La Despedida

Welcome to my last blog entry from the Southern Hemisphere (for now)! I'm about to head off on a one-week tour of all the places in Ecuador I haven't gotten to yet before flying back to New York on the 29th. As is often the case, I'm really excited to get back home and see everyone (if you're reading this blog, chances are I want to see you), but in my last few weeks in Ecuador I'm realizing how much I enjoy life here as well. It's been a pretty fantastic end of the semester.

First of all, for those of you who didn't already here (or know before hand, apparently): KRISTEN CAME TO ECUADOR!!!! I went to my internship on Tuesday afternoon, looked out the window and, much to my surprise, KRISTEN WAS IN ECUADOR!!!!. We spent the next 8 days largely in Quito, since I had to go to my final week of classes (which Kristen chose to sit in on, despite nearly universal advice to spare herself).  With her here, I ended up going out and doing all the things in Quito I hadn't gotten around to, like going to the National Theatre for a play, going to the amusement part on a volcano, watching the hit movie "A Tus Espaldas" in theaters, etc. We also climbed the Basilica and had a picnic in one of the towers. We had such a good time, it was amazing to see her, and it was exactly what I needed to get re-energized about the country for my last few weeks.  

 

                        

Last weekend, I finally got around to going to Cotopaxi, the largest mountain in Ecuador (and a relatively active volcano). With about 10 friends, I took a bus 2 hours south of Quito, set up two tents (which was not nearly enough space for 10 people), and spent the next 24 hours lounging about in the paramo. Cotopaxi was shrouded in mist at first, but just as the sun started to set it cleared to give us a breathtaking view of the mountain. As I learned in my class "Diversidad Ambiental de Ecuador", it gets very very cold at nights in the paramo. Given this knowledge, you'd think I would have brought a jacket, or at least a sleeping bag. But no. The only reason I'm still alive, rather than a gringo ice statue, is that 2 tents was not nearly enough space for 10 people, so we were packed in pretty tight. 

After a few very late nights (the record was 6am) writing more than 40 pages of essays in Spanish, my semester officially ended, and it was time to transition into the "goodbye!" phase of the program. Last night Holger and Carla had a Cena de Despedida for me, and literally everyone in the family came. I kept thinking of the first time we had a big family dinner like that at the beginning of the semester and realizing how much better my spanish is, and how much more comfortable I am with all of them now.

 

That night, IES rented a Chiva for us. For those of you not lucky enough to have experienced a Chiva, it's basically a party bus. It's 50 people on a truck with dance music and complementary cocktails. So for two hours, everyone on my program and I got driven around Quito dancing and blasting party music. It was a great way to see everyone again before people start leaving for the States on Saturday. At one point, was stopped in one of the plazas in the Centro Historico (the same one where the Easter Concert was held) for pictures and a contest to see who would be Kind and Queen of the Chiva. And guess who won King of the Chiva, thanks to breakdancing and being the only boy on the program? Me!!!! 

And now it's time to pack, go buy any gifts I've neglected (I got your email, Dad), and have one last night out with my friends. Then Jane and I will head to the bus station and start figuring out how to spent 1 more week in Ecuador! As the great poet Daddy Yankee once said "[Ecuador], ¿como te voy a olvidar?"

Excitement!!!

Hello one and all! It's been a very exciting, busy few weeks for me. In the interest of convincing myself to do another post, I decided it would be easier to do another picture entry, rather than try to walk you through every moment. Here we go:

On April 13th, my host sister Anita had a baby!  Above, Tio Holger,  Tia Maria Fernanda, Abuela Carla y Abuelo Holger are admiring the photo Byron,  baby Emilio's dad,  took on his phone 5 minutes after Emilio was born.

The classroom for Linguistics is usually locked when we get there,  so the class congregates on the bench outside the room. Today, we're all studying frantically for the quiz we're about to take. On the far left, Mauricio and Emily (from Ambato and Indiana, respectively) are comparing notes. 

