Okay, greenity I didn't ignore your comment, I just wasn't ready to answer it yet.

My information about them is so profoundly limited that I have trouble imagining how my observations would be of much interest. So if, for example, I seem to condone what appears to be heinous, take it to mean that I simply do not want to condemn what I know nothing about and vice versa.

The experience in Colorado City (back from that trip to Northern Arizona last month) consisted of the following:
1) about 15 minutes of background info from a professor who has worked in the area for years (with the Kaibab Paiute, not FLDS)
2) going and buying snacks at a grocery store manned (actually womanned) by FLDS women with long hair french braided in the back and poofed up in the front and wearing long simple dresses. Just like the women whose kids got taken, if you want a popular image.
3) eating lunch at a little dive that sold FLDS tracts next to the register, one of which I picked up and read
4) more conversation afterward in the car with 7 other anthro people.

The time in the store was the most interesting to me. I immediately walked away from my companions and looked through the aisles alone. It was obvious that we were part of the same group, because of our clothes and hair and manners we stuck out like sore thumbs. Apart from the women at the registers, there were a number of women with small children doing their shopping. Despite sticking out, I was not apparently the object of their or their children's attention. But whereas my companions, who walked around speaking loudly (I thought), appeared to be pretty much ignored, when I smiled at someone or greeted them, they smiled back and talked to me as well.

The girl who rang me up struck me at the time as pretty young, but on reflection she was no younger than girls who ring me up at the Safeway in back home. What was different was my interpretation of her working and her youth. I saw her as "of a marriageable age" and working to support her family in a system that seems utterly foreign to me, as opposed to the youth I'm used to who are NOT of a marriageable age, although they are certainly old enough to have children of their own and are part of a system that I'm far more comfortable with.

In the restaurant, a young mother with two children allowed her little daughter - 2 years old? - to run to the front counter. The little girl slipped right in front of me and nailed her face in the counter. She ran back to her mother and who comforted her. What really surprised me though was that she barely made any sound as she sobbed. I glanced to my professor who tacitly confirmed my question about whether the relative silence of the girl was cultural. I can't IMAGINE a 2-year-old in my culture having that occur in that particular way and staying so quiet. It disturbed me more than anything else I saw. Certainly more than the huge vans for families with many mothers and tons of kids or than the half-built houses everywhere designed to evade taxes. I would like to think that the little girl was "naturally" like that, but her excitement, her energy in her run, suggest to me that was not the case.

Finally, the tract. It was, undoubtedly, screwed up. It begins with an explanation of the sexual evils of woman and appears to be aimed at men avoiding them, then the main part begins. The story is of a woman, dying of a disease in the most abject poverty possible with babies all around (also, apparently, starving and dying) who explains that all this has happened because she cheated on her husband (she was a second wife) with a bad (young) man.  Yes indeed. It's almost comic. My only question is whether, by refusing to accompany the FLDS preacher back to civilization to avoid people's attention (scorn? pity?) she is considered to be atoning (even though it will mean the eventual death of her children by starvation when she dies) or she is considered to be beyond help. At any rate the preacher leaves her and the thing ends with another exhortation to women to stop being such big sluts. It is beyond doubt that this is related to community conceoptions of marriage, gender, and theology, but if my experience reading ancient Greek myths has taught me ANYTHING its that what the men write ain't necessarily what the women think or live. Another example is of the FLDS women going with their children to some of the reservation casinos in the area.

So, what do I think? It sure as hell isn't a life I'd want, and I strongly doubt that the situation allows for polygamy in a happy healthy way for anybody concerned. Furthermore, I am quite concerned by the idea that people need help from the FBI agents constantly stationed there to be able to escape. I sympathize with them because they are certainly persecuted, but living outside the law means that there is no protection for those powerless INSIDE the society, and that gives me the heebee-geebies.

Now I am very curious, greenity , why you asked.

Whew! It's been a full couple of weeks.

