Ecua-Fabulous

La Madrina

mueller-san — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:59:00 GMT

If I have one strategy about living in Ecuador, it is to accept all invitations I receive (that is, with the exception of the invitations offered to me from men on the street between their wet smootching noises and hisses). But in terms of my host family, students and co-workers, I am convinced that whatever they want me to do with them and their families is worth doing.

Had Jorge known this strategy of mine he would not have needed to be so polite when he asked me to do what he called a favor. He and I share an office space at my school, and one morning after his computer class, he asked me if I would be willing to be the madrina of the sports teams for our school. Had his explanation been in English, it still would not have given me a good idea of what in the world that entailed. Having gotten used to the lack of details in the explanation of plans in Ecuador, I was ready to accept the invitation despite my lack of comprehension. So when he mentioned that I got to wear a banner (a la beauty queens), there was not even a hint of a doubt in my mind that the following Friday I was definitely going to be the madrina.

Through conversations with other coworkers I was able to gather that there is a yearly sports competition between various government institutions. SECAP, funded by the government as it is, participates in this competition every year, and our men – like the other teams – always arrive in matching full body track suits, ready to compete. The teams also arrive with one woman, dressed to the nines, who does the honor of leading the team in the opening ceremony.

I, like you may be, was imagining something grand, a legit ceremony followed by a full day of soccer, basketball, Ecua-volley, and maybe even some track and field. The number of times I was approached and re-approached by coworkers about the color of my dress (in order to best match the lettering of the banner) further strengthened this notion of mine. So I got a manicure, bought new stockings and new shoes, shaved my legs, and wore the most expensive dress I have ever bought (which thankfully now had a reason for having been brought to Ecuador).

The day of the competition I was severely overdressed for my morning class, but confident that I would make an appropriate madrina for the rest of the day. When I saw the team, a hodgepodge of men but all wearing remarkably suave navy and orange track suits, complete with the SECAP logo, I was ready to represent, albeit a bit nervous about my responsibilities. Through my broken Spanish conversations I had heard mention of a separate ceremony for just the madrinas (where purportedly one “wins” – based on what I had no idea), and for some reason I was convinced I was going to have to sing the Ecuadorian national anthem – something I was utterly incapable of doing.

Perhaps luckily, but somewhat sadly, I never got to find out if I could have won, or could have faked my way through the anthem, for in typical Ecua fashion, we SECAPers arrived at the competition an hour late. The other teams were already lined up in the gymnasium – madrinas in front, gracefully holding their bouquets – when we arrived. So we walked in late (me without flowers and with only half our team in tow) – in time to hear the closing remarks. In the small and unimpressive gym, the few people who were there to watch were busier talking on their cell phones or chatting among themselves than listening to anything that was said. Hardly a grand ceremony.

It was not long before the competitions started. They began with a run, in which two of our about 20 person team participated. Standing in the street to cheer, it soon became clear that the big race required the runners to go around the block, in my estimate, about four times. SECAP did not win. We ventured back onto the grounds of the school in which the competition was being held and chatted for a while. My assumption that we were waiting while a series of soccer or basketball games were set up was proven wrong when the game of cuarenata was announced as the next event. Far from anything athletic, cuarenta is actually the national card game. Again, two of our 20 person team participated.

After more than enough time watching men play a card game I do not understand, I was ready for some real sports. But, perhaps more to my liking in reality, we exited the small classroom where the cards we being played and were immediately lined up to receive our huge lunch of hornado – a delicious dish of juicy pork, mote (a type of corn), llapingachos (potato pancakes with cheese), rice and potatoes. Still in my fancy dress and new heels, we sat in the stands of the gym and I gorged on my favorite Ecua dish. And then, the day was over.

I do not know why the track suits were necessary – I generally do not think of playing cards as an activity that requires attire suitable for sweating. I don’t know why the day was hyped as a day of sports competition. I do not know why we had such a large team and so little participation. And I don’t really know why my presence was needed. But I know that the turning of events – the lack of congruency between my idea of what the day would be and what it was – was one of the most entertaining things I have experienced thus far. And I know that I felt honored to be asked to be the madrina, that I enjoyed spending the day with my coworkers. And I know I still have a very glittery banner to prove that I was in fact Señorita Deportes SECAP 2008.

Gallery: Ambato y Baños de Ambato

mueller-san — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:52:00 GMT

The second week of my first vacation

Gallery: Julian (and the rest of the fam)

mueller-san — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:35:00 GMT

We joke Julian, who is 1, is my novio. All I know is that he is really cute!

