Bendicion de casa

Correction to the previous post...apparently my theory AHEM that was mine and mine alone AHEM that the broken glass on top of the walls was to keep birds away was not quite right. It is actually to keep burglars from climbing the walls!! Ah, if only it were just for the birds... :)

Another correction would be that Pablo only lives by ONE all girl school, but one color track suit attends morning classes and another color goes in the afternoon. I forget if blue or red goes first.

Yesterday was pretty amazing. Pablo took me and his friend Angel to a grand opening ceremony of a daycare/school center in Peguche which is near Otavalo and north of Quito. On the way, we stopped at the equator, la mitad del mundo, in a town called Cayambe. That's Pablo's friend Angel on the other side of the globe. :)



The drive up was beautiful at times and at others, quite sad. We passed lovely hills with different-colored patches of fields as well as some very impoverished communities struggling to make do. There were a lot of "houses" people lived in that were just unfinished or abandoned buildings...concrete frames and cinderblock walls with rebar jutting through the tops; some had roofs, some didn't; no glass in the holes for windows; no insulation; lines of drying laundry were the only signs of life in some of these houses.




Some stellar ladies from Holland created the children'center in an attempt to better the community and offer a safe place for young indigenous children to stay. Apparently, parents would lock their children in their houses while they went off to work without any supervision and many would die due to fires or drowning. So sad. But this colorful new center is a positive step forward.




A brass band that started to play just as Pablo, Angel, and I pulled up to park. Reminiscent of Everything Is Illuminated. :)



Pablo's at the top left posing with some adorable kids who will be going to the center.


The opening ceremony was more of a blessing of a new house. A Catholic priest did a quick prayer and blessing. Then an indigenous shaman blessed each side of the house as well as the inside by saying a prayer in quichua (a language spoken by the indigenous people here) and sprinkling rose petals at each section of the house. Those sprinkling rose petals wore a few petals on their heads as well. Three handmade decorations were placed on the roof, as well.



It was so interesting to see the mixture of modernity and tradition there...people dressed in modern clothes seated next to people wearing very traditional clothing. The women's clothes were quite lovely: a blue skirt made of linen or cotton (not sure), a white blouse embroidered with colorful flowers, a blue or white shawl of the same material as the skirt, and a head covering of either another blue shawl/scarf or a fedora-like hat. I LOVED their jewelry: collar necklaces made from several strands of gold-colored seed beads as well as multi-strand bracelets of orange seed beads. It was quite stunning to see all the women wearing these.


These sweet indias prepared a ton of food for the guests: a really hot soup that I think was made of cornmeal, some chicken, boiled potatoes, and white hominy. Pretty tasty.

It was a day unlike any other I've experienced. Hopefully, there will be many more of those to come. :)

different

I climbed that steep street to get this view and realized that 9,000 feet is tough...and that I am extremely out of shape! :)

Quito is huge, that pic is just a fraction of the view, but hopefully I will climb something a bit more formidable than a hilly street to get a better view of the city.

Here are some funny things I've seen/experienced so far:

- people put broken glass straight up and down on the ledges of their walls to keep birds from perching and pooping



- i definitely need to wear sunblock every day (got burned on my nose, cheeks, and chest yesterday...then again i did walk around for like 4 hours!)

- there were honestly at least 500 people (probably more) in a huge park playing soccer yesterday (even men in their sixties!)



- the parks aren't quite like ours...tall fake rock formations for kids to climb on with cement below to break their fall...anti-aircraft gun and cannon for kids to play with...actual airplane with a face painted on it, but was so decrepit they had to put a fence around it..but lots of areas designated for futbol...a noteworthy botanic garden (where i became some woman's personal photographer, but at least she took one of me :) )



- no recycling...NO RECYCLING!!! i don't know how i'm going to cope since i have to drink bottled water here

- more people drank and talked with friends in the streets than inside bars and clubs last night

- pablo lives next to two all girl schools...at lunchtime, they flood the streets with their red or blue track suits or sweaters with plaid skirts (scary memories of catholic school surfacing here ;))





- i have to get re-accustomed to strange people kissing me on the cheek whenever i am introduced to someone (my personal bubble is deflating rapidly!)

- taxis honk whenever they see a potential fare...it doesn't mean i'm looking foxy that day

- the psuedo-official ecuadorian alcoholic beverage is canelazo...i still don't know what's in it, but it was served hot (i, of course, had to wait till it became luke-warm because hot + alcohol = gross)

- i have to swap several of my castellano and mexican spanish words for ecuadorian ones (i.e. sorbete = straw, saco = sweater, and many more)

- more interesting observations and experiences to come... :)

First hours in Ecuador

So I'm sitting at a Coffee & Toffee internet cafe in Quito, Ecuador. So bizarre! I feel a bit tired and weak from two nights of little sleep, two long and bumpy flights (one 7 hours, the other 1.5), and not enough water throughout it all. But I'm just taking it easy today, getting accustomed to my new surroundings (including the altitude of over 9,000 ft!). I have a meeting today at 4 with my program coordinator so hopefully I'll start working soon. Those businessmen won't know what to make of this goofy gringa trying to teach them English! :)

I arrived late last night and took a taxi to my friend Pablo's apartment in the more modern section of the city called La Mariscal. Pablo is a travel agent who does freelance photography as well. He is so nice and helpful! He's already taken time out of his busy day to show me around his neighborhood and give me several helpful suggestions. I'm totally loving being immersed in Spanish again! Everyone I've met is super sweet so far.

Well, I know it's not much of a riveting first blog in a foreign country, but hopefully the subsequent ones will find me more acclimated and rested. Although, when I mentioned to Pablo that I was looking forward to sleeping tonight, he reminded me that it was Friday...time for FIESTAS!!! Ay ay ay. :)

Sending you all much love,
Amy

P.S. I'm still trying to figure out what writing style I'm going for with this blog. Hence the signing off as a letter today. :)

The Countdown Begins...

8 days. How can there be only 8 days left until my flight to Ecuador?! I'm playing hooky from substitute teaching this morning (shh! Don't tell!) to sort of process this fact and get caught up on my to-do list. Yes, creating a blog was on my to-do list. I'm a dork, I know. :)

I have very mixed feelings about this journey. In June 2009, I bid farewell to my friends, colleagues, and students in Colorado and moved back home to California for a spell. It was so sad to say good-bye to the people that I'd spent the last four to eight years of my life with! However, I was ecstatic to be able to re-connect with so many friends and family members once I returned home. My time at home was originally intended to be a summer's long vacation, but it became a longer and much-needed period of healing and rejuvenation.

But now the time has come to check a few more things off my bucket list! I hope that as I get more accustomed to blogging my polysyllabic vocabulary will resurface and whoever feels so inclined as to read through my ramblings will find them more entertaining and enjoyable. :)

8 days.