A Tour of the Senses

And now, a preview of the senses experienced in a day in Ecuador which I´ve been compiling the past couple days:

Smell (my favorite): The first smell that comes to mind is the continual presence of bus exhaust. I usually get several facefulls on my walk to work and some days the smog above the city hovers menacingly, obscuring views of the neighboring volcanoes. At the same time however, when the smog clears, you can pick up baking bread, garbage, strong business-man type cologne, and the intense spring smell that comes up every afternoon. Now that it´s cold I also smell wood-burning stoves that remind me of my old piano teacher´s house. Walking down the street every restaurant has some distinctly tasty smelling food that has more than once lured me inside. The soap in my family´s house is also a pretty important smell, I know that one of my grandmas had the exact same-smelling soap at some point. I think my favorite though is the vender who sells roasted almonds (known as caca de perro, or dog poop here) on my walk to work.

Sight: Obviously this is probably the most diverse but even the different kinds of light in a day surprise me. In the morning I´m awoken by the piercingly bright sunlight at 6:30 peaking over the building across the street. The sun usually stays pretty bright, spring-style, until about noon when things start to cloud over. For the rest of the afternoon it´s pretty dark, around 5 even darker than it is at night. Night is never too dark because the city glows with light pollution reflecting off the low clouds. My favorite part of the day (light-speaking anyway) is around 4:30 when I´m walking home and some days the clouds are just lifting and El Panecillo and southern Quito are flooded in golden light. In these moments I can also see Cotopaxi rising above the clouds in the distance and the whole thing makes me think that the fighting kids I just left maybe aren´t so bad.

In addition to the light (because there isn´t really anywhere else to put this image in my blog), one of the most memorable sights for me is the elderly blind couple I see walking on my way to my internship every morning. They never beg or try to sell anything, but the old man has a cane and guides the woman through the morning bustle. They´re always talking to each other quietly in Spanish and maybe before I leave I´ll try to stop and talk with them.

Taste: So far I´ve absolutely loved the food here. I´ve even eaten mushrooms, my least favorite, and enjoy delicious vegetables at every meal. Rice is a staple that I eat with almost every meal, but I also really like the Andean grains maní, chote, and quinua. In addition to the new fruits and dozens of banana varieties, I´ve also added a alot of soy sauce to my diet as my family uses it as the main seasoning for rice and meat. My family doesn´t eat very much meat but I´ve definitely learned to appreciate good tofu here. There are also ice cream stores on every block so I´ve been sampling guanamana, pistachio, and coconut ice creams. One taste I´ve slowly become accustomed to (accustomed to, not "a fan of") is the Nestle instant coffee. Although Ecuador has a pretty big coffee industry, most is exported...leaving me to my sour powder.

Sound: The sound that comes immediately to mind is the yell of "Nata!" from my kids which is used throughout the day regardless of whether "Nata" is actually needed or not. The yell can especially be heard when I don´t understand something (in which case "Nata" is used exasperatedly) or during stilt-walking lessons (when it is used in desperation and alarm). Other sounds include the barking of the street dogs, the neverending car horns (seriously, I think drivers just get bored or use their horns as some kind of weird mood ring), and the yells of the street venders, which used to get louder as I walked by but most venders have learned that I´m not going to stop. I´m also often woken up in the morning by my host dad playing a) his guitar or b) my favorite playlists on my ipod, which he´s started to really like. My favorite sound though, as always, has to be the rain that sometimes wakes me up...nothing beats that.

Feeling: Usually I have a feeling of dull ache in my head from bumping against the ceiling of the bus and the doorways of Sol. Also there is the pervasive feeling of moistness (that´s right, I used it, my most loathed of words) and chill now that we´ve entered the winter/wet season. Usually my shoes don´t have time to dry out between outings so I try to rotate between my two pairs. Finally, one of my favorite feelings is the warm, wooly feel of my blankets when I finally get to bed after a long day.

I´ve tried to remember these things as I´ve come across them lately but I know there are a couple important sensory tales that I´ve forgotten. Maybe there will be a Tour II in the future!