Let's eat!

Who’s hungry? Because I have quite the backload of food observations for the enjoyment of your stomachs! It will have to be imagined enjoyment, but I have faith in your imaginations.

So, you all may remember that one of my first meals here included soup with a chicken foot it in. Well, things haven’t really gotten stranger, but they also haven’t been much more “normal.” Or at least they weren’t until I got used to them.

Food here, in general, has some very defining characteristics. They are, to quote a friend who also studied here, “carbs, carbs, carbs, carbs, and more carbs!” I’d add a bunch of salt in there somewhere, but that honestly pretty accurate.

Now, keeping the abundance of carbs in mind, people here ARE very creative with what they have to work with. And the sheer variety of fruit that is available here makes up for the lack of differences in the main course.

A typical lunch here (which, if you remember, is the big meal of the day) consists of a bowl of soup (with a starch and some carbs in it usually. Unless it has a foot, then it’s mostly just foot and broth. Or maybe that’s just all I noticed…), a piece of meat, a “salad” (this means there is a spoonful of some sort of vegetable-like thing cut up, often salted, and placed on your plate), and lake of minestrone next to a mountain of rice. (When I come home, DO NOT FEED ME RICE. Thanks.) If you’re out eating, you will also receive a tiny little desert at the end of your meal. What this desert actually consists of is usually in part a mystery. A mystery that is often not resolved even after you finished eating it. (I know that was a strawberry, but what was on top of it? Or that spongy thing that looked like a cheesecake, but tasted more like whipped yogurt? What do they make this stuff out of???)

Don’t get me wrong, I really do love Ecuadorian lunches, but they are just all so similar.

One wonderful thing about food here is that it is CHEAP. If I have to pay more than 3 dollars for lunch, I feel like I’m spending too much money. I good lunch usually costs me $2.50, but if I don’t have a lot of time to eat and pick something up at the bus station, I can eat pretty well for about $1.

There’s honestly way too much to say about the food here not to break it down into sections. First up: fruit. Just about any fruit you can think of grows here, which is just wonderful if you ask me. There’s yellow and white pineapple, a couple different kinds of mangos, pears, papaya, passion fruit, a jillion kinds of orangey citrusy fruits, delicious strawberries, mora (a kind of raspberry/blackberry type fruit), and more! The only thing that is really disappointing about the fruit, is that the apples here aren’t very good. And they don’t have cherries. Of course, I might just be spoiled by home-grown Michigan stuff, but I really do miss good apples. A couple of the fruits I’ve tried here, that I’d never seen before, are absolutely delicious. Guanabana and pitajaya are the two that come to mind most readily, for they are delicious. I know that one can buy guanabana juice in the states, but I don’t think pitajaya exists outside of the tropics. I could be wrong, but I certainly had never seen it before I got here. 

Dairy. Is interesting. People here really love their mozzarella. Like, REALLY. In the grocery store, there’s a small portion of a shelf next to the deli devoted to some expensive hard cheeses. However, there is a portion of the wall about 10 ft long devoted to mozzarella. And nothing else. Next to that is a bit devoted to queso fresco, which is kind of like a hard cheese before it has been hardened. Sorta. But there is a real discrepancy between the amount of mozzarella and everything else. You can tell what kind of cheese these people like. Anyway, more dairy. Milk here comes in bags (I have yet to see any in a carton), and is generally drunk warm. Yogurt is drinkable (seriously, completely drinkable and super runny) and comes in a number of flavors, but not quite the variety we have in the states (we kind of go a little overboard I think). I really like the yogurt though. It’s delicious, and makes for a good portable snack, being drinkable and all.

