50 States

Yesterday I attended a lesson in Ecuadorian history. Like most evening activities at my school, almost no one attended. I sat in a stuffy, wooden room on the top floor with a young German girl-- Germans make up the majority of our small student body-- and an older Swedish woman. We talked for a bit, then then the professor came in and proceded to explicate the history of her country in rapid Spanish, none of which I understood.

She explained the colors of Ecuadorian flag, their significance, and the pride in the Andean Condor, the widest bird in the Western hemisphere. She asked about the colors and meanings of our flags. I told them that the 50 stars in our flag represent the 50 states. The Swedish woman and the teacher both twisted their faces.

"You have 52 states, no?" asked the Swedish woman. I said, no, and then she said, no, that Alaska and Hawaii made 52. We argued until I said, Yo prometo, I promise. Soy Americano.
Before I left for Ecuaodor, I visited with my grandfather, and he advised me to always remember that I´m a guest when I travel. In my first week here I have been timid, polite, humbly learning, and softspoken, a true guest, because when you don´t know the language and your skin and tongue are different than everybody else´s, it seems improper to be bold and outspoken, and because of this I have diminished my swagger and insisted on nothing. But not this time goddamnit. If I know nothing else I know that my country has 50 states. Yo prometo, I said again, but the two women looked at me with suspicion, and I felt that my intelligence, not as a person, but more imporantly, as an American, had been challenged. Then the professor moved on to explain that the Andean Condor has a wingspan of eight meters, and I realized that she was generally misinformed.
But the next day I experienced a foreign dose of neuroticism. What if the Swede was right? What if I was wrong about such a constitutional fundament, ousted by two 0lder foreign women who thought a condor had a wingspan of 25 feet? If so, how should I feel as an American? As if it´s not enough that I am an awkward, tongue-twisted gringo, but that I might not even know how many damned states my country really has. I immediatley found a computer and looked it up. Tengo razón, thank god, tengo razón.

On another note, I am trying to break my nocturnal habit of watching telenovellas (primetime soap operas) about Columbian cartels with the family. Instead I am trying to make friends and go out. Quito has a vibrant night time scene. In the old city, there is a street with very old stone shops where men play mariachi-like guitar songs in open air courtyards or next to your table. The bathrooms are closets, and they serve hot liquors, like hot cinnamon cane liquor. In La Floresta, or Gringolandia, tourists flock through the clubs and themed bars and take over the streets, even during the weekday nights. I went to a bar in gringolandia with a friend from school, hoping to sit at a patio, but someone working there told us it was a bad place to drink and showed us a "better" bar. Inside it was lit with dim violet nights and they played American 80s music. It was terrible. Of all the genres they could have selected from our rich musical collection, they played U2 and Oingo Boingo facsimiles.

I think I am leaving Quito in a week, although I´m not sure where I am going. I will have eight weeks to volunteer or see beaches, jungles, islands, farms, schools, waterfalls, mines, ruins, cities and countrysides of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador or other countries. But obviously, I don´t have time for all of it. If you were here, where would you go?

No pictures, sorry

I don´t seem able to post pictures. I am experiencing miscommunications with all the computers I´ve encountered so far. Until I figure out, I guess just use my descriptions and your imagination combined.

Week 1 Narrative and Notes

I am going to play around with some different formats, and I will try to make more narrative style posts every week, entonces....

I arrived at Quito last monday late during carnival. I was picked up at the airport by a man named Xavier that I haven´t seen since. It was hard to discern anything about the city except that it was empty. When I arrived at the house, it was near midnight, and Xavier pulled over on a quiet, modest if not a little poor, neighborhood. Manuel, the father, immediately jumped out of the apartment to greet me. I sat in the living room with my new family, Manuel and Nelly, who both used to live in Tena, a large town in the jungle, before moving to Quito where they now live with all their daughters and other family in the same neighborhood. I gave them a few gifts and we talked for ten minutes before they showed me my and retired to sleep.
I hardly slept the first night. The room was plain, with a few simple pieces of furniture, and a small bed as the centerpiece of a room without any color besides the sheets and the orange streetlight that pushes through the large window that spans the length of the wall.
Sometimes in the early morning I hear the neighbor´s rooster (gallo) singing very early, and soon after, the street dogs fighting until I wake up and wonder where the hell I am. The orange light in my window somehow reminds me that I´m in Ecuador. It illuminates the austerity of my simple room, and through the window, beyond a tangle of powerlines, I can see a small mountain village on the horizon. I always feel very sober then, and I am glad that I am not lying in bed drunk or naked or dubiously reflecting my future, instead I´m just a student and a traveler living politely with a family in a modest apartment, sleeping in a bedroom perfectly fit for me grandmother, and I am immediately refreshed and ready to sleep again.