Gallery: La Vida del SECAP

mueller-san — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:00:00 GMT

paseos, students, madrinas

Gallery: Vilcabamba

mueller-san — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:54:00 GMT

tranquidad to the max

Gallery: Hanging with the N and J

mueller-san — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:09:00 GMT

Natty and Jake visit!

Eating Pets in the Pueblito

mueller-san — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 01:06:00 GMT

My mother always says that she did not eat cuy when my parents were in Ecuador because my father wouldn’t let her. Since my father isn’t anyone to allow my mother to do anything, this was always said in jest. I do not know the real extent of her desire to try cuy since we North Americans are somewhere between curious and disgusted by the idea that guinea pigs are a food here in Ecuador, but I understand my father’s hesitance to partake in this particular cultural activity. I personally equate guinea pigs both with 4^th grade classroom pets and rodents. I am not sure which association is stronger, but neither really compels me ingest the things. Nonetheless, I came to Ecuador willing to try anything, and faithful as I am in the strength of my stomach, I figured I would eventually eat cuy. Had I come here to live alone however, I am not positive I would have sought it out on my own. However, because I live with Ecuadorians, am often a guest in their homes, and because cuy is considered quite the delicacy here, it became a fate I could not avoid.

I had the pleasure (take that word lightly) of watching the entire preparation process the first time I ate cuy. I was in Jima, a pueblocito an hour and a half outside of Cuenca with a group of other volunteers from around the country. We were visiting a fellow volunteer who lives in this tiny, dirt-street lined town. While it was impossible for our program to find a host family for the volunteer to live with, she does have a pseudo-host-family who owns one of the two restaurants and who feeds her. We were in this restaurant soon after our arrival, and since Jima may have never before seen such a large group of gringos, a treat was in order. So we followed our chef to her tiny kitchen and watched every step of preparing cuy from pulling the living guinea pig from the burlap sack, to the swift (and clearly oft-practiced) breaking of its neck, to the draining of the blood, the plucking of hair and the removal of the internal organs, to the placement on a stick to rotate above the fire. (Please see my photo album for the gruesome graphics).

A North American understanding of delicacy is yet another thing which does not translate directly into an Ecuadorian understanding. For unlike escargot or caviar which are considered delicacies in the States for their rarity and cost, cuy is dirt cheap (that is to say, guinea pigs are dirt cheap, perhaps because they live in it) – they reproduce like, bunnies, I guess. Rapidly, cost-effectively. Cuy therefore, it seems to me, is more a delicacy for the labor it entails. A labor of love. A bloody, gut-extracting, hair-plucking labor, but a labor of love nonetheless. From the killing to the last spin over the fire, it was more than two hours before our pets were ready to eat. You have to respect the time commitment.

Served with motepillo – a dish with mote, a corn species you cannot have a meal in Cuenca without, and some cheese and spices – the cuy had thankfully at least been cut into pieces. But that didn’t really make it that much easier to eat. With tiny bones a tons of fat, the meat of cuy is relatively hard to get at – requiring both hands and no utensils – thus negating another Western conception that a delicacy should perhaps be eaten with refinement. Despite the cliché, in reality cuy tasted an awful lot like chicken – only fattier. Whenever I have expressed that opinion to an Ecuadorian, they agree but rebuttal with the idea that it therefore has more flavor. And indeed, the weight I am gaining here seems to support this notion of fat and flavor going together (especially when you consider the Ecuadorian habit I have adopted of putting ketchup on rice – I still avoid the mayonnaise – since you need to add some sort of flavor . . .)

In the end I am glad I ate cuy, if only to see the somewhat shocked expressions of Ecuadorian faces when they hear I have tried their treasured national food. Then again, I am therefore always subsequently required to feign enthusiasm for it – something which is not wholly honest because in the end, as pets or rodents or food, I am still not strongly compelled to eat guinea pigs.

Canned Peaches, Flora and an Old Tire

mueller-san — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 01:03:00 GMT

Kat had an unexpected four day weekend. That is to say, her expected three day weekend turned into one of four days when she discovered that Thursday was an exclusive holiday for the employees of the University where she teaches – meaning it not technically for the professors and students, but also meaning that the employees who have sole possession of the keys to the classrooms were unavailable to perform their daily duty of unlockings – thus effectively rendering Thursday a holiday for all. This strange and illogical distribution of labor is characteristically Ecuadorian in its inefficiency. While an extranjero like me, living in Ecuador, is generally delighted at the discovery of this cultural quark because it means I have been here long enough to recognize something that is particular to Ecuador, the manifestation of this inefficiency are usually, well, inefficient, and thus troubling to the North American mentality. But in this case, it gave Kat the excuse to make the nearly 10 hour bus trip from Ambato to Cuenca, where she could visit me and see one of Ecuador’s cleanest and oldest cultural hubs.

