algunas novedades.

last tuesday was the feast day of the virgin of quinche, so with my popular andean religions practices class, we took the bus to el quinche, a town 1.5 hrs from quito, to observe. it was so interesting! the people have such faith in the healing powers of this virgin statue, they were frantic to touch her or rub her with a cloth so that they can rub the cloth on themselves when they are sick. and there was a fountain of healing waters, a wall full of plaques where people make promises to the virgin, and over 300,000 people at the mass outside of the church. and like all ecuadorian festivals, there was music, fireworks, and tons of street vendors. i am absolutely fascinated with the intersection in between the sacred and the secular, especially in this country. there seems to very rarely be a division.





my brother came to visit for thanksgiving! it was great to have him here. we did all the touristy quito stuff, and his enthusiasm and constant picture taking really helped me to see the city with new eyes, since it has become rather ordinary to me on some days. we spent the weekend in cotacachi teaching english and having good political convo with raul around his fireplace, drinking champagne. we went to a real-time, non-touristy shaman (friend of raul’s) for a cleaning ceremony, where we were rubbed down with candles, sticks, and rocks, and had alcohol spit all over our bodies and smoke blown all over us. as uncomfortable as that sounds, it was actually so refreshing. i felt like i was being confirmed again. and the intersection between traditional indigenous practices and catholicism was fascinating here too. the shaman’s “office” was full of pictures of saints and Jesus, and we were instructed to offer our candle to the virgin mary (on an altar in another room in his house) after the cleansing. i could study that kind of mezcla for years i think!

we also went to go see some pre-incan pyramids close to quito with my family. it was shocking to see such interesting and historically significant ruins with almost no preservation, no publicity, no research done about them, no books to be sold regarding info about them. its such a shame! but the trip was rather interesting. and apparently, at pyramid 14, the pyramid of fertility, there are still indigenous weddings rather frequently.



the fruit market in otavalo (somewhere else i took my ñaño)

my ecuadorian presidential candidate, correa, won the segunda vuelta! thanks be to God, i was pretty much nervous about the results all of sunday. my brobro and i went to correa’s victory party that night in a quito street, where the popular masses were dancing salsa and drinking boxed wine. incredibly fun. i really wish that i would still be here in jan. when correa gets inaugurated, because i’m really interested to see what will happen here...

annnnd, today, my ecua-mom put up the christmas tree...another confirmation that time is absolutely flying by... take care, friends!

“the flavor of mangos para chupar always makes me think of christmastime and the new year”

--my sis at breakfast this morning, my translation
its funny how mangos, what we might consider a tropical fruit, are only sold in quito this time of year, and make my sis think of christmas. her statement over desayuno also brought with it another realization: time is flying! only one month left... my recent attempts to live it to the fullest:

last weekend we climbed the world’s highest active volcano, cotopaxi. freezing cold, a little scary, very fun. i hadn’t played in snow in over five years, so that was really awesome.

monday i climbed the tower of the basilica and sat outside on the roof. also a bit scary, but peaceful watching all of quito walk and drive by during rush hour. and then i ate in a fair trade restaurant under the san francisco convent! monday was also the opening night of the first-ever ecuadorian-made opera. it told the story of the feminist mistress of simon bolivar, who liberated ecuador from the spanish. very, very good for the first-ever opera in a country, with a very appropriate theme.

thursday brought an organ concert of bach and mozart music in quito’s cathedral, by an italian, which was quite beautiful. friday i got a perm with some other girls from the program. it turned out pretty disastrous. haven’t quite figured out what to do with it yet...

and this weekend we went to baños, a town three hours south of quito that has natural hot springs. the town had been closed for a couple months due to damage by the volcano tunguragua, which feeds the hot springs. and we almost didn’t go this weekend because there was a paro (strike where they close down the roads) made by all the people who had been displaced by volcano damage and had not received any government assistance, but the paro ended the night before we left. (considered a success because promises for assistance had been made, but they rarely are followed through with, unfortunately).
we ate good food (how i’ve missed pesto and hummus!), swam in the warm pools at dawn, drove four-wheelers to the top of a scenic overlook, and climbed down to a beautiful waterfall.


and now its time to prepare presentations, write papers, etc. until my ñaño chris comes to visit on wednesday!


leave with you a little laugh... "parks are not restrooms." only in quito...

latest photos can be viewed here.

