¡Anita, apurate!

wellllll here I am in La Calera. I love it. thus far. Haven’t actually started my internship, which consists of being IN CHARGE of English for three or four grades….there is a lot to be defined yet there….but I love my new host family. My host “mom”, who is like more of a friend then a mom – as she prefers it – is a huge social activist and is involved in about five billion things, which include holding workshops working against machismo and domestic violence, being an asembleista, working for indigenous rights, hand embroidering shirts, making bracelets, taking care of our chickens, cuys (guinea pigs), sheep (only one), and pigs, taking care of a couple plots of land, owning an internet cafe, raising a 7 year old son naimed Kairik (after the Andean emperor) and a small dog named Abel…Inez, thus far, rocks my world. She was even in a play once.

so yes. we have an internet cafe, attached to the house, and a small plot of land and pigs in the backyard. I was walking around today watching people farm and blast Ludacris from radios. this is definitely a rural area…animals are everywhere, there are no street signs that I can see, everyone seems to know each other, I believe there is one local store, one fútbol field, etc., but the contradictions have my head spinning. Kairik literally brought pachamama (mother earth), our sheep, into the kitchen one second after I emerged from the internet cafe which has a bunch of slick slim screen monitors. it seems to be a magent for the local teenagers, all of whom seem to fall in either rockero or hiphoper sub culture.

I went to the school but still have so little idea of what´s happening there I´d rather talk about the other kids I met. My host brother, Kairik, and his five year old cousin, Peta, are pretty much going to be my best friends. They were the ones that took me on the walk. I found out some other very interesting transnational phenomenons, such as the fact that children seem to love, just love, to steal my water-bottle and will always asked to be pushed harder on the swing even if you are afraid you are going to push them right off. I loved hanging out with them because, well, they really like me. It´s all about making jokes, finding the right moment and the right spot to tickle, and to make them think they are smater then you. I´m glad I know enough spanish to achieve this. “Apurate” means hurry up, essentially, and was Peta´s favorite thing to order me to do, including when I was in the bathroom. When I opened the door she was standing right outside, on the verge of opening the door and dragging me out I suppose.

It is an indigenous community and I have already met a couple people who don´t speak Spanish. they are older, of course, but I still find it amazing in this area, which is not isolated at all, not like some of the communities in the Amazon, there are people who don’t know any spanish. I’m hoping to learn some Kiwcha but it looks and sounds fiendishly hard. Spanish has some of the same ancestors as English. Kiwcha…er. not really. I bought a dictionary and literally could not find a pattern I understood the grammar. vamos a ver I suppose.

It´s also great to finally go a day without hearing any English. I´m sure I will have a day when that is all I want to hear, but I´m excited to see where my spanish goes here.

I´m surrounded by mountains, that I can actually see, and there are actual green spaces. the air is full of dust when the wind blows, but it´s still a thousand times better then the clouds of black smoke that poured out of all the cars in Quito. I´m hearing a language I´ve never heard before (Kiwcha), that the Incas spoke. My host family here has about 20 times more books then my well off family in Quito, and more then half are about community organizing and woman´s rights. I loved helping Kairik with his homework and having his other cousin Rami show me the local game, spinning tops essentially that you throw. I love the fact that the fridge is full of vegetables and I dug potatoes out of the ground….who knew potatoes grew in the ground?! Well, I did, but actually pulling out of the ground was fucking miraculous. It´s food. that came out of the ground. I don´t know how I feel when we knock off one of the animals and eat it but I´m sure I will find the experience equally miraculous. it´s just so much work. Iñez seems to be able to fall asleep anywhere and take deep sleep power naps. I don´t blame her. My bed is slightly softer then bedrock but I think I´ll sleep just fine as well. It´s been a lot to take in at once. I´m not looking forward to when I get lice or fleas, which seems to be slightly inevitable, but I´ll wash my hands and be generally fine. there´s no hot water and no washing machine but this house has three floors.

contradictions contradictions contradictions. traditional kiwcha dress and tennis shoes. more palm trees against a backdrop of more mountains. cows in the street and a cell phone in every pocket.

will post photos when I can. I feel so much safer here. I feel so much happier here. I also feel so much more nervous here. the responsibility of teaching. being part of that pattern of three month volunteers re-teaching and re-teaching the english names of colors and animals over and over again because they can´t afford an english teacher, a pattern I hate and would hate if I was a student. the absolute terror I have of 7th graders, the group I will probably be working the most with.

vamos a ver. I plan to take long walks.

 

time to go lesson plan my first day.

ya me voy

well here is my last night in quito for a while. The First Annual Zombie Pub Crawl, Quito, Ecuador, 2009, was a resounding success. I got to satisfy my Halloween craving by making people up. trying to pack and generally failing. still really have no idea what age kids I’ll be working with, pretty much anything at all. guess I’ll find out when I get there. looking forward to kicking for good the cold I’ve had on and off for the past, I don’t know, month, Quito pollution – literally black clouds of smoke coming out of cars and buses – isn’t very conducive to trying to heal a sore throat.

