somewhere under the sky

2011-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

i love that every time i return to this blog, the recent post has something to do with a thought that recently passed through my head or an experience i've just lived. the other day walking down the street, i noticed someone beating a rhythm with a random object, oblivious to the stares, and i was reminded of that time - could it be so many months ago - that i was walking down the street in Athens...i forgot i had even written about it in "Beats".

i don't watch tv in the states, principal reason being that i don't have a television. secondly because commercials drive me mad. i have been watching tv here, one to keep up with spanish, two to fill the emptiness of my apartment for lack of a music source which would otherwise fill it, and three to do what i judge others for - to turn off my brain after an exhausting day.

in such a process i have noticed the following: every single commercial for anything domestic - cleaning products, household kitchen appliances, household items, etc. features a woman. it is nauseating how these gender stereotypes are reinforced. i know it's the same in the states (i do watch tv about twice a year when i visit home). one commercial for a stove features a standard family of mom, dad, and child. mom takes the cookies out of the oven, and child and dad come running to have some. i know men who bake. but something tells me it would not occur to advertising companies to have dad take the cookies out of the oven.

i recently read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. i highly recommend it. i was intrigued by her struggle as a feminist and as a food lover to come to terms with the connections between what has happened to US kitchens in the last 50 years, and the gains in the US feminist movement. the movement exhorted us to undomesticate ourselves, to get out of the kitchen and into the workforce. of course, most families need two incomes to afford anything, but the reality is, how do we feed ourselves? this necessary thing for us to continue functioning was taken over at the same time by the food industry. Kingsolver explains better than i will the terrible conspiracy of subsidizing corn and soybeans, and using it not for food but for meal for animals which aren't supposed to eat corn and for food-like substances that fill all the packaged food with extra and poisonous calories that have turned US people fat and sluggish. apparently this generation is, for the first time, predicted to have a shorter life span than their parents. it is interesting to think what happened when women left the kitchen. of course, except for wealthy families contracting brown-skinned women as live-in nannies, women are now both in the workplace and in the kitchen and who isn't exhausted at the end of day? who wants to go to the garden to pull carrots and shred them for a soup after working the whole day? i guess this is opening many other cans of worms...i just remembered a Barcelona friend of mine telling me she was completely perplexed by the US work day. in Spain there is work for several hours, then rest for several hours, then work for several hours, then rest for several hours.

the food issue is a big one for me, even though i dedicate myself to antiwar forpeace activities, the food issue is always lurking in the background. if we don't have food sovereignty, then our bodies can be manipulated and it might come to a point where we just don't exist anymore. if the food situation is so disastrous, there won't be any other issues to fight for. the entire world has a problem of rural-urban migration. food is too overwhelming for me.

another observation i can make from watching tv in Ecuador is from the movies that are shown. on this point, there is absolutely no mystery as to why people think that in the states, everyone lives in a mansion, has a swimming pool and even the fries taste of freedom. take "The Girl Next Door" for example. this is the type of movie that hollywood churns out like Cuenca bread shops, and it's the type of movie that's shown on tv all the time. hollywood movies don't care about the poor or middle class, so those images are never on tv and of course people think the US is money-land. besides this, the movie was also nauseating. the female protagonist had her life chosen for her first by her porn star pimp and then by the student body president morally righteous nice boy next door.
what was on next? 90210.

the status quo is disgusting to me. the normalization of oppression, the banality and superficiality of relationships, the incredible profit from destruction of life...i take comfort i am not alone in my disgust.

beats

2010-11-08T15:43:00.001-08:00

today as i was walking down the street i was thinking of the African proverb "If you can talk, you can sing; If you can walk, you can dance." i was carrying a cardboard soup bowl with a plastic lid and plastic spoon. i began to beat a rhythm on the lid with the spoon and discovered three different beats i could make. i walked the whole way home this way, walking to the rhythm of my soup bowl, and once it occured to me that maybe i was annoying people walking around me. but then i realized they all had their ipods in their ears anyway. what a world. people aren't listening to each other's beats. this makes me sad.

uncanny

2010-11-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

i happened to be perusing my blog a few days ago, which i have never done before, and found an entry, that, unlikeliness of unlikelihoods, came to pass again - three and one half years later, to the exact day, i feel EXACTLY the same way today as i did on 6 May 2007, when i wrote the first entry. it is a very different situation, of course, so i am deleting a few sentences here or there, perhaps adding a few. and so here is today's post:

This is an excerpt from a book called "Dear Exile," which is the one-year written correspondence between two women friends. One woman writes of her breakup:
"I hate the idea that he continues to pay his phone bills, to button his shirts, to age, to eat, to read or not read the newspaper. I hate that he lives in real time, that everything he does involves the decision that he didn't want to do it with me. Somewhere he's filling up his gas tank and I'm thinking about how I'd like to see the way his arm looks doing that[...]how his fingers looked, by themselves and against mine. How his sentences came slowly, for reasons I won't find out. How tired he was, how sad and tired all the time and determined to be well and good. How I wanted to heal him, not by helping him or carrying him but by huddling next to him. How I wanted to have his whole world, to move it in some way across my body, or to digest it, to have it be at once foreign and part of me. I wanted him to talk forever for the sound of his voice, for what he said and what made him think of it and what it made him think next, for how it sounded in the trees or in a room, for what the room said back."

No one told me life was fair; but I'm going to complain about its unfairness anyway. Why do men make women feel like fools? Note here that I say men, not love (I concede lust and infatuation must leave one feeling like a fool. Of course. I also fully concede that women make men feel like fools). Why do they pursue us, treat us well, pretend to be a friend and then disappear into their own lives? Were we wrong to hope that a person cared about us enough to want to be with us over a long period of time? Were we wrong to believe him, to believe in him, to believe in a real relationship? And even at the end of it all, were we wrong to believe him when he said he wanted to still be friends? Left with feelings of frustration, disappointment, anger, hurt, disillusionment and foolishness, one is looking for someone to blame. I don't know where the blame falls although I know this post looks like I'm blaming men. And I know you (men and women) hate me for stereotyping (both men and women). But even if I weren't speaking from personal experience, in the past 6 months 11 women, that's right, 11 of the wonderful women I know have had uncannily similiar experiences; such that it's beginning to sound to me like all men have the same recipe for a relationship. And it's 12 women who have been hurt, but by 19 guys. These are not good statistics.
The pain could disappear instantly, if one could just erase all the memories. All I want is someone who wants to commit to me because he values me, who thinks being with me (not 24/7, certainly) is a joy and not a burden, someone who is my friend, someone whom I make a better person and who makes me a better person. This is love.
And these patterns that I see are that things start well, and then one person pulls away, shuts the door, but shuts the door without telling you, so you are still knocking and eventually you realize the door isn't open anymore and then you knock really hard to say, um, hello? And the door is opened and greetings are made and then it's shut in your face again except you are now standing on the threshold so you get knocked over. And the other person continues to live his/her life, and like the quote above, you continue to live your life, knowing that the person behind the door decided not to share it with you.
I realize that nothing is as it seems and that everything is more complicated than it appears. But the feelings I listed above remain, despite any understanding of the situation or of the guy, and I don't like feeling them because it hurts and hurts and hurts. And I feel like such a fool for having believed, again, that something beautiful could have lasted.

despairwork

2010-11-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

yesterday i woke up to the doomsday results of tuesday's midterm elections. even though the so-called options were between, in the words of Ani Difranco, tweedledumb and tweedledumber, unfortunately tweedledumbers won for both governor of Ohio and southeast Ohio's 6th district representative. so instead of just bad news, it was bad-er news. comments made by politicians who had won or lost ("America is the greatest nation in the history of the earth") made me want to run far away from this country. i've wanted to run away before, but knowing that my "representative" wants to cut the National Endowment for the Arts, really, truly, does make me want to run away. a politician in connecticut spent almost $50 million in her campaign, which she lost, and then partied for four hours by offering her republican supporters an open bar. she got half a million votes. $100 a person.

i walked out of my apartment thinking about one more aspect of how this democracy is a joke - elections are a game played mainly by millionaires and the only thing they care about is winning or losing. then i walked past a couple girls who were collecting money for Athens County Children Services. i gave a couple dollars, but instead of feeling warm and fuzzy, i just felt despair: "thanks," one of the girls said, "sometimes these are the only christmas presents the kids get."
maybe if someone spent $50 million on a political campaign and then funded a program for the entire state, in which every single child had food, shelter, clothing, and appropriate education, i wouldn't have so much of a problem. yeah, it's difficult. but i'm sick of bureaucratic and logistical excuses. there is no excuse that children go hungry. look into the eyes of a hungry child and say "well, i'm trying but really it's more important that we fund Israel's army to kill Palestinian civilians and we need to give them tanks so they can keep those people in a state of siege, so i'm sorry, you'll just have to stay hungry until we can figure this out."
and thus, yet another day began full of deep despair that the world is not how it should be, my refusal to accept the idea that maybe it's okay that it's not how it should be, and the feeling that it seems like most other people ARE accepting this idea.

the good news is, i stumbled upon something called "despairwork" in a book called "Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age" by Joanna Macy. here are some poignant ideas i have read so far: "We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When part of that body is traumatized, we sense that trauma too - in the sufferings of fellow-beings, in the pillage of our planet, and even in the violation of future generations. When the condition of the larger system falters, sickens, as is occurring in our present age of exploitation and nuclear technology, the disturbance we feel at a semi-conscious level is acute. Like the impulses of pain in any ailing organism they serve a positive purpose, these impulses of pain are warning signals...Yet we tend to repress that pain. We block it out because it hurts, because it is frightening, and most of all because we do not understand it and consider it to be a dysfunction, an aberration, a sign of personal weakness...As a society we are caught between a sense of impending apocalypse and the fear of acknowledging it. In this 'caught' place, our responses are blocked and confused..." so we all to some extent lead "double lives:" "One one level we maintain a more or less up-beat capacity to carry on as usual - getting up in the morning and remembering which shoe goes on which foot, getting the kids off to school...and all the while, underneath, there is this inchoate knowledge that our world could go at any moment." the author goes through the causes of repression, of this societal psychic numbing (fear of pain, of appearing morbid, of appearing stupid, of guilt, of causing distress, of provoking disaster, of sowing panic, of religious doubt, or of appearing too emotional), then the effects of repression (fragmentation and alienation, political passivity, destructive behaviors, psychological projection, diminished intellectual performance, burn-out, sense of powerlessness), then how despairwork came about (which was not at first a theory but simply people trying to deal with this world in a productive way and sow peace and healing), and then chapter two moves into theoretical foundations of it.

i have never felt so comforted that in fact i am not crazy, that really most people probably do feel a sense of pain for the world, it's just that we don't talk about it because it's overwhelming, we are afraid to show emotion, to cry in public, to appear unreasonable, we are passed off as idealists, as if what is Good couldn't also be what is Real. all this pain is repressed, and while "each days news brings fresh cause for grief" we still go about our day and our routines, etc. etc., and in my heart i carry a heavy burden for all the children who are dying, mothers who are suffering, men who are teased, war, famine, natural disasters, etc. tell me you don't carry this burden also? why can we not grieve together? and then do something about it? (the book offers methods and strategies to channel this sorrow into creative means).

today i woke up to reports of malnourished children in South Korea and i thought of the thousands of pounds of food "waste" generated in this country. "waste" that could not only feed children in South Korea but families in Appalachia who are hungry too. this really has nothing to do with socialism or any political belief. it is a simple belief: every life is valuable. not just rich people's lives, or white people's lives, or men's lives, or U.S. people's lives, but every fucking life. and when there is enough food, medicine, and technology to go around, then there is no excuse.
also today, i was tutoring a Chinese student in the library and i made a comment that some students near us were being loud. she looked over and then said to me, "black people," with a shake of her head. i said, "what does their being black have to do with it?"
she said, "oh, well i just said that because the other day there was a group of black people and they were being loud." WHAT??
i said, "well, white people are loud too, it has nothing to do with the fact that they are black."
"oh, okay," she said.
WHAT?? where on earth is this Chinese student, living in the U.S., getting her prejudices from?

everything is messed up and the world is complicated. but, my god, if we are afraid to speak out, to feel this pain, to grieve, to act, to cry, to heal, then this whole world is going to hell.
so, let's stop repressing it, let's weep together and let's learn strategies to act.

Hanus Hachenburg

2010-08-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

Terezín is a small town outside of Prague, Czech Republic. it was originally founded as a military fortress in the 18th century by king somebody. during WWII it was turned into a ghetto - a model Jewish city - by the Nazis.

at the ghetto life mainly revolved around labor camps but to a certain extent, intellectual and artistic life was allowed to develop, since the Nazis needed to allow them some expression for purposes of propaganda. if you are in the Czech Republic, i highly recommend visiting this town because the museum houses an amazing collection of the artwork and literary work of the people who lived there. in the ghetto there were writers, artists, actors, singers, etc. several of the houses were boys houses, and some of the artistic ones published a secret magazine called Vedem, or We Are Leading.

Hanus Hachenburg was a boy who was taken to Terezín and lived there for several years. on 18 December 1943, he and his mother were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was last heard of. presumably he died in 1944, when he was 15.
at the age of 14, he wrote this poem:

Terezín

A little dirt within the dirty walls
and round about a little bit of wire
And thirty thousand sleeping there,
who will awake one day
And see their life blood
Spilled around them.

I was a child once - two short years ago
My youth was longing for another world
I am a child no longer - I saw things to make me blush
Now I am adult and have known terror,
Bloody words and murdered days,
That is no longer just a bugaboo!

But I also believe that I am only sleeping
That I shall see my childhood once again
Childhood like a wild, wild rose
Like a bell to wake me from my dreams
Like a mother who with womanly intuition,
loves the naughty child most
How terrible my youth that watches only
For the enemy, the rope

How terrible a youth, that to itself
Must say: this one is good, and that one is evil.
Somewhere in the distance, childhood sweetly sleeps.
Along the narrow paths of Stromovka park,
There, from that house, someone leans out,
Where only contempt is left for me,
Where long ago, in gardens full of flowers,
My mother brought me into the world to weep.
In candlelight I sleep on my hand pallet,
And one day perhaps I shall understand
That I was just a tiny creature,
As small
as that chorus
of thirty thousand.

imbalances of power

2010-07-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

i was inspired to write, so i flipped through my journal for a subject and we'll start with this: at a party for the summer solstice in Estonia, i was helping to group branches together which are used in the sauna as a sort of beating device (it feels very good, i promise) and i had just met the people around me, which were a mix of estonians and russians. i dont really know why, but someone of those who knew english asked me if i knew anything about Belarus. with a guilty heart, i confessed that in fact, i knew nothing about Belarus. one of the women remarked, in russian, that everyone knows everything about the U.S. but U.S. people dont know anything about the rest of the world. i took her seriously, even though it was a joke, and i exclaimed "i know!" and then began to protest in a voice that was louder than necessary that yes, this was unfair and i know that the world is this way at the moment and its not fair that U.S. people dont know anything about the world which knows everything about them (which in fact, is not completely true on either side), but that i was trying, okay? and that how can i be expected to know everything about the entire world?

such were my protests. at the time, i did in fact feel exasperated that i should be expected to know everything about the entire world. but my entire purpose there was to be learning about that part of the world. and i felt it was unfair, because i have spent 4 or 5 years studying latin america really intensely, and i am very young, and if anything about Belarus was mentioned in high school, which i doubt it was, then i have forgotten it. the lady was joking, but as i often do, i took the joke seriously and i couldnt just laugh it off, probably because i havent yet reconciled my guilt for US foreign policy decisions that have nothing to do with me.
but even as i protested, i also began to question was i right to protest such a comment. maybe its unfair to expect me to know everything about the world, i didnt ask for that, but i also didnt ask for the US to be a superpower and so maybe i do in fact have a responbility to know a lot about the world, since the U.S. meddles in all the worlds affairs. and maybe if i had never gone to the middle of nowhere, estonia, i would never have found myself in such a situation, or have felt guilty about not knowing anything about Belarus, so maybe if im going to travel i should read a lot first. which normally i would be an advocate of doing that, except oddly enough i have to say that not reading before making this trip has made me much more open to hear what people have to say, and to learn about history through people's stories and perspective, rather than books, and the more people i talk to, the more diverse the perspectives become, and without reading beforehand, i have not as many prejudices towards how history happened and i can hear it from the people.

so i am a little conflicted. the U.S. is in every corner of the world, if not the government herself, then Coca cola, McDonalds, Southpark, Law and Order, Barbie, and ipods are sure to be in every city in the entire world, and anywhere that a television antenna reaches, they will be there too. i am bothered by this. very bothered. so maybe i can assuage my botheredness by learning about the entire world. i just dont know. some say the human brain has not evolved as fast as technology, our brain is not equipped to handle so much information at once, or such large social circles. i would like that believe that, as i feel the world is un-managable, although i do know people who know things about the entire world.

what a strange world. in school we learn about U.S. history, and in every other country, they also learn about U.S. history. i am bothered by this, but dont quite know how to solve it.
i remember that i asked an estonian if they had any special new year traditions for january first (although this is the West's new year). when he said no, not really, i joked, "you mean you dont drop a big diamond ball?" he gave me a puzzled look, and do you know, i was THRILLED to discover that i could actually share something that he doesnt know about the U.S.??!! U.S. media have so inundated the entire world that in estonia, i was beginning to feel it was impossible to even tell young people what the U.S. is like because they already know! and of course, this adds another layer, because the U.S. is so large, and the movies only portray a part, that is all stereotypes. but these aside, like i say, i was so excited that this young man had never heard of the ball dropping in Times Square and that we could have a real exchange (instead of the usual- me knowing nothing of estonia and him knowing everything about "America"). and of all things, this stupid tradition is the one i get to share? ("oh yes, its very popular, in fact people line up 24 hours in advance and bring bottles to pee in!")

i do admit that i like talking about the U.S. when people ask because one of my favorite things to do is dispel stereotypes. i met a young estonian man who could quote Southpark and who knew everything about our financial system from watching a lot of youtube (and tell me how many U.S. young people know that the dollar is not backed by gold?) BUT he had never actually met a real U.S. person. and i couldnt even talk pop culture with them. "leah, who is your favorite actor or actress?" "uuuhhhh..."

Latvians call people from the U.S. "ohmygods". i found this hilarious. and despite the fact that i did indeed find myself saying "oh my god" a lot in our conversations, a Latvian family told me later that i broke their stereotypes of "Americans", which i will admit, i am proud to admit. even though i am still not settled about if i have the responsibility or not to know everything about the world.
well this post easily turned into a long one. goodnight.

finland

2010-07-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

i was in helsinki only three days, but there a few things i selected to comment on:

1. my host. i was couchsurfing for the first time and i had a great first experience. i think couchsurfing and other networks like it are wonderful ways to travel - i was greeted at the train station and taken to my host\s home and we made dinner together and i immediately felt at home. much better than being in an anonymous hostel. the wonderful thing is realizing not only cultural differences (learning that other ways are possible) but also similarities between people who live on opposite ends of the earth. one of my favorite comments from my host was: -I drink entirely too much coffee. And I have a bad habit of making coffee and then only drinking half the mug and then the sink is cluttered with half-filled coffee mugs-. i read somewhere that Finns drink the most coffee per capita than any other country. my host also told me stories about her family - her father was a communist but most of her family came over from estonia before the revolution. so she felt sad for her father, because he really believe that people should be equal but it failed in the Soviet Union, and she thinks it is idealistic but it doesnt work in practice (i will be writing on this from my estonia & latvia experiences). in finland education and health care is free for everyone. even college. i couldnt quite imagine this. free. for everyone. i mean, it is a possible thing, you know? there are only 5 million people in Finland. and i think about small versus large countries and i think national pride is more understandable in smaller countries because maybe (maybe) there is a little less diversity of lifestyles and opinions (but i'm beginning not to believe this either) but i also think that a lot can be done with education and health care when you don't spend more than 50 % of your budget on military expenditures. just saying.