I was excited for a visitor in general, but more excited to see Kat, who had been my closet friend during our month of orientation. She called a few days before her arrival in order to seek advice about what presents my host family might appreciate as a gift for housing her for the weekend. She had initially thought to bring a nice bottle of wine, but because my familia ecuatoriana consists of a woman who I have never seen drink, a former addict and another woman who is currently breast-feeding, I suggested she bring something else. When I picked her up at the terminal at 6am, on my way to my excessively early morning class, she immediately showed me the two large cans of canned peaches and coctal mezcla her family had sworn to her were a very nice gift to any Ecuadorian family. Despite the early hour and the general discomfort of being gringas in a terminal where every man is either smooching at you or offering you a ticket to Montañita, our own cultural training made us loudly erupt into laughter at the idea that canned fruit was any sort of delicacy or gesture of gratefulness. We had both seen that canned fruits were housed in the same aisle as desserts and candies (including $8 bags of M&Ms) at any supermercado we entered, but our vision of canned fruit only belonging in hick America was too prevalent to seriously accept the fact that canned fruit might be worth something to the elites I was living with. It was a humorous thought we would continue to giggle at throughout the weekend.

Upon Kat’s arrival I realized I didn’t really know what to do in Cuenca besides wander around, which is what I usually do after my morning classes. My anxiety about this lack of activities was soon resolved when we realized that this happened to be a big weekend for visits in Cuenca. There were about 15 volunteers from our program in town in Cuenca this weekend, and while Kat and I were the only ones from the March group, the September volunteers were friendly and ready to hang out.

So that Friday we all congregated in the centro at mid-morning. After scarfing down some eggs and humitas (deliciously sweet tamales native to Ecuador) we all bused it to the Feria Libre, a hub of buses and themed stands selling everything from large almuerzos (which technically mean lunches, but are actually available for consumption from about 8:30am on) to cheap hair supplies to pirated DVDs and CDs. The plan was to catch a bus heading to Guayaquil and hop off in the Cajas, a beautiful national park about an hour and a half west of Cuenca. But upon discovering that such a bus would not be leaving for another hour we decided to transport ourselves to the park in the second best manner in Ecuador – by asking a complete stranger to out us in the back of their truck. Seeing the hoard of gringos wandering to every truck driver we saw, a friendly security guard eventually offered his help. Leading us around a few corners, to a man who was most likely a brother-in-law of the guard, we soon secured a ride with an old man whose white pickup was complete with tall wooden barriers around the back and a thick dusty substance covering the floor. We joked it was likely we were sitting in lyme or anthrax. Nonetheless, we piled in and 75 minutes and 40 bucks later we were in the Cajas.

If my popping ears had not warned me before, the immensely colder air would have told me we had climbed significantly in altitude. Zipping up fleeces and pulling on hoods we roused our sleeping limbs to climb out of the truck and gaze upon rolling brown and green hills, the extensive span of which was obscured by misty grey clouds that blew and dispersed throughout their concave passages. With no trails per se we simply started walking. Each ascent to a new ridge would undoubtedly reveal another small lake nestled in the relative flatness existent at the foot of numerous hills. Although the wind changed direction frequently, it blew consistently and made the light brown shrubs that coated the mountains resemble hair under water – fluid and weightless. While guide books and posters hype the possibility of seeing wildlife in the Cajas, the most interesting species I saw were the smallest – tiny plants with buds striped in the same colors as circus tents and cactus-like vegetation that sprouted upwards in purple and green stalks and seemed to want to engulf the air around them. There is likely some lesson to draw from that, about the diversity of life – even on the smallest scales – but I was more interested in simply looking at the foliage, and in using the digital macro feature on my camera.

So that’s what I did, took pictures, walked in the cold, cursed when I stepped on something I believed to be a mountainous rock covered in moss and subsequently discovered the moss in fact only rested on water. A few of us had to return to Cuenca for evening classes, so we all hiked towards the sound of passing cars and soon found the road. Without anxiety we were soon able to flag down a different white pickup, and the man and his family were more than happy to have us pile in the back. I was surprisingly comfortable in the middle of the discarded tire in which I found myself sitting.

