Hi all! This is going to be kinda long, I have a lot to cover. I've been working at an organization called La Pastoral Migratoria (now that I think about it I'm not sure I know what it means, but it has something to do with migration and flocks). It's a Catholic organization that receives money from a whole bunch of mostly international sources to help both Colombian refugees and poor Ecuadorians. There are a lot of Colombians living in Ibarra, because it's the biggest city close to the border (about 2 hours away), and the conflict in Colombia is mostly concentrated in the South, close to Ecuador. Let me introduce you to the cast of characters I work with:
- La Hermana, a very jittery nun who has giant glasses that make her look like an alarmed bug. She's Brazilian, so her Spanish accent is super goofy sounding (certainly not more than mine, I'm sure, but still)
- Elisa, the social worker from Belgium who came here as a volunteer, feel in love with an Ecuadoran and moved back
- Yajaira, the pyschologist who shows up to work every day on her motorcycle in stiletto heels. She desperately tried to set me up with a friend of hers, which I was not having at all, so I told them I was in Quito last weekend to get out of a date. Then I saw him at a club that night. Whoops....
- Benicio, the world's most enthusiastic accountant who spent 10 minutes telling me how fulfilled he feels working here, and how his soul has awakened after working in a private business.
Basically, la Pastoral has a daycare for kids 1-5, and then an after school program for kids 6-12. They have a psychologist for trauma therapy, 2 social workers, 2 nuns, and a lawyer. All the services they give - childcare, legal, pyschiatric, food, temporary housing, etc - are free. It's a really cool organization.
I do really random stuff at the organization. When Elisa has somewhere to go, like a visit to a family, I follow her, which is really interesting - I've seem some incredibly desolate living situations. I've been working a lot with Yajaira, setting up workshops to give to different groups. I go to the afterschool help program, try to help basically illiterate kids with their homework, and play the "how do you say this in English?" game for hours. And I interview people, for the academic part of this month. Starting next weekend, I have to write a 30 page paper in Spanish about something pertaining to my experience. So, I've been interviewing Colombian refugees about their lives - why they left Colombia, what their life is like now, etc.
Last week we gave a workshop on "managing fear" to a group of people who live in a place called Vergèl, which is basically a housing project. Almost all these people are Colombian, all are extremely poor, and most have come from horribly traumatizing situations in Colombia. Last weekend, someone wrote a threat on the wall on the side of the building, something about "Colombian refugees...government informers...go home." Then, Monday night, someone threw an actual homemade bomb inside of the building. Aside from the accompanying emotional trauma, all were fine.
For those of you who don't know anything about the Colombian conflict, it's bastante complicado, as they say. It's basically the FARC, a guerrilla group that formed in the 1970's, fighting the Colombian government. There are also paramilitary squads, vigilante groups that were originallformed by landowners as protection against the FARC. Whatever it may have started out to be, the conflict has basically degenerated into narcotraffickers killing each other and civilians. Both FARC andthe paramilitary groups have been accused of horrible human rights abuses, and the Colombian government has been accused of ties to the paramilitaries.
US role: In 2000, Prez Clinton started Plan Colombia, which was basically a big aid package to the Colombian government to fight the "Drug War." The problem with it was that 7 out of 10 of every US dollar went to military and anti-narco practices, which put a lot of money in the hands of the army but did little to develop the country. The current president, Uribe, is one of the only Latin American leaders left with really good relations with the US.
Here are some of the stories I've heard from people:
- A woman who was kidnapped for 2 1/2 years with her husband, who was put through training to be a soldier for the guerillas while she was basically enslaved as a cook, cleaning lady, etc. They left their several month old son with a friend when they left, and when they came back, he was 3 and they had to get medical tests to prove that he was their son.
- A woman who fled the south to Medellin with her husband and 6 kids. They moved 5 times, each time being followed and receiving letters saying, "We know where your kids go to school. We have pictures of them. Leave here, or we will kill them." She burst into tears in my office when I asked her why she thought they were following her - they have no idea.
- A woman who worked for narcotraffickers that think she wronged them, and now want to kill her (or at least scare her). They followed her to Ibarra and beat her up in her house. She wants to leave with her 2 children, move somewhere more anonymous in Ecuador, but she's under investigation. The place she works was robbed, and because she's the only Colombian who works there, they assume she did it.
The night that I had that last conversation, I talked to my host brother and mother about how dangerous Ecuador has become in recent years. To Ecuadorans, the reason has to be the influx of Colombians. The discrimination against Colombian refugees here is just as bad, if not more blatant, than US discrimination against Mexican immigrants. I sat here at the table as two wonderful, well-educated people (who, over the years, have had 15 host students, most of whom worked at this same organization) tell me that Colombians are thieves, they're the reason Ecuador isn't safe, they're responsible for 70% of crime in the country (the last official figure I saw was 3%). It was really mind-blowing.
Other than work, I do absolutely nothing. There's no one else from my program anywhere near me, and I work 8:30 to 5:30 every day, and I go to bed at about 9. In a lot of ways it's good - it's been really relaxing, I've had lots of time to concentrate on what I'm here to do, and I've been practicing my Spanish a shit ton -but I'm really looking forward to seeing all my friends again. I just have to write this goddamn paper first....
And then there's my living situation - the family is great, but the house is fucking full of children. There's one little girl who lives in my house, and 2 other kids who live in the same yard in the house right behind. For those of you that know how I feel about kids, you can imagine how much I enjoy this. The girl who lives with me cries constantly (I'm only home and awake for an aggregate 4 hours a day, and I witness her crying at least 2 or 3 times every day), and the teeny one who lives in the back is a little thief who just steals everything she can get her hands on when she walks into a room. It's just not my bag. Fortunately, I won't be home a lot this week.
That's about all I can handle right now. I can't believe this semester is almost over - I have one week left of work, then I have a week(ish) to write my paper, then I go back to Quito for a week, and ya llegan mis padres (and then my parents are already here). ¡Que tan rapido pasa el tiempo!
love,
Alice
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
When the lights go out...
So it´s been a little over a week. I´ve been quite busy since I leave Quito for a month today (eek!) Here are a few things:
1. Quito´s electricity runs on hydroelectric power from a water reserve in the Oriente (Amazon). Unfortunately, since it hasn´t been raining there recently, there is a huge power shortage in Quito. What they do to solve this is turn different grids off in a rotating order - so there are parts of the city that don´t have power at all times. This includes things like streetlights, so traffic is totally crazy. It also includes internet cafes when people are trying to register for classes. Yesterday I was out running errands, sat down to register at 3pm my time, and at 2:56 the power for the whole grid goes out. I had to book it about a mile to find somewhere with power. Fortunately, abroaders register first, so it worked out just fine.
