 pounds, but in Ecuador means I'm skinny as hell. Except, I guess, for my thighs.)
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sooooo.... guess it's time I update, eh?
It's been almost four months since my last update, so thank Gill for bringing that to my attention. Truth is, I don't really know what to post anymore. Things are kind of blurry for me right now, like life is sliding by and I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to grasp moments and memories.
I went to Cuenca in May, for "resiliency training", aka, "how not to ET training." It was (surprise surprise!) boring as hell, but while in Cuenca I got to hang out with some amazing people and see what is truly the most beautiful city in Ecuador.
My birthday was in June, during mid-service (boring, but mercifully short), and some people from my Omnibus surprised me with a chocolate-covered apple, a mini bottle of wine, and a big bottle of vodka, which we all shared. I am in awe of the people in Peace Corps-- I swear it draws the best of the USA.
Big bro came to visit for the whole month of June, but besides saying we went to the beach and attempted to surf (I actually managed to stand up a few times!), I can't get into details here. Maybe next year... but let's just say it was awesome.
I've been writing A LOT. Nothing exciting (fanfiction, doncha know, aka I've developed an obsessive love of Supernatural), but I've realized that writing fun stories is so, so good for me. Not only does it allow me to have fun on otherwise boring days and get some positive feedback online, but it also allows me to percolate on original ideas that are lingering in the back of my mind. My brother actually inspired me during his visit, and now I have the plot for a possible book that is quietly putting itself into place while I write other stories. I'm super-excited about this -- Dangerous People was my one good idea, and now that I've written it I was afraid inspiration wouldn't strike again.
I just got ordained online (apparently I can absolve your sins now), so I can officiate my sister's wedding in a few months. I'm also looking up plane fares online, and will be home for a week at the end of September/beginning of October. Plus, only nine months left of Peace Corps!
As for daily living... things have slowed down... a lot. The volcano erupted, which is kind of cool, but mostly irritating. About 50% of my work was in a town called El Triunfo, and I can no longer go there because I have to go through Banos, and that's off-limits because of the volcano. Also, school is out for the summer, so there goes another 25% of my work. Plus, my community contacts aren't getting back to me, so...you get the idea. I'm trying to plan new things, get involved with new projects, because damnit, I only have nine months left and I want to be able to say that I accomplished SOMETHING in the Peace Corps.
Oh, and I joined the newly-restarted newspaper, El Clima, though exactly what I'm supposed to be doing on it I'm still a little unclear. Hmmm....
What else is new? Spent the forth of July in my apartment, feeling sick, but on the 10th there is a gringo get-together in Rio Bamba complete with picnic food and fireworks that I hope to go to. If that falls through I'll go to a picnic in Cayambe on the ninth. I've (finally) started exercising again. I found sour cream for the first time in 16 months (Wooo!). I'm signing up for the GRE's as soon as they open for registration. I'm getting by. And...that's life in Ecuador.
I went to Cuenca in May, for "resiliency training", aka, "how not to ET training." It was (surprise surprise!) boring as hell, but while in Cuenca I got to hang out with some amazing people and see what is truly the most beautiful city in Ecuador.
My birthday was in June, during mid-service (boring, but mercifully short), and some people from my Omnibus surprised me with a chocolate-covered apple, a mini bottle of wine, and a big bottle of vodka, which we all shared. I am in awe of the people in Peace Corps-- I swear it draws the best of the USA.
Big bro came to visit for the whole month of June, but besides saying we went to the beach and attempted to surf (I actually managed to stand up a few times!), I can't get into details here. Maybe next year... but let's just say it was awesome.
I've been writing A LOT. Nothing exciting (fanfiction, doncha know, aka I've developed an obsessive love of Supernatural), but I've realized that writing fun stories is so, so good for me. Not only does it allow me to have fun on otherwise boring days and get some positive feedback online, but it also allows me to percolate on original ideas that are lingering in the back of my mind. My brother actually inspired me during his visit, and now I have the plot for a possible book that is quietly putting itself into place while I write other stories. I'm super-excited about this -- Dangerous People was my one good idea, and now that I've written it I was afraid inspiration wouldn't strike again.