 The drive out from D.C. was actually considerably easier for me than I had anticipated, despite the last minute breakdown of Guille's computer which signified the loss of my nine books-on-CD I'd dutifully borrowed from the library and burned onto the computer in anticipation of the drive before we even left for Ecuador two months ago! But I still had a couple of lectures and my old friend NPR kept me entertained whenever we were close enough to civilization to hear it. Guille's car really struggled, I'm afraid, burning much more gas than we expected and eventually refusing to drive above 60 mph. It made us nervous enough that in Texas we stopped early and took it to a dealership. They advised about $500 worth of "necessary" work, but I called my old mechanic in D.C. and he explained that half of that wasn't really necessary while the other half was, but could wait until our trip was done as long as we didn't really mind the gas-guzzling or slower pace. We didn't, and continued on, only to have a terrifying clunk and hissssssss cause us to pull over to the side of the highway in Lord-knows-where West Texas. A big chunk of metal had inexpicably blown out of a piece of machinery we suspect might be the Mass Air Flow Sensor, but caused us no further problems and we drove on, arriving after a mere four days of driving.

We arrived in Tucson on the 9th and started unpacking and settling in. I've got a fantastic library/study with a view of the fruit trees growing all over the back yard. I've set up my altar here and even managed to meditate once, but I'm not quite settled in to a routine yet. I love this room and - complete with a delicious overstuffed chair and full-spectrum floor lamp - I can't imagine any problems spending huge chunks of time in here studying. Our bedroom is enormous, but comfortable, and includes a Venetian bath, the only sad thing is that we can't allow Nikos in there since the owners want to make sure there isn''t any lingering pet dander to make them allergic. We've got covers on all the couches, though, so he seems happy enough without our nocturnal presence. We've also started to get to know the area; I've got my Pima County Public Library card and have checked out The Count of Monte Cristo, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Name of the Wind. Life seems very livable for me.

On Friday, I joined a bunch of other UA anthro students on a trip to Northern Arizona to see/participate in a Powwow at the Kaibab Southern Paiute reservation. I've seen powwow dancing on T.V., have heard recordings of drumming and singing, and have met a very few indigenous North Americans, but this was another thing altogether. However, unlike my time as a tourist in Misahualli, Ecuador, there was no sense that their cultural performance was for my benefit. Rather, the other students and I (and the professor) worked our tails off hauling trash, flipping Indian burgers to be put on fry bread (mmmmm!), selling raffle tickets and Paiute T-shirts to fundraise for next year's Powwow, serving food and moving the heaviest bleachers I've ever encountered from one side of the grounds to the other on our shoulders between sneaking off to watch the dance and drumming (singing) exhibitions and competitions. We ran/walked in their 5K. We even signed up for their 3 v. 3 basketball match, but got intimidated by the competition and backed out. It was, on the whole, another utterly new experience for me, and a wonderful one.  On the same trip we drove out to Colorado City, where I noticed we were all were far less comfortable with the community of polygamists rejected by the LDS church. That part of the adventure still requires a great deal more thought from my end, so not much to say about that yet, except that I'm very glad I saw it. On the way back home on Sunday we stopped and hiked about 3 miles along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and that was also much more cool than I had expected. Despite the awesome stuff we saw, the best part of the trip was the chance to start to get to know some of the academic community I am joining. I remain optimistic that this is the best place for me.

Also: I got my hair cut off again. It's nice and cool in the heat.

Also: Guille's doing well and has made me a number of delicious meals since getting here. Also his computer is finally set up and he's beginning to settle into the job search. Life is good.

Yes. I've made it. I've registered for one class. I'm going on a three day camping trip to a powwow or something in Northern Arizona with the applied anthropologists. I've vacuumed the pool and watered the houseplants. We've been grocery shopping. My books are on the three shelves in the MY library/study. In other words, things are going well.

More later.

