Because I'm sitting here trying to read a friend's thesis and give feedback (omg, why am I such a friggin' slow reader of nonfiction?) I declined G's offer to join him in watching America's Best Dance Crew.

We had really enjoyed watching all the back episodes, marveling over the Jabbawockeez and excited about the presence of Vogue Evolution, a crew made up of four black men and one black trans woman. They weren't necessarily our very favorite dancers, but we liked their energy and we definitely liked their presence on the show. It seemed like Lil Mama, one of the judges was one of those people out to show off how cool they are by liking gay men, but there are worse sins.

Like, for example, when in the last show, Lil Mama took it upon herself to criticize Leiomy's femininity and to teach her how to be a real woman. While I could not be shocked, I was still SO disappointed. Leiomy's sitting there pissed as hell and all the boys around her are nodding and whatnot and I'm like, DAMMIT, NO ONE IS GONNA CALL THIS WOMAN OUT!

And they haven't, as far as I can tell.

But today, while I was sitting here and trying to read, I heard G and his bro talking about the show in the living room. And it was not G (who I expect such sentiments from), but his brother (the Iraqi war vet) who called her out. "'This is how to be a woman,' shut the fuck up! She was totally out of line," he said disgustedly.

And that was the moment I knew that he could live with us as long as he wants. :-)

[ETA: Thanks to my friends who help check my language.]

Life. It seems to be going pretty well, I think. There's some stuff going on work wise that is neither full of drama nor angst, but is still difficult. I think that's a good thing. School starts Monday.

Family is doing well, as far as I can tell. I got to visit my sister in San Diego over the weekend and that was very yay. That trip, obviously, also involved multiple instances of getting to be Auntie Sam, which is always fun. I have learned about myself that I am not the fun aunt. Despite insisting to Mason (my nephew) that he think of Jelly Bellies when he thinks of me, I think, instead, he thinks of a second-rate unbuckler of carseats and a really awful stroller-pusher. ("Mommy," the two-year-old darling announced to my sick sister upon our return from the walk to the park, "Auntie Sam is a bad driver.") The thing is that I really enjoy reading him picture books and letting him make me pretend sandwiches, but I guess I just don't have the energy to spoil him. I am a failure of aunt-ness!

It was nice to come home, though. Guille is sick, but nice, and yesterday I got to see a whole bunch of friends from school. I realized that I think I can actually count many of them as friends and not just mere acquaintances, despite the transitory nature of grad school peer relationships. Life with the puppy is going very well, too. He and Nikos get along very well so far (knock on wood) and play together a lot. Life in a house that I own is going pretty well, too. We might buy a new car on Monday, too.

It's 3:30 and with the help of G's mom the house is in really good shape to pass back to its owners. These owners arrive tonight around 10:00 p.m. G's mom (and dad, brother, and nephew) are in a hotel.

But wait!, you might say, why aren't they in the house that you closed on yesterday. Your new house with three bedrooms and that unfortunate wall that previous owners painted black? You know the one!

Um, yeah. We didn't close on it yesterday. For whatever reason (it involves paperwork, and faxing between Boca Raton and Tucson and G's dad having power of attorney for his grandmother and omg I am so glad G's the one taking care of that end of things), we had to wait. So now we're hoping to close by Monday. It's (remotely) possible it will be done by Friday. It's (depressingly) possible that it will take all of next week and into the next.

In the meantime, G and I are hopping from friend's house to friend's house (thank goodness anthropologists do their research in foreign lands every summer) and blessing our lucky stars that we made some friends here. Also for the graduate student listserv.

I am taking the next few hours to catch up on some work taiwanese drama. I am so tired that I sort of want to cry. I feel like I should tell people I love (e.g. dad) the new state of things, but I really don't have the emotional energy to engage in conversation.

Spring Break - which was, despite my being fairly consistent about doing work, super fun and relaxing - is over. Dad and Trish are here (actually, at the moment they are at the Desert Museum) and I am attempting to write essays. I'm struggling. Derrida is not my friend. But Derrida is not the problem. The problem is that Spring Break is over.

Commiseration welcome in lieu of flowers.

