Alas.
I´m typing this in a Locoturio (internet cafe, not source of craziness) in San Telmo, a few hours away from my flight to Miami. Which will be five hours longer than usual this year, but it´s been worth it.
Goodbye, Buenos Aires. Goodbye, Ayres Porteños, the enormous, loud, garishly coloful but somehow endearing hostel that has been home base for the past two weeks. Final Submarino has been quaffed, last museum visited. So far, I´ve avoided in stepping in the ubiquitous piles of dog crap that are almost as emblematic of this city as tin roofs and tango, but it´s a walk back to the hostel, so there´s still time.
BA is an amazing place, and I have barely touched my toes on the surface of the universe that is Argentina. Reciprocity visa lasts for ten years after purchase: I´m hoping to be back.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Tour Less Taken
So, we´re in Mendoza right now, which is Argentina´s wine country, home of the world-renowned Malbec and other allegedly mind-boggling elixirs. Just got back from a group tour of two wineries and an olive farm, which was good fun and would have been deeply, deeply educational had I A) attained that ever- elusive Spanish fluency before embarking or B) come to this wine tour with, like, ANY prior knowledge of wine.
Again, folks, I am not a fluent Spanish speaker. Baby steps, though; I now understand almost every single word said in my presence, as long as everyone near me shuts up for at least five seconds after every sentence said aloud. Whisper to your neighbor, turn on the radio, or speak your second sentence while I´m still gnawing on the first one, however, and I´m toast. I also find that recognizing every single word in isolation is NOT the same thing as understanding what´s been said: I sometimes feel like a kindergartener who, having finally mastered the alphabet song, is thrown a book of Dostoyevski because the letters are the same. Today´s best example would be my initial understanding that the kindly lady winemaker had made changes to the tour after dozens of tourists were torn to pieces in the past; Andrea informed me that, actually, we just weren´t supposed to toast with our glasses because the bodega was sick of replacing the broken ones.
So, that´s column A working against me. In column B, we have my absolute ignorance of All Things Wine. It comes from grapes, it sits around for awhile before you can drink it, and it plays some kind of pivotal role in a crap Keanu Reeves movie. Also, people talk about it smelling like things that can´t possibly be in it; the more wine snobbier you get, the more and weirder things you recognize. This, my friends, was the sum total of knowledge I brought with me on Wine Tour.
Nevertheless, it was fun. I followed all instructions for swirling and sniffing as best as I could, and, although it´s the freaking dead of winter here and we didn´t get to actually see a single grape, I did appreciate a closer connection to the people who make the stuff I don´t understand. I perked up significantly for the olive oil tour, as well, as I had a toehold on what made it complex and delicious.
Bringing me to my modest proposal for another kind of Tasting, also featuring a treasured part of Argentina´s cultural heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me on the Tour de Submarino.
We will not, on this journey, be going underseas. The Argentinian Submarino is simply a bar of chocolate, sunk into a glass of hot milk. Bringing us not one, but TWO products to sample and obsess about!
First, the milk part. If people spend hours waxing poetic about the many varieties of grapes and the complicated fermenting process, I think Tour de Submarino can become equally obsessed about sub-species of cow. According to Wikipedia (granted that I Googled ¨beef¨. but the ladies must be doing something while we barbecue the menfolk...), there are six main breeds in the country to choose from; I´m thinking that each would yield a milk which can be described with different ridiculous adjectives. Ideally, participants could try their hands at milking at least one sample cow before proceeding to the Whisking Room to discover how best to froth it. Whole milk or low fat? Perhaps a touch of cream? And in which direction does a TRUE afectionado stir it? So many areas for discussion and study.
And next, of course, the question of chocolate. I imagine two seperate tastings here. For the first, one samples tiny perfect shavings off of six different chocolate bars, possibly using fancy silver tweezers to lift and inspect without melting them in your hands. Since I´ve been reminded today that wine often tastes of chocolate (alas, one slight misunderstanding of that led me to EXPECT a bit of chocolate at the end of the tour), it´s obligatory at this point to compare the chocolate to wine. The better shavings, I think, would have a slight hint of Malbec.
For the final tasting, one receives an eyedropper and a miniature shotglass. Following the careful and elegant instructions of an impeccably dressed Submarinero, participants combine various varieties of milk with various tiny squares of chocolate, testing for such crucial qualities as Floatiness and Sweet.
Who´s with me?
Again, folks, I am not a fluent Spanish speaker. Baby steps, though; I now understand almost every single word said in my presence, as long as everyone near me shuts up for at least five seconds after every sentence said aloud. Whisper to your neighbor, turn on the radio, or speak your second sentence while I´m still gnawing on the first one, however, and I´m toast. I also find that recognizing every single word in isolation is NOT the same thing as understanding what´s been said: I sometimes feel like a kindergartener who, having finally mastered the alphabet song, is thrown a book of Dostoyevski because the letters are the same. Today´s best example would be my initial understanding that the kindly lady winemaker had made changes to the tour after dozens of tourists were torn to pieces in the past; Andrea informed me that, actually, we just weren´t supposed to toast with our glasses because the bodega was sick of replacing the broken ones.
So, that´s column A working against me. In column B, we have my absolute ignorance of All Things Wine. It comes from grapes, it sits around for awhile before you can drink it, and it plays some kind of pivotal role in a crap Keanu Reeves movie. Also, people talk about it smelling like things that can´t possibly be in it; the more wine snobbier you get, the more and weirder things you recognize. This, my friends, was the sum total of knowledge I brought with me on Wine Tour.
Nevertheless, it was fun. I followed all instructions for swirling and sniffing as best as I could, and, although it´s the freaking dead of winter here and we didn´t get to actually see a single grape, I did appreciate a closer connection to the people who make the stuff I don´t understand. I perked up significantly for the olive oil tour, as well, as I had a toehold on what made it complex and delicious.
Bringing me to my modest proposal for another kind of Tasting, also featuring a treasured part of Argentina´s cultural heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me on the Tour de Submarino.
We will not, on this journey, be going underseas. The Argentinian Submarino is simply a bar of chocolate, sunk into a glass of hot milk. Bringing us not one, but TWO products to sample and obsess about!
First, the milk part. If people spend hours waxing poetic about the many varieties of grapes and the complicated fermenting process, I think Tour de Submarino can become equally obsessed about sub-species of cow. According to Wikipedia (granted that I Googled ¨beef¨. but the ladies must be doing something while we barbecue the menfolk...), there are six main breeds in the country to choose from; I´m thinking that each would yield a milk which can be described with different ridiculous adjectives. Ideally, participants could try their hands at milking at least one sample cow before proceeding to the Whisking Room to discover how best to froth it. Whole milk or low fat? Perhaps a touch of cream? And in which direction does a TRUE afectionado stir it? So many areas for discussion and study.
And next, of course, the question of chocolate. I imagine two seperate tastings here. For the first, one samples tiny perfect shavings off of six different chocolate bars, possibly using fancy silver tweezers to lift and inspect without melting them in your hands. Since I´ve been reminded today that wine often tastes of chocolate (alas, one slight misunderstanding of that led me to EXPECT a bit of chocolate at the end of the tour), it´s obligatory at this point to compare the chocolate to wine. The better shavings, I think, would have a slight hint of Malbec.
For the final tasting, one receives an eyedropper and a miniature shotglass. Following the careful and elegant instructions of an impeccably dressed Submarinero, participants combine various varieties of milk with various tiny squares of chocolate, testing for such crucial qualities as Floatiness and Sweet.
Who´s with me?
How the Other Half Busses
Hello from Mendoza, via a Nightbus De Lujo. Aka luxury night bus. As in, 15 ridiculous hours spent drinking fancy wine, nibbling snacks, and reclining almost 180 degrees in a posh leather seat. Even the movie was a step above: yes, in true South American fashion, it had to be a high-octane bloodbath, but there were Samurai instead of drug runners.
Mendoza is wine country, so we´ll be looking into tours and tastings. Starting...now.
Mendoza is wine country, so we´ll be looking into tours and tastings. Starting...now.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
In Which Someone ELSE gets to screw up the language
As I continue slogging my way through the Spanish language (today, I asked the airport officer when the ¨Room of Faithful Hoping¨ would be available to us...), I feel equality demands that I also report on the most hilarious English translations I´ve come across in my travels. These are wildly more common here in Argentina, I think because Ecuador really hasn´t gotten around to translating many things yet.
At any rate, Tuesday´s lunch menu was truly a thing of beauty and a joy forever. One could enjoy pizza with a wide range of toppings, including ¨sauce, chicken, crash, onions, and mozzarella¨. Crash was also available on a pizza without chicken, but I couldn´t be sure that meat was not involved. For dessert, one´s choices included ¨sucker in syrup, with cheese¨ and a complicated sampler platter including both ¨salad of fruit¨ and ¨one rejects of ice cream¨, lovingly enveloped in ¨sauce frit and sauce snare¨. However, the menu´s piece de resistance was clearly in the meat section: a savory meal of ¨language of cow, to the vinegar.¨
We had to know who created this linguistic masterpiece, so I asked the waiter how, exactly, the menu came about. He was hilarious: ¨Well, this woman who used to live here translated it for us, but I think she just ran it through a computer program. None of us read English, so we have no idea what it says, but we see people laughing at it all the time. I was watching you both a few minutes ago, and I told my buddy over there, look, they´re laughing at our menu again.¨ He enjoyed the explanation about, where, exactly, the cow tongue had gone a bit awry, but seemed quite happy to leave well enough alone with the menu.
