Theodore's Ecuadorian Escape

A Time Removed but not forgotton

2009-03-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

Because I am so far removed from my last days in Ecuador(May of 2008), I'll just give some anecdotes as I remember them from the pictures I have selected...

The above picture is of me and my amazing travel partner Chisara and our equally amazing Andean Anthropology professor, Angelica Ordoñez of USFQ. I remember her walking past us our last day and me thinking why not get a picture, she was very challenging and a great educator with TONS of reading but it was a great class.

I actually snagged that pic moments before our program director and housing coordinator, Tania Ledergerber y Victoria, took us out to eat lunch as a farwell kind of event. It was very relaxing because throughout the semeter the students and IPSL butted heads and most people had issues with their service placement, but not at this lunch. We all realized it was over and we had fun over the five months we shared. The picture to the left is one last pic with all of us together.

After the lunch we decided to hit up the Guayasamin museum in Quito that we forgot to go to over the five months we were there. It was called "La Capilla del Hombre" (The Chapel of Man) and the museum was a costumized viewing hall for the Ecuadorian artists work. For more info on him go here===> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayasamin . One part of the building that stuck out to all of us were these HUGE letters on the wall that formed this short four line poem that sort of sums up the tragic death-like humanity that the artist expresses in his paintings. The words read, "Yo Llore porque, no tenia zapatos, hasta que vi un niño, que no tenia pies", which translated reads "I cried because, I did not have shoes, until I saw a boy, who didn't have legs". It sort of speaks to ignorance and realizing that as terrible a situation we may ever be in, there's always someone who's going through something worse. He leaves it at that for shock value, I think to urge the audience to act, maybe, not? There's another pic at the top right that's very dramatic called "Lagrimas de Sangre"(Tears of Blood).

These last pics are of my host family minus one brother and sister. I never really took pictures of them throughout my time there. We honestly didn't spend that much time together, because I was always running around doing a million things. I did however have a good relationship with Andres and still keep up on the Facebook. The mother Lorena and the father Ernesto. They were some of the most generous and caring people I've met in my life. I couldn't have asked for any better treatment and love from a complete stranger. They've had several other host students as well so I'm sure they were pros at it by the time I came to Quito. -Thanks-

Some Quick Last thoughts on these pics. I had cuy(guinea pig) the night before I left. And yea, um not the best fried food I've eaten, I mean beignets or fried rodent...but it's unique to the indigenous Kichwa speaking descendents of Incan empire. But the large majority of ecuadorians do NOT eat guinea pig, although there are large indigenous groups throughout the larger urban areas and rural.

I also bought some flowers for my mom in the airport. It was like $12 I think for two dozen flowers that were the most beautiful roses I've ever bought(but i'm inexperienced), but no smell at all. I got searched like crazy at the airport leaving Ecuador and coming to the U.S. They even made me turn my ipod on and off to ensure that it wasn't a bomb I guess? It was ridiculous, but again, I think I just got the "Aladdin" treatment. Sometimes my racial ambiguity skews some to think I'm of "Middle-Eastern" descent. While that may have not been the case...they didn't search anybody else like they did me...

Before It's too late...

2008-06-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

So I've been out of the loop the past, oh say, month and a half, catching up with old friends, giving out ecuadorian and otavalenan gifts, and getting reaquainted with life in the U.S. which is markedly different from life in Quito, Ecuador.

I'll include some pictures from my last days in Ecuador in the post and discuss them and then, hopefully post about my current job at the University of Michigan where I am writing from at the moment.

So as you may recall I was busy trying to decide what to do for my final paper in my class for the IPSL(International Partnerships in Service-Learning and Leadership) program called Social Organizations, Development and Service. Like my class on colonialism I wanted to take an Afro-Latin American perspective in my approach to this paper. I ended up writing on the role of NGOs(Non-Governmental Organizations) or ONGs(Organizacion no Gubernamental)----pronounced oh-eneh-hey(fun to say, haha). So again, I wrote about the effect of blanqueamiento on afro-ecuatorianos(as in my Andean Archeology class) and for the latter half of the paper discussed a couple ONGs that impact their lives such as the one that Chisara was working for (CARE). We also had to give a 20min. presentation IN SPANISH, on our organization, with analysis of our experience with the organization. Chisara took a picture of me during the presentation.

It was rough, the semester AND the papers that were both supposed to be 8-10pgs...mine were six and a half, not quite what they wanted but apparently it didn't hurt me too much. I ended the semester with a 3.75 overall GPA with my only B coming in the aforementioned program class. While the classes were challenging, as far as speaking in spanish 24/7, readings and papers were concerned, grading was not as critical as I would've expected.

The ABOVE is a post that I started the BEGINNING of TASS on 6/29/08 as the kids were arriving. I remember working on it while Abdul's sister and friends roamed the Telluride house and have been in a severe procrastination drought over the past months. I think part of re-acclimating myself to life in the states was ignore this part of my Ecuadorian experience...posting weekly, bi weekly or whenever I could. Well, a combination of that and the whirlwind of a experience being a tutor for Telluride, and genuine procrastination/laziness. Anywho, I'm going to try and make one or two long posts about telluride and maybe one wrapping up Ecuador, but man, by now, that was a YEAR ago! Time flies, time to recap on the blog...

In Retrospect,after posting these pictures:

I was going to make a post talking about this random demonstration me and Kristina bypassed the last day of our service job, obviously they weren't fans of president Correa with signs like Hambreador, which is like guy who makes you hungry(translated by me).

Monografías y algo mas educativo

2008-04-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

So that last post was a week old and needed to get out quickly to make room for more posts. So right now I am slaving away at the university. Granted I did not have to be here today but here I have free, fast uninterrupted internet use...something I will not miss in 4 days when I am back in Birmingham!!!

I mentioned I was slaving away but not on what. So two weeks ago I finished with my class entitled Procesos de Colonialismo: Norte y Sur. All in all, I think it was my favorite class manily because of the teacher,Sabrina Guerra. There was a lot of reading but because USFQ has a large extranjero population half was in english and the other half in spanish. Everyday however, she managed to call on me for some thing or another. It got to the point where it was a joke between me and a couple of the guys in class about who she calls on first. It was really annoying because the class was taught in spanish so to try and offer up something useful in spanish on the reading in english was a little tricky. But honestly I think I got more out of the course that way because I made damn sure that I read and understood and had something insightful to present in class.

So throughout the course we had to work on a portfolio which was essentially composed of four two page reflexions due during the course. My tema(theme) for the portafolio was syncretized religions in the New World, such as Santería in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil. I took a class on Tradional African Religions this past semester at UAB and learned primarily about Voodoo, Santería and their origins. Voodoo, Santeria and Candomble though practiced in different parts of the world all came from the same Yoruba root in present day Nigeria.

Anywho I had to connect Norte y Sur in the porfolio and Cuba and Brazil are both considered Sur. So I took the AME(African Methodist Episcopal) Church for my northern focus. For the presentation, I had no clue what to do, so I went to mommy who always has good ideas. We had to present for 10 min on our theme and include a creative component. We decided to make cookie masks. I bought some cookies and icing and m&ms and made little masks for them to eat to represent the mask that Santeria is for Catholocism. Both Santeria and Candomblé mask their african roots with Catholic saints so as to retain their culture and religion throughout slavery. The cookies were a hit and the presentation...a little shady but it worked.

Right now I´m reflecting in this blog as opposed to stressing/working on my other 2 papers that are due on Friday. One is for Andean Anthropology on Blanqueamiento(or mestizaje, which is the mixing of white spaniards and indigenous peoples here in Ecuador to create a caste system for people who are indigenous mestizo and blanco), but with a focus on how it´s effected afro ecuadorians. The other one is for my program´s class...no clue what I´m going to write it on though...something about NGO´s that work to combat racism in Ecuador...any suggestions???

Time to get back to work, but I´ll leave you with some pictures I took the last day of my job at ALDEC where I helped Ecuadorian students with homework in English and other subjects and helped out in the kitchen, a lot more than that...but I´ll post later on it.

Cuenca and wrapping up

2008-04-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

So my time here in Ecuador is slowing down and coming to an end, I can´t say that I´m sad but I am beyond beleif grateful for the opportunity that I have been able to take advantage of...