For other less-narrative travel notes: I have since explored more of Quito. I have had a chance to wander the Historical District, which is filled with gold-interior churches, spacious plazas, and remarkable old Spanish buildings. Some of the churches have walls completely covered in gold. My friend and tutor in the States tells me that the gold comes from a small mountain town in the South, Zaruma, where children and adults both mine the mountains without any safety equipment and make the ore with their bare hands, handling mercury directly, for what amounts to a small amount of money for them.

Yesterday I took a gondola to the volcano overlooking Quito, and then I walked to the ridge, 4,700 meters (or about 15,000 feet) above sea level. I am not yet used to the altitude (Quito itself is 9,000 feet high) and on the part, a few hundred feet of sandy rock at a 45 degree angle, I had to stop to catch my breath every five to ten steps. It was good for me to climb slowly, because there is a surprising dropoff at the ridge, and people in the past have fatally fallen over because they did not pay attention. At the top, I howled for a moment and went back down. The views were spectacular but I realized what I like most about hiking is not the physical challenge but the coooperative participation with the forest. I suppose I´m a hippie, but I always feel better among trees and flowers, and in places like the Appalachians, I am always reinvigorated by the forest, its colors and energies. However, there is nothing hospitable about the top of a volcano. There is little flora and something about the weather and sharp drops sends a clear message to me as an animal, ¨don´t press your goddamn luck.¨ I didn´t. I went back down where it was sunny again. From Pichincha you can see just how big the city is. Because it´s in a mountain valley, it is very long but not wide. The last census in Ecuador (2001 I think) said 1.3 million people live in Quito, but I think it must be more than two million easily.

Before I finish posting, it´s probably worth commenting on the common gringo experience. I suppose every white American experiences this when traveling to a foreign country, even in a place like Quito, where lots of young white students come to chill, learn and travel. I think that being a gringo is kind of like being a white person in southern Dorchester or Harlem, except that people laugh at you. Taxi drivers always try to charge me too much and if you´r in a neighborhood without a lot of tourists, the locals have a special ridiculing smile intended just for you. I am trying to embrace it. I suppose it´s important for everyone to experience what it´s like to be the minority, especially for a white male who grew up in the suburbs. I think the only possible way to diminish the gringo factor, is to learn spanish proficiently, but even this I guess isn´t enough. I hear there are advantages to being a gringo, though. I just need to figure them out.

A quick hit list of interesting notes:
-The buses here are privately owned and compete for routes, which means the city has privately owned public transportation.
-Most everything is cheap (25 cents a bus ride, 2 or 3 dollars for lunch) unless it is imported. -There is a 70% tax on items imported from United States. I´m not sure why, I will research it.
-Right now flooding is causing a state of emergency along the coast. If you look to the news items to the right, there will likely be more information.
-The temperatures stays very consistently between the 50´s (in the morning) and low 70´s (afternoon). Despite the coolness, Quito is the worst place for sunburn because the sun is so strong. We are 9,000 feet up and right next to the equator.
-Ecuador, I believe, was the first colony in South America to revolt against the Spanish in 1809, although they didn´t win independence until 1822 (more history later).

Ok, this blog is long enough, paz, Sam.