I finished the quiz early, so I decided to distract the rest of the class by taking a photo of them so you guys could all see a classroom. When we're not taking quizes, the desks are usually in a horseshoe along the walls. 

For the two weeks leading up to Easter, there were a TON of free concerts in all the churches downtown. The main event took place in a plaza outside between three or four churches. Above are some of the audience for the concert on the steps of one of the major Quito churches. 

In addition to the normal orchestra, the music (written specifically for this performance) incorporated Andean flutes,  bells from the surrounding churches, and a full telling of the Easter story through dance. 

To finish off the performance, there was a firework show right above us (plenty of debris fell on my head). It was pretty fantastic. The video's not the best, but you can get a sense of all the different things going on. 

For those of you who didn't know, this past weekend I spent 5 days in the Galapagos Islands.  As you might expect, they were absolutely incredible. Basically every day we had a three hour boat ride between islands. I usually chose to sit up on the bow,  since it was a little less nauseating, I got a better view, and I got to feel like an explorer!  

Our very first boat ride, we passed a huge pod of dolphins! They were jumping everywhere and sitting on the bow, I saw them zooming just under the surface in front of the boat. After about 5 minutes of them following us, we all threw on our snorkeling gear and jumped in to swim with them! 

Iguanas and sea lions are pretty much everywhere.  Here on the island of Floreana, these two little guys were taking a nap together. Marine iguanas shoot salt out of their eyes every few minutes to desalinate, and I'm pretty sure this one hit the sea lion in the face a few times.   

The Galapagos are volcanic islands, so on Saturday morning we took a 5 hour hike up the main volcano on Isabela. It was pretty exhausting, but a lot of fun. Our guide reminded us several times that it was still active and could explode at any minute.   

 On the far left, we have Galapagos penguins (adorable, as penguins usually are). In the middle are some classic blue footed boobies (no comment). And on the right, a pelican (which is every bit as ridiculously looking as the penguins are cute). We saw all three species all over, and even swam with the penguins! 

On one of our many snorkeling trips, we went to an area that has these cool (if claustrophobic) channels that are about 15 feet deep. The visibility was pretty bad that day (which was especially scary, since we saw a few sharks before we got in)  but we had no trouble seeing the sea lions (picture above)  when they swam right underneath us and stared us down. 

And of course, the HUGE Galapagos Giant Tortoises.  Not the most graceful eaters, but neither are lots of people I like,  so I forgave them. There are 11 different species of tortoise on the islands, including Solitary George, who is the very last of his species. We saw various tortoises several times throughout the trip, some in the wild, and some (like the ones above) in a special tortoise nursery to help increase population sizes.

It's been an amazing few weeks. I'm definitely starting to transition back to USA mode, in some respects, but I have exactly a month left here, so I plan to make the most of it. Final exams, some Ecuadorian politics, and a few more trips are all part of the plan.  Hope you're all doing well! 

For Samuel (And Everyone Else, Too)

In the past month, I've found a circle of Ecuadorian friends, stumbled into a communist political rally, received a 100% on a midterm (and a 30% on the following quiz), gotten a little bit robbed, and spent 4 days on the beach. All of them, in their own way, have been fun, interesting, and educational.

About three weeks ago, on a Saturday night, I got a call from my friend Ignacio (whom I met through the Jewish community) asking if my friend Caroline and I wanted to come to his cousin's house party. This plan seemed preferable to wandering the streets aimlessly, so we quickly accepted. At Cousin David's, we had some fantastic fondue and spent the evening hanging out with Ori, an Israeli guy working at the Israeli embassy in Quito, and Nir, an Ecuadorian Jew. We talked about everything from the minimum wage in various countries to why I'm not very good at doing "the worm". At the end of the night, Nir invited me to stay over at his house and go paintballing in the morning with him and some friends. In the US, paintballing never intrigued me, but in Ecuador, it sounded awesome. I was terrible, of course, but it was a lot of fun. Over the past few weeks, I (usually accompanied by Caroline (who's Vietnamese, but belongs to the JCC at home)) have had a lot of fun meeting up with Ori and Nir a few more times for pizza and TV, trivia nights, and generally going out on the town.