So last weekend I did nothing but watch X-files season 9 and work on monografías(final papers). I´m sort of traveled out after the weekend before last when we went to Cuenca...about 10 hours normally away. We took a night bus the same time I wrote my last post. Traveling at night is by far the best idea ever. We paid for a $10 bus ride at 10pm to get there and just slept on the bus and got there around 7:30am, found a hostal and went out for breakfast. There was something about the city that was very warm and inviting.

Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador behind Guayaquil and Quito. It was an important colonial center in the 16th century. Much of that colonial past is ever present in Cuenca. Unlike Quito there were very few parts that did not display some remnant of it´s colonial past, the architecture, the churches, even the streets with there narrow cobble stone structure. We heard there was an orquidearea(an orchid garden). So we looked in our Lonely Planet book and asked people and took a bus...to a suburbian town about 20min away called Orquids! So we played in a playground there before going to the acutal orquiedearea on the other side of town...which was closed because it was a holiday. We got to Cuenca for the weekend of there Founder´s Day.

It was a neat celebration filled with parades throughout the main plaza and all around our hostal. It was funny and sad at the same time because for the most part they had elementary schools marching in cute little uniforms representing their schools. About half of them had bugles, trumpets without the valves. But the kids were just taught to blow as hard as they can into the mouthpiece and probably received little to know musical instructions because ooooweeee did they sound rough. But I guess I can cut them a little slack since they were 6-15...but it was still brutal. All in all it was a very good trip and Cuenca was a very warm city that reminded me of Birmingham.

Machu Picchu, Llamas and Padre Victor

2008-04-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

Oh I also forgot about the llamas and alpacas that are abundant in this region. We went to an alpaca farm on the way to visiting all the amazing sites. Here are some funny pics...

Ok so back to the fun stuff right? So we went to Machu Picchu via the ferrocarril(railroad). It took us four hours to get there but we finally made it to the lost city of the Incas. The mountains in general in Peru were super impresionante,but these were on a whole nother level. We had about 4 hours in Machu Picchu, and actually Machu Picchu is more like the altitude of Quito but Cuzco, the city, is higher than both...go figure.

Our guide was great in Machu Picchu as well and my oh my was it amazing. It´s called the lost city because it was abandoned shortly after the Spanish arrived in 1532, and because it´s in the ¨cloud forest¨ bordering the Sierra with the Oriente, jungle, there´s a lot of plant growth that has to be maintained today. Because after 5 years the entire site was covered in growth and not rediscovered until the early 2oth century by yale archeologist, Hiram Bingham. But it was discovered on accident, adding to the mystery and allure of the ancient site.

About 70% of Machu Picchu represents what it looked like hundreds of years ago. Only about 30% of has been recreated and is present in the thatched roofs of some of the areas. Ok now for more pictures, and not much writing.... There were a lot of explanations of the different areas which have gone blank in my memory however, the terraces that you see and are seen all over the Incan sites are for agriculture, and are naturally irrigated. Oh and also the Incan structures are not built straight up they are built like a trapezoid so as to prevent them from being effected heavily by earthquakes. The world was made aware of this in the 1950´s when there was a catostrophic earthquake in Cuzco that destroyed 90% of the city and guess who built that 10%???? It was the architecture of the Incas that survived the earthquake and the colonial spanish churches and buildings were all razed by the quake. In the small pic above the guide is displaying how the trapezoid structure works. He had me stand straight and then pushed me over with little force and then had me stand with my feet to my shoulders and did the same, and guess what, i didn´t fall...go incas, so intelligent.

Also, an eeried tidbit of information is that all of the churches you see in Cuzco were all built in the colonial era over the most important Incan temples to display Spanish dominance.

So after Machu Picchu, the next day, the day of the Eduardian blow up, we visited some sites in and around Cuzco again before our bus at 5:30 left for Lima. Delgado told us to get tickets for the 20-31 so we did. And 4 of us ended up having to stay an extra day in Lima because of him. The others left on Sunday, we left on Monday, but we got to see so much of the actual city of Lima that we missed out on previously because of Punto Hermosa and the Kique experience.

So one of the members of our group had a brother who spent a summer in Lima at a seminary with Padre Victor who in turn spent a summer in the home town of Carlos(the friend in our group) in Wilmington, NC. He called from Cuzco, explained our situation and we got to stay at a seminary in Lima for free. Padre Victor couldn´t have been more excited to house 9 gringos and one ecuadorian at his seminary. We arrived at around 2 on Saturday and got to the seminary around 4 and went site seeing after that with him. We went to Plaza Mayor...reminiscent of the one in Madrid, Spain. It was impressive, and different from Quito.

We went back slept, the others left at 7 in the morning, and the 4 remaining had a day alone with Padre Victor. We went back to Plaza Mayor during the day but not before stopping at la iglesia de San Francisco. We payed 2 bucks and went in and the unique thing about this church is that it gave tours of it´s catacombs where thousands and thousands of bodies were layed to rest. As in we saw thousands of bones that are still there over centuries, creepy and interesting at the same time. I wish I had taken pictures...but that was illegal as you might assume.
We made sure that we got back to Plaza Mayor at 12:30 so we could see the changing of the guards that was supposed to be really really royal but wasn´t soo much. But they had a national band that marched around the plaza and played the national anthem and other music. And they had guards march around too and the did drill much like UAB´s colorguard does...which I must say is much more pleasing to watch than what I saw.

Around 6 we headed back to the church because Padre Victor had to do the padre thing for misa at 7:30. This misa was sooo much better than the previous one in Punto Hermosa, if I might say. It had nuns which had their convent across the street...literally, and padres to be singing to guitars and what not. After that, it was like he was another man and came and took us out to eat. We left in the morning around 7 like the other group...he even went and got our taxis because as we have seen with Eduardo and Kique, peruvians are pushers and want that money and if speak a lick of english it´s rip off city.

It was an interesting taxi ride back to say the least. The driver was Venezuelan and made a couple of comments about Chavez before saying,¨Espero un ratito¨(wait just one second)...stopped on the side of the street, went behind the taxi to urinate on the back. My friend Chisara said, ¨I know he´s not urinating¨, but of course he was. Soon though we were to the airport and on our way back to beautiful Quito.

I don´t think I ever wanted to be in Quito more than two weeks ago. At this point I´m sick of Quito and ready to go, it´s been great and my experiences here have been invaluable, however, I have 30 more days to go and am counting them down hard. Wow that took forever, hope you all enjoy it, feel free to email me with any questions at tiddieche@gmail.com

PS. Click on the pictures to see a blown up high def view of them and also I´m taking a 9hr bus in 2hrs to Cuenca, the place that i mentioned and drew in a green line on the previous post with the map!!!!

Iheyna Jona Tochi(Phonetically prounounced Nigerian saying) means ¨Sad Things Make You Laugh¨:My Experience in Cuzco

2008-04-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

So that phrase is from Chisara and there are several reasons for posting that, all of which I hope to include in this post...

So I´ve been taking entirely too long to post on the rest of the Peru experience so I´m going to try and be as brief as possible, but previous attempts have failed as evidenced by previous posts.

Taking a 20hr bus ride from Lima to Cuzco was an experience to say the least. It really wasn´t that bad because, theoretically, you sleep for at least 5-10 of it right?(not in my case) My body decided it would pic up some bug in Lima and then start destroying my body on the bus ride there. As soon as I stepped on the double decker bus, I knew it would be an especially long one. The only redeeming factor was that they showed a total of 6 movies on the ride there, but not after 1 and not before 7 inwhich we were turning and swerving up and around mountains, which looked ridiculously scary at night, not to mention we were at the front of the bus as to be able to see right out the impending doom.

We knew that before we got there that we probably didn´t want to go with the package that Kique´s friend Eduardo was going to offer us, but at the same time not sure how he was going to react to that granted, one of our members had already wired him $480 as per the professor´s request. Of course when we got there he was waiting with his buddy doing everything he could to rush us to his hostal...Rupa Rumi(****DISCLAIMER****AVOID THIS HOSTAL AT ALL COSTS). He said that everything was fine, and we were all trying to explain our professor-less situation and the Kique experience to him(not too necessary b/c Kique called Eduardo to give him the heads up on the greedy gringos).

So his original offer was going to be 800 for an 8 day package, however it was cut down to 500 after negotiating some activities out. The hostal was nice and so were the workers, the owner was just plain disgusting. He was very rude to his workers and nothing better than a pusher(drug dealer) of his package. All the while he claimed to be professional. So professional that his good bye words were ¨Leave my country, you mother fuckers¨, that´s after he called me liar of course. I guess I have some splainin to do as Ricky would say...