This example contributes to the idea that we in the developed world (problematic term, but you know what I mean) have become increasingly removed from our environment. We are only very affected by environmental events when they´re pretty huge - snowstorm, hurricane, drought. But when there´s a drought, either in our country or another, we still go on eating. One thing I really noticed on the coast is that they are completely interdependant on the land - if there isn´t fish, or if it stops raining like it did 10 years ago, people go hungry. People´s lives are threatened. Even Quito is affected by environmental changes - and Quito is certainly not the country. It´s a bustling city with a transportation system, malls, gay bars and KFCs. But it still stops when it doesn´t rain in the Oriente. We have become so good at trying to harness nature and bend it to our will, that we have lost a lot of interconnectedness with it.
2. Something pretty unfortunate happened this week. Last weekend was Día de los Difuntos, or Day of the Dead, which is a 4 day weekend in which all of Quito seems to go out of town and the city is totally dead. My friend Carl was coming home from being out of town on Sunday, right in the middle of the feriado (holiday), and got off the trolley at a bad stop. He got into a (registered - the ones they tell you to make sure you get into) cab, and the cabbie proceeded to pick up 2 other guys and the 3 tried to rob him. They put a gun to his head, threatened his life, demanded that he give them all of his money and valuables. However, Carl had already been robbed of his camera and sunglasses on the bus on Saturday, and had only $5 after the long weekend. Eventually, when they decided that he really didn´t have anything, they maced him, threw him out of the car and took his shoes.
Obviously, this really shook all of us - Carl wasn´t hurt, beyond the blinding pain of being maced, but it was a reminder that we really are living in a dangerous country. However, there are a couple of things he could´ve done better - he shouldn´t have been alone, in that part of town, with his backpack, on that holiday weekend. Anyway, I don´t say that to scare you guys, but it was a pretty big event of the week.
3. Another unfortunate thing of a different magnitude - all my mosquito bites from the coast are infected. Gross. I´m also probably going to get malaria because I keep forgetting to take my medicine.
4. I leave for my ISP (Independant Study Project) today! I really can´t believe it. I´m really excited - my plan (certain to change, like all plans in Ecuador) is to record the life histories of the refugees I meet there. However, I´m also super nervous - to be doing something totally on my own, with none of my buddies there, to be speaking Spanish all day, to be trying to do research to write a 30 page paper (in Spanish). I know I´m going to be totally fine and have a great experience, but I think I´ll also experience loneliness and difficulty. But anyway. Here we go!
Love,
Alice
1. Quito´s electricity runs on hydroelectric power from a water reserve in the Oriente (Amazon). Unfortunately, since it hasn´t been raining there recently, there is a huge power shortage in Quito. What they do to solve this is turn different grids off in a rotating order - so there are parts of the city that don´t have power at all times. This includes things like streetlights, so traffic is totally crazy. It also includes internet cafes when people are trying to register for classes. Yesterday I was out running errands, sat down to register at 3pm my time, and at 2:56 the power for the whole grid goes out. I had to book it about a mile to find somewhere with power. Fortunately, abroaders register first, so it worked out just fine.
This example contributes to the idea that we in the developed world (problematic term, but you know what I mean) have become increasingly removed from our environment. We are only very affected by environmental events when they´re pretty huge - snowstorm, hurricane, drought. But when there´s a drought, either in our country or another, we still go on eating. One thing I really noticed on the coast is that they are completely interdependant on the land - if there isn´t fish, or if it stops raining like it did 10 years ago, people go hungry. People´s lives are threatened. Even Quito is affected by environmental changes - and Quito is certainly not the country. It´s a bustling city with a transportation system, malls, gay bars and KFCs. But it still stops when it doesn´t rain in the Oriente. We have become so good at trying to harness nature and bend it to our will, that we have lost a lot of interconnectedness with it.
2. Something pretty unfortunate happened this week. Last weekend was Día de los Difuntos, or Day of the Dead, which is a 4 day weekend in which all of Quito seems to go out of town and the city is totally dead. My friend Carl was coming home from being out of town on Sunday, right in the middle of the feriado (holiday), and got off the trolley at a bad stop. He got into a (registered - the ones they tell you to make sure you get into) cab, and the cabbie proceeded to pick up 2 other guys and the 3 tried to rob him. They put a gun to his head, threatened his life, demanded that he give them all of his money and valuables. However, Carl had already been robbed of his camera and sunglasses on the bus on Saturday, and had only $5 after the long weekend. Eventually, when they decided that he really didn´t have anything, they maced him, threw him out of the car and took his shoes.
Obviously, this really shook all of us - Carl wasn´t hurt, beyond the blinding pain of being maced, but it was a reminder that we really are living in a dangerous country. However, there are a couple of things he could´ve done better - he shouldn´t have been alone, in that part of town, with his backpack, on that holiday weekend. Anyway, I don´t say that to scare you guys, but it was a pretty big event of the week.
3. Another unfortunate thing of a different magnitude - all my mosquito bites from the coast are infected. Gross. I´m also probably going to get malaria because I keep forgetting to take my medicine.
4. I leave for my ISP (Independant Study Project) today! I really can´t believe it. I´m really excited - my plan (certain to change, like all plans in Ecuador) is to record the life histories of the refugees I meet there. However, I´m also super nervous - to be doing something totally on my own, with none of my buddies there, to be speaking Spanish all day, to be trying to do research to write a 30 page paper (in Spanish). I know I´m going to be totally fine and have a great experience, but I think I´ll also experience loneliness and difficulty. But anyway. Here we go!
Love,
Alice
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Absurd and disconcerting amounts of rice.
HA. You all thought I had finally fallen prey to blog enertia and given up. BUT NO. I was just in a coastal village with no internet access. Suckers. Sit tight, this is gonna be a long one.
Let´s see. We left Wednesday, spent a day in Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador, which looks hoppin and awesome. Thursday, we drove up the coast and our directors dropped us off in pairs in little tiny pueblos, with only the name of the person we were staying with. The idea is that the pueblos are small enough that you can ask pretty much anyone where "Bella Lainez" lives and they can tell you. Theory proven. Onto the bulletpoints:
- My partner was a senior from George Washington named Margaret, which has a dry, goofy sense of humor to rival mine, so we had a pretty rockin good time. A veces, all we could do was laugh at the ridiculous shit that was going on around us. So I lucked out, partner-wise.