Did you happen to read that angry open letter to Better World Books a week or two ago? Well apparently so did their Customer Care guy. I didn't bother to contact the company when my book didn't show up in time. It was still within the margin of error re: arrival time and it was so cheap that it wasn't a major loss.

But now I have my book. YAY!

In fact, the guy Priority Mailed it to my dad's house and it was here waiting for me when I got in from Ecuador.  This is awesome.  (Secretly, I'm not a huge fan of the book thusfar, but that's hardly his fault!) I am so glad that this company is as awesome as it appears to be. So go buy from them! Forget about Amazon.

Also, I've been home for two days now and I still haven't had time to pack. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. How do people DO this?

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.

Dear Better World Books,

You said that it should take 7-14 business days for Conflict and Conformity to arrive. You warned me that it might even take 21 days. You said, more obscure places (and I'll assume that the third largest city of Ecuador does count in that category) take longer than, say, the UK and Mexico. So I did the calculations in my head on June 17th and decided it did make sense to order the book.

I've now run out of reading. I want my book.

To make matters worse, I'm leaving Ecuador in a scant nine days. I may not even have time to read it before classes start.

I wrote you a love song when I bought from you, but I'm becoming more and more disillusioned. Give me my book!

Sincerely,

ailiathena

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.

Yesterday I might have been cursed. I met a woman in a crossroads, she was standing there smack dab in the middle, just waiting, but for what I don’t know, halfway up the mountain. I asked her for directions to a little church that I wanted to visit and she pointed me towards a little village I’d never seen before.

Walking into the village the first person I met was a young man, but he did not look at me. Instead he turned away and as I walked by pissed in the road. I kept walking and the next person I met was a young woman about my age. She was squinting and shading her eyes from the sun next to a big yellow dog stretching. She didn’t seem too steady on her feet, as if she was hungover, and she pointed me on through the town. The next person I saw was an old man, sprawled out on the ground in such an unnatural position that I thought he was dead until I realized that the eye rolled backwards to look at me was following my movement. I walked to the other side of the road.

Before too much longer I realized that this road would only lead me to the highway, not the little chapel I was seeking. I didn’t want to turn back and walk through the town, though, and when I saw what appeared to be a shortcut winding behind people’s houses and back to my road, I hefted my rock – protection against over confident dogs – and set off.

I was pretty far along the path when I walked by someone’s cornfield. The dogs protecting it heard me coming and all six of them came out running and barking. I was terrified, but I lifted my rock and backed away yelling at them the whole time. Thankfully they understood the threat of my rock and weren’t aware of my terrible aim. I kept on, shaken, when a smaller yellow dog came out and followed me threateningly for a ways longer than the far more dangerous pack. I kept on, now thinking about how I could get out of there, but the mountain was steep and surrounded by cornfields I was afraid to pass. It was then a third dog jumped out at me. Because the mountain was so steep, it was on a grassy ledge above the path and right at the level of my head. Unlike the others, this dog seemed like it really wanted to attack me. Like it would bite me if it got the chance to get off its ledge. I was so scared I slipped off the other side of the path, but I managed to regain my footing and get away before the dog could find a way down.

Ahead of me I could see two more cornfields on either side of the path. I didn’t want to go through, but was terrified of going back and kicking myself for putting myself in such a stupid situation. There were no fallen branches or anything to protect myself with. But I saw a little streambed going up to a large pipe and decided that it must go under a road, so, squelch, squelch, squelch I climbed up. When I got to the pipe I realized that there was something hidden in its darkness, but thank goodness my luck was improving and it left me be. I put both hands in the grass and pulled myself up the steep incline, my rocks in my pockets, and I could see the road! I lurched towards it and there tripped over a line of barbed wire at the level of my ankle. It ripped a cut along the back of my right knee and a little puncture in my left ankle. I fell hard on the road, bruising my knee and scraping my legs, but I had made it and I was feeling no pain.

I sat there a minute breathing hard and flooded with relief before I began to make my way home again.

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!

I'm packing.