So it all started after returning back the second day we were there from visiting this amazing Incan area called Pisac(more on the fun stuff later). I return to no ipod or ipod charger in my room which was stupidly laying on my belongings beside my bed. The room I was staying in was right next to the entrance of the rustic hostal, near some couches, sorta of like a waiting area. I very calmly approached Eduardo of my at that point missing but at this point stolen ipod, cleverly not accusing anyone, simply stating the facts. There was an ipod there last night, and now there is none. He kept on asking if I was 100% seguro, and I repeatedly said yes. He responded with ¨I´m going to kill the mother fucker who took your ipod¨. He then proceed to belligerently ask his workers if they had taken it. After that he said he could get one on the black market for 100 on saturday and mail me one. I told him if he gave me $100 I´d be satisfied, after we all paid him $500.

500 x 10 = roughly...$5,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He didn´t mention it the following days until the last day when we were there. And decided to throw in some extra charges that he was charged because of changing dates and this that AND the other, and figured out that as a group we owed him $100 and that we could just pay Teo(ME) that 100. Of course I told the group no. And said we´d like to talk to him before we leave about it. Of course, he comes within 20min of our departure back to Lima and says to me, ¨Did you talk to your friends¨ and I respond ¨Yes¨ but we´d like to talk to you and that´s when all hell broke lose and i called him unprofessional and then he went on a diatribe of expletives that don´t need to be repeated...BACK TO THE FUN STUFF!!!

Oh and my sunburn kicked in full force at this point, just my chest and shoulders(red hot...a first for my fresh mulatto skin,haha). So as I said the first day we went to Pisac. We hiked with our wonderful tour guide Cristobal all over this one mountain area where the inca ruins were ever present, and stunning. Every tour guide talked about the uniqueness of the Incan architecture because they used NO mortar or cement, but instead used fine carving to place the many ton rocks on top of each other through concave and convex carving techniques not evidenced on the outside but on the inside.

We traveled all day to several Incan sites, the names of which have vanished from my memory but the pictures are priceless.

The next day was Machu Picchu and as we can see I´ve already written a book, I´ll try and make another quick post for Machu Picchu to do it justice till then stay fresh....

Primero destinación...Punto Hermosa, Perú

2008-04-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

So my Semana Santa in Perú was inolvidable, sin embargo, it was very long and very crazy, I´ll try and recount what took place from the beginning...

We started off the trip flying from Quito in the mountains to the coast in Guayaquil and waited there for a couple of hours before we met up with four other kids that had just gotten done visiting the Galapagos Islands to leave as a 10 person group to Lima,Perú. And this is where the trip started to go sour...

If you recall, we were supposed to travel with Professor Florencio Delgado, professor of Andean Archeology. He arrives at the airport with $2000 in hand to return to us. We each gave him a $500 deposit the week before, which should have been an indication of how unorganized this trip would be. He went to the bathroom and counted and it and returned it to us. Then he informed us that he would not be traveling with us to Lima(Friday) but would meet us on Sunday because his mother was ill in Cuenca(2hrs away by car from Guayaquil). He then introudced a prof. from another school named Gilda who would be accompanying us on the trip,nobody had ever met her before. So here we were, 9 students and one random adult headed on a plane to Lima where we would meet....someone we didnt know.

The plane, although it only cost $165 roundtrip was really nice with free movies on the back of the head rests and in flight games. Also for Ecuador and Peru there are airport taxes for international flights that you have to pay in cash at the airport,a little new. It took two hours before we arrived to Lima. In the airport, because we weren´t told otherwise we converted all of our money ($480) into peruvian soles(pronounced soul-lays). We were then met in the airport by the hostal owner Enrique who was there to pick us up in a bus for 20 but there were only 9 of us...the beginning of the miscommunication.

Enrique is an archeologist phD candidate at the University of Pittsburg and has a Heines(the ketchup company) fellowship to carry out his work near Punto Hermosa,Perú about 40km outside of Lima where he works with his team from Belgium, Spain and several other countries at an archeological site that I can´t remember but have pictures of(haha). So even though Delgado did not accompany us we were getting the real deal with this guy...to an extent.

So we take the 45min bus ride,tired, to his hostal in Punto Hermosa. There we explain our situation and how nothing is really organized. He starts by saying that he is soo glad that we ended up with him and not on the streets and Lima with all this cash strapped on us, and so were we, we thought. He agrees at that point to give us a free night on Sunday if we can´t get a bus to go to Cuzco from Lima that day. That was $30 off basically, so we all paid upfront. Needless to say he reneged and the last night said that the numbers weren´t adding up and he´d need $15 from all of us, well that didn´t go over too well with the indignant of the group,which resulted in a hr and a half back and forth between the group and him. Some highlights were him saying, that what he felt was us being ungrateful, we were TOLD to leave by 9am the next morning on monday, and since we were talking business he expected to be reembursed for the gas he wasted driving 45min into Lima to get our bus tickets for us($2 a piece)...very awkward situation thanks to Delgado!!

Back to the fun stuff...

So he took us to Pachacamac which is a HUGE archeological site right outside of Lima. He helped with the excavating of it about 6yrs ago and had VIP access to some parts which was neat. The site is super old and on the coast originally used by pre-Incan societies, then by the Incans, and then conquered by Pizzarro and company in the 16th century. When Pizzarro ransomed Atahualpa, he sent Pizzarro to Pachacamac to steal the gold he demanded. The size of the site is muy impresionante, and there are still huge huge parts that are underground and one can tell from a far because of the different shades across the many acres of land. By the way, I´m sure you can notice how dessert-ie it is here.

Kique(as he liked to be called), then took us to eat at this really nice buffet lunch restaurant, and then to his site where he works. It´s smaller than Pachacamac and open to the public which can complicate things but they still work 8hrs a day in the arid heat. He´s looking mainly for pyraimd remains and the implications of social structure in the area, very interesting stuff, but I´m glad I´m an African American Studies major.

That night he threw a party at a club within walking distance from the hostal on the beach and the dinner was salmon! The next day was Sunday, the day we wanted to leave but could not so based on his suggestions we went to go be lazy on the beach. We laid out and got burned under the sun at Punto Hermosa. The place is well known within the surfer world because of Pico Alto, which is the second largest surfable wave on the planet. In fact, the hostal we stayed at housed supposedly one of the greatest surfers of all time back in the 80s, and of course Kique surfs and is all about good energy...but we had the exact opposite that night. I even went to misa(mass) with the catholics in the group...it was boring(sorry God, please forgive me)...I say this because the misa I went to the following Sunday in Lima was really nice and interactive.

that´s all for now, that´s the very first leg of my trip from there we took a 20hr bus ride from Lima to Cuzco(because we didn´t know when we would be going where we were unable to buy plane tickets for 150 ida y vuelta(roundtrip) from Lima to Cuzco. I´ll post as many pics as I can right now and more later but I have to go meet a friend for a birthday a la Mariscal(see previous posts) and it takes forever to do this at an internet café!!!!

i´ll try and post about Cuzco tomorrow, stay fresh...till tomorrow

(ps...email me Willa)

What I´m Doing and Where I´m Going for Spring Break aka. Semana Santa

2008-03-20T14:54:00.001-07:00

So we have a good week and a half break for Semana Santa(Pascua====>Easter)....

I will be flying now out of Quito tomorrow morning to Guayaquil, the most important port city in Ecuador. From there me and 4 friends will be taking a flight at 7pm to Lima,Peru where we will be meeting up with professor Florencio Delgado who is the prof. for Arqueaologia Andina. Chisara and I are not in the class but our other two friends are. Us 4 will be accompanying another 10ish students for the trip.

The flight was only $60 as opposed to a 10hr $10 bus ride. While 50 is a lot because of the heavy and unusual amount of rain that Ecuador has experienced over the past month there have been alot of derrumbes or mudslides that have really damaged the carreteras or highways which are already dangerous because they all traverse the Andes Mountains. We, as a 4 person group, decided our lives were worth an extra $50 bus ride.

We will spend a couple of days in Lima before boarding on a 20hr bus ride from Lima to Cuzco. Cuzco is the colonial town and former capital of the Incan empire before Francisco Pizzarro burned it down and built the Spanish city that stands today. From there we will travel to Aguas Calientes which is the city right below Machu Picchu before going up into the city!

