Punk and Jazz don't mix

To start off this post, I just want to write about some random thoughts on things I’ve noticed over the past month and things I may have forgotten to mention in the blog:

Mama porque soy fea
There’s this weird tv show on one of the Ecuadorian channels. It’s not really like a telenovela because it’s just on once a week on Sunday night. It’s about a bunch of spinsters living together but the catch is that the spinsters are actually men dressed as women. It’s also a period show and it takes place probably during the 1800s or early 1900s. I haven’t actually seen it but I see ads for it all of the time. Maybe I’ll watch it one of these days. It just looks so weird.

Maid
My family has a maid. That’s pretty common here I guess. She cleans the house, cooks the lunches, and does the laundry. I talk to her every day and she seems to like me. We talk about all kinds of stuff like religion, politics, the economy, things that she says I need to do while I’m in Ecuador. I feel bad because she’s doing my laundry and making food for me, but I guess she just feels lucky to have a job. She comes here from Quito every weekday morning and leaves later in the day. I don’t know exactly how things are on weeknights, but I have been told not to take the bus alone at night and she does this every night to reach her home. She has two daughters, one my age and one who is eighteen and she keeps telling me how she wants them to get an education and leave the country so that they can have better futures. She also hopes to leave the country and move to America or Spain some day to make a better life for herself. On the weekends when she doesn’t come, we usually eat out because my host mom doesn’t really like to cook.

Toilet paper and toilets
Here, it is unusual to find a toilet in which you can flush the toilet paper. Most septic systems would backup if you did this. I have gotten pretty used to this by now. I haven’t really had a problem with accidently flushing toilet paper and clogging a toilet, but I still feel tempted once in a while. It was so weird using the latrines at Intag and putting the toilet paper down the hole. It’s definitely going to be different going home and flushing the paper.

Brushing teeth
I miss brushing my teeth with tap water. I just miss drinking tap water period. I get these bursts of extreme thirst that sometimes are hard to quench because I don’t have access to unlimited water. I have enough water to meet my needs though and I drink a lot when I have access to clean water. However, I don’t brush my teeth at all with tap water. I don’t even rinse it off, just to be safe. Therefore, my toothbrush is full of toothpaste gunk. I’ll have to clean it off sometime. Drinking tap water and using it to brush my teeth is one thing I miss doing and look forward to upon returning to the U.S.

Self-medication
Everyone here is really into self-medication. My host mother takes a ton of pills and one morning, when her stomach was bothering her, she took a potato, squeezed the juice out of it while it was still raw, and drank it. I don’t think this sounds too appetizing. Also, oregano tea is a big one for feeling a bit under the weather. Also, it’s so easy to get any medication you need here. You don’t really need a prescription for things. I could go and buy more malaria medication if I really wanted to.

Tv-English programs
It still sometimes weirds me out when I see Simpsons or Spongebob in Spanish on tv. A lot of the television shows on Ecuadorian channels are from America and are just dubbed in Spanish. There is Futurama, Sex in the City, Dragonball-z, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Smallville, and lots of movies. I just watched Johnny English and there have been tons of ads for Juwana Man. Also, just starting now is Kull, the Conqueror (or Kull, el Conquistador). The same goes for movie theaters. Most of the movies are from the states and just have Spanish subtitles.

Coca cola zero
A lot of people here drink coca-cola zero. I had some at a family gathering. However, apparently the beverage here has an ingredient in it that is not permitted in the US. I’m not sure exactly what the reasons for this are, but I find this a little sketchy. Nevertheless, I haven’t had any bad affects from this.

Elections
There are elections coming up on 30 of September here in Ecuador. The president decided to throw out the old constitution and write a new one so there are elections for a constituent assembly. Apparently 3000 people are running for 140 seats. Everyone in the nation has to vote by law. I’m not sure what the penalties are for not voting, but the common practice of those who don’t want to vote is to write a bad word across the ballot. Also, the whole process of counting votes sounds so complicated. You can vote for a ton of candidates if you want, but they’ll only get a fraction of a vote depending on how many you choose. If you only vote for one person, they get a whole vote. There are so many ads for the elections. There are also tons of people handing out propaganda on the street. They even offer some to me for some reason though I can’t vote in the elections. Maybe I’m starting to look like an Ecuadorian?

Eggs and milk
Eggs and milk are not refrigerated here. At first I thought it would make me sick, but so far so good. The milk apparently has this super pasteurizing process that kills all of the bacteria and makes it safe to keep unrefrigerated for a month. I haven’t had any plain milk-I usually drink it in a milkshake with bananas or with Ensure (not sure why my family buys this, but ok). Also, the egg issue-most people here, I think, like to eat eggs “duro” which I guess means virtually uncooked. They go in the pan for less than a minute and then they’re ready to eat. I was worried about salmonella, but so far I’ve been fine. I try to get my host mom to cook mine a little longer, but they’re still a little on the raw side.