2. speaking of military expenditures. i went to visit one of the most famous sightseeing spots for Helsinki - an island called Suomenlinna, which was a military fortress (see picture). i didnt take a tour or anything, so i just wandered around, and of course, happened upon a prison (see foto). the sign said you couldn't go in. i asked at the information desk and was given a very weird look but was told it was an operational prison and there were about 90 prisoners who did work around the island. as prisons go, this doesn't seem to bad - they can work and be outside and wander around the island. i found a couple things interesting - i wonder if anyone has written a book on islands and prisons. being on this little island, i thought of Alcatraz, and stories i have heard of the Galapagos Islands, which had both a US military base on it at one point (a terrible history of what they did to the island) and a prison. i'm sure someone has. islands seem to be used as military/naval advantage points, and they are also isolated, making it the perfect place for people society or governments don't want. i also find interesting that the island is a destination for prisoners and tourists. there are also some 850 residents. i asked one girl i met in helsinki about it and she didn't even know it was there. my host did, and told me some of the history.

3. finland's currency is the euro and estonia has crowns but both are in the EU. estonia is cheaper however, and about two hours away. so one thing my host told me is that estonians are upset because finns will ferry over from helsinki to tallinn, buy a lot of beer and go back. in fact, they don't even leave the dock. on weekends they will drink on the way there, buy a lot of beer, drink in the pubs right near the dock, and then stumble onto the boat drunk. my host called them ^drunken hobbits^. sure enough, on the boat to tallinn i noticed many people with little carts that they bring to stock up with beer, and a store of beer right at the dock.

newadventures

2010-06-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

i hope this prints in english.

well despite the various thought processes i've gone through since that last post, i'm moving on anyway because it's only been a week and the stories have piled up.

i was only three days in helsinki, finland. here are my observations:
helsinki is actually much like mayfield village, ohio, the suburbs at least, and the city itself is much like i imagine boston to be, or some small sized city. the public transportation is clean and super easy. there are pines, other trees i wish i knew the name of that are similar to northern u.s. and it is flat.

something strange for me who has never experienced this - it grows darker maybe around 12:30 am, but notice i say darkER, never completely dark, really, and then it stays that way until it gets light around 3 or 4 am. very, very weird. i had no sense of time.
it is also strange to be in a crowd of white people and not understand a word of the language they are speaking. again, strange because i haven't experienced this before. i can blend in, this is something new for my travels, and unless i open my mouth, i could pass for a Finn, which i apparently did, since several people started speaking to me in Finnish. the other thing is that learning languages are just so normal, every Finn learns finnish, of course, and Swedish is also obligatory (Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden for some 600 years or something), and then of course almost everyone speaks excellent English, and Russia is right near (and considered a threat as well) and then you learn whatever else - German, French, Spanish, Greek, whatever. i was so surprised about the english. i mean, people i spoke english too spoke it really well. and of course it was inevitable i would be making comparisons to ecuador and to ohio, etc, which i tried to be fair and understanding in these comparisons...
but one thing i noticed, which i wanted to wait to make comparisons on this (but couldn't because in estonia it is different) but i finally pinpointed this weird feeling - their english was good, and it seemed most people in helsinki spoke it, but it didn't feel like there was this longing for the states, like there is in ecuador. i think that i notice this feeling in ecuador from inevitable conversations about the states, about migration, it's the way people look at you, the way people talk about english, the way people ask about what life is like in the u.s....there wasn't this feeling in finland (yes, three days is NOT enough to conclude this). and in ecuador, it's like this longing to be there, to migrate and work in order to have enough money for a home and to never go hungry, but at the same time a bitter resentment about being labeled "third world," "backward," "developing," etc. like they understand that powerful governments and institutions and people who manage third-world poverty think that they will never be good enough, that they can't be creative, that they're too debt-ridden to ever follow their own path.
i was thinking that even though helsinki was so similar to the u.s., it's not like they developed the city AFTER the u.s. so i was thinking about the history of materials, and where things come from, and education, etc. helsinki was just helsinki, it wasn't a "third world imitation" of the West, and everyone spoke english but it was just to speak english, and not because anyone is thinking of moving to the states. i was thinking how money travels...and raw materials travel...

i don't know, it's just a feeling.

more later.

relationships

2010-05-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

i am going to do something very atypical of me - write about relationships. i never do this because i much prefer to write about political or cultural issues, but it's very late and there is no one i can call to blow off my steam at the moment. so i'm going to throw these words out there to the universe and this time it´s not even in the spirit of getting comments or discussion or anything. i want to vent, and i'm right, and i don't care to discuss this issue.

a few weeks ago i became extremely sensitive to the "signs" that society gives you to be married and/or in a (heterosexual) relationship. for instance, i bought milk from nestle (forgive me), and i happened to be studying the picture on the milk carton and it was a young, skinny but curvy, stereotypical "milkmaid" with cute, blond, wavy hair. besides the obvious barbie-like suggestions, a certain accessory adorned her right hand - a diamond, obvious, wedding ring. please tell me, why is the ring necessary? why is it there? WHY is there a ring on her finger?
i watched a movie in which a country singer falls in love with a woman half his age but when his alcoholism jeopardizes the life of her son, they break up. years later when they meet again and he has changed, she still refuses. but what has happened? he notices a ring on her finger - "he's a good guy" she says. of course, the movie could not have ended with her just being single and the relationship just not working out.
when i am asked if i have a boyfriend and i reply no, the immediate response 100% of the time is "why not?" accompanied by a look of both apparent shock and concern, and sometimes pity. "i'm sorry, do i need one?" i always want to say. on the other hand, i bet anyone $100 that if i answered "yes" to this same question of do i have a boyfriend, no one would ever say "why?" with a look of shock or concern or pity.

the reason i am currently incredulous is because i just finished watching "He's Just Not That Into You." i loved this movie, i adored it, and i'm not the biggest fan of chick flicks, if this is even considered one of them, but i thought it was cute and funny and relevant and truthful. until after two hours of loving it, i was utterly and completely disappointed and outraged at the last 30 seconds of the movie. literally. it doesn't matter if you've seen it or not. the point is, it is seemingly impossible to escape the norm. but i mean that society simply refuses the possibility of anything but heterosexual marriage. anything but that is simply not okay. i would like to join my voice now with all the gays, lesbians, and other marginalized people as this: a single person. the one couple in this movie that represented an actual committed relationship without the institution of marriage, what happens in the end? he asks her to marry her because that is "what people do when they love each other." yes, there are two single women at the end of the movie, but their lives/stories are canceled out by the narrator's voice, around whose struggle to find a guy the movie revolves. the woman complains the entire movie about the things women are taught about men, she reaches a climactic conclusion that all of her obsessiveness and overanalysis is actually passion (women), which is much better than just never caring or being an asshole (men), and in the end she becomes the "exception" to all the women who end up with jerks. this is bullshit. the movie promises for two hours to accept an alternative to marriage and what does it end up being? the disney story of prince charming and finding the one and living happily ever after. the very last words of the narrator that end the movie start with the idea that maybe it's not about finding the one, maybe it's about self-exploration, or picking up the pieces and starting over and being strong in oneself, and then, her very last words? "but maybe it's about the fact that you never gave up hope."

what the hell is this? the movie gives so many promising apparent acceptances of alternatives and in the end? it's a prince-charming story about heterosexual marriage. this movie starts with criticizing what women are taught since little girls and ends by giving the very same message. i find this astounding and disgusting.
i have nothing against relationships. i´m sure many of them are wonderful. my only complaint is about the inability for society at large to show any clue of acceptance that it's okay to be single. and of course, i am fully aware that everyone takes my ranting and raving as me trying to cover up the fact that i must not be okay inside. i must really be suffering, and i must really be lonely and i must really be waiting for the day when i find some awesome guy and then i must be just waiting for the day when he gives me a ring and says "will you marry me?" and that is exactly my point! people refuse to believe that single people are okay with the fact that they are single. it is infuriating. society, from every angle subtle and obvious, tells you that something is wrong with you if you are single. and if you don't have a boyfriend people suspect that you must be a lesbian, which is equally frustrating to single people and to lesbians. what a disappointment that movie was - it tried to dispel all the stereotypes and in the end, it's the same message: never give up hope for your prince charming. never give up hope that you are the exception and that all the obsessiveness and overanalysis is worth it in the end. which is of course: never give up hope that you will one day not be single.
i say again, bullshit. i love being single. people who are in relationships, that's wonderful. people who are single, that's equally wonderful. that's all.

more commentaries

2009-12-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

i forgot to write something about Kapak Raymi which i found very beautiful. during one of the ceremonies, somebody commented that Kapak Raymi is not only to celebrate publicly the new leaders but it celebrates the strength and power inside each of us in the space that corresponds to us. it was simple but profound.

christmas has come and gone here in Saraguro, although this morning i heard once again the parade of Wikis, Ajas, Gigantes, etc. pass my window so maybe it´s not so gone. there is absolutely nothing here that reminds me of christmas where i grew up, so i have been missing the holidays less than i expected, simply because it doesn´t feel at all like the holidays. i have to say that christmas here is much more friendly to the environment - no christmas lights, no yards of wrapping paper and bows only to be thrown away, no plastic wrapping from toys and gadgets, etc. just by way of commentary...

today i had a lengthy discussion about the education system. in Ecuador the system has come from Spain, obviously, although i remember reading somewhere about trying to imitate the French system at some point. in either case, it is a system based on the paradigm of memorization, or "conductivist." which means the professor dictates the class and whether you agree or disagree doesn´t matter, the students stay quiet and seated and to "learn," they memorize. there of course, exist other types of schools. Montessori, etc. have been set up in some places. the fight for bilingual (native language and spanish) has been long and hard. the indigenous here in saraguro have set up their own education centers, since i think around 25 years ago, but these don´t go until high school. i was conversing with an educator of one these centers who was saying they are having a hard time because in the indigenous centers they´ve implemented the system based on the development of motor skills (destrezas). kids learn by playing, is the idea. they´ve had problems because people from the high school claim that the professors are lazy, that they don´t actually do any teaching, that they don´t plan, etc. in fact it´s the other way around. if you are a professor in a high school based on the dictate, memorize system, what planning is necessary? the professors work from 8-1 and that´s it. on the other hand, to implement an alternative system in the centers has taken a lot of work. not only are they constantly planning for the actual school day and discussing what type of education they want, but it´s also inclusive, which means once a month there is a meeting with the parents, etc. and this requires much more work than the salary they receive. it has also required a lot of work on the part of the educators, who themselves were formed in the memorize-dictate system.
it made me think of my own education. my friends from Asia claim that the united states is known for very good education. when i think about our popular society, however, i question this. or Miss North Carolina. or the sad fact that in 2002, 11% of U.S. students ages 18-24 couldn´t identify the United States on a map (88% couldn´t identify Iraq). but on the whole, i do think at least that we are not discouraged to talk, react, question, etc. a lot depends on the professor. as a national system, however, i have heard not so heartening views about no child left behind. well...

i´m very excited for "the old year", as new year´s eve is called here. people form groups and make life-size dolls to burn and with it comes a whole dramatization and the people burned leave "wills" and the imaginary figure that remains is the "widow." i´m pleased to announce we are burning the mayor and the indigenous candidate who ran against him. for all my wanting to see the good in people and wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, i have come to the conclusion that the mayor is a racist, authoritarian jerk. or maybe even a harsher word would fit. he was already a term as mayor and for the new constitution, the country had new elections. he changed political parties to ally himself with Correa (the president), obviously to have more funds, and won the election by a series of fraudulent events. if you are wondering why the indigenous candidate is also being burned, this is because it´s part of the dramatization - in other words they can re-enact the elections and have them insult each other. i´m very excited.

II

2009-12-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

to continue with Kapac Raymi, someone i was talking to about it mentioned how christmas is the celebration of the new King - Jesus. and so around this time the indigenous also celebrated new leaders, so it was easy to transpose the one onto the other. yesterday started celebrations of Kapac Raymi in a different community. there was a dance competition and an invited group of music but it was terribly cold and i didn´t even stay to dance.

i´m very pleased to say it has rained the past couple days in saraguro and it seems winter is finally here. not like winter on the east coast of course, but winter is needed here too. the drought has affected not only crops...Ecuador gets most of their energy from hydroelectricty, which means when there´s no water, there´s no energy either. to save energy the government has been cutting electricity by regions for a few hours a day. in city centers of course, businesses are subsequently affected by this. in turn, i imagine it has created much more business for sellers of generators, since businesses started buying them to keep from closing.

in Saraguro the celebrations and activities continue. nothing interesting comes to mind at this moment although in the past week i have had many conversations and experiences that have taught me. hopefully next time i´ll have something more interesting to say...

अ फेव नोट्स

2009-12-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

i tried typing the title "a few notes" and apparently it is automatically translating this to arabic (?). i hope my text appears in english for you.

i am in Saraguro, Ecuador again, working on my thesis (again, or as usual). it is the first time i am away from home for the holidays but while i miss my family, Christmas time in Saraguro is fascinating. they started celebrations last weekend and they continue intermittently until 7 january. rehearsals for the dances started months ago, and in fact, the patrons/financers of the celebration for next year are named this year. to explain would take a book, which there is of course. but briefly, there are two patrons who are held in high respect by the community, and the community contributes bringing different items of food for the celebrations. there are parades with dances with different personalities, the most interesting of which, to me, are the two Ajas and two Wikis. Saraguro was catholicized when the Spaniards came, so of course one would try to relate these characters to the Christmas celebration, but no where else in the world, that it is known, are there characters like these. which means they are either of mix of some Andean/Saraguro simbolism with the Catholic stories or they are Andean images that were incorporated into the celebration. apparently, in times past, there even used to be the figure of a priest who was ritualisticaly decapitated; but that ended on the order of one of the priests. go figure. anyway, the celebration centers around the "image" which is a figure of the Christ child, who is guarded and made vigils over for these few weeks. sources on/from the Saraguros talk about how celebrations incorporate several things - they are a break from daily hard work, they are key to maintaining social relations, they are one of the ways the community expresses reciprocity, and their symbolic meanings are a way for the community to literally express their religiosity. in my obversation of the celebration of Kapac Raymi yesterday in one of the communities, this was all very clear to see. Kapac Raymi is different from Christmas, it is celebrated on the winter solistice but i´m not sure yet of all it´s meaning. Kapac means leader and Raymi means festival. the celebration is a time to laugh, to establish, reaffirm, and create values, to express reciprocity by bringing "pinzhi" which are contributions to the food, etc.

on a personal and unrelated note, today i had my own mental celebration. i suffer from a disease called perfectionism; one of the effects of this is that i never acknowledge work that i´ve accomplished and instead i tell myself i haven´t accomplished anything in accordance to the goals that are in my head. being aware of this, i´m trying to celebrate accomplishments. today i went to meet a figure in the community whom i don´t know to consult him about several things, and i celebrated the simple fact that i approached the house correctly. this involved: first observing the dogs to see if they were dangerous (almost all houses in the communities have dogs for protection). upon seeing that they were not so friendly, i looked around for a stick, and armed, i approached, also giving the hissing sound that is given to get dogs away. then i gave the other whistle that is to notify people of your presence and yelled out "se puede?" which means can i enter? of course, even knowing these customs will not hide the fact that the person who came to greet me found a scared-looking gringa with a stick in each hand.
i celebrate this as something that i have learned little by little throughout my stays in Saraguro, and it something that i did not know before. so, if you are a perfectionist, celebrate something you have learned today.

until later

ah, fellowship

2009-08-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

religious fundamentalism has (almost) always been propagated in the united states, at least since Manifest Destiny. its form in the u.s. is of the christian variety but of course, as hypocrisy is characteristic of fundamentalism, it fights other fundamentalisms because they are the "wrong" ones.
this is so eloquently evidenced today by Mr. Prince and his goons.
so if this has been going on forever, i suppose i shouldn't be worried that doctors are being assassinated by the "pro-life" movement or that town halls are unusually rowdy these days or that those protecting u.s. officials in their imperial adventures overseas are murderers (ref: Nisoor Square) or that those leading the war on drugs don't in fact want it to end because they are the very drug smugglers (ref: Colombia, Mexico, Charles Bowden, the Taliban, the CIA, etc) because it has always been this way and the world hasn't spontaneously combusted yet with the hypocrisy that rules her so maybe it won't, in my lifetime at least, and everything is going to be just fine.
but as a young person, it's hard to have historically-lived perspective (i can have historically-read perspective) and so i do worry. and while news of The Family doesn't surprise me in the least, it still scares me. things like "biblical capitalism" scare the hell out of me.

i wrote something else but i'll save it for later because i realized i got myself into a more complicated situation than i intended. so for now...i leave it at that.

blue sky II

2009-04-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

i say II because now there are more blue skies since, hardly to anyone's surprise, i have not written in 4 months and april has sprung upon us. i take full credit for that pun.

today at Ohio University there was a conference on Hip Hop and sustainability featuring a performance by Detroit artists Invincible and Finale and guest speaker Majora Carter and guest poets the Affrilachian Poets . kudos to all those at OU who pulled this event together. in conversation with a professor and environmental activist here about the poor turn out, she reminded me there is always a poor turn out. and it's true, i am always disappointed at the poor turn out of the events i go to, because i think to myself, there are 20,000 undergrads here....and there were maybe 25 of us who participated in this awesome conference. but, this professor said to me, what can you but just keep doing what you're doing? and i think she's right. so i want to shout out to those few souls and thank them for their presence because it mattered.

a few comments from the day: Majora Carter gave a fabulous presentation on the changes she's helped engender in the South Bronx and i definitely applaud the awesome work she has done. but i simply have to share my growing concern about the image of Obama as a superhero. i hear comments made all the time about "before" and "now" as if "now" that we have an Obama administration, roses have suddenly lost their thorns and the pots of gold at the end of rainbows really have been found. i've seen shirts with Obama in a superman uniform and a big O on his chest. and in her talk today, Carter gave another acronym for Obama something about americans being able to behave how they should..i don't remember it but it was yet another "joke" that suggests the 9 clouds that surround Obama. and whenever i want to criticize Obama people seem to shrink back at me, but might it be possible that it's the office of the White House itself that will never really change? can the master's tools destroy the master's house? that's a question for another day, but let me post two things - one is that i was really disappointed in NPR last week because each morning when i woke up to the news, i heard not a word about the protests in London during the G20 or in Strasbourg, Kehl & Baden Baden over NATO even though these protests are extremely significant because people are fed up with this system. and all they are doing is trying to save the same system that got us here while the people are calling for a whole new system.
i've also seen buttons with the sign of the peace inside the O in Obama's name. this is dangerous brainwashing. please, we must be diligent.

