"Why couldn´t I have been named Bob or Jose?" and Zancos

So after two weeks in my internship, my kids´largest problem seems to be not that they have an American volunteer, or that they have a 6´4" volunteer, or even that they have a volunteer with mediocre Spanish. No, by far the largest hurdle so far has been having a volunteer named ¨Nate¨. The first day I tried to make my name Spanish-friendly and introduced myself as "Naughtawn (which has been successful in the past), but I was apparently misunderstood and my names at Sol de Primavera range from Nata, to Nat, to Natalie (because there´s a girl named "Natalie" there who goes by Natal). The result of this madness is that the kids love yelling my name at all times, both because "nata" is a word for a milk drink here and because they know they can absolutely massacre my name and I´ll respond. Fortunately I work with a French volunteer named Maud, so I´m not alone in my name-insecurities.

This week I´ve really started to bond with some of the kids and figure out how to work with the more difficult ones. I gave my first stilt-walking (zancos) lessons and the kids seemed to decide that if they could entrust their lives with me, I was worthy of their good graces in all areas of the program. This week saw another momentous occasion when Julio (the biggest trouble-maker who always speaks in a whiny voice so I can never understand him and who I had never seen smile or laugh) finally smiled at me and gave me a big double-high-five after we went for a bike ride. I´m still not sure what I´m supposed to do there exactly and maybe 4 months of playing chess and breaking up fights is what´s needed but I feel like I should have a project with a tangible result for my time here. The kids see a stream of volunteers going through the foundation and while I´m sure that we all help in our own ways, I need to find a way to contribute something longer lasting. This week I also need to turn in my proposal for my independent study project. I´m planning on studying how different forms of education in the city (public, private, Catholic, indigenous) affect identification as "indigenous" and what the indigenous community wants from their education system (be it complete integration or cultural autonomy). I have a sneaking suspicion this topic is a little ambitious for my time here but I´ll try my best. The project culminates with a paper and oral presentation, I´m going to try and write the 20-page paper in Spanish but we´ll see how that goes...

This week I also met my host-dad for the first time as he has been away on business in Bolivia for a month. He´s a really, really interesting man and it´s been fun getting to know him the past few days. He´s really into indigenous culture, speaks Quichua fluently, and works with a global organization that works to preserve the indigenous lifestyle and agriculture. Despite being a little intimidated sometimes, I´ve bonded with him over teasing Charo and I feel comfortable around him already.

This week my program went on a little field trip to a community in southern Quito that is working on creating a society based on indigenous communal societies (and communism a little bit too). They have their own schools which have gardens which feed the parents who constructed the schools and other self-sustaining elements. It was pretty interesting and ended up being a beautiful, rainy day walking through reclaimed parks and school grounds.

This week was also the last week before the assembly elections held tomorrow. The outcome of the election will very seriously determine the future direction of the country as this assembly will be charged with writing a new national constitution. The city has been absolutely covered with political slogans, campaign fiestas, and propaganda for the whole month. There have been tons of political demonstrations and when I got home on Wednesday (the last day of campaigning), I could turn 360 degrees in the plaza and see a continuous sea of political supporters and candidates. The sheer numbers of the election are mind-boggling: there are 26 national parties, each with 24 candidates for the national assembly and each voter votes for 24 candidates. The ballot also includes the provincial assemblies(of which there are 14 seats in Pichincha) and a few other positions. It´s anticipated that it will take each person at least 8 minutes to vote. Also voting is obligatory in Ecuador, meaning that if you don´t vote you pay a fine and (according to some of my sources) could have trouble getting loans/leaving the country. Because of the obligatory vote (I guess), it was illegal to sell or consume alcohol in all of Ecuador from Friday to Sunday, apparently with the idea that sober voters are better voters. Entire parts of the city are closed as a result (namely La Mariscal, the tourist center and home to most good bars and dance clubs) and I´ve heard several disgruntled tourists complaining about the lack of nightlife this weekend. All in all, it´s been an absolutely insane week politically-speaking. I´m planning on posting tomorrow with all of the exciting events of the day and with some pictures. ¡Hasta mañana!