Although I usually speak English with this circle of friends, it's a much more Ecuadorian experience than speaking Spanish as I travel around to the touristy spot. Tonight at dinner, my host-brother-in-law and a family friend discussed how much more I've seen of the country than them. By staying in town and seeing what an Ecuadorian college student does on the weekends, I finally feel like I'm starting to get a sense of life here.

Two Saturdays ago, I woke up to what I have to assume was the Quito Pep Band playing outside my building. Like I was late to class, I jumped up, put on yesterday's pants and shirt, and raced outside with my camera. Apparently, it was the opening day of a political campaign discussing some proposed changes to the Constitution, and these people were gathering to expresse their strong opposition. For about 45 minutes, they played their instruments, chanted slogans, and had their official clowns on stilts dance in the street. Finally, they filed into an auditorium for speeches. That's when I started to notice several signs with hammer and sickles, flags with Che Guevara, and I was handed a newspaper with the slogan "Let the proletariate of every country unite!". Now, to be fair, there were a great number of other political organizations present too, but I couldn't help but feel that these people were not part of the political mainstream.

I don't speak about my classes very much on this blog, but I assure you they continue to exist, and are slowly demanding more and more of my time. Two weeks ago, for my class at the local university (PUCE) about the management of environmental conflicts, an Ecuadorian girl and I had an hour long presentation on mining in Ecuador. It was nice to have confirmation that procrastination is international, since we didn't start until the day before it was due. Nonetheless, we managed to put together a pretty solid presentation. My favorite class continues to be Linguistics of Spanish, also at PUCE. We mostly learn about the rules of pronunciation and the variation therein, which is a little boring for the Ecuadorians, but fascinating for a non-native speaker (although I can't always hear the differences between certain sounds). I am proud to announce that I got exactly 100% on my midterm for this class, which I took the day I left for Colombia. Unfortunately, I missed a few days of class while in Colombia, and we had a pop quiz when I got back, leading to the humbling grade of 30%.

My latest adventure took place in Atacames, a mid-sized beach town towards the north of the country. Four friends and I stayed at a hotel right on the beach and spent the day on a boat tour of the mangroves (although Cartagena was better), on a bananaboat, and lounging on the beach. Unfortunately, we were somewhat irresponsible, and one time left our stuff on the beach while we went swimming. Not surprisingly, when we came back, it was gone. Luckily, our hotel owner happened to have seen two guys take our stuff, and alerted the police. One guy got away with most of the stuff, including my iPod, but the other guy got arrested and taken to the station. I spent the next two days working my way through the Ecuadorian legal system, which was very strict and streamlined in some respects, and somewhat lax in others. I filed a report against the guy, Henry, and I was in the process of setting up an audience with the judge, when my hotel owner found me and told me to go talk to Henry. I went back to the police station and walked up to the holding cell (anyone can just wander over), and ended up negotiating a settlement, of sorts. I would drop my case against him if he paid me "the cost of the iPod", which we haggled to around $130. While some people may choose to look at the negative sides of being robbed, I had a pretty cool inside look at the Judicial system, and I'm actually pretty pleased with the whole experience.

And that, my friends, is the past month in a nutshell. Anyone want to place bets on how many more posts I'll fit in? I only have 7 weeks left!

The Amazon and Cartagena

Three weekends ago, while the rest of Quito headed west to the coast to celebrate Carnival, my fellow Americans and I went east into the Amazon Rainforest. Our hotel, the Yacuma Ecolodge, was a little resort run by the indigenous Quechua community located in the middle of the jungle. In fact, the only way to get there is a half hour motorized canoe ride.

With the ecolodge as our home base, we did a lot of half-day trips to learn more about the jungle we were surrounded by. We visited the AmaZOOnico, a reserve for Amazonian animals that can't be released back into the wild, usually because they've become too domesticated to survive. We saw huge snakes, ocelots, a ton of obnoxious parrots, and a few species of monkeys.

("Don't eat the dates, Indy!")