- Marge and I stayed with a family in their apartment above the shops they owned downstairs - a pharmacy, a tienda (little convenience store) and a bar. Upstairs, there were 5 bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room for 10 people, including a family of 5 in one bedroom. Only two of the 10 family members had steady jobs - one of the sisters owns the pharmacy, and one of the brothers owns the tienda and the bar. Neither of the abuelos (grandparents) worked, nor the oldest sister. The father of the family of 5 sometimes helped his brother out in the bar, and his wife made hats. This is very representative of the situation of most people in the town - there just isn´t very much work. 70% of the money earned in the town comes from tourism, which really only exists between December and April. Most of the rest is artesanía, or handicrafts, which it seems that everyone makes.
- The unemployment was especially evident living above a bar. About half the time, the only way we could get to the stairs to the apartment was by going through the bar. In the daytime, this involved ignoring the 2-5 drunk men that were always there, at any time of the day. At night, it meant we had to walk through a crowd of about 15 drunken jeering men. Ecuadoran men love blondes. I ended up leaving the town with a really profound respect for the women and a pretty intense disgust for the men. I was hit on by married men, men while their kids were standing there watching, men who would hold my wrists and not let me go until the bar owner kicked them out. Almost all of the worst of it happened before noon. Obviously, this is all a result of a really devastating lack of opportunities.
- About 10 years ago, something happened, and it stopped raining. As my family told me, "Ahora no hay invierno," or, "there´s no winter anymore." so crops can only be grown a couple months out of the year, and almost none of the food comes from there. While the abuelo supported his whole family on agriculture for his whole working life, that just isn´t possible anymore.
- Like I said, artesanía is the really big thing going on in the town. There are dozens of little stands selling hammocks, straw hats, knick-knacks, furniture. We stopped and talked to a lot of the people, and we ended up spending a lot of time at La Casa de las Hamackas, or the Hammock House. It´s a family business that sells gorgeous hammocks (one of which will be proudly on display in my room next year), jewelry, hats, etc. Basically all the places sell the same stuff. Anyway, we hung out with the girls that worked there and they taught us how to make hats. It takes about 3 days to make a hat, when you´re really fast, and so we made a little piece of it about the size of my palm, and they finished them into little mini hats for poodles when we came back to say goodbye the next day. Neither of these girls had attended high school, and they spend every day making handicrafts.
- We made friends with a Peace Corps Volunteer in the town. She only arrived about 2 months ago, so she was still getting to know the place a little bit. It gave me a much better idea of what doing the Peace Corps would really be like - basically what Marge and I did, execpt we got to leave after 5 days and she´s going to stay for 2 years. At first, 5 days even seemed to be pushing it, and I couldn´t imagine having to stay there for 2 years. However, as the end of the weekend neared, I started to see things a little more positively. No matter how small the town is, there´s always a million relationships and stories and events to understand and learn about. I think the isolation would be hard, as would the lack of direction - they send you somewhere, with a general theme (Brooke´s in the Health program), and then you spend 2 years coming up with projects. A little daunting.
- Because we were obviously the most exciting thing in town, we got invited to events that we had absolutely no business being at, such as a wedding and an Evangelical quinceañera. The wedding ceremony was interesting - it was a little special section of a regular Mass, and there were two couples getting married at the same time. Then the priest continued with the rest of Mass. So we went to Mass, waited about an hour, and showed up at the reception, thinking we´d be a little fashionably late or at least on time. WRONG. If there´s one thing wrong with gringos, it´s their punctuality. So we were literally the only ones not in the wedding party there for about 2 hours. Downside, very awkward. Upside, we are now the only ones with pictures of their first dance or toast, and they continually served us beer for the entire 2 hours. The wedding was on the beach, and during the first dance of the couple and each of their parents, there was a little boy clad in an Oshkosh fireman raincoat standing in the middle of everyone, crying, and throwing sand at the nicely dressed people, who completely ignored him. That alone was worth the entire trip. However, once all the Ecuadorans got there, we realized that we were LITERALLY the only women besides the bride drinking at the entire wedding, and were therefore not surprised when the town jóvenes (youngins) approached us an hit us with what I´m sure is their magic pick-up line: "So, which do you like better: tequila, or beer?"
- Our "host mother," or at least the lady we were paying to feed us, didn´t actually live in the house we were staying at. She was their sister, but she lived across the street. Anyway, I´m almost positive that she was mentally disabled. She made pretty good food, but gave us about 3 times too much. The title of the entry is a direct quote from my director about what to expect of coastal food. 4 of the 10 people living in the house with us had no teeth, including our host mother, which had a significantly greater effect on our ability to understand them than the coastal accent we had been warned so greatly about.
- We left our homestays Monday afternoon and went to meet back up with the group at an ecologically friendly lodge on the coast. Yes, after our challenging and eye-opening immersion into abject poverty, we went and played on the beach at a resort for 2 days. I literally spent all of Tuesday either in the ocean, running in the sand, playing beach soccer/volleyball, and collecting rocks. It´s a really rough life. Not to mention moonlit ocean skinnydipping...
Oy. Sorry. That´s not quite as funny as most are. It was a really amazing experience, and I can´t believe I´m now back in Quito with a laptop and an iPod and everything. And I wrote two essays today, which was jarring since I haven´t really done much major work here.
For the last month of the program, we all split up and go to different places throughout the country to work on projects of our choosing. I decided that I´m going to Ibarra, a city in Northern Ecuador, to work with an NGO assisting Colombian refugees. I´m really excited about it. None of my program buddies are going to be around me, so I´ll be speaking a lot more Spanish and be a lot more isolated than I have been so far. I think it´s going to be a great experience.
love!!
Alice
Let´s see. We left Wednesday, spent a day in Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador, which looks hoppin and awesome. Thursday, we drove up the coast and our directors dropped us off in pairs in little tiny pueblos, with only the name of the person we were staying with. The idea is that the pueblos are small enough that you can ask pretty much anyone where "Bella Lainez" lives and they can tell you. Theory proven. Onto the bulletpoints:
- My partner was a senior from George Washington named Margaret, which has a dry, goofy sense of humor to rival mine, so we had a pretty rockin good time. A veces, all we could do was laugh at the ridiculous shit that was going on around us. So I lucked out, partner-wise.