This is good because the doing keeps me from feeling anxious. I have little doubt that the coming two month stint in Ecuador is going to be incredible, I just have no idea what specifically is going to be amazing about it. I am very slightly worried about altitude sickness since a good friend of the family died of it this year (he was otherwise very healthy), but there's not really anything I can do about it and the likelihood of real problems is low. Driving to Tucson isn't nearly so intimidating now that I've copied so many books on CD from the public library over. I'm still hoping tatterpunk will drive with me and Dad and Trish have also offered to keep me company, but if it doesn't work out, it's no big deal. Of course, like the Ecuador trip, once we arrive I've got no idea what to expect.

I left TPR on Friday, and it was a relief to have the drudgery end. Even though I'm still doing drudge work, it's MY drudge work and that makes all the difference.

I have no emotions about leaving, except my stomach and chest suggest that I am anxious.  I have had moments where I have felt absolutely brokenhearted, and a couple of times when moving on to the next step includes the elation of being a little closer to my heart's goals: especially becoming a professor and having babies (never mind that those two things may not work easily together). Mostly, though, I just feel focused on getting done what needs to be done.

Guille and I have been in Tucson since Saturday, and the trip has been very successful. When we drove in from the airport we drove through the ghetto and Guille (and I, even though I was here before) had a rude awakening about the depression that this area is experiencing. Later, we drove through another section of town looking for apartments and found nothing but the kind of shitty broken down undergrad housing that we really don't want to be a part of. Thank goodness things started to turn around later. We began to see nicer and nicer areas, well landscaped (yes, desert can be beautiful with strategically placed cacti) and well kept.

We went out for lunch with one couple, then tea with another, then dinner with a third - all from different sorts of jobs, but all well off - and despite our intention to invite them (after all, they were doing us a favor!), they all ended up treating us. It was very unexpected and just so nice to know that we're gonna have at least a little bit of a safety net (one family even offered us a place to stay for a couple of days if we haven't signed a lease by the time we move here!). 

The job thing for Guille - the secondary goal of our trip - has gone pretty well, too. We've learned about a couple of areas that could be very interesting to him. One we heard about this morning sitting in a coffee shop next to the anthro dept. and Guille thinks he could do some consulting type work/volunteering for them (depending on what they can afford) even while we're in Ecuador. It's a microcredit borderlands small nonprofit startup. Probably not a long term job, but maybe a way to break into the scene here.

I'm feeling ambivalent still. Perhaps even more than before I visited this time and it became a manageable reality. Nonetheless, this has been a very good trip.

This is Nikos. He is my cat. He is super cool.
 
And, he needs someone to take care of him while I am in Ecuador for two months (June-July). He would need to move in with you - he likes hanging out around people and is ridiculously chill. He doesn't talk much, mostly chirps, and likes to curl up near you rather than ON you, but is very tolerant of any attention you give him. drownophelia and aubrilee I am thinking first and foremost of you, but others are also entreated.

I would bring all his food for the time and litter and toys and even his "tree" if you are willing to take that into your house for the time.

We have been living in one room for the past 6 months, and he's totally fine with that, so space (as far as HE'S concerned anyway) is not an issue.

Let me know if you are interested and how much you think would be appropriate for payment for keeping him for that length of time. I don't know, having never done this before.

I need help! My family will also be out-of-town and I haven't found anyone who can take care of him. If you know of anyone who might be interested, pass it around!

I am not a beach babe. I burn very quickly. I get tired of the heat. I miss the deciduous trees. But I have to say, that spending this Christmas in Florida with Guille's family (and Elio) was wonderful. The kids were the best part, but the most mindblowing part was when I unwrapped my gift from Bill and Nelly (well, one of them - I tell you I was as spoiled as their grandkids!) and it was a digital camera. A NICE digital camera. Which means that I could take photos to show you!


Isa is so cute!



So is baby Nico!



Okay, all her kids are cute.


Merry Christmas!