“eso es el INEPE, queridas compañeras”

today was maybe one of the coolest experiences of my life. i went to INEPE, a school in south quito, the poorest part of the city. INEPE is a really good private school but everyone pays what they are able, so kids from the barrio go there, along with some middle-class kids too. the kids whose parents can’t pay at all repair things at the school on saturdays or work in the organic greenhouse which raises food for the free breakfasts and lunches at school.

in addition to traditional classes at the school, even the youngest ones take english, and there are dance and art groups. also, a big part of the curriculum is “formacion humana” which is where they learn important values, foster a culture of community and taking care of the school and of themselves (they have showers at the school, so that the kids who don’t have water in their house can bathe before school), learn to criticize and self-criticize, ask questions (why do i live in poverty? what can i do to change it?). and i don’t think ive seen happier children in my life. i seriously cant describe how bursting with joy the whole place is.
there are 580 students at the school and 92 workers. many of the workers are former maids or unemployed parents of the kids at the school, who receive training from the school to become art teachers, cooks, nursery caregivers, etc. many other workers are former students, who received scholarships from the school to go to universities, then come back to be teachers, secretaries, or administrators. in fact, there is a former student administrator for every grade level who do frequent evaluations of the teachers and students. the curriculum is not planned far in advance but is specialized for the needs of individual students and the group as a whole, and is really about empowering students. i don’t know that ive ever seen any sort of organization so well run and so sustainable.

(one of) my dream future(s) = finding a partner with similar values, living in a community with many needs, identifying one of those needs and developing something awesome to help alleviate the problem without compromising any of our values. and the director of the school and his wife have seriously done all that. in the late 70s, as hippies recently married, they started a youth organization for kids of quito barrios, and it spread all over the country. they began to have kids and decided to start a school for their kids and their neighbors to raise their kids with good values and a good education in an area that had no good public schools. the community lent them a house, and the first school had only 8 kids in it. as time went on, the kids from their youth organization became professionals and began to donate their time to the school and it began to grow. during the late 80s when lots of NGOs began to come here, they looked into getting funding but never felt it was right because they didn’t want to compromise their values for the objectives of an NGO. for 14 years, the school was totally volunteer run, but now a french NGO, which has a similar vision, funds them well. i think i could be absolutely happy working in that school (or starting one like it) for the rest of my life...

trip to the tiputini biodiversity station, amazon rainforest, 3/11-6/11

(notes scribbled down during an 11 hour regreso)

a day’s worth of travel: by car, by plane, by canoe, by ranchero, by boat and by bus.
spanish, spanglish, kichwa and wuar dance through our ears as white river dolphins wriggle by.
“hemos llegado” and we put on boots and pop malaria pills. gotta charge our cameras during the five hours the generator runs...
(my camera doesn’t run on candlelight).

our guide, josé, is perfect. pacha mama has raised him since childhood and she is his first love. he shares her gifts with us: snacks of lemon-flavored ants, bracelets from palm fibers, natural mosquito repellents and toadstools with which to write letters, fruit-dye tattoos and the proper way to attract strapping young kichwa men with nets of grass seeds.
rio tiputini is our sitio of choice for showers (but watch out for the fish that can lay their eggs inside of you if you pee!), and we float down the river lazily as the rain caresses our faces.

walks by moonlight call out those more “dangerous” creatures and snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and crickets the size of my hand come out to say hello. monkeys choose to relieve themselves on trees above our heads and the florescent fungi, which light our pathway with no need for a linterna, laugh along with our guide.

