bye

so im leaving south america in a couple of hours and i wanted to blog one last time just for bloggin one last times sake. after a year of this, i dont have anything too grand or witty or wise to say other than that if you are reading this because you were ever thinking of going to ecuador and argentina, go! If you are reading this because you are interested in knowing a little about what its like to travel through south america, its interesting! if you are reading this because you are just bored on the internet, traveling through south america is good and interesting! if you are reading this because you know me, i will see you soon! if you are reading this because you know me and you dont live in new york, hi!

freelance

so as time is officially starting to wind down for anna and i here in south america. for example, we are going away next week and are quite sad that we will be taking what should be the last 20 hour bus rides of our lives. well, we said after we bussed for 68 hours across the united states that that would be our last long busride over 10 hours, so i guess you never know what will happen.

 

anyway, our time is definitely coming to an end in both south america and in buenos aires. and, finally, as of this week, i can finally say that ive been busy here in buenos aires. about a month ago, having given up on the idea of working, i decided to join the local gym. it has prvided me with much needed hours-away-from-home-or-cafe-or-aimlessly-walking-around-but-not-really-so-much-because-it-rains-so-much. these hours, for most of the world, would be taken up by their jobs. but for me, and apparently for the other 20 or so people who are always at the gym when i am, the gym served this purpose. that is, until last week.

 

in a former blog, i had described the horrid job market here in buenos aires for the efl instructors, and in doing so i mentioned a woman who had seemed to want to be taught by both anna and i, but who instead opted only for annas services. i was heartbroken. however, early last week, she announced to anna that she was indeed relieving her of her duties in favor of my more writing oriented approach.

 

i met her at her house the first day. she has an american husband, 3 cats, 2 kids under 4, 2 maids, 3 stories to her apartment and more rooms than they know what to do with. i think the cats have a room. the kids have a drawing room. there are three computer rooms and generally more than what is necessary. apparently the apartment cost 90,000$, which is not so much for something like that. so, under normal circumstances the house gave off all the cues that i would normally take to mean that the residents are rich beyond belief. but, given that the husband makes american dollars, who knows. still, the woman was willing to pay 10$ per hour for english lessons. a) she speaks pretty fluent english. b) the schools pay, at most, 5$ per hour. rich? maybe. the first lesson went ok. she served me coffee and had had croissants for me to take as well. she wrote some paragraphs. i checked them, and that was pretty much that. aside from an occasional interruption from her husband, who works from home, and the occasional getting up to go talk to the maid, things ran pretty smoothly. the next day, when i arrived, she was in teh shower and everyone else in teh house was sitting down to lunch. i was invited to join and also to fake-oogle at some of their older daughters artwork, which predictable looked like a bunch of squiggles, but i ooed and aaahed enough that she liked me and elected to sit next to me at the lunch table after announcing, quite callously, that she did not want to sit next to the maid. after a parental lecture about how princesses (i think that meant, 'older people') find more tactful ways to say mean things about people, lunch was served. there was meat soup, arugula salad, tomato/broccoli salad, pureed squash, baked salmon (with sesame sauce), baked chicken, and potatoes with peas. after eating, my student and i went to one of the vacant upstairs rooms to have our lesson. there were only 15 scheduled minutes left and she spent 10 of those yawning ostentatiously and telling me that it wasnt my fault. the next day i arrived and she was alone, but the kids were there and all 3 cats were there. apparantly the baby likes to pull the tail of one of the cats. cats are not too understanding about these things, but are also difficult to move when they are comfortable. so, the cat stood its ground, but didnt attack the baby. still, my student/the mother was very worried that it would happen so every time the baby began to crawl over to the cat, which was every time a second passed on the clock, she interrupted the lesson to go distract the baby by rattling things and blowign raspberries on her stomach. as they slobbered on each other, i drank coffee and did my best to position the other lingering cat in very awkward locations that would interrupt the lesson further. it was unnecesary, however, because the hour and a half passed without us doing hardly anything. then, she said that she might want to have more lessons with me, but she didnt know. still, she paid me. i figured that meant it was over, but she said she just wanted to pay me now while the money still had meaning to me (implying that i wouldnt need her 30$ once i got back to new york). but little did she know that i a (as of now) unemployed in new york as well! anyway, we said goodbye. she was nice and her house is nice and her family is nice. and so ends my very extensive and life-altering phase as a freelance efl instructor here in buenos aires. but, you can bet that will look different on my resume...

tired, or retired?

ive always admired retired people. the freedom they have. ive always imagined it as a kind of paradise thing wher eyou get to sit around and admire the facet that youve done lots of hard work throughout your life. you can sit around if you like, wake up late when you are tired. wake up early when youre not. you can rekindle past hobbies if you like, take long walks, take classes, bike ride across the country, you can. if you want to watch tv, throw pie into your face and do headstands on the middle of broadway, you can.
anna and i are effectively retired. we wake up at 9, or 10, then lay in bed for a little while longer. we drink coffee and eat peanut butter sandwiches (our last canister of peanut butter is rapidly disappearing and a new one is out of the question for some reason here in buenos aires, thus our style will be somewhat cramped, but we will improvise for the last month...) and play free cell. we go to the gym. we go about our daily business (one goes to this cafe, the other to that, with the basic end purpose being that we have different stories to tell each other when we reconvene at 7 for wine/fruit/nuts/olive hour. then, we watch a comedic dvd, play more free cell, then, go out to eat, or cook something. at this point, when we are done, it is approximately 11 or 1130, at which point we have the monumental decision as to whether or not we should go to a bar/club/cafe/movie/bed/tango show.
retired from what? you may be asking. and yes, i have asked myself this as well. the retirement was not what we had wanted. exhibit a) we came to bsas with a job connect that turned out to be terribly shady and in the end to not even contact us. exhibit b) the english-teaching job market in bsas is illegal at best, takes a while to develop a good schedule at average, non-existant at worst. exhibit c) teacing english to individuals yielded a student who was going to give us a few hours each week and then decided first that she didnt want me to teach her, and has since begun flaking on anna.

alas

so we are coming home in june anyway and have enough money to live cheaply until then, so all the efforts in job-search are being put forth to the new york market. so, until then, anna and i get to live the retired life. i write, i read, i walk, etc. however, my mini-retirement isnt quite as i would want my real retirement to be - you know - the one that will start 5 years from now after i make 1 billion bux. the main difference being that when you retire after having worked for a long time, you get a pension! that means that whatever you choose to do, you dont have to worry about money. free-time is a misnomer at best, an oxymoron in reality.

but, dont feel too bad for us :-) being tired of being retired is still the good life category!

my pics up to argentina

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4030&l=b4150&id=599517094  ecuador

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5152&l=e2998&id=599517094   peru

 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5153&l=e05b5&id=599517094 colombia

whales, luxury, engagements

so puerto madryn was cool, although we were there a little bit after the season where you purportedly definitely see orcas, we managed to have fun. months of traveling have taught us to sniff out a place where there is one thing to do, do it, and get out. so, we got into puerto madryn, relaxed, went on a tour the next day, and left the next. the town was kind of dead, being that the tourism season is over, and since we didnt overstay, we liked it. our hostel was cool. hostel viajeros, or something. the only thing was that they made us rent towels, which was just sneaky. but, the rooms had cable and there was a kitchen.

the tour we went on was also good. it was just us and one other guy. ther ewas a lot fo driving around in proportion to how much out of the car time we spent, but it is patagonia - it is big and barren. durin gthe driving, however, we saw lots of guanacos, sheep (which dont count), we saw a fox, these weird ostrich-like birds that ran fast, giant rabbits, and armadillos. when we did stop we saw sea lions, sea elephants, penguins and even a franco-austral whale jumping around in the distance. apparently we were lucky to have seen these.

we were out of bs as for 2 weeks and 4 of those nights were spent on busses. so, for the final bus, we decided to go all out. that sleeping at a 35 degree angle, though loads better than the 90 degree angle provided by good ol' greyhound, we were still not satisfied. so we went for it. we spent the extra 10 bux and got the 180 degree seats. the fat leather seats build for rhinocerii the fold back and extend to a full bed. we got a special section of the bus, sectioned off by a curtain that snapped shut so that we souldnt have to see or smell the other people on the bus - the poor slobs who toiled in anonymity in their inferior seating arrangements. we got asked what kind of food we wanted. we chose steak. we got steak. and, unlimited wine (thats an exaggeration) throughout the dinner portion of the evening. and, we arrived back in buenos aires well rested and without the creeky bones that often accompnay a morning after a night bus. then, we immidiately joined the local gym. then, i lifted weights and tor every muscle in my chest and havent lifted my arms in 5 days. then, it rained tempest style and the rain came into our apartment because we were out and the windows blew open and the rain ruined my charles darwin book i was reading. boo hoo.