Eating meat here, as you may have guessed, is an adventure. When I go out to restaurants, I have started asking for the “carne” (meat) option, just because if I ask for chicken, I have no idea what part of the chicken I’m going to get (I usually end up with the tail. This may contribute to my carne preference). Don’t get me wrong, the chicken is usually wonderful, but I’m not always sure how to eat it. Ordering fish is also a good option, but only if you aren’t freaked out by heads and fins and scales and bones. The only thing they bother to do with the fish before coking it is take the guts out. My host dad’s favorite part of the fish is the head. I give him mine (or rather he just puts all the heads on his plate when he serves up the fish). Carne here refers to any kind of meat that is not chicken. (Vegetarians have a hard time with this. If you say you don’t eat meat, people will say “Oh! Then we will give you chicken!”) This means there is a wide variety of what you may be getting if you order the carne option. You could end up with a thin piece of beef, well done, but cooked well (as in, tasty), or you might get a hunk of pork, cooked exactly the same way. Who knows! Some of the best meat I have had though has been baked pig, and street food meat. (There is a picture of that meat somewhere on facebook. It was delicious.) When the meat is fried, they call it “fritada” (literally: fried. Go figure.) and that’s my favorite.

Carbs. Where to start? Bread here is delicious. I don’t believe in white wonderbread (I used to, but I’ve changed my mind), and neither does Ecuador. Which is fine with me! I get to eat really good, really cheap bread every day if I want to! Rice is everywhere here, though not in any sort of variety. It’s all white, and it all tastes the same. Just like people here are magicians with cement, they are magicians with potatoes. Maybe not quite as magical as with the cement, but they do have some wonderful ideas. There’s baked potatoes and boiled potatoes with all sorts of sauces to put on top, potatoes in soups, mashed potatoes mixed with cheese and fried, and, a staple, French fries. Though the French fries are by FAR the least impressive. (Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew: po-ta-toes [if you don’t know the reference, it’s ok.]) Yuca is also pretty common, though it is used way more in the Oriente than here in the Sierra. It’s tasty. Especially when fried.

Dessert here varies. Cake is often more like sweet bread, though at times it is moist enough to be good. The cake my host mom made for her birthday party was tasty, though undecorated and lacking any sort of frosting. Noting this, Susie sprinkled a packet of splenda on top to make it look prettier. There are some interesting practices surrounding cake eating as well. At birthdays of the youngest generation, the “cumpleañera” or “cumpleañero” (birthday girl/boy) is required to “matar” (kill) the cake by biting into it without using any sort of utensil. Of course, the other family members find it fun to shove the cumpleañera’s face into the cake and everyone gets a good laugh out of it. But there are other deserts as well. Ice cream here is amazing. It comes in a billion different flavors and I could eat it forever. Chocolate, on the other hand, is generally either awful or overly expensive. (And by that I mean costs the same or only slightly more that it would in the US. What can I say? Food prices here are spoiling me.) There are some delicious candies sold on the sides of all the roads leading in and out of Quito that I have been on: coconut balls made with molasses or other substances, a gel-y candy made from guayaba (I think), toffee stretched right there in front of you, and often pieces of sugar cane to chew on.

A specific food I would like to share, that all of you probably THINK you know, is tamales. Here, I have had 3 distinct types of tamales. One: a tamale without any filling, eaten with cheese. Two: your typical Mexican tamale, only wrapped in big leaves instead of corn husks. And three: the sweet tamale. These are great. They are made from a sweeter corn I think, filled with a bit of chicken and a piece of a hard-boiled egg, and occasionally have a couple of raisins in them. They are also made with leaves. SO GOOD!

One of the strange things about food here is the method of refrigeration. Or rather, lack thereof. Many things I would put in the fridge, just aren’t. Not that it matters much, they are things that don’t necessarily need it, but they last longer that way. For example, my family often uses the oven to store cooked meat and baked goods instead of putting the meat in the fridge and the baked goods in Tupperware.

The saddest thing about the general alimentation here is the lack of real coffee. These people live in the middle of coffee country, and yet, they drink instant. I don’t get it. The only good that comes of the instant coffee in my house, is that I can make a mocha in the morning with my glass of milk.

Well, I hope I made you hungry! Have a good week! I’ll be going to the coast and the Oriente this week because the University is on vacation, so I’ll try to post between the two trips, but no guarantees. You may not hear from me for a while!

P.S. Trix here is in the original shapes. Not the stupid multi-colored balls they make in the states now. It’s like I’m a kid again!!!