I just got ordained online (apparently I can absolve your sins now), so I can officiate my sister's wedding in a few months. I'm also looking up plane fares online, and will be home for a week at the end of September/beginning of October. Plus, only nine months left of Peace Corps!
As for daily living... things have slowed down... a lot. The volcano erupted, which is kind of cool, but mostly irritating. About 50% of my work was in a town called El Triunfo, and I can no longer go there because I have to go through Banos, and that's off-limits because of the volcano. Also, school is out for the summer, so there goes another 25% of my work. Plus, my community contacts aren't getting back to me, so...you get the idea. I'm trying to plan new things, get involved with new projects, because damnit, I only have nine months left and I want to be able to say that I accomplished SOMETHING in the Peace Corps.
Oh, and I joined the newly-restarted newspaper, El Clima, though exactly what I'm supposed to be doing on it I'm still a little unclear. Hmmm....
What else is new? Spent the forth of July in my apartment, feeling sick, but on the 10th there is a gringo get-together in Rio Bamba complete with picnic food and fireworks that I hope to go to. If that falls through I'll go to a picnic in Cayambe on the ninth. I've (finally) started exercising again. I found sour cream for the first time in 16 months (Wooo!). I'm signing up for the GRE's as soon as they open for registration. I'm getting by. And...that's life in Ecuador.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Insert Title Here
Went to Mindo the other weekend with some PC people, and had one of those crazy, soul-sustaining times that keep me sane in Ecuador. It's a sleepy little cloud-forest town, where we went zip-lining (one of which was a slightly terrifying bungee-jump-cum-zip-lining mash up) and jumped off of a high (12 meters) rock into water (I hit the bottom) and swam in a river with waterfalls. At night we ate delicious over-priced food and swapped stories and were generally silly. There are good people in PC Ecuador, that's all I have to say.
And now for something completely different...
I'm in a pretty good mood tonight. I finally realized today that if I want a change in my life, I have to make it, and that even something small can make a difference. So I looked up some info/videos online and started teaching myself Parkour/freerunning at a local children's park.
It's perfect for me: the park is ten minute walk from my house, and isolated enough that are no people staring at me as I run (and Patate is perfectly safe, as well, unlike other Ecuadorian cities...please don't let THAT statement come back and bite me in the...)
The park is filled with benches, jungle gyms, swings, tables, tires, slides, everything a beginner runner could want. Parkour, or freerunning (though they are a little different, but at this basic level I think I can use them relatively interchangeably) is essentially running from point A to point B no matter what is in front of you. So you vault off tables and swing over bars. It gets crazy (aka the guy in the opening sequence of "Casino Royale" was a freerunner), but I'm just trying to learn how to roll without hurting myself and vaulting over benches. It is brutal work, and makes my whole body feel like jelly. I feel great.
Work is also improving, and while it is still slow slow slow I am at least getting something accomplished, and that's a relief. A school garden actually succeeded (gasp!), a farmer sought me out to ask my advice, a school I work with made their own Biol, and I'll be teaching honest-to-goodness classes in a few weeks. And as always, the people that I work with are so friendly, I literally don't know what I would do without them.
My biggest thing now is looking to the future: My brother's visit in June (+birthday and midservice), going home for my sister's wedding, Me + Mom = Galapagos, but most especially ending my service in just over a year and going to graduate school. I've been doing my research and have my schools narrowed down (just two now, but they are both awesome), and will be retaking the GRE's/ applying this fall. I am so, so looking forward to that life. I miss school, I do. I miss learning, I miss sitting in classrooms, I miss writing papers in coffee shops on my laptop, I miss living in an American city with American people.