- Marge and I stayed with a family in their apartment above the shops they owned downstairs - a pharmacy, a tienda (little convenience store) and a bar. Upstairs, there were 5 bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room for 10 people, including a family of 5 in one bedroom. Only two of the 10 family members had steady jobs - one of the sisters owns the pharmacy, and one of the brothers owns the tienda and the bar. Neither of the abuelos (grandparents) worked, nor the oldest sister. The father of the family of 5 sometimes helped his brother out in the bar, and his wife made hats. This is very representative of the situation of most people in the town - there just isn´t very much work. 70% of the money earned in the town comes from tourism, which really only exists between December and April. Most of the rest is artesanía, or handicrafts, which it seems that everyone makes.
- The unemployment was especially evident living above a bar. About half the time, the only way we could get to the stairs to the apartment was by going through the bar. In the daytime, this involved ignoring the 2-5 drunk men that were always there, at any time of the day. At night, it meant we had to walk through a crowd of about 15 drunken jeering men. Ecuadoran men love blondes. I ended up leaving the town with a really profound respect for the women and a pretty intense disgust for the men. I was hit on by married men, men while their kids were standing there watching, men who would hold my wrists and not let me go until the bar owner kicked them out. Almost all of the worst of it happened before noon. Obviously, this is all a result of a really devastating lack of opportunities.
- About 10 years ago, something happened, and it stopped raining. As my family told me, "Ahora no hay invierno," or, "there´s no winter anymore." so crops can only be grown a couple months out of the year, and almost none of the food comes from there. While the abuelo supported his whole family on agriculture for his whole working life, that just isn´t possible anymore.
- Like I said, artesanía is the really big thing going on in the town. There are dozens of little stands selling hammocks, straw hats, knick-knacks, furniture. We stopped and talked to a lot of the people, and we ended up spending a lot of time at La Casa de las Hamackas, or the Hammock House. It´s a family business that sells gorgeous hammocks (one of which will be proudly on display in my room next year), jewelry, hats, etc. Basically all the places sell the same stuff. Anyway, we hung out with the girls that worked there and they taught us how to make hats. It takes about 3 days to make a hat, when you´re really fast, and so we made a little piece of it about the size of my palm, and they finished them into little mini hats for poodles when we came back to say goodbye the next day. Neither of these girls had attended high school, and they spend every day making handicrafts.
- We made friends with a Peace Corps Volunteer in the town. She only arrived about 2 months ago, so she was still getting to know the place a little bit. It gave me a much better idea of what doing the Peace Corps would really be like - basically what Marge and I did, execpt we got to leave after 5 days and she´s going to stay for 2 years. At first, 5 days even seemed to be pushing it, and I couldn´t imagine having to stay there for 2 years. However, as the end of the weekend neared, I started to see things a little more positively. No matter how small the town is, there´s always a million relationships and stories and events to understand and learn about. I think the isolation would be hard, as would the lack of direction - they send you somewhere, with a general theme (Brooke´s in the Health program), and then you spend 2 years coming up with projects. A little daunting.
- Because we were obviously the most exciting thing in town, we got invited to events that we had absolutely no business being at, such as a wedding and an Evangelical quinceañera. The wedding ceremony was interesting - it was a little special section of a regular Mass, and there were two couples getting married at the same time. Then the priest continued with the rest of Mass. So we went to Mass, waited about an hour, and showed up at the reception, thinking we´d be a little fashionably late or at least on time. WRONG. If there´s one thing wrong with gringos, it´s their punctuality. So we were literally the only ones not in the wedding party there for about 2 hours. Downside, very awkward. Upside, we are now the only ones with pictures of their first dance or toast, and they continually served us beer for the entire 2 hours. The wedding was on the beach, and during the first dance of the couple and each of their parents, there was a little boy clad in an Oshkosh fireman raincoat standing in the middle of everyone, crying, and throwing sand at the nicely dressed people, who completely ignored him. That alone was worth the entire trip. However, once all the Ecuadorans got there, we realized that we were LITERALLY the only women besides the bride drinking at the entire wedding, and were therefore not surprised when the town jóvenes (youngins) approached us an hit us with what I´m sure is their magic pick-up line: "So, which do you like better: tequila, or beer?"
- Our "host mother," or at least the lady we were paying to feed us, didn´t actually live in the house we were staying at. She was their sister, but she lived across the street. Anyway, I´m almost positive that she was mentally disabled. She made pretty good food, but gave us about 3 times too much. The title of the entry is a direct quote from my director about what to expect of coastal food. 4 of the 10 people living in the house with us had no teeth, including our host mother, which had a significantly greater effect on our ability to understand them than the coastal accent we had been warned so greatly about.
- We left our homestays Monday afternoon and went to meet back up with the group at an ecologically friendly lodge on the coast. Yes, after our challenging and eye-opening immersion into abject poverty, we went and played on the beach at a resort for 2 days. I literally spent all of Tuesday either in the ocean, running in the sand, playing beach soccer/volleyball, and collecting rocks. It´s a really rough life. Not to mention moonlit ocean skinnydipping...
Oy. Sorry. That´s not quite as funny as most are. It was a really amazing experience, and I can´t believe I´m now back in Quito with a laptop and an iPod and everything. And I wrote two essays today, which was jarring since I haven´t really done much major work here.
For the last month of the program, we all split up and go to different places throughout the country to work on projects of our choosing. I decided that I´m going to Ibarra, a city in Northern Ecuador, to work with an NGO assisting Colombian refugees. I´m really excited about it. None of my program buddies are going to be around me, so I´ll be speaking a lot more Spanish and be a lot more isolated than I have been so far. I think it´s going to be a great experience.
love!!
Alice
Sunday, October 18, 2009
In the heart of the city
Just finished my first week in Quito, which is a really great city. We´re not here for very long - 10 days, then we´re on the coast for a week, then 10 more days, and we´re done - so I´m trying to cram everything in. Highlights:
1. Tuesday we went to La Basilica, which is a beautiful, old stone church that took 163 years to build. You can climb up into these giant towers, probably doing something like 800 stairs, some with questionable safety precautions.
2. The weather here has been surprisingly Seattle-like. It´s usually fairly sunny in the morning, and then around 2 pm (right when everyone leaves work to go home for lunch) it pours down rain for about 30 minutes. This week has been rainier than usual, which I appreciate. It helps me miss the Northwest fall a little less.