On December 26th I took a trip to San Diego to see my sister's son. Also my sister and my brother, and, naturally, my brother-in-law. I hadn't seen Mason since he was born eighteen months ago. An enormous number of things have changed in my life since then. Re-reading the entries I wrote then, I scarcely feel like the same person.

It is traditional, at the start of a new year, to review the past and consider the future, and I suppose that's just what I've been doing.

My whole life, but particularly 2008, has been unbelievably blessed. Just. Unbelievable. I was accepted into the graduate program I most wanted, I got to spend a two month vacation in Ecuador with family I enjoy, I began work (ie, graduate school) that I find completely fulfilling and engaging and meaningful, I am living in a gorgeous house that I would not be able to afford in normal circumstances, and, just as the year came to a close, I was offered a TA position. My relationship with my husband is fantastic, and it always amazes me how functional we are. Our ability to communicate openly about our feelings and our passions is (I begin to realize) rare and truly special. We challenge each other and we have a hell of a lot of fun together. I also have an amazing support system in the form of a friendship that even a fifteen hour time difference cannot shake, and family that is helping me follow my dream materially and emotionally. As I suspected when I first left for college about seven years ago, my family provides me with excellent grounding and stability as long as I don't have to switch between their houses. :) 

(As a sidenote, I was talking about life philosophies with my husband today, and I think I pretty much got mine from Mom. Mostly it involves very low expectations of the world and very high expectations of oneself. This could help explain why I feel so incredibly lucky re: my whole life, but this year I was lucky beyond any normal person's expectations.)

For 2009, I definitely have some areas to work on, but there are two in particular that I think will be most challenging (and most important):

• regular exercise
• organizing (ie, actually beginning) my research

Things that I have been moderately successful with in 2008 and need to kick up a notch in 2009 include:

• forming relationships with colleagues/peers (I need to budget more money for coffeeshops)
• meditating regularly

I am very very happy.

Tomorrow is Guille's bday, which means tomorrow is CHRISTMAS EVE! This does not compute. I don't know if it's the so-focused-on-school-I-forgot-the-world thing, or just the fact that Tucson is merry bright and above 65* every day, but I didn't quite realize how fast this had come. Now my brain is doing double work just to catch up.

(advent) Mom came and visited! It was too short a trip, a mere three days, but we managed to spend some really quality time. Oddly, the thing that makes me happiest is how much she likes my cat. My mom is allergic to cats, and I always believed that she didn't like them. But my mom LIKES my cat. And what's more, she is impressed with his training. I STILL haven't managed to teach him to fetch, but she says he knows more tricks than her lab. Yay!

(baby) It rained this morning, and so we HAD to bring in the boxes sitting outside (we didn't see them last night). They were full of goodies from Dad and Trish (we had to open them immediately instead of waiting for Xmas to make sure the water hadn't soaked through). There were some wrapped gifts, too. We'll wait 'till Xmas for them. Goodies include: Yarn! Half a pillowcase I knitted! Crochet hooks! Knitty books! And other things I didn't have time to look at before running out of the house this morning.

(Christmas) I wrote a Christmas letter. But it was boring and, even after so much teasing last year, Guille stepped in and added much needed detail and levity. If you want a copy of said Christmas letter, despite the fact that you undoubtedly know pretty much everything in it from reading my LJ, then comment, and I'll send you a copy.

(donkey) Today is my last day as an Office Asst/Outreach Specialist. On Monday, I officially begin my new position: TA! Don't laugh, but I cannot TELL you how excited I am to be a TA. I'll be teaching undergrads anthropology! OMG! Granted, not too much money (although the out-of-state waiver makes up for a lot), but I am ridiculously happy. Especially because it's a quarter time position which means (in my imagination) that I'll still have time for my classes. Of course, that only made me feel guiltier about leaving my old job, but, after a week of being extremely stressed about it, I think I've finally let it go.

There's more, but that seems like enough for now. I'm gonna go work on grant applications now.

The semester is over and I was victorious!  (That is, I turned everything in on time, and there was nothing I was ashamed of.)

Mom is currently visiting me, which is wonderful, but I am also tired. A little too tired to write a real post.

Holy OMG! Trishie sent this to me and it is just too perfect for words. The lyrics are so amazingly appropriate it seems impossible. And Palin singing the part of the women of the night who otherwise preach that one doesn't really have choices so you might as well give 'em what they want is also perfect. Not that she's a prostitute, but what they represent philosophy-wise? Oh yes.




