Otavalo!

Sorry about the long silence everyone! I’ve been finding out just how much homework I actually have to do here. Turns out it’s a lot. (Which also means I’m writing this instead of the three short papers I really SHOULD be working on right now…)

Last weekend all of us crazy K kids went to Otavalo and the surrounding area. SO COOL! We got to see all the amazing markets in the area. First the animal market with all sorts of farm creatures for sale. There were young chicks and ducklings, grown birds of every kind that is edible (turkeys, chickens, ducks, pigeons, etc.), sheep (all the same kind, sorry mom), llamas, pigs, goats (once again, all the same kind), rabbits, guinea pigs, puppies, kittens, cows and a horse. There were also a few animal-related things for sale, some of which I couldn’t quite identify.

Next was the walk through the food market. The sheer variety of foods for sale was overwhelming. If you can’t find whatever type of food you were looking for there, I don’t think it exists in Ecuador. No joke. The market took up a full block in alleys of vendors, some with roofs over their heads, others tarps (the ones on the edges). Right in the middle were vendors selling cooked food and cuts of meat and sausages. If I knew my digestive system could handle it, I would have wanted to try everything there. As it was, we didn’t have too much time, and I don’t quite trust their sanitation practices.

The artisan market was where we spent most of our time. Our program leaders tortured us by making us walk the entire length of the market without stopping before they let us go buy things. It was nearly impossible to decide what to buy because everything was so interesting and beautiful and well-made and colorful and unique and… you get the idea. I refuse to say what things I actually spent my money on since at least half of them are presents for people reading this blog. You all will just have to wait until you see them.

We also went to the main market street in a neighboring town that is famous for its leather work and walked around the many shops that all smelled like tanned hide. The people here are very creative with some animal parts. For example, I did not buy the bottle covered with a tanned cow’s foot, hoof and all, though I was sorely tempted. I had (possibly very fortunately) run out of money I was willing to spend at that point.

Of course, our trip wasn’t entirely shopping. For example, I got to witness four of my fellow K students being healed by a natural healer. A natural healer is similar to a shaman, but they only deal in good energy, not both good and bad energy as a shaman does. (I don’t know if that’s the best wording for the distinction, but you get the idea.) The “ceremony,” if it can be called one, involves lots of spitting of alcohol, sometimes spitting said alcohol through fire (this guy breathes fire for a living fellow circus people. Gets paid to spit fire AT other people. To heal them.), sometimes spitting other substances, and also doing a bunch of other things that remove bad health and give good health. Natural herbs and plants seemed to play an important role, as did eggs and the words the healers were saying. This was one of those experiences I will remember forever. And one that will probably be totally unique in my life.

We also went to a bird sanctuary, the location of an old indigenous fortress where there now grows a 200 year old tree (with his own story), and a demonstration of local Andean instruments. If I have time later, I will write more about those experiences, but no guarantees.

This week has mostly just involved me trying to stay on top of all of my homework. It doesn’t help that I was gone all weekend with no time for homework and will be gone again this weekend. Hopefully I’ll have a free weekend somewhere to actually catch up on everything. We’ll see.

I definitely have more to say, but I think my grades would prefer that I write a paper or two instead, so I’ll save everything else for later. I hope you are all happy and healthy and enjoying yourselves!

P.S. I have posted a number of pictures on facebook of my adventures and you can look at them here and here. Even if you don’t have a facebook.

Reflections from the Bus

I’ve been doing less interesting things of the big variety this week, which has been good for me. My classes are starting to pick up in intensity and I’m having a hard time keeping up in some ways. Part of the problem is I feel like I have no idea what I should be doing for homework half of the time. This is not conducive to making sure I have said homework done by the time class rolls around again.