3. Wednesday Ecuador lost to Chile, which was the end of any World Cup aspirations. It was pretty heartbreaking, although the loss to Uruguay last Saturday was really the crucial nail in the coffin. Then Friday night we went to a Liga game, which is the most popular team in Quito. I love how much soccer there is here.
4. When we were in Los Chillos, we were taking Spanish classes for 5 hours a day, which were basically the biggest waste of time I´ve ever experienced. In Quito we start with our "Culture and Development" seminar, in which we have 1-2 lectures a day on different topics central to Ecuador from important people in the field. The subjects have included Development, Women, Human Rights, the Indigenous Movement, and Migration. It´s super interesting, but we really only have a week and a half of these lectures.
5. Friday night we found a bar that had relatively cheap shots, including some that they light on fire. You have to sip them through a straw in order not to burn yourself. Baller.
This is a short one. We leave for the coast for a week on Wednesday, so I´ll update after that.
1. Tuesday we went to La Basilica, which is a beautiful, old stone church that took 163 years to build. You can climb up into these giant towers, probably doing something like 800 stairs, some with questionable safety precautions.
2. The weather here has been surprisingly Seattle-like. It´s usually fairly sunny in the morning, and then around 2 pm (right when everyone leaves work to go home for lunch) it pours down rain for about 30 minutes. This week has been rainier than usual, which I appreciate. It helps me miss the Northwest fall a little less.
3. Wednesday Ecuador lost to Chile, which was the end of any World Cup aspirations. It was pretty heartbreaking, although the loss to Uruguay last Saturday was really the crucial nail in the coffin. Then Friday night we went to a Liga game, which is the most popular team in Quito. I love how much soccer there is here.
4. When we were in Los Chillos, we were taking Spanish classes for 5 hours a day, which were basically the biggest waste of time I´ve ever experienced. In Quito we start with our "Culture and Development" seminar, in which we have 1-2 lectures a day on different topics central to Ecuador from important people in the field. The subjects have included Development, Women, Human Rights, the Indigenous Movement, and Migration. It´s super interesting, but we really only have a week and a half of these lectures.
5. Friday night we found a bar that had relatively cheap shots, including some that they light on fire. You have to sip them through a straw in order not to burn yourself. Baller.
This is a short one. We leave for the coast for a week on Wednesday, so I´ll update after that.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Amazonía
OK, I´m back, and I can no longer put off writing this post. Well, actually I could, but that would involve going and watching Ecuadoran news with my mom and host sister, and I´d rather do this. Shit, I´m such a bad exchange student....
The Amazon was great. Here they call it the Oriente, which means East, because it´s on the East side of the country (not because it´s closer to the Orient). We were only gone for 5 days, 2 of those pretty full of traveling, so overall we were only in the jungle for about 3 days, which was not enough. Fortunately, I´m going back with my parents, aunt and uncle when they come down in December.
Highlights:
1. We spent part of a day in an indigenous village along the Río Napo. In the morning we did art projects and played tag with the kids, ranging from about first to sixth grade (they have to go to a different village for higher education). We got to see them go through their daily routine of songs, including the national anthem and some song that goes "Somos soldaditos/de chocolate" (we are the little chocolate soldiers). In return, they asked us to sing them our national anthem - probably the first time in quite a while that most of us had sang the whole thing out loud (fortunately we remembered the words).
Then we did a minga (a community project), in which we planted a bunch of different fruit trees along the edge of the river that borders the community. In reality, the kids did it for us, because gringos obviously don´t know how to plant jack. But it´s the effort that counts, right?
In the afternoon we played a game of soccer against what seemed like the whole town. If you were to actually count everyone that was on the field (which was easily bigger than Whitman´s, which is about the biggest legally allowed by FIFA), it was probably about 10 of us against 20 of them. The fact that their average age was probably 11 doesn´t matter. The average 11-year-old here probably has skill equivalent to a high school varsity player in the US. (Boys, that is - women here generally do not play soccer. In fact, I absolutely SHOCKED one of my friend´s host cousins when I told him that there are, *gasp*, girls in the US that are better at soccer than me. I think he had the idea I was about national team caliber. Maybe I should´ve let him keep thinking that...)
2. I´m sure most of you have now seen the pictures of me and Mona. However, don´t be fooled by her wooly, charming outer shell. In reality, she´s a sexist little bitch. She wouldn´t go anywhere near any of the women for the first day we were there, but was all over the guys constantly. When she finally "warmed up" to me, she actually just latched herself onto my face and tried to chew my eyebrow off. But it was totally worth it.
3. I´m now with my new host family in Quito. It´s just the mom, her 20-year-old daugher, and (drumroll....) their miniature dachshund! No, seriously, I´m not kidding. Her name is Chupeta (which I think means popsicle, but don´t quote me on that), and she looks exactly like Chestnut. She´s just about as spoiled, too.
I´m super stoked to be in Quito. As a general rule, the Quito families are less affluent, so my host mom works all day and my host sister takes classes and works. Ergo, I will have a lot of free time to roam the city and not feel guilty about not being home socializing with my host family. Host families are probably the most enriching part of the study abroad experience - I think they´re indispensible, especially when you´re trying to learn a language. However, they´re also exhausting and can be boring. I might learn Spanish by idly chatting and watching anime dubbed en Español, but that doesn´t mean I enjoy it. Also, it´s a huge adjustment to go from the freedom of US universities to a house in which you have to ask permission to go out at night. We all felt like we had been wisked back to high school. And again, I don´t mean this to sound negative. In a lot of ways, I really like the heavy emphasis on family in Ecuadoran (and broader Latin American) society. Young people have more respect for their parents, and in exchange the parents take care of them for a long time, which has certain monetary benefits. ´
That´s all. Love!
Alice
The Amazon was great. Here they call it the Oriente, which means East, because it´s on the East side of the country (not because it´s closer to the Orient). We were only gone for 5 days, 2 of those pretty full of traveling, so overall we were only in the jungle for about 3 days, which was not enough. Fortunately, I´m going back with my parents, aunt and uncle when they come down in December.