Apparently this was made the day before the election. Either way ... it's awesome.

I voted last week at an early voting station here in Tucson. It was awesome.

Voting time is always a special time of year for me. It is, for me, a family tradition far far more than a civic responsibility. My parents separated when I was 9, and my memory is pretty crappy so the sense I have of my family (mother and father and me) before then is very limited. There are fragments, mostly, of climbing the doorjamb in the red-checkered wallpaper kitchen at 10424 Inwood Ave. while someone cooked, of walking to the bus-stop with Dad, marching around the neighborhood in commemoration of women's right to vote with mom, and lying on the yellowing carpet at the top of the stairs listening to the sound of grown-up voices downstairs in the living room when I couldn't quite fall asleep alone in the dark. And election night. Of all of these memories, election night is the only one that gives me a real sense of a WHOLE family. I didn't watch a lot of T.V. as a kid (we only had broadcast and my boobtube allowance was very limited) and I went to bed early and regularly, but all bets were off on election night. That night, there WAS NO bedtime. I remember Michael Dukakis. I remember the hope against hope, the dedication to the candidate that must have been like sports fanaticism in another family. I remember the graphs and charts, the coverage. I remember my family together.

When my parents separated, that sense did not go away. All of my parents cared very deeply and, in separate houses now, the late night election coverage continued. When I was finally on my own, that interest might have dissipated, but it didn't. In Puebla, Mexico, where I was living during the 2004 election, I stayed up all night watching the L.A. news, exhausted, but unwilling to allow myself to sleep. I had cast my absentee ballot in Ohio, but I was terrified that it would not be counted. I'm still unsure it was.

This year, however, my interest has been deeper, my commitment longer, and my sense of a family tradition renewed. I went last month to the Democratic headquarters and made calls to New Mexico voters, urging them to vote early. And Monday and Tuesday, although I have no time, Guille plans to canvas making sure that Obama voters are actually getting to the polls. Last week, Guille and I sat in the car for almost an hour reviewing every candidate and prop to make sure we made no mistakes before going in and voting ourselves. For the first time in my life, I voted for a Green party candidate over a Democratic one - over a Democrat committed to women's reproductive health, no less - for a state representative. It was not an easy decision, but the sense of satisfaction, of involvement, and of family strength was great.

I can't wait for election day. I can't wait to stay up all night and hope that, unlike the only other elections I've voted in at this point in my life, this one will go my way.

I expect this will be my last entry about my travels.

I thought, coming, that with a full two months here I very well might settle in. That I might begin to feel like I was living here. That did not happen. I was undeniably ON VACATION every moment that I was here.

This is not the first time that I've been with Guille's family for extended time; I stayed with them in Boca Raton for three months back during summer break from Oberlin. But I was working then, and that made all the difference. Here in Cuenca, I helped out around the house (although I didn't even make a dent compared to the ridiculous amount of work that Nelly did) and played with the kids some, but mostly, as when we were in Florida, I hid in the room, reading. "Taking time for myself" as Guille calls it, seems to be a very crucial part of living with this many people. I don't feel bad for not spending more time with people because, ultimately, this is me and that's who they're living with. However, it does raise a niggling concern about what I'm gonna do with myself once I have kids. They will certainly need more attention than I will have to give, and I just hope that I can adjust into that experience wholeheartedly.

Kids. That's another thing that I learned about here. Guille and I talked at length about what sorts of things we DO and DON'T want to do when we have some of our own. Twice on the trip he told me that he's emotionally ready to have kids, and I think I said it about 20 times. I even teared up at one point watching someone else playing with their own kids. We're waiting until some more stuff has been worked out - like him having a job and me being in school long enough to be able to anticipate some of the challenges we will face - but there is no doubt it's now on the to-do list. Being around four extremely high energy kids of such varying ages was amazing. It was fun. They are a handful, but one I want. I fully expect to bear ADHD kids, and being around these guys made me confident we can handle it.

