Quito Ardiente: October 2008

Considering it's been over 3 weeks since my last entry, I thought it was due time to write another one. Although the small business class is now finished, the last few weeks have been anything but calm. I've started doing research and planning into our Library Project, which aims to create the first public lending library in the Valle de los Chillos. Additional house and administrative duties have recently been divided up after last week's departure of the final PD from the first year's group. Also, we have started up two new classes: Beginner's English for young adults, and Women's Exercise, headed by Jocelyn and all the girls respectively. The English class contains 15 students at the moment and filled with joys such as trying to explain how to properly pronounce the word purple. No, it's not said, "perpel" and unfortunately, there are no similar sounds in Spanish. And although, the Women's Exercise class is strictly "no boys allowed," the girls assure it's off to a great start. With over 20 women ages 15 to 68, there is wide variety and apparently a plentiful amount of laughter present as these women attempt work-out videos and yoga for the first time in their lives. On that note, I decided the best way to end this entry would be to provide everyone with a list of strange things I've seen and lived in the past 3 and a half months of being in Ecuador. Enjoy.

Things Uniquely Ecuadorian

- Eating $1.50 almuerzos (lunch) at a typical restaurant. Oh and you don't get any choice about what the serve you.
- Seeing a cow give birth outside of the Casa Barrial where we teach classes.
- Walking out of our not-so rural house to see a herd of cows grazing in our front yard.
- Surviving the now daily torrential downpours.
- Skinning cow legs destined for soup at our community partner, la Fundación Aliñambi.
- Surfing "high-speed internet" that, although it costs fully 1/3 of the monthly rent for our house, completely shuts down if someone is using Skype or watching videos on Youtube.
- Getting used to 10-hour Ecuadorian night buses (even longer during the day) between cities that are only 200 miles apart. Which cost $8.
- Summiting a mountain a month on average.
- Living in mountains twice as high as Denver while being less than 100 miles from both the beach and the Amazonian rain forest.
- Finding electricity-free activities during the weekly power outages.
- Watching Ecuadorians' awe-struck reactions to our house vegetarian as he explains what that actually means. "But you eat chicken though, right? Well, what about fish?"
- Trying to overcome our awe-struck reactions as we continually are baffled as to where all the tasty cuts of beef are sent in this country. They must be either exported or thrown out because they're clearly not sold to the public.
- Viewing stubborn Ecuadorian country maps that still dispute the location of the Peruvian border which was re-drawn after losing its war with Peru. Which ended in in 1942.
- Coming to the slow realization that dinner preparation takes 3 hours on average since everything must be made from scratch here. Meaning it's impossible to find delicacies such as canned soup, tomato juice, pie crust, tomato sauce, blueberries, dried fruit, pumpkins, and most spices.
- There are no jalapeños in this Latin American country. Period. (Which of course correspondingly affects Ecuadorian "Tex-Mex.")
- Living without seasons (besides dry and wet.)
- Trying a new fruit weekly.
- Discovering that the yellow South American spiky fruit known as pitahaya (dragonfruit) is the world's best fruit. Ever.
- Forgetting how to say things in English. Like the confusing phrase "ring a doorbell."
- Loving the 4 different kinds of bananas coming in 3 different colors and 2 different sizes, all of which are far tasty than their US counterparts.
- Realizing it is impossible to buy a movie or CD that isn't pirated and doesn't cost more than $3 to purchase.
- Feeling a strange mix of pride and jealously when I walk by the Ecuadorian-based fast food response to KFC: "Texas Chicken."