So my month-long hiatus from the catcalls, heckling, and general
street-calling came to a screeching halt about 2 weeks ago. Because my
hair decided it wanted to un-dread itself, I complied, and Daniela, and
Lucy a little bit, spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon
combing through the remaining ones. Monday then, I went out into the
world dreadless, going even so far as to straighten my hair on my first
day. And what an uninvited shock it was! I'm back to being equated to a
pastry, the "ricas" and "mamacitas" coming back again full throttle.
Honestly, creativity is not cat-caller's strong point. .
In other news, Lindsay and I have really begun to find the quirks of
the green buses (between Quito and school) quite endearing. Be it
little Jesuses hanging from the ceiling (assurances of a safe ride) or
seeing just how fast our bus can get back into Quito (12 minutes in
what should be a 20 minute ride...it's kind of terrifying as we realize
that we are flying around the curves on two wheels) or even just how
the green bus allows us to indulge in our new-found habit of
harmonizing to N'Sync songs ("This I Promise You" being a definite
favorite), we have found that a day without the a green bus experience
is a sad day indeed. About a month ago, then, we were in a green bus
headed back to Quito in the pouring rain, and the windshield was
looking all foggy. Now the bus ayudante ("helper"..the guy that goes
around and collects our money) is sitting up front with the bus driver,
wiping away at the windshield, but things aren't getting any clearer. I
can only imagine this is because the windshield needed to be wiped from
the outside (now that I think about it, I don't remember windshield
wipers...), but the ayudante continued uselessly wiping and wiping.
Finally he whips out a bottle of windex, squirts the entire inside of
the windshield, turns around, and proceeds to collect everybody's
money. Now, notice how I didn't say he wiped it off, oh no. There were
definite circular-shaped, windex sprays all over the inside of the
window. Great. Now we can't see because of foggy windows AND windex
dripping all over the place. Lindsay and I just sat there and kind of
gawked, and the ayudante continued to collect all the money from
everybody and when he got back to the front, he wiped off the windex.
The result? Absolutely no change. What a strangely uneffective and
inexplicable solution to the problem!
A couple of Saturdays ago Raluca and I went to the artisan market to
buy...well lots of stuff. We decided to eat lunch at about 3 when we
smelled a delicious aroma coming from "Texas Chicken". Intrigued by the
delicious smell and cheap prices, we walked right in and ordered the
only thing they had: chicken. So our chicken comes in pieces, but in
some definite I-need-some-silverware pieces. Searching our little
basket for silverware, we found only our napkins, so we proceeded to
dive in with our hands. Having finished the chicken, I remove the
plastic from around my napkin to clean my grease-filled fingers, when I
realize the plastic has a form...of a hand. I was, in fact, holding
plastic gloves. Now I don't know if they think that that is how we eat
chicken in the States, but we had such a laugh at the prospect of
having actually used the plastic gloves to eat our chicken. Que chiste..
This weekend was the Fiesta de Quito (well, the official day is
actually December 6) i.e. Festival of How Drunk Can You Possibly Get.
This in mind I fled the city and did a tour that I had wanted to do
since my plane ride to Ecuador, appropriately marked with a
"Continental Airlines" napkin. Though I had to study, I just had my
vocab list that I really needed, so I studied on my library-on-wheels (
i.e. the bus) and bussed through the Andes, a spectacular backdrop to
studying. I also went gold panning last weekend (and had
Thanksgiving!), so I'll send the link to that too...sorry, there are
lots of landscape pictures in these two albums...
gold panning and Thanksgiving:
http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314511&l=47dca&id=8628451
Quilotoa:
http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2318214&l=9a569&id=8628451
annemary