Solitude in Company

mueller-san — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 00:55:00 GMT

Friday May 2, 2008

I practiced my lie on the way home tonight. Walking the three blocks up the winding Lorezo Piedra, around the piles of crumbled stone from construction projects I never see being worked on, and past the green graffiti of a tearful face (buttressed by small windows which peer into an equally green overgrown courtyard) that I keep telling myself I’ll take a picture of, I recited the clumsy Spanish I would use to tell my family I was feeling nauseated. It wasn’t true; I in fact had more energy than I usually do returning home after my night class. I had not even been forced to fight heavy eyes during my long and jerky bus ride home – something which I have become accustomed to despite the fact that the buses here seem to run more on the cacophony from their obligatory treble-heavy and thunderous music (reggaeton or love ballads or English music I previously thought only appropriate for Bar-Mitzvahs), than the diesel gasoline that spews clouds of black and runs through engines I can feel vibrating in my ears and newly forming fat deposits.

Tonight I attributed my alertness to the fact that I was alone. Peter, whom I teach with, had taken a taxi to the Centro to meet his visiting parents, and without my commuting partner – whose maleness provides a tangible amount of security – I naturally adopted my persona of heightened awareness. It is a persona that will take time to perfect, for while it entails that I be conscious of the happenings around me, it also requires that I not be a happening myself, that I be as invisible as possible. Imperceptibility is a strange goal to have every time I am in public, one that generally runs counter to my personality and therefore does not sit too well with me. Nonetheless, it is a necessity, and something I actively and willingly seek. But no amount of practice at avoiding eye contact with men or not letting the rough bounces of the bus throw me off my balance will neutralize the reality that I am a gringa, and therefore permanently perceptible. And every time I board the 12, which has a route that continues to outlying towns and pueblos, my gringa-ness is that much more distinguishable. So tonight on the bus I only glanced up from the ground or away from the window to occasionally meet the eyes of the staring women and children in order to discourage them from doing so. I even tried to not nervously check the position of the gigantic flying beetle that had also boarded the bus, fearing my glances would betray my fear and somehow invite the thing to fly near my face, which could only result in a frantic and spastic (and hardly discreet) bodily reaction.

The bus ride tonight, like most of my experiences in Cuenca thus far, was a solitary one. It is a solitude that is solid and substantial and it seems to increase my separation anxiety and I succumb to its power more than I should. Its real force is that it is strongest when I am surrounded by other people, even those I have come to know and feel relatively comfortable with. Only too aware of my lacking Spanish skills, I find that even if I can understand what is being talked about around me, I have nothing coherent to say in response. This is especially true given that the majority of conversations which take place among females my age are about their children, namely how long they breast fed, and where they will go to school, and their weight, and their sleeping patterns and what the occasional egg rub rituals have said about their health. Were these even in English, I would have nothing to contribute. At times, I can sense the superiority these women feel they have over me, and it is at these times I wonder most why I chose to leave family I do have, albeit still childless. And it is at these times, and the times when I just don’t understand what is being discussed, that the solitude is its strongest, and that it tempts me into real, physical solitude.

So jumping from the bus (quite literally – the inability of the buses to ever stop completely belies the cultural acceptance of tardiness), I decided I did not have the willpower to withstand a night of my difference and silence and confusion being expressed in every conversation I was not having, every joke I was not getting, every time I was the only one not laughing. So I took three blocks to prepare my sentences about not feeling well enough to accompany the young couple I live with to the birthday party of a perfectly nice and courteous young man who lives below us with his beautiful and kind wife. Entering the house, my face betrayed my preoccupation, so when Lupe, the dueña of the house, asked me right away what was wrong, I let my lie of nausea fly.

I should have taken the time to realize that house was empty except for us and to remember that making plans in Ecuador rarely leads to the actual doing of them. That was my first thought when I was told, as Lupe prepared me tea for my stomach, that Angelica had gone to a baby shower and David was out with his friends. I sipped my tea and realized I had just wasted a perfectly usable lie. But realizing that this was not a solitude I had chosen, not one I had lied my way into for my own comfort, I suddenly felt alone.

The truth is that I do not have any friends, and that fun is not a word I would regularly use to describe my life in Cuenca thus far. And the truth is that I know most, if not all, of that is my fault. I know I should try to speak Spanish even if I know it is inarticulate, that I should study more in my spare time, that I should suppress my feelings of loneliness and be active in order to dispel them. And I know that there may be more useful things than fun now, that I came here to become educated and challenged, that my life before Ecuador had been too much about fun. And I know that loneliness is not all bad, that if I came here to learn things about myself I need to be with myself. These things I know. And I am confident that there will be a times when life makes me happy, when my Spanish will be noticeably better, when I will be able to understand a joke. But tonight, I could do nothing but be alone.