but, the interesting news, that which the 4 people who read this blog might be interested to know, is that anna and i got engaged. finally. a couple people know that ive been carrying the ring around with me ever since new york. well, it finally went onto her finger last night. we were coming back from cafe tortoni, which is the fanciest cafe in buenos aires, but the coffee is only 30 cents more than everywhere else. it is more like a theater where they have tango shows. the cafe itself is build of marble and has pillars with ornately carved designes in the molding. the waiters wear suits. anyway, we were walking back and stopped in the middle of july 9th street which is the widest street in the world and has a lit-up obelisk at its center (ok, we werent in the middle of the street but the street is broken up into 3 streets with 3 pedestrian walkways running parallel. we were on one of those.) we sat on a bench-like thing. i asked her, she said yes, and then we went and ate steak and drank wine (for a change) to celebrate. refer to annas blog soon for more girly/romantic-like details, but it will have to suffice to say here that i am happy and i hope she is too!

deciding how far to go

so, there are some aspects of travel that people get confused about. one is that it is hard to do. no. all you have to do is save up enough money, buy a plane ticket, get to the airport on time, sit on the plane and get served lunch and dinner, or dinner and breakfast, take a little nap and then poof, youre there! youre a traveler!
then, people think that it is difficult to put up with a lot of the things that traveling serves up. ok, this can be true. but if you are in buenos aires, apart from the weird, darker-than-a-rubber-band genocide that seems to have happpened, life is much like life in new york. even in cuenca - sure there was a slightly higher percentage of ecuadorians there than you may find in areas of queens, but, people still drank water and breathed air. it wasnt too shocking in that sense. even if you go to a place like principal - a tiny little village where people live so extraordinarily different than we do in new york that it is quite amazing, you are still just a bus-ride away, and anybody can ride a bus. so, what is it then about travel that makes it so fun and worth such vast portion of ones savings? i dont know. different people get different things out of it and its very personal.

however

its pretty cool to say youve been to the end of the earth. this is one objective travel goal that needs no justification. the end of the world - where the earth turns to ice and global warming hasnt really done its damage yet. wow.

so, with this not yet in mind, anna and i decided on extending our vacation from bsas to come south from mendoza here to bariloche - the northern portion of patagonia . its hard to gauge where you are in the world while you are traveling. for one, the world is flat in all locations, so even in cuenca you werent thinking, "wow, im so high" because the mountains that surrounded the city didnt look any higher than mountains that start at sea level. you cant really gauge latitude without a birds eye view of the entire world or a digitized map that updates your every movement. so, as the 19 hour bus due south of mendoza sped down the highway during the night, all i could really do was be impressed by the vastness of argentina. argentina is a country slightly smaller than india, but with only 40 million inhabitants. india of course has over a billion! of the 40 million agentinians, 15 million live in buenos aires. so, while traveling throughout the rest of the country, you can really notice how devoid of people it is. we traveled hours through the flatlands with nothing to see but sky and wheat colored grasses. a 19 hour busride is a necesary evil here because its not like there are villages abound for you to get off and break up the trip. 19 hours up the east coast of the u.s. brings you through boston, new york, philly, baltimore, dc, norfolk, etc. plus, there are suburbs the whole way through. even in the most barren parts of the u.s. there are farms here and there. while we were going from mendoza to bariloche, there was nothing nothing except the peopless aspects of the world.

eventually we got out of the flatlands and turned towards the andes. 19 hours south of mendoza, the andes have are mostly snowcapped and hre in teh lake region, they provide people with lots of adventure travel opportunities. but mostly they are beautiful to look at. when we got off the bus, we could also feel immidiately that the 19 hour southward trip had brought us into a new temperate zone. the air here was chilly and the trees were changing colors even though we were only in the beginning of april (beginning of october for you northerners).

our hostel was nice. they celaned the bathroom ever now and again. the people there were cool and nice and interested in doing things. us too. we hiked a few mountains (but took the ski lift down) and saw some nice views of the lakes and mountains and the emptiness of patagonia and we were going ot ride our bikes but hte last couple of days have been rainy so we havent. instead we have done internet adn enjoyed the coldest air weve felt since march 2006 back in new york. bariloche is a nice town to be cold in. it is small enough to not have to walk from one cafe to the next. and, there is an obsession with chocolate here that makes any grey day a little sweeter. although, it is a weirdly swiss obsession with chocolate. all teh houses look swiss or german, they have st. bernards roaming around the main square ready to have their pictures taken for a price, and they like chocolate. the restaurants are kind of expensive, but, the hostel has a kitchen and clean pots and pans so when you cook you dont catch backpacker disease.

but, now that we are here in patagonia, the temptation has gotten even stronger to go down to ushuaia, the last city in the world (currently the only other country - not including chile - that has any parts more south than us is new zealand). there we would see mountains made purely of ice and weird hairy animals. also penguins who are weird too. however, it is a 50 or so hour bus ride from here and an expensive flight. actually when i logged onto the internet today my intention was to look for cheap tickets down there, not to blog. but i had no luck. we met a gril who had just come back from antarctica and did a cruise and since the world is smaller down there actually wound up in africa. its very strange. but, i think we will probably head on to puerto madryn, at equal latitude with bariloche, but on the east coast, to see sea lions and penguins there. we might not make it all the way to the end of the earth, but i guess thats ok...

mendoza, wine, backpackers, and trees

so now that weve decided to come back to new york (june 2), we have been able to structure our lives a bit more. perhaps coming up with time-limits on coffee drinking. perhaps setting boundaries for how late into the morning we sleep. things like this. first though, we decided to take a trip out to mendoza to do our sideways thing.

mendoza is in the heart of wine country and is right smack square on the tourist trail. mendoza also has the distinction of being on the argentinian vacationmaker trail too, and, this is easter week, which apparently is the biggest vacation week for argentinians in the late march/early april timeframe. and, we didnt make reservations.

luckily one hostal did have a room for us. a room, of course with no lock on the door, bunkbeds and no windows. and in a hostel filled with a thousand dirty 20 somethings vying for backpacker of the year award (1002). there we have to contend with the american who refuses to speak english. this character is one you can expect to find in most every heavily backpacked area. they are learning spanish (or whatever language) and have taken to heart all of the snide comments of foreigners concerning being an american - you know - the comments about george bush that are meant to rattle us and shame us to the bone. it is not uncommon to approach people in spanish - it is the common language after all. but, once done, and once the conversation reaches the "where are you from" level, and it is determined that you really are both from the same country and thus speak the same language, and yet when you attempt to switch to said language and the other person doesnt - this is when it gets strange.

we have to contend with the digeridoo playing hippie who isnt from anywhere in particular and isnt going anywhere in particular. lets face it. it isnt easy to meet new people. but, when traveling it is. a simple, "where are you from?" or, "where are you going?" usually suffices. however, when captain hippie decides that he is from "his mother", "the world", or "earth" the conversation cant go much farther.

at any rate, mendoza is a clean, new city. it is not the place to come if you want to see old archtecture or ruins. the streets are tiled rather than cobblestoned. the plazas are actual parks where you can have picnics and whatnot. its definitely a city built around tourism, however. the restaurants are more expensive and fancy - you wont find $2 steaks here. and, everywhere is offering to bring you to a vinyard, a mountain, or white water rafting. all of which are within easy reach and if you make it our of the city to the city park, which is about as big as the city and includes a lake and leaves turing fall colors (probably not all the time), you will see the mountains with their snowy peaks. however, being a wine oriented city, you can only imagine, of course, that mcdonalds has gotten its hand in the game. so, yesterday for lunch anna and i went to mcdonalds without knowing exactly what was in store. i ordered my two big macs because it has been well over 2 years since ive eaten at mcdonalds and i was in the mood fo a big mac or two. but, also onteh menu were little bottles of wine. and this was no mcwine either. this was regular, local wine. the mcdonalds marketing peopel are so clever...

why you might see me soon (if you live in new york)

so, we came to buenos aires with the hope and expectation that the job market would be more or less like the job market in cuenca, just with more options because it is a bigger city. well, let me start over: we came to south america with the idea that we could probably get good jobs anywhere we went because they are available and we are qualified - no - overqualified for the majority of them. in cuenca we found a school. a decent, well enough run school that had semesters, regular pay - all the things you would expect from a school. we worked there for the amount of time we agreed, then came here to buenos aires more or less expecting to find something similar. sure, the pay wasnt great in cuenca, but we werent expecting anything much better and we were able to cover our living expenses and not spend too much of our savings.

 

however, here in buenos aires, the job market is a little bit different. for example, there are no schools. well, of course there are international schools - schools where diplomats send their children. you go to these, sign a 2 year contract, get paid an american salary and sometimes get housing. we are of course qualified for this, but, we didnt think of this last year as we were planning our year. so, the job market that we are thus a part of - the backpacker job market here in buenos aires is quite grim. for teaching english, you are basically a temp working for various agencies that hook you up to teach businessmen. the pay is paltry, and can change at any moment. the classes are not in fact classes and can be cancelled at any moment. the hours change week to week and you might not get any classes at all. you know ,a temp job... after one of these interviews, we decided that ok, we are now in teh system so we might get a call at any point for one of these jobs so great - but it is rather beneath us to try to base our lives around this kind of work - us with masters degrees and years of teaching experience etc.

