Long Overdue

That is what I am. I spent a decent part of today catching up on writing about a lot of what I've done the past six weeks. I was going to post an "update" entry that had a short blurb about everything I've been doing but ended up writing enough for a bunch of individual entries. So, here's an update about what I'm currently doing, and you can expect to see about 8 new blog entries over the next few days. I'll add pictures as I have time.

Currently - May 3:

I'm learning about Afro-Ecuadorian culture in the core course of our program. We're learning about how Afro-Ecuadorians got here (slave trade) and how they won their freedom and how they currently live and what the constitution says about Afro-Ecuadorian rights (they have all the same rights as everyone else - yay, equality).

In my psychology class through the university I'm learning about Ecuadorian public policy on public health. Basically, what I've learned is that there isn't any. There are only 5 mental health institutions in all of Ecuador (for 13 million people). Only 4 are public. The ratio of mental health workers to people is 8 for every 100,000 people. I took a mid-term exam in the class last week. It was incredibly tough. Doing all the readings and tests in Spanish certainly does not help.

My History of the Church in Latin America class is now over. We had to give short presentations (5 minutes) to end the class. I presented on the Treaty of Tordesillas which was when the Pope decided where to put an imaginary line from north to south saying that Spain could have all territories discovered and conquered to the west of the line and Portugal could have all territories discovered and conquered to the east of the line. The line moved a couple of times due to different papal bulls and it wasn't followed too strictly by conquerers, but I didn't know that before I presented on it, so I learned something interesting.

My Spanish class is going well. We had a midterm exam on advanced prepositional phrases, demonstrative sentences (commands), and the subjunctive form. I did pretty well but didn't ace it, which I'm OK with because it wasn't made to be easy (language is a [insert expletive here]). Outside of the testing situation, my Spanish is feeling pretty good. Yo puedo decir casi cualquier cosa que quiero decir cuando quiero decirla... la mayoría del tiempo. I can say almost anything I want to say when I want to say it... the majority of the time. The problem spots are very specific vocabulary sets (i.e. names of cooking utensils or scholarly writing) and when it's difficult to hear (i.e. when there's music, you're being whispered to or a lot of people are talking at once).

I just started taking lessons in Charango, my new little Andean string instrument. I'd already learned a lot by plunking around, looking at a chord dictionary, and running into a few people on some of my travels who taught me a trick or a song or two. I've had one lesson and have another tomorrow.

I set set up a music therapy curriculum for my little kids at Superar. I have learned to play 7 different children's songs in Spanish including "Mr. Golden Sun," "I Love You," "The Wheels on the Bus," and a song called "Tengo Una Vaca Lechera" (I Have a Dairy Cow). So far, it's going very well. The kids love it and the teachers have been at least a little bit impressed.

The reasons I haven't written for the past 6 weeks are: 1) I've gone out of town for 7 of the last 8 weekends, 2) I've been keeping up with classes during the weeks, and 3) I've been doing a lot of volunteer work and other little things, as well. I am continuing to love every moment I spend here. This country is unbelievable and this program is doing a great job of allowing me to delve into everything that is wonderful about this country.

On a U.S. note, yay Barack Obama for having an incredibly impressive first 100 days. The people of Ecuador (and I) like you a lot more than they (we) liked George Bush. I hope everyone is avoiding the swine flu. It has yet to come to South America (that includes Ecuador).

However, I did manage to get a nasty intestinal infection while visiting an Afro-Ecuadorian community named Chota. (You'll read about it soon.) Thirteen of the 16 kids on our program got sick (intestinal infections, parasites, and one case of E. coli) during or just after the trip from eating foods with a different level of sanitation than our bodies were used to. The food, however, was delicious. Several girls ended up in the hospital over night. I went in to the ER just to get checked for parasites (negative), get rehydrated, and get some anti-biotics. I was better in under 24 hours. Yay rockin' immune system.

Read quickly. Much more is coming very soon.

Baños - Chapter III: The Ascent

After we had all taken the plunge (The pun there is SO intended. I wish I could also be making a bathroom reference.), we continued on our way biking down the mountain valley (see below). The last waterfall we reached on our journey (you can actually go a few kilometers more to another one) was called "Pailón de Diablo." Now, I haven't figured out what that means yet, but I think it means something like "Devil's Awesome Waterfall" or "Devil's Super-High-Powered Fire Hose." Suffice it to say, it's a very forceful waterfall and the hike to it is quite impressive as well.