Gallery: Mi ciudad

mueller-san — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:35:00 GMT

Cuenca, in all its glory

Gallery: Guayaquil for a night

mueller-san — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:26:00 GMT

I went to Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city for one night, in order to celebrate fellow vol Shelby's b-day. Much dancing ensued.

Gallery: Jima, and eating pets

mueller-san — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:05:00 GMT

My weekend trip to the pueblocito of Jima, and my first experience eating Cuy (guinea pig, yum yum!)

Gallery: The Amazon, for real

mueller-san — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:13:00 GMT

Perros Calientes

mueller-san — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:08:00 GMT

Shock may be too strong of a word, (I think amusement is more appropriate), but I have found one cultural difference which stands out to me – if only in its frequency. Indeed, I generally think of hot dogs as one of the few typical North American foods, but they are also not necessarily a regular food – maybe I will eat them at a ball park or a BBQ. But I certainly do not encounter them in every other restaurant I see (restaurants – that’s a glamorous word for them - specializing in comida rapida are very common here). And I certainly never eat them on my pizza (the more common word for hot dogs in Ecuador, salchicha literally means sausage, and thus is full of the potential for disappointment when you are imagining a delicious spicy Italian sausage on your forthcoming pizza pie).

But just about every certainty I had about hot dogs has left my worldview since coming to Ecuador. You do in fact encounter them with a frequency that is at first baffling, multiple options on each block. And, if you opt to, or simply get fooled into it by the dangers of direct translation, you do eat hot dogs on your pizza. And you do also eat them on toothpicks, and in a dish with rice and cucumbers (dinner the first night in Quito). And you can also sample the different variations of hot dogs – my first was my second night in Cuenca, when the family and I stopped to order a Salchicha Colombiana from a street vendor. Apparently these were one of the main cravings of my host sister when she was pregnant with her now 9-month old son, and I could see why. Smothered in ketchup, excuse me, salsa de tomate, mayonnaise (which runs like water here in Ecuador) and mustard (first time I have seen this beloved condiment of mine in this country since the red-headed stepchild of condiments, mayo, seems to have all the power), this glorious hot dog is also topped with onions and, in what makes it so special, potato chips. What relation this has to Colombia, I have no idea, except that perhaps after one eats enough of them, Ecuadorians will look down on the fat rolls as much as they do on Colombians.

While I am positive there are more variations of hot dogs for me to discover (maybe on for each neighboring country?), I know of only one more that I think I will be forced to try simply because of its ridiculousness. “My Favorite Hot Dog”, a tienda of hot dogs across from a corner where I can catch a bus to my school, apparently is the place to go whenever you want a hot dog with, I kid you not, shredded hot dog on top. Que Rico! Despite the existence (and delicacy status) of cuy (guinea pig) in Ecuador (which I have not tried, but clearly have to) and the regular sightings of whole pigs on spigots, and the cow tongue I had for lunch and dinner last week (delicious, but unsettling in its familiarity, in the fact that I was eating a tongue with my tongue), for the moment, salchichas are my favorite Ecua meat.

La Familia

mueller-san — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:19:00 GMT

We were all waiting in the conference room of the Hotel Embassy, immediately after our session about some classically Ecuadorian cultural quarks. In addition to the warning that men would be pressured to drink a lot, and that there are many Quichaua phrases in Ecuadorian Spanish that we were bound to not understand at first, we were told repeatedly about the Ecuadorian concept of time, which, crudely, is to say that they don’t respect it the way a North American mind is accustomed to. Showing up for a meeting or a wedding or any sort obligation an hour late is not only acceptable, it should be expected.

So when I was the last one to be picked up that night by my host family, almost an hour later than the designated time, I figured I was at least living with some legit Ecuas. I had been told that I was living with a young, childless couple, Doris at 24 years old and her husband Eddy, who is 31. So when they showed up with an unidentified young woman and two children I was again impressed by the authenticity of the experience, having been told that families in Ecuador are huge and varied and ever-present. And I could not help but somewhat immediately feel like a member of that family when the very first place we went after my pickup was not to the house, but to the grocery store, where I proceeded to play with 7-year old Naomi (one of the now-named children, although relation to the family was still unclear). We wrecked havoc on the air freshener aisle for about 25 minutes, leaving it in a disarray of pungent scents – an activity that promptly led us to smelling everything in the store. The fun and comfort I felt on that first night (and the third, when I was ip until 1:30 am participating and watching the lively living room karaoke session) was a feeling that would only increase throughout my month in Quito. Doris, with big eyes and an infectious laugh was always loving and looking to have fun. And Eddy was a mixture between a father and a brother and friend – always looking out for me, always with a smile on his face, and always being a joker of some sort. And although I never really understood where the line was drawn between friend and employee for Mari (who was the unidentified woman the night of my pickup), I did eventually realize that she had two children in addition to Naomi – her full brother Alexander and her half sister Areana, who was perhaps the cutest child I have ever encountered, and was often the light of my day. Mari would sometimes cook, sometimes do the laundry, and eventually worked in the pizzeria my family opened in the last week of my stay there. The same was true for Pauline, who lived on the first floor of the house. Again, she often did chores around the complex, but was also clearly a trusted friend, as was her son Adonis. My family was like a show, basically. Something was always going on, someone was always laughing.

