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?