Now that the craziness of February is over and I have some work to do, I am content here. A volunteer who is just about to COS (leave country) told me that the goal of the second year is just to make it to the end, but it goes fast and despite this, is the best year of all. So I'm looking to the future, as always, but content. Maybe I will even miss it when it's over.
And now for something completely different...
I'm in a pretty good mood tonight. I finally realized today that if I want a change in my life, I have to make it, and that even something small can make a difference. So I looked up some info/videos online and started teaching myself Parkour/freerunning at a local children's park.
It's perfect for me: the park is ten minute walk from my house, and isolated enough that are no people staring at me as I run (and Patate is perfectly safe, as well, unlike other Ecuadorian cities...please don't let THAT statement come back and bite me in the...)
The park is filled with benches, jungle gyms, swings, tables, tires, slides, everything a beginner runner could want. Parkour, or freerunning (though they are a little different, but at this basic level I think I can use them relatively interchangeably) is essentially running from point A to point B no matter what is in front of you. So you vault off tables and swing over bars. It gets crazy (aka the guy in the opening sequence of "Casino Royale" was a freerunner), but I'm just trying to learn how to roll without hurting myself and vaulting over benches. It is brutal work, and makes my whole body feel like jelly. I feel great.
Work is also improving, and while it is still slow slow slow I am at least getting something accomplished, and that's a relief. A school garden actually succeeded (gasp!), a farmer sought me out to ask my advice, a school I work with made their own Biol, and I'll be teaching honest-to-goodness classes in a few weeks. And as always, the people that I work with are so friendly, I literally don't know what I would do without them.
My biggest thing now is looking to the future: My brother's visit in June (+birthday and midservice), going home for my sister's wedding, Me + Mom = Galapagos, but most especially ending my service in just over a year and going to graduate school. I've been doing my research and have my schools narrowed down (just two now, but they are both awesome), and will be retaking the GRE's/ applying this fall. I am so, so looking forward to that life. I miss school, I do. I miss learning, I miss sitting in classrooms, I miss writing papers in coffee shops on my laptop, I miss living in an American city with American people.
Now that the craziness of February is over and I have some work to do, I am content here. A volunteer who is just about to COS (leave country) told me that the goal of the second year is just to make it to the end, but it goes fast and despite this, is the best year of all. So I'm looking to the future, as always, but content. Maybe I will even miss it when it's over.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
So...
This isn't going to be a long entry, as it is still rather difficult to type now, but I figured that I should update after what happened.
A little over a week ago, a friend and I were attacked in a park in Ambato.
This isn't one of those "girl was walking through a deserted street at 3 am drunk and got assaulted" deals. We did nothing wrong. It was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, in a park filled with soccer players, families, and laughing children. My friend Julie (another PC volunteer) and I were walking back to her house on an "ecological trail" that follows the river. A young family, with a well-dressed dad, mom, and infant, had passed us several times that day, but we thought that they were just strolling aimlessly like we were. The moment we began to think it was strange and no one else was around, he whipped a knife out.
He grabbed Julie's arm. She screamed and dropped into a crouch because she was afraid that he was aiming his knife at her neck. I lunged at him and he turned on me; when I tried to knock the knife out of his hand he swiped at me and cut my thumb and index finger, then cut the strap of Julie's bag and ran with it.
Luckily, there was nothing of value in the bag except her house keys (she promptly changed the locks), and it gives me a grim satisfaction to know that he went through all of that for a broken bag, lipstick, unusable keys, and hand sanitizer.
I was bleeding to a degree that was frightening. I've never in my life seen so much blood. It pooled in my cupped hands and ended up on my face, all down my pants, and saturated my sneakers to a degree that even my socks were bloody. Some kind hearted lady helped us get to the hospital and gave me an old shirt to staunch the bleeding; it became soaked through with blood. I also bled all over the emergency room floor. I can't imagine the amount you must pour out if you get stabbed someplace serious.
The cut on my thumb is the worst, a deep diagonal gash that took eight stitched to close. The other isn't as bad, only four stitches and it barely hurt at all. The doctor claimed there was no nerve damage, but I still can't feel the tip of my thumb, so....
