Miscellaneous Week

I’ve gotten in the habit of only blogging about the weekends because it feels like there’s not a whole lot of stuff happening during the week. It’s usually just the same old routine, but there’s usually cool and interesting stuff happening. I’ll try to put something together for this week.

One interesting experience that happened this week was getting a haircut on Tuesday. My hair has been getting longer so I decided to go for it in the spur of the moment while we were down in Carcelén. I was expecting the worst to happen, but the haircut actually turned out well. I was proud of myself for explaining what I wanted in Spanish, and as my parents know, this is something I don’t like doing in English. And the best part: it only cost $4! The haircut included a trim with a straightedge razor, which I admit was slightly nerve-racking.

My hairstylist, Fernando, was an interesting dude though. He lived in Spain for a while and got his hair license while he was visiting England. (He said he couldn’t speak English very well, and the only English word he used was an expletive when he nicked me with the straightedge.) He was really nice and we talked a lot, but I could tell he was gay with his hair and earring (a sign in Ecuador). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with this, but I had to think about the cultural implications afterward. I asked Josué what it meant when he conversed with me in the second person, and apparently this showed that he felt really comfortable around me. I then asked what it meant when I referred back with the same pronoun, and found out this was a way of showing that I felt really close to him as well. Great. The tú/usted pronoun difference (two different ways of saying "you") in Spanish is really important in distinguishing close relationships with professional interactions and discernment can help keep space between yourself and another person. I totally knew this beforehand but wasn’t thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Fernando where I lived.

Another interesting event was a concert last night (Wednesday). It was a strings ensemble of baroque music that played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons among other pieces. Jenna (a NILI student) was offered a bunch of free tickets from the school she helps at so a large group of us decided to go. It was a really good event and I love capitalizing on whatever free opportunities come about. The music group was a travelling ensemble from Korea and we found it weird that they spoke to the crowd in English. I tried translating for Gustavo, but even us gringos had trouble understanding the non-native speech. Afterward a few of us were dying of hunger so we made a late-night food run downtown.

One activity we tend to do a lot is going to the nearby mall. It’s not too far away and we usually split a taxi since they are cheap in Quito. Today (Thursday) we decided to go shopping and I ended up buying a shirt. I love how South American sizes are more slender, and I found a t-shirt kiosk that only had size differences with the height. Score! The shirts were all $16, but some of the styles were half off. I paid with a $10 and ended up getting change back in nickels. We also stopped at Sweet & Coffee, a popular coffee shop that has good drinks and desserts. They have really good prices and their large frappachinos are only $2! I dumped off my nickels on the cashier and eagerly awaited my drink. However, it was strange today because Josué ordered a type of cappuccino and they gave my drink to him with his order. I ordered a new flavor (cacao) but it didn’t look the same and we thought it was meant to be mixed with his drink. We soon found out we were wrong and ended up sharing the drink (a dizzying concoction of cacao frappachino with a double cappuccino shot and two packets of cane sugar). Needless to say, I will probably be up late tonight.

This weekend I am really excited because the NILI guys (Josué, Thad, and me) are heading back to Mindo. It’s a touristy town in the cloud forest about 2 hours away with a lot of fun activities like hiking, biking, rafting, and zip lining. This is where we went to the butterfly exhibit and chocolate factory at the beginning of the trip and we’ve wanted to head back. We are actually staying at the hostel that is part of the chocolate factory so that will be awesome. It will be really good to get out of Quito now that the political situation is pretty much all straightened out.

Another thing that will be amazing: a few of us are going to a South American Cup game on Tuesday! The Copa Sudamerica is an annual soccer tournament for pro teams, and last year LDU Quito won it all. However, this year they lost their last game to San Felipe, the Chilean team that they are playing again on Tuesday. It was an interesting game (I reported on it for a news article in class), and while San Felipe is a younger team, they fought a lot harder. I imagine the motivation had a lot to do with the rescue of the Chilean miners on the same day. But Tuesday’s rematch will be an intense game, and Yoan warned me not to go unless I plan on jumping and screaming the whole time. Heck yes.

