Category Archives: Ecuador

We’re officially moved in to our new place, we’ve posted pictures on the coppermine. There are pics from Banos and of the new place. Tim’s sick again, we’ll find out today if he has consumption. He probably just has some new parasite friends (all of you considering making the trip, no worries, you have to be here at least 3 weeks before the buggers get to ya). Tim started teaching on Monday; he has two classes of beginners. The police showed up at one of his classes. But don’t worry, the tourist-sector police are his students. Sorry for the cheesy joke. It was bad, I know.

Since we had a few days free and we were both healthy, we decided to get out of the city for a bit. So Tuesday morning we got up early, stopped at a restaurant in La Mariscal for pancakes and hopped on a bus to the Trebo. The Trebo is basically a big traffic loop, but it is also the last pick-up for buses leaving Quito. After a two-minute wait a bus passed which was headed towards Baños (our final destination) we boarded and about 4 hours later we arrived. Baños is a tourist town, but is by no means garish. It is nestled in a valley between volcanoes and on one end of town there is a waterfall and hot-spring baths. Tuesday we walked around the town, ate lunch and checked out the possible activities for Wednesday (we decided on a biking/rafting tour). That night we headed to the pools and soaked for awhile, enjoying the view and hot water. The next morning we got up early and ate breakfast in the gorgeous terrace at our hostel (eggs, fresh rolls with pineapple jam, tea, and fresh passion fruit juice). We met a nice Swiss guy at breakfast and discovered that he and a friend were signed up for the same tour as us. So we walked down the street to a “Rainforest Tours” where our guide, Enrique, handed over our bikes. Enrique is an Ecuadorian with the look of a Californian. He did an excellent job yucking it up with the clients. The bike-ride was almost completely down-hill and he liked to take both hands off the handlebars and sing “Vamos a la playa, la, la, la” which translates to “We’re going to the beach, la, la, la.” We stopped a few times on the bike ride to learn the names of waterfalls or national parks we passed (we were assured there would be a test later). At one waterfall you could pay a buck to ride on the longest and highest cable-car ride in Ecuador which passed directly over the cascade. It was flippin awesome. At the end of the bike ride we hiked in the forest a bit, saw another spectacular waterfall, a suspension bridge, and some rainforest foliage. Then we rode in a van to the launching place for the rafting. Enrique passed out wetsuits, lifejackets, paddles, and helmets and took us through a saftey demonstration where we also learned the commands he used (forward, backpaddle, get in there´s a big rock, and gimme five). He was an excellent coxswain “faster, faster, paddle faster!” He also liked to pull on the back of our lifejackets and dunk us in the river during the slow parts. We throughly enjoyed ourselves. The only problem was that Tim´s sunscreen washed off with all the splashing and his shoulders got fried. Hopefully we´ll get a chance to post some pics of the trip soon.

Sadly, we´re back in the city now and we both start work on Monday. But we´re excited to be moving this weekend – the cleaner air and proximity to work will be great! Plus our host family has been harder to convince that tim really can´t ever eat anything with milk in it (even if it has just a little) and that I not only don´t eat meat, but I also don´t eat chicken. So we´re looking forward to having a little more space and being able to control what we eat.

Nothing invokes self-pity more so than vomiting. Diarrhea is uncomfortable, but vomiting is like getting kicked in the stomach repeatedly. It squeezes the tears out of you. Luckily, it didn’t last long. I woke up at four am yesterday and endured an off-and-on stomach ache for about three hours. That’s all. But then I was pretty tired the rest of the day. Instead of hiking up Pichincha like we were going to do, we ended up staying home all day. We watched a DVD we brought with us called “Ghost World.” It’s this quirky story about alienated people, basically. After watching it, Eileen and I talked about being losers. The conversation went like this:
Eileen: We’re losers.
Tim: I know. I was thinking the same thing. We’re essentially one loser split in two.
Eileen: Why are we such losers?
Tim: Well, would you really want to be a normal person?
Eileen: What do you mean?
Tim: I mean, if you were a normal person, you’d have to talk about stupid things like sports and what you did last night at the bar.
Eileen: I don’t know.
Tim: What don’t you know?
Eileen: I don’t know. Do you want some bread?
Tim: No. You do know. I mean, don’t you prefer meaningful conversations?
Eileen: Are you saying that normal people don’t have meaningful conversation?
Tim: No. I’m saying that I’ve observed a lot of social normalcy and that it’s boring. It involves talking about a lot of stupid crap.
Eileen: Oh.
Tim: You’re just don’t like criticizing anyone. Not even privately. Don’t you have any idea what I’m talking about?
Eileen: How about crackers?
Tim: Sure.