Coming tomorrow: THE ELECTIONS, meeting President Correa, and my brother-in-law

My routine in the middle of the world

This week I started to settle into my routine of life in Quito. I have class Monday and Wednesday afternoons and have my internship every morning and all day on Tuesday. I eat lunch at home with Charo or our cook, Myriam, who chastises me if I eat too much/too little and talks for the entire meal (maids and cooks are much more common in Ecuador than in the US, most middle class families have someone who comes a couple times a week). After class I usually take a nap or do something athletic and do homework and hang out with my family/friends at night.

This week marked the beginning of my internship here and it has been a week of drastic highs and lows. Because after leaving Friday afternoon the lows are the most readily available memories, I´ll start there. The lows have included taking broken glass away from babies (long story), breaking up the fights between Edison, Julio, and Ricky, and generally not knowing what I´m supposed to be doing or what I have to contribute to the organization. The highs include taking the older kids for a bike ride, the hugs I get from Narcissa and Gustavo every morning, and the hiking invitation I got from my co-workers for next weekend. I work with 2 Swiss and 1 French volunteer along with the amazing Ecuadorian employees. My organization works with kids in the poorest barrios to get them off the street and into a safe space. We provide tutoring for their homework and also work on art projects and just play games with the kids. I spent most of this week playing chess with Ernesto and memory with Narcissa while occasionally helping kids with their homework. For the older kids the foundation offers classes in baking, sewing, woodworking, and jewelry design with the idea that when they are old enough to leave, they go with employable skills. I also am going to be teaching the kids how to juggle and walk on stilts because they can make more money on the street with a talent than they can through simple begging. Although I´ve never walked on stilts, my director assured me that since I practically already do I shouldn´t have a problem...we´ll see about that. The internship is going to be a very trying and educational experience, so far I´m still really excited on my walk to work every morning.

This week my family has been pretty busy: my brother has been finishing up a commerical for Mazda, my host dad has been driving 3 days to return from Bolivia, and my mom just got back from 2 days in Tulcán, on the border between Ecuador and Columbia. She brought back these traditional corn cookies which are so delicious, I ate about 7 the night she got back. To those of you who are laughing and saying, "He didn´t eat 7"...stop laughing. I continue to love the family situation: Charo and I talk politics and human rights at every meal and JuanCar has a great movie selection (being a film-maker probably helps) that we´ve been working through. My host dad, Juan Carlos, was supposed to return on Wednesday but took a detour through Cuzco, Peru and will get back tonight around 1. Everyday my host mom tells me, ¨He´ll be here tomorrow¨but my friends and I have started to suspect he´s been photoshopped into the family pictures...I´m excited to meet him.

This week in between classes and my internship I went rock climbing (which I´m trying to do a couple times a week) and have been checking out the various markets and neighborhoods around the city. For the moment I´ve abandoned my running goal, rationalizing that since everywhere I go I´m walking up hill...I don´t actually need to. This week I´ve also taken the time with friends on the program (Anna, Emma, Eli, and Kristin for Erik) to find our favorite bar and hamburger place. This weekend we went to Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world) an hour north of Quito. It´s really just the equator but it has turned into a full-scale, circus-style, Disney World-esque tourist attraction. The highlight is a huge tower with a globe on top and the line of the equator running through the whole complex. We took our requisite ¨straddling the hemispheres¨pictures and took the bus back home. Last night I went to a ridiculous modern dance performance with Anna and later checked out a cool tapas bar. Today we took a bicycle tour of colonial Quito which was originally scheduled for the first week but had to be postponed until today. It was fun but by now all of us had visited the churches and plazas so we didn´t really feel like being tourists. I also walk past most of the sites on my way to my internship every morning so it was a little redundant, but it was fun to do it on bikes.

I added some pictures on the picture site, there aren´t very many so I need to get in the habit of taking more. I´ll work on it. Thanks for the comments and I hope everyone is doing well!

Coming soon: host dad (if he really exists), hiking with co-workers or Peguche, and Quito Sur (southern Quito)

Fútbol with llamas

Well it´s been a week since I last posted and I have to use my schedule of activities as a reference for what I´ve been up to...yesterday seems a lifetime ago and when I think I´ve only been here two weeks I get a little dizzy. In an attempt to supply information promised several posts ago, I´m going to try to summarize a week in a couple short paragraphs...here we go...

