Alright, so after our return from Cotocachi, we entered into the week of the fiestas de Quito. For the majority of the city, the week means bullfights, concerts, and drunken debauchery in the streets and the prospect of a week-long party went more or less the same for me in the months leading up to it. The only problem was that Dec. 6, the official date of the fiesta, celebrates the day the Spanish arrived in Quito. What isn´t usually discussed is that following their arrival, they proceeded to rape, plunder, and murder the already established Incan empire in the area. For that reason I´d been hearing from my family and from meetings with our kids in my internship that really, the fiestas de Quito weren´t something to be celebrated in the usual way. In that spirit, I spent most of my fiestas de Quito finishing my independent study project (which is entirely finished and turned in at this point, more later) and attending rock concerts at Quitu Raymi and Quitofest, both huge rock festivals fighting against the Spanish-centric history of the holiday. In one tiny aside, we also decided to get our shoes shined for the first time by the kids who have been asked us for 4 months. Rebecca´s shoes turned out really well, so when the girl told me that, yes, in fact she did know how to polish the suede on my shoes, I accepted the offer. After the very first stroke of her brush and the sight of my already stained shoes, she quickly beckoned over 4 of her shoe-shining comrades. Within seconds I had an army of shoe-shiners, all equally willing to water-stain and incorrectly color my shoes. They look awful right now, but don´t worry, I had to pay the most for them because it took so much powder and oil to ruin them.
The week passed more or less normally, with more activity, noise, and visitors in the city before we left for Baños on Friday. Baños is one of the places in Ecuador that people always ask, "Have you visited it yet?", so we´ve all felt pretty obligated to visit. Baños sits more or less on the transition between the Andes and the Amazon, with some famous thermal baths thrown in. Baños is also right next to the volcano Tungarahua which has destroyed the city several times in the past. Tungarahua is actually erupting right now, as we could see from the bus as we approached the town, but it was too cloudy while we were actually in Baños to see eruption or the lava during the night. We (Anna, Kristen, Danielle (a friend from Carleton volunteering in Ecuador for a month), and myself (Marge and her, our, friend Rebecca got there later that night)) got to Baños on Friday afternoon, checked into our hostel, and explored the city a bit. By some strange coincidence Friday night was fiestas de Baños (my 4th city fiesta) and we enjoyed some street dancing and canelazo drinking. The next morning Kristen, Danielle, and I left for a bike ride through the mountains with a very tentative goal of reaching Puyo, a town officially in the rainforest, out of the mountains, and 60 km away. The entire bike ride was fantastically beautiful and at one point I just had to decide that I´d taken enough pictures of picturesque waterfalls. When we´d reached the end of our bike renter-provided map much earlier than we were supposed to have arrived, we just decided to keep going until Puyo. Afterall, how sweet is it to be able to say you biked out of the Andes mountains into the Amazon rainforest. The trek was longer and much, much more uphill than we´d been told, but we arrived in Puyo around sunset, just in time to see the Andes looming above us far in the distance. Needless to say, we caught a bus back to Baños...60 km was definitely enough for me.
The next morning, while Anna, Margaret, and Rebecca got massages, Danielle, Kristen, and I decided to go bridge jumping. It was more or less like bungee jumping, only the cord didn´t bounce us back, we just fell for 150 feet (from the 300 ft bridge) until the rope caught us and we swung under the bridge. It was a really fantastic experience and I can´t wait to try real bungee jumping. I may or may not have punched myself in the face during the fall and blacked out, but unfortunately, the difference between blacking out and falling 150 feet is very minute, and I can´t really decide what happened. Nevertheless, we all enjoyed our falls and I got a full body massage as a reward afterward.
This week I not only finished my 24-page independent study project paper in Spanish along with an 8 page final in Spanish, but was actually content with both of them upon their completion. The completion of those looming projects was kind of a shock, leading to a "well, what do I do now?" crisis. Tonight we also cooked dinner for all of our families and had a great time. We made chili, enchiladas, salad, guacamole, various appetizers, and wine (the most crucial part of the dinner as it turns out) and everything was met with great success. We cooked/shopped all afternoon and despite some unnecessary stress for the last week, I had a great time drinking and cooking with everyone. After the dinner we received the shirts we designed to represent our term (you´ll see me wearing it plenty) and watched a quick CD of pictures from the program. Although the beginning of the end has been an ongoing process for a while now, tonight I actually had to say goodbye to important people from the program and my friends´families...I don´t think I like this "goodbye probably for forever" thing.
On a concluding note, and to be continued later, tomorrow is the last day of my internship. I´m more than a little worried about leaving my kids, even though this entire week has been something of an emotional rollercoaster as they alternate between hair-wrenchingly bad behavior and tear-inducing moments of incredible interactions. The low point definitely came today when, as I was saying goodbye to Julio for the day (I really need to describe Julio and his situation one-on-one, just because I can´t quite write it out yet) and he apparently had missed the memo that "Nata" was leaving tomorrow. Julio and I have become very much like brothers and when he asked if we were doing zancos next Monday and I had to explain that I wouldn´t be there next Monday, his surprise that I would be in the US on Monday absolutely broke my heart. If the walk home today was as difficult as it was, maybe tomorrow I´ll just take the bus.
I also put a ton of pictures on the site, so check that out. Juan Car was in charge of my camera tonight at the dinner so I´ll be posting all of those great pictures after I get back from Tena next Tuesday. See everyone soon!
Coming soon: Last day of the internship, Tena, and closing remarks
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