El Mitad del Mundo y La Gran Carrera

Wow, this has been a really busy weekend so far! On Friday we didn’t have class and took a field trip to Mitad del Mundo, the famous park on the equator. (It’s funny because they discovered with GPS that the monument is in the wrong spot, but all of the tourists still go there instead of the real spot.) We also went to the nearby museum that is actually on the equator and were able to stand on it and see a lot of cool tricks because of the Coralis Effect. Water always spins counterclockwise to the equator and we saw how it drained differently on both sides. In the middle it just fell straight through, and it’s crazy how much of a difference six feet on either side makes. Other tricks were drastically reduced strength and balance while standing on the equator, and overall it was really cool to stand in two hemispheres at once!

Afterward we went out to lunch, and in my quest to try everything I tried an Ecuadorian plate lunch along with elote mayonesa. This may sound super gross, but it is corn-on-the-cob smothered in mayonnaise and a cheese garnish (the corn, mayo, and cheese are all different than the kinds we have at home). It’s super popular in Mexico and Central America, and it actually wasn’t too bad. The worst part was just thinking about what I was eating. Later that night some of us decided to go to a movie and we ended up seeing El Origen (Inception). We were relieved when we found out the movie was only released in subtitles, because it was hard enough to understand in English. Movies down here are either completely dubbed or have Spanish subtitles. It’s funny that we were probably the only people in the theater who could understand the movie without reading.

Today, we had a “transportation seminar” that started at 9 am and we expected it to be a long classroom lecture. Instead, we were handed envelopes that said ‘La Gran Carrera’ (roughly, the Amazing Race) and after being paired up with our roommates we were unexpectedly thrown into Quito on a trail of clues. It was a lot of fun, and we spent over four hours racing through the city by bus, taxi, paddleboat, and on foot (sprinting is super hard at 8,000-10,000’ altitude). We dashed across streets, through parks, and through markets and a mall, and I can’t imagine how ridiculous we looked. In the end our group came in third because the first two groups found a taxi before we did.

Tonight a few of us are going to a concert downtown. I don’t know any of the artists, but it sounds like a lot of fun. One of the guys in our group has heard of Alex Campos, a really famous Christian artist in Central and South America. There are a bunch of other famous bands playing as well and it’s supposedly a five-hour concert. Hasta Luego!

The Kids, and Pictures

One thing I really like about the seminary is that there are families that live here, because the parents are going to school and have young children. That means there are a lot of kids who are fun to hang out with and they really like us gringos.

Daniel and Jeremy discovered my headlamp in my dorm yesterday and asked what it was. They were immediately mesmerized when I showed them how to turn it on and change colors, and they both wanted to wear it around. Jeremy put it on and went into the bathroom where it was dark, but he accidentally locked himself in, and Gustavo (my Columbian roommate) spent a few minutes trying to get him out. When the boys started running around outside, I asked if I could take some pictures of them and immediately they got even more excited. They wanted to use the camera themselves and when I gave it to them they started taking pictures of everything. Pretty soon their friends got in on it too and they were having a blast with both the camera and the headlamp. Almost a hundred pictures later, I realized that I’d found a good way to connect with the kids.

Speaking of pictures, I haven’t taken many yet because I’ve only been to places where my camera could be stolen. The seminary is in Carcelen, which is a rougher area in northern Quito and I don’t want to draw attention to myself as a tourist. I’ve seen so many cool things that I’ve wanted to photograph, but I’m going to wait until I get more comfortable with the area. But it looks like I won’t have to take too many pictures because the kids will do it for me.

Here is what the view looks like from the academic building. The three buildings below are the dorms (I live on the opposite side of the second) and the mountain in the background is Pululahua (about 11,000 ft). The soccer field behind the first building is where the Ecuadorian national team practices, so we can watch them sometimes. I'll try to get more pictures later. Hasta luego!

An Awesome Church Experience

Yesterday I had the coolest experience. Someone told me that if I went to church with Yoan (my Venezuelan roommate) in the afternoon, there wouldn’t be another gringo for miles. That sounded perfect. We drove with his friend Raul to a rough area on the other side of town, using progressively less traveled roads. Finally we turned on a dirt road and went down one of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. (Afterward, we had to walk so Raul’s car could make it back up.) At the bottom there were shacks dotting the hill along with chickens and stray dogs running around. The actual church was just a dirt floor with lawn chairs and a structure made out of plywood. It’s an outreach for youth in the area that Yoan and Raul help with, and it’s a tough area with a lot of drug problems. But there was a strong sense of community there and it was eye opening for me.

Afterward the pastor invited us into his home, which was made out of cinderblocks and instead of doors there were rugs hanging. It was a lot of fun visiting with his family and seeing a way of life I hadn’t ever seen. During the visit his wife pulled out a big jug of murky liquid and offered me a glass. I realized it was chicha, a sweet homemade drink in Ecuador that is fermented from a woman’s spit. It had a weird sweet and sour flavor, but it actually wasn’t too bad. I decided that that this is the real South America I want to see, one that tourists rarely get to observe. (Afterward I was told that instead of spit the drink was fermented from a parasite that grows in corn. I really don’t know what’s worse.)

