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.