apart from that concern of mine, both workshops i attended were excellent but i'll wrap up with this: at the spoken word workshop, we did an exercise that began with a line being drawn on the board. we were asked what do we see? of course, i immediately began to wonder what a line represents symbolically...the first thought that popped in my head was Frost's poem the mending wall but i spun off from that and my actual answer was something crazy like "i see death and destruction, because you know, lines are false the lines that divide the earth are false and they divide..." and once i realized what the exercise really was supposed to be, i have laughed at myself all day. the leader said "wow, we really do have some abstract thinkers in this group...does anyone see a snake stretched out in the sun? how about a stick on the pavement?" and i just laughed and laughed...i think grad school is really dragging me away from reality...

and this is why i don't blog that often...there are too many links on this post. so have fun with that.

in solidarity.

blue sky

2009-01-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

the reason i don't blog is because there is too much to blog about. i will explain in a minute. i also don't blog often because while i am learning and processing an extraordinary amount of information everyday (grad school does that to you, i guess), i prefer to share it with real people in real conversation. i'm not suggesting that is a form of "fake" communication -on the contrary i'm much better at dialoguing through writing-and i don't just mean Sarah Palin's real people. i'm only saying that neither this blog nor any one person nor my own brain can handle all of the things i think in a day so i just don't blog often. there is too much to blog about. this is also the reason why i really haven't started working on my thesis. there is too much to read, to process, to analyze, to synthesize, to write, etc.

so i will share some thoughts from the last week and also avoid talking about the situation in Gaza, which makes me very sad.

new year's day i woke up to a blue sky. compared to other blue skies i have seen, this probably paled in comparison. however, the reason it was so blue, the reason it nearly shocked me awake, the reason i stared out my window so long at it is because it was, simply, blue. during the winter, there is no color. everything is a shade of brown or gray-the trees, the sky and even the grass. gray gray gray. so, to see a blue sky is to be reminded of nature's colors and it can jolt the mind awake from its winter hibernation.

i don't mean to criticize winter. i feel extremely fortunate to have lived my life in a place that has very distinguished seasons. if we were more aware of the seasons, i think they offer very simple explanations of life and they go a long way to explaining man and nature and man's part in nature because really, man is neither above nor below but part of nature. seasons show birth, growth, completion, and death. and it starts over. they show that life is cyclical, that things are always changing, growing, birthing, dying. there are many who say they would love to live in a warm climate year-long. this may be understandable in some situations, but sometimes it is the case that this is simply escaping the reality of life and trying to give oneself the illusion that life is always sunny. we who know the winter can fully appreciate the color of life when it finally comes.

p.s. and i mean that symbolically in all its cliched goodness.

language

2008-10-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

the other day i heard a talk by Dr. Charles Ping, Ohio University's 18th president, from 1975 to 1994. the subject of the talk was the importance of global exchange in the context of university students.

one of his comments raised an interesting point. why might the "typical" american be so narrow-minded? we in the states grow up monolingual for the most part. with the exception of heritage speakers and immigrants, english is the only language spoken at home AND in school. nationwide, language programs are not usually introduced into the school system until the 9th grade, right after the critical period for learning a language has passed. anyway, his comment was that all education, even thought itself, begins with language.

of course. knowing only one language, therefore, greatly limits education, and even thought. it would be a fallacy to state that all people who only know one language are narrow-minded. so i will speak in positive instead of negative terms. knowing another language greatly increases one's capacities to understand other perspectives, other thought patterns, other cultures, etc. one's life can be greatly enriched by the ability to understand different thought, aka language.

more on perspectives

2008-08-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

i am recently back from ecuador. while in saraguro, a tooth began to bother me and i went to the dentist, who was an uncle of the family i was living with. he found three cavities, which he showed me, and a stain on another tooth that for the moment, is nothing but a stain. he filled the three cavities and it cost $36 dollars for two visits and 3 fillings.

this week, upon my return to Ohio, i went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned, as they were due for a cleaning. i informed the dentist about my cavities, and he replied, "You went to the dentist in ECUADOR? That was gutsy." i wish i could get his tone across to you over cyberspace, but you can just imagine. what i wanted to say was "Excuse me, but just what do you mean by gutsy? Because it is supposedly a third-world country? Does everyone in Ecuador live in crude huts with a banana leaf for covering? Do they not clean their teeth in Ecuador? Do they not know how to study? Is the dentist a dangerous place to go in Ecuador? Sorry, but the office was every bit as clean as yours, Dr. Priesand, if not cleaner because there wasn't carpet, the dentist went through just as much school as you did, if not more because he's also an orthodontist, and he had just as many shiny, scary instruments as you do. And he was even indigenous." gasp!!!

the other topic of this blog is the fact that i didn't say this. i didn't react in the way that i wanted to react, which happens all the time and i know i'm not alone. i simply laughed, and let him continue in his stereotypes and wrong judgments. and without insurance, this fun visit to the dentist also cost the fun total of $160. then, while looking at my teeth, he acquired a superior attitude, as if dentists in Ecuador were stupid or blind. "Well, I don't see anything, I mean, I see the fillings, but I don't see anything."
well, of course you don't see anything, the cavities were FILLED.
anyway, i'm in the process of learning how to react when i want to react and not be filled with these regrets after the fact, of not having said anything to correct this man's arrogant attitude. any suggestions are welcome. perhaps someone can help me by role playing.

and by the way, we are $53 trillion in debt.

recent thoughts

2008-06-26T12:27:00.001-07:00

well, it's been a long time.

i finished the Ohio program in Cuenca and we went for our end-of-trip trip to the jungle and the north of ecuador. all in all i found it very disappointing that i think the students took away a very superficial and limited perspective of Ecuador. this might be expected of only 10 weeks in a place but it also depends on the person, one can, in fact, choose to be superficial or dive in. it makes me think of how each of us sees the world through different lenses, and it's a bit strange to think that the ecuador i know isn't at all the ecuador some of the other students know. it reminds me that when i listen to people, everything they tell me about their experiences and thoughts is only the way they interpreted what happened. nothing in this world is objective. unless you care to disagree.

in quito we were watching CNN in English and they were talking about a new movie about Che Guevara. the newscasters, including the one doing the special report, pronounced his name continuously like this: "gwayvara", and without rolling the "r." i was totally shocked at the anglicization of his name. his name is simply not this. i would excuse mr. smith on the street who doesn't know any spanish, but of course if he gets his media from CNN and other corporates, then we have ignorant people, no offense to those who watch corporate. CNN, however, has their very own channel en español and i find it difficult to believe they couldn't get this corrected. which leads me to believe it was on purpose. which makes me very very sad. of course, che is not alone. Jesus, Ghandi, Osama bin Laden and a whole slew of others have anglicized names. i'm sure you're wondering just what exactly is my point, and the truth is i can't quite express in words what i feel the full meaning of anglicization of names is but all i know is i was utterly disgusted at the repeated butchering of che guevara's name on a media that has full access to the real pronunciation.

a peasant selling street-food on a corner in Cuenca was wearing her typical peasant dress as well as a cap that said CIA. i really wasn't sure whether i should laugh or cry or simply shake my head. i'm fairly certain this woman wasn't wearing the hat as propaganda for the CIA, and part of me thinks that even if i were to tell her of all the atrocities that the CIA has committed and all the citizens they have murdered and democratically-elected presidents they have thrown out, she would shrug her shoulders and say something like, well it's the only hat i have. at least that is the scenario i imagine.
what are we to do? how do we fight for real democracy?

i was in peru for a week visiting friends and the city of Cusco and Machu Picchu. i am convinced that...that what? what can i say about Machu Picchu without writing a book? that it is beautiful? magical? yes. ah well, me faltan las palabras que realmente transmiten lo que pienso sobre las culturas pre-columbinas. perhaps i'll post some fotos.

i am now living in Saraguro, the love of my life. during the festival of Inti Raymi this past weekend i was watching the dances and thinking that not many years ago the Church had so much power as to prohibit exactly these kinds of celebrations. and i truly rejoiced that these people were doing something that belonged to them, and not to colonization. it was beautiful. this culture is possibly the most beautiful...experience i've had on this earth. i really hope that in the whirlwind of the 21st century we can continue the process of decolonization and de-education. indigenous people will talk to you of the fact that they were colonized with fear, that they were taught by the Church to be afraid so that they could be controlled and become good christians and, of course, "civilized." perhaps the problem wasn't so much this as the fact that were taught in the masses about a loving god, but were shown something totally different. much can be done with images from Dante's Inferno.

i am teaching english on the weekends and i have a problem with it. i have 6 indigenous students, and only one of which knows kichwa. if my indigenous students all were fluent in kichwa, i would have no problem teaching them english. but i am internally struggling with the fact that i am teaching the imperial language to students who only speak their colonized language and don't know their indigenous language. the positive part about it is that quite contrary to teaching to freshman and sophmore students at Ohio University, my students actually respect me, are humble and good-natured, and above all are motivated. of course i see the usual sadness of the fact that here there are no resources but all the motivation while at Ohio University there are all the resources and none of the interest.

the grass is always greener on the other side, so they say. we often gain a particular perspective because we are on the outside, and those on the inside never gain the same insight.

anecdotal

2008-04-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

i did in fact write another post but i took it off and saved it for another time because it was unorganized and uninformed. i decided with this post to share some anecdotes that reflect both the positive and the negative of my experiences here.

the other day i was taking the bus to my friend's house, which is way on the outskirts of the city. in accordance with my friend's directions, as soon as we turned onto the autopista i told the bus-helper (the guy who collects the money and barks out destinations) to drop me off at "the bridge over the river Tarqui." there was some debate between him and the driver, i repeated the destination several times in crystal clear spanish even leaving the Cuencan accent for "plain" Spanish but he claimed never to have heard of such place. meanwhile it had definitely been past the 10 seconds i was supposed to wait. some indigenous women indicated to the bus-helper that said bridge was a bit further down and that she was getting off there. wonderful. then the older man sitting behind her started conversing (shouting really because we were roaring down the highway with the windows open) with bus-helper about me, while i stand there looking at them converse about me. "where is she from?" he asks. "america" replies the bus-helper (generalization number one). "oh" replies the old man "she must be looking for the mall." i fume. i was so angry the only thing i could do was look at this man and say "no. don't judge me." and then i turned around while he continued to talk to my back until i got off. i will be honest about my feelings because i am an honest person. i wanted to physically beat the stereotypes out of this man. but i didn't, because i am not an abusive person. also, the MALL is the LAST place you would find me.
anyway, i get off, still fuming, and after much walking about and waiting and messaging back and forth with my friend, she finally calls and we realize i am waaaaaaaay further down than i need be. when i finally find her we begin walking to her house and she says "look, here is the bridge over the river Tarqui." there it is, a bridge, right over the river Tarqui.
she tried to comfort me by saying that most people who take that line are going to the main mall in Cuenca, but this doesn't excuse this man's, nor the bus-helper's, generalizations about me. i wanted the bridge over the river Tarqui.

the very next day i witnessed not generalizations towards me as a gringa but what is a common phenomena here in Ecuador, which is that of racism by mestizos against indigenous peoples. i got on the bus at the terminal and sat down in the first row next to an old, disabled, indigenous Saraguro man. he very nicely asked me where i was headed, i replied "Saraguro" and asked if this was also his destination. he said no, he was getting off at Urdaneta, a community a bit north of Saraguro. very well. the bus-helper, similar to those of the city buses, before we leave tells the old man that he needs to sit further back because this seat is reserved. the old man, confused but quite willingly complies, and he shuffles back to the seat indicated, where somebody else tells him that said seat is occupied and so he shuffles to the back. was the seat next to me reserved? absolutely not. did someone else that we picked up 10 minutes later sit in that seat? yes. did they pack the bus so that not only all the seats but the entire aisle was full of people? yes. pure racism. i told this story to an indigenous women friend of mine in Saraguro who told me that for this exact reason she doesn't like traveling on the buses and "poor" as she is, prefers to pay extra for a private car for her and her family so they can travel without harassment.

despite the racism and stereotypes of gringas, i love it here. the 12-year old son of the woman i just mentioned was sharing with me his love of rock music, which in fact i don't share but quite willingly explained the english lyrics, explained that i don't personally know KISS or Led Zeppelin, and even demonstrated how to dance to rock, hair loose and flying, the whole 9 yards. at the end of our rock session, even though i was clear about the fact the rock music does not figure into my personal likes, he gave me as a gift one of his CDs of rock music. i asked if he was sure he wanted to part with such a valuable and he said of course, he has plenty. i felt so honored, despite me not liking rock music and him claiming that he has plenty of it, his gift shows how big his heart is. that last part was very cheesy but i have spent the last 10 minutes thinking of how to describe how i felt and words didn't come. so i hope the feeling was felt through the story.

until next time.

a return

2008-04-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

on bbcmundo's homepage for today one of the featured videos is entitled "flying penguins." interested, i clicked on the video and was amazed at the images of penguins flying. after 10 seconds of video, you find out the bbc has a sense of humor; the video is a farce. happy april fools, don't i feel foolish.

i'm back in ecuador. it's wonderful to be back, in fact much more than i was expecting. one of the factors that plays a major role in my love for this region of the world is, of course, nostalgia. as soon as we landed in the quito airport, memories of the other two times i have been came to me, and as soon as we were on a bus, i realized how familiar to me this region is. i have ridden many, many, many hours on a buses through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and when i think of Latin America, i think of two things: the bus, and the campo. the images that come to me from the bus, the layout of the cities, the entrances to small towns, the architecture of the houses of the rich, the half-built houses with money from remittances, the houses of the poor, street vendors, shops, and of course, the Andes, all these images are so familiar to me now and this familiarity was what i found a little weird-that another world, because it is a totally different world, should be so familiar to me. the campo is the countryside where peasants and indigenous farmers live. the sight of the campo in the Andes and the smell, whatever that smell is, has made its mark on my heart and i cannot think of anywhere more peaceful in the world.

i hope to have some excellent stories and information to share, i will be keeping the blog up regularly.

affirm life

2008-02-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

over there is over here

the free market of knowledge

2008-02-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

whenever professors stipulated that they would not accept Wikipedia as a credible source, i simply respected this opinion, without holding one of my own. i understood what Wikipedia was-that anyone could post on Wikipedia, absolutely anyone-but i still used it to find information. when i came across people or historical events i wasn't familiar with, i would throw it into google search, and read the subsequent Wikipedia article that surfaced, usually finding it to be informative and helpful. while i respected the opinion of my professors, i didn't understand until 5 minutes ago what, really, Wikipedia really is.

on the Wikipedia page for "Loja Province," the first sentence of the "Overview" used to say "[...] Ecuador is recognized as being a friendly and pleasant city." when i read this, of course i reacted quite strongly. Ecuador is a country, not a city. as of 5 minutes ago, the page for "Loja Province" no longer says this.

why?

because I changed it. yes, me, Jane Doe of Ohio, U.S.A. i created an account in seconds, using my email and a password. they didn't even ask for my name. i then clicked "edit," changed the word "Ecuador" to "Loja" and clicked "save changes." deed done.

this is why, my friends, some people do not consider Wikipedia a credible source. con razón. is anyone else as stupefied as i am? try it yourself.

dry spell

2007-12-27T22:37:00.000-08:00

i've been pretty dry on blogging ideas, so i'll just share a couple thoughts. soon enough i will be inundated with ideas, not to worry.

-Milan Kundera is one of my absolute favorite authors and i recommend him, not to everyone but unless i know you, i don't know if you would like him. i sometimes will come to a sentence and put down the book, thinking that i could never read a more beautiful/interesting/thought-provoking sentence for the rest of my life.

-i'm learning French and the other day i was reading an article and came across the phrase "déjà vu." this means "already seen" in French. i learned this years ago, and i've used the phrase easily over 100 times in my life, not to mention seen the phrase, heard other people say it, etc. but this time when i came across it, my mind didn't register it like the concept of "déjà vu" that i know in English. my mind read it as the word "déjà" which means "already," like "ya" in Spanish, and "vu," which is the past participle of the verb "voir"-"to see," and i understood it in French, rather than in English. it became a literal rather than an abstract concept. and this is one of the wonderful aspects of learning other languages.

-the best advice that i have been given recently is "Cheer up. Life is short."

reflection

2007-11-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

today in India a man got married to a dog. he did this because he has suffered serious health afflictions ever since he attacked two dogs, and he wanted to reverse the curse upon him.

if anyone in the United States thus deduces that the India is a "strange" culture, i want them to look me in the eye and tell me that Paris Hilton is not, also, married to her dog.

shock and awe

2007-10-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

my alarm clock is the news. this morning i woke up precisely to hear this statement:
"Luckily, I could recognize the bodies of my family members; because otherwise I could not have recognized my house."

What????
From the few remaining seconds of the story i gathered three pieces of information: the Yazidi people, Tel Azer, Iraq. This sentence haunted me until i left the house, and the busi-ness of the day pushed it to the back of my mind. When I finally came home, I immediately recalled it. Later, I looked for the full story. The Yazidi are a minority religious group in the Middle East, the target for the August 14 insurgent attack that occurred in Iraq, the deadliest since the U.S. invasion, killing 310 and wounding more than 700.
The religion denies the existence of the devil and evil.

The statement above comes from a 20 year old boy who was playing soccer when the bombs went off. Khudayda Khalid lost his parents and 18 other relatives in the attack. "Luckily, I could recognize the bodies of my family members; because otherwise I could not have recognized my house."

johnny simpleton

2007-09-29T08:39:00.001-07:00

every saturday morning on my weekly bike ride to the farmer's market i am inspired to blog. today on the bike path i saw the following:
(I) tailgaters, at 10 in the morning, hanging out outside their cars. at first i was thinking that this is a part of my culture that i don't understand however, now it occurs to me that this could actually be a positive aspect of my culture-i'm always thinking that in comparison, the US spends much less time together as a family. but tailgating, be it with friends or family, is simply people spending time together, and i like this.
(II) trash. recyclable trash in fact, that my guilty conscience before such beautiful nature obligated me to pick up.
(III) the winding Hocking river, and the reflection of the sun on the water. the hills behind the river covered in trees just starting to turn colors
(IV) couples walking
(V) tents set up for the annual Sustainability Festival
(VI) dozens of kids skating on the ramp at the Athens Community Center
(VII) rec league children playing soccer games and their parents watching in lawn chairs on the side.

what was most beautiful to me was Nature of course, and the feeling of community, of people engaged together in encouraging activities.
my destination was the farmers' market, another spot in athens where i feel joy at the simple fact of people coming together to buy local food. today i bought goat cheese from a farmer in Albany, a neighboring village to Athens. He has 12 goats, milks them and proceses the cheese himself. i couldn't afford it in the least (in fact, i owe him a dollar, he was kind enough to still let me buy it) but it was worth the splurge because it is delicious and because i know that i am supporting his farm so that he can continue milking goats and making cheese.

whenever i wander around the farmers' market or the local grocery store i always think about the sad fact that only the upper/middle class can afford to eat healthy. it's true though, that during some seasons produce at the farmer's market is actually cheaper than at the store, and buying day-old bread is incredibly cheap. but no one denies the high expense of organic food. in one sense, i feel like it should be this way: simply because quality is worth more, what is Good has a higher value. but that doesn't negate the fact that the Good should be available to all people. the good news is that the Athens farmers' market accepts food stamps. i just hope that as time goes by and people become more conscious of how their lives affect the place we live, the demand for organic will grow, reducing the price while maintaining the quality.
p.s. i know nothing about economics.