Highlights:
1. We spent part of a day in an indigenous village along the Río Napo. In the morning we did art projects and played tag with the kids, ranging from about first to sixth grade (they have to go to a different village for higher education). We got to see them go through their daily routine of songs, including the national anthem and some song that goes "Somos soldaditos/de chocolate" (we are the little chocolate soldiers). In return, they asked us to sing them our national anthem - probably the first time in quite a while that most of us had sang the whole thing out loud (fortunately we remembered the words).
Then we did a minga (a community project), in which we planted a bunch of different fruit trees along the edge of the river that borders the community. In reality, the kids did it for us, because gringos obviously don´t know how to plant jack. But it´s the effort that counts, right?
In the afternoon we played a game of soccer against what seemed like the whole town. If you were to actually count everyone that was on the field (which was easily bigger than Whitman´s, which is about the biggest legally allowed by FIFA), it was probably about 10 of us against 20 of them. The fact that their average age was probably 11 doesn´t matter. The average 11-year-old here probably has skill equivalent to a high school varsity player in the US. (Boys, that is - women here generally do not play soccer. In fact, I absolutely SHOCKED one of my friend´s host cousins when I told him that there are, *gasp*, girls in the US that are better at soccer than me. I think he had the idea I was about national team caliber. Maybe I should´ve let him keep thinking that...)
2. I´m sure most of you have now seen the pictures of me and Mona. However, don´t be fooled by her wooly, charming outer shell. In reality, she´s a sexist little bitch. She wouldn´t go anywhere near any of the women for the first day we were there, but was all over the guys constantly. When she finally "warmed up" to me, she actually just latched herself onto my face and tried to chew my eyebrow off. But it was totally worth it.
3. I´m now with my new host family in Quito. It´s just the mom, her 20-year-old daugher, and (drumroll....) their miniature dachshund! No, seriously, I´m not kidding. Her name is Chupeta (which I think means popsicle, but don´t quote me on that), and she looks exactly like Chestnut. She´s just about as spoiled, too.
I´m super stoked to be in Quito. As a general rule, the Quito families are less affluent, so my host mom works all day and my host sister takes classes and works. Ergo, I will have a lot of free time to roam the city and not feel guilty about not being home socializing with my host family. Host families are probably the most enriching part of the study abroad experience - I think they´re indispensible, especially when you´re trying to learn a language. However, they´re also exhausting and can be boring. I might learn Spanish by idly chatting and watching anime dubbed en Español, but that doesn´t mean I enjoy it. Also, it´s a huge adjustment to go from the freedom of US universities to a house in which you have to ask permission to go out at night. We all felt like we had been wisked back to high school. And again, I don´t mean this to sound negative. In a lot of ways, I really like the heavy emphasis on family in Ecuadoran (and broader Latin American) society. Young people have more respect for their parents, and in exchange the parents take care of them for a long time, which has certain monetary benefits. ´
That´s all. Love!
Alice
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Weekend in review
Lists are really my favorite way to organize things. so here we go:
1. Saturday we had crab, which we bought live and then had to kill. meaning, my family made me help them kill a whole bunch of crabs - like 40. and then they laughed at me for being squeamish. this from the family who told me they prayed that I wouldn´t be a vegetarian.
2. My sister has these two little turtles - they´re about the size of the palm of my hand. She won´t name them, because if you name things you´re sad when they die. but the other day I did come into her room and find her, her brother, and all of the turtles lying in bed (they´re 17 and 21, but seriously, that´s not the weird part). And today, after our really fancy lunch with guests, the turtles were brought in and walked all around the table. So, to summarize, turtles rank somewhere in between getting to roam all over beds and the place that we eat and deserving names.
3. There´s only one club in Los Chillos, the town I´m staying in. Of course, we could go to Quito, but I think we keep getting lazy and just going to the Red Hot Chili Kingas (I don´t know if there is an explanaition for this name or if they just got the band name wrong. There are also paintings all over the walls of different US bands, but a lot of them have incorrect members in them - like Keith Richards plus the Chili Peppers, etc). After going there Friday night with 21 other people on my program, and dancing on the bar with half of them, my brother and his friends decided they wanted to go there Saturday night. OK, fine. It has booze, it has music, that´s generally good enough for me. However, I did get kind of embarressed when the doorman recognized me as I was scrambling to pull out my ID. Direct (although translated) quote: "Oh, it´s OK. She was here yesterday. And the week before. And the week before...." I guess I don´t look Ecuadoran enough to blend in.
4. Tuesday we went to one of the low-income elementary schools in the area, and in groups of about 3, taught classes for the morning. I had 7th graders (artfully avoiding my fear of children by picking kids that were about as big as I was). I ended up giving them a 40 minute American history lecture (in Spanish), which they listened to incredibly closely, and even asked questions. One of them asked why someone had thrown a shoe at George Bush, another why there was racism in the US (according to the world´s smartest 7th grader, there isn´t any in Ecuador). I was super stoked, and shocked that I managed to get a bunch of 12 year olds to listen that long.
5. Tuesday afternoon I went to the world´s most pathetic theme park with my mom, my 17 year old sister and her 3 friends. They literally would start the ride for just the 4 of them, because there were only about 15 people in the entire park. Anyway, while we were watching them, I asked my mom what she thought about my host brothers´girlfriends. It ended up starting this long conversation about how she thinks that you have to marry within your social class or you will ultimately have problems. Apparently, she doesn´t think my brothers´ girlfriends exactly come from the appropriate families or statuses. Although she also told me that her older son "doesn´t care whether a girl has a pretty face, or a nice body, just what´s in her mind," as if this was a bad thing. She also said that if you´re a darker-skinned person (which she and her kids are, compared to a lot of Ecuadorans), you need to marry a lighter skinned person, presumably so that your kids will be lighter-skinned as well. It´s really interesting because classism is significantly more blatant here. No one would ever say that in the US, although I think it´s something a lot of people think about more than they would like to admit. On the other hand, I think part of her reasoning is that girls from a lower social class wouldn´t know how to run the house as well, maybe because their mothers worked when they were younger (my host mom is "una ama de casa," or housewife). I wondered what she would think of me - sure, in Ecuadoran terms, I have money, and I´m certainly light-skinned, but I don´t know jackshit about taking care of kids, or a house, or cooking for a family, nor would I agree to take that role.