All in all I´ll be gone from the 21 to the 31 of March!

I´ll have a blog to update the Semana Santa trip upon my return.

wish me luck

Teddy

Below is a pic of where I have been in red. Where I will be flying tomorrow in Blue. And in green a colonial city called Cuenca that I plan on travelling to in bus sometime in April.

Mascarilla and Muisne

2008-03-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

(Sugar Cane in Mascarilla)

This past week my friend who I traveled with, Chisara, had two friends from back home come visit her for a week and left yesterday, needless to say I did as much traveling in the past week as I´ve done in a month here for them...

They came on Wednesday night and that night we all met up at La Mariscal which as you may remember is the hip place for the youngsters to commute packed with clubs, bars and restaurants. They went to a club, I went home. The next day they came to school with us where many groups at school had stands up, mostly from marketing and business classes trying to sell food, or an oxygen bar, or a slack line(where you basically walk a tightrope).

There was a group that Thursday from the province of Esmeraldas playing and dancing the Carambe. Here are some pictures...

That Saturday Chisara wanted to take Alana and Alex(the friends visiting) to Mascarilla. Mascarilla is a small town in the Valle de Chota north of Quito in the province of Imbabura, the same as Otavalo. So it took 3-4 hours by bus to get to Mascarilla, but we finally made it. It was very arid and dry and the entire Valle de Chota is known for it´s Afro-Ecuadorian population, mostly because of football(soccer) athletes.

The Afro-Ecuadorians in Chota are all descendents of slaves in the region where the major crop is sugar cane as seen in this amazing picture. In Mascarilla the artesanias are involved in a project where they make masks in an attempt to strengthen and represent black choteñan identity through the masks that they make from clay. They work with agencies in Italy and travel there once a year and masks are shipped all over the world. Chisara works there during most weekends through CARE. One of the artists, Betty, showed us around the shop and a video further explaining the importance of their project. She also demonstrated the Bomba which is a dance unique to the Valle de Chota where the women dance with bottles on their heads. It was very amazing and the music was very African, rhythmically.

Betty explained some of the history of the Afro-Choteñans and the sugar canes and this monument dedicated to their ancestors. They want to erect a museum dedicated to them as well but obviously will be pricey. This all exactly what I was looking for in better understanding and connecting the African Diaspora that we discuss so much in African-American Studies. Their agricultural way of life and everything is reminiscent of where my father grew up in Abernant, Alabama. The smell of the town was something that hit me as I could be in rural Abernant where my grandmother raised and killed hogs practically till the day she died in her 70s. It really was remarkable. From there we took two buses to Otavalo for the friends to purchase stuff like we did the first month, of course I again blew way too much money on gifts but it was worth it. Oh and here´s a picture of the 4 masks I bought below

Chisara´s co-worker at CARE, Sophia, took us to the Teleferico which takes us to the top of the mountain Pichincha and also is the highest teleferico(gondala) in the world. Excellent views of Quito and the mountain/volcano. The volcano erupted in 1999 and is still active but no like the other one Turunghaua. Then she took us to Mitad del Mundo. It´s a city dedicated to celebrating the equator and claims to be positioned right on it although it is off by a ways it´s the closest you´ll get and is a popular spot for married couples to get married stattling the equator.

The next day on Sunday we took a bus at 11:45PM! to a beach town in the province of Esmeraldas called Muisne that is about an hr from Atacames the place we went before. However this place did not reak of poo, was not covered in clubs and tourists. It as muy tranquilo. We took a taxi around the beach and stopped at this one house where a guy cut down two pipas from this palm tree where we drank the juice inside and ate the meat around it, very cool. We stayed at a hostal where we were not torn up by bugs and had fun showing alana and alex around all week!!

Political Climate in Ecuador

2008-03-08T10:05:00.001-08:00

I don´t know how big of a story it is in the U.S. but the political situation between Colombia and Ecuador right now is at full steam...

As I understand it last Saturday Colombian military forces crossed the Ecuador-Colombian border and killed FARC´s(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or in spanish...Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) second in command. This event led to the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, to break political ties with Colombia and expell the Colombian ambassador. In a move of solidarity, Venzuela and Nicaragua both did the same. There were demonstrations throughout Quito the past week in support of the Ecuadorian presidents decision and against Colombian-U.S. actions. Here is a good article for understanding less biased facts on the situation:

To read, listen to, or watch the whole story:http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/4/with_us_assistance_colombia_carries_out

Things are a little better now that the Colombian president has apologized but tensions between the two countries are ever present. There are over 150,000 displaced colombians in Ecuador due to the previous civil war and ongoing conflicts between FARC and the Colombian government, adding to ecuadorians discontent. Although I haven´t seen any demonstrations I have seen a huge rise in the amount of grafitti denouncing colombian prez Uribe and Colombia´s ties to the U.S. government.

Other than political news, I´ve been really sick the past week with a self-diagnosed sinus infection. But today I feel much better and just need to keep blowing my nose. Some friends went to Baños, a popular tourist town in direct threat of the active volcano Turunghaua. But I´m in a computer lab doing homework and getting up to the minute updates on the UAB-Memphis game. I have 2 8-page paper proposals due next week and need to figure out what I´m going to do and how i´m going to do it.

Resumen de Mindo

2008-02-25T06:42:00.000-08:00

Mindo fue bien chevere y divertido...

This past weekend me and seven other friends traveled to Mindo, Ecuador. It was a very very touristy town full of everybody on the street as soon as you get off the bus, trying to sell you this package and that package for a ¨descuento¨. We walked through town a little bit before finding a hostel that was listed in one of our guidebooks and took it for $5 a night. It even included a very nice breakfast for $2 more...everything cost money, there were even waterfalls that you could see....for a price, I´ll pass, there are some free ones back home on the Cahaba River...

Once we got there we went out on the town....nothing exciting as you can see. We found a restaraunt that found it extremely crazy that my pickyself wanted nothing on my hotdog, they returned the favor with a lukewarm weiner inside a toasted bun, cost 1.50, so i´m not complaining. That nite we just stayed up playing CatchPhrase, while others played jumprope with kids in the town.

We woke up rather early off of our brick beds at 9, ate, and went to go ziplining, through the dueño of the hostel. She had the hookup with all her costa rican buddies since there was now competition from an ecuadorian group. It cost 13 per person, but apparently 30 usually and it was worth every dime. There were 13 cables to go on, and almost all offered up awesome views of the countryside. They even let us do two trucos(or tricks).

One called the superman as shown below

And one called the mariposa(butterfly) as shown to the side.

After that we went into town, got some pizza of course and headed back to the hostel. The owner then called a taxi(truck) to pick us up for tubing, down white water rapids. Definitely couldn´t have done this in the states which is what makes it so awesome. It only cost 5 but was pretty dangerous and fun and freezing cold.

After that it started to rain so we just chilled at a restaraunt to wait for the rain to let up so we could go get some marshmellows for some smores later on that nite. It took us about 2hrs but my Eagle Scout skills finally came in handy getting a fire started with damp wood. There we played cards, ate smores and talked in English, which I now see now was a mistake as changing over to spanish was a little rough this morning with my host mom.

We were discussing my plans to go to Machu Picchu, which included 3 nites in Lima which she said was bastante and that I should get more than just one day at Machu Picchu. So I´m going to talk to the travel agent this week and try and see if I can´t get anything changed.

Till next time, stay fresh.....chao

Mindo, Identidad Afro y Lluvia a catarnos!!!

2008-02-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

So this weekend, I am probably going to go to Mindo, about two hours north of Quito away from any volcánes o inundaciones. Apparently there is a lot of nature stuff to do and it would be cheap as well....which is always good, especially when you´re planning a trip to Machu Picchu!!!!

So earlier this week Chisara gave me a invite to a lecture being held at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar(UASB). We took a bus from Cumbaya where USFQ(the school I go to) is located to Guápolo which is part of Quito, just another part. I had three midterms yesterday, one of which murdered me...my colonialism class. Anywho, I asked mi profe de Anthropología Andina donde está la UASB. She was kind enough to write me a map and showed me which bus to take and everything. She also asked me to contar( or tell about) the lecture to the class on tuesday, so much for sycophancy.