Athens, Ohio is one of the most beautiful places i have ever seen, and i say this after having the fortune to go to many beautiful places. these are 2 picture of Athens in the fall, what it will look like in a month.

being special

2007-09-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

the moment i came back to the states i made the depressing realization that i am not, in fact, exotic. at least every 3rd person here has blond hair, and even more if we include the fakies (no offense). here, i'm not a giant, i'm average height. the only thing i may still have going for me are my eyes, which are not a too common color.
this is a disappointing realization. when i was in Cusco, whenever i went alone to the plaza and sat down, waiting for a friend, inevitably a guy would meander over to me, sit down uninvited, and start talking to me. i never really minded, because i knew that sooner or later the person i was meeting would show up and save me from the horror of small talk. this happened because in Peru, every 200th person has blond hair, and that's probably because s/he is a tourist. in Peru, i am exotic.

i jest about it being so disappointing, but being the minority is an important aspect of traveling (to places other than canada and west europe) and it is an interesting feeling, to say the least. for someone who has lived her entire life in the majority in terms of appearance, social status, and education, looking different from the people around me makes me much more self-conscious, even if all reason tells me not to be. you begin to associate people with geography and this divides the world. because of this mental division between race, class, etc, the most important part about traveling is talking (actual dialogue) to the people who live where you are traveling to. it is by talking to people that you discover that despite our physical appearances, we all get hungry, laugh, cry, have hopes and desires and love.

home

2007-08-30T18:08:00.000-07:00

after traveling, it feels wonderful to be in one place, to feel settled. i admit that i love traveling because i have less things. i always come back after traveling having forgotten how many possessions i have, books, clothes, etc. despite the hassle of having so much stuff, i feel centered. i love having one place in which i cook, eat, sleep and do laundry. a home of course, can be anywhere, the point is that there is one place to which i return. home is where the heart is, as an old saying goes, and if that's the case, i have several homes all over the world. so it is a bit of contradiction, i suppose, to say that i am settled; because for the moment, it is a temporary settlement.

my thoughts on home, and the undeniable fortune that i have to have one, brings me back to what i saw in Perú. i wrote before on the homes of the poor that i saw in the northern coast. further travels provided other opportunities to view their living conditions, for they are not just on the northern coast. looking out the window on the bus from Puno (on the border of Bolivia) back to Cusco was like watching a video called "This Is What It Is Like to Be Poor." when i speak of the "poor" i of course use the word in its financial sense, because differences between the financially rich and poor are visible, whereas differences of the heart are harder to discern. the people of the countryside live in homes no bigger than a small apartment, one floor, and made mostly of brick and mud. roofs do not seem standard.

what was most difficult to see was the view out the window of the bus ride from Cusco to Lima. this was a 21-hour bus ride (a one-hour flight) through the mountains and up the southern coast. i took this bus 5 days after the terrible earthquake which hit Perú on August 15. we drove through towns where entire churches had collapsed killing those inside, homes had been destroyed, the highway had been split in two. tents were set up in front of damaged homes, families were camping. the worst sight was the people, many of them children, standing on the side of the road holding out bags in the hope that travellers would throw them money.
the U.S. is comparatively financially better off than Perú and we have still not recovered from Katrina. how can a country already so poor repair what has been lost?
if you feel so inclined, please go here to donate: www.thehungersite.com

i´m okay, but others are not.

2007-08-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

there was an earthquake in Peru of 7.5 on the richter scale. it was very serious, although the epicenter was in the ocean, near a city called Pisco (from which comes the Peruvian drink Pisco Sour, a very good drink). Lima, the capital, was badly affected. so far there are more than 500 dead, and more than 2000 hurt, as i understand. here in Cusco a small tremor was felt, although i didn´t feel anything because i think i had fallen asleep. the people i know weren´t affected.
that is the update. i have much to say from these past few days, conversing with Cuscqueños, but it will have to wait.

the birthplace of the sun

2007-08-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

to orient you-Lake Titicaca is a massive lake on the border between Peru and Bolivia. There are a hundred or so islands in the lake, two of which are Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna, the supposed birth places of the sun and the moon.

i went to Isla del Sol yesterday, but only had an hour in total on the island. trying to go Che Guevara style, i wanted to get the history of the island from a local. after walking up an Inca staircase, which quite literally took my breath away every 8 steps, i eventually stopped and (with permission) sat down next a local, elder Aymara woman. i´ve observed people work with peasants, and i knew i first needed to gain her confidence. i only had an hour though, and i pretty much failed at this. i tried making small conversation, and then asked if she could tell me the history of the island. she said she didn´t know. i said " they say the sun was born here." she agreed, but said nothing more. i could get no story out of her. it´s not that peasants are distrustful people. on the contrary, i find peasants to be the most generous, humble, wise, and beautiful people i´ve ever encountered. many of them are in fact, quite open with foreigners (or at least, me). but many are also shy. it is my educated guess that if i spoke Aymara, she could have chatted my ear off. as it was, my spanish couldn´t serve me. i asked her friend if she could tell me a story. "there aren´t any stories that are told to children?" i asked. "ah yes, the children, they know how to tell stories. but they´re in school right now."
the first woman was weaving. yarn was looped around a small stick, and the stick she held in between her feet while she wove the yarn with her hands. i was mesmerized. she sells her work to tourists, and i bought one from her for about $1. it´s a small belt-like thing, with the woven inscription "ama sua ama llulla ama killa." Aymara for "don´t steal, don´t lie, and don´t be lazy," the three rules of ancient Andean society.
what divided me from this woman? i looked at her feet, and at my own. i was wearing New Balance sneakers that i had bought less than 2 months ago when i was San Fransisco. i had sustained an injury and needed tennis shoes so i went to the store, and paid $65 for a new pair of good shoes. her shoes were mocassin-like, black, faded, cracked and worn leather with holes in the top where her equally cracked feet poked through. her feet told a history, but i never got it from her.
what does it mean to be poor? to be rich?

arriving

2007-08-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

when we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, we got off the bus in a crowded, narrow street. after moving out of the congestion, the three of us stood around, quite obviously looking for a taxi. a policeman came up to us and said, are you looking for a taxi? we said yes, and we showed him on the map the hostel we were looking for. he helped us get a safe taxi, and told the taxi driver where we wanted to go. it was a fabulous welcome, i´ve never felt so safe and cared for. Paul pointed out that maybe Bolivia takes such good care of her tourists because she needs the money they bring. this could be, but regardless it was wonderful.

when i arrived back in Cusco, Peru, it was midnight and i got off the bus into a sleepy terminal. i walked toward the exit, and was suddenly swarmed with taxi drivers. it was amazing really, i felt like fresh meat being thrown to the dogs. they weren´t aggressive, but they wanted my business so 4, 5, 6 came up to me at once and the crowd of other taxistas lurked behind the more forward ones. one sleepy fellow was sitting on a bench, eyes half closed,head hanging low, but when he saw he leapt up and barked "taxi?" poor guys.

2007-08-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

my thoughts are just going to fly out at random because i´m way behind.

i love Bolivia. i love the feeling that i have here. most of it has to do with my obsession with Andean culture, and Bolivia is a country that has a higher percentage of indigenous people. La Paz is a city surrounded by snow capped mountains and suburbs (very poor ones) clinging to the cliffs around the city. the poor districts are at a higher altitude than the rich, contrary to other major cities. granted, i was only in La Paz for 2 days. but never once did a guy whistle at me or molest me, and i think this is why i felt so wonderful in La Paz.
the city is basically one big market, which may be unfair to say since i didn´t see much of it. but besides all the tourist markets offering loads of textiles and ceramics, the streets also convert themselves into day markets for bolivianos selling any assortment of vegetables, fruits, contraband CDs and movies, and clothes. as one also obsessed with markets, i just loved the atmosphere.

i haven´t written about my trek to Machu Picchu. Dan, however, has done a fabulous job of recording the moment, please see the link "my travel compadre" at the left. the trek was 5 days, 5 days even out of a year isn´t much, let alone in 22 years of life. it was a small drop in a very big bucket. nonetheless, during those 5 days it seemed like it was a very significant part of my life.
walking is one of my favorite activities because this is how one gets to know the land, be it a city or a mountain. i walked for 5 days in the Peruvian Andes. in such a short time, i got a taste of what it would be like to be a peasant in these mountains, or what it was like to be a Quechua in the time of the Inca. difficult. but even though life is hard and uncomfortable, the people, because they know their land, are intimately connected to it, and this is what attracts me.
oh i could write forever on this...more to come.

update

2007-08-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

i'm way behind on posting but here's a quick one just for an update. my travel compadre and i have split, due to various practical reasons like money, time, and sickness. when you travel alone, it's true that you can do whatever you like when you like. however, this is the only benefit and traveling with a companion, i've decided, is infinitely better. he's probably still on a bus, heading for Chile. at the moment, i'm in Copacabana, Bolivia.
i have much to say about our 5-day trek to Machu Picchu but that will come later.
for now i'll give the observation that traveling makes you realize how many people there are in the world that you could potentially fall in love with. at the same time, the very nature of travel makes a love relationship almost impossible. it's a strange feeling to think about where you were born and about what if you had been born in a different place, who would you fall in love with? traveling allows you to meet many more potential lovers, but unless it is "true love" it is a love almost never fulfilled.

walls

2007-07-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

i spent very little time in Lima and don´t have much to say about it. it´s a big city, with nice parts and not so nice parts.

Cuzco and the Sacred Valley.
we flew from Lima to Cuzco. i have never seen such a beautiful sight outside my airplane window. it was sunrise and it illuminated mountain chain upon majestic mountain chain.
we went directly to Pisac, which is a little town in the Sacred Valley, and hiked the ruins. words fail me. i really don´t know how to describe Incan ruins. i´ve seen them in Ecuador, and i don´t know if it was that i just didn´t get it, or i wasn´t paying attention, but when we got to the ruins of Pisac, at every turn i was exclaiming "oh my gosh" "this is just incredible" "amazing" and i really wouldn´t shut up. i have never seen such beautiful walls in my entire life.
the Incas quarried these stones and dragged them up and down mountains, over rivers, some weighing many, many tons. and they fit them together without mortar. absolutely perfectly. i can´t wait to show you pictures, even if it won´t do it justice.
i think i was more amazed than at the awesome columns of ancient Greece (blasphemy!), such feats of engineering as i have never seen. i am fascinated by the Incas. just to touch those walls put me in a state of historic, scientific, and mystical shock.
i also can´t believe the use of the land. these are tall, tall mountains, from 10,000 to 14,000 feet. the Incas, and peasant and indigenous people of today, farm on these mountains. they cultivate them using the terrace system. i mean, i am just astounded. miles and miles of terraces, up and up and up. they USE the land as it is.
i´m sorry my words just do not say anything. it is a total wonder, the Andean way of life.
i´m off on a 5 day hiking adventure. wish me luck. as much as i am Andean in my heart, my body has not lived in mountains.

a bit of peru

2007-07-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

in an effort to catch up, i´m writing another entry. but this doesn´t mean you can skip the one below, although it´s an admittedly scattered entry.

we spent many hours on a bus to arrive in Lima, Peru. as a bit of practical advice, always cross the border into Peru on the Andean side, instead of the coastal side. it´s much less of a hassle.

in the north of Peru, near the coast, people live in a poverty i have never seen. shacks. real shacks. it´s like seeing something you´ve only seen in movies, except that in movies (Hollywood) all you see are riches. "houses" constructed of sticks and grass. maybe a roof.
my first thought was what do these people do all day? where do they go to the bathroom? where do they get water? how do they work? where do they get food? how do they live?
in complete contrast, on one of the buses they showed the movie "If Only." while shot in London, it was a typical hollywood movie with pretty people who have cool jobs and cool clothes and beautiful apartments. a life so far removed from the shacks in the desert in the north of Peru. i was confronted with two screens- the television and the window, one representing fantasy and the other so clearly, reality.
my friend in Lima explained that many of these poor are people who have invaded government property. from there they get help from social workers to get the land signed over to them and from there they begin to construct a life, better housing, etc. if the land they invaded is private, there is nothing they can do. Alan Garcia, the president, apparently has a plan to decrease poverty by something like 20%. the current rate is around 45-50%.

if you read this before, i´ve edited it. i didn´t like how i ended it and my thoughts weren´t organized. perhaps i will return to it at a different time.

returning part infinite

2007-07-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

i returned to Saraguro, one of the loves of my life, and my favorite place in all of Ecuador. this blog actually came out of an email i wrote to a good friend today. i realized something about my love for this town, and maybe about love in general, but it will be hard to tell.
when i stepped off the bus, i was in familiar territory, it was a place i knew well and one i dearly love. i was of course, a bit nervous about going back to the organization i had volunteered with because i had only contacted one person to tell him i was coming again. i need not have worried. i walked into the office, one year later, and asked for people that i knew and upon finding them, we entered conversation like it was two weeks ago that i left, which is what it felt like to me. what worries me about this phenomenon is that in one year i have learned, changed, and grown. but i walked into this town and to me it felt like no time had passed. does this invalidate the year i spent growing and learning? well of course not. but it frightens me, because among people then, the year becomes much shorter. "leah, what´s new?" "oh, not much, i graduated and i´m on vacation now until i start my master´s program in the fall." that whole year condensed into one sentence. but it´s not important that every person knows every detail about my life. with good friends much is shared and that is all that is necessary.
i lived with an indigenous family for a total of 2 weeks time last year, and i fell in love with them. i returned this year, and they did not know i was coming back. i walked to the house in the dark, and encountered the kids in the pathway to the house, who naturally were frightened at first. i said "i´m the gringa that was here last year, i´m leah!" it took the boy a while to believe it, "you´re her???" and there were hugs all around.
coming to Saraguro is like taking a deep breath. people here live what i believe in-connection to the land and to the spiritual. i have a theory that humans (but when i say that, i mean the majority of the united states citizens) have become disconnected from both the earth and from the divine. obviously i´ll save it for another blog. but regardless, the reason indigenous people fascinate me is because they live close the land and close to the divine. the land is Mother Earth, literally our mother because she gives us food. every living thing has a spirit and should be respected because it is living.
the father showed us their system of plowing. they use 2 bulls with a wooden yoke attached to them and a long, wooden trunk with a very large and sharp point coming off the end that sticks into the ground. the person leans on this point while another guides the bulls and it is this point that digs into the earth and tills it. the father said that they don´t use machines because that puts a distance between them and the earth.
air, he said, is necessary to breathe. why am i going to pollute the very same air that i need to breath?

this entry is all over the place. what i wanted to say at the beginning was that love can sometimes be separated. i love Saraguro. but i spent a year in a very different life, living in a way that these people can´t imagine. yet i always kept that love in my heart and when i returned, that love resurfaced as if i had been gone a week.
i go to Saraguro often to visit. i want to live there because it is one thing to be a tourist, to always be able to return somewhere where life may be more "convenient" and "comfortable." but it is another to live among the people. Saraguro has captured my attention. while i realize that the greater picture is that i love indengenous cultures and philosophy, i hope one day to settle there for a time and live a life that i only know in passing.

2007-07-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

last sunday, in cuenca, i sat down at the dinner table at 1230 in the afternoon and for the most part, did not move until 8 pm, when the guests began leaving. they were all family of some sort, relations of the friends i was staying with. this in itself is not so amazing. what is amazing is that the conversation never stopped between when they first got together and when they left. nonstop conversation. we ate lunch, waited for dessert, ate dessert, had a second round of dessert, played cards for a time and then ate dinner. after about 4 hours, i finally felt comfortable enough to pipe in the conversation. this was all in spanish, of course, which is why i was quiet for quite a time. i get nervous when there are more than 2 people that i have to talk to at the same time. but by the end, we were all old friends, or family i should say. this is a regular custom of some ecuadorean families. i don´t want to say all, because i can only judge by my particular experience.
everyone is family. in the states, family lives more or less separated from each other because everyone goes off to their selective colleges and from there, other jobs, etc. but actually, this ecuadorean custom is not much different from my culture, the difference is in the states, gatherings consist of friends whereas in ecuador, gatherings are of family. so, what is family.
the interesting observation i made was the following-ecuadoreans can all talk at the same time. this is not the interesting part. what fascinates me is that they can all hear each other at the same time. last saturday night i was with 10 or so adults and i watched a woman talk to 3 other people while someone else was commenting or asking her a question, and then she responded to the person who was talking to her while she was talking. i was amazed.

perspectives

2007-07-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

i will not be using any contractions so sorry if my writing seems a bit awkward. i am using a different keyboard and i just do not want to take the time to search for the apostrophe.

i have a lot to say that is all backlogging, but little by little it will come out. in response to my last entry, i had the pleasure of speaking with a young Cuencano about machismo. he first defined it as when the man says to the woman, you have to do this and this and this because that is what pleases me. i agreed that this is part of machismo. his primary argument was that it is the women who are at fault for machismo because they are the ones who raise their kids to act this way. in the nature versus nurture category, he obviously fell under nurture. he seemed to believe that people behave as they were taught to.
how one grows up plays a part in his-her behavior as an adult. however, i also believe that humans are capable of searching out what they themselves believe is the right way to live. this of course, might be a question of education, then again it might not, depending on your belief in the power of the human mind.
secondly, is this not machista in itself, to say that women are to blame for machismo? instead of blaming other people for how you behave, think for yourself about what is right. this comment also suggests that fathers play no part in raising kids. while throughout all history and most cultures, women have been the ones responsible for raising kids, fathers should and do play an important part in shaping kids, whether the father is absent or present.
to say that someone else is to blame is so obviously irresponsible and lazy. people are responsible for their actions and for their behavior and how they treat other people.

we spoke in good fun, but i hope this guy realizes that men themselves should take the matter into their own hands, instead of displacing the blame onto women. but i guess people do what is easy rather than what is right.
i have much more to say, in particular about what a different culture Cuenca is and about how much i am in love with the Andean indigenous culture and my little pueblo of Saraguro. but my time has run out. until next time.

again

2007-07-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

every aspect of life has good and bad, including places. so, for as much as i love Cuenca, i do not like all the cars or buses that leave a cloud of dirty pollution in your face when they pass. may this not deter you from visiting. it is a wonderful place. there are 4 rivers that run through it, and it is surrounded by beautiful mountains. the rivers usually sparkle from the sun, contain dozens of rocks strewn about at random, and there are various bridges, so that it often appears like a Thomas Kinkade painting.
returning to a place means returning to it´s bad aspects as well, namely machismo. as the poet Cavafy says, we carry our cities inside us, meaning that wherever you go, you are there and you can not leave problems behind. i say this because i have not changed my physical appearance since i was here last and this gives me problems. last year, i tried to deal with the men in the streets who whistled or spoke to me by trying to understand why they did this. i failed at understanding it.
this time, i still ignore it, but instead of getting pissed off, excuse the slang, i usually end up smiling to myself, because, yes i´ll come right out and say it, i think this habit of theirs is tremendously stupid. i do not mean to be insensitive. if you know me, you know that i love other cultures and i love all people. i am not saying that these men are stupid, nor even that the culture is stupid. but this particular aspect of the masculine culture in ecuador i think is ridiculous. by whistling at me or saying "hola reina" "preciousa" "hola gringita" "hello, how are you" etc etc, what do these men hope to gain? i just do not understand, nor do i feel respected and that is the most important part. i am molested (not physically) simply because i have blond hair. i am from the united states and apparently this makes me more attractive. more often than not, the whistles and comments come after i pass, instead of before, thus i see it as even more pointless. part of what i understand is that i am not the actual focal point, i am only a catalyst so that men can prove to each other how macho they are. again, ridiculous.
don´t be offended if this is your culture. i freely criticize my own culture as well. nobody nowhere no culture is perfect. good and bad is found absolutely everywhere. these are my honest opinions about an aspect of ecuadorian culture that some men choose to participate in. others do not. i have met sincere and respectful men here. but the whistling and the comments contine to bother me, and i think it´s just stupid.