6. We had a lecture today on the cosmology of the Amazon, including a little section on, ahem, "herbal experiences." There´s this ceremony called Awayaska, which involves a mix of several different hallucinogens, which allegedly enables mind-reading, talking to the dead, and future-telling. While we are prohibited from doing this during the program (apparently, a couple years ago, some student decided to try one of the hallucinogenic flowers and went completely blind for 3 minutes), it´s apparently a very amazing experience. The interesting thing is that these ceremonies, at least in the traditional villages, are restricted to men. The traditional indigenous reason for this is that women already have enough power - not only the power to give birth to other humans, but the erotic power over men. This attitude towards women´s power also appears in traditional African feminist thought.
7. I have 3 more days at this homestay, in Los Chillos, then I go to the Amazon for a week, and then I move into a new homestay in Quito. While I´m going to miss my family here - they´re all super friendly, helpful and fun - I´m looking forward to getting out of this town (imagine the Eastside of Lake Washington, without having a car to get to Seattle). I think it´ll be great to move to a more fast-paced, city lifestyle.
OK, that´s certainly enough information for now. I imagine no one´s going to get through that in one go. I´ll update again after the rainforest.
Love,
Alice
1. Saturday we had crab, which we bought live and then had to kill. meaning, my family made me help them kill a whole bunch of crabs - like 40. and then they laughed at me for being squeamish. this from the family who told me they prayed that I wouldn´t be a vegetarian.
2. My sister has these two little turtles - they´re about the size of the palm of my hand. She won´t name them, because if you name things you´re sad when they die. but the other day I did come into her room and find her, her brother, and all of the turtles lying in bed (they´re 17 and 21, but seriously, that´s not the weird part). And today, after our really fancy lunch with guests, the turtles were brought in and walked all around the table. So, to summarize, turtles rank somewhere in between getting to roam all over beds and the place that we eat and deserving names.
3. There´s only one club in Los Chillos, the town I´m staying in. Of course, we could go to Quito, but I think we keep getting lazy and just going to the Red Hot Chili Kingas (I don´t know if there is an explanaition for this name or if they just got the band name wrong. There are also paintings all over the walls of different US bands, but a lot of them have incorrect members in them - like Keith Richards plus the Chili Peppers, etc). After going there Friday night with 21 other people on my program, and dancing on the bar with half of them, my brother and his friends decided they wanted to go there Saturday night. OK, fine. It has booze, it has music, that´s generally good enough for me. However, I did get kind of embarressed when the doorman recognized me as I was scrambling to pull out my ID. Direct (although translated) quote: "Oh, it´s OK. She was here yesterday. And the week before. And the week before...." I guess I don´t look Ecuadoran enough to blend in.
4. Tuesday we went to one of the low-income elementary schools in the area, and in groups of about 3, taught classes for the morning. I had 7th graders (artfully avoiding my fear of children by picking kids that were about as big as I was). I ended up giving them a 40 minute American history lecture (in Spanish), which they listened to incredibly closely, and even asked questions. One of them asked why someone had thrown a shoe at George Bush, another why there was racism in the US (according to the world´s smartest 7th grader, there isn´t any in Ecuador). I was super stoked, and shocked that I managed to get a bunch of 12 year olds to listen that long.
5. Tuesday afternoon I went to the world´s most pathetic theme park with my mom, my 17 year old sister and her 3 friends. They literally would start the ride for just the 4 of them, because there were only about 15 people in the entire park. Anyway, while we were watching them, I asked my mom what she thought about my host brothers´girlfriends. It ended up starting this long conversation about how she thinks that you have to marry within your social class or you will ultimately have problems. Apparently, she doesn´t think my brothers´ girlfriends exactly come from the appropriate families or statuses. Although she also told me that her older son "doesn´t care whether a girl has a pretty face, or a nice body, just what´s in her mind," as if this was a bad thing. She also said that if you´re a darker-skinned person (which she and her kids are, compared to a lot of Ecuadorans), you need to marry a lighter skinned person, presumably so that your kids will be lighter-skinned as well. It´s really interesting because classism is significantly more blatant here. No one would ever say that in the US, although I think it´s something a lot of people think about more than they would like to admit. On the other hand, I think part of her reasoning is that girls from a lower social class wouldn´t know how to run the house as well, maybe because their mothers worked when they were younger (my host mom is "una ama de casa," or housewife). I wondered what she would think of me - sure, in Ecuadoran terms, I have money, and I´m certainly light-skinned, but I don´t know jackshit about taking care of kids, or a house, or cooking for a family, nor would I agree to take that role.
6. We had a lecture today on the cosmology of the Amazon, including a little section on, ahem, "herbal experiences." There´s this ceremony called Awayaska, which involves a mix of several different hallucinogens, which allegedly enables mind-reading, talking to the dead, and future-telling. While we are prohibited from doing this during the program (apparently, a couple years ago, some student decided to try one of the hallucinogenic flowers and went completely blind for 3 minutes), it´s apparently a very amazing experience. The interesting thing is that these ceremonies, at least in the traditional villages, are restricted to men. The traditional indigenous reason for this is that women already have enough power - not only the power to give birth to other humans, but the erotic power over men. This attitude towards women´s power also appears in traditional African feminist thought.
7. I have 3 more days at this homestay, in Los Chillos, then I go to the Amazon for a week, and then I move into a new homestay in Quito. While I´m going to miss my family here - they´re all super friendly, helpful and fun - I´m looking forward to getting out of this town (imagine the Eastside of Lake Washington, without having a car to get to Seattle). I think it´ll be great to move to a more fast-paced, city lifestyle.
OK, that´s certainly enough information for now. I imagine no one´s going to get through that in one go. I´ll update again after the rainforest.
Love,
Alice
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A weekend in the clouds
Hello all! I just returned yesterday from Intag, which is a cloud forest in the mountains of Ecuador about 3-4 hours North of Quito. We spent 4 days on this amazing farm that grows all its own food and operates without electricity or running water. It was incredibly beautiful - we were a short walk away from two waterfalls and a river, plus amazing hiking trails through the jungle. A few notes on the weekend:
1. (Note: I heard this lecture in Spanish, meaning I´m a little fuzzy on some of the details. My apologies). Intag is an area of incredible biodiversity, home to many species found infrequently or nowhere else in the world. However, it is also an area rich in minerals, which has attracted mining companies from all over the world (predominantly Canada). The most major way in which mining disrupts ecosystems is by contaminating the water supply. Runoff from mines seeps into rivers, lakes, and through the soil, killing plants and animals and putting the local population at extreme risk. Its been found that when a water supply is contaminated, the sector of the population most effected is the children. In areas that have been previously mined, there are incredibly high rates of cancer among the local people, especially young ones.