Since we got back from the jungle, we have mostly been closing up shop, running errands and saying goodbye to people. We're here until the 31st, but it already feels like it's over. Looking back on the whole time here, the absolute best thing I got to do was go to the jungle. I'm sorry I didn't post more about it, but I still don't know what to say. It opened my eyes to a new world that I never thought I would experience, and that new world was BEAUTIFUL. If I could, I'd go back there every couple of years for the rest of my life.

I do hope that I will return here more than once. It feels important to me to bring our hypothetical children here. Roots are important to me. I fully plan for my children to know where I came from and to know my family in Georgia, too. Getting to meet so much extended family - even those whose names I still don't know - helped me to feel like a part of Guille's family and helped me feel like I am a part of all of the stories I listened to him tell me, sitting in the laundry room in the basement of Talcott my freshman year of college. Those stories changed my understanding of family forever.

That said, I'm ready to leave. Not because there's anything that I'm tired of here so much as the fact that I've got so much to do at home. I've always been the kind of person to plan for - imagine - my plan for the future. I still feel overwhelmed by all the things that I want to do and how I can possibly get them all done, but I've got faith in my own ability to make it work and in the support network I have around me if I can't to it alone.

Okay, this time it wasn't from boredom that I didn't post but craziness. Since I last posted I've visited Quito, the Central Sierra, and the Amazon. As Inigo said, "Lemme 'splain. No, is too much, lemme sum up." Quito is, as remembered, not as cool as Cuenca, mostly because it's just a big city. However, the Museo del Banco Central is the bomb and the top floor is full of really really disturbing art that has been haunting my dreams. I want to go back. Also, Otavalo (a day trip from Quito) was neat and full of tourists who arrived by the busload. Though Guille and I did buy stuff (too much coolness) the highlight of the trip was (for me) waiting for the others to do their shopping and hanging out with an Otavaleno wearing a Santa Fe t-shirt sent to him from relatives in (guess where!) Arizona! I practiced my baby-kichwa on him as I left and his eyebrows shot up about a mile. Not so typical among the tourists, I gather.

The Amazon was amazing. We were really on the outskirts without any significant danger of dengue or yellow fever, but I wish I could go and live there a little deeper in. It was the first experience I've ever had that made me seriously question whether I really want to focus my anthropological research on urban U.S. populations. I'm not entirely sure what made me love it so much. I had a whole lot of fun (swimming in the Rio Napo - a tributary of the Amazon River - and hiking in the jungle and going to the animal rescue with various species of monkey running around relatively wild and seeing a Morpho butterfly in its natural habitat and seeing a performance of how people live there - actually that made me feel more than a little funny, but I can't deny that I enjoyed it - and swinging in the hammock listening to the birds, insects and rushing water) but I think that it went beyond that, because I felt a special sort of feeling for it before we even got out of the car.


We were there for three days, and the experience really deserves three entries, but I'm not feeling up for it. The drive home took us back through Banos of Ambato (where Guille and I had taken the bus from Quito to meet up with his parents in Puyo) and Riobamba (where Guille's dad was born) then Chunchi - a mountainous sugar cane farm in the Central Sierra - and by then I was exhausted. I felt more like a city girl there than I think I have ever in my whole life. I was perfectly at ease floating on the balsa in on the Rio Napo, but the pigs in Chunchi scared me to death. Furthermore I complained about everything from the beds to the weather to the smell of the distilling rum (in my head mostly, but somewhat even to Guille) and felt crampy and put out at the world.

We arrived back in Challuabamba yesterday and Guille, his dad, his sister her husband and one of their kids drove out to Guayaquil (on the coast) today. I regret not getting to see the coast, but I don't regret staying here. I hid in my room most of the day (I should have been helping Nelly, Guille's mom, with the other three kids) and I feel much more human now than I did after a week and a half of travel and two weeks of tourism. I put up about 40 new pictures on Picasa, too, if you're interested in them. Lots of butterflies and animals and flowers, but some other stuff, too.

The days I sit down in front of the computer are inevitably less interesting, thus the lack of recent updates. But there HAVE been fun goings-on in the last week or so.

Danny and Nico (ages 5 and 2 now) had there birthday parties and we had a big pinata (not generally an Ecuadorian thing, I don't think, but nonetheless a lot of fun, except that it fell off the line broke) and the few Ecuadorian kids we know came and played and ate too much candy along with the Hardigan children. It's been long enough since the day, however, that I no longer remember the funny parts.

