Baños

This past weekend, my Study Abroad group and I went on our first excursion outside Quito.  We travelled to Baños, which is a little tourist town about 4.5 hours away and the whole trip was an awesome adventure!  I really enjoy being around all my Study Abroad friends and feel very lucky to be able to experience Ecuador with a group of such wonderful people.

Highlights from this Week:

·      Monday – This afternoon, I helped take Clarita, an 85-year-old woman, to the Comedor, which is where the seniors in the community eat lunch.  Just three years ago, Clarita could walk to the Comedor by herself, but now she needs help getting there in her wheelchair.  I couldn’t stay to help serve food because I had to go to class, but the program for seniors seems like a wonderful thing for the community.

·      Tuesday – I had my first ecology class today.  It looks like the we will be talking more about how being aware of environmental issues can help you professionally than ecology, but that is interesting, too, and it should be a good class.

·      Wednesday – After classes, Paige, Lauren, and I ran into Zach and Leo and we all piled into a taxi to go home.  You know all those wildly inappropriate jokes about piling Mexicans into a car?  How about gringos?  (It was quite fun, by the way, though I’m very glad the car was full of people I know and like rather than strangers.  If the car had been full of people I didn’t know, the ride would have been very uncomfortable.)  I’m also starting to become addicted to two telenovelas, which is a good sign I’m adapting to the culture.

·      Thursday – Happy Birthday Hillary!  After classes, everyone in our group went to Hillary’s house for singing and cake and ice cream.  There were two wonderful cakes and three flavors of ice cream and a new “tradition” for us Americans.  Essentially, Hillary was supposed to take a bite out of each cake without using her hands.  This pretty much ended with her face in the cake (after some “help” from her host mom and María).  We sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English and visited and just had a wonderful time.  After a while, we went to dinner at a sushi place in Cumbayá where Hillary had her first “official” drink (technically, the drinking age in Ecuador is 18, not 21, so it was more like a first “U.S. official” drink).  All in all, it was a fantastic evening and a wonderful way to celebrate our friend’s birthday.

·      Friday – After classes, I returned to Lumbisí to help at the minga, which is like a community work time to better the town.  We were cutting down trees and hauling the logs down a hill for later use in building a greenhouse in the community’s organic garden.  It was really hard work, especially after it started to rain and the hill became wet and muddy.  It also didn’t help that we had to wait half an hour in the rain for the truck on which we were supposed to load the logs.  Once we were done, we were all soaked and muddy but very happy we were able to help.

·      Saturday – Greetings from Baños!  Starting early this morning, we travelled from Cumbayá to this semi-touristy town about 4.5 hours from Quito.  The area is at the base of a very active volcano, which routinely erupts ash but, since the Virgin Mary appeared by one of the waterfalls near the town, ash has never fallen on Baños.  On the way to our destination, we stopped to take pictures of gorgeous views of towns and a green lake with a shady history that involved government workers throwing bodies of enemies into the water.  Later on our trip, we stopped at a painter’s house to learn how the indigenous people of Ecuador paint on leather canvases.  The artist we met uses acrylic paint, but he paints the traditional way and his work in gorgeous!  We spent much of the afternoon at the Zoológico San Martín, which is the zoo in Baños.  There were many different animals there, most of which I had never seen.  A few of us were very lucky and got to see the condor, Ecuador’s national bird, up close when it landed on a rock near where we were standing.  We also went to a shop where we learned how sculptors carve palm ivory.  In the evening, we went to the hot springs at the base of the waterfall where Our Lady of Baños appeared.  The water was wonderfully warm and, though there were a lot of people there to take advantage of the water’s healing properties, going to the hot springs was a wonderful experience.  It was interesting, too, that when you looked out into the darkness surrounding Baños, the only thing you could see was a lighted cross high on top of a mountain.