as the sunset nos da un beso cada noche over the laguna, in the same way, the amazonian sunrise greets us from the bird tower and reveals the private lives of toucans, parrots, macaws, spider monkeys and even prehistoric birds who chose to make their home only here.
“los riezgos” of this area don’t see to cross anyone’s minds. although danger shakes his fist during a few of our adventures, he seems to always be ignored, in search of the opportunity to more fully savor every moment.

but quito calls us back, and although i’d prefer to ignore her voice, i return my boots, now muddy, and doy besos to the cooks, guides, and scientists i’ve somehow grown fond of in just three days.

so we drive through the selvain a chiva, feet dangling in the dappling sun
(same vehicle as a week ago halloween, but transformed into algo mas practical and more in touch with reality)
and i’d rather not leave—cuz there’s comfort in the isolation
and liberation from tourism
and somehow i feel that being this far from the world makes it all the more real.

p.s. new photos can be viewed here. many apologies for the low quality of almost all the amazon photos, it was always hard to decide whether or not to use flash and i have shaky hands.

trick-or-treat, ecuadorian style

for halloween, the program group decided to rent a chiva, which is an ecuadorian-style party bus, open without windows, and space on the roof for us all to stand/dance/hang out with the live band. we drove all around the clubby-touristy area as well as the historical downtown, and even had a dance contest in the deserted plaza of the san francisco church. quite fun and unique. during the festivals of quito the first week of dec. apparently everyone gets on chivas every night.
however, the kids digging through trash and watching us, wide-eyed, dancing in the plaza, was a sobering dose of reality...i don’t want to forget...

halloween is not really celebrated here; there were a few people dressed up in the clubs and roaming the streets, but it definitely wasn’t a big presence. the program director told me that a few years ago everyone would get dressed up and close down the streets and dance, but then the president asked them not to, because its not an ecuadorian tradition but rather just u.s. influence, and that they should celebrate the ecuadorian seal instead. (oct. 31 is also ecuadorian seal day…whoohoo!). another interesting effect of globalization...

nov. 2 marked “el dia de los difuntos,” celebrated similarly to “el dia de los muertos” en mexico, but with some marked differences, for the different indigenous cultures here. even before the spanish came here and made everyone catholic, the kichwas of the sierra would celebrate their ancestors during this time of the year because they believed that the cooler winds brought their ancestors spirits.
nowadays, they bring traditional foods, like guaguas de pan (bread shaped like kids) and colada morada (a purple fruity drink made with dark corn flour) and eat it while sitting on top of the graves of their relatives. they pour some colada morada over the graves to share with the dead.

for my andean religions class, we went to calderon, (a town half an hour outside of quito famous for their marzipan figurines!) to observe the cemetery, which has a large indigenous population that still eat with their dead on this day. there were so many people there, to the extent that it was hard to walk around. the street outside the cemetery had become a festival, with all kinds of vendors, and even a ferris wheel!
in the u.s., no one wants to walk over graves, out of respect, but here, everyone was walking over everyone else’s graves, leaning on tombstones, and even walking around selling ice cream and lotto tickets! it was shocking, but actually the whole atmosphere was pretty liberating...like how death should be celebrated.

there was mass out in the open air, and during the homily, the priest explained the significance of the symbol that had been constructed on the ground in front of the altar. in the middle was a guagua de pan, which represented each person, recently born. we travel down the spiral of life, growing physically, mentally, and spiritually. the path is filled with the things that strengthen us (the foods of this area, part of the indigenous sierran identity), as well as flowers and thorns (to represent the beautiful and the difficult that we all encounter). and the spiral doesn’t end, in the same way that our life doesn’t. after death, our life just changes and “se pierde el infinito.” (this is beautiful and i feel like it doesn’t quite translate). and the rays that come from the spiral represent the forces of the universe, which keep the planets in orbit and form the earthquakes. the rays are made of corn, and in the same way that it is key to the andean identity and is their primary form of nutrition, the forces of the universe, and God’s love, is our primary form of nutrition. que tan linda!