But perhaps the night I laughed the most was the night of the pizza espionage, one of my favorite memories from Ecuador so far. About two weeks into my stay, before I had any indication a pizzeria was in the mix, I came home from class late, around 9:30 at night. As I was approaching the door of our house, Doris was leaving with Areana. In the broken Spanish I thought I understood, I got the impression she was just walking the little 2-year old back to her mother’s house. I threw down my backpack and told her I would accompany her – which seemed like a ridiculous thing to do once I realized Mari’s house was all of 30 seconds away. But when Mari came out of the house, instead of us going in, and we walked down the stairs to the bus station, as opposed to up them towards the house, I really wondered what I had gotten myself into. Mari was talking to me on the bus about her boyfriend, and the father of Areana. I understood that he lived in Spain, that she has not seen him for a long time, that they talk everyday, and something about one month. When this conversation seemed to have gone by the wayside (as they often do with someone who is barely capable of understanding, let alone responding to, what is being said), I finally asked Doris where we were going. “To eat” was the only response I got. So two buses and a cab ride later we end up at a hole in the wall pizza place, where Eddy was mysteriously in his car outside waiting for us. Confused as ever (pizza is widely available anywhere in Quito), I suddenly had the sinking feeling we were here to meet with Mari’s boyfriend, and that I had totally inappropriately invited myself along. This feeling was only enhanced by the fact that Doris and Eddy and Mari were all whispering at the table, not making loud conversation like they usually do, and barely even looking at me. So I absorbed myself in Areana, hoping I had not just made some huge cultural faux pax, until we were actually kicked out of the place because it was closing. Relieved that the mystery boyfriend had not showed up and that it was time to go home, I was aghast when, about three blocks away from the restaurant, Eddy flipped a U-turn on the street in front of the pizzeria and parked his car. I was even more perplexed when Eddy, at 11:00 at night, got out of the driver’s seat, and began to wax his car while we all sat contentedly in the dark. After about 10 minutes of waxing, Eddy got back into the car. I think my confusion was visible, because at this point he looked at me, laughed and finally explained that he and Doris were opening a pizzeria in a couple weeks and this place had a maestro of pizza working as the chef. We were waiting in the car, and Eddy was waxing as a signal to the security guard of where he was parked, in order to steal the chef from this place and hire them at the new pizzeria. Stealth business in Ecuador for sure. But once I understood what the hell was going on, I got really into it – all of us peering at the pizzeria in the distance, anxiously awaiting the chef’s departure and strategizing about how best to encounter him.

In the end, he was too expensive and some random aunt taught Doris to cook pizza. But that night stands out to me as one of the most hilarious and memorable.

A Bubble Indeed

mueller-san — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:12:00 GMT

A bubble orientation was, for sure. We had classes all day every day, commencing with Spanish classes at 7 in the morning, and eventually ending at the conclusion of our practice teaching at SECAP Sur in Quito at 8 in the evening. Besides the students we taught for the last two hours of the day, and the occasional lecturer, all of our interactions were with each other and more current volunteers. And besides our daily commutes to classes, all of that time was spent in the Mariscal, the gringoland of Quito.