Yesterday was another party, the "reunion" of the Pesantez clan (Guille's mom's side). It all took place at the farm house where Nelly (my mother-in-law) grew up - a vertical sugarcane plantation (since this place was on the side of a mountain). Today, though the buildings that housed the barrels of sugar and alcohol remain as do the rooms with cuy and rabbit cages, there is nothing but the house and a couple of flower patches. Flowers are a major industry in Ecuador, but there aren't enough to sustain the property. It is the perfect place for kids to play, however, and play they did! Meanwhile the grown-ups drank whiskey and sang along with the musician they'd hired for the event. Everybody started dancing - even a rather embarrassing "bottle dance" that I won't describe - and it was cool to see adults having so much fun. The kids, meanwhile zoomed around on four-wheelers and horses (the horses were not pleased to have riders and occasionally reared trying to throw people off - Isabel hung on though). We ate a delicious pig - skin and corn first, then a soup, then slices with rice and llapingachos - and Guille and I came home early (we only stayed 6 hours) because he was still feeling sick from the Chinese food he ate at the mall three days ago.

We're taking it easy again for a while, which means I'm going into Cuenca more often to get on the internet. I'm still reading The Sacred and The Profane by Mircea Eliade - I even wrote a little bit about it over at blog.paleothea.com - but I cannot tell you how much I hate that book. It's so ... so ... modern. Ugh. I've tried to read it about 7 times since I bought it and never gotten further than the first chapter. Every page I find myself writing something along the lines of "attempting to universalize this idea makes it totally simplistic." Nonetheless, I think it's important to learn where current theories came from, and I'm doing my best to sift the good points out. Best thing is that I'm 140 pages in out of 232! But the "objective fact" approach has been bugging me so much that I decided I HAD to get a book to counter the perspective.

So today I got on fetchbook.info - my new best friend - and found the book I wanted (Conformity and Conflict, which was used in the cultural anthro 101 class at Oberlin I believe, but I didn't take that class) for 6.50 INCLUDING shipping to Ecuador. Where is this marvelous online bookstore you may be wondering? Why it's BetterWorld.com which appears to be a nonprofit that ships books anywhere in the U.S. for FREE and anywhere internationally for $2.97. Oh and the money you spend on your book? It goes to fund various literacy projects all over the world. LOVE. And since it's new and used, I may never use amazon.com again!

And since I'm posting here, I might as well take the opportunity to post a couple more pix, except no new interesting things have happened since yesterday - well, the broadband card arrived, so we now have internet access out in the boonies of Challuabamba, but that doesn't really merit a photograph - so I'll just post a couple that didn't make the cut previously.

I'm beginning to go a little crazy sitting around and need to get over going up the mountain by myself. I've got Paladin of Souls on my Ipod, too, so I've got no excuse! (Except that I might get lost on the mountain and some nice Quichua speaking family would have to take me in and I'd be TOTALLY screwed because all I know how to say is "Imanalla" [how are you?] and "Alli" [fine] from the 47 page PDF called "curso basico de kichwa para hispanoparlantes, nivel 1" because there aren't really any Quichua professors around interested in taking on a couple of vacationing estadounidenses, and so I would learn to make llapingachos and how to tend sheep and corn and make my own clothes up up up in the mountains and maybe life wouldn't be so bad after all.)

We went to Banos (enyeh not eneh, but I don't know how to do that on lj) by Cuenca today and the kids enjoyed the 115 degree swimming pool c/o the local volcanic springs. I, on the other hand, got a massage. I think there is something incredibly profound about that sort of touching between humans. I tried to explain it, but when I used the word "energy" everybody started calling my a hippy. Gah. I have no pictures of that, but I do have a profound sense of calm.



We've been taking it easy lately, the kids have been struggling, and I'm still enjoying myself thoroughly. I'll just post a picture for now and have done.

I woke up the first time today at 6:15 AM after a night of trying to keep from rolling down the hill that our tent was set upon. I was cranky from lack of sleep, and the altitude (14,900 ft.) had given me a headache and made me terribly nauseous. I wrote a little in my journal, but quickly decided that staying awake when there was nothing to do except watch the layer of ice on the tent melt wasn’t worth it.