One of the things that has me most stressed out right now is my ICRP (Intercultural research Project, for those of you who are not yet in the know about that acronym). Instead of putting all the K students who have to do the ICRP into one class like they have been doing for the last umpteen years, they decided to throw us into the service-learning classes for the regular Ecuadorian students. Which is all fine and dandy in theory, but so for doesn’t seem to be working out too well in practice. The idea was that the Ecuadorian students could help us find places to work and we would get more immersion time. Instead, almost all the Ecuadorians are working at the same place, which we can’t work at, and we now have to fill two different sets of requirements. I’m still trying to secure a place to volunteer, and I’m not having any luck so far. Fingers crossed that things improve.

I did get the chance to do something interesting last Sunday. My family took me to an agricultural exposition. For me, it was interesting to see all the different agricultural products that Ecuador has (as compared to the US), and what people do with those products. If the exposition had been during my last week here, I think I would have bought a whole bunch of food items to bring back to the states. As it is, everything would have had to sit around for another 5 months, so I decided not to buy anything.

Today, while I was on the bus home, it started to rain. It doesn’t actually rain that much here in Quito. The climate is a bit dry, but they do get their fair share of rain storms. Today’s was a soaker. By the time I got to the bus station, it was raining pretty hard, and it soon turned into a torrential downpour. Waiting in line for my bus, the two tiny ladies in front of me beckoned me over to huddle up under the roof “for warmth.” I think they also wanted the big American girl to block the wind. We were huddled way under the terminal’s awning because the wind was blowing the water in. By the time I got off the bus, the roads had become rivers and in places there were foot-deep lakes to wade through. I crossed the street at a run and managed to keep my shoes relatively dry, but it was difficult. The drainage system here just couldn’t handle the rain. Not to say that it can really manage much rain at all. Quito is so hilly, it must be a nightmare trying to send the water anywhere. We are in a mountain valley to boot, so there’s really nowhere for the water to go except straight into town. I suppose it eventually could head downhill to Cumbaya, but it has to go through the whole city first.

Starting tomorrow, I have a whole weekend of fun planned out for me by my study abroad program. We are going to visit one of the smaller mountain towns called Otavalo. Otavalo is known for having a great market where nice things can be bought very cheaply. Our group is very excited about the trip and I don’t think any of us can wait until classes finish tomorrow so we can all set out on the trip.

I think it’s time for some more of Sara’s observations in Ecuador. Today we will be focusing on the world from the perspective of a daily bus rider. It really is interesting to take the bus and see all the different people and how a set system works within the culture here.

For the most part, every bus here has the radio playing. Or something. In any case, there’s almost always music. The type of music is totally dependent on the preferences of the driver and the bus boy (or girl, as the case may be). Sometimes there’s totally American music playing. Today, for example, Ke$ha was playing when I got on the bus back to Quito. The other day, it was “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train. More often though, the music is Latin American, and even though occasionally the drivers seem to like sappy romantic songs, the majority of the music is basically salsa music. This often gives me the feeling that there is a soundtrack to my life. Which is cool. The music just fits well with the scenery and the general feeling of taking the bus in Quito, and it’s fun to imagine that it’s all a part of some big story that’s important enough to have a good soundtrack.

Another integral part to understanding the bus system here is the payment system. This system is not consistent (just like most things here), but it really ties everything together. On my first bus (from home to school), I pay right away when I get on. There’s the driver, and a lady (on this route all the bus boys are actually ladies) sitting behind or next to a cash box. She takes your money, gives you a ticket, and you walk through the in-bus turnstile to go find a seat (if you are lucky). Once we get to the station, everyone gets off the back door and hands their ticket to one of the station workers. From there, I don’t have to pay again to get onto the transfer bus between the North Station and the Rio Coca Station. We all just file (more like push and shove) on, from a platform this time, and try to find a seat. This bus only has a driver, and can only be entered from a platform because the doors open and drop down a ramp that stops a good two feet off the ground without a platform. To get on these busses, you have to go to a station, or one of the special stops in the middle of the street. The very middle. There’s special bus lanes in the middle of major streets that lead up to these platform stops which are only used by these busses. My final bus is a lot less organized. There’s a driver and a bus boy (I think I’ve only seen one of these busses where the bus boy was actually a girl) and it varies how they make you pay. You never pay when you get on, that’s for sure. Sometimes they ask for your money as you step off the bus, at other times they collect part-way through the ride to Cubaya. Depends on the bus boy, since it is his responsibility. The drivers never collect money, they have enough on their hands driving a bus on these streets. On the way home from Cumbaya, the bus boys always collect during the ride. The transfer bus is the same, but I pay to get into the station, and don’t have to pay again for my final bus home. The method of asking to get off the bus also varies. On my first bus you have to press a button unless you want to stay on until the bus reaches the station. The second bus stops and every single stop, so there’s no actual asking to get off. And on the Cumbaya bus you just walk up next to the driver and he will stop for you.