I go back to Quito tomorrow to get my stitches removed, and I also get to go the following week to talk to the new group of trainees. Poor Julie is jumping at her own shadow and hates the sight of families with children. I'm mainly pissed that I didn't think clearly while fighting (punching instead of kicking, so stupid of me!)
I've already written more than I thought I would, and it sucks to type without a thumb. It just sucks in general. Everything about this month so far, with its drama and huge annoying festivals and lack of work and water balloons (Carnaval) and drunks and too many parades and irritating bottle rocket/fireworks just sucks.
I can't wait for March.
A little over a week ago, a friend and I were attacked in a park in Ambato.
This isn't one of those "girl was walking through a deserted street at 3 am drunk and got assaulted" deals. We did nothing wrong. It was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, in a park filled with soccer players, families, and laughing children. My friend Julie (another PC volunteer) and I were walking back to her house on an "ecological trail" that follows the river. A young family, with a well-dressed dad, mom, and infant, had passed us several times that day, but we thought that they were just strolling aimlessly like we were. The moment we began to think it was strange and no one else was around, he whipped a knife out.
He grabbed Julie's arm. She screamed and dropped into a crouch because she was afraid that he was aiming his knife at her neck. I lunged at him and he turned on me; when I tried to knock the knife out of his hand he swiped at me and cut my thumb and index finger, then cut the strap of Julie's bag and ran with it.
Luckily, there was nothing of value in the bag except her house keys (she promptly changed the locks), and it gives me a grim satisfaction to know that he went through all of that for a broken bag, lipstick, unusable keys, and hand sanitizer.
I was bleeding to a degree that was frightening. I've never in my life seen so much blood. It pooled in my cupped hands and ended up on my face, all down my pants, and saturated my sneakers to a degree that even my socks were bloody. Some kind hearted lady helped us get to the hospital and gave me an old shirt to staunch the bleeding; it became soaked through with blood. I also bled all over the emergency room floor. I can't imagine the amount you must pour out if you get stabbed someplace serious.
The cut on my thumb is the worst, a deep diagonal gash that took eight stitched to close. The other isn't as bad, only four stitches and it barely hurt at all. The doctor claimed there was no nerve damage, but I still can't feel the tip of my thumb, so....
I go back to Quito tomorrow to get my stitches removed, and I also get to go the following week to talk to the new group of trainees. Poor Julie is jumping at her own shadow and hates the sight of families with children. I'm mainly pissed that I didn't think clearly while fighting (punching instead of kicking, so stupid of me!)
I've already written more than I thought I would, and it sucks to type without a thumb. It just sucks in general. Everything about this month so far, with its drama and huge annoying festivals and lack of work and water balloons (Carnaval) and drunks and too many parades and irritating bottle rocket/fireworks just sucks.
I can't wait for March.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
A Year in the House of Sarah
A little late, but here it is:
2009: A Year in Review
January:
-Started the year in Baltimore, watching the fireworks with Gill and her (then-boyfriend, now husband) Ken, freezing our butts off, praying for good things.
-The inauguration of President Obama.
February:
-Road tripped to Pittsburgh and Penn State, for a final farewell of friends and fun.
-Left for Peace Corps, Ecuador. Arrived in Quito one warm rainy night, then journeyed on to Cayambe to begin training.
-Went to Mitad del Mundo, the center of the earth, and stood with one foot in each hemisphere
March:
-My first stomach flu of Ecuador….the first of many.
- Learned to wash my clothes on a big stone, went to Cotacachi, went on big hikes, saw an indigenous sun celebration and was blessed by a shaman, ate guinea pig for the first time, had long days of classes
- Found out my site placement was La Victoria, Tungurahua
April:
-Went on my site visit, and came away from it scared and upset and dreading the future.
-Went on the Tech Trip, which included lounging in a pool and playing soccer and doing yoga in the steaming heat of Puerto Quito, and staring at the stars, buying chocolate, and doing karaoke in Salinas de Guaranda. One of the best weeks of my life.