At the farewell dinner for the Project in Quito, we discovered that the menu had been recently translated as well. I don´t remember most of the mistakes, but very much enjoyed the description of quimbolitos, which are like sweet fluffy tamales, as involving a ¨sweet corn feeling¨. Adam was reminded of a cafe he´d visited once which attempted to translate ¨te¨ (tea) into English: because that seemed very very close to the second person possessive, the end result was a delicious glass of Ice You. Rumor has it there is a burger joint outside of Cuenca which offers a wide variety of ¨fats foot¨.
Ah well, we all more or less manage to get our points across.
At any rate, Tuesday´s lunch menu was truly a thing of beauty and a joy forever. One could enjoy pizza with a wide range of toppings, including ¨sauce, chicken, crash, onions, and mozzarella¨. Crash was also available on a pizza without chicken, but I couldn´t be sure that meat was not involved. For dessert, one´s choices included ¨sucker in syrup, with cheese¨ and a complicated sampler platter including both ¨salad of fruit¨ and ¨one rejects of ice cream¨, lovingly enveloped in ¨sauce frit and sauce snare¨. However, the menu´s piece de resistance was clearly in the meat section: a savory meal of ¨language of cow, to the vinegar.¨
We had to know who created this linguistic masterpiece, so I asked the waiter how, exactly, the menu came about. He was hilarious: ¨Well, this woman who used to live here translated it for us, but I think she just ran it through a computer program. None of us read English, so we have no idea what it says, but we see people laughing at it all the time. I was watching you both a few minutes ago, and I told my buddy over there, look, they´re laughing at our menu again.¨ He enjoyed the explanation about, where, exactly, the cow tongue had gone a bit awry, but seemed quite happy to leave well enough alone with the menu.
At the farewell dinner for the Project in Quito, we discovered that the menu had been recently translated as well. I don´t remember most of the mistakes, but very much enjoyed the description of quimbolitos, which are like sweet fluffy tamales, as involving a ¨sweet corn feeling¨. Adam was reminded of a cafe he´d visited once which attempted to translate ¨te¨ (tea) into English: because that seemed very very close to the second person possessive, the end result was a delicious glass of Ice You. Rumor has it there is a burger joint outside of Cuenca which offers a wide variety of ¨fats foot¨.
Ah well, we all more or less manage to get our points across.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Eating My Way Through Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, the largest and probably most interesting city in Argentina, has a lot of things going for it. It´s the Tango capital of the world. Malfalda, the scrappy little protagonist of one of Latin America´s favorite comic strips, hails from here. There are many truly excellent museums, nice leafy parks, and absolute shit tons of historical things to see.
I shall write, in this post, about none of those things. What has been most compelling to me so far about Buenos Aires has been the utter unexpectedness of the local cuisine.
I remember the dumbass that I was six years ago, before I started spending summers in South America: I kind of imagined an entire continent of tacos, with maybe the occasional variation in sauce. Ecuador and Peru shifted my paradigm a bit, kicking out the taco and replacing it with an enormous, bland plate of potatoes and rice. I then saw a Man Vs. Food thing on some ridiculous cable channel or other, which dropped a healthy gob of mesquite-grilled cow offal on the previous mental plate.
Fortunately, I could not have been more wrong. We have yet to hit a parilla for the grilled beef that is a mainstay of Argentinian cuisine: instead, I´ve been happily gorging on homemade pasta, fresh vegetables, and insanely good salads. Today for lunch, we attempted to go to a place that no longer exists and settled on the closest thing to the vacant storefront: I ordered the ¨green leaf salad¨ and received an enormous bowl of field lettuce, topped with sun dried tomatoes, sliced avocado, bits of hard goat cheese, a slice of homemade toast, and the most perfect poached egg I´ve had in my life. I will dream of that salad tonight.
Those who scoff at ¨rabbit food¨ will find much to eat here as well. My guidebook points out a number of all-you-can-eat parillas, which are hilariously named as ¨tenador libre¨. Literally, ¨free fork¨, the term somehow also hints at disinhibition, and I picture a happy piece of silverware cavorting, unleashed upon the world and propelled by its own power. ¨All you can eat¨ is generally about a third of what they serve at many traditional restaurants, where pasta is popular, typically made onsite, and always delicious. It´s a bit odd: you order the pasta seperate from the sauce, and most menus have at least 8 or ten choices for both.
¿Y para beber? The coffee here is inevitably delicious, not a single instant anything anywhere in sight. My new favorite drink, however, is the ¨submarino¨, which involves heating milk to near boiling point and dropping a chocolate bar into it. Caused a bit of confusion for me a couple days ago, as it sounds a lot like ¨su marido¨, which is a polite way of saying ¨the husband of someone who is not the person speaking.¨ I wasn´t entirely sure what the waiter was offering for a minute there.
Ice cream is supposedly very, very good here, but I won´t be sampling it: it´s the dead of winter right now and we´re in the midst of a cold front. Also excellent, as I can personally attest: the coats. Hope I´ll still fit into my new one once I´m done here...
I shall write, in this post, about none of those things. What has been most compelling to me so far about Buenos Aires has been the utter unexpectedness of the local cuisine.
I remember the dumbass that I was six years ago, before I started spending summers in South America: I kind of imagined an entire continent of tacos, with maybe the occasional variation in sauce. Ecuador and Peru shifted my paradigm a bit, kicking out the taco and replacing it with an enormous, bland plate of potatoes and rice. I then saw a Man Vs. Food thing on some ridiculous cable channel or other, which dropped a healthy gob of mesquite-grilled cow offal on the previous mental plate.
Fortunately, I could not have been more wrong. We have yet to hit a parilla for the grilled beef that is a mainstay of Argentinian cuisine: instead, I´ve been happily gorging on homemade pasta, fresh vegetables, and insanely good salads. Today for lunch, we attempted to go to a place that no longer exists and settled on the closest thing to the vacant storefront: I ordered the ¨green leaf salad¨ and received an enormous bowl of field lettuce, topped with sun dried tomatoes, sliced avocado, bits of hard goat cheese, a slice of homemade toast, and the most perfect poached egg I´ve had in my life. I will dream of that salad tonight.
Those who scoff at ¨rabbit food¨ will find much to eat here as well. My guidebook points out a number of all-you-can-eat parillas, which are hilariously named as ¨tenador libre¨. Literally, ¨free fork¨, the term somehow also hints at disinhibition, and I picture a happy piece of silverware cavorting, unleashed upon the world and propelled by its own power. ¨All you can eat¨ is generally about a third of what they serve at many traditional restaurants, where pasta is popular, typically made onsite, and always delicious. It´s a bit odd: you order the pasta seperate from the sauce, and most menus have at least 8 or ten choices for both.
¿Y para beber? The coffee here is inevitably delicious, not a single instant anything anywhere in sight. My new favorite drink, however, is the ¨submarino¨, which involves heating milk to near boiling point and dropping a chocolate bar into it. Caused a bit of confusion for me a couple days ago, as it sounds a lot like ¨su marido¨, which is a polite way of saying ¨the husband of someone who is not the person speaking.¨ I wasn´t entirely sure what the waiter was offering for a minute there.
Ice cream is supposedly very, very good here, but I won´t be sampling it: it´s the dead of winter right now and we´re in the midst of a cold front. Also excellent, as I can personally attest: the coats. Hope I´ll still fit into my new one once I´m done here...
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Argentina Day 1
Allegedly wrapping up a busy day of sightseeing in Buenos Aires. It is currently 9:30 at night, which means that Argentina will start eating dinner in about half an hour. Last night, we went out in search of dinner at around 8:30, and everything was deserted. Too late? Hell no. Too early.
I want to write about all the amazing, historic, thought-provoking and/or ridiculous things I've seen today, but I'm actually too overwhelmed by all of it to reduce things to something that makes sense. We saw the Casa Rosada, which is the presidential seat of Argentina-a flamboyant, gorgeous, ornate, sprawling pink building with angels and vines carved into the facade. The Cathedral was equally impressive, down to the thousands of tiles used to mosaic the floor in a flower motif. After all that lavish prettiness, Teatro Colon was a bit of a letdown, but there's still plenty of the good stuff to see tomorrow.
Lunch was a huge plate of house-made ravioli: pasta is serious business here, which is a relief as it allows me to leave the beef alone. After lunch, I dragged Andrea to a truly ludicrous destination, Tierra Santa--allegedly the "world's first religious theme park", and also billed as a chance to "enjoy Jerusalem all yearlong in Buenos Aires". Basically, it's Dollywood for Spanish-speaking Bible thumpers: you go in through a sounds n'lights Nativity scene, move back a bit to the creation of the world, zoom straight to the Last Supper, promenade down the life-sized Stations of the Cross, and conclude with a giant Jesus statue that resurrects itself every hour. Many of the models are 1970s semi-animatronic figures that seem like they were retired from the Pirates of the Caribbean: Jesus typically misses the bread when he lifts his hands to bless it. All in all, good wacky fun: I don't know why, but I'm absolutely fascinated by pop-culture´s attempts to make sense of Christianity, and this was definitely a...unique incarnation.
And now, dinner.
I want to write about all the amazing, historic, thought-provoking and/or ridiculous things I've seen today, but I'm actually too overwhelmed by all of it to reduce things to something that makes sense. We saw the Casa Rosada, which is the presidential seat of Argentina-a flamboyant, gorgeous, ornate, sprawling pink building with angels and vines carved into the facade. The Cathedral was equally impressive, down to the thousands of tiles used to mosaic the floor in a flower motif. After all that lavish prettiness, Teatro Colon was a bit of a letdown, but there's still plenty of the good stuff to see tomorrow.