I met all of the other 9 volunteers in my group at the Miami airport on our way to Quito, and I was not immediately put off by any of them as you sometimes dread when meeting a group of people you will be forced to interact with. In fact, it turns out I enjoy all of them, some of them greatly. Kat is probably my best friend from the group, we had similar vibes, mostly meaning sense of humor I suppose, and I think we both knew it right away. Had I known her biography before, and she mine, we probably would have taken more time to become so close. But despite the fact she is a former evangelical (although still religious now) from Houston, and I an agnostic, (close to opposite ends of a spectrum, extremes both of us have little familiarity with) we became fast friends. She is hilarious, full of crazy amounts of energy and humor, a sort of one woman show. But her attention getting tendencies are not of the self-absorbed nature, more of the pure entertainment type, and she is actually very intuitive and a great listener, meaning I have found someone I feel very comfortable talking about everything with– something I treasure because of its rarity. Chris struck me immediately as a good soul, someone who has no intention of hurting or taking advantage of another. This impression may have been influenced by his long dreadlocks, which archetypically imply peacefulness, but I have yet to be disappointed by that first impression. He is 26, a special education teacher, a guitar player, skinny, and therefore someone I am attracted to, of course. Matthew, 24, and I connected right away because we had both studied abroad in Nepal and because he is from Albuquerque, which I unrightfully feel I have a connection to since my grandparents lived there once and since I heard so much about it from a homicide case I worked on for the law firm. Turns out though that he knows nothing of Senor Murphy’s candy in New Mexico, and I know much more about the Albuquerque meth scene than this good old boy who went to Swarthmore does. Jared, 27, I liked because he is clearly a playful guy, because he had really hip thick-rimmed glasses and because he quickly admitted his deep love of his cat Ira, characteristics which do not necessarily jive with his 6 years in the Marines, 9 months of which were in Iraq. April, 26 like Chris, seemed serious at first, but was intriguing for that reason, and as her mother is from Guyaquil she had the most direct connection to the place we were all heading. Tina, 22 like me, just graduated from UC San Diego and had a sunny and fun personality to match the state she is from. Of Taiwanese descent, she is actually mostly interested in Latin America and was in Argentina for a year. Adam, 23, who I liked because he had the same name as my brother, also provided a more distant family connection as he was from Georgia – yet another place I feel is a part of me, despite the fact that I have only been within its boundaries twice, for about a week total. He is sincere and has a pretty smile, the way you think all good Southern boys should. And the fact that this is his first time outside of the States further adds to the sweetness I tend to correlate with South. Lisa is from Brooklyn and worked for NARAL pro-choice in DC before coming to Ecuador. These are characteristics I would usually associate with a fierce woman, but for as right as my stereotypes were for Adam, there were totally off-base for Lisa. Her severe timidity and barely audible voice, as well as her extensive allergies make her seem more fragile that one would expect for someone choosing to leave home for a year. I was shocked to discover she was 26, thinking she was much younger, and that she had studied in Spain for a year. She once told me she was in Ecuador to overcome her fear of public speaking, and I couldn’t help but be impressed while at the same time thinking that she was crazy, that perhaps community theater would have been a more practical choice. And lastly, Robert. I come to him last as he is the most extreme of our group, and definitely the most hilarious and eccentric. At 72 he is way above the average age, and in comparison to a typical North American, he has way above the average amount of experience with both Eastern Europe (where he lived and taught – in the Czech Republic and Albania – for the past 12 years) and with foreign prisons, having been arrested numerous times in his past life as a student (socialist?) radical. He is full of stories, mostly about AlBANia, as he says it, alfalfa and Nubian goats. He smokes a pipe, which is appropriately fitting for the slightly disheveled white haired and bearded man who makes clear he has duel citizenship with Canada whenever he is asked where he is from. He is also to thank for the group’s most favorite, and long-running joke, since he is incapable of remembering the correct name of our program, calling it WorldTech instead. When finally corrected, he admitted he had wondered why @worldtech.com had failed to return any of his emails.

In addition to having had the opportunity to meet these varied, vivacious and amusing people, orientation was useful for this person who clearly had spent more time thinking about the country than the job she would have there. I was grateful to receive loads of information about how to be a good teacher of English (surprise! simply knowing it is apparently not enough). It was one of those experiences that makes you feel you’ve been a place for a long time, and yet whose sudden end surprises you. There is a lot I will miss about that month in Quito, namely the friends I made, both with the other volunteers and the family I felt I became a part of. That and canalazo (delicious hot fruit and aguardiente drink).