This week began with our first actual seminar, led by the amazingly-intelligent and rapidly-speaking María. I´m really excited for everything about this class, we´re going to be looking at social change in Ecuador and studying the different social movements occuring today. Tuesday night we had conversation tables with a couple English classes in the Catholic University. It was a really fun experience and I think I´m going out with some of the students later this week. Wednesday we visited El Panecillo (a hill on the southern end of the city and home to an enormous statue of the Virgen de Quito) and the City Museum. On Thursday we took the Teleflórico (a big cablecar) up Volcán Pinchincha and hiked around the volcano and enjoyed the amazing views of the city. We could even see Cotopaxi 50 kilometers to the south. I also checked out a rock climbing facility with some friends and I´m excited to improve during my stay here.

This past Saturday we had a picnic in Parque Metropolitano with all of the host families and students. It was a really fun time and it was amazing how easily you could pair students with their families. We played games of charades and soccer (battling off the llamas in the park) and got to know each other´s families.

OK, now, today I had my interview for my intership today (definitely the most important component of my program). Originally I was going to be teaching in a school for indigenous families who recently moved to the city but there was some kind of problem there and they couldn´t take an intern. Martha, my program director, then told me about another larger and more formal indigenous school. That was the plan for a couple days before we found out that the school wouldn´t really have anything for me to do. So then we arrived at my third and final internship: Sol de Primavera (Sun of Spring). This organization works with children who work in the streets and live in one of the poorer barrios of the city. The organization gives them a safe space and provides meals, school, and healthcare to the students free of charge. I have yet to determine how the program is funded but I´m excited to work there. I´ll be teaching and organizing activities in the mornings and then will be part of a community outreach team in the afternoon. They said I´m also free to design and implement my own projects in the program so I´m excited to learn more about it. It´s about a 30 minute walk from my house and I start tomorrow...I´ll let you know.

In just two weeks I feel incredibly comfortable with my family and life in Quito in general. I´ve learned that although the city has several streets named for important dates, if you try to organize them chronologically you´ll be a mess. I´ve learned that you fit in better if you look kind of angry while waiting for the bus but smile at people when you get on. I´ve learned that (as my host mom warned me) if I start a conversation with our maid/cook Myriam (whom I adore) she will never ever stop talking. Most importantly I´ve learned that I can feign understanding frighteningly well but also that I´m not as well informed as I thought I was.

Also in the course of writing this I´ve discovered that pictures take a long time, bordering on forever, to load on blogspot so I made a different album instead, sorry for the barrage of links...

http://picasaweb.google.com/aventurasdenate

Coming soon: first week of internship, the middle of the world, and my host father

Old men, children, and fiestas

This morning I went for my first run at 9500 feet (in a park above the city, if that´s even possible) and I am actually writing to you now from the after-life. Although I´m a reasonably fit 20-year-old I was passed by children and a man old enough that he didn´t have his dentures in on a Sunday morning. But my host mom goes to this park everyone Sunday morning for yoga so I think if I set myself the incredibly ambitious goal of running twice a week, maybe in a month I can beat that old man. Now...back to the beginning.

The past two days have been amazing and action-packed. I´ll start with Friday night, when I went out to a salsa bar with some friends from the program and our program assistant. It was a little disheartening that I was dancing next to a salsa instructor and a national champion (just looking at them broke every bone in my body), but we had a lot of fun nevertheless. I took social dance at Carleton, so I could almost keep up...Then yesterday morning my host mom and I went out to breakfast with her son-in-law Simeòn who is originally from Austin, Texas. Simeòn is a linguistic anthropologist on his way to Brazil, where he will be working with a project that is working on the first documentation of some indigenous language. We were also joined by another American family friend, Connie. She is also a linguistic anthropologist working with a tribe on the coast.

After breakfast Charo and I walked around Quito colonial...definitely the coolest part of the city so far. Charo very proudly told me that Quito has the largest colonial district in the world. There are tons of churchs and plazas along with several shops in the centuries-old buildings. We then went grocery shopping in a co-op type place that only buys directly from Ecuadorian farmers and ranchers.