There’s a certain culture to taking the bus here too. If you’re a guy taking the bus by yourself, you better be ready to hop on or off a moving bus because they won’t stop. It you are female however, there’s a certain amount a flirting involved that causes them to stop the bus completely. That flirting ends once you’re on though, even if you don’t have your bus legs on yet. The drivers and bus boys are very accommodating for the young and the elderly though. If there is an older gentleman or woman getting on or off the bus, the bus boy will help them out. Or, if there is no bus boy, sometimes another rider will take it upon themselves to be of assistance. I have also seen a bus boy pick up a small child and carry him off the bus so that he wouldn’t fall. People do look after each other here, even if they do expect you to have good balance.

Most of my experience with street vendors has actually been on the busses. One of the more disturbing things about this is that many of the street vendors who get on the busses to sell their various products are actually children. There’s a boy who gets on the Cumbaya bus almost every day selling the Extra section of the newspaper. And he’s certainly not the only one. This last year, I took a class on child labor and the lack of childhood education in the world, so not only do I have my natural bad reaction to these child vendors, but I have a whole 10 weeks worth of factual information to make it worse. It’s just one more example of the major class differences here, and one more example of things that exist in this world that I would like to change. I’m not really sure what I can do to help them change right now, but maybe some day I’ll have a better idea. That day may even be soon, who knows.

Cultural Musings

Next on the list of things to do actually turned out to be: help mothers with computer problems. I say mothers because I spent part of my Tuesday night sending computer instruction to my Mom through email, and another part showing my host-mom how to send emails with attachments. I think Susie really likes being able to ask me computer questions. She does it about once every-other day.

It’s nice to feel like I’m being useful here and starting to fit into the daily lives of the people I meet. One of the girls in my Capoeira class seems to have befriended me because she said a full hello to me in the hall the other day and I talked with her on the bus (we ride the same bus home, go figure!).

There’s other everyday things that I’m doing or seeng now that also make me feel like I’m getting used to being here. One of these is pestering Toño while I’m brushing my teeth. There’s a skylight type thing in the house that also lets light into the next floor down, so there’s this empty box of windows in the middle of the house. One of the panes is missing from this box right next to my sink. Since the box covered by an opaque domed window on the roof, I can see when Toño is near it. He can hear me if I call to him, but he hasn’t yet figured out that the voice is coming out of the window. It’s rather fun to confuse him once in a while.

I’ve also been indoctrinated into the select group of people who know about the miracle tea. APPARENTLY there is a tea out there that will cure you of anything. Literally. It is sold by a man who gets on the Cumbaya bus, stands up, and gives an entire presentation, with laminated scientific-looking articles and everything, about how great this tea is. It even cures hepatitis. It might cure AIDS. I didn’t fully understand that part of the presentation. No, I did not buy the miracle tea (only a dollar per packet, can you believe that?), but it was one of the best bus vendor experiences I have had yet.

Some every-day things I’ve managed to do sound comical when I tell people who aren’t here about them. For example: on Monday I did my laundry for the first time here, all by myself. That doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment if you think about it from a stat-side perspective, but I was really proud of myself. I also left my first Spanish phone message. It’s the little things like that that make me feel good, like I can actually do this and survive in another place, another culture.

I was introduced to a favorite past-time of young Ecuadorians by Andres and Mafero the other day: shopping with friends, online. They had four friends over and all of them were gathered around two laptops, searching for the best online deals and approving each other’s purchases. It was a bit comical.