Another one of my favorite outings was the tubing trip down the Napo River. We took a canoe about an hour upstream (at one spot, the river gets incredibly shallow, so we had to get out and wade through 2 foot deep mud to find a deeper spot in the river), took a brief break to watch our guide pan for gold (it takes about 12 hours of work to get a gram of gold), then jumped in our inner-tubes and floated back downstream for 45 minutes. It was definitely a little surreal to be lazily drifting down a piranha infested river surrounded by untouched primary forest. That morning, we'd gone on a three hour hike through the forest with our indigenous guide. We endend up playing a fun game of telephone, as the guide would mention to the first person "don't touch that plant", "look at that bug!" or " be quiet and walk quickly, that's an angry bee's nest", and we would pass the message back. A few highlights from the innumerable factoids and tree names we learned: the above ground roots of huge tree are used by the indigenous people as giant drums to communicate across long distances; termites are a natural bug repellant (see me looking doofy in the photo below); and the fruit of the cacao tree is delicious, but tastes nothing like chocolate.

For most of the following week, I was feeling fairly sick. After a few days of intense coughing, I finally gave in and went to the doctor for some meds. It was very important that I feel better by Tuesday (the 15th), because I was going to Cartagena, Colombia to see Kristen!!!

Cartagena is a city on the Caribbean coast of Colombia well known for it's fantastic beaches and other touristy activities. One of the things that surprised Kristen and I was that almost all of the tourists we met were from other Latin-American countries - almost no Americans or Europeans. None of the menu's were bilingual, all the vendors spoke to us in Spanish despite our obvious gringo-ness, and we only heard English a few times throughout the week.

Although we didn't make it to a few of the best known beaches (when we tried to find a taxi-boat, they tried to make us pay 2x our nightly hotel fee, which was just ridiculous), we did spent about two days on the beach (Bocagrande) two blocks from our hotel. It's a public beach, so there were thousands of vendors asking us every 15 seconds if we wanted to buy water, buy a beer, buy a clock built out of a ship's wheel, buy mangos, buy popcorn, get a massage, get hair extensions, etc. The massage women were scariest, since even after our repeated refusals, they occasionally just grabbed our legs and started rubbing. But the water was warm, the sand nice and hot, and the sun ridiculously strong, so we had a great time.

We also took a day trip to el Volcan Totumo, a mud volcano about an hour outside the city. The volcano is about 50 feet tall, with a pool of mud wide enough for about 10-15 people inside at the top. The density of the mud is such that we could float when we got in, but it was really hard to move around. So for the most part, we fruitlessly paddled in place, completely vertical, with our heads out of the mud and our feet not touching anything. Afterward, we went to the river to wash off.

On Friday night, we went on a Rumba Chiva tour of the city. With a Rumba band in the back row, us and about 20 other people got in an open air bus and drove around the city for the night, armed with 2 bottles of rum per row and our guide constantly asking "where's the happiest row?! The best dancers?! The row who loves Cartagena?!" to keep energy up. Our bus, along with every other Chiva in the city, stopped at one of the walls of the old Cartagena fortress and we all had a Rumba dance party on the wall for half an hour, which was utterly ridiculous. In addition to the usual night-time water, beer and maraca vendors, the walls had several "spectacles", including a real sloth, which you could hold and pet and get a picture with. Completely illegal, I'm sure, and again: completely ridiculous.

And now, after a really incredible few days with Kristen, I'm back in Quito. Every time I leave Quito for a trip and come back, it feels a little more natural to call it home. In contrast to a new city like Cartagena, I know Quito pretty well, and it feels comfortable and familiar. That said, it's also back to the reality of classes, essays and internships, which are nice sometimes, but considerably less exciting than exploring Colombia with Kristen. On the other hand, the Ides of March have come and gone, meaning that my time in Quito is half over. I still have plenty of time left, but it's time to start planning which things I need to make sure I get done in the next two months.