-Finished my classes.
-Swore in in Quito on April 30, and became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.
May:
-Moved to my site, and had to sit on my hands for three weeks because my house in LV was not finished.
-Finally moved into my house in LV.
-Started planning many projects, many of which would never come to fruition. Ah, PC life.
June:
-23rd Birthday in Rio Bamba!
- It rained all month.
-Thus started summer depression.
July:
- Depressed and stuck in LV alone. It continued to rain. Not a great month.
August:
- Pretty depressed and without work and got sick in Tena… until…
- I got permission to move to Patate. I started looking for an apartment and found one that I absolutely love.
September:
- Moved to Patate
- Went to the grad school fair in Quito, which changed what I want to study and direction my life will take, and, completely coincidently, met Adam
-He followed me home and lived with me for the next month
-Began work with my new counterpart group, Aves y Conservacion, first trip to El Triunfo, and the rest is history.
- Reconnect in Rio Bamba
October:
- More work, good times with Adam
-The El Chaco trip, in which I got way too sick and missed whitewater rafting. Yeah, that sucked.
November:
- Thanksgiving at the embassy
December:
- Christmas, went home, and all of the wonderful times that came with it
-My sister got engaged
A few low points, but all in all, a pretty great year. Here’s to 2010: I can’t wait to see what you will bring me.
2009: A Year in Review
January:
-Started the year in Baltimore, watching the fireworks with Gill and her (then-boyfriend, now husband) Ken, freezing our butts off, praying for good things.
-The inauguration of President Obama.
February:
-Road tripped to Pittsburgh and Penn State, for a final farewell of friends and fun.
-Left for Peace Corps, Ecuador. Arrived in Quito one warm rainy night, then journeyed on to Cayambe to begin training.
-Went to Mitad del Mundo, the center of the earth, and stood with one foot in each hemisphere
March:
-My first stomach flu of Ecuador….the first of many.
- Learned to wash my clothes on a big stone, went to Cotacachi, went on big hikes, saw an indigenous sun celebration and was blessed by a shaman, ate guinea pig for the first time, had long days of classes
- Found out my site placement was La Victoria, Tungurahua
April:
-Went on my site visit, and came away from it scared and upset and dreading the future.
-Went on the Tech Trip, which included lounging in a pool and playing soccer and doing yoga in the steaming heat of Puerto Quito, and staring at the stars, buying chocolate, and doing karaoke in Salinas de Guaranda. One of the best weeks of my life.
-Finished my classes.
-Swore in in Quito on April 30, and became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.
May:
-Moved to my site, and had to sit on my hands for three weeks because my house in LV was not finished.
-Finally moved into my house in LV.
-Started planning many projects, many of which would never come to fruition. Ah, PC life.
June:
-23rd Birthday in Rio Bamba!
- It rained all month.
-Thus started summer depression.
July:
- Depressed and stuck in LV alone. It continued to rain. Not a great month.
August:
- Pretty depressed and without work and got sick in Tena… until…
- I got permission to move to Patate. I started looking for an apartment and found one that I absolutely love.
September:
- Moved to Patate
- Went to the grad school fair in Quito, which changed what I want to study and direction my life will take, and, completely coincidently, met Adam
-He followed me home and lived with me for the next month
-Began work with my new counterpart group, Aves y Conservacion, first trip to El Triunfo, and the rest is history.
- Reconnect in Rio Bamba
October:
- More work, good times with Adam
-The El Chaco trip, in which I got way too sick and missed whitewater rafting. Yeah, that sucked.
November:
- Thanksgiving at the embassy
December:
- Christmas, went home, and all of the wonderful times that came with it
-My sister got engaged
A few low points, but all in all, a pretty great year. Here’s to 2010: I can’t wait to see what you will bring me.