So, I liked the uinversity a lot better than USFQ because it was actually in the city of Quito while USFQ feels secluded from the rest of Quito in a nice safe rich bubble(UFSQ is the most expensive university in Ecuador with half of Ecuador´s Phds teaching there). Anywho, when my friend Kristina and I got out of the bus in Guapalo we walked about 7 cuadras(blocks) in the pouring rain, I had no paraaguas(umbrella, ella, ella, ella, haha). We finally got there a little after 6 soaking wet.

It was a book talk on a book called Identidad Afro by the main author and two other reaserchers. It focused on Afro-Choteños from la Valle de Chota, an area in the province of Imbabura that is notorious for the fuente(fountain, or source) of Black sport talent and afro-ecuatorianos in general. That is where Chisara is traveling every weekend to work with a community in Chota. It was really intersting for an African-American Studies major. The book focuses on four hitos(milestones): electricidad, una nueva carretera(highway), políticos democráticos, y reforma agraria.

I got the e-mail of the author and hopefully will be in contact with him!

Oh and it´s been constantly raining for the past 3 days straight...horrible!

gotta go, thanks for reading...

Teddy

Alguien me robo!!!!!

2008-02-19T07:27:00.001-08:00

So this past week I had my cell phone stolen!!!

Fortunately it was just my Ecuadorian phone and not of too much importance, although it did cost $50 to replace it!!!!

I was riding on the Ecovia, the main bus I take to get around Quito. It goes from North to South and stops a block away from my apt. It was packed beyond capacity, literally it was soo packed that people were pushing each other just to stand, not just to move. I was turned the other way and not paying attention when I got this feeling. Sure enough, a moment later I feel my pant leg pocket and no cell phone.

Needless to say I have a 39 pocket jacket that housed my ipod, flashdrive and several other valuables to be stolen. I just had gotten comfortable on that damned bus and let my guard down, and at that moment, my phone was gone. Apparently my friend who got off the bus before me said that there were some guys behind me eyeing my backpack...

From now on...phone in the jacket!!!

El Oriente, una Broma de los Dios...

2008-02-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Finally getting back on track with the blogging... I´ll explain why I titled this post the Amazon, a joke from God throughout...

There´s some background info. on the Amazon or Oriente here in Ecuador. While the Amazon river does not run directly through Ecuador there are several rivers and tributaries that empty into the Amazon. The Amazon is home to Ecuador´s largest indigenous population and second official language Quichua. At USFQ I am taking a class on Quichua so it was interesting to be able to use it a good bit this past weekend. Quichua became the official language of the Incan Empire at the height of their campaign across South America. Because Quichua is not a written language there are several differnent spellings for it. In the the southern bordering coutnry of Peru, the official second language of the country is Quechua. Throughout the Sierra, Oriente, and Costa you´ll find different dialects of the language and Quechua is one such different dialect.

A Brief Lesson in Quichua from a student...not professor....

So far we´ve mastered several common questions and responses in Quichua, such as,

Pregunta: ¿De dónde eres tú?========>¿Maymantatak Kanki?

Respuesta: Soy de Birmingham========>Nukaka Birminghammantami kani

So for this one you would respond with Nukaka, then whatever city you are from with mantami added to it and then kani. It´s definitely a different sentence structure with the verb coming at the end. One more:

Pregunta: ¿Cómo se llama?========> ¿Imashutitak Kanki?

Respuesta: Me llamo Teo ==========> Nukaka Teomi kani

The same as before except simply add mi to the end of your name. That´s very basic! All of the accents are the same as in spanish because it was the conquistadors who first attempted to write quichua. Solamente hay diez millones de quichuahablantes en el mundo. Todos están en Sudamérica.

Ok back to the trip. This trip was organized by IPSL there for it was gratis(free) for me. Which was nice because I´ve been spending too much traveling on my own. We left Saturday morning at 7 from a large centro comercial se llama Quicentro para ir en un bus privado. It was private, but don´t let that fool you. Private in Ecuador is NOT private in the U.S. On the way there we had to go over more mountains as expected and got a great view of a mountain called Napo. WE got out an took pictures. Further on we made another stop at lake Papayakta near a mountain named the same thing. Papa meaning potatao and yakta meaning lake in Quichua.

By far, this was the MOST bumpy ride I´ve ever experienced in my life. The roads were in such bad condition that literally for two hours the bus was constantly shaking furiously. WE finally got to Tena, the last semi-large town before there was no signal. We then made it to our destination, Misahualli. And this is where my ¨bad luck¨began. So apparently I left my wallet on the bus because it had fallen through a crack in one of the seats. I didn´t realize this until hours later and suspected someone from the hotel. So the entire time I was there I was worrying about my billetera. Because there was no way to get intouch with the bus driver because he was across a river and we had no sginal.

That night we went to a ¨shaman ritual¨ which proved to be quite hokey and seemingly artificial for tourists. We had to take a boat ride there and almost everywhere but it was more like a canoe with a motor. There was smoke and dances but it all seemed very tourist oriented unfortunately. The speaker also led us to a rock where apparently there were profiles of a woman, snake and other things, here´s one of a snake.

That night we had tilapia for dinner,which was a first and not that bad. I slept like a baby...and the pulgas(feas) feasted. I didn´t realize it until we had made it to an animal rescue center called Amazoonica which was one of the best parts of the trip. My arm was covered in red bumps that itched like mosquito bites but I hadn´t seen THAT many mosquitos, certainly not on my skin. I came back and took a shower and looked at my pillow and sheets and saw little black bugs jumping....worst nightmare. At first, it felt like that movie...¨Bug¨, because I couldn´t see them that first night nor during the day. Eventually I got a new room even had a portable air conditioner.

Amazoonica was a center for animals from the Amazon that had been taken as pets and then dumped off and before they are reintroduced to the medio ambiented they come here. They had capiburra, oceltots(tigrios) and several other animals that are popular as pets. That night we went on a caminata for more foe-quchiua rituals. By the way, becuase I wear a size 11 shoe I had to buy my own botas(boots). And I got a size just too small too, so I had blisters, bug bites, and no wallet all weekend. Somebody had to be laughing at me.

That evening we went to a Carnaval celebration across the river in Mishualli. It´s apparetnly all about getting wet. If they see any extranjeros that are dry they soake them with buckets of wather and foam in areosal cans. So I had to stay away from all of my woman counterparts because they were just asking for it. Needles to say I still got wet but they got drenched. THere as stage with a popular band called Los Inquietos playing there hits near the river while everyone got soaked. Later that night the stage and all the trash got swept away by the rain that came and wiped it all away.

It was fun and I got great pictures but boy oh boy was it hell for a while until I found my wallet on Monday. I´ll try and upload some now but I´m under the bullet now at an internet cafe.

Atacames

2008-01-31T13:52:00.000-08:00

So, I´ve fallen way behind on my blogging as you guys can tell. But maybe that´s a good thing, that means I´ve been dedicating my time to more important things like school right???...... we´ll let the end of the semester determine that....

So now, the weekend before last we traveled to Atacames, Ecuador mainly because one of the girls will be traveling with her community service agency for the majority of weekends to come and she wanted to get some beach love before hand...so we went.

There were several beaches we could´ve gone to in Ecuador, all of which would´ve been at least a 7hr bus ride from Quito because of Ecuador´s moutainous terrain it takes forever to travel to the costal cities. Atacames is located in Ecuador´s province of Esmeraldas. This province is notorious for putting out star athletes in Ecuador´s soccer leagues and national team. Incidentally, Esmeraldas has Ecuador´s largest Afro-Ecuadorian population at 80% of the province. It´s interesting that Blacks in Ecuador even though they are a more extreme minority,like African-Americans in the U.S., dominate the country´s premeir sport. Is this an attestment to Black physical superiority or another example of how societal factors have affected the sports landscape and in what ways?? Tell me what you think.

So we took a bus for $8 at 3:30 for our 7hr trip to Atacames. The first 3hrs of the trip were phenomenal seeing how a carretera(highway) was carved out of the Andes Mountains. It felt like an Indiana Jones movie, how high up we were in a charter bus. There was a 3month old infant to my left with her mom and her 14yr old sister to my left. AT first it was annoying but we forged a sort of comaraderie through the tumultous drive that at one point was sooo humid that we could barely see out the windows and to open them meant freezing. Oddly enough I got into a random conversation with the man and his daughter infront of me because I was speaking english with my friends about everything from jazz to Hurricane Katrina. It ended with him giving me his e-mail address and telling me if I needed anything to just let him know. Granted, I was a little weary at first just because I´ve heard horror stories of naive Americans...but he seemed genuinley nice.