There are a couple of things that are really cool about the waterfall. First of all, as you hike down, you pass an incredible rock-face cliff. Second, at the bottom of the waterfall, you can climb over a rickety wooden rope bridge that warns "Attention! Maximum 5 people. Do not jump/swing." Third, two rivers meet at the bottom of the waterfall - one that comes from the waterfall and one that doesn't. What's cool about it is that the water from the waterfall is greenish and the water from the river is brown. From the bridge you can see where the two rivers collide and watch the waters mix. Fourth, you can climb up very close to the waterfall in these caves carved by water.

cliffs

rope bridge and warning signs

where the rivers mix

getting rained on by the waterfall

picture from under the waterfall

I thought I should include a picture of the actual waterfall

After climbing up very close to the waterfall, we headed back to our bikes (which we had locked up at the top of the trail). We didn't intend to bike back to Baños 25km uphill, so we did what most folks do and we found a random guy driving a truck and asked him to take us and our bikes back to Baños. $1.50 a person... 25km... 7 bikes. And a beautiful sunset to boot.

We didn't do very much at night in Baños because we were very tired both nights. So, on Sunday, after doing a little bit of shopping and hiking around town and checking out the town's cathedral, we basically headed home, but not before trying some of Baños' famed melcocha - taffy. It's very hard, but very good. Actually, I discovered on the bus back that melcocha is infinitely better when it's warm (my bag was apparently on a warm spot on the floor).

I should really only include one thing more. Remember my rant about the markets? Well, in Baños I saw the extreme of that. Just along the bus station, there are about 100 (not exaggerating) little tiendas selling caña (sugar cane) and jugo (juice) de caña. We got some for the trip home.

awesome idea

Photo album: "La ruta de las cascadas..."

Baños - Chapter II: The Faster Decent

One of the "features" of the Waterfall Route is that there are several tunnels and bridges. From a pair of these bridges, about halfway through the bikeride, you can get off your bicycles and do what Ecuadorians call "puenting." Puente means "bridge," thusly, puent-ING means "bridging," which makes no sense grammatically but means bridge-jumping. Puenting works in one of two ways. Usually there are two bridges very close to each other (one for traffic one way and one for traffic the other, for example). One option is to jump from the lower bridge (34 m or ~110 ft) while you swing - like a swing - from a rope attached to the higher bridge (45 m or ~155 ft). That's the wussy way (sorry Ashley and Amelia). The varones way (macho-man way) is to jump Superman-style from the higher bridge. The way this works is, your rope is tied under the bridge you are on to the other side. When you jump off, you dive head first and swing under the bridge you were just standing on. It's scarier than... well, most things anyways.

I was the first one of our group to go and I Supermanned - like a champion... almost. Story: When we arrived at the puenting site, no one was presently jumping. From our group, I was the only one willing to go first (surprise!) so I got all harnessed up. The guys asked me if I wanted to Superman and, since I hadn't really thought about it (I didn't know it was going to be an option), I said I wasn't really sure. So, they told me to go to the other bridge where I would jump from. Now... I have explained to you all how this whole bridge-jumping thing works, but I didn't know how it worked and neither did anyone in my group and it didn't help that the only people who could explain it to us spoke only Spanish. (It never does help). So, as I hiked up to the higher bridge, I was unaware that I was hiking to my imminent dive - rather than swing - off of a bridge. Short story long, as I walked up to the bridge a big group of people arrived to wait to go jumping. When I got to the jumping spot the assisted-suicide, bridge-jumping assistant man asked me if I was ready to Superman. I was quite surprised not to be offered both options, so I asked, "What about regular puenting?" He said, "Well, you'll have to go to the other bridge for that." I wasn't really sure what to do, because we didn't get to watch anyone else jump first, and I wasn't really ready to dive off a bridge attached only to a rope or two before I saw anyone else do it. But by this time, all my friends and the group of people who had arrived were watching me, waiting for me to dive to my demise. So, after getting up and down from the bridge's railing two times, asking the bridge dude if he was sure I wasn't going to die about fifty times, and getting the crowd to cheer for me, I dove off the bridge. It was exhilarating to say the least.

Unfortunately, no one got any great photos of me jumping, so instead I posted a sequence of photos (above) that I took of my friend Christabel jumping sometime after my heart slowed down from its elevated 2000 bps. It looks safe enough, right? (On that note, no helmets were provided and no waiver was signed. Just pointing that out.)

To be continued more...

Photo album: "Fighting the instinct to protect our species..."

¡A_a_ay!

Let me explain. Kichwa (or Quichua) is a very difficult language, I have been told. I know very little of it, but I have learned several words in Kichwa which turn out to be very crucial words in Ecuadorian Spanish. The majority of the words I now know in Kichwa follow the following (and above) format - "¡A_a_ay!" - in which a random letter or group of letters is repeated twice, one in each blank, to create a word that is, generally, some form of exclamation. Here are several examples:

"¡Ayayay!" means "Ouch!"
"¡Achachay!" means "Cold!"
"¡Araray!" means "Hot!"
"Atatay!" means "Gross!"