Friday, January 8, 2010
A New Year
I realize that I have lacking in writing in this journal, and for that matter, even in my own journal. I feel like my entries are few and far between and unable to accurately show a realistic portrayal of Ecuador, its people, and my life here.
Recently, though, there has been very little to write. The weeks before I went home were filled with the agony of waiting, and also the desperate rush to finish revising my book before I left (though now I realize that it needs MORE revising. I swear, I will never be done.) Then I returned, went to Guaranda for New Year's, and have spent the remaining days sick in bed and spending far too much time on the internet.
First off:
Christmas was wonderful, and honestly, soul-sustaining. I encourage every volunteer who has even a lukewarm relationship with their family to go home at least once. Sometimes your mind just needs a respite, to be surrounded by nostalgic things before it can keep going.
The big news is, of course, that my amazing, brilliant, wonderful, smart, witty , fantastic sister is engaged, and this is a wedding that I will definately be coming home for. It's tentatively next fall, so I have about another ten months to go, and I am just so happy for her that I could frolic.
I also saw friends, exchanged gifts (Zombie Christmas Carols, anyone?), and generally just basked in love. Oh, and I got a netbook, since my old computer was just about to die on me.
Going to Guaranda for New Year's was not what I had anticipated or planned, but was fun and cold and turned out to be an amazing cultural experience.
A cultural note: In Ecuador, the tradition for New Year's Eve, or Ano Viejo (literally, old year) is to build representations of all of the sins and problems and anger of the year and burn them at midnight. Also, there are transvestites. Lots of them. This is due to a tradition that men dress up as widows of the old year, asking for money, which eventually evolved into simply dressing up as flashy women and doing a little booty-shaking dance for a few cents. Kids also hold cars hostage by stretching a rope across city streets and refusing to lower it until a fee of five cents is paid (or in some cases, until the driver gets royally pissed off and yells at the kids.) It's pretty awesome to see Ecuadorians, usually so strict in their machismo and male/female roles, dress up in glitter and high heels and makeup and hot pants. They are fierce.
The picture displayed is one of my favorite images of the night: A well done, room-sized display of the Simpsons (representing capitalism/US influences/what?) with a masked, smoking transvestite standing randomly at its side.
We (my new friend Katie and I, since the others went to bed early) were literally the only gringos in the entire city, which meant that we were famous, getting our pictures taking by everyone with a camera and dancing around fires with drunk boys and their elderly moms. Still, just to be safe (because though the enviroment was fun it did combine fire, the pent-up rage due to counting all the bad things that happened that year, and massive amounts of alcohol) we were home by midnight, just in time to watch the fireworks from afar.
Oh, and by the way, if you are ever planning a trip to the Ecuadorian Sierra (mountains), the road from Ambato to Guaranda is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, with high paramos and grazing alpacas and huge, snow-capped peaks close enough to walk to.
In other news, I have found a martial arts "academy" that looks legit enough, though it doesn't have straight-up tae kwon do. It's apparently some mix of kickboxing, tae kwon do, jujitsu (throwing), and boxing, so it's...kinda of MMA? I'll have to see, but I'll definately be trying it out! I miss fighting. It gives me a sense of control and action, this feeling of being truly within my own skin, of power, that I lack in my day-to-day life. And hey, you can't beat ten bucks a month.
Things are going really well here, and will improve when I am feeling 100 percent and get my ass out of this apartment and start doing some real work. I'm anticipating that from here on out is when it all begins to take shape...God, I hope so. Once I slide back into my charlas, pick some more communties up, start my anti human trafficking work, maybe start writing some articles, and just, well, put myself out there, I'll feel more like a PC volunteer and less like a lazy ass. We'll see.
A happy and beautiful 2010 to all of you, everywhere.
Recently, though, there has been very little to write. The weeks before I went home were filled with the agony of waiting, and also the desperate rush to finish revising my book before I left (though now I realize that it needs MORE revising. I swear, I will never be done.) Then I returned, went to Guaranda for New Year's, and have spent the remaining days sick in bed and spending far too much time on the internet.