We got there at 11:30 and all 5 piled into a small rinky little taxi cart that reminded me of the same ones in China. We got to the hotel and were surprised that it was going to cost $34 per person as opposed to $17, but at that point we weren´t going to argue nor try and find another hotel. We left to find food and found a pizza place on the beach surrounded by discotecas and bars. Soon after we returned after some of the girls got their baile on to our beds with mosquito nets because malaria was prevalant but not endemic in the region. Needless to say I was taking my malaria medicine every other day just like the bottle said so.

The next day we visited some artesanias that had stands set up near the beach and then went on to the overcast white sanded beach. The girls were expecting to get some sun, me not soo much, but that definitely wasn´t going to happen with the overcast skies. Chisara and Kristina met a guy trying to sell a boat ride for $30 on the beach,which to me looked sketchy but they were ancy to go so we all piled in. It turned out to be much better than I though and we got to see more of the coast. We got to se some more sealife.

That night we ate at a nice seafood restaurant where the girls wanted to get ceviche, which is a kind of stew that is notorious for making foreigners sick. I chose to get lomo(or beefsteak). THe girls ended up getting fish instead. After that we went to a couple of discotecas and called it a night. The next day, I woke up late while they all went to the beach to try and tomar el sol(or sun bathe). By 2 we were back on the long road back to Quito, which only took 6hrs on the way back!!!!

Hopefully I´ll be able to get in another post about this most recent weekend in the Oriente(AMAZON).

Todo de Otavalo

2008-01-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

Let´s give this another shot...

I´m going to be sprinkling in photos throughout, because there are soo many!

So two girls in the program, Chisara and Kristina, were supposed to be planning our trip to Otavalo this weekend. We weren´t all on the same page on when we were going, who we were going with and where we´d be staying until around 11:30PM Friday night. It´s a two hour ride to Otavalo from Otavalo, it turned out to be a 3hr BUS ride from Quito to Otavlo, which wasn´t amazing but they did show some cheasy American movie about a Chimp who is a spy dubbed over in Spanish on the way there as consolation.

We decided to meet at this address somewhere in Quito where there was a terminal for us to take a bus to Otavalo. Alison and I live next to each other so Alison walked to my place and then we looked for a taxi. All the while I am looking desperately for an ATM because it is a small country town and I didn´t know if there would be one, and one of the primary reasons for traveling there was to shop...and if I didn´t have cash...well you can put two together...needless to say they had a couple of ATM´s there BECAUSE it was a tourist hotspot.

Mother, Mike...please don´t kill me, I do confess that I pulled out $100 at their ATM, granted I only came with $4 and two was for the bus, and we had to pay for food, taxis and hostel while there so it wasn´t ALL on regalos(gifts) but most of it was. We got there about 8 blocks from the center of town and had to aimlessly walk down cobblestone road till we found it. Chisara works for CARE(CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. We place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.). It´s an international organization that her aunt is the president of and she will be working with here in Quito. They had a stand that Saturday at Otavalo and Chisara will be working with them in the predominantly Black province of Chota.

We got there, listened to CARE people speak about their various projects and then we were on the hunt for an ATM. I found one and made my first of 4 trips to the ATM throughout the day!!! There were kiosks EVERYWHERE along this one street with all kinds of vendors. You would just glance at a stand and someone would walk up in a pusher´s voice and say, ¨Hola, amigo tengo mucho de ________¨ They had everything from scarfs, to shirts, sweaters and a whole host of other handwoven items and paintings. I bought all of those things and more... but it was worth it, an alpaca sweater, the only thing I got for myself cost $10!!! I soon learned the meaning of descuento(discount) because if you looked like you didn´t want it and they´d say ¨quieres un descuento señor¨

Anywho after hours of shopping and walking we ate lunch only as a break for more hours and hours of shopping. Once we had reached our limit, we all 5 piled into a taxi to head for the hostel which one of the girls made reservations for. It cost $10 per person. It was called La Luna and was about 15min away from the city seemingly on a finca(farm) and was surrounded by fincas. At first traveling up the windy and crumbling cobblestone road up to this big house on a farm with a rusty gate, was worrisome and shady, but after meeting the owner and seeing the rooms, the hammocks and the mountain view...it was heaven. The perfect romantic spot for a novia(girlfriend).

There were three rooms and I got the one with the only functioning fireplace. There were two bedrooms with one having a ladder to access the bed up in a small loft above. The view of the mountains surrounding Otavalo were phenomenal as you can see. They also had several HUGE dogs that sorta protected the place I guess. After it got dark we waited for a taxi to take us into town to eat and see a cock fight(pelea de gallos)...illegal in the U.S. We ate at this hookah bar, in which we partook in hookah, jasmine flavored...like the incense...not so tasty. It had a very relaxing ambiance about it. We asked the taxi driver if it was peligroso and responded about 50 times with no, ¨Otavalo es muy tranquilo y bonito¨.

We left the restaurtant and found a cheap phone booth in which I called my dad to find out that UAB lost to MARSHALL!!!! We proceded to ask person after person in this shady looking area where the cock fight was. We finally found it and the cock fight cost $1 and we sat for about 20min before they started with the first bout. It wasn´t as exciting as I anticipated and a little brutal once one of the cocks gave up, but they took the loser out before he REALLY went out.

We came back to a living room full of smoke because one of the fireplaces didn´t lead the smoke out so it just stayed in the room and the fire was out by the time we came back. A guy came back and lit the one in my room and it worked better. It was fun to have a fire again, like back when I was an active scout. The girls didn´t know how to add/build a fire...which was sad, but fun for me. There were also these figurines of obviously African slave head masks on the wall above my bed which was quite creepy.(see picture of me mocking them).

Gosh this is long, but hopefully the pictures will soften the blow. The next day we paid and the hostel made us lunch(me a hamburguesa con queso). And the taxi arrived around 10am and we began the drive up the hill to hike around Lake Mojanda in the mountains above Otavalo. It was the same taxi driver from the night before and the girls thought he was hot...although he had a very long pinky finger nail which Chisara informed me is for snorting coke.......co-cah-eeeenah(cocaine pronounced in español).

It took about 30min up a windy deteriorating road, very creepy but gorgeous. I took a ton of pictures from the taxi itself that turned out phenomenal. Once we got there we walked around the lake a good bit, wrote our names in the sand that was black from volcanic ash surely since one of the large mountains was a volcán(volcano). It was an amazing day up there, with tons of great pictures. The cab esperó por un hora y media antes de salimos por veinte dólares. We then made the trek down the hill, to the hostel to pick up our gifts we bought and down to the bus for the ride home...we were exahusted as I am now after writing this very long post.

....hope you enjoy it and most everybody that knows me, whom is reading this has a gift on the bed!!!!! granted I return on May 17.....

chao(the correct spelling for ciao(italian version) in español

p.s. I have about 10 more pics to upload, too many good one to choose from and it´s taking forever at the computer at my host family´s house...I´ll put more up tomorrow

The trip, Day and Stay at Otavalo

2008-01-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

This might end up being two posts depending on how much I write because this past weekend I took a TON of pictures at Otavalo.

But first, I´m going to write a bit about my community service experience this past week. Once again, the name of the program I am studying abroad with is called International Partnership for Service Learning and Leadership. The unique thing about the program is that you are required to do 20hrs of community service which will enhance my understanding of the place I´m studying abroad in. They have many programs in many different countries including one in the U.S. with the Lakota Nation in South Dakota, which seems really interesting. Anywho, I was originally slated to work at a school called Colegio Ipatia Cardenas.

*A picture of me and a girl in my program, Alison Ethridge, and some heart shaped bread I bought while the bus was at a stop*

In the application they had 2-3 pages of questions asking preferences of where you would like to work(school, hospital etc) and who you would like to serve(Persons with physical or mental disabilites, elderly, children, adolescents). It seems as those preferences went right out the window. I was going to be at a school teaching English(because I´m trained to teach English as a secnod language right?...NO). Apparently the first school didn´t work out because there were too many volunteers. We went to another school but the service coordinator didn´t like the principal of the school because she wasn´t punctual. So I went to an organization called, Chicos de la Calle which was not my original site but the site of another student in the program.