I’m a bit nervousand also saddened to leave the other people in my program, some of which I’ve made quite good friends with. some other people have others in the same internship site and while from the outset I didn’t “want” that, right now it sounds like it would be pretty good. I am going to be essentially solita, well, close enough to some other MSIDer’s see them on weekends if we so desire, but unfortunately not the ones I am closest with. good people of course but cie la vie.

I went to a house party a couple nights ago in Guapolo, the so called “arsty/hipster” neighborhood of Quito, which I had generally been avoiding as a French girl was shot point blank there a few weeks ago (she actually had been living in Ecuador for a couple years.) at any rate it was this amazing little apartment, colorful walls and bare minimum furniture, music playing, homemade canelazo, and a bunch of people from FLASCO, social researchers, filmmakers, an animated little thin old man with grey hair in a ponytail and a cigarette and beer in hand, and it was great to sit down and chill with some people to whom theater and art were not strange words on the tongue. too bad I’m leaving so quickly, and it made me hunger to quit the program and go find these types and people and just learn that way.

and other then all this right now I am ridiculously nervous, don’t quite understand how I got myself in the position of teaching english, literally being in charge of english for an entire school, when that is the one thing I did not want to do, why I am not in Peru with pupeteers, why am I not x, why am I not doing y, why has my spanish been so awful this past week, etc. etc. etc.

remember, 20 minute walk from internet. welcome to even less frequent updates. or perhaps more frequent actually, planning to make a once a week walk to work on my paper, so might update weekly now.

WHO KNOWS

I don’t even know what age kids I will be working with, if there are paper and markers….if there is not I do not know what I will do with myself

buy them, probably.

I just keep reminding myself this is an adventure, and it will be worth it no matter what, as awfully trite as that sounds.

it’s just an incredible feeling to wake up today and have no idea what my life will be like tomorrow, this evening. I guess that can apply to any day of any life however. you never know. that truth is just painfully, splendidly, awesomely – in the true meaning of the word awe – clear at this moment.

adelante

hummingbirds and conifers, palm trees and doves. this is a country of countradictions, of stagnancy and sudden change, of paros and unending plates of rice. political discontinuity but the light never changes. same dawn same dusk. I feel like I’m stuck in time. I bought a mango from a woman on the street who was weeping. I ignore the children selling chicles as I drunkenly weave my way through Mariscal Sucre, oh mariscal mariscal you won the stones beneath my feet from Spain, and now your heritage is discotecas cheap beer and military men patrolling the streets with shotguns machine guns dogs and jeeps. won’t find that sort of force hanging around the corner of First Ave. or Hennipen smoking a cigarette as they watch you pass, the guns too large to be real how can they be real but they are real. just passing by señores. is this supposed to make feel safer? it unsettles the ground more then the zhumir and tilts the sky sideways. machine guns and glittery-assed jeans, camoflague and cover charges the mist hangs heavy thick how can the taxi even know where the stoplights are? here’s a little reminder for you all, the mountains say, remember where you are.

hummingbirds and confiers, palm trees and doves, I didn’t mean to interrupt this woman’s grief eyes on the mango just want the mango ¿cuanto cuesta uno de etsos? oh. lo siento. tears rolling down lined cheeks as she sends her small son to run a packet of limones y sal over to the buisnessman impatiently waiting on the corner. Simon Bolivar watches over our shoulders the surge of people etched in stone swelling up around him Simon Bolivar I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted this. Estabamos mejor con Lucio. ¿En serio? the things the walls say here. fuera CIA del Ecuador. muerto a Israel. Diagolo por la vida, Sep. 16th. ¡Todos a los calles! the revolution beckons peering out behind cement reaching out with long graffiti letter fingers, black and fuzzy and enchanting. curls around my legs soft softly as I speed past on my way to catch the bus, hope I can find a spot where I’m not hanging half out. wouldn’t that be nice, a revolution, but already the children in the street and the man with no legs who plays the flute, badly, I’m sorry but badly, on the corner of the Plaza Grande in sight of the Presidential Palace well it all just becomes so much background. and then you realize it’s 10 in the morning and shouldn’t she be in school? so much background. Hannah Montana Jonas Brothers y Disney Disney Disney! self-contained reality sucking out the marrow of what could be a real culture both here and in the states.

thunder sounds the same. people still use baby voices to talk to the their pets, which I find to be a somewhat surprising trans-national phenomenon.

Part of me really hates Quito. I’m ready to leave in a week. I am terrified to teach English, yes, but I am ready to leave Quito.  Leave the city. I’m not going to be in an insanely out of reach place. A 20 minute walk to pharmacies and internet cafes and the lovely little town that is Cotacachi. But I know La Calera is going to be different from anywhere I’ve ever lived before, especially considering that I’ve considered the same house in suburban Plymouth my home since I was three months old.

Went to one of the main musuems yesterday. I was very dissapointed, and the art history snob in me, outright horrified (hyperbole!) at the mal organization of the musuem. The lack…well the lack. I have never felt so priviliged to have the Walker and the MIA and also musuems like the Art Institute of Chicago or the Met within my own country.
Just finishing up classes. One week left. Going to lead a workshop for the people in my program. Excited about that. Not quite sure what my life is going to be in a week.