 

the other thing is that in order to get paid, and to get paid in such a way that the company who finds the jobs for you dont have to pay so many taxes, you have to falsify a tax document called a 'factura' which is also the word for some kind of commonly found pastry here in buenos aires. everyone says that it is quite common for people to falsify tax documents in this way. but the way i look at it, people of my age, education and experience should be getting jobs that give them visas to legally be in countries if they want to work in foreign countries (immigrants to the u.s. notwithstanding). so, either way, the job market is grim. on the other hand, there are personal ads taken out on craigslist for people who want to learn english and will put cash in your hand for your services. and, there is the option of posting flyers so that you can get this kind of work without the agency. but this is not the way i want to make a life. anna either.

 

so, rather than go find another city where we will probably have the same problem, go back to cuenca where it is fine but will cost money to get there and we will only get paid a little, find some village somewhere who needs someone to give out condoms or something all day for room and board, find some hotel somewhere who needs someone to clean up the piss of backpackers for a free spot on the couch, etc., weve decided to come back to new york early so as to not spend all our money doing any of the above mentioned, or just sitting around unemployed in buenos aires - fun as it may be what with the steak and wine and espressos and overall good-citiness of it all.

sort of not the same

so we are living in an apartment in the center of buenos aires. we go out almost every night to eat huge steaks and each night at around 8 we have wine hour, which means that we buy a bottle (no, not box) of argentinian wine for about $2.50, then buy some grapes, some pears, some plums, some figs - whichever fruit we can get for under $.50 at the supermarket and then sit in our apartment drinking the wine and eating the fruit and remarking how cheap and great all of it is. at around 10 we go to the parilladas at which point we order said huge steaks, another bottle of wine - with club soda as its done here - and salads. over dinner we eat greedily and then remark about how cheap and good all of it is. by the time we are done, it is 12am or so. this is what time people ere stop eating. then we go out for a drink or something or a coffee, which inevitably comes with a cookie and a glass of bubbly water, and sit at the outdoor bar or cafe and watch people walk by and drink our drinks or coffees and remark about how nice the weather has been and how relaxed and healthy we feel. the truth is that although we are eating so much steak, it is always preceeded by fresh fruit, always accompanied by a healthy, colon cleansing salad and always followed by an arterie cleansing glass (or bottle) of wine. now that i have a mirror in my apartment, unlike in ecuador, i can see that ive become quite plump in my final weeks of ecuador. i attribute this to the pig binging i was doing. also the copius pairing of white rice with each and every meal couldnt have helped. and, the fact that the most commonly used - by about a ladelfull in every serving - spices found in ecuador are salt and sugar, couldnt have helped. here, though im eating cows all the time. they are not heavily salted. and, they dont come with white rice. so, i feel healthy. we have spent the days - after we deem the morning worthy to wake up to (aka11am) - walking around the city for miles on end, visiting cafes, visiting stores, visiting people weve met, visiting potential jobs, watching people and remarking about how many of them there are - how we didnt know that this city was about as populated as new york, and how we could really get used to this.

of course, tomorrow we have some job interviews and we wont have our days free to walk around town feeling like some slacking aristocrats with nothing better to do, but its been nice.

all tht travelers we have met, and even people we knew in cuenca ill prepared us for this city. the majority of travelers come to south america to see indigenous culture because a) it is most different and b) the places where it is found are generally cheaper than the places where it is not found. so, people get their flights to buenos aires or out of buenos aires when they want to travel the whole continent. they get to buenos aires and waste a bunch of money and grow bitter because they now cant travel as long as they had wanted to. or, they finish up in buenos aires and have already spent all their money and cant enjoy it here as they would have wanted to. so, when you see them in the mountains of peru or ecuador and they are sitting around the hostel hungover from a night of overindulging on the local moonshine, wearing a newly purchased poncho and boiling their daily pot of plain pasta, they will tell you that argentina is not the real south america. that is fallacious. admittedly, we are staying in a free apartment courtesy of annas godfather, and so dont have that daily expense that other travelers might have. but, the fact of the matter is that given argentinas recent economic crash and unwillingness of the people to change their lifestyle, a good bottle of wine here costs less than the bottle of moonshine (ok, i know, the same amount of the moonshine will get you more drunk, but who needs that?). they probably got ripped off for the poncho no matter how hard they bargained or how down with the people they feel they are, and, their daily meal of plain pasta just shows their general lack of creativity. so, i am here to tell you that buenos aires is definitely the real south america: its just different than the rest.

we also have hot water. but, in order to flush the toilet, we have to fill te toilet tank up. but, the toilet tank is not like a regular toilet tank. instead, it is controled by a knob on the side of the toilet and a faucet that pours water into an unseeable container behind the wall. i cant even really describe this... its weird though. and to flush the toilet you have to reach your hand into the wall and pull on this hook-like contraption. to get cold water in the shower or any of teh sinks, the toilet water faucet has to be gushing, and, to get hot water in te shower the sink has to be running too... i dont know how to describe that any better...

change of plans... but not too much!

so, again for those of you who are counting - you will be interested to know that not one aspect of the trip laid out in my previous entry went as planned. some aspects for teh better, some for the worse. well, none really for that much worse because i am here in buenos aires which is an amazing city, and im unharmed.
first of all, i would like ot announce the fact that the road that goes from cuenca to guayaquil shouldnt exist. what happened, in a short version, is that our bus had to stop at 5 in the morning because there was a landslide. we waited on the bus and around the bus for 5 hours. the plow came to help about 3 hours into this, and then at about 10, there was another landslide. this one happend so that anna and i had to actually run away from falling rocks. this was scary, but also an adrenaline rush in teh sense that we next had to run through the landslide at a moment when it was calm so that we could cross to the other side and not get trapped. once we got to the other side, we found a pickup truck that was also waiting to cross from the other direction, paid them to take us to the nearest town, and then waited. this is why we never got to guayaquil so that we could eat the breakfast we had talked about. instead, near the little town, there was a tollbooth that we waited at until our bus passed. we were quite dirty at this point and we had to wait for the bus for 3 hours in teh sun so that by the time we did get on the bus we were more sweaty and more tired. we flagged the bus down and got on and it was a comfortable bs where the seats go back kind of like beds, but there were a couple of crying babies and i couldnt get comfortable enough to sleep because i was still sweating and had a layer of grime and mud that blocked my true access to the chair. a woman remarked that my feet smelled. rather than shoving my sock in her mouth as i should have, i just noted that she was an unhappy person and tried to sleep and ignore the babies.
so, we got to lima and then decided not to spend the night in the airport, saving money though it would have, but instead to go to a hotel and shower. this was a good decision. the water rolled off me black like coal. we also decided to eat at chilis which is something i have never done before. but, since we had recently escaped a natural disaster, and narrowly (i cant stress enough the closeness of the huge rocks that were falling around us - and it was foggy so we couldnt really see where we were going. im serious!), we figured that to spend a bit of money on some baby back ribs wouldnt kill us.
so, we got up at 4 to go to the airport and did. no problem there. then, we checked in and everything and went to go eat a good mcdonalds breakfast (again: natural disaster, us, reward...), and while we were eating, the lan agent came running to us and told us that there was a flight leaving at the same time our flight was scheduled to leave, but going direct to buenos aires. this was better than having a layover - cool as it might have been to go to chile for a moment. so, since they were begging us to take a flight that was better than the one we had planned to take, we figured they didnt need to bump us and so therefore didnt ask. we got the exit seats which had as much leg room as first class and personalized tvs, on which i watched the garfield movie which was quite bad considering how funny garfield usually is. oh well. therefore, every aspect of our plans changed except for the fact that we are here in buenos aires...

and the irony is...

so thursday was my last day of classes and i was actually sad to say goodbye to my students. tomorrow i will be sad to say goodbye to the cats, and eventually i will be sad to say goodbye to all the things i have liked in cuenca. however, i am a bit too excited about going to argentina to to get too sad at the moment.

one ironic thing is that anna and i decided to go back to the first restaurant that we ever went to in cuenca when we came here in july. this is a typical food spot (for food, typical means traditional here in ecuador) that we found wandering around last summer. so, we went there as a sort of cheesey full circle kind of thing, but the ironic thing is that the food there was quite good. well, thats not the ironic thing. the ironic thing, i guess would be that we stopped going there after our first week because the food wasnt as interesting as we would have liked and we went on a search for more interesting food (whatever that means) until today and once we went back to the place we set off on our journey for more interesting food from, we realized that their food is more interesting and tasty than most. thats the ironic thing. also ironic has been our quest, during the past couple of weeks, for non-widely available typical foods such as sancocho, that culminated last week with a 3 hour walk around the outskirts of the city, and was accidentally achieved at this restaurant, our first ever, squarely in the center of town. i had some very good sancocho there today, and a nice, cheap empanada, and even a maracuya juice, which i thought was out of season based on the non-availability of it in other places. so, the irony is in the whole things you are looking for being right under your nose aspect.

so, sitting in that restaurant today, i was thinking about how certain aspects of everyday life in cuenca are vastly different than what im used to. simple things, like the grunginess of the floor in the restaurant, the aprons the ladies who cook and serve wear, the fuzziness of the television that is blasting. basic things. like the fact that there are songs here that i hear everyday that i dont even like all that much, but when i hear them i will forever think of cuenca, but i dont like them enough to buy them, and theres a good chance that i will probably never hear them again. but of course there will be new songs...