Anyway, our classes have been going great and we just started a new block this week. We are in the classroom three hours a day, but the good thing is each class only lasts for three weeks. The first two class blocks were Advanced Grammar I & II and now we are in Advanced Conversation. It is a good class so far and we talk about a lot about cultural topics and current events. I am learning that I need to become less of a procrastinator, as the workload gets bigger because it is harder to put off work that has to be done in Spanish. I especially realized this with a 4-5 page paper that I didn’t do until the day of on Tuesday. I really need to work on procrastination and I should probably start by getting to my homework tonight. Anyway, hasta luego!

Colonial Quito & Last Weekend

Things have gotten a lot busier here. We have a midterm exam and presentation tomorrow, and Friday morning we leave for a weeklong missions trip to Santo Domingo, about a three-hour trip west. I’m really excited for this because we get to do a lot of volunteer work (as opposed to class and homework) and activities with the kids. I doubt we’ll have internet there so I’ll make this post a little longer and add some more details about the weekend.

Today we had another weekly academic outing, which is awesome because we get to learn outside of the classroom. It was our introduction to colonial Quito, which is an awesome and beautiful part of the city. After arriving at the plaza and grabbing a delicious pastry, we had a tour of The Society of Jesus Church, a popular cathedral that took 160 years to build and is almost completely covered in gold leaf. Next we went to the City Museum where we learned a lot about Quito’s colonial history. Finally we went to lunch and I had shawarma wrap and some guanábana ice cream. Later we had some salchipapas at a small street corner restaurant that was about as hot as a sauna from all the frying grease. I absolutely how cheap food here can be. (Large Size = $1.40!)

Here are a couple pictures I took today, including a panorama of South Quito.

On Sunday I decided to hang out with Gustavo and I went with him up to the mountains to the church he works at. We had to take a bus up there, which I’ve found is one of the scariest systems of public transport. The bus drivers aren’t any better than the others and they hardly stop to let you on and off. It is really important to hold on too because they drive all over the place. Even though I’m used to riding on a ferry, I realized my balance isn’t as good as I thought. They will cram a ton of people on, like the subways in Tokyo. The only difference is South Americans value personal space a lot differently, and if you sit down you might end up with someone’s armpit in your face. At the top, the roads were dirt and cobblestone, littered with garbage, and there were close concrete buildings and stray dogs everywhere. I love places where I can be the only foreigner!

The church service was small, but really good, and afterward we walked over to the pastor’s house to eat lunch. On the way, we stopped at a small street corner grocery and bought some chorizo (sausage). Those tiny stores have everything, including chicken feet and other cuts of meat I don’t recognize. While Gustavo and the pastor cooked the sausage and rice, they showed me how to make juice from tomatillos, which taste like the combination of a tomato and a peach. Juice is really popular here and they make it with blended fruit, water, and (lots of) sugar. There are a lot of good drinks here, with tropical fruits and sweet teas.

Oh yeah, the concert on Saturday turned out to be awesome! There were probably about 10,000 people there and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the only gringos. I love learning about new music and there were four different bands playing (I really liked Pescao Vivo, a Columbian alternative band). The concert was supposed to start at 5, but instead the first band didn’t open until 6. This is because of La Hora Ecuatoriana, Ecuadorian Time where everything begins casually late, anywhere from ten minutes to over an hour. From what I’ve heard this is pretty common in South America. Our first week welcoming party started about thirty minutes late (us Americans were all standing around waiting), and I’ve gone to play basketball but had to wait a while for someone to bring a ball. During orientation we were told that whenever we see a time, just to add an “ish” on the end of it. Coming from a punctual society I’m not used to it. Well I’m used to procrastination… I still have to study a lot for my exam tomorrow. Hasta Luego!

Left: Jenna, Josué, and the girl with the flashlight. Right: Pescao Vivo