The Intag community has succeeded in getting much of the land, including the farm on which we stayed, named as a national reserve, meaning it cannot be exploited for its natural resources like minerals and petroleum. But not without an effort. The tactic used to procure land for mining is for a ¨junior company,¨one that is not extremely large or well known, to go into areas rich in minerals and buy up land through bribery, intimidation and force. Then the main mining companies come in to exploit the product. The owner of the farm has been a prominent figure in the anti-mining movement, to the extent that in 2006 a junior mining company hired 15 off-duty and retired policemen and soldiers to come to the farm to arrest him on a sketchy charge made by an employee of the mining company. The ultimate intent was not to have the charge stick, but to hire someone to kill him in jail (apparently very easy and relatively cheap). He ended up hiding in the woods and in friends houses for over a month before the charges were dropped, with no help from either the Ecuadoran or US government (he´s an expat from Wisconsin).
Many of these companies come from Canada for two reasons: one, there are apparently few regulations on the companies that trade in the Toronto Stock Exchange - so these junior companies can be listed on the TSE despite being relatively illegitimate and the perpetrators of bribes, intimidation and assassination. The second is that while Canada is one of the most minerally rich countries in the world, there are laws against contaminating in Canada. Therefore, these companies have to find other countries to contaminate.
2. Onto a lighter topic: now, I have never been much of a coffee drinker. The occasional mocha (with enough chocolate so I can´t taste the coffee) is about as far as I go. However, at the farm we stayed at last weekend, they grew, roasted and brewed their own coffee - and it was completely amazing. Ironically, though Ecuador grows some of the best coffee in the world, people here drink Nestle intant coffee, probably packaged in Charlottesville or something ridiculous like that. I spent the entire weekend totally wired because I was having about 10 times as much coffee as my system is used to at every meal. And today, I feel terrible....coincidence?
3. On the way home, a few friends and I stopped at a restaurant that listed ¨Chocolate con Ron¨(ron = rum) as one of the drink options, which sounded amazing and I obviously had to try. However, we´re not actually sure they even put water inthe chocolate - it tasted more like they heated up a big mug of rum and sprinkled chocolate powder in it. Word to the wise.
4. I ran into a rose bush while playing soccer on Monday night. Slight complication: rose bush was surrounded in barbed wire. Ouch.
5. Even though we did have lectures while we were gone - including a fascinating 2.5 hour history lecture - I got to listen to them while in a hammock. Winner.
And now I´m back in Los Chillos. Unfortunately, I do still have to go to school, which I had completely forgotten about while in Intag. However, we only have 7 more days of Spanish class (which is mind-numbingly boring), and then all our classes are going to be seminars on history, politics, economics, development, social movements, etc. I´m pretty excited for those - so far they´ve all been really interesting. And in about 10 days we head to the Amazon, which is going to be sick. It´s completely ridiculous how quickly time goes here.
Hasta luego,
Alice
1. (Note: I heard this lecture in Spanish, meaning I´m a little fuzzy on some of the details. My apologies). Intag is an area of incredible biodiversity, home to many species found infrequently or nowhere else in the world. However, it is also an area rich in minerals, which has attracted mining companies from all over the world (predominantly Canada). The most major way in which mining disrupts ecosystems is by contaminating the water supply. Runoff from mines seeps into rivers, lakes, and through the soil, killing plants and animals and putting the local population at extreme risk. Its been found that when a water supply is contaminated, the sector of the population most effected is the children. In areas that have been previously mined, there are incredibly high rates of cancer among the local people, especially young ones.
The Intag community has succeeded in getting much of the land, including the farm on which we stayed, named as a national reserve, meaning it cannot be exploited for its natural resources like minerals and petroleum. But not without an effort. The tactic used to procure land for mining is for a ¨junior company,¨one that is not extremely large or well known, to go into areas rich in minerals and buy up land through bribery, intimidation and force. Then the main mining companies come in to exploit the product. The owner of the farm has been a prominent figure in the anti-mining movement, to the extent that in 2006 a junior mining company hired 15 off-duty and retired policemen and soldiers to come to the farm to arrest him on a sketchy charge made by an employee of the mining company. The ultimate intent was not to have the charge stick, but to hire someone to kill him in jail (apparently very easy and relatively cheap). He ended up hiding in the woods and in friends houses for over a month before the charges were dropped, with no help from either the Ecuadoran or US government (he´s an expat from Wisconsin).
Many of these companies come from Canada for two reasons: one, there are apparently few regulations on the companies that trade in the Toronto Stock Exchange - so these junior companies can be listed on the TSE despite being relatively illegitimate and the perpetrators of bribes, intimidation and assassination. The second is that while Canada is one of the most minerally rich countries in the world, there are laws against contaminating in Canada. Therefore, these companies have to find other countries to contaminate.
2. Onto a lighter topic: now, I have never been much of a coffee drinker. The occasional mocha (with enough chocolate so I can´t taste the coffee) is about as far as I go. However, at the farm we stayed at last weekend, they grew, roasted and brewed their own coffee - and it was completely amazing. Ironically, though Ecuador grows some of the best coffee in the world, people here drink Nestle intant coffee, probably packaged in Charlottesville or something ridiculous like that. I spent the entire weekend totally wired because I was having about 10 times as much coffee as my system is used to at every meal. And today, I feel terrible....coincidence?
3. On the way home, a few friends and I stopped at a restaurant that listed ¨Chocolate con Ron¨(ron = rum) as one of the drink options, which sounded amazing and I obviously had to try. However, we´re not actually sure they even put water inthe chocolate - it tasted more like they heated up a big mug of rum and sprinkled chocolate powder in it. Word to the wise.
4. I ran into a rose bush while playing soccer on Monday night. Slight complication: rose bush was surrounded in barbed wire. Ouch.
5. Even though we did have lectures while we were gone - including a fascinating 2.5 hour history lecture - I got to listen to them while in a hammock. Winner.
And now I´m back in Los Chillos. Unfortunately, I do still have to go to school, which I had completely forgotten about while in Intag. However, we only have 7 more days of Spanish class (which is mind-numbingly boring), and then all our classes are going to be seminars on history, politics, economics, development, social movements, etc. I´m pretty excited for those - so far they´ve all been really interesting. And in about 10 days we head to the Amazon, which is going to be sick. It´s completely ridiculous how quickly time goes here.
Hasta luego,
Alice
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