This is the LAST post on my trip to Greece. (Probably.)

We spent our final 4-5 days on the Cycladic island of Santorini, also called Thera. It has two ancient sites - kinda shocking for such a small island - but both of them had shut down along with the tourist season. Our last day there we had people telling us that they wouldn't be working any more for the next five months. We just made it. But I am getting ahead of myself. In the last post, we were still in Mykonos (taking a trip to Delos). Because I was told that the view coming into Santorini by boat is one of the most incredible ever, I insisted that we go by boat. Well, there were no longer any ferries from Mykonos to Santorini, but there was from Syros. So we went to Syros, and had a six hour layover. Mom tried her first Greek coffee soon after our arrival, but decided to stick with tea from then on.


Syros was awesome. It is where Greeks vacation, and is the capital island of the Cyclades (so is where government stuff takes place and business, etc). For the first time, our tourist Greek became useful - since fewer people spoke English - and the expectations almost disappeared. We spent almost the whole time sitting in a square by the big government palace thing and just talking. I learned things about David that I'd never known before, and I think it was the most chill moment of the whole trip.


We arrived on Santorini at 3:00 AM and, after the scariest taxi ride I've ever been on (in pitch black up the side of a cliff with my man passing everyone on the wrong side of the road so that he could go back down for a second fare), we arrived at our hotel. The view, even at night, was breathtaking. When I woke up, and was able to photograph it, it was only more incredible. Santorini is a volcanic island on one side of a caldera, and our hotel was built into the side of a cliff. Here's a peek into mom's balcony:


We explored a lot, and on the second day, mom and I went walking together. As soon climbed the five flights of stairs to get up to the cliff road (at that point, not yet covered in donkey dung), a dog met us. This dog was, technically, a stray. I saw it leaving someone's house (where I think it was getting breakfast), but it belonged to everyone. She responded when we called her "kale skyle" and when we called "Ella!", because we city folks were afraid she might get hit by a car. It was awesome. She walked ahead of us for miles. I think she would have taken us all the way to Oia (at the end of the island) if we'd let her. (We were staying in Firastephani because, the tourist season having ended, there were no hotels in Oia.) If I ever get a dog of my own, I want her to be JUST LIKE that one. She followed us everywhere - except when we got to a restaurant or store, she just plopped down outside the door to wait. Amazing.


The strays there were incredibly well-fed, there was food left out in a number of different places, and the dogs actually IGNORED it, because they were already so fat. When the dog showed us around the second day I told a Greek shop owner "O skylos einai o xenagos mas." (The dog is our tourguide.) And they laughed and then looked shocked that I spoke Greek. The day after that, we rented a little Fiat and David drove us around the island. I tried to get us to the Red Beach and the White Beach, but it turns out that the latter is totally inaccessible by road. So after bumping down a dirt mountain road in a tiny Fiat, the beach that we found was about 20 feet long and pure pebbles. Still, we took our photos.


David was driving, and Mom kept telling him to pull over if he saw any donkeys. She was SO into the donkeys. We thought she was joking at first, but she wasn't. We saw a donkey in its pasture and she got out, but it ignored her. So she started calling, "Dooooooonkeeeeeey," over and over. It was priceless. That same day we made it to both the Northern and Southern tips of the island. At the lighthouse, I found this amazing rock that jutted out over this huge drop, and while the others explored, I just lay back and listened to the incredibly blue waves wash over the rocks below me. All the myths of maidens and nymphs throwing themselves off of just such cliffs to their deaths were so easy to imagine.


The food we had was hit or miss, although the yogurt and honey was great everywhere (although different everywhere, too). But the last day we ate in a place with a pomegranate tree, and took the time to get our pictures taken underneath it.


I LOVED Santorini, and it was the perfect way to finish off the trip. After that, we had 31 hours straight of travel and arrived home completely destroyed, but it was totally worth it. There are, of course, more stories to tell, but you'll have to get them from me in person.