That pretty much does it for today's Kichwa lesson. I only know two other Kichwa phrases off the top of my head. One of them is mashi and means "friend." The other I will use to say farewell. It means "good night." Cayecama.

Baños - Chapter I: The Decent

Baños is sort of like adventure sports central of Ecuador. It's actually known for its hot springs baths for which it is named (Baños means "baths"). It's a beautiful little touristy town situated within erruption distance of nearby active volcano Tungurahua. From Baños you can do a plethora of adventure sports including white-water rafting, mountain biking, dune-buggy riding, waterfall climbing, zip-lining, and bridge-jumping. Unfortunately, I only got to about half of the options, but it was a pretty adventurous weekend nonetheless.

We (7 of us, I believe) spent three days in Baños. We stayed in a beautiful hostal called "Plantas y Blancas" (Plants & Whites... not really sure why). For $6.50 a night we stayed in rooms of four with comfy bunkbeds, a great view of the town's waterfall (I know, the town has a waterfall), personal bathrooms, and access to the roof top porch and kitchen. Great deal.

Anyways, after arriving early on Friday afternoon (it's a 4-hour bus ride), we explored the town a little bit and decided to hop in some buggies and go for a drive. They pronounce buggies like "boo-geese" here. And I like that. We "boo-geed" ourselves in two-person buggies up through the Andes mountains a few kilometers to where we had a view of Volcán Tungurahua. Unfortunately, the entire top of the mountain was cloud-covered. However, in the early 2000's, Baños had to be evacuated because of the volcanic activity going on on Tungurahua. There were big lava flows and several small erruptions. Anyways, what we could see was the river beds that the lava carved in the side of the mountain. That was redeeming. Also, the buggy ride was exciting and really fun despite some minor mechanical difficulties.

waterfall 1

waterfall 1 (zooooomed)

waterfall 2

waterfall 3

the waterfalls below town

The next day we went on a bike ride down a route called "La Ruta de Cascadas," which means "The Waterfall Route." It's named so because, as you bike downhill on this highway through a valley in the Andes, you pass seven or eight incredible waterfalls that you can see from the road. At some of them you can take a cable car across or even zipline across the valley. We opted not to, but stopped at most of the waterfalls to take pictures (see above) and a break from our 25-kilometer trek.

To be continued...

Menu Mishaps

The menus in Ecuador are, generally speaking, not well-translated. Most places don't have English on their menus at all, so I suppose I should give them credit for trying. Furthermore, it's undeniably obnoxious of me to make fun of anyone else for translating incorrectly - I pretty much do it all day long. However, there have been several mistranslations that I have happened upon that I simply cannot resist passing on. The following stand out above the rest:

Spanish: "Caldo de Bolas de Verde"
Translation: "Green Banana Balls Soup"
Proposed Correction: "Plaintain Dumplings Soup"

Spanish: "Bebidas Gaseosas"
Translation: "Gaseous Discard"
Proposed Corrections: "Bubbly Drinks" or "Sodas"

More to come...

Mercados y Cascadas: Otavalo

from the bus on the way to Otavalo

The weekend after Carnaval we decided (I guess) that we hadn't had enough traveling lately so we left Saturday morning and headed north two hours to a town called Otavalo. Otavalo is known for its weekend artesanal market, one of the largest in all of Ecuador. You can find paintings, wood carvings, hand-knitted clothing, jewelry, hammocks, wall-hangings, delicious food and an infinite number of other things. There are literally hundreds of individual shops. Our group of ten or so spent Saturday (the biggest market day) exploring the market looking for trinkets and gifts for friends and family. The market is incredibly beautiful and colorful, so I took a lot of pictures (check 'em out). After the little booths started to close down, some of the group left, but a few of decided to stay the night at a hostal and explore more the next day.

Ted & Jennifer

Sunday morning the market wasn't as big, so after breakfast we took a ten-minute bus ride to a nearby national park, home to La Cascada (waterfall) Peguche. The hike to the waterfall was relatively short but beautiful. The waterfall itself is rather grand, it's hardly small, but it's not the most exciting thing in the world. However, you can keep hiking up to the top of the waterfall and all around it. At the top of the main waterfall was a large tunnel carved through the rock where there river went. We climbed through a small cave and were able to wade up the stream a little ways where we could see another waterfall. It wasn't quite as big of a drop but it went through the tunnel, so it was really cool. We hiked all over the area, up over the tunnel (really the tunnel is like a big V with one tiny rock bridge going over it), and on the hills and cliffs around it. It was pretty scary and unsafe, but beautiful and a lot of fun. Pictures coming.

I found a rock with a face in it

Cascada Peguche

from the top of the waterfall - there's no guardrail

the second waterfall inside the cave

Photo album: "Otavalo"