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