Back to my life:

After getting back to Los Chillos, we just had class on Thursday as usual. Then on Friday, all of the classes had their own trips into Quito. My group had a few problems. First, one of my classmates was ill. Then, another one didn’t remember where to meet that morning to catch the bus to Quito (only $0.40 for a 20 minute or so ride) so we were late meeting up with our professor at the Universidad Catolica. We got into Quito and saw the line of people outside of the US embassy building (one of the uglier buildings I’ve seen) waiting to get visas. Apparently they start lining up at 6:00 even though lining up early doesn’t give them a better chance of getting a visa. Then we were walking when another person from the group tripped over a concrete structure just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, so we spent 20 minutes in a pharmacy getting stuff the clean it off with. We were supposed to go to the Basilica, but that involved a lot of climbing narrow staircases into the towers and that would have been difficult with a scraped knee, so we decided to go to the Museo del Banco Central. The museum was pretty nice. However, about 45 minutes into the first part of the tour, the pre-Colombian period part, I started to feel really light-headed and hot and I asked my teacher to find a seat where I could just sit, and we were on our way out when I couldn’t see or hear anything and I guess I just passed out, but a few other people were supporting me as well so I didn‘t fall or anything. We made it to the seats in the lobby and I woke up and someone gave me some gum and water. Later I ate an apple and talked to the guy sitting next to me. I felt much better after half an hour or so, but I was still a little shaky so I spent the remainder of the hour and a half in the lobby watching tourists and workers. I think I just didn’t eat enough breakfast because I didn’t eat as much as usual, but it was so weird. After everyone was done with the tour, we went to get lunch at Café Amazonas and I had the menu, which was a beef steak, some soup with barley, rice, chocolate ice cream, jugo de naranjilla, and some water all for $4.50. That was the end of walking around with the group.

I went off with Amanda to the centro historico to walk around and wait for my Quichua lesson. I waited in line to get into the presidential palace but I didn’t have too much time so I headed off for my lesson shortly before it was our turn to go in. I talked with one of the academic directors about my ISP project and I wanted to take Quichua and he agreed that it would possibly help me with my final project if I knew how to speak some Quichua. So, I had my first hour of Quichua in a man’s house near the Basilica, so I got to see the Basilica after all, but I hope to go back for a real tour. Quichua was very interesting and very overwhelming. It’s so different than Spanish and I’m learning rudimentary things again, like I am ____ and My name is _____. I enjoyed it though and I’m so happy I have this opportunity. Another cool thing is that my teacher is also the teacher of the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, and apparently the president wants to meet other Quichua students, especially those of us from the U.S. The teacher asked if we wanted to meet him next Saturday, which would be really cool because that’s election day, but that’s also the last day with our homestay families so we really can’t do it. But he said another weekend would be fine and we can talk to each other in Quichua. Also while we were in the lesson, someone called the teacher and we asked him in Quichua if it was the president (because I can kind of ask that) but he responded that no, it was just the minister of something. After the lesson, I hung out with some of my companeros for a while in the centro historico and then in the Mariscal. We walked around and went to a bar and a Mongolian Barbeque. I was surprised that I didn’t see too many gringos in the bars, but I guess it was kind of early. It was probably around 7:00 and we were just killing some time. After that, we headed to this club that Siena recommended, El Pobre Diablo, to watch a band perform. We got there about an hour and a half early, but it was nice to just hang out. We split a bottle of wine between a big group and just talked and had some potatoes with cheese sauce. Then the band, Musica a la Carta, performed. It was actually a mixture of two bands, one jazz and one punk. It was interesting. The cool thing about this performance was that people from the audience got to choose which songs the band would play and while they were playing the songs, the audience member could take out players, speed things up, change the style, and do other things. However, it just wasn’t my thing. I was hoping for more jazz than punk so there was a little too much screaming into the microphone for me. I left around 11:30 with some people but it took forever to get out of there because they waited until people were leaving to make us pay the cover charge and the bill for our food. We finally got out and four of us got a taxi back to the valley. Originally the driver told us it would be $12 but he raised it to $15 when he found out that he had to make multiple stops. It wasn’t the most pleasant taxi ride because he went the wrong way and got a little angry with us for not telling him where to go, but I got home safely by 12:30. I went to bed because I was really tired.

Then on Saturday, I slept in a little bit. I spent most of the morning working on my personal and national history paper due on Monday. I went out for lunch with my host mother and grandmother. We ate at Cebiche de Ruminahui and I had some grilled fish with a plaintain, rice, tostadas, cucumber salad and lemonade. It was pretty good. Then we drove my host grandmother back to Quito to her house and dropped her off and drove back to the valley. I worked on my paper some more and updated stuff on face book and on my blog. Then I just felt like organizing my stuff a little more and took everything out of my bags to figure out what I had and start getting stuff together for the rainforest next week.

As of today, I’ve been in Ecuador for a month. I can’t really believe it’s been that long. Time really has flown quite a lot here. Also, I only have five more Spanish classes, one of which is teaching at a school and another of which is taking the final exam. Then, only one day after that with my family and then back to Quito for the night, and then off to the Oriente. This means that tomorrow I have to start taking my malaria medication, which should be interesting. Apparently I have the medication that makes you have hallucinations and nightmares. We’ll see how that goes. As long as it keeps me from getting malaria. The hallucinations might be fun hen I'm trying to teach first-graders about culture and fourth-graders about geography the next day. Well, that’s it for now. I probably won’t update again until I’m back from the rainforest, although I may try to use the internet one last time right before I leave. We’ll see how things work out. Chao.