That afternoon Charo took me to Casa de Matilde, a battered women´s shelter she founded and the first women´s shelter in all of Ecuador (by this point there is one other in Cuenca). The shelter was in the far south of Quito, traditionally in the poorer and more dangerous parts. In the past few years there have been attempts to unify Quito moderno and Quito colonial but the city is still largely segegrated geographically. Charo had a meeting there from 3-6 so I just played with all of the little kids and their puppies. It is definitely an interesting experience, you hear things from kids that adults are too polite to say. For example, in Ecuador race is accepted as a pretty clear indicator of class so when one of the little girls asked me, "Why are you so white?" another, older girl quickly answered, "Because he´s American stupid." As if I don´t have enough American guilt to begin with...

When we got back from Casa de Matilde I met some friends to go to a fiesta in Guapalo. Guapalo is like a suburb of Quito in the next valley over. The walk down was amazing, the valley was completely filled with fog so we could hear the party as we walked down and then the scene just unfolded in front of us. The fiesta was in honor of the Virgen of Guapalo (also the Virgen de Guadalupe) and was held in the central plaza of the town. There were at least 2,000 people packed in there and I don´t think I´ve ever laughed so hard for so long in my life. There were dancers in costumes as various as clowns, gorillas, babies, and a ninja. There were also people dressed as bulls with real horns who would run around and gore people. Most spectacularly though were the firework carts...in the middle of the crowd they were shooting off fireworks of the caliber that, in the United States, would require a viewer distance of about a kilometer. There were also little carts of sparkling fireworks that shot hot sparks into the crowd. We danced with Ecuadorian friends we met there, Juan Pablo and María, and a group of German volunteers for about 5 hours...all in all an amazing experience. Two days later my ears are still ringing a little bit.

After the fiesta some people went home but I went out for a couple drinks with two other people on my program. It was nice to just sit down in a bar after the crazy fiesta and just get to know each other a little bit. Believe it or not this actually leaves out a lot and although I was intending to post pictures, I over-estimated my Spanish and accidentally deleted the pictures off my camera when I meant to eject it from the computer (Steve, you were right). But they were only place pictures and I´m going to retake them all right now anyway.

Coming Soon: a change in internship, pictures (cross your fingers), and family things

Day 2!

When I decided to start a blog I was expecting to post new entries once a week or so, but there is so much going on in these first few weeks that I have to get these things down a little more quickly. I also have internet access in my family´s apartment which I hadn´t expected so that makes everything a little easier. This morning I woke up to the usual charming sounds of the city: the car alarm that seems to blast right outside my window 24/7, the kids walking to the school next to our building, a little dog barking somewhere, and the general hum of 2 million people living in the valley. This morning I had to register my visa and on the bus ride there I was feeling pretty confident in my abilities to navigate the city. I had afterall taken my bus route twice the day before (once alone) and I was trying my hardest to not look like it was my second day. This attempt was shattered when a little kid on the bus who had been staring at me for the entire ride looked up at his dad and said "Papi, ¡un gigante! (Dad, a giant!)" It was then I realized any attempt at "blending in" would probably require expensive surgery.

The visa registration was a completely nondescript experience except for the fact that I saw that bureaucracy is that same wherever you go. After that I did some cell phone research with another student and headed home for a quick nap before lunch. Lunch is the meal of the day in Ecuador and my experience so far is that´s its place among the meals of the day is much more significant than any in the US. Today my host mother had vegetable soup, arroz con pollo, ensaladita, pan dulce, delicious fried bananas, and this kind of cereal drink we have with every meal. Whenever she places something on the table Charo (my host mother) says, "this is good for your stomach." She has also quickly assumed her role of surragate mother in that she doesn´t offer me food but rather uses the mandato verb form and commands me to eat more. Also, when I told her this morning that I´d forgotten how to get hot water in the shower, she reminded me how but first told me that a cold shower is good for my health.