·      Sunday – This morning, we went to tour the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Agua Santa at the center of Baños.  The walls were lined with paintings depicting the many miracles credited to Our Lady of Baños.  There was also a shrine to Mary in a side room and we stopped there to talk about it and/or say a prayer, depending on our religion.  Later that morning, we went on a tour of the nearby waterfalls.  I rode a cable car across a canyon to take pictures of two falls and a bunch of us walked right up to two twin falls after crossing a suspension bridge over a river.  We hiked a path that went through the jungle and by a number of waterfalls as well.  In the afternoon, we headed home and, though this was a lowlight rather than a highlight for us, we dropped off Leo, who’s continuing his Latin American adventure.  “May the road rise up to meet you.  May the wind be always at your back, the Sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields.  And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

Random Notes:

·      Question:  How many things can you do with a banana?  Answer:  Not as many as the Ecuadorians can.

·      Jugo is not juice from a bottle or carton.  Jugo is chopped fresh fruit and water blended and then strained through a sieve.

·      A piece of (delicious, freshly-baked) bread from the local bakery costs $0.12.  An (delicious, freshly-baked) empanada (bread with cheese inside) costs $0.25.

·      The bus does not necessarily come to a complete stop if you’re the only one getting on or off.  You just kind of have to jump.

·      Ecuador pretends to be a handicap-friendly country.   Ecuador is not a handicap-friendly country.  Also, when I say “handicap,” I don’t just mean being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life.  If you need crutches for a broken leg or a brace for an injured knee or anything at all to support your joints or bones, in Ecuador, you have a handicap.  This is not to say that you couldn’t make things work for you in Ecuador…I’d just, personally, be a little hesitant to try…

·      Speaking of being handicapped, practically no one here is (perhaps because you can’t really afford to be…).  You frequently see 75-year old women carrying 50-pound sacks on their backs.  They just wrap a blanket around themselves and the sacks and tie it in front of their chest and off they go!  On a trip into Quito, we saw a woman carrying a garden on her back!  There were plants on top, but you could tell most of the approximately 3’ x 2’ x 2’ box was filled with dirt.

·      A very important local volunteer organization is FeVi.  Get to know them because they’re awesome and have awesome people working for them.  Almost anytime you’ll be doing volunteer work here, it will be with them (at least, in this program).

·      At USFQ, the international students hang out by the lake and the Ecuadorian students hang out by the lions (the statues in front of the main building).  Hence, as beautiful and serene as the lake is, you will want to try to spend some time near the lions.

·      Bring a flash drive with a decent memory.  It’s the best way to store readings and other homework-related things when you don’t have Internet at home.

·      All food safety rules that apply in the United States also apply in Ecuador, even if many people here don’t realize it.  One member of our group wasn’t feeling very well over the weekend and one of our program directors thought it might be from the sushi we all had last Thursday.  Yup…raw fish will do that…

Classes Begin

I’m starting to settle in and everything seems a lot less new and scary now that I’ve been here in Ecuador for over a week.  My Spanish is getting better little by little and people who know me tend to understand me.  Living here really is wonderful and I’ve realized how lucky I am to live in Lumbisí Community – everyone’s so nice and it’s really starting to feel like home.

Highlights from this Week:

 

·      Monday – We had orientation at USFQ for most of the day.  We listened to a bunch of presenters talking about safety, health, social norms, and a world of other helpful topics.  One guy in particular was very funny and kept us entertained through the safety and health talks.  In the afternoon, Zack took us on a tour of Lumbisí to show us places we could volunteer in the community.  Later, all the people living in Lumbisí met up with Zack and Leo to play billar, which is apparently the only thing there is to do in Lumbisí in the evening.  I certainly don’t mind – although I’m not very good at it yet, playing billar with English-speaking friends was a relief after all the Spanish and I had a ton of fun.  Hopefully, we can do something like that again before Leo departs for other adventures across Latin America.