When I woke up again more than four hours later (possible only because my altitude sickness seemed to be light compared to the three kids, all of whom vomited and were utterly miserable) the sun was shining and warm, but I felt only a little better. It wasn’t until we got on the trail again that all my symptoms went away. Actually, Guille thinks that it was because I kept moving (rock climbing with the guide after we arrived at the lake where we set up camp in the north of El Cajas) that I avoided the misery for as long as I did! Anyway, I felt fine all day, even when it started to hail and then pour rain on our little group. Sipping away at our “water of life” that took away the altitude sickness made by our guide out of plants growing nearby, we came down down down the pass in rubber boots that only barely managed to stay on as we made our way through the mud.



Given the rain, the kids’ misery, and everything else, we made for a home that was being built out of cement, straw, mud, and rocks. We built a fire inside on the stone floor and huddled around, watching our clothes steam. This evening we gave up the idea of another night and I have to admit, as much as I enjoy hiking, I’m glad for it. Nonetheless, it was an experience not to be forgotten, and the land is beautiful. Someday I hope to try again.

Clinton is out of the race, and I can hardly believe it’s over. I still have no regular access to the internet and read the news in the El Mercurio that Guille’s parents picked up when they went out for breakfast this morning. I was troubled that the last line of the article announced that, obviously, a large number of the people who SAY they’ll vote for a black man actually won’t when they get to the poll. I think that is much more likely to be a representation of the country we are in now than in the U.S., and it annoys me that in such a short article that would be the only line about how things will shake out in the major election. I think it furthers the misrepresentations of racial politics in the U.S. But, anyway, go Obama and bless Clinton for backing him now.


In more travel news, this vacation is a bit exhausting! Yesterday we left the house and ate a special lunch of cuy (COO-ee), or guinea pig, with Guille’s mom’s long lost cousin and his family, then went to there house to hang out until the sun was down. I wasn’t exactly feeling social when we left the house the first time, so it was a very very long day. I felt like I used to feel after church and I couldn’t get my parents to wrap up their conversations so we could go HOME already! But despite my anti-social tendencies, I did enjoy meeting them all. And it was pretty neat to eat cuy – Maria del Carmen (Guille’s cousin) says that the raising and cooking of cuyes is very labor intensive, and when you eat it you are symbolically getting “the best” of what the family has to offer.

Sunday we went on a recorrido – a drive, maybe? – from our house in Calyabamba to Gualaceo, to San Bartolome, to Paute, to a couple other places that I’m forgetting. I got beautiful silver jewelry in Chiruleg (?), where it is the specialty, including a silver rosary for my Virgin of Quito statue and a pair of traditional filigreed earrings called condonga (?). Guille was hoping to get a handmade guitar by one of the lutiers of San Bartolome, but they all seemed to be having their day off. Well, it was Sunday, so I guess that makes sense. Paute, where Guille’s mama was born, was no less beautiful and we stopped at a shop where Nelly’s aunt used to work, behind which she still lives. We talked for a while in her beautiful, antique home with lace everywhere and old European portraits on the walls. She lamented the influx of Peruvians to the area – a result of the job opportunities in the flower industry – and explained how the “quiet, simple, peaceful” people of Paute were unprepared for the thieving, raping immigrants. To be honest, hearing that was one of the most interesting parts of the trip thus far. Migration is a hugely important subject here, but not necessarily something you can approach directly if you want to really understand its effects, since there are so many politics surrounding it.

Today I climbed a mountain. Bill (Guille’s dad) led the way and Guille and our niece Isabel came, too. Our pace was pretty steep (so was the path!) for a 9-year-old, but by the time we were at the top, she said she liked hiking, so I thought it was a success. I kinda wish that it had been a little quieter; it was less than three miles to the top, so we went up quick and talked the whole way. Nevertheless, the beauty of the place began to soak into me. The plan is to do this every day.