In the afternoon we went to the Museo del Banco Central where we got kind of a crash course in precolonial and colonial history. The museum was really interesting not only in the artifacts and interesting cultures presented but also in the comparison between the precolonial exhibit and the colonial exhibit. We always hear about the human sacrifices and shrunken heads of South American tribes (and they were certainly well represented in the museum) but the colonial exhibit was much more gruesome and violent. It was interesting that the exhibit with Christian imagery was making people queasy and uncomfortable with the blood and guts, not the shrunken heads like you might expect.

Tonight was the first dinner the family has eaten together since I arrived and we had a really good time. It was the first time I met Charo´s younger daughter, Lucilla, and watching Lucilla and Juan Car interact was hilarious. My Spanish is good enough that I can get in on the jokes sometimes but if I don´t understand they make me laugh anyway. After our delicious dinner we went and visited some of the neighbors, Nuri and her son Eric. Nuri is a city architect but is also helping organize a city-wide week without cars called Las Calles para La Gente. It sounds really interesting and we all bought t-shirts to support the cause. I´m excited to see what it will be like next week. I could definitely appreciate a couple fewer cars in the city, I´ve come so close to being hit by the cars and buses so many times that I´ve lost already count. The cars give you a courtesy honk but they show no sign of slowing regardless of the impending crash; it´s definitely been an adventure.

The definite highlight of the evening though was meeting Nuri`s 4-year-old son Eric. He was already up past his bedtime but he was so wound up and demanded that I read him one of his books in English before he went to bed. He introduced me to his stuffed dog and cat and showed me all of his toys declaring, "That´s mine! And this is mine! And this room is mine!" I promised to visit often and offered to babysit for Nuri.

After writing all of this I realized I didn´t include what I´d promised last time, I guess that will have to wait...

Still coming soon: my internship, Quito, the people on my program, and salsa dancing

Quito...finally

Well, after about 36 hours of travel and 24 hours later than I expected I have arrived in Quito. On Monday my flight to Houston was redirected to San Antonio because of bad weather. There I was treated to 3 hours of screaming babies and a lecture from my seat-mate on why South American natives need to be converted to Christianity. By the time we were finally able to leave San Antonio for Houston I had missed my flight to Quito. On the bright side however, I seem to be one of the few people who got a free hotel room and meal vouture (at least according to the people grumbling on the shuttle to the hotel). Because only one flight leaves from Houston to Quito a day, I ended up spending 24 hours in Houston. Although a day in Houston was annoying, it served as a very gentle transition into a Spanish-speaking country after I navigated my way through the airport and to my Hilton Garden Inn in Spanish. My host mother picked me up at the airport and was extremely friendly and very accomodating. She lives with her husband (who is in Bolivia for a month on business) in an apartment in the middle of Old Quito (Quito is split into Quito colonial and Quito moderno). They have three kids: their son lives in the next apartment over, their second oldest daughter lives across the street, and the oldest daughter lives in Austin with her husband but is coming to visit tomorrow. This morning I hopped on my bus for the very easy 10-minute ride to my school. The other students in my program are really cool (but it took us until the afternoon to really start talking to each other) and we spent the morning in a beautiful modern art museum. Gauging from the amount of participation in the afternoon session, I think my Spanish is about average for the program and I could understand most of the things our profesora said. This evening my group went to dinner in a nice restaurant in Quito moderno. My host brother picked me up with his girlfriend for the busride home and I´m excited to get to know him better. He originally went to college for chemistry but changed to film-making and is currently working on getting his first movie sold. We get along really well and after about an hour he was completely comfortable correcting all of my Spanish mistakes. Now I´m heading to bed since I have to register my visa tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning. I hope this finds everyone well! ¡Ciao!

Coming Soon: my internship, the other students in the program, and more details about Quito

Welcome to my Blog!

Hey friends and family! I don't leave for Ecuador until Monday but I wanted to get my first post out as something to welcome you to my blog! I've decided to log my experiences abroad here rather than send out a mass email. I'll post here on anything interesting I experience and I'll be able to post pictures here as well. I should have fairly regular internet access while I'm there so I don't really have any excuses not to post. Feel free to check in whenever you're interested in seeing what I'm up to. I would definitely still love personal emails or comments on my posts. I hope everyone has a great fall and I can't wait to tell you about everything when I get back!