Weekend Adventures

I was only in Baños, the small-town-outdoor-adventure-capital of Ecuador for about 30 hours, but I stayed completely busy and came back exhausted. Yes, the class 3+ whitewater rafting was fun (despite the irritable Scotsman sitting behind me), as were the thermal baths, but there's something about jumping off a 140 meter bridge that dominates your mind for a little while after.

Puenting (or "bridging", for you non-hispanohablantes), is sort of like bungee jumping, but instead of a single elastic line down, the rope is attached to both sides of the bridge, so you fall into a pendulum swing, rather than bounding in place. Basically, they hooked me up to two harnesses and four carabiners, then had me step onto a tiiiiiny little platform off the edge of the bridge. If I wasn't freaking out before (and I was), I started to then. But I had an incredible view of the mountains around me, and there was a very pretty river 300 feet directly below me. The guy said "listo?" ("ready?") and I said "ahhhhhh!" ("ahhhhhh!"), and then, betraying every survival instinct in my body, I let myself be pushed off the bridge. I wasn't planning on yelling anything, but as soon as I started to fall I found myself screaming "HOLY SHIT!!!!". And then it was over. And they slowly, gently lowered me down to the ground. Easily the scariest thing I've done in my life, and I can't wait to do it again!

In other news, I came back to Quito in time to go to the Sunday get-together at the synagogue, where I played futbol, had a ton of pizza and chocolate cake, and hung out with Ignacio and Nir, the only two guys my age. It was really cool just to spend to some talking and fighting for bounce-house supremacy. Although it sounds like people my age aren't terribly engaged in the community, there's a decent chance I'll end up seeing these guys again, either at the synagogue or we made tentative plans to meet up for an evening to hang out again. Success!

Overdue

It's been a while since I've updated you all. Again. But I've finally been shamed into writing an update, in part by seeing how frequently other people studying abroad have been blogging, and in part because I just discovered that I can see how many people check my blog any given day/week/ or month, so I know some of you have been waiting for an update for a while.

The past several weeks have largely been about settling into a routine. I've stopped expecting life here to be new and exotic, which was a harder thing to accept than I expected. For a while, I was frustrated with myself, assuming I wasn't being observant enough to notice the idiosyncrasies of Quito. More recently, however I've come to the conclusion that culture and character doesn't have to shout or make my life difficult to count. The rhythm of live here isn't drastically different than other places I've spent time (Ancramdale and Mumbai being clear exceptions), but I'm starting to notice it's specific paces and rules, like just how long the bus will wait for you to get on before accelerating again, or how much a simple "buenas tardes" is appreciated before giving a taxista directions.

On the other hand, I get frustrated at times that I'm stuck in a limbo between all-out adventure, and truly fitting in. Although I'm frequently told that my Spanish is very good, I still can't understand my family at lunch, unless they slow down to include me. And while I'm often the one giving friends directions from University to point X, I still don't know anything about most of the city. My goal for the next month is to make peace with my status as a temporary resident, try to cover as much ground as I can, and not over-think everything so much.

As for adventures, I've had two major outings in the past few weeks. First, the week after Canoa we went to Mindo, a small outdoor activity village in the cloud forest. In 30 hours and $45, I went whitewater rafting (class 2), zip lining, and repeled down a waterfall. We went zip lining on an especially cloudy day, so you often couldn't see the end of the cable, making flying above the forest especially empowering. I definitely liked the waterfall repelling best, though, because I was entirely responsible for my decent (it was just a rope from the top to the bottom which I fed through my harness at my own pace) and it required some effort and concentration. The freezing water crashing down on top of me was pretty cool too.

My other recent excursion was taking the cable car up Pinchincha, the volcano that boarders Quito on the west. At 4,100 meters, it was a little difficult to breathe at first, and I was surprised to discover they sell cigarettes up there, for anyone who wants to challenge their lungs. The landscape up there was spectacular, with deep ravines, rollings hills, and an impressive view of the city below, when the clouds parted for a bit. We walked around a bit, and discovered that there are horseback riding trails and horses for rent. So, humming the Rohan theme the entire time, I took a half-hour journey on horseback around the mountain.