One thing I love here is that food can be found for so cheap. Yesterday there was a lunch fundraiser at a nearby church, and for two dollars I got a bowl of ceviche (a citrusy shrimp soup) and a big plate with rice, egg, lettuce, avocado, and cau cau (stew made from potato and cow stomach). It was really good, and they also served popcorn, juice, banana chips, and bowl of dessert flan. I realized that not everything is cheap though; at the mall there are many American shops that charge close to what they do back home. A new MacBook at the Apple Store still costs over a thousand dollars, but that doesn’t stop South Americans from jumping on the bandwagon. In the mall everything seemed westernized until we came across a guy performing traditional music on an Andean pipe flute. The western influence immediately came back when he played the theme from Titanic (which Yoan instantly recognized.)

Today was the first day of classes and the grammar class turned out to be really fun. We expected to be drilled with verb tenses, but instead the teacher began by teaching us all the local words and slang that come from Quechua, a common indigenous language. There are a lot of funny words like cushqui (money), ñaño (sibling), and ayayay (expression for pain). But things are going well and I don't have too much homework (yet). Hasta luego!

First Impressions

Yesterday we arrived in Quito after a full day of travel. I met up with some of the other NILIs in Houston and our plane left late (funny that the first thing I saw at George Bush airport was a Fox News gift shop). We finally got to Ecuador at about 11:30 and got through customs and immigration after midnight.

First impression: Ecuadorians are horrible drivers. When I was leaving the airport I saw a woman manage a sixteen-point turnabout, all just to pull into a parking spot. She had to back the car out twice and restart, almost hitting our van and another pedestrian. The program director here told me that almost all Ecuadorians are first generation drivers and they never grew up riding with their parents. Riding to the campus I also learned that there are no posted speed limits (or at least ones that locals know about) and red lights after midnight are usually ignored. While cruising about 50 miles an hour through the city and changing lanes (without slowing down or signaling) I realized how much my dad (an ex-driver's ed instructor) would have flipped out. It’s probably less intense during the day, but that was my first impression.

We finally got to the campus super late and had a quick orientation. Don’t drink the water and don’t flush any toilet paper. Great. Then we realized that our roommates were already sleeping and we had to wake them up to get in the rooms. After waking two sleepy Latinos I realized that the beds were tiny, and the only one left was a rickety top bunk. The bed was moved to the ground and I tried to quickly unpack but I also realized that the bathroom has no fan and is partly open to the rest of the room. This will definitely be an interesting experience.

Today I was able to talk to my roommates more and they are really cool guys. Gustavo is from Columbia and rides a motorcycle, and Yoan is from Venezuela and used to play pro baseball there. Other than that we’ve just been having meetings and language assessments, and I even got a cell phone! The school schedule is awesome because it’s only one class at a time for 3-4 weeks. We also have field trips every week with no classes for the day, and there are a bunch of weekend and weeklong trips. The cafeteria food is really good too: it’s all Ecuadorian. Tonight there is a welcoming party, which will be fun because there are seven of us and the school is no more than forty people. Hasta luego!

Getting Ready for Ecuador

I’m going to Ecuador in three days! :) This fall I’m studying abroad there for fifteen weeks and I figured it was about time to start a blog to inform my family and friends about what's going on.

Here’s a little background info on the trip: as part of my Spanish minor at George Fox University I chose to study with NILI (Nazarene International Language Institute), a new program that GFU is supporting. The program is at a South American seminary and focuses on the Spanish language and Missionary work. There is also a travel practicum, which includes trips into the Amazon and Galapagos, and I admit, this is what first attracted me to the program.

My summer has been great. I’ve worked a lot at a bike/kayak rental shop and got to rent/repair bikes, have fun, and meet a lot of cool people. Tourists come from all over the US to visit and this summer I’ve even met people visiting from England, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and ironically, Ecuador. I also worked at the school as a summer teaching assistant. We had a three-week reading program for elementary schoolers and that was a lot of fun as well.

I was also able to hang out with my girlfriend Lauren, who lives in Portland. I stayed down there for a week in May and we did cool stuff around Portland, the coast, the gorge, and her family’s cabin in central Oregon where we fished and snowmobiled up to Crater Lake. She came up here for the first week in August and we did lots of island stuff like hiking, biking, kayaking, crabbing, and snorkeling. Overall it’s been a great summer and I’m almost ready to leave.

I leave the island on Wednesday night and fly all day Thursday, from Seattle to Houston to Quito. I’m hoping that this experience will improve my cultural understanding and give me a taste of what missionary work is like. But most importantly I want to become a lot better at Spanish so I can become less of a gringo. Anyway, I’ll try to post whenever fun, interesting, and awkward experiences come about. Hasta Luego.