*A pensive shot of Alison looking off and this neat little house on the road there*

Sometimes mistakes work out for the better. Chicos de la Calle(Children of the Street, literally) may not be too P.C. but they do a lot of good work and have been for 30 años. Basicamente, trabajo y ayudo con chicos quien no tienen una casa con su tarea. Or as they say here deberes, which is the same thing as tarea:homework. I was actually helping a child with his long division and was completely lost because it read: 986.453/4 - 222 = ??????? It took me a while but I soon remembered that our comma used to separate numbers is their decimal and vice versa. I remember thinking wow, at age 10 I was not dividing decimals, haha....stupid me.

Last story, I swear. Yesterday we went and this girl that couldn´t be older than 12 came in with her 10yr old brother and infant sister. All, including the infant, were dressed in very dirty and ragged clothing. The girl had a...half inch gash that she got on Friday that looked swollen around the yellow looking scab....aka. infected. Being the Boy Scout that I am I still had some first aid stuff left over in my backpack from the trip to Otavalo. I first cleaned the already scabbed over gash with some chloride wipe stuff, then put bactroban type stuff on it and covered it with a band-aid however the band-aid didn´t fit her hand well at all, so I gave her a couple more. It´s depressing that nobody was there to tell the girl to go get some hydrogen peroxide for the cut or anything else...and we aren´t at all equipped to be a first aid facility.

*A picture of another girl in the program, Eva Mantybande, knocked out during the 2hr, $2, bus ride to Otavalo*

So.....I lied, I´ll upload a couple of pictures of the road trip to Otavalo here and then make a new post, JUST talking about Otavalo...

This last picture down at the bottom is what my bed looks like everyday when I come back from work or school, the empleada, Brisa, washes my clothes and even fixes my bed!!!! ridiculous!

Despues de una semana...

2008-01-16T06:44:00.000-08:00

I officially made it through one week abroad and have only 122 more days to go....

I feel somewhat accomplished. I have yet to have a ¨breakdown¨, two out of the 6 of us that are in the program have succomb to the breakdown, although i did count down all the days I have left and put them on my calendar.

This past weekend, some friends from the program and I went to El Centro de Quito, or the more colonial and older part of the city. Fue muy bellismo. Cada iglesia està muy bellìsima con sanctuarios con muchas esculturas de madera. We walked for hours, and found a neat museum that only cost a dollar with great views of the city and told a lot about the history of Quito, Ecuador and it´s inhabitants even before the Incas.

At night the one Ecuadorian friend took us to some night clubs in an area that slightly resembled New Orlean´s famed Bourbon Street, more like a quarter of the debachery...which was a good thing.

The next day I woke up at 11am to my host brother, Juan Pablo, asking me if I wanted to help his abuelita(grandmother) help move. Of course I said yes, y ahora me duele mi espalda hasta sàbado cuando les ayudè!!! Apparently the grandmother had her own T.V. cooking show at one point when we unloading the literally over a 1,000 books from her house to the truck, I saw one and was like...¨wait a minute¨.

Some general observations: NOBODY says adios here, it feels about as old as saying automobile instead of car. EVERYBODY says ciao. I feel ignorant if I say adios. Also, chevere is all the rave here. It´s the U.S. equivalent of cool. Professors say ¨superchevere¨ and chevere after everything...it´s pretty chevere, haha.

Remember when I mentioned that my study abroad experience would be so unique because of my the required service-learning facet...that´s turning quite sour, quite rapidly. So in the application there were a good two pages asking you to detail what type of service you´d like to be doing and with who and rank them. I was originally slated to work at a school called Colegio Ipatia Cardenas. Then when the IPSL sevice coordinator picked me up on Monday, we went to another school because apparently the other one had too many volunteers. We ended up waiting about an hr for the director or principal to come and then she gave us 5 min to tell us to come back NEXT monday. Victoria, the coordinator, said, No me gusta and we were off to Chicos de la Calle, a site where another girl in the program is working.

Upon entering we find out that padre Rodrigo had passed in December. Already an ominous sign right? So we went in and got put into their computer system but they seemed very busy and not too receptive. I was told to come back today, Wednesday for my first day. Victoria me dijo que necesito llegar a las ocho. Lleguè mas temprano a las siete y media. They didn´t open till 9!!! I called victoria at 8:15 and she told me to wait, so i did, another 45min!! All that only to find out that they were too busy today and I should come back on Friday. I understand that ...¨stuff happens¨. So I´m really not too worried, but I hope this service thing works its way out soon.

Time to go struggle through some reading, in spanish of course, for my service learning class at 2:30!!!

Oh and this weekend we might go to Otavalo, a largely indìgenas town that has become a tourist hotspot for weaved apparrel...leave a comment and I might get you something!

Ayer, El Segundo Dia de Orientacion

2008-01-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was going to post my first two days together but ended up writing too damn much...sorry.....

So yesterday started off interesting because I got to take the bus to and from USFQ. All the other students had to be there at 9:30...Chi and I got a phone call at night indicating that we needed to be there at 8:30 because the rest of the students in my program had arrived. There are seven of us in total,however I´m the only G...guy, which can be a good thing ;). Again, the program is called International Partnerships in Service-Learning and Leadership. We all have one class that we will take together, Social Organizations and Development, and we all have a site that we will be doing community service with 20hrs a week. Mine is called Colegio Ipatia Cardenas...I hear it´s far from where I live but that´s about all I know. Today I´ll find out what exactly I´ll be doing.

At first I took the wrong red bus but eventually figured it out and got to USFQ with 10min to spare, but it turns out I got there before most of the other students anyway. Our profesor, Tania Ledergerber, introduced herself and talked a bit about IPSL and then she helped us with registration because there were still some kinks to be worked out. After that we all went to more orienation al coliseo, Collessium.

I walked into this profesor talking about the different accents and languages found in the country of Ecuador, roughly the size of Colorado. He then went on a spiel about accents of Cuenca, a southern Ecuadorian town and how they could be equated to the Southern accents found in ....guess where...yes Alabama. I should´ve walked up and slapped him, jk. It was true, but I like the Southern accent. He then went on a racist tirade about security in big cities and how Quito is like Chicago or New York in los Estados Unidos. But he had never been robbed in Qutio in 50 some odd years but he gave a telling story about his experience in New York. Within ten minutes there were three attempted robberies in a McDonalds. Guess who the culprits were...yes you know...it´s on the tip of your tongue....the criminally and violently predisposed BLACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Two blacks came and stole a japanese family´s bag then while he and the father of the japanese family chased the two down, the profesors family was robbed by knife in the same McDonalds.

MORAL OF THE STORY... be wary of those evil Blacks, look over you shoulder, hold your wife close, and if he reaches in his back pocket for his wallet to show you I.D. don´t hesitate to unload 41 bullets in him because it very well might be a GUN!!!! of course this is all satire but that´s what i´m sure the overwhelmingly white majority of international students pulled from this charla(speech). check out this neat link for more on the irrationality of black criminals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Anywho, after a long 4hr orientation session that included a long and very scary story about thievery and crime in Quito our group of 7 and two professors from the program left to go eat on IPSL. It was a semi-mexican restaurant with pizza and wraps...good food. We tried to purchase cell phones...but they were too expensive. I got to call home though for 15 cents a min. not too bad compared to cingular´s 2.50 a min.!!!

By that point we had formed a solid group of about 7 students. We all left USFQ on the green bus back to Quito. We all got on the red bus and traveled for a good 20min to central Quito, that is more colonial and wow, I swear every vista es bellismo(every view is gorgeous...really). The picture at the top is one from right outside the university. See the green bus???? The ones below are of our venture to colonial Quito where we discoverd una huelga(a protest). It was small but there were maybe 50-100 chapas(cops, slang for police) all around with guns. When I say guns, I mean GUNS, like ones that take your life not injure you but END you....haha. A little scary but so long as you have your wits about you and stay out of harms way...you´re good.

From there we took two taxis to la Mariscal which is a gringo area with bars, restaurants and clubs...aka Birmingham´s Southside area times 10. Me, Chisara and Bastian were in one taxi and arrived at the wrong restaurant called the Coffeetree. There were two and the taxi took us to the wrong one. So we asked about 10 different people where the OTHER coffeetree was and ended up walking about 25 blocks until we found it. Our other friends were half-way through they´re meal at that point. But it was all good, we ate, I had un hurucan(huricane, an awesome drink from New Orleans, very fruity).