Lunch was a huge plate of house-made ravioli: pasta is serious business here, which is a relief as it allows me to leave the beef alone. After lunch, I dragged Andrea to a truly ludicrous destination, Tierra Santa--allegedly the "world's first religious theme park", and also billed as a chance to "enjoy Jerusalem all yearlong in Buenos Aires". Basically, it's Dollywood for Spanish-speaking Bible thumpers: you go in through a sounds n'lights Nativity scene, move back a bit to the creation of the world, zoom straight to the Last Supper, promenade down the life-sized Stations of the Cross, and conclude with a giant Jesus statue that resurrects itself every hour. Many of the models are 1970s semi-animatronic figures that seem like they were retired from the Pirates of the Caribbean: Jesus typically misses the bread when he lifts his hands to bless it. All in all, good wacky fun: I don't know why, but I'm absolutely fascinated by pop-culture´s attempts to make sense of Christianity, and this was definitely a...unique incarnation.
And now, dinner.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Hello Argentina: How the hell does ¨ll¨ become ¨sh¨?
Ridiculously quick post just to inform concerned parties (Hi Mom!) that I´ve landed safely in Buenos Aires. More when I´m not navigating a language barrier on four hours of sleep.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
On Coffee
Spending my last afternoon in Ecuador, as tomorrow, Argentina beckons. It´s been fabulous, and I´ve literally enjoyed every single day of this trip.
I´m feeling pretty good about moving on, though. Largely because I´ve just completed the final Ecuadorian must-do: bought a crapload of supermarket coffee at the local Tïa in old Quito.
It is, I assure you, not just any supermarket coffee. Cafe Minerva, which is basically Folgers for Ecuador, is, in my humble opinion, the most fabulous coffee in the entire known world. And I´m including the pricey gathered-by-monkeys-and-made-by-the-cup nonsense beloved by the coffee elite in the Bay Area. It´s dark, silky, and delicious, and it costs two bucks for a bag that makes 80 cups of the stuff.
I hit Tia with Stacey, who is perhaps the only person I know who loves coffee more than I do; I have vivid memories of our first Project year, when Stacey would show up for breakfast every morning with her own little French press and a snack-sized Ziploc of grounds from the States. Her response to seeing me literally embracing my four packs of Minerva was a good deal of skepticism, and the suggestion that I save space in my suitcase for Argentian cafe.
As Stacey chats on the phone a few feet away in this cabina, however, I fortify myself with more information in my defense. According to Wikipedia, Ecuador is one of very few nations that produces and exports ALL varieties of coffee, and has over fifty countries lined up for the goods. In 2001, Ecuador produced 63,720 metric tons of coffee. While the magical bean´s role in the economy has diminished in the face of increased revenues from tourism and immigration, it remains one of the main agricultural exports, after bananas.
And often, it is absolutely delicious. Today began with a cafe con leche, hand poured at our table as a perfect equilibrium of dark coffee and milk. The cups here are so small that another coffee mid morning is always a good idea: we had lunch at a fair-trade shop and my iced mochachino was about 2% milkfat short of a chocolate shake. I still fondly remember the cafe pasado (basically, aged coffee wine) we had in Ambato a few years ago, and every cup of Minerva I drink reminds me of my time staying with coordinator Gladys, who somehow always finds time in her insane save-the-world schedule to make soup for lunch and serve coffee at sunset.
Coffee is a ritual here: in Cuenca, the traditional afternoon snack is dark, sweetened coffee with humitas, which are like unfilled tamales. Anywhere with a large Colombian population has men selling coffee from a thermos into little foam cups. My Spanish teacher had very few materials, but a can of Si Cafe always took pride of place on his table.
It´s a longstanding joke among coffee snobs that countries like Ecuador export all the good stuff and drink the shit that´s left over. I´ve had too many truly good coffees in most of Latin America to believe that, but I am amused to note that many Ecuadorians truly love instant coffee. The ultimate confirmation of that came half an hour ago, when Stacey, finally convinced by my Minerva-worship to buy a bag herself, made me ask the check out guy if he liked this coffee. The answer came loud and clear: well, it´s delicious. But Nescafe is better.
I´m feeling pretty good about moving on, though. Largely because I´ve just completed the final Ecuadorian must-do: bought a crapload of supermarket coffee at the local Tïa in old Quito.
It is, I assure you, not just any supermarket coffee. Cafe Minerva, which is basically Folgers for Ecuador, is, in my humble opinion, the most fabulous coffee in the entire known world. And I´m including the pricey gathered-by-monkeys-and-made-by-the-cup nonsense beloved by the coffee elite in the Bay Area. It´s dark, silky, and delicious, and it costs two bucks for a bag that makes 80 cups of the stuff.
I hit Tia with Stacey, who is perhaps the only person I know who loves coffee more than I do; I have vivid memories of our first Project year, when Stacey would show up for breakfast every morning with her own little French press and a snack-sized Ziploc of grounds from the States. Her response to seeing me literally embracing my four packs of Minerva was a good deal of skepticism, and the suggestion that I save space in my suitcase for Argentian cafe.
As Stacey chats on the phone a few feet away in this cabina, however, I fortify myself with more information in my defense. According to Wikipedia, Ecuador is one of very few nations that produces and exports ALL varieties of coffee, and has over fifty countries lined up for the goods. In 2001, Ecuador produced 63,720 metric tons of coffee. While the magical bean´s role in the economy has diminished in the face of increased revenues from tourism and immigration, it remains one of the main agricultural exports, after bananas.
And often, it is absolutely delicious. Today began with a cafe con leche, hand poured at our table as a perfect equilibrium of dark coffee and milk. The cups here are so small that another coffee mid morning is always a good idea: we had lunch at a fair-trade shop and my iced mochachino was about 2% milkfat short of a chocolate shake. I still fondly remember the cafe pasado (basically, aged coffee wine) we had in Ambato a few years ago, and every cup of Minerva I drink reminds me of my time staying with coordinator Gladys, who somehow always finds time in her insane save-the-world schedule to make soup for lunch and serve coffee at sunset.
Coffee is a ritual here: in Cuenca, the traditional afternoon snack is dark, sweetened coffee with humitas, which are like unfilled tamales. Anywhere with a large Colombian population has men selling coffee from a thermos into little foam cups. My Spanish teacher had very few materials, but a can of Si Cafe always took pride of place on his table.
It´s a longstanding joke among coffee snobs that countries like Ecuador export all the good stuff and drink the shit that´s left over. I´ve had too many truly good coffees in most of Latin America to believe that, but I am amused to note that many Ecuadorians truly love instant coffee. The ultimate confirmation of that came half an hour ago, when Stacey, finally convinced by my Minerva-worship to buy a bag herself, made me ask the check out guy if he liked this coffee. The answer came loud and clear: well, it´s delicious. But Nescafe is better.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Hello From Otalvalo: You Want a Blanket With That?
Greetings from Otalvalo, where the following are numbered among the many tourist attractions:
Extreme Sports, Sidewalk Edition : The walkways of Otalvalo are among the most perilous I have encountered so far, and I am including Calle Bolivar in Cuenca, which is a highly populated and heavily trafficked street which is CURRENTLY under full cement-truck construction. Random metal stakes jut out at odd intervals, no longer in use for connecting cables to poles. Huge gaping holes await the unweary, and dog crap is absolutely everywhere.
Sinfonia de Basura: Every night, the garbage trucks make their rounds, announcing their presence with tinny, ice-cream-truck music.
Let's Make a Deal: Otalvalo is best known as home to the largest indigenous market in South America, largely due to the presence of many talented weavers and artisans. Haggling is an art form here, as every Saturday brings hundreds of tourists to entice and exploit with blankets, weavings, and such. Since this is my fifth trip to Otalvalo, I've long sense made my peace with the bartering of the market, but this trip, I've noticed that even the restaurant folks are getting in on the act. When the waiter sees my plain water and attempts to raise it to a passionfruit smoothie, the charm begins to wear off a wee bit.
Fortunately, I'm not just in Otalvalo to poke fun at it. We are using this pretty little town as a home base for our work in Ibarra. Today was the first of a two day training and informational exchange: we met with dozens of early intervention workers and a handful of teachers and therapists. Tomorrow, parents and families will be joining us, and we will be making materials together to serve children with and without special needs.
It has been and continues to be satisfying work, and as we wrap things up for this year's Project, I am intensely grateful to play a part in it. Although the good salespeople of Otalvalo do remind me that, if I were to play 20 parts instead of just the one, I would most likely get more colors and a discount.
Extreme Sports, Sidewalk Edition : The walkways of Otalvalo are among the most perilous I have encountered so far, and I am including Calle Bolivar in Cuenca, which is a highly populated and heavily trafficked street which is CURRENTLY under full cement-truck construction. Random metal stakes jut out at odd intervals, no longer in use for connecting cables to poles. Huge gaping holes await the unweary, and dog crap is absolutely everywhere.
Sinfonia de Basura: Every night, the garbage trucks make their rounds, announcing their presence with tinny, ice-cream-truck music.
Let's Make a Deal: Otalvalo is best known as home to the largest indigenous market in South America, largely due to the presence of many talented weavers and artisans. Haggling is an art form here, as every Saturday brings hundreds of tourists to entice and exploit with blankets, weavings, and such. Since this is my fifth trip to Otalvalo, I've long sense made my peace with the bartering of the market, but this trip, I've noticed that even the restaurant folks are getting in on the act. When the waiter sees my plain water and attempts to raise it to a passionfruit smoothie, the charm begins to wear off a wee bit.