First off:
Christmas was wonderful, and honestly, soul-sustaining. I encourage every volunteer who has even a lukewarm relationship with their family to go home at least once. Sometimes your mind just needs a respite, to be surrounded by nostalgic things before it can keep going.
The big news is, of course, that my amazing, brilliant, wonderful, smart, witty , fantastic sister is engaged, and this is a wedding that I will definately be coming home for. It's tentatively next fall, so I have about another ten months to go, and I am just so happy for her that I could frolic.
I also saw friends, exchanged gifts (Zombie Christmas Carols, anyone?), and generally just basked in love. Oh, and I got a netbook, since my old computer was just about to die on me.
Going to Guaranda for New Year's was not what I had anticipated or planned, but was fun and cold and turned out to be an amazing cultural experience.
A cultural note: In Ecuador, the tradition for New Year's Eve, or Ano Viejo (literally, old year) is to build representations of all of the sins and problems and anger of the year and burn them at midnight. Also, there are transvestites. Lots of them. This is due to a tradition that men dress up as widows of the old year, asking for money, which eventually evolved into simply dressing up as flashy women and doing a little booty-shaking dance for a few cents. Kids also hold cars hostage by stretching a rope across city streets and refusing to lower it until a fee of five cents is paid (or in some cases, until the driver gets royally pissed off and yells at the kids.) It's pretty awesome to see Ecuadorians, usually so strict in their machismo and male/female roles, dress up in glitter and high heels and makeup and hot pants. They are fierce.
The picture displayed is one of my favorite images of the night: A well done, room-sized display of the Simpsons (representing capitalism/US influences/what?) with a masked, smoking transvestite standing randomly at its side.
We (my new friend Katie and I, since the others went to bed early) were literally the only gringos in the entire city, which meant that we were famous, getting our pictures taking by everyone with a camera and dancing around fires with drunk boys and their elderly moms. Still, just to be safe (because though the enviroment was fun it did combine fire, the pent-up rage due to counting all the bad things that happened that year, and massive amounts of alcohol) we were home by midnight, just in time to watch the fireworks from afar.
Oh, and by the way, if you are ever planning a trip to the Ecuadorian Sierra (mountains), the road from Ambato to Guaranda is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, with high paramos and grazing alpacas and huge, snow-capped peaks close enough to walk to.
In other news, I have found a martial arts "academy" that looks legit enough, though it doesn't have straight-up tae kwon do. It's apparently some mix of kickboxing, tae kwon do, jujitsu (throwing), and boxing, so it's...kinda of MMA? I'll have to see, but I'll definately be trying it out! I miss fighting. It gives me a sense of control and action, this feeling of being truly within my own skin, of power, that I lack in my day-to-day life. And hey, you can't beat ten bucks a month.
Things are going really well here, and will improve when I am feeling 100 percent and get my ass out of this apartment and start doing some real work. I'm anticipating that from here on out is when it all begins to take shape...God, I hope so. Once I slide back into my charlas, pick some more communties up, start my anti human trafficking work, maybe start writing some articles, and just, well, put myself out there, I'll feel more like a PC volunteer and less like a lazy ass. We'll see.
A happy and beautiful 2010 to all of you, everywhere.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving in Quito
Here is a quick entry to say that Thanksgiving this year was fantastic.
I went to the ambassador's house in Quito, ate a lavish meal with new friends, hung out with the ambassador and watched "Miracle on 34th street", went dancing, dawdled in a used bookstore, finally bought the end of Battlestar Galactica (and promptly watched it as soon as I got home), drank wine at a cafe and then ate spicy indian food. Everyone from the new PC group that I met were awesome, I felt comfortable and happy, and it really was a great couple of days.
Plus, it's now officially the Christmas season.
Two weeks!
PS: I also found out the reason that I've been getting sick so much lately is because I have amoebas, which is actually fantastic because I have a name to put to my problem and it is easily curable. Here's to (hopefully) the end of my stomach woes.
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