returning

2007-07-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

i forgot that people in ecuador were so friendly. how can one forget something like this? it is possible that i forgot a lot of things, in fact now that i am here for a second time i am remembering much that i did not know i had forgotten.
yes, people here are extremely friendly. a woman i met on the plane was returning to ecuador after 11 years of living in the U.S. she gave me her contact info in case i needed anything. a man was kind enough to walk me to the bus stop from the airline office. a woman on the bus held one of my bags and pointed out a seat to me. a woman on another bus gave me two mandarines. everywhere i find goodness.
except for certain taxi drivers. they pretend to know somewhere but really they do not and then it is an annoying mess because of course, i do not know the place, nor do i have a cell phone.
i had also forgotten that ecuador is another world. as soon as i entered this world for the second time, i remembered all my feelings from when i left it before and re-entered the world of the U.S. it is hard to explain. riding on the bus from Quito to Ecuador, i remembered everything-the convenience stores, the way the plants grow on the side of the road, the Andes, the landscape checkered from agriculture, the blue sky against the green mountains, the houses in the midst of construction, the bread, the colors, the smells, the language...it is all different.
i love everything and everywhere i go a flood of memories come back to me. it is strange to be in a place where i lived before after a year of growth and learning. some things change, some things stay the same.

a response to Jaclyn's critique of my "critique"

2007-07-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

please see the post "rote-ness" below and "a response to leah's critique" on "togo or not togo" on the sidebar links.

i agree with everything Jaclyn says, and some of our ideas even coincide on my original post. i said that i agree that learning a foreign language is impossible without memorization (although i do believe that a 2nd language can be learned in the same way as our 1st) and that it is important to know dates and figures in historical contexts (done through memorization) in order to understand them.
i also agree that in fields such as biology, memorization is crucial (i certainly hope that doctors memorize anatomy so that when they are operating, they operate on the correct body part, etc). i also concede that memorization can be a basis or foundation for knowledge. if, for example, we memorize the key players in the Spanish civil war and when it happened, we can then discuss its impact on Spanish peasants and other European countries for the rest of the 20th century; a discussion which would be impossible without the memorized foundation of certain factors.

first, my post was an emotional reaction to having spent 3 hours memorizing events and dates for an exam, all information that i have since forgotten.
my aversion to memorization comes when it is used as the sole learning method in a particular class. in this particular spanish history class, there was no discussion or analysis of any of the events we had to memorize. i hope Ms. Janis would concede that essays are a better assessment than matching of what a student has learned. my final cumulative exam, however, was fill-in and matching. essays allow students free range to take all that they have learned and process it, instead of just regurgitating information. memorization can be used quite effectively, but when learning stops at memorization, this is what i call an insult to knowledge.
i freely admit its "potential in education." but when this potential is left unearthed in the classroom, when education does not challenge students to think analytically and critically about what they have memorized, students are cheated of the opportunity to expand their knowledge and understanding of the world at a deeper level. in order to create solutions to today's social problems, we must be able to think critically.
as Ms. Janis knows, i normally do not draw stark lines; as a favorite mutual friend, Mr. Darko, points out: "life is not that simple." actions cannot be divided into two categories: good or bad. i apologize for seemingly to draw such line between memorization and immersion. it's what happens when i write from emotion. as an educator, i fully realize that learning comprises myriad forms, as no two people learn in the exact same way.
my hope is that in all disciplines, creativity is encouraged so that young people may effectively work towards a better, more socially responsible society. education is key, but it must be good education.

exposure

2007-06-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

'vast' is a word i only ever applied to the ocean or the sea, as opposed to land. when i looked out over the endless blue, i thought that this landscape was vast.
after 2 weeks of exploring the southwest United States, i have learned that vastness is also a quality that applies to land. of course i should have known this. many places in the world are even more isolated and unpopulated than the southwestern united states, and vast stretches of unhuman-ed land are what i consider vast, so i could have realized this if i thought about it. but apparently, seeing is realizing.
travel radically changes perception. i had comprised my image of the entire western half of the united states based on pictures, movies, and my imagination. when i traveled here, all my previous conceptions were immediately scrapped. what i imagined was not how it is.
the Grand Canyon, for instance, is hyped up among travelers. seeing it makes one understand why. this canyon is not overesteemed. if one has seen pictures of the grand canyon, one gets the sense that it is beautiful. this is not the case. the canyon is more than beautiful. 2-D pictures lack all depth, and even if you see a 3-D model of the canyon, you still cannot imagine the actual size of it. as i said, seeing is realizing. it is realizing how deep, how, long, wide, seeing is perceiving. to be honest, the grand canyon was too much to comprehend, and people easily give up on things they can't understand. i suggest either hiking inside the canyon or going somewhere smaller.
at any rate, the world's geography is fascinatingly diverse, and travel exposes its quirky characteristics, in order to humble you, its lowly yet lovely inhabitant.

rote-ness

2007-06-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

allow me to complain for just a moment. i need to release this negativity and writing helps me.
memorization is THE worst form of learning. in fact, it is an insult to the concept of learning to even include it under this category. i was studying for an exam and all i had to do was memorize facts and dates and names and i felt oppressed because i felt like a puppet. the only reason i was memorizing was for the teacher and for the grade. memorization is oppressive because it stifles creativity and allows no opportunity for independent thought. furthermore, i will wake up tomorrow and will have forgotten everything i "learned" for the exam, as i did for all the others this quarter-this is because i was not made to think about the material. i simply looked at words on a page. but when i am forced to think about the meaning of historical events, then i remember them.
i agree that memorization may be a necessary evil-learning languages, for example, is impossible in a non-native context without memorizing certain vocabulary and grammatical structures. but even this is not ideal. one can learn a language the same way we did as babies, without memorization, by immersion in the native country. instead of converting the word "table" into "mesa," a native speaker points to a table and says "mesa." the learner then has the image in his/her head, instead of the word, because words are arbitrary.
i also agree that in order to think about the Spanish civil war, it is important to know when it occurred and between what groups. memorization, however, stops there, which is why it is the worst form of learning. nothing means anything without its meaning-does it make sense? the Spanish civil war means nothing to me unless i understand the effects of it on Spanish civilians, how it has affected their lives today, and how such a war can be avoided in the future.
learning is first selfish in nature. one has to learn for oneself in order to use his/her knowledge to help others. memorizing, as i said, is for the exam; it is not for me. i learned nothing and therefore, i can help no one.

the world around me

2007-06-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

A few minutes ago I glanced out the window and was profoundly disturbed by a what I saw. A robin was hopping around the grass, plunged her beak into the ground, and pulled up a worm. The worm flopped out of her mouth but she quickly picked it up back up and swallowed it. This all occurred in less than 10 seconds and I was shocked to witness the reality of the animal world and the quick death of the worm. That is not to say that the human world is nothing like the animal one, in fact part of what disturbs me is the possibility that they are in fact, quite similar. The worm was living and then he wasn't. It was so matter of fact, it caught me completely off guard. I had been engrossed in an essay analyzing artwork of the Spanish painter Goya and three feet from my chair the animal world performs its precept: eat or be eaten. The worm, of course, was helpless, which tells me that in nature, everything has its role; perhaps it is not so chaotic and mysterious as it seems. It is simply the way things are. When this transfers to the human world, however, it becomes deflated. Death is certainly inevitable, but doesn't it usually seem an injustice? Something about this unfairness makes me question whether it is simply the way things should be.

perspective

2007-05-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

The other day I ran into an old acquaintance who had studied in Spain last quarter and whom I had seen maybe once or twice in the past 2 years. She started speaking to me in Spanish and I was a little surprised because I hadn't been expecting it but nonetheless, we carried on our conversation in Spanish.
Afterward I was wondering why it bothers me so much to speak in Spanish with native English speakers. I came to the conclusion that what I most desire in human relationships is connection and that there are already enough barriers between people that we don't need to add on top of those an unecessary language barrier. Language is an essential part of identity and speaking in a non-native language does wierd things (in my experience) to the mind and identity of the speaker. Granted, the whole reason I learn other languages is to make connections to people-but obviously to people who don't speak English. A person speaking in his/her native language can draw on all sorts of social and historical connotations with which a non-native speaker may not be familiar. I learn Spanish in order to make Spanish speakers feel more comfortable talking to a foreigner, but in order to connect to English speakers, I obviously speak in English. We have so much in our shared language that can connect us, why would we speak anything else?
A friend, R, later pointed out to me that my acquaintance probably associates me with all things Spanish and so by speaking to me in Spanish, she in fact was trying to connect to me. This had not occurred to me.
I ran into my acquaintance again today, and again we spoke in Spanish. At the end of our conversation she told me she was so happy she ran into me so we could practice Spanish. Afterward I realized that she is going through exactly what I went through when I returned from Ecuador: the simple depression at not being in a Spanish-speaking country where Spanish IS life, and not just a part of life. With this understanding, I realize that actually the best way for me to connect to her is to speak in Spanish. Thank you, R, for giving me perspective.

apologies

2007-05-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

I did something terrible today and I feel like an awful person. So, I would like to send out this apology into space, knowing that it may never reach the person but hoping that if I apologize somewhere, she will feel forgiveness from some collective consciousness.
Today it rained very hard and the streets were full of puddles. I was driving home and after veering to avoid a huge puddle, I naturally began to veer back to the appropriate lane. I did not make the connection that the girl walking on the sidewalk would be splashed by the car as I passed and I realized it a second too late. I splashed her, and a feeling of remorse swept over me as I looked back at her staring after my car, indignant, angry and annoyed. I fully understand the girl's frustration since I am a pedestrian myself (the car was borrowed) and I detest it when cars drive by with no regard to the splash they make on those on the sidewalk.
I apologize with all my heart. Please forgive me.

abortion and the nature of the soul

2007-05-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

in a class we have been discussing abortion and contraception. with the premise that i do believe in the soul (whatever that means-i apologize for not setting up a definition), a question of mine has been, when is the soul created? is it at conception, is it when the embryo takes on a gender, when that group of cells passes from being a group of cells into a group of human cells, when the baby leaves the womb?
i suppose in reality that the answer (if there is one) hinges on the definition of a soul. however the attempt to define soul is so daunting that i will save it for a rainy day.
on that note, i will still pursue the question of when. true to my inherited Western individualism, i previously thought of the soul as an individual-as in i, Leah, have a soul and you, reader, have your own soul and never the twain shall meet except in bodily contact.
this may be an erroneous view of the soul. consider the doctrine of reincarnation in Buddhism in the context of abortion: "a being was going to be born. for reasons judged good by the would-be parents, that birthing was stopped, but the being who would be born is put back in waiting. the 'life' that was rejected or that died through miscarriage or infant death is called a mizuko [in Japan] and parents pray for its well-being in the sacred realms to which it has been returned." (from Sacred Choices)
let's say that "soul" does not refer to my soul but instead to the collective soul, this spiritual one-ness in which we are all part. and maybe our personal souls are simply unique expressions of this collective soul. in this way, the soul of an individual would never be created, as if it weren't there and then it was; it would just always have existed.
the question is: when an embryo or fetus is aborted, what dies, what is killed? all of us eat, and therefore all of us are guilty of killing, either animal or plant. those who are upset about abortion must be upset because they see an injustice. so, what is the injustice they perceive about abortion? in other words, what is being killed by an abortion? is it a group of cells? because we do that everyday when we eat our vegetables and meatballs. or is it a soul? how is it possible to kill a soul? the perceived injustice must be, then, that this soul did not have a chance to manifest a unique expression of the Soul lived out here on earth.
in order to understand abortion, it is necessary to understand the perceived injustice about it. doing this could 1. get more people to agree, 2. help us to understand what the real argument is and 3. help us move forward in finding a solution.
because it is certainly not as simple as saying "abortion stops a beating heart," as i hope this post shows.
by the way, i used to think it was as simple as this. the more i learn, the more i see that it is not. please post views, perspectives, and responses so we can help each other understand a debate that has been recyclying the same discourse for a couple decades now.

life.

2007-05-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

this is what i experienced between 1 pm and 3:45 pm today:
in religion class we watched two videos, one was a documentary on the Women's March in Wash DC that was esteemed for presenting both sides of the issue (abortion/women's rights) but was clearly biased toward the women who were marching; the second video was called "Abortion Diaries" and presented in a very real way the stories of 10 or so different women who had all had abortions.
after class i walked by the central part of campus where i observed for 5 minutes an evangelical preacher and the crowd of students that were gathered around him.
walking home, i passed by the following: a man with wild hair and beard, head down searching the sidewalk for what i assumed were nickels and dimes; a girl who for unknown reasons has never been friendly toward me, i smiled and waved as usual, and was pleased that she actually acknowledged my presence by saying hi; a guy who 4 years ago asked me out on a date, even though i didn't realize that's what he was doing at the time and he has creeped me out ever since; a display in somebody's yard that included a sign with "Earth (does-not-equal symbol) Ash Tray" and various giant cigarette butts lying in front; and finally, a caterpillar that i saw alive this morning and had somehow gotten smashed during the day.
then, i voted. and thought it ironic that i was doing it in a church.

if i were to write a book, each of these events could be a chapter. that is why i am overwhelmed with life, or maybe i just think too much. women's rights deserve its own post(s); i will comment on the preacher.
the preacher had attracted a crowd to him. i later realized that while some middle-aged persons were there, it was only students who were engaging with him. no children or older persons were there (i assume they are both too wise to care). what i thought was sad was that while it seemed like these people were engaging in dialogue, we all know that the preacher is not really listening to what the students are saying, and the students are not really listening to the preacher. i wanted to gather them all, invite them over for tea, and say "so, what is the argument?" and once they realized they didn't even know what the argument is, i would say "well, we are all human beings who love and care about the people in our lives, right? let's go from there."
if the preacher saw the man that was scrounging the sidewalk for change, in what way would he be more acting like Jesus?
1. by opening his Bible and reading to him in a very animated and loud voice how all of his sins are forgiven and he now has eternal life through Jesus being raised from the dead -or-
2. by ushering him into the restaurant nearby and giving him a good meal, company, and a pair of ears to listen to his story.

a personal entry

2007-05-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from a book called "Dear Exile," which is the one-year written correspondence between two women friends. One woman writes of her breakup:
"I hate the idea that he continues to pay his phone bills, to button his shirts, to age, to eat, to read or not read the newspaper. I hate that he lives in real time, that everything he does involves the decision that he didn't want to do it with me. Somewhere he's filling up his gas tank and I'm thinking about how I'd like to see the way his arm looks doing that[...]how his fingers looked, by themselves and against mine. How his sentences came slowly, for reasons I won't find out. How tired he was, how sad and tired all the time and determined to be well and good. How I wanted to heal him, not by helping him or carrying him but by huddling next to him. How I wanted to have his whole world, to move it in some way across my body, or to digest it, to have it be at once foreign and part of me. I wanted him to talk forever for the sound of his voice, for what he said and what made him think of it and what it made him think next, for how it sounded in the trees or in a room, for what the room said back."

No one told me life was fair; but I'm going to complain about its unfairness anyway. Why do men make women feel like fools? Note here that I say men, not love (I concede lust and infatuation must leave one feeling like a fool. Of course). Why do they pursue us, treat us well, pretend to be a friend and then disappear into their own lives? Were we wrong to hope that a person cared about us enough to want to be with us over a long period of time? Were we wrong to hope that this person wanted more than just fun and games? Were we wrong to believe him, to believe in him, to believe in a real relationship? And even at the end of it all, were we wrong to believe him when he said he wanted to still be friends? Left with feelings of frustration, disappointment, anger, hurt, disillusionment and foolishness, one is looking for someone to blame. I don't know where the blame falls although I know this post looks like I'm blaming men. And I know you (men and women) hate me for stereotyping (both men and women). But even if I weren't speaking from personal experience, in the past 6 months 11 women, that's right, 11 of the wonderful women I know have had uncannily similiar experiences; such that it's beginning to sound to me like all men have the same recipe for a relationship. And it's 12 women who have been hurt, but by 18 guys. These are not good statistics.
The pain could disappear instantly, if one could just erase all the memories. All I want is someone who wants to commit to me because he values me, who thinks being with me (not 24/7, certainly) is a joy and not a burden, someone who is my friend, someone whom I make a better person and who makes me a better person. This is love.
I realize that nothing is as it seems and that everything is more complicated than it appears. But the feelings I listed above remain, despite any understanding of the situation or of the guy, and I don't like feeling them. And I feel like such a fool for having believed that something beautiful could have lasted.

an update

2007-05-04T21:14:00.000-07:00

as usual, I lied about getting back to blogging. The strange thing is that lately there has been so much on my mind, and much of it I have consciously wanted to blog about, for reasons unkown.
I have created another blog solely for the movie Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). the link I'm sure is somewhere on this blog, maybe on my profile, but the address is www.daslebenthelives.blogspot.com. those who have not seen the movie are of course, welcome to participate in the discussion. i find this movie profound, i think, in that international sense of we human beings are all the same and all over the world people have similar ideals and people are beautiful. all over the world. i connected to this movie because i saw in it the ideas of Plato and the hope that a person can choose good over evil-and yet the brilliance of the movie was not that it was Good vs. Evil, like a Lord of the Rings motif, and for the main character things were not so black and white-i mean to say the choice was not so clear. When he was with the Stasi, he believed what he was doing was right. but his mind was opened and he choose to believe in something else, something else that was right.
i could just go on and on. i'll save it for the blog.
and hopefully i'll be posting more frequently.
peace out

20/20

2007-03-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'm back after a hiatus of academic inferno.

Today I discovered irony. Winter quarter really was difficult-I loved all my classes but the amount of work they required was literally unbearable. Sometimes I thought it was a pity that I was taking these classes all at once because some of them I had to make priority over others and that wasn't fair because then I missed getting deeper into the material. Needless to say, while I enjoyed the intellectual challenge, I was stressed out for 11 weeks straight and complained constantly of the amount of work.

As I was sitting in my new Spanish classes today, bored to death, I realized I missed last quarter's Spanish classes like crazy. While my teacher droned on about the major rivers and mountain chains of Spain, I would have given (almost) anything to be analyzing Cesár Vallejo's poetry or discussing sexual identity in modern Spanish culture (two things I did frequently in my classes last quarter).

Ironic. Last quarter, while complaining about my classes, I always knew that I preferred a stressful but challenging class to an easy but boring one. I hate being bored. I love to relax and I hate being stressed out, but sitting in a boring class is possibly a worse hell than what I experienced last quarter.