Fortunately, I'm not just in Otalvalo to poke fun at it. We are using this pretty little town as a home base for our work in Ibarra. Today was the first of a two day training and informational exchange: we met with dozens of early intervention workers and a handful of teachers and therapists. Tomorrow, parents and families will be joining us, and we will be making materials together to serve children with and without special needs.
It has been and continues to be satisfying work, and as we wrap things up for this year's Project, I am intensely grateful to play a part in it. Although the good salespeople of Otalvalo do remind me that, if I were to play 20 parts instead of just the one, I would most likely get more colors and a discount.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Quick Check In...
...and apologies for the lack of blog action. Much has happened, but it´s all been a wonderful blur of Project activity. My colleagues arrived last week, and we did a two day training for over a hundred people from six local schools in the province of Azuay: ´twas amazing. Now we´re up way north in Otalvalo, getting ready to do more or less the same again.
El Comercio´s recipe of the day involves crazy chocolate/cinnamon biscuits with a healthy dollop of blackberry preserves. I did not request and do not want the box of 10 bright red fine point dry erase markers that somehow snuck into my stationary bag. All of us, on seeing the box of confiscated items at the Cuenca airport, thought longingly of the adaptations that could be made with that much tape. The mountains around Otalvalo are gorgeous and amazing.
And that is all, for now.
El Comercio´s recipe of the day involves crazy chocolate/cinnamon biscuits with a healthy dollop of blackberry preserves. I did not request and do not want the box of 10 bright red fine point dry erase markers that somehow snuck into my stationary bag. All of us, on seeing the box of confiscated items at the Cuenca airport, thought longingly of the adaptations that could be made with that much tape. The mountains around Otalvalo are gorgeous and amazing.
And that is all, for now.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Hail Mary Full of Explosives
One of the many thousands of reasons that I love Cuenca is that this city knows how to PARTY. Not the weed-smokin´ Montañita party nor the gringo-gropin´ Mariscal party, nor, for that matter, the pig roastin´/speech givin´ Huambalo party or cuy chompin´ Salasaca party. No, I´m talking about the kind of party that begins with a solemn mass and descends, over hours or days, into an absolute joyous riot of candy and fireworks, with ample stops midway through for traditional dancing, local bands, and random local families sharing their snacks with me.
This week´s main event has been the commemoration of the apparation of the Virgen of Carmen, who doesn´t seem to have made it past Palestine but is nevertheless deeply venerated here. One of the prettiest little churches, behind the flower market near the new Cathedral, is dedicated to Carmen and also houses a cloistered group of nuns, who spend their days praying, doing needlepoint, beekeeping, brewing weird traditional drinks, and planning cultural events for the parish. The drinks contain valerian and other mild mood altering substances: most of the events they put on involve towers of sweets and culminate in fireworks. I really want to meet these ladies.
Anyway, the Fiesta Del Carmen lasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 days, and for the past many years, the plaza outside the church has hosted dance troupes from across the country as part of the celebration. On the last day of the celebration, the community participates in an adorable little morning procession, with kids dressed up like nuns and angels riding on flatbed trucks and throwing flower petals. The highlight is a statue of the Virgen which is paraded around the town, trailing a huge white veil that the people walk beneath to symbolize her protection.
Thus pass the faithful days and rich, cultured evenings, but as is often the case, there´s more to reveal. All week long, the city pops at night with random fireworks, but from 11 or so on for the last two days, things really go nuts. A castilla, or tower, is built more or less in the middle of the street, loaded with little explosives and lovingly decorated with streamers and tape, waiting for the vaca loca to finish so that someone can set it on fire.
Vaca what, you say? The vaca loca, or ¨Crazy Cow¨, is a tin cutout of a spotted Holstein, mounted on a slender metal post. A truly insane person picks up the vaca loca, which, like the tower, is utterly saturated in things that explode. Someone lights a match, or does whatever one does when one wants to start fireworks, and the vaca loca careens through the street, scattering sparks and little rockets at completely unpredictable intervals as it goes. People rush the cow, the cow rushes the people, everyone screams and runs around like mad. I found myself cowering against the outside wall of the New Cathedral with a cluster of Cuencanas and a terrified blonde college girl.
Eventually, the vaca loca runs out of explosives and it´s time to set the tower on fire--frighteningly enough, the local guy who was explaining things to us suggested that this , not the cow, merited a few steps back. Things start popping from the bottom level, and the energy makes the wheels on a fiery pinwheel turn, then the sparks jump up a level and start shooting out in all directions. It was like a Rube Goldberg contraption, culminating in fireworks at the upper level spelling out ¨Viva la Virgen de Carmen¨ and a scattering of stars from the tip.
And thus, the good people of Cuenca celebrate the mum of Christ, meek mild and innocent as she always seems to be. I imagine the nuns sneaking peeks from the cloisters, snickering madly beneath their dark veils.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Pensamientos desde las calles
Just for kicks, I thought I´d share with you my mental processes this morning as I walked from Spanish class to lunch.
Since I´d just finished class, I felt the need to attempt thinking in Spanish. Since I´d been in a hurry that morning, my main thoughts were that I needed to find a newspaper before I went to lunch, and that I wasn´t sure where to find one where I was at the time. Since the main didactic method that Spanish teachers use to build fluency in their pupils is repetitive, slightly changing practice with the same structured phrase, my thoughts were thus, as I passed all the shop windows and daily life in quest of El Comercio:
I don´t want a fancy pink dress, I want to buy a newpaper.
I don´t want to buy telephones, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want fried bananas, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want to get my brakes repaired, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want...wait, what the hell is that?...I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want an inexpensive funeral package, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want a lunch of cow stomach with peanut sauce, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want to buy shoes, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want a restaurant named after a salsa-dancing monkey, I want to buy a newspaper. Hmm, what if I wanted to buy a salsa dancing monkey? Oh crap, I think I´d need to use the subjunctive for that one. It...hmmm, it would depend on the degree of certainty I have about whether the monkey dances salsa. If it´s a habitual action which is frequently experienced, it would be the ¨monkey salsa-dancing.¨ But otherwise, it would be ¨the monkey who may dance salsa.¨ It would...I think it would be like when you´re looking for an open internet cafe on Sunday night--you aren´t sure there is one, so it´s ¨lugar que esté abierto¨, not ¨lugar abierto¨ . I think the monkey is the same. I´d have to querer un mono que sepa bailar, wouldn´t I?
Dammit, I need a newspaper. A nice English newspaper.
Since I´d just finished class, I felt the need to attempt thinking in Spanish. Since I´d been in a hurry that morning, my main thoughts were that I needed to find a newspaper before I went to lunch, and that I wasn´t sure where to find one where I was at the time. Since the main didactic method that Spanish teachers use to build fluency in their pupils is repetitive, slightly changing practice with the same structured phrase, my thoughts were thus, as I passed all the shop windows and daily life in quest of El Comercio:
I don´t want a fancy pink dress, I want to buy a newpaper.
I don´t want to buy telephones, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want fried bananas, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want to get my brakes repaired, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want...wait, what the hell is that?...I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want an inexpensive funeral package, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want a lunch of cow stomach with peanut sauce, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want to buy shoes, I want to buy a newspaper.
I don´t want a restaurant named after a salsa-dancing monkey, I want to buy a newspaper. Hmm, what if I wanted to buy a salsa dancing monkey? Oh crap, I think I´d need to use the subjunctive for that one. It...hmmm, it would depend on the degree of certainty I have about whether the monkey dances salsa. If it´s a habitual action which is frequently experienced, it would be the ¨monkey salsa-dancing.¨ But otherwise, it would be ¨the monkey who may dance salsa.¨ It would...I think it would be like when you´re looking for an open internet cafe on Sunday night--you aren´t sure there is one, so it´s ¨lugar que esté abierto¨, not ¨lugar abierto¨ . I think the monkey is the same. I´d have to querer un mono que sepa bailar, wouldn´t I?
Dammit, I need a newspaper. A nice English newspaper.
La Receta del Día
We interrupt this blog to informe you that El Comercio´s recipe of the day for Tuesday, July 13th is canneloni stuffed with diced chicken and brains.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Más crispies, por favor...
I dined tonight at El Pedragal Azteca, which is the closest thing anywhere in Ecuador has to an authentic Mexican restaurant.
´Twas pretty good--actual papel picado on the walls, tamarind juice on offer, and a fairly tasty bowl of tortilla soup.
And, for entertainment value, the proprietors had made an endearing but hilarious attempt to translate the menu into English for the gringo clientele. Allowing would-be parents to order the ¨plate of children¨, and giving the rest of us oh so many chances to enjoy the ¨tortillas crispies¨. Very many dishes came with tortillas crispìes.
In fact, each meal began with a free plate of tortillas crispies, with salsa. It was truly amazing how much these laborously hand made chips tasted like Fritos--exactly, positively, like Fritos. If they hadn´t looked as they did (first, they hand make the tortilla, then they cut it into random, jagged semi-rectangles, then they fry the living hell out of it and arrange it on a platter), I would have been fooled.
It´s a better option, anyway, than the Colombian cafe which seems to import actual, orange Doritos for their $1.25 guacamole platter.
Who´s taking me out for Mexican food when I get home?
´Twas pretty good--actual papel picado on the walls, tamarind juice on offer, and a fairly tasty bowl of tortilla soup.
And, for entertainment value, the proprietors had made an endearing but hilarious attempt to translate the menu into English for the gringo clientele. Allowing would-be parents to order the ¨plate of children¨, and giving the rest of us oh so many chances to enjoy the ¨tortillas crispies¨. Very many dishes came with tortillas crispìes.