Gallery: Orientation, Quito

mueller-san — Sat, 5 Apr 2008 04:02:00 GMT

Words I Will Likely Eat Later

mueller-san — Sat, 5 Apr 2008 03:57:00 GMT

I received numerous materials before my departure about the difficult process of adjusting to a new culture – “this is different, that is really different, you’ll probably make this mistake, you’ll definitely interpret that wrong . . .” I think it is a combination of my idealist belief in the power of the universality of humanity (which leads to some naïveté), and my very un-detail-oriented mind (which leads to a certain lack of observation), but culture shock was not a eminent concern of mine before I left, and it remains that way now that I am here. For now, I think the lack of “shock” I have experienced has most everything to do with the fact that I have been fortunate enough to travel before, which, besides having given me some idea of what it feels like to be a foreigner, has also reinforced my belief that US culture is far, very far, from ideal or superior. I believe it is clear that this sort of arrogance and lack of exposure, which go hand in hand, are main contributors to “culture shock.”
Additionally, I find myself frequently comparing my experience here in Ecuador to the one I had previously in Nepal and India (my longest stint abroad). In the end, it always seems to come down to the fact that South Asia was a lot more extreme. The poverty, the religious differences, the color schemes, the language barrier, the pollution . . . And having had Nepal as my first solo travel, and my first true immersion experience, has made the transition to Ecuador much easier than I imagine it would be had I not tried to do something like this before. I am not shocked by things that would seem odd or novel were this my first time in a developing country. Chickens on buses and indigenous dress and sidewalks with more holes than not and transportation systems that require vigilance and physical effort and unidentifiable food and the prominence of bargaining and the constant stares at my white skin – all of these things seem familiar, I guess, in a way.
Then again, there are many reasons why the previous statements are presumptuous and naïve. To begin with, I have only been here one month, and it has been a very comfortable one at that. Secondly, I will be here for much longer than I have tried to be anywhere even slightly different. Even at college on the east coast I noticed cultural differences that I was happy to leave after only five months or less there. So I imagine my one month of comfort in the orientation bubble is not the best indication of the ease at which I will deal with living abroad for a year.

A Future Upon Me

mueller-san — Sat, 5 Apr 2008 03:54:00 GMT

For something that had been a plan for 10 months, the fact that I was actually leaving for Ecuador was a surprise, something that sort of snuck up on me. So the night before my flight to Quito, I found myself confused about what I was about to do. It had been so easy to say that this was my plan – especially since as soon as one graduates college they seemingly need a plan more than they needed the college education itself – but it was proving more difficult to believe my plan was a reality now that it was upon me in a matter of hours.
And for something that is actually a large commitment, living and teaching abroad for a year, I found myself only anxious about packing. I assume this was both a matter of practicality (packing was something that I needed to do, and do right) and a matter of avoidance (of what strength and work such an experience would require).
But there was practicality in that avoidance as well. I found it a bit of a waste of time speculating about a place, and how I would react to it, when I had no way of actually knowing about those things. This would be my very first time in South America, and only my fourth time physically being immersed in Latin American culture (the others having been one trip when I was 8, and therefore barely conscious of what was going on, to Guatemala and Costa Rica, and subsequent visits to the latter country to visit my brother who currently lives and works there). My lack of experience and knowledge about the region I was entering made it even more difficult then, and fruitless, to attempt to prepare psychologically in advance for the upcoming year. I basically knew three things only about the year: that it was happening, that it would likely be challenging at times (to be an outsider, away from my family, surrounded by people who I could barely communicate with), and that, in the end, the next year had the potential to be the most significant and valuable experience in my life thus far. And that was enough to know, I suppose.
So when anyone ever asked me if I was excited, I would reply with the obligatory affirmation, but very little of me was capable of actually wrapping my mind around what exactly there was to be excited about. I knew I was excited to learn Spanish (opting to not dwell on just how tiring that would be), and to see a new country, but it was difficult to know and think concretely about an experience from which I had no idea what to expect. So instead of attempting to mentally prepare myself for the year ahead of me, I focused on buying the right shoes.
For the most part, that seems to have been a good decision. Shoes have proved to be important here, and I am pretty satisfied with my decisions about them. All in all, I did a great job packing. And I have to give props to myself for that, because it was a hectic process there at the end. And in many other ways, I was sufficiently prepared for coming to Ecuador. In terms of my life, and where it was going and what it was doing in those few months after college, it was definitely time for me to do something real, something meaningful. I was in need of a change, and more importantly, I was in desperate need of a challenge. In addition to the daily trials of living abroad, teaching will definitely be that for me – something I will write about later.
So Ecuador is something that I need, and it is also something I am confident I can do. And I am happy with my decision to not spend time trying to prepare myself for the culture shock that would be moving to Ecuador. I’ve always been a procrastinator, everyone from my parents to the woman who interviewed me to see if I was capable of entering my “gifted” middle school could tell you that, but in this situation I believe that my procrastination (if you can all it that) of thinking about what I was going to encounter has proved to be valuable. In this manner I was able to enter Ecuador with few preconceived notions about what I was going to see, what I was going to feel, and even what I was going to accomplish. Indeed, the only thing I really wanted, and needed, was to come to Ecuador with a clean slate, and with the notion that if the energies of the universe and of my own work so desired, this was a grand opportunity for Ecuador and I to learn from each other.