So I've learned a lesson, perhaps. At any rate, I won't complain about this quarter. I have 3 other exciting classes and plenty of hobbies and friends to keep myself occupied. I'm reminded of that Alanis Morissete song "Ironic." I usually see life as a dichotomy and not as ironic but now that I think about it, irony occurs everyday in our humdrum experiences-for example, with parking spots. Now that I have this perspective, I'm sure I'll see it all the time. Or, ironically, I won't.

SAD

2007-01-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

i'm skipping the usual apologies for not writing.

today, according to a study and the report i heard on NPR, is the most depressing day of the year: January 22. there are at least 6 contributing factors: the weather (which is reason enough for me); credit card bills from the holidays are coming due; new year's resolutions are starting to peter out; after the exciting holidays the daily routine is back to stay, for a while; and i forget the others, although they had to do with the fact that people are frustrated at the same ol' same ol'. these are excellent reasons. while i myself have had reason for these to be the happiest couple of days of my life, i can see how someone who has many more responsibilities than i do would not enjoy january 22. the man who did the study suggested that instead of anticipating this time in a negative way, we should try to do something fun and out of the ordinary on january 22. i think we should do this at least once a week anyway.

but who wouldn't be depressed upon hearing what else NPR had to say this morning...at least 130 people died in Baghdad as a result of 2 car bombs that exploded in a crowded marketplace. i hope Bush does not see this as a justification for sending more troops. the reasonable thing for him to say would be "aha, my strategy does not seem to be working." in fact, it never did. somebody should send him a post-it note. shall i indulge you yet again in why war is wrong and peace is right? i use the words of another, that "power without love is reckless and abusive," that "darkness cannot put out darkness," and that i stand with this man, Martin Luther King, Jr. because we have decided to stick to love, for "love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems."

but don't worry about the current darkness, people, for the happiest day of the year is just ahead on June 22 (it's true!). unfortunately, Bush will still be in office...

reflection

2006-12-28T02:08:00.000-08:00

on the eve of my last day in Hawai'i, i reflect that a month, depending on the circumstances, is usually not sufficient time to know a place. this can be compared to a person, i suppose. can you get to know somebody in a month's time? hardly. the complexity of a human soul makes this impossible. thus it is with places, and even more so, since usually places have a history longer than the span of a single human life.

the last 3 places i have traveled to i have spent at least 2.5 months there. i left sad. but this time not only do i leave sad but also with the feeling that i only have a taste of Hawai'i. a taste is okay. but i'm the kind of person who likes to have mouthfuls. other cultures are entire worlds. i like to explore the history, language, geography, and customs of this world. so one month: not enough to satiate my curiosity.

this is not to say i'm not grateful. i, for some unkown reason, have been granted incredible privileges in my life, and traveling is one of them. whenever i reflect on this, i thank God, the universe, fortune, luck, parents, everything, that conveys me across this vast earth. because i am so appreciative for the love that has been shown me.

i have more to share about Hawai'i, including pictures. this will come in the near future.
my Christmas (/Hanukah/Kwanza/New Year/holiday) wish is that you would be at peace with yourself. because it is only when the individual is at peace, that the world will be at peace. merry christmas to all and to all a good night.

a convert

2006-12-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

i am sold on blogging. yesterday i accidentally discovered a blogger who lives in spain and became enraptured with her blog, and then with the blogs that she reads, posted on her site. i read blogs from different parts of spain, chile, and argentina.
today i watched a video of a village market in Togo, posted a peace corps volunteer's site.

technology is a paradox. we all hate it and love it. it's terrible and great at the same time. what i think we need to do, inspired from a recent conversation with my best friend, is use technology for good-like...well anything really. we have the technology to make technology better. you see yet another paradox. but love of money, the root of all evil, is why technology is exploited and why we are wasteful. people want to make a profit, not do good. people are not conscious of their actions...

back to blogging, i am discovering that it is a wonderful thing-a monstruous web that connects the entire world-or at least those who are literate and have access to a computer. well, that hardly makes up even half the world...but still. we can learn things.

this picture, if you can see past the glare, is an example of bad, wasteful technology. one of islands in the hawai'i chain has been devastated because of its use as a test site for the U.S. military. sigh...

the city

2006-12-16T16:17:00.000-08:00

i promised to keep this up and i've been quite lazy about it.

recent activites in Honolulu:
Chinatown: a bustling hub of sights, smells, and sounds and an eclectic blend of every asian culture: korean, vietnamese, thai, chinese, japanese, not to mention south pacific. a little bit like SoHo-fattened pidgeons included. it was all of my weaknesses: colorful markets, good food, and chinese milk tea.
honolulu's chinatown is the oldest in the nation, probably started by immigrants after their contracts on the plantations were up, and twice devastated by fire. in 1899 bubonic plague broke out and the Board of Health quarantined the 7000 chinese and japanese residents. the plague continued to spread however, and the Board decided to burn infected houses. wind caught the fire and eventually leveled all 40 acres of Chinatown. since then the atmosphere has been evolving, from a sailor's pleasure to the unique, historic attraction that it is today.

Foster Botanical Garden: which houses rare trees from all over the world: central and south america, the caribbean, africa, southeast asia... it also has the only native Hawaiian palm, yes, there's only one, the loulu, and the Bo tree, the sacred tree of the Buddhists.

Hawai'i State Art Museum: with an interesting exhibit "the land and the sea," which focuses on the connection between the people and the land, and the terrible destruction that has occured to hawai'i's native forests and animal species. also has contemporary hawaiian artists.
Honolulu Academy of Arts: beginning with ancient mediterrenean art all the way through modern art. includes exhibits of chinese, korean, indian, japanese, southeast asian, etc. my favorite was the temporary exhibit of Indonesian artist Sudjana Kerton, a true creator. see www.kertonart.com.

hawai'i offers much to see and explore, sorry if this sounds like a bad tourist plug for hawai'i but it really is amazing that this tiny set of isolated islands has become host to such a blend of history and culture.

a little of hawai'i

2006-12-07T22:50:00.001-08:00

a quick thought on the power of our minds: i was convinced that i was in possession of the movie Amelie for several months now...until last night when i tried to watch it. after ejecting and putting it back into my computer several times, and telling itunes that no, i did not want to import "Amelie" into my music library, i realized my fatal mistake: i had the soundtrack, not the movie. it scares me that i went for so many month believing that i had the movie when i really have the soundtrack. this is the problem with the world: we convince ourselves of things that simple aren't true.

anyway, the other day i learned how to surf. it was difficult. it takes an enormous amount of arm strength and stamina and there is just no room for reluctance. but, though i am obviously not an expert after one try, it was great to try something new and if i could actually stay on the board, i'm sure it would exhilarating and fun. it looks fun. i hope to go again.

hawai'i has a fascinating history. the united states may have claimed melting pot status but hawai'i is a real fusion of cultures from all over. there is no ethnic majority here, 42% claim "mixed ethnicity" and Caucasians, Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese follow. full-blooded Hawaiians sadly make up less than 1% of the population (according to 2003 stats). the native population was mainly destroyed through diseases introduced by foreigners to which it had no immunity. much of hawai'i's fusion of cultures comes from migrants who were brought in to work on the sugar and pineapple plantations in the 1800's. before the annexation to the u.s in 1898, sugar plantation owners brought in 70,000 Japanese immigrants, for fear of soon-to-be migration restrictions. immigrants have come from everywhere: china, korea, japan, the philipines, puerto rico, as well as germany, russia, scotland, etc. thus, i love it.
the situation of native hawaiians is sad, being a small minority in their own land. land laws are supposed to allow for natives to gain possesion of it but to begin with, private owenership of land was a foreign concept to islanders when it was introduced and the land was soon swallowed up by Western investors. the government (aka, the u.s. military) also owns a significant portion of land that should belong to the hawaiians.
and thus is the situation in many areas of the world. at any rate, it is a colorful and fascinating history.

a return

2006-11-30T00:29:00.000-08:00

due to current travels, i am resurrecting the blog. i guess it never really died, but posts were random and scattered, and perhaps hard to follow. so i will be consistent, at least for this month, until school again smothers me with work.

i am in Hawai'i, on the island of O'ahu, quite near Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. i was told that Hawai'i is magical and i imagine this is so. i have only been here a few days, therefore i still have a lot of exploring to do. however, it's tropical and ancient and modern and beautiful. i cannot deny Hawai'i's lure, it is absolutely beautiful, with palm trees and ferns and trees with thick, gnarled trunks, and luscious vegetation of every variety. after Ecuador i realized that not only do i love diversity in people, but in plants too. Hawai'i offers me both-native Hawaiians and Japanese people live with the U.S. military folk (who come from everywhere), add to that tourists from all over, and its myriad flora, and thank you Hawai'i, mahalo.

my brother-in-law is in the Navy, therefore i am staying in government, military housing. it is Suburban America with a capital S. these houses are all the same, upper-middle class construction with picket fences. everyone owns at least one car. lawns have the same haircut as the military and navy men: buzzed at all times. everything is in order.
the neighborhood next door is a different picture. this is the real Hawai'i. i went jogging there today, and to be honest, felt a bit more at home. the houses are a different style, much more colorful, and some are run-down. junk crowds garages and spills out into the driveways. "works-in-progress" are everywhere. some yards are overtaken with tropical plants. actually, it reminded me of Ecuador, and i loved it.

there are 13 sounds in the Hawaiian alphabet. i am learning some, from a wonderful "instant immersion" program from the library. Japanese may be more useful, i will try to learn a little of that too. this picture is from the plane.

Where do we go from here?

2006-11-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

I am more convinced than ever that war and violence are evil and that love is the greatest power in the universe. King said that he was concerned about a better world, justice, brotherhood, and truth. “When one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder...Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.” Only light can put out darkness.
Where do we go from here? Violence can murder a terrorist but it will not destroy terror. America, this is where we are: we are murdering the terrorists. We must change. Violence only begets violence. We have become what we sought to destroy; we have become what we hated. Love seeks to create, uplift, restore, reconcile, construct, build, support, and dignify. We must love.

sigh

2006-09-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

oh, God. it passed.

the border is 2000 miles long. the bill was for a 700 mile fence. they appropriated enough money for 370 miles. they will build 370 miles of fence. and then?
somebody, please tell me what good will come of this.

return to the wall

2006-09-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

i'm back to this wall issue. last night the senate voted to end debate and by saturday they will hold the final vote on this bill. here are some things people have said:
Jeff Sessions, Republican, alabama
“We know that fencing works. It’s time to make it a reality. Then we’ll have some credibility with the American people. Then we can talk comprehensively about how to fix an absolutely broken immigration system.”

Mexican chancellor, Derbez
"No se pueden solucionar los problemas migratorios construyendo barreras, no se puede mejorar la seguridad, construyendo muros." "Migration problems cannot be solved building barriers, you cannot improve security building walls."

another mexican diplomat said that these measures hurt the bilateral relationship, they are contrary to the spirit of cooperation that should prevail to guarantee the security of the common border, they propitiate an atmosphere of tension, and they create splits instead of convergences between the two countries.

i should point out that mexico doesn't say this because they think a wall will actually work and are afraid they'll have to stop throwing their people out of their country. rather, because (please reference my earlier entry), as the recently elected president Calderon has said, the only solution to the migration problem consists in creating employment opportunities in Mexico.

i wonder how mr. sessions knows that fencing works since it still needs to be made a reality. and just what credibility will he have from us? has he lost credibility? credibility for what? and by completing a construction project and spending lots of money he will get it? i don't understand.
anyway, it's not too late to email your senators!!!!! everything gets done at the last minute right...
go here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=OH

this wall is not only going to cost a lot of money but lives as well from immigrants who will now seek more dangerous routes. morever, it will create tension not just in the border towns, but between americans and mexicans. walls divide and separate. mexico is not against strengthening our national security. but the solution lies in creating employment in mexico and a bilateral effort toward fixing border problems. as seems to be our habit in the rest of the world, we are alienating mexico.

the numbers

2006-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

well. the US death toll in iraq and afghanistan has surpassed that of 9/11.
and the iraqi death toll. i read a statistic that i don't remember well...someone please correct me on this but i believe in the past 3 months, iraq has experienced a death toll equivalent to that of 9/11 each month. this seems outrageous but that's the point.
i know you're not supposed to measure the success or failure of war in numbers. but what are these numbers? lives. what are lives? a life is a birth, childhood filled with toys or hunger depending on your area of the world, but a childhood nonetheless, with parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents and games and being rebellious, learning to walk and then talk and maybe to read and write and so on. a life is the images, thoughts, feelings, and memories of a unique passage through time on this earth. friends, jokes, smiles, broken hearts, a life is alive-it moves and breathes and talks and sees and thinks. and then it's gone. this moving, breathing, laughing bundle of life is gone in a second, a bomb or a bullet. the life is gone, its thoughts, feelings, memories, and laughter lingering somewhere in the smoke, a vague fog that eventually rises and evaporates into the atmosphere forever.
these are the lives, these are numbers these are the US dead in the iraq war and operation enduring freedom. and these are the many thousands more of iraqi lives. do we have justice now? are we satisfied?
has anyone really thought about this name "war on terror?" there is something so wrong about waging a war on terror.
war IS terror.
can you conquer war with war? this is not a rhetorical question. the answer is no. fighting war with war produces war, and a neverending bloody mess. and the numbers rise and rise and rise.

los indocumentados

2006-09-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

a quick break from the Ghandi series to discuss the issue of the Wall. the House of Reps. aproved the construction of the Wall between mexico and the u.s. which will now go to the senate and then the white house. the senate has differed from the house on this issue so it's hard to say what will happen.
now, from what i read, the rebulicans insist that migration reform can wait, while security and protection of the border can not. first the wall, then total migration reform.
ok, here is an old proverb that is an analogy on why i see something wrong with this and on what i think the solution is: give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.
we are going to build a wall, and THEN reform the problem. so that after we have reformed the problem, what happens? the wall is useless, it will be useless, people!!! do you see? because if we actually solved the heart of the problem, we would not need a wall. therefore, just like some other projects this government has undertaken, it wil bel a large amount of money absolutely wasted. where are we putting our money??????? have we not read history? why do we not learn from our mistakes? i also wonder why, if the u.s. considers arab men, or "extreme islamists" to be the enemy, they even bother about the mexicans. the migrants are people doing desperate things and endangering their lives to WORK here, not to bomb here. in fact, many migrants from ecuador (and maybe all latin america but i can only speak for ecuador) do not want to live here, they want to work for several years to make money to take back to their country.
now then, the republicans want to put up this Wall. i ask, what the hell is a wall going to do? it will, maybe, discourage people from coming in that way. but, fact is people are desperate to come here and do desperate things to get here. i have heard nightmareish stories of people ( i mean real people, people with names and people like "rosa's brother," "carlito's mom") trying to cross the border. what this wall will do is encourage other routes, more dangerous and more desperate. and therefore, adding fuel to the fire and absolutely doing nothing to help no one.
the democrats want migration reform. so make the laws tougher, or put more police on guard or give them more dogs or what have you. it could even be positive, like offering free english classes for a couple months in migrant areas or having social workers help them with housing, and so on.
this doesn't solve anything either. let's work this out. problem: actually, what IS the problem? ok, seriously, the problem seems to be that...ok well, fact: there are many people migrating to the u.s. and the u.s. sees this as a problem. ok, how do you solve this? by not having people migrate to the u.s. and how do we solve that? by taking away the motivations people have for coming here in the first place. duh.
why do people want to come here? to make money. because the economic situation here (regardless of whether you think it's good or bad) is better than in their country. people want to eat and people want shelter and clothes. so that you don't confuse these people with upper class north americans, i should put it in the negatives: people do not want to starve and do not want to be homeless and/or crowded and do not want to wear rags. this is obviously the extreme situation. the entire population of ecuador is not starving and wearing rags. but the point is, for many people it is difficult to feed their family because the wages do not match living expenses (correct, it's the same way in the u.s.) but wages here are higher than in ecuador by such an amount that people risk their lives and sometimes lose them to come here just to make money. in other words, people want a higher standard of living.
the point is, the solution is not a wall, but to fix the economic situation in these countries, which is the reason people cross the border in the first place. now we could point fingers and place all the blame on 15th century Spain who messed everything up when they colonized america. or we could think of solutions. i know nothing about economics, therefore i don't have the solution and have no idea how to improve the economy. but i'm pretty sure some other people with Ph.D's could think of SOMEthing. and if we have billions of dollars to fight a war and to build a wall (again, before we solve the problem) and since OU keeps raising my college tuition, there is plenty of money floating around the u.s. that could be poured into economic development programs in latin america. believe me, once people can make enough money in their own country, they will not want to come here (recreational travelers exempt from discussion). and if they don't want to come here, they won't come. as i see the logic. and therefore, we won't need a Wall. i'm repeating myself to get my point across and to emphasize how ridiculous this Wall is.
and this, not even mentioning how we could better our own situation if we turned our dollars internal. but the government seems bent on saving the world. so if we must do that, my own humble suggestion is that we do it in a peaceful, meaningful, and uplifting way. and not through a destructive path of blood and weapons and disgusting power trips.

i have more to say such as how improving the economic situation, and taking away the motivation to risk one's life to come to the u.s. would solve myriad other social problems in latin america (ecuador). but i've gone on enough. i've made several generalizations based on my experience in ecuador and on my perspective of this issue. and have perhaps allowed my passion for this situation to run wild and perhaps instead of being reasonable, i've been emotional, as i tend to do. so i'd love to start a discussion, and/or to hear what you think. if you actually read all that, thanks for reading, courage to you. the floor is open.
maybe there's just something in me "that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." or maybe good fences really do make neighbors.

the wisdom of ghandi: a series

2006-09-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

"'twere as unreasonable to doubt that hidden in the murky smoke of Western materialism are immortal qualities..as...to ignore the existence in the Orient of the splendid monument of spiritual lore-the heritage of a long line of Eastern saints and sages...Branches from a common root, Oriental and Western have each their mission, their place in the grand economy...It rests with both to recognize that differences are not necessarily synonymous with superiority or inferiority and to patiently cultivate that spirit of self-restraint and toleration which...will...destroy the senseless rind of misunderstanding...Let [the Oriental] hold fast to what is best...in the history of his people and...while retaining his self-respect, the more surely win the respect of his Western neighbors. Equally, the Western should abandon an attitude as stupidly inconsistent as that which demands from his Oriental neighbor conformity to his own ideals of propriety, while denying him every facility and encouragement."

if you're thinking that this might apply to today, to current events, keep thinking...and you'll be sure.

a quick update

2006-09-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

i'm back in athens and excited to be here. excited for old friends, new friends, donkey chai, and studying. i have a chinese housemate who i met tonight and adore already. she found out i'm very good at talking...i started talking about walmart and then didn't shut up about everything that's wrong in america and then felt bad about bombarding her with pop culture vocabulary and corporate (specifically, profit-driven) practices. BUT. i would like to say there are definately good things here, and there are many places that are beautiful beautiful beautiful, thanks to mother nature. oddly enough, although maybe it's not odd, most international students that i've encountered do not know about the evils of walmart and go there of course, because it's the cheapest around, thanks to the monopoly it holds on Athens. luckily they get housemates like me...haha just kidding. i can't force anyone to do anything so you make your own choices and i'll respect that. i've decided to only say my opinion if someone asks it. which is why i have this blog...so that i can voice all my opinions without anyone having asked. this is really a fantastic relationship we have. what's even better is that you have the option of commenting and informing me of YOUR opinion or even of your better-informed opinion and we can have discussions. that would be neat and i could be more informed.
anyway-point. we spent $85 million on our recent balistic missile defense test, which was reported as a success. but nowadays whenever i see money figures i always wonder where ELSE this money could have gone and wonder why we live in a world that we have to spend money on nuclear defense.
and the original point: i'm excited to be here. love to you.