In fact, each meal began with a free plate of tortillas crispies, with salsa. It was truly amazing how much these laborously hand made chips tasted like Fritos--exactly, positively, like Fritos. If they hadn´t looked as they did (first, they hand make the tortilla, then they cut it into random, jagged semi-rectangles, then they fry the living hell out of it and arrange it on a platter), I would have been fooled.
It´s a better option, anyway, than the Colombian cafe which seems to import actual, orange Doritos for their $1.25 guacamole platter.
Who´s taking me out for Mexican food when I get home?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
!El Pulpo Sabe Todo!
No, I am not saying that the Pope is, indeed, infallible. The confusion is understandable, though--this weekend, I´ve been knee-deep in Spanish words that sound like other Spanish words.
Starting with pañuelo, hankerchief. In order to make it clearer that I was actually PARTICIPATING with understanding in the march for non-violence, and not just standing around with my camera like your garden-variety tourist, my teacher recommended I wear white. A color which makes me look absolutely terrible and increases dramatically my capacity to spill stuff, so a nice hankercheif was recommended. Causing me a great deal of distress, as I know enough Spanish to know that hankerchief sounds like diaper, but not enough Spanish to always hit the mark.
Eventually, I just bought a damn tee shirt.
Ah, but then, the Pulpo. I wonder if the psychic octopus is as big a deal in other countries; here, he has been absolutely all the rage. Daily photographs in all the papers of Paul, hovering over two clear boxes of food adorned with the flags of whichever teams were about to compete in the final few games of the World Cup. Amazingly, or perhaps not, El Pulpo is in this case more correct than El Papa´s been in others, as we discovered for the final time today.
Normally, I have so little interest in sports that I honestly don´t know who plays what at what season, but this time, the octopus hooked me in. I saw the final game at an English bar with a group of Norwegians and Ecuadorians, surrounded by Dutch folks and a swathe of Americans. Yet another chance for miscommunication occured when people started chanting for penales, which are neither diapers, nor hankerchiefs, nor sea life.
Appararently, it was a game for the ages--craploads of overtime and a sea of yellow cards. And me at the back with my Spanish verb drills in my lap, nibbling on homemade potato chips and cheering for Paul.
Starting with pañuelo, hankerchief. In order to make it clearer that I was actually PARTICIPATING with understanding in the march for non-violence, and not just standing around with my camera like your garden-variety tourist, my teacher recommended I wear white. A color which makes me look absolutely terrible and increases dramatically my capacity to spill stuff, so a nice hankercheif was recommended. Causing me a great deal of distress, as I know enough Spanish to know that hankerchief sounds like diaper, but not enough Spanish to always hit the mark.
Eventually, I just bought a damn tee shirt.
Ah, but then, the Pulpo. I wonder if the psychic octopus is as big a deal in other countries; here, he has been absolutely all the rage. Daily photographs in all the papers of Paul, hovering over two clear boxes of food adorned with the flags of whichever teams were about to compete in the final few games of the World Cup. Amazingly, or perhaps not, El Pulpo is in this case more correct than El Papa´s been in others, as we discovered for the final time today.
Normally, I have so little interest in sports that I honestly don´t know who plays what at what season, but this time, the octopus hooked me in. I saw the final game at an English bar with a group of Norwegians and Ecuadorians, surrounded by Dutch folks and a swathe of Americans. Yet another chance for miscommunication occured when people started chanting for penales, which are neither diapers, nor hankerchiefs, nor sea life.
Appararently, it was a game for the ages--craploads of overtime and a sea of yellow cards. And me at the back with my Spanish verb drills in my lap, nibbling on homemade potato chips and cheering for Paul.
A bailar, entre otros
Wrapping up a very culture-filled weekend in Cuenca.
Friday began with a torrential downpour--the likes of which are very very rare here. I was at the market with my Spanish teacher, Marta, to visit the curenderas. These women are like shamans; twice a week, they set up shop at the Plaza Rotary with piles of herbs and a few dozen eggs (don´t worry, I´ll get to that.) Previously, they didn´t have a designated stall in the Plaza, but recently, they acheived a bit of a coup in the form of a moveable tarp to cover their wares.
So, alas, rain did not excuse me from the Traditional Semi-Shamanic Experience. Marta dragged my gringa ass to her preferred curandera, a mischievious looking old woman who was in the process of rubbing down the most adorable tiny baby with herbs. The mom, a very modern younger woman with tight jeans and a cell phone, explained to us that her daughter seemed to scare too easily and she was afraid that the little one had attracted the evil eye. I felt a bit weird about standing as close as Marta indicated we should (to escape the rain outside the tarp), but nobody seemed to care that we were watching. The curandera finished up with the herbs, rubbed an egg gently all over the baby, broke it open, scrutinized the innards, and pronounced the session a tremendous success. She concluded by cautioning us all to stand back a bit, then sipped something from a plastic bottle and spit gently on the child´s head before dabbing ashes on the little girl´s forehead and belly.
Next! Marta presented me to the curandera for your garden-variety ¨limpienza¨ or aura-cleansing, which basically involved the same process with more force and a larger bundle of herbs. The curandera smacked me, hard, up and down the arms and back with the bundle, chanting something in Quechua which I darkly imagined may have had some reference to payback for hundreds of years of oppression. Finished up with the same egg, spit, n´ ashes routine, then cautioned me that a good deal of ¨mal energía¨ remained. I guess I´ve had longer than the baby to accumulate stuff.
Total cost? Two dollars. Followed by a buck-fifty worth of hot chocolate and sweet corn pancakes in the market while we waited for the storm to settle. No luck, alas, and we weren´t able to hail a cab either. The universal rule of taxis seems to be an inverse relationship between need and availability; my Norwegian friend notes that her travelling companion tends to gesture wildly when talking, which often means cabs stop for them in the middle of the road when he gets too excited as they walk down the street. But that afternoon, nothing stopped for us, despite dozens of passing taxis and some almost bird-like flapping on our part.
The rain continued throughout the evening, which was really unfortunate for the dance exhibition at Plaza Santo Domingo. Dance troupes from all over the country came, invited by the provincial government and watched by locals and tourists alike. No tarp, no problem, despite the tendency of people to crowd around so closely that umbrellas simply couldn´t be used. I´ve noticed a lovely tendency of the Cuenca citizenry to, almost inevitably, gesture me towards the front of the crowd so I can see better whenever I am travelling solo; the thought seems to be that the nice little gringa won´t take up much space. I can´t decide if I should be pleased or offended to note that the same rule applies to small children, who are often coaxed by friendly strangers to stand in the front of the group. At any rate, got a very nice view of some really exquisite dancing before the rain overcame me and I called it a night.
Saturday, a different dance experience, as I hit the bars with a cluster of Norwegians and a Canadian guy who was studying to be a doctor. We started out at a ridiculous but adorable Arabian Nights themed cafe, where one could smoke twenty flavors of hookah and order surprisingly good Middle Eastern Cuisine. Then, thanks to the local knowledge of the Norwegian´s recently acquired Cuencan girlfriend, we went to what I think must be the Most Happening Discoteque of Azuay: hidden behind an unassuming courtyard in the same street I walk down for Spanish lessons, a two-story nightclub with go-go platform and smoke machine. Not so much with the subjunctive Ud. here; the place was crawling with locals trawling for a chance to dance way too close with strangers, and Monica and I were accosted almost immediately. Made the mistake of dancing with the guy who had seemed like he was trying to preserve my virtue from the other guy, then fended off a third guy whose dogged persistent attempts reminded me hilariously of the little kids who sell roses at restaurants--they sneak in, you tell them you don´t like roses, the owner kicks them out, and the circle repeats six times. Finally, Monica and I helped the poor sweet Canadian boy acheive what must have been a life-long dream, as making him appear to have two girlfriends made us much less accessible.
(Don´t worry, Mom, I am more than capable of convincing any number of boys that no means no in multiple languages, and machísmo notwithstanding, even the drunkest Ecuadorian man has enough fear of Mother Mary to back off when asked.)
So, ludicrous night of hookah and debauchery: acheived. Thank God--giving things like that a whirl helps me, at times, reconnect with what I do like by understanding what I don´t. Less flash, more connection--a chance to get to know the boy before we hit the dance floor. We´ll see where life takes me, I guess, but knowing what you want doesn´t seem like a bad thing.
Friday began with a torrential downpour--the likes of which are very very rare here. I was at the market with my Spanish teacher, Marta, to visit the curenderas. These women are like shamans; twice a week, they set up shop at the Plaza Rotary with piles of herbs and a few dozen eggs (don´t worry, I´ll get to that.) Previously, they didn´t have a designated stall in the Plaza, but recently, they acheived a bit of a coup in the form of a moveable tarp to cover their wares.
So, alas, rain did not excuse me from the Traditional Semi-Shamanic Experience. Marta dragged my gringa ass to her preferred curandera, a mischievious looking old woman who was in the process of rubbing down the most adorable tiny baby with herbs. The mom, a very modern younger woman with tight jeans and a cell phone, explained to us that her daughter seemed to scare too easily and she was afraid that the little one had attracted the evil eye. I felt a bit weird about standing as close as Marta indicated we should (to escape the rain outside the tarp), but nobody seemed to care that we were watching. The curandera finished up with the herbs, rubbed an egg gently all over the baby, broke it open, scrutinized the innards, and pronounced the session a tremendous success. She concluded by cautioning us all to stand back a bit, then sipped something from a plastic bottle and spit gently on the child´s head before dabbing ashes on the little girl´s forehead and belly.