Quito, being a large city, has quite a night-life, so yesterday Hannah and I decided to go join in on it with a few other people from Kalamazoo. We had heard there was a Beatles themed bar somewhere in the party district, so we went on a quest to find it and the people we were supposed to be meeting. In the process, we ran into a group of fire jugglers. Totally on accident. I just happened to notice that one of the guys sitting on the side of the street seemed to be twirling around an unlit fire devilstick and another had juggling club handles sticking out of his backpack (a very familiar sight for me). So I worked up the courage to go back over and introduce myself to the group and find out more about who they were and what they do. We later saw another person from their group actually juggling fire on the corner, and even later ran into the whole group again gathered around a guy with a guitar and singing away. I found out where and when (approximately) the group practices, so I may try to go play with them some time. Hopefully!

Eventually, Hannah and I found our people and went in search of the Beatles bar, which we ended up finding by accident. Everyone had gone into a big noisy bar that didn’t look very appealing, so Hannah and I left and just happened to glance across the street, where we saw the Beatles bar, called Strawberry Fields, hiding between two much larger establishments. It turned out to be a very chill place with all Beatles music, and all Beatles themed drinks. Much better than the loud and crazy place across the street.

I’ve been spending a lot of breath on the things I’ve been doing here, mixed in with some of my cultural observations, but there are some things I haven’t managed to talk about yet. Some are as simple as the hilarious use of the English language here. Clearly someone needs to edit this city, because there is a lot of “bad English” all over the place. One example is the shirt I saw on a man waiting for the bus the other day. It said bikecycle. Not bycicle, bikecycle. Editor: GIANT RED PEN MARK OVER YOUR SHIRT!

One of the more serious “cultural” things I have noticed here is the prevalence of what I consider to be racism. It gives me a little more perspective on the “racism is conquered” idea that some people have in the US. They say that racism really doesn’t exist anymore. Well, people here say that too, and I can definitely see it all over the place. Generally speaking, it seems that the whiter people are here, the more money they have. Major generalization, but it’s kind of true. Of course, this means anyone who looks indigenous is going to be discriminated against, but probably be robbed less. The more open and obvious discrimination actually seems to be between regions and “types” of people. The telenovela my family watches has characters that are almost all based solely on a particular stereotype. The stereotypes here are strong, and this carries over into the regional discrimination. I often hear that people from” such and such an area of the country” are “stereotypical characteristic.” When I went to the soccer game, the Ecuadorian host-brother of one of the girls in our group insisted that all the Barcelona fans are crazy and dangerous and are the only reason there are fights after games (super simplified version of what he actually said). Well, I hate to break it to him, but you can’t really have a fight unless there are two sides willing to go at each other, it’s not called a fight if only one side wants to be violent. That’s someone getting beaten up. I think his opinion was partly the result of the belief here in Quito that Guayaquil is extremely dangerous. I’m sure it’s not that much more dangerous than Quito, but to hear Quiteños talk about it, stepping foot on the streets of Guayaquil is really asking for it.

Included in the “racism” is class discrimination. Once again, this is all tied up with the fact that whiter people are richer. There are clear boundaries between different classes of people and everyone here seems to know exactly how one is supposed to treat everyone else. This is also tied in with the large amount of service jobs that exist, like the young man who pushed our luggage for us on the coast, the lady who comes to clean my house and make lunch, the guard that sits outside the house at night, and the guys who help you park your car in parking lots, among others. Nearly everyone in the service business seems to be considered a class down from the people they are serving. There’s no mistreatment that I can see of these people, but they are treated differently, if at least amiably. The difference was made a little clearer to me after an interaction I observed between my host-parents over the last weekend. Susie asked Marco to do something, and he protested because she didn’t use any “cariños” (endearing words and nicknames used between loved ones ALL THE TIME!). To him, the lack of extra words meant she was treating him like an “empleado” (a person employed in some way in the house). He sort of jokingly made the comparison, but he definitely noticed the difference. Such language would normally be used with someone of the lower class, not someone at the same level. Even if the person were a stranger of the same class, I think there would be other additions to a request that would make it clear that the person was being respectful, even if those additions weren’t cariños. It’s strange for me to see this division of classes between servants and served.