a note

2006-08-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

ok so i posted pictures. what i did was go back and put in pictures that had to do with either that entry or an entry around it. so scroll around at your leisure. i didn't know how to add a caption to them but context should help that. and i could only put in 4 or 5 pictures on each entry. which put a damper on things but it's probably better.

i continue being back

2006-08-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

i wasn't sure if i was going to continue this blog after returning from Ecuador, mainly because now life is boring. just kidding, life is what i make it but anyway i'll try to make it interesting with thoughts and opinions and questions. i think it's been a while since i've written.
when i got back i went straight to indiana to visit my sister. if i can publicly announce this, she's moving to hawaii, which when i first found this out, made me ecstatic because that means i get to visit. this past weekend i went to new york city to visit my very generous brother. i'm glad i had some time between getting back and going to nyc, because all those people and tall buildings were a bit of a shock. i really like nyc but that's because nyc is like a little world and i really like the world. for example, the store signs around my brother's neighborhood in Brooklyn are in Polish.
so i'm for the most part over being depressed. actually i was only depressed for a few days. and neither has "adjusting" been hard. adjusting is not the right word. because i know how to live this life-i've lived it for over 20 years so that's no problem. basically i just miss Ecuador. i miss my host family, i miss the people in the office at CEDEI, i miss the mountains, the fresh juice, i miss speaking spanish and eating soup everyday. so it's not that it's hard to adjust to life here, it's not at all, but i just miss Ecuador and would rather be there. not that there's beautiful, wonderful people up here like you. i love you.
did you know that in the united states, each person has a lot of space? it's true. well it's true for the middle to upper class at least. so i mean the suburbs, which is most of what the united states is. can you imagine an entire apartment for one single person? this amazes me. one person has their own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and probably a living room. all for ONE person. imagine. i think this is part of our rugged individualism. people talk at a distance and live at a distance and assert themselves as individuals, this is ME, this who i am and this ME deserves at least 100 square footage all to itSELF. or maybe that's just the way life is-the privileged get space and the poor don't.
this is something i've noticed since being back. not that everyone in ecuador is poor or lives 8 people in a 2-bedroom house. but an apartment to yourself is not the norm. kids live at home until they get married, generally speaking. as an example, my 22 yr old sister, 27 yr old brother, and 29 yr old sister all live at home. and the older two have (very) full time jobs. but it's perfectly acceptable that they live at home. here we are thrown out at 18 to fend for ourselves. i'm not complaining about this. actually the funny thing is that about all of this i'm hypocritical-i really enjoy travelling and being on my own (not that i don't love my family) but i still criticize this aspect of my society.
i'll be posting some pictures soon. i think i know how to do it...

back

2006-08-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

i'm back in the states. yes, i'm a bit depressed and yes i cried a lot when i left. it was a rough journey home.
i feel very strange. first, i feel like a tourist because i'm seeing everything with new eyes. i'll tell you that everything is big, everything is new, and there is soooo much just for one person. i'm having trouble grasping the suburban lifestyle-the very one that i grew up in. also, things are so different that i can in no way connect my life in ecuador to my life here, which makes everything in ecuador like a dream. i feel like i dreamed it.
i miss it a lot. i especially miss my family, my mom and brother in cuenca. i miss eating with them, i miss chatting with my mom. i miss spanish a lot. a lot.
i'll stop whining, no one likes that. i'm in indiana now visitin my sister. that's fun. i saw the new woody allen movie yesterday. i liked it, it's clever.
ok that's all. i wish i was back in ecuador.

well

2006-07-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

here i am...
i don´t know why it published two of the last entry. i must really be lost.
let´s see...i´m pretty much done with TEFL. tomorrow i have a grammar test, which i expect will be as easy as the first, and then finito. last thursday night was my teaching for 2 hours slot. it went well i think, or rather nothing went wrong. i felt myself learning as i went along, which is a good thing. and i was completely exhausted at the end of it, ready to collapse, which is also a good thing. it means i gave my students energy. one of my observers says she is always hungry after she teaches. tomorrow we have the goodbye party for them. thursday is our goodbye party. tonight i´m eating dinner with the ladies of the office, who have all become good friends in the past months.
oh yes, over the weekend we went out to a small town in the countryside and gave a lesson for two hours. my group did a role play in a restaurant setting and once the kids caught on they had a blast doing it and that was cool-to see them interacting and enjoying it. other than that i´m a little like, why do these people need english? it´s such a small town. the main reason is for those who work in tourism there. which is a credible reason. i don´t know...i´ve got lots of opinions on teaching english.
sunday night i said goodbye to my mom´s sister and she started to cry, which was completely unexpected. so i started to cry too. other than that i´m still trying to keep my mind as far away as possible from the thought that this is all almost done. which sometimes works.
on friday i go to saraguro and i´ll stay there until wednesday. wed i´ll catch a bus to cuenca, eat with and say goodbye to my family and then catch a bus to quito. my plane leaves early thursday morning (the 3rd).
i don´t have much else to say at the moment. i don´t know if i´ll write again before i leave. if i do, it´ll be before i leave for saraguro. so take care everyone, hope all is going well. much love.

lost

2006-07-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

first announcement-i changed my profile so everyone can comment, not just other bloggers. i know i was told this a long time ago but it didn´t register until last week. so leave a comment. if you want. thanks!!!
today we talked about social justice and responsibility. i was so overwhelmed by the end of the lesson i couldn´t breathe. i´ve already had a million thoughts running through my head about globalization and immigration, ecuador and the united states, broken families, depressed kids, the disappearance of cultures and language, poverty, tourism, money, etc etc. plus the volcano that erupted here, tungurahua, beginning on friday i think, has affected a lot of people (only one human death so far. only, i say). the middle east, the other tsunami...and then add to that everything that we talked about today, about how we as teachers can be socially responsible, how we can integrate REAL culture talk into our classrooms (not just pilgrims, indians, and st. valentines crap but race, identity, perspective, etc) and how as teachers we affect so many lives and how as teachers of english, we especially have a role in either ignoring what´s going on the world or bringing up these topics and facilitating critical thinking, facilitating action...also our culture of consumerism and how that has affected the world, how everyone here wants "american" brands, how in the US thousands of more dollars are invested in prison inmates than in public school kids...
when i was visiting the school in an indigenous community in Saraguro, i was chatting with a group of girls (age 10) during lunch and one of the first things kids ask me (in general) is if i have a father. (¿tiene papá?) and so it went and i said yes and then we continued with this game, just me and this one girl, and i asked if she had a step-dad and she said yes. do you have a step-mom? yes. where do your mom and step-dad live? in Spain. so you live with your dad? no. where does he live? in Spain also. so who do you live with? my grandpa.
sigh...

aqui pasando la vida

2006-07-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

TEFL continues. This week is absolutely terribly stuffed with work. So I´m writing in my blog because I´m unmotivated to finish this horrible "research" paper i started that is incoherent, disorganized, and lacking a purpose.
The trip to the Amazon was okay. It was much more jungley than the trip with the Ohio group. After getting to the Oriente, we drove half an hour by bus and then walked an hour into the jungle to get the cabins. Everything was really cool, I´m not complaining, but it was about 40 people, and just logistically speaking that causes some...problems. But the food was great, we hiked through rivers, waterfalls, jungle, and mud, so...but as much as i enjoyed it, returning to the mountains felt like coming home.
i must say i felt really weird travelling with a bunch of gringos. obviously i did it all the time with ohio, but since then i´ve gotten used to travelling by myself, to riding the national bus lines, to speaking spanish, etc. so it was weird and i´ll go ahead and be stuffy and say that i prefer travelling on my own, or at least in a small group.
yesterday we switched teaching groups and i taught the beginners. woooooooh is it different from the advanced. everything, the whole environment...you can´t say anything. for instance, to transition in the advanced, i could say things like "now that we´ve reviewed this and gotten some more practice with this structure, and covered such and such topic, we´re going to move on to blah blah." but last night, i sat there for a second and then finally just said "next topic!" it was really difficult not to just...talk. but all the same, i fell in love once again with all the students, especially the adults who are highly and intrinsically motivated to learn.
i´ve gone on about that enough...peace.

being in cuenca

2006-07-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

well. i can say it´s a lot different from when i was here before. i realized just yesterday that i like cuenca. i do. i feel like i´ve been here forever and i feel like i actually have a life here. therefore, i like it.
this weekend i spent some quality time with my host family, namely my brother and my mom, with whom i really connect. my brother and i saw Cars, which was my first movie all in spanish (exciting!), because it was a kids movie, they dub everything instead of having subtitles. and that was cool because afterward i could explain to my brother all the cultural references in the movie, such as cow-tipping. yeah.
anyway i feel a lot more at peace since the last program. even though the actual program is a bit stressful and intensive, i´m content. i´m so happy that i´ve had the opportunity to stay longer and with my same family because i get to just continue building my relationship with them and i really feel part of the family.
i do miss being in saraguro, but feel like i´ve finally settled in to cuenca. took long enough. i´m not thinking about leaving.
on wednesday i´m going on a trip with this program to the oriente again, although a different part than where i´ve been. i´m excited, even though it´s with a really large group, which if you know me, isn´t exactly my favorite thing, it´ll be cool i think. so i won´t be writing for a week. until then!

trial by fire

2006-07-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

is what this TEFL program is like. TEFL is teaching english as a foreign language, which yes, is different from english as a second language, or can be.
so my day-i have class from 830 to 1230 then i eat lunch, then i lesson plan usually all afternoon, then i teach from 6 to 8 pm and then we have a review session afterwards with our observer.
and this is how it´s been since day 1. that´s right, our first day of this program we met our students and the next day we were teaching. which is why i say trial by fire because they just sort of throw us into the classroom, not knowing a whole lot. at least for me, i haven´t had any of this theory, and teaching spanish for 1st graders once a week is a lot different from teaching ecuadorian advanced students of english every day.
so, classes are so-so, it´s hard to pay attention sometimes. my favorite part of all of this is talking with my students at night. and i´m learning about who i am as a teacher and discovering that i might be more comfortable in the role of "tutor" than of actual stand in front of the class teacher, although there are a thousand different ways to teach, as i´m finding out. but i ADORE my students. right now i´m teaching advanced, next week i switch to beginners, and in this class we have a range from a 14 yr old to i would guess around 45. it´s a blast getting to know them, their personalities, their lives, what they like, etc. it´s a shame we have to switch...i get attached real fast.
so that´s the program. it´s intense, which has advantages and disadvantages to it. i´m usually exhausted at the end of the day. but i know this is the right time for me to get this certificate, so...i keep at it.

the other return

2006-07-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

i´m catching up on my blog. soon, very soon, we will be caught up.
last weekend i returned to saraguro and went to the Oriente with 4 other people from the foundation. there is a hike from Saraguro to the Oriente and they are developing this to offer to tourists so we went to the first stop in the Oriente, a tiny town called Tutupali to present the idea of community tourism to this town.
we traveled by car through Loja, in the south, and then into the oriente and took the road until we could, because then it was blocked by some machine. then we hiked down to the town and had dinner, and i discovered another delicious cheese! ecuador really has a great variety of cheese but only if you travel. for instance the cheese in cuenca, i don´t like. the cheese in saraguro, if i haven´t talked about it, i looooove and is my favorite cheese in ecuador. and now the south of the oriente contains my 2nd favorite cheese.
anyway then we had a meeting with some people of the community. for those who don´t know, community tourism is being developed by indigenous communities as a way for the community itself to participate in the tourism, and of course for themselves to get the money, although you can´t say it makes them rich. but it´s a way of sharing their way of life, their culture, and a way helping them maintain and be proud of their heritage. so you can stay with families, do activities with them, and you eat what they eat (if you want to of course) stay more or less where they stay and can see artesans, music, dance, etc. the reason i´m a fan of this is because it´s what introduced me to saraguro, and more than anything, it´s a concept of sharing life, of sharing culture.
we had the meeting, conversed for awhile, and in the morning we left. it was absolutely beautiful, everything. and i returned to cuenca, back to life here.
next entry will be about this tefl program i´m in and how i´ve been feeling here in cuenca. until later!

inti raymi

2006-07-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

is the festival of the sun, or of the harvest. and i returned to Saraguro for a week to see and participate in this festival, after my mom had left from her visit in Cuenca.
it was about 3 and half days of festival, food, dance, music, rituals, and community. i stayed with one of the families i had stayed with before-with the father i mentioned earlier. and this was great because i got to know the family better and i just love them...there are 4 young kids and they are shy and cute and great, but opened up to me as well and i love them. and the mom is first of all, an excellent cook, and whenever she laughs at something i have to laugh, it´s contagious.
my favorite part of the festival were 2 rituals that i participated in, the first was of fire, which was very early in the morning but beautiful, and the second was a bathing ritual, which was very late at night. the water was absolutely freezing, freezing, but it really does have the cleansing effect and feels great afterwards.
after the festival ended, i spent two mornings in the school in the community. these children are beautiful!!! they are so open and well mannered and curious and it´s all part of the education this community has been developing over the years, actually based on principles some german guy brought over to Saraguro a couple decades ago. as well i worked some more in the foundation with the tourism branch.
maybe the best part of all this was my last night, although i cried a lot, my famiy made guinea pig for me, which is only for special occasions, and i learned a bit how to cook it. and then after dinner, the father told me stories, fables i mean. i love stories and i think culturally, stories are one of the most important factors in a society. first, i was happy because i could understand everything he said. but more importantly, i felt so privileged that he shared with me these andean fables that he had grown up with, and he would ask me at the end if i understood the moral, and sometimes i needed it explained :) but anyway...i can´t describe how i felt.
Saraguro has also given me another specific reason that i learned spanish. my philosophy has developed over these couple of years about learning languages and for me, learning the language is by no means the end. it is not my goal, but rather it is the way...the way to see through a culture and learn who other people are. learning spanish has let me learn about saraguro, because nobody there, thank god, speaks english, and about a people completely different than anything i would have known, and in a much more real way than from a textbook in a classroom.and for that, i am so thankful.

the return

2006-06-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

so what did i do in saraguro? this entry will be for the 1st week and a half i was there...

i worked a little bit with la Fundación Kawsay, which you can check out at www.kawsay.org. the first part of the week i went around with a woman named Lorjia, who works with disabled people. so to explain a little, there is the town of Saraguro and then around it are different communities of campesinos (mestizos, mixed, farming people) and indigenous people. right now the foundation works with 5 representives in these communities who either work in the daycare with children with disabilities, or with teenagers, or visiting older people. they help in all kinds of areas, methods for helping language disabilities, down´s syndrome, etc. so Lorjia was going out for visits to these communities and i just sort of tagged along. which was awesome for me to see. one that sticks in my head was an older guy, around 75 years old who we went to see, and all these people live out in the country in the middle of absolutely beautiful nowhere. anyway he only spoke kichwa and so we sat there with the representative, who talked to him in kichwa, while he was weaving a fan for the fire, and surrounded by chickens. apparently he once had up to 200 chickens roaming around his house. i loved seeing a different world than the one i know.
turns out i love that world and i would gladly drop everything, buy a farm in saraguro, and live off the land. and find a husband.
the other work i did involved translating tourism packets. pretty straightforward.
during this time i stayed with 3 different families in 2 communities and loved them all. i learned about their food, their family life, their work, etc. i had a fantastic talk with one of the fathers. in order to start conversation, i just asked him if the majority of the people in the community were catholic and he ended up telling me his entire philosophy and how this indigenous community is trying to recover their andean roots, mentality, and religion and moving away from the catholocism implanted by the spaniards. and this is one of the reasons i love it so much, because the andean philosophy is deeply connected to the earth, because it gives them life, and therefore a deep respect of everything that is living, and everything IS living. and this is something i really connect to, sustainable living, respect for the earth and people, and is something that really isn´t present in the united states. or not widespread. and i´m not saying it´s widespread in ecuador, by no means, just that i listened to this man and almost cried because what he said was so beautiful.
so that´s a little of my experience in this week and a half.

Saraguro

2006-06-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

i´d thought i´d give a quick update since i´ll be out of touch for another week in Saraguro.
however, i´m not sure what else to tell...my mom left for her galapogos trip after a short visit in cuenca. it was nice to be around someone familiar, someone who knows me.
tomorrow i leave for saraguro. i feel so lucky, blessed, fortunate, that i get to spend another week there. why do i love it so?
1. it is less touched by North American culture. Unlike Cuenca, it is more Ecuador and less United States.
2. to me, the people (the indigenous people specifically) are so beautiful. i could stare at these people all day. i feel like i have a crush on an entire population.
3. i really feel like these people´s worldview is more profound that what i see in the states. they respect the earth, they respect eachother, and they value the sun, the earth, their animals, their families, etc.
4. they´re so nice. might sound lame, but i just feel so welcome and comfortable around them. they´re fantastic.

this all refers to the indigenous culture of Saraguro. i really want this culture to be maintained and i want other people to know this culture. do i sniff a future here? perhaps. perhaps. we shall see.
so i´m a week more in Saraguro. then my program starts, which i hear is stressful and intense. can´t wait.
love to all
ps i love being a country that loves futbol

adventures

2006-06-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

i´m back in cuenca. i´m sure for those of you who actually check my blog have given up by now since i´ve been completely out of sight and out of mind, maybe, but anyway here´s a quick update even i´m still all over the place until my other program starts june 26.
my mom has arrived safe and sound here in cuenca and we are visiting around.
i am in love. still with saraguro. for those of you who know me well enough, the best way to explain is that i love saraguro like i love greece.
so. with the group from ohio we left for the amazon, then to quito for a day, then mindo, then otavalo, then back to quito, from where everybody left. it was all interesting and beautiful, but a little rough with all of us traveling around together. i had an especially hard time, just being in the middle of things and not taking sides and just wanting everyone to get along. but anyway it was a good time, and i was sad to say goodbye to my fellow companions from cuenca-land. then i was off with 3 others to peru. only for 2 days. it was beautiful and nice but left with a terrible impression after being robbed quite willingly by 3 men who took advantange of me because i was alone, a woman, and a foreigner. anyway i´ve forgotten about it. just never cross the border again.
then i went to my beautiful saraguro. this i´ll have to explain in a separate entry. but i spent over a week there working through a Foundation, getting to know what they do and the projects they have. i fell in love with every indigenous Saraguro. unfortunately, they´re all married. i think i just have to meet some younger ones. so in another entry i´ll explain what i did and why the culture is beautiful and why i want to live there forever.
so i´m here in cuenca for a few days. and then off to saraguro again!!!!!! i´m so excited that i have the opportunity to return because next week is Inti Raymi, festival of the sun, and it´s a huge deal and it´s going to be fantastic. i can´t wait. and then, sigh, i return to cuenca and the busy stressful city life.
until then, regards, too bad the US was shamed but go Ecuador!!!!! ¡¡viva el futbol!
much love

vacation. ish

2006-05-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

forgive my errors but i´m really late in getting home and need ot go.
school is over, i´m glad although i went through a lot last week involving the start of major culture shock but i´m learning a lot. i´m physically feeling better, which is good.
tomorrow we leave for the oriente for almost a week, then i´ll be in quito for a few days, then to peru for a few days just so i can cross the border and get my visa renewed, and then i´m going back to saraguro, the people i fell in love with, and doing some volunteer work for a little bit. i will then be returning to cuenca for a few days. so i will be basically unavailable until june 13 when i´m back in cuenca.
special shout out to bro and sis, who i wanted to email before i left, and john ryan who i wanted to email, i promise a long letter when i get back. and dad.
so sorry for being not good at keeping in touch. please know that i miss you all so much, more than you can imagine, and i love you!
congrats to those who are graduating!!! good luck finishing out. we´ll talk soon. love you!

the ups and downs

2006-05-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

well sorry to say but i think i'm finally in that "down" phase they told us we were supposed to hit a while ago. i've been sick almost the whole time of this trip, although a different sick than i was in the states so again, i can never predict or figure out anything and i'm sick of being sick and going to doctors who don't help me.
luckily though teachers are understanding and of course i get really sick during the week of final exams and papers but everything's going to be ok. on the bright side, i'm learning how to say all kinds of diseases and symptoms in spanish and that's fun.
so aside from the physical aspect i've been a bit down because i miss friends and it's hard to live in another culture and i think i was a little bit equivocada (i either don't know or forget the word in english) in my expectations of what i was going to do here. but i'm glad i'm realizing this and i still have time here to enjoy myself and meet more people. sorry i'm vague, i don't feel like being too personal over the internet.
so i'm in a down phase, which is perfectly normal and i'll get out of it, and hopefully i'll get physically better and my family is supportive so all is good. and the weather hasn't been as cold and rainy, which is a plus.
i miss you and love you.

happy mother´s day

2006-05-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

to mom and grandma. i love you very much!!!!

mother´s day is a big deal here. it´s nice, i liked it.
i got sick again on saturday night. i was better yesterday. don´t feel so good today. i´m going to ask God for a new digestive system.

in other news, i found where my ipod had hidden the Amelie soundtrack, which i had bought just before leaving for the purpose of listening to it here and after 2 months i finally found it!!! it makes me happy because it reminds me of the donkey which indirectly reminds me of my friends Natalia, Leah, and HiuYin. I miss you guys!