so, we are off to argentina and it wont be easy to get there, for those who are counting:
tonight, after a night of packing and carousing, at 3 in the morning, we are getting on a bus to guyaquil. we will get there around 730 - 8 at the latest. we are supposed to be at the ormeño station (our next bus company) at around 1030 in order to leave at 1130, but if we get there at 11 im sure nobody will decapitate us, defenestrate us, or care. the decision process that went into this was as follows:
we have a monster bus ride ahead of us. we could get an ok nights sleep (not good) in our apartment, wake up at the crack of dawn and then take the bus to guayaquil only to rush to the ormaño bus and start bussing all over again. or, party until 230, get on the bus at 3, sleep a little bit on the bus, then have time to stretch the legs and eat a good breakfast (probably at the place we passed by with my parents after we had already eaten breakfast, but noticed that the papayas and pineapples were the size of young elephants) and recharge the damned digipod that only has 4 hours of battery life. plus by the time we do get abck onto the bus, we will be tired enough to sleep. the ormeño bus that has been being referenced will be a 27 hour long affair, taking us to lima. as you may know, anna and i have been expert busriders throughout our illustrious relationship. but, this stil engenders feelings of fear and why-the-hell-did-we-decide-to-do-this. heres why: flights to buenos aires from guayaquil are about $530, while flights to buenos aires from lima are about $280. of course, flights to buenos aires from buenos aires are even cheaper, but of course there must always be a limit to the amount of pain and suffering that you want to inflict upon yourself. somehow, we determined that 27 hours on a bus combined with the cheaper airfare was well worth it. the good news is that we will have peruvian style bus seats that fold back into beds, a laptop/dvd player with a fully charged battery, and a season of the sopranos on dvd that we havent watched yet (season 1).
once we arrive in lima at about 3pm on sunday, we will go to the airport and put our baggage away, then get out to miraflores (fancy neighborhood with things like starbucks, burger king, and other worthwhile things) and hang around until we get tired, at which point we will get back to the airport and sleep a bit. yes, the airport. why? because our flight is at 7am monday, which means that we have to get to the airport at 4 or 5am anyway. and, since we will at that point be on a roll of being uncomfortable and dirty, why ruin all that with the conveniences of a hotel? however, if everything goes as planned, we wont even get on that flight. we have heard that lan (the airline) has been very lenient with some people about bumping them. we have friends who when they flew out of lima, got bumped from 2 different flights just because they asked to. so, they got to where they were going 2 days later, but they also got $1000 worth of airline credit. thats cool. so, all day sunday, as we are walking around miraflores without a shower, and without a place to stay, anna and i will be pumping each other up. keeping each other thinking positively and head strong about how we shouldnt get weak when the moment comes. of course it will be inviting to just get on the flight and get the trip over with, but no. we must remain strong and ask to get bumped! of course if we do get bumped, we will then get a hotel - we arent crazy!
once we arrive in buenos aires, we will shower and go looking for jobs. what kind of jobs? who knows. is that important? yes. teaching english is cool, and it may be what we get as soon as we get there just because we are good and have recommendations. but in the long run, no, its not what we want to do. why? because we have been doing that here in cuenca and despite the manner in which we travel, we do want this next step to be a step up in life.

in related news, both my students and annas, yesterday, decided to take us out for food. my class took me to pizza hut, which is the height of class here in cuenca. they have a garden, indoor palm trees and waitress service. annas class took her (us because i came) to cafe austria - an overpriced, but nice cafe. i would have settled for sancocho and morocho...

 

activity day

activity day was never a good idea.
it is a pr thing for cedei, mainly, where classes are forced to go on stage and show off the english that they have learned over the course of the semester. it is billed as a community event, where parents, doners, and random people off the street who hear the irresistable sounds of the performing cedei students can come and enjoy themselves for an afternoon.
there was activity day last semester, but fortunately for me, i was working in the non-central building and was therefore exempt from the proceedings. the report i received about activity day were not uplifting. bad performances and bad emceeing. still, this meant nothing to me because i didnt have to do it. instead, i went on with my life - went to cartagena, came back to cuenca, bought tickets to go to argentina, ate pig, etc.
however, upon returning to cuenca, the powers that be at cedei decided that because activity day was such a disaster last time, the correct course of action would not be to cancel it altogether, but rather to make it higher stakes. it was so decreed that all classes would have to participate in activity day, and on top of that, that each participation would have to include a performance of some sort - you know, singing, dancing, etc. and furthermore, their performance would count for 10% of their final grade.
now, i worked all those long hard hours online getting my very prestigious tefl certificate. this was so that i could join the ranks of the world changing do-gooders known as efl instructors. this was supposed to be a job consisting of teaching english. now, all of a sudden, i had to become a producer as well.
here is the folly: a cedei semester is 10 weeks long. there is midterm week, finals week, the first week which is spent not doing much, and various short weeks due to holidays etc. this leaves about 2 weeks for doing activity day related work. needless to say, this is not academic in any way, nor is it in any way productive. for example, my class has spent the last week.5 to 2 weeks perfecting our lines for our romeo & juliet puppet show instead of learning how to write a paragraph, or to use the present perfect tense. my other class has spent the last week.5 to 2 weeks perfecting their lines for their axe commercial spoof (which wasnt even aired during activity day because the schedule was overbooked) rather than discussing important cultural differences between this and that.
anyway, point is that it was an unmitigated disaster. theres more i could mention by way of proof, but i dont really feel like writing about it anymore...

instead, i will talk about how this weekend, anna and i decided to go find the pig lady so vaunted and mythological. this is a lady who sells pig, which is the basis for most good ecuadorian traditional food. the problem with this traditional food is that, at least in the center of town, it is impossible to get unless you are eating at the market (which, of course makes it eminently possible to get). the majority of new restaurants opening up seem to cater to tourists, and the traditional restaurants that do exist in town are very much interested in serving seco seco and only seco. which is good too. however, on some special occasions, like independence day, i have seen the sancocho bubbling in pots around town, heard the crisp of the sancocho, seen cuys roasting over open charcoals, etc. but never in town.
my students had told me that there is this one street, don bosco street, where they sell lots of traditional pig oriented food. a couple of weeks ago, anna and i went over to this supposed street, walked along it for about an hour then gave up and went to the mall. this weekend, conversely, we walked towards don bosco from another angle, which took us longer, but in the end was more accrate. so, we spent the weekend eating succulent pig products and being happy about it. then, we decided to not go to a party that sounded like it wasnt going to provide us with any particular emotion. doing that made us happy too.

but to tell the truth, there are some aspects of cuenca that i think i will miss the rest of my life. i mean, i dont know when the next time im goingto be living in the andes is. more than anything, though, i cant wait to get to argentina and see whats up there. there is nothing like the week before a change...
anyway, to makea long story short, activity day is not something that is keeping me here in cuenca and i have to lok past it in order to truly see what great things cuenca does have to offer.

by the way, i may have forgotten to mention the fact that my one class did a video spoof of an axe commercial (which beg for spoofing). it was a good commercial, but we were pretty far down on the totem pole as far as scheduling was concerned and therefore didnt get to go. it was sad, although my students didnt mind too much. their commerical was good. i was hoping for a big teary thing that would have made cedei feel bad, but no such luck.
my other class wanted to do a puppet show of romeo & juliet. they watched the movie, developed dialogue, made puppets out of cloth and panty hose, rehearsed and then totally dropped the ball behind the puppet wall. well, they did alright when they were actually talking, but they spent most of the time giggling into the microphone at each other. they are silly.

average

i guess there is no doubting that cats are animals. i often wonder about their lives now that anna and i are leaving. who will feed them? who will play with them? do they need anyone to take care of them? will they jump over the walls and run away to some long forgotten cat world?
in any event, they were in my room last night being playful/annoying. fat-fat has this thing where he takes abot 30 minutes to get comfortable in a place, so he crawls and prowls around in a circle no matter if he has to crawl over you, your clothes, your food, etc. it is one of his charming things. then, his sister, tentatively named, schmeeberq, is in the habit of attacking his tail when she wants attention. therefore it is quite difficult to relax while cats are around. they are kittens though, so its funny.

also, anna and i have taken to not sitting in the living room anymore. we are leaving soon and have nothing to really prove in the apartment. also, we have a laptop that has a dvd player, so we retreat to our room to feed our sopranos obsession. this includes watching while eating. and, last night i made turkey curry and put it over rice. i made a few variations on the normal turkey curry i would make. for example, i used swiss chard instead of celery. i used cinammon sticks. i used dried mushrooms for the broth. these things make a little difference. but, i wouldnt necessarily prefer it that way over the original way. its just that i was restricted by what i could buy here (celery is outlandishly expensive), and how big the pot was (not very - not enough to fit a good amount of cauliflor). it turned out good enoughand i finished it ravenously and put it on the floor because i couldnt be bothered to reach over to the night table. schmeeberq was cool about it and continued sleeping on the foot of the bed, but fat-fat, who is problematically jumpy, nearly had a heart attack at all the motion going on around him. he jumped down and hid under the bed. moments later, i heard some real animalistic laping noises. with great effort, since i slept on my neck wrong the other night and had a pinched nerve, i leaned over the side of the bed to see what was going on and saw f at-fat dragging my nearly cleaned turkey leg bone out of the bowl and onto the floor so he could gnaw at it easier. schmeeberq was also intrigued by this and was roused out of her curled position and hopped down to join her brother in the feast. moments later, i heard, emitted from the bowels of fat-fats cat soul, a deep growl that stunned his sister.
its weird though because the only cats these cats have ever met are each other and theyve only lived in the backyard, so its interesting to see what kinds of cat behavior they exhibit and to wonder what kinds of human behavior we would exhibit if the tables were turned.