In Quito

I have been here less than two days, and I have many impressions, but what has impressed me most so far has been the fruit. I live with a wonderful and kind family in a small neighborhood in La Vincentina. When I walk home, I know I am near because one of the neighbors owns a rooster with a busted clock. He often crows at two or three in the morning and wakes me. At home, mi nueva madre prepares fresh fruit for breakfast and makes her own juice from tomate de arbol, or tomate dulce, which means tomato of the tree or sweet tomato. It is a small fruit and it is better and sweeter than any orange, apple, or pear I have had before. She serves the juice from a bowl. In the grocery store there are many fruits I have never heard of before and I am making it my mission to try them all before I leave.

The city itself sits in a tall valley in the middle of the Andes at 9,000 feet above sea level. It is the second highest capital city in the world. La Paz, Bolivia is the first. Because of this, the city is very long, but not wide. Hanging over the city is an active volcano, Pichincha. It erupted just more than ten years ago, but only released a few inches of ashes on the city. To the south there is another volcano, Cotopaxi, which is allegedly the highest active volcano in the world. It is possible to climb both of them.

I admit so far what I have seen of Quito is not especially pretty. There are many stray dogs in the streets, lots of trash, and a whole lot of smog from cars and buses, but I have only walked through two neighborhoods so far, and there is a lot more to explore. I will try to post pictures soon. Paz.

Last Day Home

I leave tomorrow in the afternoon, depending on snow showers. I was going to explicate my reasons and the process of my choices that lead me here, but I think that is probably mostly uninteresting and just blog fodder until I arrive. My best and simplest reason for traveling is to have an adventure. I am a restless person, and I am uncomfortable when I get too comfortable somewhere, which is why I've moved around so much in the last few years, always trying to find something new. I think freedom is always personal. For me, freedom is a sensation, and it depends on my mobility forward. If I keep moving, I can stay free, and this is the most wonderful high I know yet in my young life.

More importantly, I want to thank everyone who has helped support me through the last few months. The growing enthusiasm of friends and family has truly helped foment my determination to make the trip happen and sustained my good spirits as I prepared. If not for you guys, I probably would have just drank my money away. So, cheers and salud, and I'll post you again from down south.

Getting Ready

I am leaving for Ecuador in three days. I have fluctuated often between nervousness and excitement, but now both those emotions have been replaced by the dull feelings of the waiting game. My bags are packed, I have exercised the tedium of details necessary in preparation, and now I am just spending time with friends and family and waiting for my plane.

As I wait to leave, I have realized how few images and experiences I am anticipating. The idea of the trip is to be rather open-ended, and although I have arranged for some details in the first few weeks, for the most part I am without anticipation or expectations. I think this is one of my key talents, my ability to suspend expectations before experience. Not only does this release me from possible disappointment, it opens up a wealthy revenue of surprises that otherwise might not exist.

I guess it's probably proper to note some details of my plan and travels. For the first three to four weeks I will be living with a family in the La Vincenta neighborhood of Quito. During that time I will be studying Spanish with a teacher for twenty hours a week at the Simon Bolivar Spanish School. I will stay there for at least three weeks, or until I feel confident in my language skills to travel independently afterward. I have been blessed for the past two months with a wonderful family friend who has tutored myself and another student every Sunday and Wednesday. At this point, I am not only excited by the challenge of a new language, but I crave it. As someone who has spent the last seven years studying literature and attempting to write creatively, I love English, but abhor the narrowing perspective of thinking in only one such language. Learning a new language is also probably the quickest way to double my vocabulary.

After I leave the school, I will be free to travel anywhere. I have many ideas about where to go, and a possible collegiate friend to travel with (she also has a blog, I think more insightful than my own: http://www.imperialistpleasuretour.blogspot.com). In Ecuador there is a diversity of geography including beaches, jungles, mountains, islands, and deserts. There are also neighboring countries that I would like to visit including Peru and Boliva, and I think I may very likely work my way south through Riobamba, Cuenca, and eventually towards Cuzco and Machu Picchu and maybe Lake Titicaca. But in the end, any plans will likely be rearranged by impulse or recommendation, so it is probably not worth thinking about until later.

I want to write more, especially about my reasons for traveling, but I am going to exercise some restraint to keep each blog at appropriate length. Paz.