Next! Marta presented me to the curandera for your garden-variety ¨limpienza¨ or aura-cleansing, which basically involved the same process with more force and a larger bundle of herbs. The curandera smacked me, hard, up and down the arms and back with the bundle, chanting something in Quechua which I darkly imagined may have had some reference to payback for hundreds of years of oppression. Finished up with the same egg, spit, n´ ashes routine, then cautioned me that a good deal of ¨mal energía¨ remained. I guess I´ve had longer than the baby to accumulate stuff.
Total cost? Two dollars. Followed by a buck-fifty worth of hot chocolate and sweet corn pancakes in the market while we waited for the storm to settle. No luck, alas, and we weren´t able to hail a cab either. The universal rule of taxis seems to be an inverse relationship between need and availability; my Norwegian friend notes that her travelling companion tends to gesture wildly when talking, which often means cabs stop for them in the middle of the road when he gets too excited as they walk down the street. But that afternoon, nothing stopped for us, despite dozens of passing taxis and some almost bird-like flapping on our part.
The rain continued throughout the evening, which was really unfortunate for the dance exhibition at Plaza Santo Domingo. Dance troupes from all over the country came, invited by the provincial government and watched by locals and tourists alike. No tarp, no problem, despite the tendency of people to crowd around so closely that umbrellas simply couldn´t be used. I´ve noticed a lovely tendency of the Cuenca citizenry to, almost inevitably, gesture me towards the front of the crowd so I can see better whenever I am travelling solo; the thought seems to be that the nice little gringa won´t take up much space. I can´t decide if I should be pleased or offended to note that the same rule applies to small children, who are often coaxed by friendly strangers to stand in the front of the group. At any rate, got a very nice view of some really exquisite dancing before the rain overcame me and I called it a night.
Saturday, a different dance experience, as I hit the bars with a cluster of Norwegians and a Canadian guy who was studying to be a doctor. We started out at a ridiculous but adorable Arabian Nights themed cafe, where one could smoke twenty flavors of hookah and order surprisingly good Middle Eastern Cuisine. Then, thanks to the local knowledge of the Norwegian´s recently acquired Cuencan girlfriend, we went to what I think must be the Most Happening Discoteque of Azuay: hidden behind an unassuming courtyard in the same street I walk down for Spanish lessons, a two-story nightclub with go-go platform and smoke machine. Not so much with the subjunctive Ud. here; the place was crawling with locals trawling for a chance to dance way too close with strangers, and Monica and I were accosted almost immediately. Made the mistake of dancing with the guy who had seemed like he was trying to preserve my virtue from the other guy, then fended off a third guy whose dogged persistent attempts reminded me hilariously of the little kids who sell roses at restaurants--they sneak in, you tell them you don´t like roses, the owner kicks them out, and the circle repeats six times. Finally, Monica and I helped the poor sweet Canadian boy acheive what must have been a life-long dream, as making him appear to have two girlfriends made us much less accessible.
(Don´t worry, Mom, I am more than capable of convincing any number of boys that no means no in multiple languages, and machísmo notwithstanding, even the drunkest Ecuadorian man has enough fear of Mother Mary to back off when asked.)
So, ludicrous night of hookah and debauchery: acheived. Thank God--giving things like that a whirl helps me, at times, reconnect with what I do like by understanding what I don´t. Less flash, more connection--a chance to get to know the boy before we hit the dance floor. We´ll see where life takes me, I guess, but knowing what you want doesn´t seem like a bad thing.
Thoughts on Nonviolence: Journal Entry from Friday
Today, I experienced the reactions of two different cultures to the same provocations--two different communities responding to violence. Nothing in the world is as simple as we write it, but there was still a lot that made me think--about culture, about power, about the beliefs that we have about the people that we...aren´t.
Last Saturday in Cuenca, a local man was killed in the crossfire between bank robbers and police. Yesterday, in Los Angeles, a verdict was reached in the trial of Johannes Mehersle, a white cop who shot an unarmed black man in a BART station two years ago.
In Oakland, the newspapers reported an entire city a few beats short of panic in the hours before the verdict was read--announcements on loudspeakers in all the major businesses, urging employees to stop and hurry home. Churches and youth centers setting up Speak Out centers, hoping to give people a way to express themselves without the violence that was considered almost inevitable, whatever the verdict. Merchants boarding up windows downtown, sometimes scrawling pleas to the rioters who might come: this building is black owned, please don´t loot it. Hundreds of police officers, preparing for chaos, readying barricades and packing their batons.
The verdict was read, appalling thousands who saw in so light a conviction yet another instance of unchecked police brutality. Throughout the afternoon and for most of the evening, the anger was expressed in honorable, safe ways by citizens who wanted justice, not destruction.
In the later hours, though, parts of the city erupted in riots, largely provoked, by most accounts, by white rioters from outside Oakland who used this charged event as a platform for mass unrest.
In Cuenca, there was another protest, this one organized by a local women´s organization for nonviolence and attended by dozens of friends and relatives of Carlos Salamea, the man killed in the crossfire during the robbers´attempted escape. The rally began in the park facing one of Cuenca´s oldest churches, with locals gathering in white clothing, holding placards and banners asking for peace, wearing shirts with the lost man´s photo and the words, ¨for you, Papa.¨ The group marched toward the office of the provincial government, where they clustured, chanting their request that the governor come down. Two demands were made: one, that the name of Carlos Salamea be cleared of any association with the gunmen who had seized him before the bullets flew, and two, that action be taken to curtail what was seen by all as an unprecidented amount of insecurity in Cuenca. The chanting was raucus, but polite--yet another chance for this gringa to recognize the Ud. subjunctive form as the crowd asked the governor to come down. A woman held up a handmade sign asking her fellow Cuencanas to teach their children in the ways of nonviolence; five men marched behind a blue banner with a dove. My Spanish teacher, who supports the women´s group, brought me to the march and I found myself walking arm in arm with a widow in her seventies who needed a little help navigating the cobblestone streets: as the crowd waited for a response from the governor´s office, Carlos´s grandchildren played with white balloons. The little old lady took leave of my teacher and I, thanking me for coming and saying, ¨So many people think the Americans are bad people--they are wrong! ¨
I wanted, in that moment, to tell her that the errors go so often both ways--go so often in all directions. To tell her about how, back in the United States, so many people see South America as a dark, wide smear of violence, a place where the robbery that has so convulsed the heart of Cuenca happens every day. To tell her about the looters in Oakland, striking dumbly at family businesses to protest a system outside both parties´ control. And to reaffirm what she said also, to tell her about the churches and youth centers and the family of Oscar Grant, the words they were saying in search of the same peace.
So many ¨bad people¨ . So much of ¨violencia¨ . And so many ways to be right, and to be wrong.
Last Saturday in Cuenca, a local man was killed in the crossfire between bank robbers and police. Yesterday, in Los Angeles, a verdict was reached in the trial of Johannes Mehersle, a white cop who shot an unarmed black man in a BART station two years ago.
In Oakland, the newspapers reported an entire city a few beats short of panic in the hours before the verdict was read--announcements on loudspeakers in all the major businesses, urging employees to stop and hurry home. Churches and youth centers setting up Speak Out centers, hoping to give people a way to express themselves without the violence that was considered almost inevitable, whatever the verdict. Merchants boarding up windows downtown, sometimes scrawling pleas to the rioters who might come: this building is black owned, please don´t loot it. Hundreds of police officers, preparing for chaos, readying barricades and packing their batons.
The verdict was read, appalling thousands who saw in so light a conviction yet another instance of unchecked police brutality. Throughout the afternoon and for most of the evening, the anger was expressed in honorable, safe ways by citizens who wanted justice, not destruction.
In the later hours, though, parts of the city erupted in riots, largely provoked, by most accounts, by white rioters from outside Oakland who used this charged event as a platform for mass unrest.
In Cuenca, there was another protest, this one organized by a local women´s organization for nonviolence and attended by dozens of friends and relatives of Carlos Salamea, the man killed in the crossfire during the robbers´attempted escape. The rally began in the park facing one of Cuenca´s oldest churches, with locals gathering in white clothing, holding placards and banners asking for peace, wearing shirts with the lost man´s photo and the words, ¨for you, Papa.¨ The group marched toward the office of the provincial government, where they clustured, chanting their request that the governor come down. Two demands were made: one, that the name of Carlos Salamea be cleared of any association with the gunmen who had seized him before the bullets flew, and two, that action be taken to curtail what was seen by all as an unprecidented amount of insecurity in Cuenca. The chanting was raucus, but polite--yet another chance for this gringa to recognize the Ud. subjunctive form as the crowd asked the governor to come down. A woman held up a handmade sign asking her fellow Cuencanas to teach their children in the ways of nonviolence; five men marched behind a blue banner with a dove. My Spanish teacher, who supports the women´s group, brought me to the march and I found myself walking arm in arm with a widow in her seventies who needed a little help navigating the cobblestone streets: as the crowd waited for a response from the governor´s office, Carlos´s grandchildren played with white balloons. The little old lady took leave of my teacher and I, thanking me for coming and saying, ¨So many people think the Americans are bad people--they are wrong! ¨
I wanted, in that moment, to tell her that the errors go so often both ways--go so often in all directions. To tell her about how, back in the United States, so many people see South America as a dark, wide smear of violence, a place where the robbery that has so convulsed the heart of Cuenca happens every day. To tell her about the looters in Oakland, striking dumbly at family businesses to protest a system outside both parties´ control. And to reaffirm what she said also, to tell her about the churches and youth centers and the family of Oscar Grant, the words they were saying in search of the same peace.