so, it turns out that the dvd player wasnt working so well last night. it kept freezing and so rather than throw temper tantrums and throw things, anna and i decided to spend a quiet night reading. i just got this book from the book exchange yesterday. its one of those books that everyone read a couple of years ago and i didnt, but it seemed like a fast, interesting read. it turns out that the narrator is autistic. i normally dont like when narrations are too heavily affected like that, i feel that its a way for authors to fill their books with mundane observations that are supposed to sound interesting because its coming out of the mouth of a child or an autistic person. usually not my cup of tea. but then again tea wasnt really my cup of tea until recently.

oh, and i was also thinking about something else today: on the one hand, new york is a police state. you cant go anywhere or do anything without noticing or feeling police presence.  we are told in new york that the more guns we put into the hands of eager 22 year old officers will result in more safety for the rest of us. the statistics tell a different story. on the other hand, here in cuenca, people have a tendency towards spending the night on the ground where they fall when they are drunk. every morning you can see any number of non-homeless people laying around, groggily standing up, or not, after a night of so many bottles of zhumir. these people would be rounded up in new york, especially because they dont always choose out of the way places to fall. on the third hand, i saw one such man lying outside my building this morning. he was on his back lying in the gutter part of the street. this man was slightly different though because his face was covered in blood and very much bruised. i walked over to him and another man did so too. he asked me, "have you seen him breathe?" we both looked at him for a couple seconds. then, he breathed. i saw it and said, "there." satisfied, we both continued onto our jobs. now, im not calling for a police state, but perhaps some interventionist attitude is necessary sometimes. me? im excused because i dont know the abulance phone number here in cuenca nor do i have a phone. besides, he was gone by the time i got back from work and there was a huge puddle of water next to where had been lying. i guess someone from the apartment above didnt feel like looking at him there and carnavaled him.

clos, but no steak...

if you were to have asked me two weeks ago what i was doing with my life, i would have told you this:

im going to argentina for a month or so, coming back to cuenca for another semester, going to the galapagos, then taking a flight to new york to determine what will come next.

 

if you were to ask me the same question one week ago, i would have told you this:

we will go to aregntina, come back to cuenca and work half a semester. then, we will go directly to portland maine and open a soup restaurant.

 

if you ask me today, i will tell you this:

we are going to argentina, getting a job and then either coming back to new york to decide what to do next or depending on how much money we can make/save in buenos aires, taking a short trip to spain to see the san fermin festival with some other friends who are going there.

 

things change.

 

you see. we have visa problems here in ecuador. you are only allowed to be in ecuador on a tourist visa for 180 days in a year. when we got back from colombia, we only had 60 days left. however, the customs official, either through the kindness of her heart, or the ineptness of her math, granted us a 90 day visa, which has allowed us to be here as long as we have. when we are going to argentina, we will be flying out of lima. the flight from lima is $250 cheaper than out of either guayaquil or quito, so it makes sense. it is 31 hours away by bus. we are moving out of our apartment. first of all, our apartment has become an uncomfortable place to live based on many space:amount of people who live there ratio factors. second of all, if we arent allowed back into the country, it would suck to have all of our stuff still in the country. therefore, we will be traveling with everything we own. the prospect of arriving to the border on a bus, with all our stuff, and not being allowed back into ecuador - getting kicked off the bus in the middle of the peruvian desert - is unappealing.

it isnt certain that this would happen, but why take the chance when we could just stay in buenos aires (we are arriving during the high hiring season) and avoid that stress. cuenca has been nice, but there are other things to see too other places to live, etc. especially other place that have cheap steak and wine all over the place. ok, the one thing to be really disappointed about - if you were me - is that i wont get to see the galapagos. but here are some things about the galapagos: from where i am standing right now, in ecuador, the galapagos is $500 away - and that is just flight and fee, that doesnt include hotels, tours, or cruises. also, it isnt as though we havent seen any animals. that is how im rationalizing that. plus, argentina has capybaras. so, essentially, im trading a turtle for a capybara. seen that way, its an even trade.

 

ecuador does not have a huge industry for the things that we big city folk would like to think of as the finer things in life. though the traditional food of ecuador can be quite tasty, it is usually not housed in great restaurants, and the food they choose to recognize as their national food is white rice. their national alcohol is unrefined sugar cane liquor. their national beer is called, 'pilsener', kind of like the fly - they never bothered to think of another name for it. the best wine you can get (for the price i am willing to pay) is called clos (pronounced, 'close'). it is tasty wine, but im assuming that i will get better in argentina. all these big-city lifestyle things are starting to creep back into my head as we are preparing to get to buenos aires. the rain in cuenca is back with tremendous force. things are winding down.

i still dont have any definitive parting words for ecuador, that will come soon enough. and i still dont have any definitive plans for what comes next. that may not come.

changes

so, i think ive been here long enough to start reflecting. also, most of the people who we started working with in september are now beginning to end their terms here in cuenca and are therefore becoming more reflective than i have been. for example, one of my friends was talking the other day about how she hasnt quite gotten all she wanted out of her time abroad. she claims to have been searching for some manner of transcendental change that would have come about by being in another country. you know, what with all the time for self reflection and making new friends and following your desires, etc. as she is about to leave, she realizes that this change has not quite occured and she is dealing with that reality. the fact of the matter is that going to another country doesnt automatically change you. all you need in order to go to another country is $500 for a plane ticket. the rest, if you want to change, or, develop, is up to you.

anna and i were talking about this with carly the other day, laying on hammocks and drinking fancy aguardiente at 4 in the afternoon - wondering how much weve developed in our 7 months away - since we were reflecting on that which we have been doing, for carlys benefit. as it turns out, we have found no concrete way in which we have changed. we know a bit more spanish, but even that is such a day by day thing that its hard to recognize. we know more about ecuador, but that is even hard to quantify against what we should know from having been here. still, in the end, carly was wise enough to mention that whatever change has or has not occured during my time away will probably be more meaningfully noticed when i get to my next stop.

true, but there are a couple of things worth mentioning:
my last blog was more or less about how carnaval in ecuador did not compare with carnaval in other places around the world. fine if it doesnt, i eventually thought. then, we went to vilcabamba. in vilcabamba, the taxis are picup trucks that you ride in the back of to enjoy the nice weather of the place and plus you have to. when we got there, it was such a relief to be in a place like that - mountains right there, in a green valley, etc. that we almost forgot that carnaval was going on. riding through the streets, we were pelted with baloons, drenched with buckets of water, shot with waterguns, and people sprayed this foamy stuff on us too. we were sitting ducks. anna became irate at this reality and at one small boy, squirted coca cola from her half full bottle. it hit him. he deserved it. then, when done with the coke and still being assaulted, anna saw fit to throw the empty bottle (plastic) at a little girl on the sidewalk. it hit her in the leg . for a moment, i felt that it was a bit of an overreaction, that we were in a place where we really couldnt dictate the terms of what was going on, etc. that carnaval, during carnaval (as opposed to the 2 months of carnaval lead-up that went on in cuenca) was acceptable and that maybe we just shouldnt leave the hotel the whole weekend.
but then as the weekend dragged on and carnaval never stopped, i couldnt stop my mind from thinking this: what is the longest waterfight ive ever been in? the answer was 3 hours, at most. the reason? because it gets boring after that. and, i have the inkling that perhaps this boredom with wetting people is not only a me thing. by tuesday morning, when we left vilcabamba, we witnessed a group of men who were sitting at a table drinking beers who had been there since the previous night. next to them was another group of men, standing, talking. they were standing in front of a water tap that was probably there for to be connected to a hose on other occasions. one was filling up a bucket while the other 3 talked. one of the other 3 held a bottle of water, which at one indiscriminate point he tossed its contents onto the belly of his friend. the friend jumped back a bit but the conversation continued.

we decided to go on a hike. there was the hike we knew about, and another that we were told about the night before by some co-workers we ran into at a restaurant in vilcabamba. their hike sounded nice and slightly rigorous as opposed to the near death experience affair that the other hike was. of course, last time we stopped short of the real life threatening part, and we figured we would do so again. but, secretly weve been a bit disappointed to have sat there on the precipice while watching our fellow hikers skip along. still, we embarked on the hike with the idea that we probably wouldnt be going over the precipice. the view was fine from where we had stopped last time and it was carlys first hike here in the andes after having spent the last bit of time on the flat, sea-level portions of the world.
when we got up to where the precipice was, however, we changed our minds. suddenly it seemed like a good idea to walk over a strip of land no wider than my shoe with an andean heighted drop off on either side . but even with this firm decision made, there were still obstacles. cows. many of them. now, i am very aware of the fact that cows are exceedingly gentle, lazy animals who even if they werent so gentle would prefer to chew on their own cud than on you . anna and carly, on the other hand, decied that these were bulls and that they would charge us at any moment. i sat down on the trail to wait for them, while they figured out ways to avoid these death defying bovinical creatures. their first plan was to turn back. then, they saw some barbed wire that evidently separated the next property over from where we were. also, the hill became very steep over on that side of the wire and one wrong step could haev sent you plunging to your death - or at least many broken bones. still, it was deemed the safer option in the face of the cud chewing steaks. so, anna climbed over the barbed wire and awaited carly. carly, whose idea it was to not think too hard about crossing the precipice in the first place, saw the potential folly in the barbed wire scenario and convinced anna to brave the cows, who were not bulls. there may have been a steer, but seeing the biggest one pee was enough to convince anna that they were in fact cows. after that, the precipice was easy, sort of, and loose ends are getting tied.