·      Tuesday – Our program went on a fieldtrip to the Parque La Carolina and Museo del Banco Central.  Before entering the park, we walked along a path lined with beautifully painted hummingbird statues.  (The people from Chicago were all commenting that they were so much prettier than the corn and cow statues they painted back home.)  Then, we entered the Parque La Carolina, which is a huge green area in the middle of Quito where people go to exercise and play soccer games, among other things.  We were all surprised to find a painted airplane in the middle of a playground.  The plane had a slide coming down from its door and was clearly made for children to play in.  We all agreed that having an airplane to play in would be really neat!  We could also see Pichincha Mountain, the largest mountain close to Quito and a great landmark for when you don’t know where you are in the city.  In the park, we visited Quito’s Jardin Botánico, which exhibits plants from all over Ecuador and attempts to recreate some of the major ecological systems in the country.  Ecuador has everything – from dense rainforests in the lowlands to dry desert-like areas atop the mountains, so we found almost every kind of plant I could think of.  There were cacti and aloe as well as types of trees older than the dinosaurs and orchids with colors and shapes I’d never seen in flowers.  Of course, the plants that hold water or eat insects also kept us entertained, as did the beautiful butterfly garden.  Later, we went to the Museo del Banco Central, which held artifacts and artwork from before the Incan invasion through the time of the Spanish conquistadors.  The indigenous peoples of Ecuador seem very different from many of those in North America and almost everything I heard was something I had not learned before.  The whole bus-riding thing in Quito is still kind of scary for me, but the destinations we find in the city make it well worth the trip.

·      Wednesday – Happy first day of USFQ classes!  My first class was definitely not a good one to have first, but the second made things a lot better.  I had a literature class first and the professor talked really quickly and said a lot of things that I could tell were important, but that I could not understand.  Fortunately, I had a friend in that class who’s been here six months already and he helped me understand.  The second class was for people who don’t speak Spanish as a native language, so that was much better and easier to understand.

·      Thursday – More new classes!  I had three today…well, sort of…  The first was for foreigners – should be fun and not too difficult.  The second may or may not be difficult, but it will definitely be a lot of work.  The third…is the “sort of.”  Our professor actually didn’t come, which was fine with me, since it gave me more time to do other things I needed to do.  Apparently, if a professor doesn’t show up within 15 minutes after class is supposed to start, students can leave as long as the class leaves a paper with students’ names and ID numbers’ on it in the room for the professor.

·      Friday – I spent the morning volunteering at Muñequitos, a preschool in Lumbisí.  I handed out craft supplies for 4-year-olds to put feathers on a chicken, convinced a 3-year-old boy that strawberries are delicious and he should eat them, and held a significant number of hands on a walk to find farm animals around the school (yes, there are farm animals around the school – we found two pigs, a cow, and a chicken, as well as a cat and several dogs).  When I got to USFQ, we had a meeting about taking a trip to Tiputini, which is the most diverse biodiversity station in the world!  (Pictures speak louder than words, so you should really consider looking this one up.)  The trip is four days and looks awesome and I’m definitely going!

·      Saturday – In the morning, I helped with a FeVi used clothing sale here in Lumbisí.  FeVi is a local volunteer organization that sponsors Muñequitos, has a store in the park (main plaza in Lumbisí, and does a bunch of other good things for the area.  The clothing sale was a great success and we made over $200 (selling clothing items for $1 – $3 each)!  After the sale, we worked to get two kittens out from under the refrigerator in the store.  Apparently, it was warm under there and they didn’t want to move.  María had brought them to Lumbisí to find homes for them.  We picked up the kittens and carried them around the community to see if anyone wanted one.  Two nice women did and now the kittens have wonderful new homes.  In the afternoon, Cecelia and I went to Tumbaco for lunch.  We were in Ventura Mall, which is great – it’s just like a medium-large mall in the United States.  You can buy everything you need without being overwhelmed by people.  I’m so glad I won’t have to go all the way to Quito to buy stuff for our Tiputini trip.  This evening, María and I went to the meeting of the Cabildo Comuna Lumbisí, which is Lumbisí’s government.  We only stayed for the first hour, but apparently, these meetings can last 6 hours to ensure everyone’s voice is heard.  I’m not surprised the meetings take so long – just role-calling all 350 members of the community took ½ an hour!

·      Sunday – Jesús, Cecilia, and I went down to the river again.  This time, though, we went another way down.  We were sitting on the riverbank eating fruit we’d brought with us when two cowboys came riding their horses down and then back up the mountain on the opposite side.  I don’t think they saw us, but Cecilia said they were American – they certainly looked American, but one can never tell with us.

Random Notes: 

·      Sometimes, the buses change their stops – don’t panic and just look around.  It’s got to be there somewhere.

