La Amazonía

Sooo… about the Amazon…

As a part of the direct exchange that I am in, our resident director takes us to some place where we can learn a little more about the culture and how things can be done differently here in comparison to what we have always seen. Last semester we went to a little town called Yunguilla, where we helped in the organic garden, at the wood shed, in the cheese and marmalade production houses, and with our individual families. It was fun. Just thinking about it makes me miss my guys from last semester!

But this semester our trip was to the Amazon, where we were to take part in several indigenous things. The Orient of the country is an interesting place. Very different from the rest of the country. We were in Loreto, where the main headquarters of an indigenous organization is.

This was, of course, the day after we arrived back in Quito, so Lars, Charlotte and I were still a little bit exhausted to still be on the move, but it was fun too.  It felt like walking into a room full of people and doing a totally deserved double fist pump.  I felt cool.

I guess the overall problem on this trip to the Amazon for everyone was that we felt like we were being treated like kings, where instead all we wanted was to live in the indigenous communities and watch. There is nothing like feeling as though you are in a zoo to make you feel uncomfortable.

The first night we spent at the main place overlooking a river. I was in the boys room because there were only four beds in the girls room and we were five girls. I don’t think Juan liked that I was sleeping in the same room as the guys very much, but they are both good guys and have girls back home, so I was very comfortable. I guess that is what growing up with two brothers does to a person. The best part about it was that John had brought his guitar and loved to play it in the dark at night, meaning that Lars and I got serenaded to sleep. I haven’t gone to sleep quite so nicely since.

We got to participate in a sexual health workshop for the indigenous women the next day, which was very entertaining. The women were all tiny and giggling as if they were in middle school. At one point Lars was asked to demonstrate how to use a condom and then was not believed when he said he didn’t know how. Somehow it couldn’t be possible in the women’s minds that he was a virgin!

We also got to see the Casa de Parto, or child birth house. That was VERY neat. The women in indigenous communities give birth kneeling in a method of vertical birth. The doctors that have set up this house are trying to integrate the old methods with the new methods. They have everything set up for the traditional way of having a baby, complete with medicinal plants and everything, but then they have the more modern medical supplies, just in case something goes wrong. It’s like a supplement, a way of complementing what the women have been doing for centuries. Very cool.

We even got to see videos of births! Bleh!

Two communities took us in, both of which provided us with tents to sleep in by the river. Since we were an odd number of girls but Lars had his single tent, John and I shared a tent, which turned out to be fun again, since he used his guitar for some ridiculously silly slightly hillbilly rap. We cleaned off each night by swimming in the glorious rivers. Nice and cold and SO refreshing after full days of nothing but wet heat.

We got to see a Shaman healing process, de-kernel some corn, get bitten by chiggers and mosquitoes galore, see a tarantula (which actually ended up crawling up John’s leg while he wasn’t watching), step in such fine mud that we wanted to take it home, learn about all the medicinal plants that were growing wild in the forest, and eat off of banana leaves with our hands. For those that were very new to the country, this last part was probably a bad idea. After all, it has taken me seven months of being here and my system still isn’t exactly stable.

It was a good week. I was dreading the end of it, because that meant that it was all the closer to the day that Lars left, which was a sad day indeed. I don’t have any of my boys now! Although John is a pretty darn good substitute. But once we came back to Quito, I had been going for almost a month straight without sitting still. I slept and slept and tried to get some things done before my brother Daniel came. Not that I was not glad to see him (it was actually a complete KICK IN THE PANTS, if you will, to have him here) but the timing was mighty off, as my little brother’s timing will be coming up here in a couple of days. I was trying to get ready for Dan to come AND get ready for school to start at the same time. I couldn’t focus on both, but I really had no choice!

Dan’s visit was AMAZING. We went camping, visited the Basílica, got to talk for hours, and hang out in the city of Quito. We took so many pictures that were going to turn out fantastic, but by accident Daniel reformatted his memory card in his camera and lost not only all the pictures from the week, but also photos he had had for over a year. I know that it must have been horrible for him, because it upset me so much, even if I pretended like it was no big deal. I have some on my camera from the TelefériQo, but nothing else. It pained me deeply, but I didn’t want Dan to feel any worse than he already did.

Dan and Lars left on the same flight to Houston on the Wednesday after school started. I was so sad to see them both go. But I had classes to keep up with already. That was my first morning of Econ, since I had been a numbskull when signing up for classes by using the codes for the Econ class from the last semester. So when I got to the right building, the secretaries told me there was no such class as what I had signed up for and so I didn’t have a class. But I added the real Econ class and started that Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, all of the girls who were going to take History of Women had dropped the class without really letting me in on their actions, so I had to drop too, since there were no longer enough people signed up for the class to keep it open. So I signed up for Italian instead. A great choice.

Really not much has happened since then. I stayed home for Carnaval and have been somewhat of a hermit, just because things are up and down and I am settling in again. I have a great teacher for Spanish. I had her for the first part of last semester and she speaks SO fast, but is still easy to understand. She keeps us going non-top and will stop the regular lesson just to teach us something that we ask about.