Classes go on, as they always do. One professor repeats everything he says, then writes it on the whiteboard, then draws corresponding emoticons, then underlines the key words, then says it all out load again. Not my favorite class. My "Crash-Course-in-Every-Social-Issue-in-Ecuador" class is almost over, since it is only meant to be a corollary to my internship, but I've enjoyed the twice weekly discussions about topics such as alternatives to petrol in Ecuador, reducing the stigma of being indigenous, or promoting gender equality. My linguistics class continues to be my favorite, both content wise and socially. Our current unit is essentially about the subtle differences in prononciation for various letters (for instance, the /b/ sound in "bagel" and "label" are different, in English), which is extremely difficult for someone who isn't a native speaker. But it's hard for everyone, and a fun challenge. The other students in the class are very fun and friendly. Today, they invited me to go out with them after class to celebrate Diego's birthday, which was a lot of fun, and a great chance to hang out with Ecuadorians my age for a few hours.

I'll do my best to write again soon. I have a lot of good adventures in the next few weeks (Baños, the Amazon, then Cartagena, Colombia with Kristen!), so I should be motivated to write.

P.S. if you're interested in a reflection on being Jewish here, check out the post I wrote for Hillel's Study Abroad Blog: http://travelingtuftshillel.blogspot.com/

Locals

I'm way overdue for an update. In my defense, it's been a pretty busy week and half.

Last weekend, myself and 15 girls from my program left at 9pm on Thursday night for a 12 hour bus ride to the coast. Canoa is a tiny little surf town that's hugely popular with gringos like us. We stayed in a hostel with handmade steps that were cross sections of a tree trunk and the walls were all green bamboo. The beach itself was excellent. Big waves, sandy sand, cheap piña coladas (with fresh piña!) and lots of sun. Every morning a truck would drive up and down the beach-road with a loudspeaker announcing fresh shrimp, which excited other people more than me, but was still cool. At night, we made friends with Margo, one of the cabaña owners, due the 16 of us buying a ridiculous amount of piña coladas and batidos, and spending several hours dancing to the same 6 songs on the beach with his 3 nieces (ages 3, 6, and 12). On the second night, we convinced him to leave the bar for a bit and dance with us, which I think he enjoyed.

On the second day in Canoa, I got a little tired of speaking English and laying on the beach, so decided to wander down the highway for a while and ended up following a dirt road up a cliff. When I got to the top, there was a half built hotel with a balcony for every room and old guy on the top floor who invited me up. This is one of those times where prudence might have kept me from, say, accepting the coke bottle he gave me, but I decided to trust the world and just go with it. I ended up sitting there, enjoying a fantastic view of the beach, and chatting with Ramiro for over two hours about traveling (he biked the Pan American highway when he was 55), Canoa (he started the first hotel there 20 years ago), and getting lost (the motor on his boat died 20 miles out at sea). It was one of the coolest conversations I've had here yet.

Partially based on hanging out with Ramiro, I recently realized that I'm not spending enough time with Ecuadorians. Luckily, about 12 hours after I had this realization, that started to change. On Thursday, 4 kids in my linguistics class invite me and the other American, Emily, out to dinner that evening. It turned out that "dinner' meant a bar, but it was fun all the same. On Friday, I went out to lunch with everyone from my internship organization, Ciclopolis. All fifteen of them are under 30, and I was the only non-ecuadorian. Also, we basically went to "the Meat House", which was kind of scary for me, but they had thin chicken, so I survived. Finally, on Friday night, I went to Synagogue for services. It was definitely a little strange, not knowing anyone, but they sang some tunes I knew from Hillel (ej. Mizmor Shir), and others I knew from TBE, as well as a few new ones, so I felt pretty comfortable during services. Afterward, a bunch of people introduced themselves and told me to come back whenever I wanted, and one family offered to drive me home, helping me to avoid a 45 minute taxi ride. All in all, a successful adventure which left me feeling very good about my immersion rate the past few days. Although I've definitely missed family and friends some, it's been a good week.