·      Speaking of buses, the bus from Lumbisí to Cumbayá (and vice versa) is $0.20.  From Cumbayá to Quito or in Quito, it’s $0.25.  From Quito to Lumbisí, it’s $0.35

·      Speaking more of buses, the green ones are generally safe, the red ones are almost as safe, and the blue ones…well, my purse was slashed on a blue bus, but first impressions can be misleading, so let’s not be to hasty about judging the blue buses (though they’re not as safe as the red ones).  This does not mean that you should let your guard down even on a green bus, just that you can feel slightly more relaxed riding from Cumbayá to Lumbisí than riding around in Quito.

·      Remember how I said to put mayonnaise on your corn?  Scratch that – put mayonnaise on everything!

·      If you haven’t tried fried bananas, you should go make some now.  Just heat vegetable oil in a pan and lay slices of banana (cut ¼ inch thick long ways) in the pan until they start to turn brown on each side.  As soon as there is just a little black, they´re perfect!

·      Make friends with foreigners who’ve been here a while.  They can help you get to know the town and understand people when you can’t understand them.

·      Random public service announcement:  Not that you were going to do this anyway, but I can tell the presenters at orientation were trying to say this gently.  Just so you don’t miss the advice when it’s mentioned at orientation, don’t get drunk in Ecuador.  Just don’t.  Even in your last week here, you still stick out as a gringo and, therefore, a target, especially when you’re drunk (by the way, it’s much easier to get drunk at 9,100 feet than at sea level – even if you could drink 5 or 6 beers in the U.S. without feeling weird, you might feel tipsy after just one in Quito).  Just don’t get drunk.  Also, don’t sell or use drugs here (the Ecuadorian government doesn’t distinguish between selling and using).  If you get caught, you’ll likely go to jail for 25 years and the Embassy can’t help you.  This isn’t to scare you – some people have ignored the presenters’ advice and been drunk several times and were just fine.  It’s just a head’s up before you get here.

·      When you need a taxi, the safest thing is to call one.  Call a reputable taxi company (J&J is great in Quito) or someone you know (you’ll be surprised how many of your friends have host dads and host uncles who are taxi drivers).  If you need a taxi right now (like, you’re in an area and feel uncomfortable about your surroundings), though, you may need to flag one down.  The perfect cab is yellow, has municipal tags on the door and/or windshield, has a “Taxi” sign on the roof, and has an orange license plate (which means it’s an official public transportation vehicle).

·      One gesture every student should know is the “Yes, I know I’m late. I’m really sorry.  May I please come in anyway?” gesture.  First, start by making the “OK” sign with your hand.  Now, part your thumb and forefinger a little.  Straighten your thumb and forefinger out sideways.  Your hand should look like you’re trying to make a dog shadow puppet, but your dog has three ears.  If you are late to class, open the door slightly, look at the professor, and make this symbol while having a slightly puppy-dog look on your face – your professor will most likely gesture for you to come in and not feel the least bit irritated that you’re late.

·      On that note, Ecuadorian time is not the same as American time.  Sure, you’re in the same time zone as the East Coast, but time is still different here.  In America, it’s best to be early, acceptable to be on time, and, in some cases, fine to be five minutes late.  Here, if a professor says a meeting is at five, the meeting could actually start anytime from 5:00 to 5:59 (if you open the door slightly and make the “late” gesture, arriving at 6:00 is acceptable, too).  Wherever you go, be prepared to wait – bring work to do or a book to read or a friend to talk with while you’re waiting.

·      Almost everyone here is Catholic.  And, no surprise, Mass here is almost exactly like Mass in the United States…except there are more altar servers…lots more altar servers…like 8 or 9 altar servers…  I think every child close to 10-years-old in Lumbisí is an altar server and they couldn’t fit enough Masses into a weekend to accommodate everyone who wanted to participate, so they just assigned more altar servers to each of the existing Masses.

·      Kittens are just as adorable in Ecuador as they are in the United States.  Also, it is rumored that you can take an animal back to the States with you if you really want to – it just requires paperwork…a lot of paperwork…  Apparently, one girl actually took a dog home with her…after some paperwork…a lot of paperwork.

·      Remember all those words you learned in Spanish class that you thought you’d never need in a million years (like the words for playground equipment)?  Yup, you’re going to need those.