Again one hell of a day and night...I just hope the rest aren´t as adventurous as this one.....

ciao por unos dias

ps quite possibly the best item I brought to quito was the 39 bolsilla(pocket) micro-suede jacket my wonderful mother purchased. In this jacket I conceal my notebooks, camera, pens,pencils and countless other trinkets....thanks

The First Day a USFQ

2008-01-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

The past two days have been a learning experience to say the least...

It all started at 7:45 when my host mom, Lorena, drove me to USFQ which is a good 20-30min ride from my apt. in Quito. Along the way she pointed out the buses that I should take and the various stops. Upon arriving to USFQ in the city of Cumbaya I´m sure I looked like a deer stuck in the headlights of an oncoming car. I had seen the layout of the University online and it didn´t look that large but it damn sure did that first day. I walked into the lobby where an orientation leader person directed me to orientation for new students, in very fast spanish. I knew that it was the wrong orientation and simply said ¨Donde¨and she knew that I needed to go to orientation for international students. That seems to be the paradox of being Aladdin(in other words, not looking like a gringo, or white foreigner)

In other parts of the world, Mexico, gringo is a somewhat pejorative word in reference to whites and Americans. However, here in Ecuador gringo is a common word for foreigners and Ecuadorians will often refer to gringos as gringitos making it more familiar. Another surprise is the word negro, black as we know, but in reference to Black people as well. My mexican friend, Fidel Castro(no affiliation with the Cuban liberator), indicated that negro is somewhat of a slur and that moreno was more ¨P.C.¨to use in reference to those of African descent.

After getting lost and going to the Office of International Programs I found my way to a plaza with tons of other students and tables set up with group numbers on them. I was hoping that I´d be in the same group as Chisara because our last names are so close, Ezie and Foster, alas she was in group 4 and I in group 5. I was expecting everybody to be speaking English since it was the first day, but all these super-motivated kids were speaking Spanish so there was some awkward silence during meet and greets until I got into the swing of things. It flowed better but I was still in caveman mode.

People I´ve met thus far: Bastian, from Alemania(Germany), Missy Green, from Ole Miss(Finally someone from the South), Ryan, from Michigan State, Jason, from N.C. State and several other international students.

It was typical orientation with several speakers talking about Quito, USFQ and how unique of an opportunity this is. Two words I learned at orientation were ¨gua gua¨ which in Quito means baby but in Puerto Rico means the bathroom. Also ¨chapi chapi¨which means half and half, more often in reference to mestizos or persons who are half Indigenous and half European...and I guess to some degree, my ethnicity.

After tours in such some friends and I ventured outside of the gates of USFQ to a pizzeria of all places. It was different, cheap, and good. I got a personal pizza, papas fritas(fries), a drink and service for $3!!! Since Chisara was in another group we didn´t eat together, because we couldn´t find each other, however upon leaving the restaurant we ran into each other. We walked around some more and caught the bus back to Quito together.

Bus info: So there is a very main road where the Eco Via or el bus rojo as I call it runs called el 6 de Diciembre. For my Birimingham folks...think of it as a very very long six lane University Boulevard with the two inside lanes reserved for the bus. I take that bus in Quito to get to the North Station where the buses stop and turn around. It´s about 8 or 9 stops from where I live. Then I catch a green bus across the street that goes to Tumbaco, but it´s first major stop is Cumbaya where USFQ is located. This road is much more rural and goes on a highway through the mountains and is very scenic as much of Quito is. Also they ALL cost one quarter to ride...pretty nice compared to the wonderful Metro of Birmingham.

After Chisara and I got off the green bus we both got on the red bus together however she only has 2 stops from the station until she gets off where as i have several more. In true, Theodorian fashion...I forgot the stop that I was supposed to get off at. But no need to fret I got off on accident at one stop after I was supposed to and had an adventurous hour long hike/walk up and down hills until I found the crossing of Coruña y Itturey Manuel...where the apt is located. We had hamburguesas and sopa de pollo(chicken soup) for dinner and I was exauhsted

That was my first day, hectic...but an experience to say the least

Ciao, Teodoro

Arrival and Day One

2008-01-06T16:03:00.000-08:00

Phew, the past 24 hours have been crazy.

I arrived at the Atlanta airport at 10:30 and the plane was supposed to leave at 10:55, fortunately the flight was delayed till 12 so I made it. I got to Miami airport around 3 and met up with my travel buddy Chisara. We left at 5:40 for our four hour flight to Quito...needless to say it was the longest four hours of my life. When they began to serve the microwaved chicken and beef we ran into a ton of turbulence and it got a little scary for about 20 min and nobody could eat. Eventually we made it to Quito though safe and sound.

I had never been through customs before and don´t ever wanna go back. The line was superlong and we waited for 30min in line!! After getting through customs Chisara and I searched for our luggage for 20min before realizing that it was behind the American Airlines stand! From there we exited to the lobby of the airport where the scene was just like the movies with tons of people everywhere holding up signs with names on them. Sure enough there were to signs with Chisara and Theodore on them.

I met and introduced myself to my host father Ernesto Ribadeneira. From there we proceeded through the expected awkward ride to his family´s apartment. However, it was a little less awkward than I had imagined, he was very nice and spoke VERY slow which was VERY helpful. The apartment is a very nice three story space in which his wife Lorena and three kids, Lorena, Juan Pablo and Andres live. They are all 16 or older so the gifts I got them, UAB keychains and hats, are perfect. The parents gave me a shake made of tomates de arbol, it tasted like a strong strawberry shake without all the sugar.

My room is small and so is the bathroom but I have them both to myself so I´m not complaining. There´s a picture above of my bed and all my clothes that I packed in special ziplock bags that vacuum the air to conserve space. I didn´t realize it until the morning but the view from my window is phenomenal. To the right you can see a mountain by the name of Pinchincha which is also the name of the province in which Quito is located. We had a late Sunday breakfast at 11:00 with eggs,ham and toast. And to drink we had more tomate de arbol. Then Andres showed me the upstairs terrace...again phenomenal views of the city. From there mis padres, Ernesto y Lorena, took me to their Sunday getaway about 15 min away that was further in the mountains. It was gorgeous and every Sunday Ernesto and the families of his 3 brothers and sisters and their kids go there to eat and have fun. There we ate a lot of food. It was similar to a cookout or BBQ, minus the BBQ and plus Ecuadorian food.

We began with chaves which looked like very large boiled lima beans that they salted and ate with and without the skin. Then they offered vino(red wine). I don´t drink wine but didn´t want to be rude and suffered through two glasses. I didn´t catch the name of the next course of food but they were hotdogs chopped into 3 pieces and served with rolls. We then had some pasty potato soup that was pretty good. In Ecuador, stews and soups are important parts of their meals. Next was arroz con maiz(rice and corn), steak(steak), ensalada(self explanatory) and baked potato. All the food was very good.

Well tomorrow my host mom Lorena will be taking me to USFQ(Universidad de San Fransisco de Quito) for orientation at 8:15 so I´m definitely gonna get some good sleep tonite.

BUENA NOCHE!

Everybody down here says Ciao and not Adios or Hasta Luego/Manana. Also when greeting a woman a kiss on the cheek is kosher...intersante

Pre-Departure Anxiety

2008-01-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome all to my blog!
My goal is to post at least once a week with an update on my study abroad experience in Quito, Ecuador for any and all to see. At this point I am exhausted from a day of packing and visiting friends. I should be getting my beauty rest soon, but I will definitely be sleeping on the plane.

Some Logistical Info you should know:

I'm flying out of Atlanta,GA tomorrow/today at 10:55am. I'll arrive in Miami,FL shortly after 12 and then at 5:40 I will be on my flight to Quito,Ecuador with my travel buddy Chisara Ezie.
I'm studying abroad with International Partnerships for Service-Learning and Leadership or IPSL for short.
I'll be taking 12 or 15 credit hours at La Universidad de San Francisco de Quito...and NO there is no affiliation with San Francisco,CA!
I'm a 20 yr old Junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) seeking a BA African-American Studies and a minor in Spanish and English.

There will be more to come later. I'm going to sleep for a good two hours and then hit the road to Atlanta with the parents to send me off. Wish me Luck!!!