P.P.S. Pictures of rocks here!

Rocks, rocks, rocks, and more rocks!

I will never look at a rock the same again.

And most definitely not a volcanic rock.

This weekend I went to the volcano Tungurahua with my geology class and we spent the entirety of Saturday and Most of Sunday morning looking at various volcanic rocks. We weren’t just looking at pieces of rock of course, we were also looking at how the flows (of both lava and volcanic debris, the volcanic debris kind has a name, but I only know it in Spanish) traveled through the countryside and learning how to look at the general landscape to find out about the volcano’s history.

When we arrived, the weather was perfectly clear and we got a good view of the entire volcano. We were even able to see faint bluish vapors rising from the crater at the top. We never went up the mountain, but I think it’s a big ordeal to even attempt to climb it, so it would make sense that we didn’t do it.

This volcano has been active since 1999, with varying levels of activity. Some of its active periods have prompted evacuations of the surrounding towns, including Baños. In this eruption, no lava flows have made it to the towns, but the flows of debris have. The largest eruption of this active period was in 2006, when flows of debris travelled from the crater all the way across the road and down to the river below in under 4 minutes. We’re talking hot rock and ash moving at about 300 km/h. That’s FAST.

Fortunately, this volcano is loud when it is in a super active state, which means that all the people that would be in danger of an explosion get out of the area. It kind of has its own warning system. Of course, all geological activity is capable of happening without any warning as well, so maybe it was only fortunate that time…

The volcano becomes active about once every century as per human records. We know that it exploded in 1773, 1886, between 1916 and 1925, and now again from 1999 until the present. We get ranges for the later dates because, during those times, people were making more scientific observations of all activity, instead of just going: “Oh crap, the volcano’s exploding! Whoah!!! Hey… do you think we should write that down?”

From geological observations though, we know that there have been some much bigger blasts in the past (and by past, I mean thousands of years ago) that did way more damage and, if repeated today, would destroy the entire population surrounding the volcano. There have actually been 3 different Tungurahuas that we know of. The first one may have formed 700,000 years ago, but there could have been one before it that formed at that time. That is to say, the first one we know about may have formed after whatever was formed 700,000 years ago. Anyway, this “first” Tungurahua was around 30,000 years ago. At some point in there, the entire top of the cone got blown apart and fell into the valleys. After a long sequence of more eruptions and build-up of material, Tungurahua 2 was formed. About 3,000 years ago, that volcano also got blow apart in a “blast” very similar to that of Mt. St. Helen. It was caused by the same geological process, and, in fact, may have been an even bigger explosion, though we have no way of really knowing. Tungurahua 3, the one that exists right now, was “born” about 2,300 years ago. Since then, it has formed a very large, symmetrical, majestic and beautiful mountain that stands there ready to blow and any time.

We spent most of our time around the mountain examining rocks and looking at layers of sediment and old flows from the volcano. We looked at lava flows that were 30,000 years old and the flows of debris from 2006. We looked at all different kinds of volcanic rocks, determining whether or not the lava they were formed from more or less viscous and what kids of minerals it contained. Red pumice is red because it has oxidized iron in it. Did you know that?

Spending all of that time looking at what the mountain can do was amazing, and also scary. If Tungurahua erupted in a grand manner, it could totally wipe out Baños. The city is built on ancient lava flows. That could happen again, the lava could descend all the way to the river and destroy everything in its path. It was bind-blowing to think about how fragile the existence of the people around this mountain really is. The volcano, in one day, in an hour, could affect so many lives.

We didn’t spend ALL of our time looking at rocks however. Throughout the course of the weekend, I think I got to know the 4 other K kids that went a little better, and I got to meet some other International students who are in a different geology class at USFQ. About half of us went to the hot-springs in Baños after being out hiking around all day on Saturday. The trip to the springs was prompted by our professor who went with us and, true to his geeky character, showed us the back area of the hot-springs where the water comes out of the earth and is cooled a bit before being sent into the baths.