Reading the blogs of friends who are also studying abroad, thinking I’m not seeing things not nearly as hard. but I could never go on a poverty tour, which some programs that proclaim to be about social justice amount to in my opinion. the very idea riles my blood. not that it isn’t probably incredibly eye-opening and beneifical for those who go on those programs, but I’m trying to see it from the point of view of those who recieve this visits. Firstly, are they getting paid? Even if they are, I can’t help but think of human zoos. Third-world exhibitions. World Fairs. I’m setting myself out to spend a little over 4 months in La Calera. I want to go deep. 4 months probably isn’t even enough time to scratch the surface.

This past weeks in Quito haven’t been a waste. Spoken more english then spanish probably, but my spanish still has improved astronomically. I can actually hold conversastions for one. Went to more discotecas then musuems. A different kind of social development right? Stuck in class 8:30 to 4:30…..uy.

readytogoreadytogoready to go.

wawa’s

wawa is kiwcha, the most common indigenous language here and the one spoken by the incas, and it means child or baby. isn’t that deliciously descriptive?

went on a trip with my education class to visit two schools. it got me excited to be around children again…I really loved being Arts and Crafts leader at plymouth’s day camp last summer. the thing is wherever I end for my internship….on which I will give details as soon as I know them and have actually decided where I am going (pretty much know but want to hold off saying something)…..I will be teaching english

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO TEACH ENGLISH *panic panic panic*

Also I don’t know how credits are going to work out for me as I convinced my professors to give me credit for a class that turned out not to be offered (arts and cultural studies track, it’s why I’m in education now) and an internship that included theater aspects I have no idea will actually come to fruition and a research paper on local art forms I have no idea if I will have time to actually study. if my family needs help in the garden or tending the chickens or cows and the rest of the time I’m making up lesson plans because the students need to know english to get into high school, well, that’s what I’m going to do and fuck you university of minnesota.
I apologize, that was perhaps too much of a strongly worded statement. I still want to do all of the things I said above, but I am preparing myself to fail to do any of them and succeed in having an experience I can’t fortell.

Except for the fact I will be teaching English.

Literally the one thing I told everyone in the states I would NOT do.

oh well. one of the schools was practically begging for us to come and teach. in the face of such a need – not just an aspect of cultural and language imperialism, but a bona fide need in order to continue the educational process while at the same time they realize the aspects of cultural and language imperialism and fight to maintain their own culture…but they want their children to go past the 7th grade…and I know English and could probably teach it pretty decently and teach it through my artsy ideas, well, I can’t say no.

waaaugh. anyway, seeing kids play and attempt cartwheels and headstands and push each other down small hills and cry and scream and laugh has confirmed my belief that kids, in any country or culture, when they are young, are pretty much the same. although I definitely give props to the girls doing cartwheels in traditional indigenous dress, the long skirt would completely mess me up.

at the second school some of the kids performed some traditional folk dance, to andean flute tunes mixed with electric guitar solos played on a cd player….they got us up and we danced with them…I don’t know how I feel about it. it was the type of experience that I think can be done very superficially, where we come and pose and take photos with them and of them (except a couple other girls and me stepped out of the photos, and didn’t bring our cameras…)….I don’t know. human-tourism and the whites walk away feeling like they’ve done good. on the flip-side, they generally want to share their school with us and this was their way of welcome.

I am getting eaten up by some sort of bug that may or may not live in my bed…or the moment I step outside I’m getting bitten by something. why is my blood so deliciously sweeeeeeeeet

also my ear with the new piercings is a little red and throbby right now. trying not to worry about it. but perhaps worrying will send more white blood cells to the area! who knows?!

in order to get an ecuadorian prescription for my anti-anxiety meds I had to go see a psychologist and was evaluated in spanish. I was asked all sorts of normal questions, about my family history, appetite, sleeping habits, any suicidal or self-destructive thoughts, but also some new questions for me, such as, “Are your parents sane?”, “Are you using crack?”, “Are you looking for an Ecuadorian boyfriend?”, and my favorite, “Have you participated or thought about participating in any actions or protests against authority?” (Questionably, no, señor I don’t need a boyfriend to be happy, and no but hotdamn I would like to.) Generally in the States these questions are grouped under “Are you using any drugs?” and “Any changes in your normal behavior?” but I was treated to these questions, and many more, that specifically went into any conceivable instance of a deviation from normal behavior. it was entertaining and I think I said “no” more then I ever have before in a period of 15 minutes. ended getting my prescription without any further consequence so I don’t think I mistakenly said anything in Spanish that made me look insane.

and as my parents are half or more my reading audience I would like to apologize for implying you are not both 100% completely sane in eveeeeeeery way possible, riiiiight?

(you may be offended from a distance)

time for bed or rather soaking my ear in salt-water and thinking about the mountains for a while, trying to ignore my distend stomach full of nescafe and delicious delicious lachipungas

love, anita