PS: check out new pics in coppermine.

So, I’ve got a couple stories. First one: Eileen and I were coming home from classes one night on the “trole,” which is just an ecologically friendly, but crowded bus. It has its own special lane, so it’s faster than many of the other busses. Anyhow, it was standing room only and I’m talking to Eileen when I feel an unusual pressure right below my right hip, approximately where my pocket would . . . So I reached down quickly and grabbed a hand. Yes, that’s right a hand. I held onto it and pulled it up and stared its owner down. He was an older guy and he looked surprised and tried to tell me that the bus was bumpy and that he had just accidently placed his hand in my pocket. I stared at him a little more and he looked away, a sure sign of subservience among the pickpocket species. He walked away.

The next day, we were walking with the entire group to catch a bus for “Selva Alegre,” which means “Happy Forest.” Why were we going to Happy Forest? To eat guinea pigs, naturally. So Eileen and I stopped for a few minutes to help a friend who was suddenly feeling ill. We hurried to catch up with the rest of our compatriots only to find that the bus had already left. Luis, the Ecuadorian Spanish teacher leading our excursion, informed us that we would take a taxi and try to catch the bus. A thrilling high speed chase ensued. There were five or six of us in two taxis. We weren’t sure which bus to pull over, and the driver in our taxi was much faster than the driver of the other taxi, which contained Luis, the native Ecuadorian and the only one of us who knew where to go. Thus, the high speed chase involved a lot of looking backward to make sure the authority taxi was still with us, and a lot of looking forward to try to ascertain which bus to pull over. After pulling over the wrong bus, the chase got faster until, minutes later, Eileen shouted “esto, esto” and we waved our arms out the window and honked until the bus stopped and let us on.

And finally: Eileen and I went to a folk music concert last Saturday. We talked the ticket price down to two for $15, walked in and found some seats. After two or three songs, a man from Ambato(about two hours south of Quito) sat down next to me and began chatting about his cattle processing career, his carpe diem attitude, and his being favored by God. He bought us wine (in a box) and candy (Halls mentholyptus). He was very nice and patient, but as the evening wore on, he got drunker and drunker and therefore became much more difficult to understand. It was at this point of low intelligibility, of course, that he began to tell us that his wife had left him. He had hit her twice, and another time, he had given her a leather jacket, which she didn’t like, so he gave it to another woman. Woops. His wife took their son and moved to Quito. He asked our advice, told Eileen several times that she had beautiful eyes, and then wanted to change the subject when we suggested marital counseling from a priest. The evening ended with him insisting on taking us home in a taxi on his way to the bus station.

That’s that. Orientation ends today. We’re sure to become homesick in the ensuing weeks, so keep reading and keep responding everyone.

By the way, this should be our correct phone number for anyone who wants to call us: 011 593 99 807 971

We’re starting to feel guilty about moving out of our host family’s place because we’re starting to really like them and it definitely improves your Spanish when you have to communicate with native speakers. We’re also starting to doubt that it’s financial smarter. The $300 per month at la casa Ordonez includes food — cooked for us by a wonderful cook. But it’s far away. The bus ride to our schools is 20- 40 minutes each way. We’d be spending two hours a day on a bus if we stayed there. Versus 40 minutes if we moved. And the air’s worse at our current location. I mean it’s horrible. I feel like we’re going to shed years from our life spans by inhaling all this pollution

We have a week left of orientation, and I’m becoming aware of the impending shock: we will no longer have a full schedule; 28 of our American friends will be gone; we’ll be moving from our present location; and Eileen’s lesson planning panic attacks will increase in strength and frequency.

There’s also this issue of our internal clocks being messed with. Back home, it’s mid-September. Fall is coming soon. Sunsets will come earlier and earlier until the days are just twelve hours of sunlight. Here, there’s currently 12 hours of sunlight everyday. And no real seasons. Soon, our Wisconsin-calibrated circadian rhythms will tell us that something is wrong, that we’re in the wrong part of the world. Right now, it feels like we’re pretty much on vacation, even though we’re really busy. And so, I think we, or at least I, have this subconscious feeling that when we come home, everything will be more or less the same, that everything will have been more or less frozen in time for us. Of course, since I’m articulating this feeling right now, it’s not altogether subconscious. But . . . see, now I’m speechless, cuz the rest of what I’m trying to say is truly subconscious knowledge.