As with any day here, I have my highs and my lows. This morning, I took my anti-malarial medication before eating breakfast (so that I wouldn’t forget) and ended up with an upset stomach that wouldn’t keep food down for about an hour and a half. But I also got to swing on a wonderfully long swing, out over the drop-off of an extremely steep hill. So I think that kind of made up for it.

On our way back to Quito, our bus driver had a little “race” with another bus driver. They kept honking at each other, pulling up next to each other, and clearly having a good time driving around the outskirts of the city. It’s things like that that remind me that I’m in a different country. Little stuff that you just don’t see in the states, but is part of every-day life here.

I’m back to classes tomorrow morning, and I’m not really ready for them, but at times, I don’t think I’ll ever really be ready for anything. There’s always something more to prepare for. So I will take whatever is sent my way tomorrow and try to make the best of it.

¡Hasta luego! (Later!)

A Day in the Life

Days here are different than they are in the US. Things happen here that wouldn’t happen anywhere else, or at least not anywhere else I have been. They don’t always happen that way, but they can. Take today for example:

I wake up and get ready at home, trying to finish up homework, shower, and eat before I leave for class. If my host dad is home, I’m likely to get some sort of compliment on my clothes or general appearance: “Cada día mas Hermosa como una diosa!” (Every day more beautiful, like a goddess!) Breakfast is laid out on the table for me by my host mom: something to drink, something substantial to eat, and a piece of fruit. This morning it was milk, scrambled eggs on bread, and a giant slice of pineapple. After a minute of waiting for the milk and eggs to heat up in the microwave, I can eat my breakfast in silence at the kitchen table, stirring instant coffee into the hot milk and maybe adding a scoop of hot-chocolate mix as well.

Of course, as hard as I try, I never manage to walk out of the house exactly when I want to, but the bus comes every 20 minutes and I always give myself an hour and a half to get to school, even though it only takes an hour. Sometimes I run into people at the bus station and ride the rest of the way with them, other times I sit on the busses doing homework or playing a game on my phone. (Jewelquest. I’ve already beat it once.) This morning, I did a bit of both.

Jumping off the bus in Cumbaya is easy, since they ALWAYS stop at the university stop. It’s the big one in Cumbaya. If I get to campus early, and I almost always do, there’s the gringo grass to study on, or people to talk to, or the Xerox center to visit if I need to print something before classes start. Thursdays, I have classes back to back from 10 until 2:30: Weaving, Andean Anthropology, and Quichua. Which means my day consists of an enjoyable, if tedious, task, eating a snack on the run, sitting through a lecture and discussion class, scarfing something more to eat, and confusedly laughing my way through a language I understand even less of than Spanish.

After classes comes the long trek to my ICRP, stopping to eat more food in the bus station if I’m still hungry. The journey is worth it though. I love walking in to el Proyecto and being bombarded by kids who want me to do this and that. Today was a bit quieter when I arrived, so I drew an iguana (this is my JOB), which none of the kids would believe I didn’t copy from a book. Apparently being able to draw realistic drawings is a highly valued skill. The drawing is now a prized possession of Camilo, one of the kids that lives at el Proyecto, and one of the better behaved kids at that.

It’s always difficult to leave el Proyecto, not only because I enjoy being there, but also because I have to free myself from any one of the various little boys who literally hang on me trying to make me stay. I’ve become adept at walking with one or two of them somehow inhibiting my progress. Today, one of them even tried to convince the security guard at the gate that he was going to go home with me. Fortunately the guard knew he had to stay, but it was quite amusing.

My commute home starts before the sun is completely down, but it has long been dark by the time I make it to my destination, partially because of the rush-hour traffic I have to travel home in. It’s not the worst thing in the world though, it means I get to walk home while there are still people on the street, so it’s less dangerous. It’s wonderful to finally be off the streets at the end of the day, since I spend nearly 3 hours in busses and stations on my ICRP days.

Occasionally I walk in just as dinner is being served, but if not, I don’t have long to wait on these days. Today I had rice with ají, salad, and meat (as usual) with my host dad. The meat looked delicious, but turned out to be rather chewy. So chewy that I chewed it until kingdom come and then ended up swallowing it whole because my jaw was tired. The salad was cut up red onion and parsley. That’s it. All in all though, it was a good dinner.