corny-val

now, when i came here and found out that there was going to be a carnival, i got somewhat excited. i immidiately thought of brazil - the music, the costumes, the parties for 2 weeks or so. i thought of trinidad - the music, the dancing, the parties for two weeks. i thought of new orleans - the music, the parties, the parades, the girls flashing everybody, even the perseverance new orleanans have shown in maintaining their carnival celebration in the face of their cities devestation. i even think of venice, with their masks and costumes. i thought of all these places and i felt pretty lucky to be down in south america during this time. however, by the time i traveled to colombia and found out that they too have a carnival celebration like that of brazil, trinidad and new orleans i was just jealous.

i was told long ago, like in september, that carnival here in ecuador, and especially here in cuenca, involved throwing water baloons at people. i was told that this was part of the catholic tradition of purifying yourself, which is i guess what all of this carnivaling is about in some way or another. fine. so, i asked people, "well, what about the parties and parades? are there a lot of parties and parades? wow, the water baloons must go well with the parties and parades, right?" and each time, i received a quizzicle look and a response like this: "no, we dont really have parties. carnival is more of a family celebration here. each family has dinner together and cooks a pig. but then you have to watch out because as well as throwing water, many people throw pigs blood in baloons. sometimes urine." and this response is not presented with the slightest bit of embarassment, an apology for being slightly uncreative, nor is it presented as a good reason to get out of cuenca during carnival. it is always presented with a sly little giggle. and then, "carnival is only 4 days long, but people start throwing water two months in advance." so of course what this means is that for 1/6 of the year in cuenca, you can walk down the street and get hit with water.

there is a graffitti written on a wall near where we live: "carnival is our culture, those who dont play should get hit with a stick." also, many of the tourists you speak to say, "you cant get upset about carnival, its cultural." however mr/ms tourist, i ask you: if it were a true cultural activity, would people throw water at you in secret, or would they be proud of having done it and doing it? one girl i saw get water thrown at her ran up into the building she supposed is came from to approach the thrower. one group of teenage boys i saw throwin water at someone from a bus threw the water and then ducked so that no-one could see them. one woman i saw had some water sprinkle on her and she immidiately started bawling out the offending person, who turned out to be a nun watering her plants on a balcony. a cedei teacher was walking down the street and had a water baloone thrown at him from a car speeding in the opposite diection. the baloon hit him square in the face and basically ruined his weekend. this is cultural? or is it just mean spirited actions of teenage boys? lets compare it to the venerable mardi gras tradition of girls liftin their shirts in the pursuit of beads. in this cultural tradition, you have the beads, which are worthless except during mardi gras, you have girls who would normally not lift their shirts while standing on their balconies doing so, and everybody is happy.

anna and i were walking down the street the other day and a man from behind us called out to anna and told her that she had something dirty on her back (*i forgot to mention this on the phone yesterday...). sure enough, she had some pink substance on her backpack and running all down her legs. i was wiping it off of her and then i too felt something wet on the back of my pants. sure ehough, i too had the pink substance. it looked like strawberry yogurt and smelled like glue. we are not yet sure what it was, but we are assuming it is carnival related. what fun. we looked around and everyone was acting normal on the street. we did not know who to blame or where the stuff came from. even the guy who alerted us to its presence had vanished. it was like vietnam. we didn know who our friends or enemies were but then of course just in time came the local alcoholic, stumbling towards us, warning us that there are a lot of thieves in cuenca. yay carnival. and since it is a family celebration i dont even get to eat pig! we asked our spanish teacher, who is from cuba but who has lived for a long time in cuenca, why they dont celebrate here more like in brazil her answer was simple, ¨because they dont dance as well as they do in brazil.¨

suburban dreams

we had heard a rumor of a bowling alley somewhere in cuenca, and since bowling has become an activity solely for the rich in new york, we figured that this would be a nice opportunity to play a fun game normally inaccessible. we were told that the bowling experience featured 3 foot high beer towers for all to share, and that it was in the mall. we knew of one mall in cuenca, millenium plaza. it is a serviceable mall, small, but bigger than what i would have ever expected to see in cuenca, which is for all intents and purposes a mid sized south american colonial city. when you walk across the river, you can see that the new part of town is not colonial, cobblestoned or anything like that, but rather a suburb just like any other. still, its only a 2 minute walk; down some stairs and across a 25 foot bridge form the center of town for which cuenca is known.

we knew there was another mall besides millenium plaza and that it was supposedly bigger. this other mall, mall del rio, is where the bowling alley is. it was something we were doing for the first time, but seeing as it was just going to the mall, we did not embark on our journey there with any particular sense of doing something new or interesting. we ate lunch before hand at the market - freshly killed and roasted pig torn straight from the splayed body, moté, vinagred onions and tomatoes, and 2 llapingachos. we ate sitting across from a family who was sharing a larger portion of pig. the fat from the skin splashed as we crunched into it.

then we got on the bus to get to mall del rio. the ride took us all around the city - around the outermost roads until there was nothing we recognized. the city was surely no longer colonial, and then no longer suburban. still, i had the sense of not being too far from that which i recognized. we had gone in a semi circle. the mountains behind where we got off the bus were pine and uninhabited by humans. yet, across the narrow street was a mall of suburban american proportions. it was impossible to see the entire structure at once. it was a bright red monstrosity guarded by armed men in bullet proof vests. we walked in through the parking lot as part of a cluster of people who got off the bus at the same time. when we came into the mall, it was clear that we had been missing half of what exists.

the mall opens up into a food court. there are all the fancy bread and coffee spots that the center of town has, times 2. there was a pet store, there was a bar and a liquor store with a lady handing out free samples of apple or coconut flavored vodka. anna and i grabbed a couple of cups and explored through these shops and clothing stores selling italian made suits and otherwise useless items to 98% of the ecuadorian population. it was fascinating in a way, and in the center of it all was a fountain featuring a copy of a statue of a roman soldier. a train rode people around the mall who did not want to walk. there were two floors of this and at the far end of the mall were the bowling alley and the hipermarket, which is apparently ecuadors answer to walmart. there was something very disturbing about it.

the bowling was fun though. we only bowled one game, since the games werent really quite as cheap as we had hoped for. it was one of those glow in the dark alleys, which probably added some price to the whole thing. the towers of beer were exhorbitabtly expensive. we had a cheaper overall bowling experience in montana. but it was fun while it lasted. and, it was better that we chose not to consume the tower of beer seeing as that i was in for special things during that one game. i bowled a 212 - you can ask anybody - and i probably wouldnt have if i were drunk. the only pin i left standing was the very last pin of the 10th frame. it was a ceremonial pin.

after the game we left and took a cab back to the city. a $2 cab, during which it hit me what was so disturbing about the mall. the whole idea of suburbs, as they exist in the u.s. is about getting away from the city. the unfortunate reality is that it has traditionally been the rich who have been able to afford their semi-solitude, and many cities in the u.s. now feature beautifully manicured suburbs and decaying city centers. nobody with money cares about it. however, the majority of the suburbs you find in the united states are located well outside of the cities. certainly not in walking distance. the mall is a feature of these suburbs, where the people need to drive everywhere they go and can thus condense their travels into one stop at the mall where they can find anything they want. on the other hand, in cuenca, this is not the case. the mall del rio is only a 10 minute drive from the center of the city aka. walking distance. the mall is not here because it would be so difficult for the residents of the "suburbs" to get to the center of town. the mall is here because people wanted a mall. they probably watched one too many american movies and decided that the standard of wealth should be suburban consumerism. there is no doubting the fact that american media and the immense percentages of immigration (and the ideas the immigrants send back or come back with) have affected cuenca, but rather than the cosmopolitan standard of wealth that cities such as new york and san francisco share (pedestrianism, nice restaurants well located, thriving streetlife etc.), more and more it seems that cuenca is following the suburban isolationist model of wealth. so, instead of having all of these stores that are located in the mall spread out throughout the center of town, thus sprucing up the town and making it more convenient (surely cuenca could use one or two fewer bootleg dvd stores and one or two more nice restaurants or cafes in some of its more barren central parts inhabited by said dvd shops and stores selling liquor and the inevitable drunkard lying down next to it) for people to walk around. cuenca is feeding into some suburban fantasy it has, where the people living across the river, though it is but a 2 minute walk from the center of town, must go to the mall to get their items as though they were separated by the grand canyon rather than the river tomebamba. it began to disturb me on the way back from the mall that as cuenca moves away from its colonial days and the city spreads out from the center to the outer regions that these outer regions should strive to be suburbs rather than new city neighborhoods. that cuencas model for the future is based more on the detroit/buffalo urban decay model rather than the new york/san francisco/european city lively city center model.