So many ¨bad people¨ . So much of ¨violencia¨ . And so many ways to be right, and to be wrong.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Notas gastronomicas
One thing I very much enjoy every day here in Cuenca is an hour or so with the daily paper. It takes me at least that long to make any sense whatsoever of what I´m reading- I typically recognize about 80 percent of the words, but the meaning usually resides in the words I don´t understand.
My usual selection is El Comercio, which is the Ecuadorian equivalent of the New York Times. It´s bigger, more cultured, and more expensive than the other papers, with fun bonus sections like a pull-out algebra tutorial or a random explanation of the pyramids of Egypt. Every day, the Lifestyle section offers a recipe, which is usually some ludicrous, complicated international dish. Most recently, one could learn how to prepare avocado aspic or fancy roasted rabbit with herbs.
This morning, though, I didn´t have time to go to the Parque Calderon to buy my paper, so I contended myself with the local edition. As it turned out, it too offered a recipe, in the form of an interview with a chef from the next province down South. In order to prepare the frog legs that are a delicacy in parts of Zamora-Chincipe, one must first ¨acquire a frog¨, then ¨deal a strong blow to the head¨ of the frog before skinning it, removing the viscera, and coating the frog legs in something I didn´t recognize.
!Buen provecho!
My usual selection is El Comercio, which is the Ecuadorian equivalent of the New York Times. It´s bigger, more cultured, and more expensive than the other papers, with fun bonus sections like a pull-out algebra tutorial or a random explanation of the pyramids of Egypt. Every day, the Lifestyle section offers a recipe, which is usually some ludicrous, complicated international dish. Most recently, one could learn how to prepare avocado aspic or fancy roasted rabbit with herbs.
This morning, though, I didn´t have time to go to the Parque Calderon to buy my paper, so I contended myself with the local edition. As it turned out, it too offered a recipe, in the form of an interview with a chef from the next province down South. In order to prepare the frog legs that are a delicacy in parts of Zamora-Chincipe, one must first ¨acquire a frog¨, then ¨deal a strong blow to the head¨ of the frog before skinning it, removing the viscera, and coating the frog legs in something I didn´t recognize.
!Buen provecho!
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thought of the day (2 minutes till internet cafe closes...)
I will never, no not ever, tire of Restaurante El Nueva Paraiso, the vegetarian megachain where one always finds dozens of manly Ecuadorian businessmen, in full suits and ties, happily devouring platters of soy meat and enormous bowls of yogurt and fruit.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
In Which I Discover that I Can be A Total NooB About Technology in Multiple Languages and Cultures
...So, mom has been suggesting that I post photos on this thing. Prior to yesterday, however, I had what I considered an airtight excuse: camera was demonstrably not working. I could take pictures, but the window that shows you what you´re doing stayed black.
Thus, off the the camera store. Well, first, off to figure out where the camera store was. The first place that looked like it might fix cameras did not, and the guy suggested I go to the Feria Libre. Literally, ¨free market¨, this location is an absolute sprawling riot of commerce and theft, kind of like if you took the Ashby Flea Market, doubled it in size, and surrounded it with hungry wolves.
Not so much, then, with the Feria Libre. Raul, after snickering politely at the camera guy´s suggestions, gave me a few more promising leads, and I finally found Foto Ortíz in the middle of a completely jacked-up block of Calle Bolivar: piece by piece, small portions of Cuenca´s roads are being renovated, but at the glacial Ecuadorian pace which means the crew spends a month hammering the existant road to bits, then goes somewhere else for a season, then talks for a while about how nice new concrete might be. Meanwhile, business continues as usual, albeit with a bit more dust and the occasional need to scamper up a trench.
Foto Ortíz, as it turned out, has two levels: one for your day-to-day needs in film development and passport pictures, and a secret bonus level where cameras get fixed. Upstairs, there was even a waiting area (complete with receptionist!) for consultations with the technician, as though you´re bringing your dog to the vet. There was a family in front of me, and I eavesdropped while I waited: felt very proud of myself for understanding that alkaline batteries were bad news for that camera.
My turn! I gave the guy the camera, explaining in my typical adequate but mangled Spanish that, ¨The picture, yes you can take it, but the seeing, it is not possible to see what one does. Maybe is problem. With lens.¨ Oh so eloquently, and with such perfect subjunctive, the technician took the camera, fondled it for a minute, and returned it in perfect working condition. I asked him how he performed this miracle, and I will now take the liberty to translate the extremely polite Spanish response into what the guy was most likely thinking beneath the genteel veneer: ¨Hey dumbass, I just pressed a button.¨
Thanks to his tutelage, I now have the power to break and un-break my camera several hundred times a day, with the previously unknown anti-viewfinder button. Lord only knows what other secrets my camera hides from me.
Thus, off the the camera store. Well, first, off to figure out where the camera store was. The first place that looked like it might fix cameras did not, and the guy suggested I go to the Feria Libre. Literally, ¨free market¨, this location is an absolute sprawling riot of commerce and theft, kind of like if you took the Ashby Flea Market, doubled it in size, and surrounded it with hungry wolves.
Not so much, then, with the Feria Libre. Raul, after snickering politely at the camera guy´s suggestions, gave me a few more promising leads, and I finally found Foto Ortíz in the middle of a completely jacked-up block of Calle Bolivar: piece by piece, small portions of Cuenca´s roads are being renovated, but at the glacial Ecuadorian pace which means the crew spends a month hammering the existant road to bits, then goes somewhere else for a season, then talks for a while about how nice new concrete might be. Meanwhile, business continues as usual, albeit with a bit more dust and the occasional need to scamper up a trench.
Foto Ortíz, as it turned out, has two levels: one for your day-to-day needs in film development and passport pictures, and a secret bonus level where cameras get fixed. Upstairs, there was even a waiting area (complete with receptionist!) for consultations with the technician, as though you´re bringing your dog to the vet. There was a family in front of me, and I eavesdropped while I waited: felt very proud of myself for understanding that alkaline batteries were bad news for that camera.
My turn! I gave the guy the camera, explaining in my typical adequate but mangled Spanish that, ¨The picture, yes you can take it, but the seeing, it is not possible to see what one does. Maybe is problem. With lens.¨ Oh so eloquently, and with such perfect subjunctive, the technician took the camera, fondled it for a minute, and returned it in perfect working condition. I asked him how he performed this miracle, and I will now take the liberty to translate the extremely polite Spanish response into what the guy was most likely thinking beneath the genteel veneer: ¨Hey dumbass, I just pressed a button.¨
Thanks to his tutelage, I now have the power to break and un-break my camera several hundred times a day, with the previously unknown anti-viewfinder button. Lord only knows what other secrets my camera hides from me.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
De compras
Yesterday after class I walked down Juan Jaramillo to the part where it ends, at the Diez de Agosto market. It´s a huge, two story white building, encasing a sprawling indoor market where ¨soup to nuts¨ doesn´t even begin to describe the variety of choices you have when you buy. Raul got in lots of subjunctive practice with his exhortations that I avoid the meat section, but unfortunately, at times, the meat section comes to you. As when I almost bumped into a man who dangled an entire side of beef (legs were still involved) off his left shoulder while heading for the escalator.
The produce section is actually three sections. Most of your fruit is downstairs, including baskets of tree tomatoes and at least four different kinds of bananas. Leafier stuff is upstairs: the carrots are terrifying, fat as apples at one end and tapering down to inch-thick ¨points¨. Another area altogether is for beans, choclo corn, and cooked grains. Every few feet is another family´s stall, and since the sellers have nothing but time as they wait for people to buy their wares, all the pea-shelling and garlic peeling is already done for you.
The best aisle, in my opinion, is the herb section: wiry old ladies and surprisingly spry gentlemen selling pile after pile of various plants. It´s all jumbled together, chamomile and borage, purple stalks of amaranth on top of mint bundles--you tell them what´s wrong and they throw things together to match. Flu remedies are the most popular, but rumor has it they also make potions for lovesickness and luck. The smell of all those mingled herbs is absolutely luscious: I wanted to just pay the vendors a couple bucks to look away while I jumped on the piles and rolled around the stalls.
I ended out spending about 7 dollars, for:
-half pound of white beans
-half pound of shelled peas
-sack of choclo kernals
-four tomatoes
-bag of strawberries
-four tiny bananas
-red pepper
-bunch of chard
-cilantro
-parsley
-bag of cooked barley
-half pound of boiled yucca
-two onions
-two heads of garlic
and a bag of peeled fava beans.
And speaking of food, it´s time for lunch now. I´m going to be cooking my dinners, obviously, but lunch specials in Cuenca are hard to beat, and I need a nice table to spread out my homework. On the menu today: motepillo, which is a local speciality of mote (basically, hominy) scrambled with spices and eggs. ¡Buen provecho!
The produce section is actually three sections. Most of your fruit is downstairs, including baskets of tree tomatoes and at least four different kinds of bananas. Leafier stuff is upstairs: the carrots are terrifying, fat as apples at one end and tapering down to inch-thick ¨points¨. Another area altogether is for beans, choclo corn, and cooked grains. Every few feet is another family´s stall, and since the sellers have nothing but time as they wait for people to buy their wares, all the pea-shelling and garlic peeling is already done for you.
The best aisle, in my opinion, is the herb section: wiry old ladies and surprisingly spry gentlemen selling pile after pile of various plants. It´s all jumbled together, chamomile and borage, purple stalks of amaranth on top of mint bundles--you tell them what´s wrong and they throw things together to match. Flu remedies are the most popular, but rumor has it they also make potions for lovesickness and luck. The smell of all those mingled herbs is absolutely luscious: I wanted to just pay the vendors a couple bucks to look away while I jumped on the piles and rolled around the stalls.