Of course, at the next class step down are the many people selling various things on street corners and busses, and no one really seems to like them at all. The best reaction you get towards them is ambivalence. Many of these people are of completely indigenous ancestry, no Spanish blood whatsoever. Because of this connection, many of the well-to-do here are scornful of most things indigenous. For example, my 16-year-old host-cousin’s reaction to my Quichua class was “Que asco!” “How gross!” I think that reaction is a bit stronger than most people would have because of her age, but it shows that she’s picked up on the attitude that Indigenous things are “gross” and she’s taking it to the extreme.

Keep in mind, I don’t mean to say that everyone here is extremely racist and discriminatory. The things I have noticed are all very small and not super prevalent. But they are there, and it is interesting to see the difference between how the society here functions, in both good and bad ways, compared to the society I am used to in the United States.

Well, I have many more things to write about, but they will have to wait until next time. Remember, comments are always welcome here! Especially on this post as I would like to hear some other reactions to my observations.

Feeling Independent

Quick update. Today turned out to be one of the best days I have had here yet. Definitely the best “normal” day. If those exist.

This morning, I got up early so that I could find a shop somewhere in the city from which I could buy yarn for my weaving class. One of the shops listed on my syllabus for the class is in Tumbaco, the next suburb out from Quito, passed Cumbaya. To get there, I only had to stay on the same bus I take to the university and get off a few stops later. Easy. As long as the bus-boy can tell me where to get off. It was easy to get to the bus stop, but the store I was looking for was a small hole in the wall place off of a side street. A side street that wasn’t quite where I was told it would be. Fortunately, the police officer I asked for directions, after wandering around for about 10 minutes, was not a typical Ecuadorian citizen and told me precisely where the yarn store was. So I went on my way, found the store, communicated what I wanted to the people working there, and bought yarn for my class. I even made it back to Cumbaya and on campus in time to get some homework done before class started. Classes went well.

Apparently I hadn’t been doing what we were supposed to be doing in my weaving class. I’d been doing the next step. Oops! So I spent the last 10 minutes of class learning something totally different from everyone else because my teacher felt like showing me how to do it.

Once classes were done, I hopped on the bus toward Tumbaco again. This time, my stop was a little earlier. I got off at the Ventura Mall, went inside, up to the third floor gym, and looked around for some circus. Hanging in the corner were two silks, one red, one orange, with absolutely no rigging whatsoever. The gym is apparently used for gymnastics classes as well, so there are plenty of safety mats around, which made me feel a little better about the rigging set-up.

The silks teacher eventually showed up, towing her daughter along (the daughter was probably less than 2 years old). Apparently the classes that I had seen the poster for were super basic-level classes because the other three students that she had there were under the age of 13 I’m sure. But I just wanted to get in the air, so I was ok with that. Most of the class was stretching and conditioning exercises, since the class was at such a basic level, but I was able to talk to the teacher, Camila, about circus opportunities in Quito in general. There doesn’t seem to be much, but I might be able to do my ICRP with an artsy school in southern Quito that Camila was affiliated with. At least she said she would check it out for me. I paid Camila for the class once it was over 9 it was not expensive in the least) and headed home feeling pretty satisfied, though I wish I would have been able to just play a little on my own and not feel confined to the activities of the class. I was looking for a place to practice more than a place to take conditioning classes. (Which isn’t to say that conditioning classes aren’t good for me, but I want to do more in the AIR and less on the ground!) I think I’ll go back sometime, but I’m not going to be going twice a week, which is when the lessons are offered.

Basically, today has been a wonderful day. I’ve been able to go out and accomplish things on my own, speak Spanish, and enjoy being here. Next on the list of things to do: see what surprises tomorrow holds.