some little american girl somewhere crying

as ive mentioned, my parents came through to visit last week and we had a great time though by the end i was pretty tired. they wore me out walking the city and doing fun things - the problem was that while i worked, they saw estah, so they were recharged. there were too many highlights to put one here and forget the others. i can make a list if you like, but come to think of it - even then i probably wont do it. lets just suffice to say that we did almost everything we could in the week they were here and that they are welcome back whenever they like. ok fine, maybe i will make a little list.

my father managed to rig up a big yarn ball that the cats have been playing with. they are really getting to test out their hunting and fighting skills with that yarn! if i were yarn i would stay away from cats. and whats better is that now they are utilizing their practiced skills on flies. ive seen fat-fat actually catch a fly and was encouraged that next time one of the monster bugs comes he wont leave me unprotected. plus its possible that they get tired out so we can let them in to sleep in our room at night if they want and they will actually sleep and not pounce on my toes or climb all over me or fight with each other under the bed

my mother was able to learn a good bit of spanish while here and actually by the last day when shopping at the market for x amount of scarves, she could bargain and buy on her own. i think she has a natural talent for language - and also for salsa dancing.

my parents were able to reenact their wedding ceremony at the house of an ecuadorian politian/accordian music pop star.

there were a million things. but, the most impressive was that they ate the guinea pig without even batting an eyelash. well, my mother was kind of iffy about it at first until she visited my class and the kids there made it into such a cultural peculiarity that she couldnt not eat it in the end without feeling as though she were snubbing the culture. so she did, and at the restaurant we went to the cuy takes an hour to come out and they dont serve sides while you are waiting so with all of us there trying to kill time while the food was on its way we probably would have eaten rat. it turns out there is some good face meat in the cuy. despìte the fact that there is some little american girl crying at the loss of her guinea pig, we were fed well.

also, my mother was able to conquer her fear of looking out the window of the bus while it hugged the sides of the mountains. we went through cajas during the foggy hours and both parents had a good appreciation of the view and not fear of the potential drop. thats the sign of a good traveler! and, my father was able to sit out back in the patio of my apartment and spot tiny hummingbirds even during twilight and even with his having jsut had eye surgery. maybe they gave him a bionic eye. who knows¿

only the best

so, i lost all the music off of my mp3 player. i plugged it in to the computer at my house, tried to add some music, but when i took it out, all the music was gone out of my mp3 player and furthermore, it was impossible to add new music. this qualifies as a tragedy, especially considering that all my cds etc are in new york, where i am not. i had 190 albums on my mp3. 190! gone. i immidiately recognized the fact taht they were gone. it was a scenario i had played out in my head a million times, i mean, lets be realistic: you cant rely on technology - you cant rely on file transfers and invisible thins to get you through in life. you cant totally do away with hard copies. this was my personal y2k. this was that which was supposed to send me over the deep end. especially living in a country that blasts music and horror movies throughout entire night time bus rides.

yet, when it happened i remained calm. i understood there was nothing i could do about it and i sought a solution. yes. there are some cds that people had brought down for me. my parents were down at the time and had brought me some good stuff. there is a thriving bootleg industry here in cuenca. the quality may not be great (quality of music, not quality of sound), but there is bound to be something...

but at first i was stuck with nothing. a blank slate. from that point on whatever i did was representative of who ive become and not who i was (and i must admit, there was some music on my old mp3 that was only there because of force of habit andnot becuase i was excited about it), so i took stock of what it was. az, the format. good. blockhead. good. the roots newest album. always a safe bet. the juggaknots newest album. ugh. not too good. there are some songs there that are ok. the newest album by zero 7. not all that great. the newest inspektah deck album. yikes! what was i thinking? if he didnt sell another album other than the one i bought, i would understand. there were some other good albums i was left with and some more on the way when carly comes to visit soon, so whereas i wouldnt ever replace my old collection, i would certainly have enough that would necessitate buying an mp3 player.

so i went to the electronic store that i had once bought an electric shaver from. the shaver turned out to be crap, but it wasnt the stores fault - i had quite consciously bought the cheapest one. i looked to see what they had by way of 2g mp3 players. i saw the ipod nano sitting there, all shiny, for $140. but no. as soon as the idea of myself having that ipod crossed my mind, my automatic get-the-cheaper-shit button clicked in my head. my instinctive aversion to top of the line stuff took hold and i saw sitting next to the ipod, in a dustier box with two handwritten stickers on it, one that said $125 and one that said $110, i saw the digipod. clearly i bought the digipod. my confidence in technology strained as it was, i figured the least i could do was to save a couple bux.

so i was with the new mp3 and the music that had been brought or sent to me had not yet put a dent in the memory space, nor would it suffice for the next 6 months. so, i was forced to make do with the music i had acquired here. some cumbias. fine. the new jay z album. ok, not a classic, but ive convinced myself that i like it because it is the only rap available here in ecuador. if i dont like it, it is 1/20 of my music down the drain, so dont burst my bubble! the newest christina aguilera album. yes, i said it. but let me explain... the album was given to me by one of my students who i had made do a presentation on english music. its not my fault and im in no position to be throwing music away once i get it. plus, i have to admit she does kind of have a nice voice.

needless to say, within 1 day, there were problems with the digipod. there was a hidden folder worth 1g taking up space in the harddrive and i didnt know how to get it out. i tried everything i knew how to try and then took it back to the electronic store to have it checked out. long story short is that the guy there was nice and it took him about an hour to realize that all that was needed was to format the hard drive and then all was well. we talked a bit and he even gave me some music from off the computer. sure, it was the amelie soundtrack and beethovens greatest hits, but who am i to complain?

stationary

its hard for me to believe that i went so long in my life without flossing. it seems that this has been the reason for my uncontrollably decrepit dental health. a reason that is on its way to becoming moot. my parents came to visit and brought with them, as a gift, those handheld 1 time use flossers. wow. they have already changed my life. i have been brushing quite regularly since i was little, but yet the first time i flossed with this new life-saving device, it was quite a disturbing scene invloving pounds of what had become rancid meat.

the reason why it is ok for me to be receiving packages like this instead of sending loads of things back home is that for some reason, in the last couple weeks or so, anna and i have more or less come to terms with living in cuenca. deciding not to be a traveler has taken quite a long time. even though the intellectual idea was there a while ago, the realistic motions of the thing have taken a few months to become natural. for example, before leaving to come to ecuador in july, i shopped for said hand-held flossers. however, upon packing my bags, i found that my bag would be too stuffed if i were to leave them in. so, i took them out and figured that as long as i brushed, all would be well.

point is though, that now i am able to be a consumer here in ecuador. now that im not traveling. now that anna and i have decided to stay in cuenca until july, we can begin acquiring things that will weigh us down, such as: every season of sopranos that has ever existed. windows 2007 (for $2), and dental floss.

yes, it is a big turnaround for us to be wanting to now stay in cuenca, but these things happen. and, once it has happened, everything seems better. the food, once bland, is kind of interesting and tasty if you are willing to get off the travelers budget for one second and spend $1.75 on a meal rather than $1.25 (note that the travelers budget always accounts for copius amounts of alcohol and passes on food quite often). the people in cuenca are really pretty nice once you try talking to them and it is easier to make friends when you tell people you will stay around for longer. all of these things are intellectually obvious, but not so much so when you try to act it out. so, this cuenca is where you can find us, and wherever you are in life, it is pretty important that your breath not smell like rancid meat.

pacifist cats

the other day anna and i were walking to the colisseum to go work out and we noticed that strewn all along the sidewalks were these massive, hard-shelled beetles. they were abouth the size of my fist and their backs loked to be protected by something like a helmet. many of them were dead, but one was on his back trying to turn over. he couldnt, so i kicked him over and he groggily climbed up a wall.

one of the nice things about the little indiscretion performed by my ex roomate/friend who had to flee our apartment is that anna and i got her room. her room, which is now ours, has a large window opening out to the patio. nobody else goes on the patio so i spend a lot of time there now reading, or just sitting and listening to birds. our old room had a window weirdly overlooking the downstairs apartment where the girls who lived there would smoke cigarettes all day long.

ive been trying to make the male cat tough ever since iveknown him. his natural nature when he sees somone is to run away. he always does it. but, once he knows you he will come to you and sit on your lap. i play tranquily for a while and then usually dangle a string in front of his face which agitates him into violence and he flips around and gets frustrated that he cant get to it. when i got back from colombia he actually caught the string i dangled and ripped it from my hands. he then slunk off with it back to his den and tortured it like a good cat.

yesterday i was sitting on the patio reading a book as the sun set. when it got dark i turned the lights on and continued. it was a nice warm night with a cool breeze. suddenly, i heard what i thought was a moth flapping around bumping into the walls next to the lights. i was startled by the force with which it was slamming itself into the walls -each time there was a crack and i couldnt tell if maybe the walls were coming down. i soon realized that it was one of the football beetles and it whizzed by my head and landed itself on the laundry machine. i went over to inspect it and found that it is certainly a relative of the rhinocerous as it har two distinct eyes and a horn poking out from its nose and from its head.

