Resumen de Mindo

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!!!

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!!!!!

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...

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

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

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

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!