I’ve been drawing – Isa sat very still for me yesterday, and I made a passable portrait of her – and painting, writing my stories, getting exercise, and even meditating: all things that renew my soul. The four kids are a great gift. Their energy is incredible – and sometimes exhausting – but they help me stay in the moment of life. Danny (the big, very energetic 4-year-old) actually meditated with me yesterday. First we sat, and he counted his breaths and concentrated on feeling loved, and then we practiced walking around the room and paying very close attention to our moving bodies. Tomas (the affectionate 6-year-old) finds me every day and asks me to tell him stories, and I’ve been filling him up with Greek myths. Nico, the baby, has an infectious smile and loves taking pictures: both being in them and taking them of other people.


I’m still a little nervous about working everything out for grad school and financial aid, but so far the bumps in the road have been successfully navigated. Fingers crossed.

Guille and I spent a slow week in Quito. Mostly it was gray and mostly we were tired so we spent a significant chunk of time inside the apartment. It belonged to a woman named Pepita – actually, we don’t remember her real name, but her husband’s name is Pepe, so everyone calls her Pepita. She is a friend of the family since she and Nelly (Guille’s mom) met each other in Memphis. They had daughters born only a day apart in the very same hospital, and they were from the very same town in Ecuador! Small world.

[me and Guille in front of the Voto Nacional]

Pepita’s brother, Don Fabian, came out to host us and drove us around Quito. We ate chugchuaras – five kinds of pork, including two types of pigskin – accompanied by popcorn (popcorn is eaten with everything here) and drank pilsner beer. Then, despite the rain, we had ice cream. I had guanabana, aka soursop, ice cream. Don Fabian was very kind for driving us around, but he was a pretty bad driver. I mean, everyone here drives close (like everywhere in the world except the U.S. and maybe England, I don’t know I’ve never been there), but Don Fabian’s reaction time was pretty slow.

[me eating llapingachos]

We went on a tour and wandered around ourselves, and I had time to fall in love with the Virgin of Quito, aka the Dancing Virgin, aka the Woman of the Apocalypse. You know that section of Revelation with the woman standing on the moon with a crown of stars and the wings of eagles? Yeah, that’s her. And she’s got the Beast on a leash. And she looks totally joyous. So when I found an indigenous made statue of her, you better believe I was all over it. It’s rare for me to find something that I REALLY want, but when I do … well, I’m glad it was in the beginning of the trip. Now I’ve just got to keep it in one piece until we get to Tucson.

[Virgin of Panecillo aka the Virgin of Quito]

On Saturday we met Guille’s family and now there are 10 of us – not counting Juan Carlos aka Lukas, Guille’s cousin who looks just like how Guille looked in college and who has been showing us everything we need to know of Cuenca. Yesterday, for example, after a lunch that I couldn’t even manage half of (I am SO full SO quickly here), we went for an 8 km walk and Lukas showed me the leaves of the achilla (?) that are used for cooking tamales and a brilliant green hummingbird (called kinde in Quechua).

[wideshot of us walking next to the river]

In the evening we made a bonfire in the backyard, and I ran around playing with the four kids. When it got dark, the three older ones sang hymns they learned at Catholic school, and when the fire finally died, we came inside and danced bachata and salsa and samba and later Elena (Guille’s grandmother) showed me how to dance bolero. I wasn’t exactly a natural, but it was a lot of fun.

[the whole family in front of the fire]

We don’t have internet in the house yet (which is otherwise perfect and gorgeous), but hope to eventually get dial-up. In the meantime I am quietly freaking out about grad school. The day before we left for Quito I got a letter from Financial Aid asking for additional info, including W2s I no longer have access to. So now, from Cuenca, I have to get Borders and Identity to send copies of my W2s from 2007 to my mom’s house and rely on her to send them to the school. I feel dumb for not anticipating that particular request, but in my defense, I did read all of the requirements and they weren’t listed anywhere.

[the view of the mountains from the house]
In other news, Guille and I may take Quechua classes together. I’m SO excited!

BRUNCH OF THE LIVING DEAD from Dan Conover on Vimeo.


Really awesome. So awesome. And yes, Dan is my brother. He's the one doing the interviewing. :)



Also awesome? I'm in Quito, Ecuador. And I can pick up good enough wifi from the dining room table to play on the internet. At least after 7:00 PM. Woot!

Dan would be the one acting "directory." Janet (my sister-in-law) would be the one with the Everclear and OJ. If I've got nephews in it, it's been too long since I've seen them to recognize 'em. I am so proud of my family.