i was watching it and the girl cat came up from and pounced onto the laundry machine and eyed the bug. i anticipated a fight. the bug didnt move and the cat inched closer to it and put her nose to it. she didnt do anything so i assumed that it was a sort of cat hunting ritual. in a second she snaped straight and began pawing at the bug. the bug stil didnt move - not even an antenna, and the cat soon grew bored. i was disappointed because i wanted to see a fight, but i sat back down andd awaited the boy cats turn. strangely though, he was nowhere to be found. once, he ran upstairs from the garden where the cats like to hang out, but when i went to grab him to show him where the bug was, he did his favorite run away routine. i waited another ten minutes, the bug didnt move, and the cat did not come back. so, i plucked at their metal fod bowls and the sound attracted them both. they ran to me but the boy cat noticed first that it was a ruse. he ran back downstairs. the girl cat, who i believe is learning disabled in some way - but is evidently brave, stayed and allowed me to pick her up and put her near the bug for a fight. she accomodated for as long as it interested her, pawing and sniffing at the unresponsive beast, but soon joined her brother back in the garden. anna told me that they are babies and couldnt be expected to hunt so well, but i think they are old enough to find their own food if need be.

later, we were in our room and opened our window. this always attracts the cats who prefer to stretch out on our bed rather than doing anything else catlike. soon enough the boy cat came bounding through the window, but i was there to catch him this time. i brought him out to the laundry machine where the bug was still sitting dormant. i knew, just knew that the waving of the antennae would remind fat-fat the cat about the string and he would attack and eat. instead, nothing. all he did was paw - without nails- and then try to leap back into our room and take up bedspace. i stopped him and closed the window.

back in cuenca, pt 126

we got back to cuenca last week after logging a good 22 hours on a bus. but, we split the bus time up so it wasnt that bad. we left the jungle at about 530 in the morning, which was not too hard to leave because of the vast amounts of huge cockroaches that were crawling around everywhere in our room. we enjoyed the jungle and our vacation in general to such a degree that it would have had to have taken something like an invasion of waterbugs (seriously too many to count) to make us agree to come back to cuenca. the bus from our river to lago agria was fine because it was early and i got a seat in the front where i could stretch my legs. i went to sleep, and apparently the bus driver did too. luckily i slept for more time than the busdriver did. anna, who didnt sleep, told me that the bus driver dozed off and the bus rolled off the road at one point. oh well, an adventure i missed...

we got to lago agria at 830 and our next bus to quito left at 10 or so, so we sat and then ate a breakfast of coffee and chicken with rice. yum. the next bus was not so bad either even though it was a 7 and a half hour ride. the ride took us from sea level well into the andes and the weather changed. secretly i was happy to have the cool mountain air. secretly only because i had made a huge effort at not wanting to come back to the mountains. it had been the rainy season and while we were at sea level, be it the coast or the jungle, it didnt rain once. still, the cool air was nice. ther ewere the usual arguments with the ecuadorian bus riding public insofar as their not wanting the window opened is concerned. i dont understand it. i have to overcompensate just to prove my point and throw the window wide open even when it is cold so i normally ride the bus wearing a sweater tied around my neck. very classy.

we got into quito and immidiately went to the internet shop from where i posted my previous post. then, went to watch football at one of the overpriced bars with an american theme that have taken over the mariscal area of quito. unfortunately the colts won, and we had to leave midway through the cowboys-seahawks game to go catch a night bus to cuenca. its a 9 hour ride and featured teh regular cast of crying babies, men with tuberculosis or some other juicy coughing disease, closed windows and fights over opening the windows. one guy reached around my head when he though i was sleeping in order to close my window. i was awake, reopened the window and we had a bit of a staredown. i was right though and the window stayed open.

we got into cuenca at about 730am and it was drizzling a bit, which was disappointing, but this was the last time ive seen rain. apparently this is bad because rain means that we have electricity because everything is hydro powered. my personal belief is that this reliance on torrntially downpouring weather only breeds more of it. perhaps if ecuador changed its electrical policy, the rain would feel unwanted and only come at regular intervals. i should be in charge of energy and stuff.

ive started working again and classes are going fine. a few new cafes opened up so ive been sitting in them. it has been nice to see people i know, the cats are bigger. we have a couple of different roomates, which has taken some getting used to, but we will survive i guess. and, we have a brand new $8 per day budget which has been weirdly easy to follow. things couldnt be better. so thats that.

believe in the jungle

i have developed the habit of not believing people when they say things. part of this is due to peopels incessant bragging, and part due to other factors. for example: in colombia we were taking a van from here to there down a hot, dusty road. a goat ran by in front of the van and the van had to stop short. everyone slid forward and was slightly alarmed. the driver apologized. i saw the whole thing happen, though many did not. i told anna, "a goat ran by." nearby, in a separate conversation, a guy said, "i think it was a dog, goats dont run like that." i fle tno need to respond or justify my opinion. i was never in doubt. the driver heard the discussion and announced that a goat had run by. the other guy was quiet. i didnt necessarily feel vindication because i never thought i was wrong.

we met a girl in colombia who claimed that she had traveled extensively and lived in africa. she had also lived in new york city and had many interesting jobs. yet, her other topics of conversation included, exclusively, how drunk she was and had been - and her urinary tract infection. something was incongruous. then, we found out that she was 21 and had just graduated college. she had studied abroad in egypt and visited other countries for a short amount of time (different connotation than what she had originally announced). and, i didnt ask, but im assuming she did some sort of internship in new york.

 

so, when we got to the jungle, i didnt know what to think. first of all, it is difficult to imagine the expansiveness of the jungle. we were in teh amazon basin and ecuador doesnt even touch the amazon river itself. we were on the cuyabeno river and we were about 5 hours of busride into the jungle, and then a conoe ride. we conoed (in a canoe with motor) some three hours from where we were - all dense jungle, dripping and humid with bird calls, monkeys and insects filling the air with noise. still, on the map we hardly traveled any significant distance even in ecuador - a tiny country that is half jungle. the rest of the amazon basin is in larger portions of peru, colombia and of course brazil. we canoed so much that i figured we must have crossed into brazil, but no. at night, the chatter of birds and insects far off sounded like the chatter of a nearby family gathered around the tv, but no. we were in pretty deep as far as im concerned but space in the world is difficult to gauge, so there was always the sneaking suspicion that we were in the bronx zoo somewhere, lost.

 

we brought a bottle of rum into the jungle, but that was gone after the first night due to our having met some nice people and hanginga out with our guide, romulo. after helping himself to significant portions of our rum, romulo became drunk and talkative. he told stories of staring jaguars face to face. he told stories of capturing 30 foot anacondas and fishing pirhanas with his machete. i figured that i, a city kid, had no real ground to stand on from which to not believe him until he made one slip-up. he brought out two drink concoctions to contribute to the party. one was a sugarcane moonshine steeped with a special tree bark. it was kind of tasty and aromatic and it burned your insides. the other, which burned more, was a sugarcane moonshine steeped with coca leaves and a dead scorpion. the scorpion juice was given the distinction of being the source of his strength. he said it made him stronger and never made him chuchaqui (hungover). he could drink it all night and get up at daybreak and do manual labor, then catch an anaconda. even more than the scorpion juice, however, was a remedy his grandmother made him drink when he was young. she killed a turtle once, they ate it, and she made him drink the blood of the turtle. that turtles blood (since turtles live so long) has made it so that he has never been sick and is always strong and ready for action. still, i had no reason not to believe him. later though, many drinks down the road, his voice more slurred, he told a story about how strong his father is, and that once when he was sick, his father lifted a conoe all by himself even though romulo was supposed to help. ha! when he was sick, i thought, what happend to the turtle juice remedy?! great, i thought, we are being led around the jungle by a cocky, lying 19 year old kid!

 

the next night, we went on a conoe trip down the river searching for wildlife. the river is of the muddy, murky jungly sort and the banks are muddy as well. it is hard to spot things during the day. at night, when it is dark, the task becomes tougher. romulo positioned himself at the front of the canoe, with a weak flashlight in hand, while i was content to sit back, listen to the bugs, and not think about what would await me if the boat tipped over. every so often, romulo would announce that an alligator was on teh banks. when he shines his light on them, their eyes glowed red. most of them would slide into the water when we came too close. most of them i didnt see. one time, under a large fallen tree, and the growth around it, romulo spotted a red eye. we paddled over to the banks, and i didnt see what he was talking about, so i thought maybe it had either slid into the water, or he was making it up. from where i was, all i saw was romulo bend over the side of the canoe, then i heard some banging and within a few seconds, romulo stood up holding a caiman (a type of alligator). he held it up by the neck and the pelvis. he brought it through the canoe for all of us to pet. it was hard like a rock and scaly. he told us that you can tell its age by how many spikes its tail has. this one was 15 months old. he opened its mouth and showed us its razor teeth, and put it back in the water. the whole boat was exhilerated and i decided that i had no right not to believe his stories.