I ended out spending about 7 dollars, for:
-half pound of white beans
-half pound of shelled peas
-sack of choclo kernals
-four tomatoes
-bag of strawberries
-four tiny bananas
-red pepper
-bunch of chard
-cilantro
-parsley
-bag of cooked barley
-half pound of boiled yucca
-two onions
-two heads of garlic
and a bag of peeled fava beans.
And speaking of food, it´s time for lunch now. I´m going to be cooking my dinners, obviously, but lunch specials in Cuenca are hard to beat, and I need a nice table to spread out my homework. On the menu today: motepillo, which is a local speciality of mote (basically, hominy) scrambled with spices and eggs. ¡Buen provecho!
Monday, July 5, 2010
Spanish Lessons, Day One: Wait, Where´s the Airplane?
Greetings from Cuenca, which is, according to some rinky-dink ABC offshoot´s extrapolation of an International Living survey, ¨the best place to retire that you´ve never heard of.¨ Possessing, as it does, a ¨nice hospital¨ and also ¨some culture¨. Given that Cuenca has 52 separate museums and its own orchestra, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as a hotbed for most artistic endeavors in South America, that´s kind of like saying ¨politics are tangentially involved¨when speaking of DC.
Ah well. Cuenca is also a most excellent place to learn Spanish, and I´m diving in deep with that this week. It was so nice to return to the Abraham Lincoln Center, where I´ve been studying for three consecutive summers now: got a lot of air-kissing practice from the enthusiastic guards and a more reserved but no less genuine welcoming handshake from my skilled, dignified, and exceedingly long-suffering maestro, Raul.
But that was just the morning. In an attempt to shake myself out of my comfort zone and mix it up a bit with other travelers, I´m taking afternoon classes at a school that works exclusively with gringos (Abraham Lincoln is primarily a school of English for Ecuadorian youth). So far, pretty good: my teacher, Marta, is quick and responsive, and we made some decent inroads into the dreaded subjunctive.
With, alas, one fairly significant detour. When I learned to speak English, I really never paid any attention to organizational concepts or rules of grammar: words were just the sea that I swam in, and it was always quite easy to master the strokes. That doesn´t work so well with Spanish, unfortunately, especially when your new teacher assumes you´re entering the work with a good working use of the different terms for verb tenses. I have four hours a day with Marta, and at least one of them yesterday was spent with her fruitlessly asking me for examples of various tenses I'd already used in conversation but had no idea what to call: I simply didn't have the pegs on which to hang any of those articles of clothing.
It reminded me of nothing so much as that hideous Open Court unit on Patriotism we dutifully walked our kindergarteners through each year. The most hair-pulling part of that was always the Reading Comprehension exercises we had to do with the lyrics of "America, the Beautiful", which is a fairly non-literal little ditty even if you're not just a couple short years out of diapers. Inevitably, several times, children would listen politely to our explanation that Katherine Lee Bates wrote the song because she very much liked mountains and fields and fruitful American agriculture, and then ask us, "But where's the airplane?" They were okay with the mountains being the color of Barney, and they accepted the "fruited" as a given, but they just couldn't handle the non-flying of the "plain".
Making more progress today, thankfully. Fingers crossed!
Ah well. Cuenca is also a most excellent place to learn Spanish, and I´m diving in deep with that this week. It was so nice to return to the Abraham Lincoln Center, where I´ve been studying for three consecutive summers now: got a lot of air-kissing practice from the enthusiastic guards and a more reserved but no less genuine welcoming handshake from my skilled, dignified, and exceedingly long-suffering maestro, Raul.
But that was just the morning. In an attempt to shake myself out of my comfort zone and mix it up a bit with other travelers, I´m taking afternoon classes at a school that works exclusively with gringos (Abraham Lincoln is primarily a school of English for Ecuadorian youth). So far, pretty good: my teacher, Marta, is quick and responsive, and we made some decent inroads into the dreaded subjunctive.
With, alas, one fairly significant detour. When I learned to speak English, I really never paid any attention to organizational concepts or rules of grammar: words were just the sea that I swam in, and it was always quite easy to master the strokes. That doesn´t work so well with Spanish, unfortunately, especially when your new teacher assumes you´re entering the work with a good working use of the different terms for verb tenses. I have four hours a day with Marta, and at least one of them yesterday was spent with her fruitlessly asking me for examples of various tenses I'd already used in conversation but had no idea what to call: I simply didn't have the pegs on which to hang any of those articles of clothing.
It reminded me of nothing so much as that hideous Open Court unit on Patriotism we dutifully walked our kindergarteners through each year. The most hair-pulling part of that was always the Reading Comprehension exercises we had to do with the lyrics of "America, the Beautiful", which is a fairly non-literal little ditty even if you're not just a couple short years out of diapers. Inevitably, several times, children would listen politely to our explanation that Katherine Lee Bates wrote the song because she very much liked mountains and fields and fruitful American agriculture, and then ask us, "But where's the airplane?" They were okay with the mountains being the color of Barney, and they accepted the "fruited" as a given, but they just couldn't handle the non-flying of the "plain".
Making more progress today, thankfully. Fingers crossed!
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Notes from the Panamerican
So, this time around, I´m gonna go a bit more nuts than usual with the fancy descriptive writing. In that spirit, here´s what I was jotting down, stream of conciousness, as the bus wound from Durán to Puerto Inca, through banana country towards Cajas National Park.
7-04-2010
Bus ride from Guayaquil to Cuenca, past the sex motel shaped like an apple, through the insane humid lushness of green on both sides, past a scrawny herd of cattle going the wrong way down the Panamerican. Corn grows, implausably, in one of the fields, bookended by banana trees and coconuts. Ticket taker tapping gently on the forearms of the sleeping men, solicitous as a new father as he waits for them to wake up and hand him their slips. Past reed houses, thatched with rusted tin and set on stilts above the seething, swampy ground, egrets on the front yard and clothes flapping on the line. ¨Cristo Vive¨ is scrawled in chalk on one of the facades. We weave through a banana town, all luscious fruit and poverty: a half dressed boy sits proudly on a mountain of woodscraps and sugar cane. And on my iPod as I stare out the window, the sudden, perfect lyrics: ¨Show me how pretty the whole world is, tonight.¨
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Arrived...
...at Guayaquil airport in one exhausted, but intact, piece.
Cultural note: I will never stop loving the Ecuadorian custom of everyone applauding when the plane touches ground.
Practical note: bedtime.
On tommorow's agenda: juice, iguanas, bus.
Cultural note: I will never stop loving the Ecuadorian custom of everyone applauding when the plane touches ground.
Practical note: bedtime.
On tommorow's agenda: juice, iguanas, bus.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Summer in Ecuador: Once More with Iguanas
For people who've followed this thing in the past, you know the drill. Having looked at my 2009 blog and discovered that it picked up a truly random follower with whom I have absolutely no real life connection, I guess a bit of context is in order.
I'm a special education teacher during the school year, working to serve students with significant cognitive and/or developmental disabilities in general education classrooms. For several years now, I've been lucky enough to spend my summers working with a truly amazing little non-profit organization doing assistive technology work in developing countries.
And now, another school year has wound itself down, and I'm once again collecting my documents, stuffing my suitcase, and getting up at a positively ludicrous hour (2:25 AM shuttle call--yaay!) for a flight to Guayaquil.
This year, the Project will be bringing its assistive technology goodies to two new communities, near the southern city of Cuenca and up north near Otalvalo. I'm ridiculously pleased about this, both because it means I didn't totally screw up the advance legwork last year to hook into these communities and because Cuenca is, bar none, my favorite city in the entire known world. We'll be doing training sessions for professionals and families, and also collecting pictures and information for another visual guide--a simple, picture-based "how to" document so that organizations around the world can use local materials to create inexpensive access tools for individuals with disabilities.
Work starts in two weeks. In the meantime, I'm excited to spend some time really throwing myself at the Spanish language: I've got six hours of daily private lessons booked in two different schools. Subjunctive tense, you're going DOWN!
Game plan for the next few days: fly to Miami, transfer to Guayaquil, stay the hell out of Panama, check on the iguanas at the Parque Semanario, and score a prime window seat for the bus ride to Cuenca. Wish me luck!
I'm a special education teacher during the school year, working to serve students with significant cognitive and/or developmental disabilities in general education classrooms. For several years now, I've been lucky enough to spend my summers working with a truly amazing little non-profit organization doing assistive technology work in developing countries.
And now, another school year has wound itself down, and I'm once again collecting my documents, stuffing my suitcase, and getting up at a positively ludicrous hour (2:25 AM shuttle call--yaay!) for a flight to Guayaquil.
This year, the Project will be bringing its assistive technology goodies to two new communities, near the southern city of Cuenca and up north near Otalvalo. I'm ridiculously pleased about this, both because it means I didn't totally screw up the advance legwork last year to hook into these communities and because Cuenca is, bar none, my favorite city in the entire known world. We'll be doing training sessions for professionals and families, and also collecting pictures and information for another visual guide--a simple, picture-based "how to" document so that organizations around the world can use local materials to create inexpensive access tools for individuals with disabilities.
Work starts in two weeks. In the meantime, I'm excited to spend some time really throwing myself at the Spanish language: I've got six hours of daily private lessons booked in two different schools. Subjunctive tense, you're going DOWN!
Game plan for the next few days: fly to Miami, transfer to Guayaquil, stay the hell out of Panama, check on the iguanas at the Parque Semanario, and score a prime window seat for the bus ride to Cuenca. Wish me luck!
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