And now I am destined to taste onions for the rest of the night while I try to do my homework.

I’m not sure if this falls into the category of “boring blog post” but I thought it would be fun to share what my daily life is like here. Hope you enjoyed!

Religion is an curious beast.

Here’s another reflective post for you. Last Sunday I went to mass with my family. Catholic mass that is. They attend the church that is next to my bus stop called La Concepción, presumably for the virgin conception of Jesus. I always find it interesting to attend a church I am not accustomed to. The practices are always different, the people are different, and the attitudes and beliefs are different. It’s a lot harder to understand the beliefs of the group when you can’t really understand what they are saying, so I got a lot of observation in on the practices and people. Let me tell you, it’s a little unnerving to see and hear a huge group of people saying the same thing at the same time when you can’t understand it. I think if I had heard one person say the prayers, I could have understood, but it was impossible for me to pick out more than a couple words here and there when everyone was speaking at once. I also had a hard time understanding the homily because the preacher used a microphone and didn’t speak very clearly.

The practices of a church really are rather important. I tried to follow what everyone was doing, but it’s difficult, especially without a Catholic background. I had to stand or sit in silence for most of the service because there was very little written material which I could have used to follow along. People just know what to say or do and when to say it or do it. I don’t.

All in all, the service wasn’t that different from Catholic services I have been to in the states. Here, they have no songbooks or hymnals, everyone just knows the songs and sings along, and there weren’t bibles in the pews (I don’t think I’d ever been to a church without bibles in the pews before), but the order of events and the things they did were basically the same.

This probably isn’t a bad time to dive into my observations of religion here.

As many of you probably know, Ecuador is Catholic. That is not an exaggeration. I think the statistic is 95% Catholic. For this reason the country has many laws against various forms of post-incident birth control and the sex ed. here isn’t exactly great. But those issues are for a different discussion.

Even though the population is Catholic, many are not very devout practitioners. There are the people who go to church every Sunday and will talk to anyone about religion, even before soccer (which is saying something here), all the way down to those who have maybe been to church 5 times in the last 6 years but still believe in all the doctrines and ideologies. Then there are the people who don’t identify as Catholic per say, but they are still Ecuadorian, so they know all about the saints and the religious practices of the other 95% of the people in their country. The Catholic religion here is woven into every-day life. There are saints and crosses all over the place and references are made to biblical things and no one really thinks twice about it. And they understand the references, which totally fly over my head when they are in reference to something uniquely Catholic. What really gets me is the saints. There are very few that I know anything about, and their names change in Spanish anyway, which just leaves me lost.

There’s also an interesting mix or religions here (I think you’d call it syncretism, but I’m not sure since I only really know the word for it in Spanish…). Basically, in the more indigenous populations, the people have held onto some of their pre-conquest beliefs, but they are some of the most devout Catholics here. It’s a strange mix. The most personal experience I’ve had with this syncretism is with the stories that I collected as part of my Lit. class project (By the way, I should be able to post a translated version of one of the stories some time in the next couple weeks). One of the stories we were told was about three large animals that were “captured” to prevent them from eating the people, but at the end of the world they will be released to eat the people again. Clearly an old story believed by the people, kind of like the story of the Apocalypse. Except that before these animals are released, God will save all the righteous believers and take them to heaven. Huh? It was just such a surprise for me to hear that mix of beliefs. Especially since the story seemed to be completely finished before that bit was added.

Something I found interesting though, was the responses of my classmates in my Quichua class to the question “What religion are you?” I thought for sure most of them would answer “Catholic,” but it turns out about half of them identify as Agnositc. I kind of wonder if that’s partly due to the fact that they are all college students and, in my experience anyway, college students are much less likely to be “believers” than any other portion of society. But, once again, that’s a topic for another discussion.

And that’s all folks. Until next time anyway!

I feel like this might have been a confusing post, so if you have questions feel free to post them and I will try to answer them.