At the same time, she is tough. Manuela expects a lot from her students and of the five of us in the class, it is possible that two are not going to pass, although that isn’t really her fault. We have research papers to write. Last semester, many of the papers were 15-20 pages long, single-spaced (although they were also done in pairs or small groups). We got to choose our topics and I think the topics we have are pretty diverse. Benji, the young man from Sweden, is doing his about trade systems between Ecuador and Sweden, an idea that he was already researching because of a business adventure anyway. Krista, the young lady from Slovakia, is writing about nutrition and nutrition programs for kids in Ecuador. Enrique, from New York, is researching the Cofán and other indigenous tribes of Ecuador. Charlotte, my traveling partner from Idaho in Peru, chose to write about the oil companies and their influence in the country. And I am writing about the governmental influence in Ecuador’s economy. So far, mine is going VERY slowly. I just want it to grow, but I keep getting stuck. And now I have two weeks left and I am a little nervous about it.

As far as Econ, it is going well, but the first test was a major failure, although I still don’t know how badly yet. Luckily, I have been told that everyone did poorly and the first thing the prof said when he came in was, “Hey guys, what happened?” We’ve started in on the Calculus part, which makes me nervous, but I really enjoy it. I had forgotten how much I like the rules and order of math. But I have days where the prof is easy to understand and other days where I just can’t latch on to what he is saying. Those days are scary.  And to be honest, they're mostly scary because of how strongly I feel the anxiety.

Italian is amazing! I have a great prof and the class is all Ecuadorians and me! Plus, all the Ecuadorians are from the same program, which is ministry studies, so all the guys come every day dressed all sharply and they are uber-polite and uber-punctual. The prof talks only in Italian, but it is fairly easy to pick up her meaning. Well, no. But it does not feel quite as foreign as hearing anything but English for the first time. It is a little more like English than I was expecting. I guess I just didn’t think about how much we get from Italian. It’s pretty cool.

I have not done a whole lot other than focus on school for now. I have been wanting to go to Ladies’ Night in the Mariscal, but every Thursday morning we owe a section of our research papers and I’m not really good at working ahead, meaning that every Wednesday night I am at this computer, trying to get something more typed up.

As for volunteer jobs this semester, I am doing La Opción de Vida in La Carolina again and also translating for the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Ecuador and Great Britain. Before you get too impressed, it is on the computer with written documents, not spoken, and it is Spanish to English, which is MUCH easier than going in the other direction. I am currently writing from inside of the building called Edificio España, where I do this translation. I kinda feel like it is cheating sometimes that I am using it for my volunteer work when it is a company that doesn't necessarily clean up, you might say. Here I am not helping kids that live on the streets of Quito, nor am I picking up trash, nor helping kids with their homework. Instead the people around me wear suits and ties and work on computers that are not from the very early nineties.

It is, however, very interesting and maybe even important, in my opinion. I was translating into English some of the interviews, stories and information that the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Ecuador and Great Britain puts together to promote commerce in the two countries and between them. I like that because it doesn't just fix the problems, like the great programs like Niños de la Calle (street kids).  Niños de la Calle helps keep the kids alive, keep them in school, keep them off drugs, and maybe bring them to the church, all of which are great things.  But I do love working at a higher level just because it is an inspirational movement--it's more than just covering the basics. 

I enjoy both. They are different and they take up a lot of time, something I never really seem to have enough of, but I like them both a lot.

Let’s see… friends? Doing okay on those. Sometimes I feel lonely. The new people around me are just so different from last semester’s group. I don’t want to grade them down, but by the end of last semester I was SO comfortable with the old group of us that it is just weird to be so distant from people again. I guess you could say I loved the old group, I felt a lot of love for all of them. I’m trying to work on building that love for the new group too.

As far as males go, they don’t, something I’m fine with. There was one opportunity for something, but that fell through. I didn’t want to start any kind of relationship anyway, since whoever the person might have been will be going back to his own corner of the world when I go back to mine. So I enjoy John, who happens to be male, but he could just as easily be a female and it wouldn’t affect my enjoyment of his company.

I just sent in an application today for an apartment back in Moscow! Well, actually a house, which is REALLY cool. I hope we get the one we want. Somewhat expensive, but it’ll be SO cool. And the two girls I am going to live with are really chill people. No, I take that back. Kate Pleat is totally WIRED all the time and bounces around like a puppy, but she is a swimmer and has promised to teach me some strokes, something I know nothing about. But she is chill in the sense that she is nowhere near dramatic sorority-like. And Lars’s girlfriend, Anna, is the other roommate-to-be and she is super-chill in the definitely NOT wired sense. She’d have to be chill to date Lars, who can be strange at times.

Let’s see… What else? I am thinking of maybe going to Baños this weekend or at least SOMEWHERE. I am tired of being in the city. I am so thrilled my baby brother is coming!

Hey, shout-out to everyone! Not that I am counting, but I have just a little under three months left here! I am making the most of my time, because I know that as soon as it is over, I am going to be sad to leave. I miss home, yeah, but home’ll still be there. Well, I hope. Seeing as how the Middle East is developing long-range missiles that could destroy quite a bit of the United States, and the entire world is diving into a recession so great that it is getting ever nearer to the Great Depression, who knows? How negative. : )

So, final instructions for this post… for those who made it through this post and are still reading, do me the favor of leaving me a comment. I kinda wanted to see of anyone actually reads my blog and if so, how many. Even if you are not a part of blogger, you can leave a comment with or without your name. Tell me you loved my classic writing style, tell me I sucked, tell me I have something green in my teeth or maybe tell me your life story. The last book you read. What you think of Obama. Your biggest regret in life. Anything goes, I just want to hear from you. Love you all. Thanks for reading and for all the support!

Emily