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?