2006-05-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

i have more to say.
actually i thought of the perfect words to describe the feeling i was trying to describe: inferiority and superiority. when i speak spanish, i feel inferior to the native speaker, and when i speak english, i don´t feel superior but i recognize that i have an advantage. this isn´t me being arrogant, because the feeling goes both ways you see. and yes, i know that no one is inferior to anyone, i´m just saying, it´s how i feel.

comments on the weather-today was the first time since i went to coast that i have felt hot. it´s cold here in the mountains. i usually sit in my house at night in 2 or 3 layers, a scarf, and wrapped in a shawl. but it hasn´t rained yet today, miraculously, the sun is shining, and it´s beautiful. also, and this is going to sound sad, but i just realized a few days ago that cuenca really is surrounded by mountians and yes, you can see them from the city! i hadn´t realized this because when i walk, i´m usually looking down and now i see that if i look around, i can see mountains. hooray for perspective!

in other announcements. i have officially changed my plane ticket and will be returning to the states on august 3. i´m out. thanks for reading.

language

2006-05-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

i could say a lot on this topic.
first, things i love about spanish. one, having a definite article in front of my name. "la leah" i am and i love it, i feel so personalized. second, the diminuitive. this of course is what i love about a lot of other languages. here in cuenca the diminuitive is used a lot and my favorite is when it is attached to words like "minute." so you have "minutito" which doesn´t really have a translation because "little minute" has no meaning-a minute is always 60 seconds, never more nor less. i love the diminuitive. third, verbs are very useful. you can use the verb "pasar" to say "what´s wrong?" "i swallow" "hé´s coming over here" "i got ran over" "pass me the salt" "i had a good time" etc.
this leads me to other observations-while it might seem that spanish would be easier than english because there are less words, you then have the variety that seems to characterize latin america. for instance, in cuenca alone there are about 5 words that mean "cool" and 6 that mean "ugly" and these words are cuencan slang. so, imagine if you will, how this ONE city has it´s own way of talking and then multiple that by all the cities in latin america minus brazil. and there you have one reason why spanish is difficult.
i have decided that there is no language that is "easy" to learn if you want to be at the native speaker level. the native speaker of a language mumbles, doesn´t pronounce every syllable, contracts words, and knows every connotation a word has. when you learn a language, since there´s so much to learn, most times you only memorize one meaning for each word. which is why spanish for instance is difficult if a word actually has 12 different meanings.
most importantly i want to try to describe a feeling i have and i don´t know if it´ll work out. yesterday a friend of my brother´s came over who is learning english and for his homework he had to do an interview with me. so obviously when i have hung out with him before, we have been speaking spanish and he is soooo difficult to understand because he talks so fast and very cuencano, so i usually have him repeat things or smile and nod (which causes its own problems). anyway, so for the interview we were speaking english and i totally felt like the position of power had shifted over to me. it is a weird feeling. as a non-native speaker, i feel like i am not on an equal level with the person i am speaking with, as if they have some sort of power over me. and now, when i´m speaking english with a non-native speaker, yes, i feel like i have some sort of power over them, but more i can feel exactly what they feel-and that is the feeling of being "lesser" in some way. ah, language.

oh Barbie

2006-05-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

ding ding. we have a winner. leah´s favorite catcall of all time: "hello, barbie." haha i love it.
this past weekend i fell in love with an entire indiginous population called the Saraguros. i´m going to go back there and i´m never returning. there were several elements that factored into my falling in love. i hadn´t been feeling well and actually almost didn´t go. but first, the fresh air, the green, and the mountians made me feel more alive. second, the music, food, and people of Saraguro are amazing and beautiful and profound, and while what they did for us was for tourism purposes, i´m still impressed.
congratulations to sister Karena for graduating!!!! i´m proud of you.
i have one more week of school, which is hard to believe. i´m certainly ready for school to be over and i´m excited that i still have more time here. really, i´m so thankful for the opportunity to stay because if this time was all the time i had, i don´t think i would feel...fulfilled. so, i´m happy i get to stay.

apurado

2006-05-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

this little story has nothing to do with miscommunication in another language and everything to do with me being a fool.
yesterday there was a friend or aunt of the family, not sure who she is really, who came over for the day. we were eating dinner and my mom had made tamal, which i had tried once before and remember it as probably the only food item i haven´t loved. so there we are eating dinner and i say, "this seems different than the one i had before." and my mom said "yeah, it is." and then i said "well, i like this one better than the other one." and my sister gave a funny laugh and then i thought to myself...and then later i asked my mom "who made that other tamal?" and sure enough, it was the friend of the family, who had been sitting next to me. i was so embarrassed. and still am. but these things happen, my mom told me not to worry about it.
so that´s life. we still have fun.

i´m 5 dad!

2006-05-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday to jaclyn janis the coolest pèrson in the world
happy birthday to you

feliz cumpleaños querida amiguita!!!!!!
i love you

discoveries

2006-05-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

I feel like i have gone through a time warp because I didn´t check email or talk to anybody for over a week. But anyway i´m back safe and sound from my trip to the coast, and didn´t get sick.
There´s much to say. I´ll say little about what I did. We went to various places, among which were mangrove swamps and an organic farm. Canoeing through mangroves is a cool experience. I felt close to the earth. With the risk of being boring, the organic farm taught me more about how the earth really can sustain life. For instance, they use a dry toilet so that human waste doesn´t go into the water where it contaminates. You use the bathroom, and throw some sawdust on it. After the toilet fills up, it sits for a time and then boom! Safe, rich fertilizer at your service. Genius I tell you.
So besides the daily activities the trip was also…a bit of a personal journey. I realized that I have begun to adhere to the concept they taught me in first grade that if you don´t have something nice to say, don´t say it at all. It´s funny because I think I used to be “the negative one” and on this trip I have found myself being positive because I am surrounded by people more negative than me. This might sound negative in itself, or mean at least but i´ll explain a bit. Lots of people on this trip have complaints and they voice them without shame. Therefore, i´m sick of people complaining (which is of course, what i´m doing right now) and so i´ve been opting to keep my complaints to myself. I can´t change anything but my attitude so that´s what I focus on. Aren´t you proud mom.
And since I don´t complain to the group, i´ll complain to the blog. Ha. Just one more thing though, because it affected how I felt during this past week. People in my group talk about each other quite frequently. And this I can´t stand. It doesn´t matter who i´m with, someone is always making comments about someone else. It´s so frustrating. We are not in middle school and to me, these comments are just so unnecessary. So that is how I felt during the trip.
Worth mentioning is the bus ride back. It was around 11 hours so it offered plenty of time to chat. I talked with my friend for probably around 8 of these hours about love, religion, and idealism. I feel so refreshed and realized that actually talking about what I believe brings me a lot closer to my beliefs than either thinking about them or reading other´s beliefs. Our conversation was challenging and it was a breath of fresh air.
I eventually want to expand on the topics of diversity in Ecuador and American influence. Don´t let me forget. Love you and miss you.

hello again

2006-04-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

well i´ve resurfaced after a week of doing nothing but homework. that sucked but it was midterms and there´s no use getting upset about it now.
sorry for not writing. i don´t think it´s necessary to apologize but i do the same thing to myself in my journal when i haven´t written in a while. anyway i´m completely behind on email and trying to keep in touch with people.
last sunday i got really friend-sick. i read some great emails and i miss people a lot!!! so know that i miss you and i love you.
i did have 4 days of somewhat of a break last week because it was easter. easter day is really not the big deal here-it´s Good Friday, when they make the traditional Fanesca. Fanesca is something like a stew with every ingredient you can imagine. i think there´s around 20. i quite enjoyed it. i was afraid to enjoy it though because i got "amebas" last week and wasn´t supposed to eat (lots of) certain things. but my mom allowed it because i was feeling better.
i´m finally feeling like i know my way around. this is a good feeling.
frustrations with spanish come and go. i was talking to a friend some time ago in ohio about communication. i said miscommunication in english is so frustrating, imagine in another language! and she said, well i think it´s just fun in another language. and turns out she´s right for the most part. for instance. the words "your" and "his" in spanish are off by one letter. therefore if you are in a noisy bar, and you tell your brother that you like the singer´s voice (his voice, if you will), and he gives you a very strange look, you know that he understood "i like your voice." this of course is not what i said, and we cleared that up right away.
however, learning another language is frustrating as well. for instance. at lunch today my sister told a story of something her professor did. by some miracle i understood everything she said, and then she delivered the punch line and everyone laughed and i just...didn´t get it. that´s annoying.
so finally after years, well 2 really, of trying to relate to internationals, i actually do relate to my friends in the states with english as a second language.
tomorrow we leave for a trip to the coast. one week. i´m excited for several reasons-the coast is a lot different and i´m excited to learn the regional variations. i´m excited to not be doing schoolwork because i´m sick of it. and i´m excited for the ocean!!!!! i miss the sea. i´m not excited to leave my family and i´m going to miss them.
one more thing of interest-we did a volunteer project this week and i loved it. i feel like i would rather be volunteering because i would learn more about the language and culture than in school. this is a negative attitude about school, i´m sorry to give that impression, it´s not all bad. anyway volunteering-we are painting a room at a school for girls. so of course, i´m painting greece, the beautiful island of anafi, on a wall in ecuador. i´ll take pictures.
that is all. i love you.

trying to immerse myself

2006-04-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

this weekend i did all things latin. i went out with my brother fri night with a bunch of friends and relations of his girlfriends and we danced, and i need to learn the difference between merengue and salsa. i was the only gringo in this bar and it felt awesome. sunday i went to church. palm sunday here is much different than at home-i stood the whole mass with an elaborate creation of weaved palms in my hand, which i sometimes used to play with the baby that was next to me. the cathedral was packed, i don´t mean all the seats were taken, i mean all the floor was taken. then i went to a futbol game with my brother and sister-cuenca vs. barcelona, which is a club from quito. we won and i adored the latin american passion for futbol. after futbol, lunch in the countryside. we went to cajas national park to a tiny restaurant and i had a delicious delicous meal. and tried zhumir, the national drink. my brother just gave it to me and said try it and i said ok and took a sip and had a similar reaction to when i tried ouzo in greece, which was a painful swallowing and a bitter face. it´s not bad though-my mom´s friend was saying that it cleans you out so it´s good for something. so salsa dancing, church, futbol, and zhumir, that´s what ecuador is. i´m just kidding, there´s a lot more to it.
it´s raining as usual. it rains everyday here. kind of a downer but we do the best we can. i still love my family...i´m still a little frustrated that i´m forced to spend so much time with americans but yes, mom, patience i know, i´m trying.
ah yes the other thing i wanted to mention was how bad i am at keeping in touch. i´m thinking it´s because i find it impossible to live two lives at once and down here, i´ve got a whole other life with all these other people in it that it´s hard to maintain physical contact with my other life. but i think about people a lot, and i miss people and i want you to know that, if i haven´t talked to you, i´m getting to it and i love you.

my ecuadorian family

2006-04-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

although there´s many other things i´d like to talk about, it is important that i express how much i love my family here (i love my family at home too, but in this context i will be talking about my ecuadorian one).
so i have a mom, dad, brother, and 2 sisters. all of us live at home. their house is pretty big. it´s like an upper-middle class house in the states. i have my own room and sort of share a bathroom with my brother.
my mom is a fantastic cook. i have loved every meal that i´ve eaten here. the key that i´ve discovered to latin american cooking, kidding, to my family´s cooking at least, is brown sugar. it´s more natural that refined sugar (obviously) and everything tastes absolutely delicious with it. every morning i have natural tea, bread, and fruit juice, i mean smoothie. for lunch the big meal, we have soup that´s always delicious, and then a plate with rice and some sort of vegetable accompaniment. and more delicious smoothie. yesterday i helped my mom make ice cream. before it becomes ice cream however, it´s something called espumilla, which means little foam. and that´s exactly what it tastes like-foamy creamy goodness it´s like eating heaven. (just like how drinking donkey´s chai is like drinking heaven.) for dinner it´s something similar to lunch sans soup. so point is, i love my mom´s cooking it´s delicious and natural and so good for me and i look forward to every meal. i forgot to mention the hot chocolate. mmmmmmm.
so, besides the food, i just love my family. the youngest sister is really funny (when i understand her.) i went out last weekend with my brother which was GREAT because i finally meet other real ecuadorians (the not meeting of such has been a source of frustration) and i met his girlfriend and another friend. my brother and the older sister both work, and my other sister is in school.
another reason i love them is because i feel comfortable asking them cultural questions and, as with the machismo, they can make me feel better by laughing about it. they´re a quiet family...and i´m beginning to feel very at home there. my family is the best part of this trip so far. by far.

being 1.a woman and 2. the minority

2006-04-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

it´s good to have different experiences. i certainly don´t like the feeling of being a minority but i´m glad to be experiencing it. having short blond hair, green eyes, and pale skin does wonders to help me blend in. kidding. it´s painful how much i stick out. i´m getting a little used to it though. i noticed how much people look at me the first week and to me, it´s ok. i realize i´m different, and it´s just weird to feel the stares. i don´t think it´s a negative thing.
what i´m having trouble with is being a woman. i thought i was good at ignoring the catcalls and just kept on walking. yesterday though, i got upset. this is because i took a different route to school and had the bad luck of turning into a construction site. bad bad luck. i mean i´m good at ignoring them, but yesterday i couldn´t help feeling really angry. at lunch i asked my family about it. the three of them who were there all said ¨ahhh forget about it, it´s nothing, they do that to any women, just ignore it¨blah blah. to them it was no big deal. but my host mom knew i was still upset. on my way back into school i passed 3 older guys and one said to me in english ¨where are you from señora?¨ i felt really rude completely ignoring him so i answered in spanish ¨the U.S.¨ (as if it´s not obvious) and kept walking. he asked what part and i said ohio and kept walking and ignored the rest of what he said. anyway when i came home again, my sister told me she was waiting for the bus and some guy made a kissing noise at her and she thought of me. i told them the story of what happened. my mom joked saying ¨leah´s happy because some more guys gave her attention¨and my sister said ¨old ones-the best of all!¨ anyway i´ve decided not to let it bother me (although it probably always will a little). it´s something i don´t understand and i´m just going to keep ignoring it. my family made me feel better about by joking around and my sister was really funny about it.
it´s still weird to feel people´s stares but that´s the way it is.
next entry i´m going to expound on how much i love my host family.

first week of classes

2006-03-31T09:24:00.000-08:00

i´m a little bit sick. i feel fine though, just my nose running constantly.
the first week of classes was a bit stressful. people have told me usually when studying abroad, classes are easier and there´s less work. but in greece i think we had a lot of work. and i´m am not finding this perception to be the case here. i think part of it has to do with the whole other language thing-everything takes me twice as long. the history of mesoamerica is also confusing me a lot. i think it will get better.
i set off my family´s alarm again the other day. NOW i know how to work it.
i feel like i´m doing a whole lot of reading and listening and not much talking (in spanish) which is a source of frustration. i think though, that everyday i talk a little bit more, but i feel like in class there´s not much opportunity to talk, and then i have so much homework i can´t really just sit around with my family, although i have been trying to so that as much as i can because i love them. speaking is also painful because i think of things to say in my head and then expect them to come out like normal speaking pace and they come out more like a slow leaky faucet. does this analogy work.
i really have a lot more to say, as always but have to go now. chao

getting adjusted

2006-03-28T09:17:00.000-08:00

yesterday i set off the alarm in my house. i knew that i had 40 seconds to leave but i didn´t know that when i entered and no one´s home, i have 40 seconds until it goes off. so i set it off. my mom came home soon afterward and i didn´t know how to say that i set it off, so i thought everything would be fine if i didn´t tell her. some time later the phone rang and it´s my sister wondering what´s going on. apparently when the alarm goes off, it sends a signal to the cell phones of my 3 siblings and my dad. my mom told me a story of another student they had who set off the alarm and all the kids came home, the police came, the neighbors came...what a disaster. thankfully, nothing really happened in my case. the funny thing is that i had been discussing with my host brother the verb ¨soñar¨which is to dream and i asked him if there was a verb with sounds, like to sound. he said no and then yesterday i told him i looked for it and there is one, it´s ¨sonar¨ and my professor had used it that morning and he thought about it and said, ¨oh, i need to learn spanish.¨ anyway me setting off the alarm gave them a chance to use the word ¨sonar¨because that´s what my mom said the alarm was doing. so you see, i did it on purpose to show them that in fact, the word sonar is commonly used.
this is all goofy stuff, i have better material but not time right now to write it. chao!

aqui

2006-03-26T14:24:00.000-08:00

i have been in Ecuador now for 5 days. we spend 3 in Quito, the capital, one day in Baños, a town right near Cuenca, and then came to Cuenca. instead of the usual drive down from Quito to Cuenca, we had to fly because of the roadblocks. apparently in the US press there has been attention put on the ¨state of emergency¨in Ecuador and also there was a plane crash in the Cuenca airport. the state of emergency is only for 4 provinces and doesn´t affect us at all. the plane crash actually happened about 2 hours after we left the airport-it was a company we would not be riding with and it was because the plane didn´t get enough air. surrounded by mountains, it´s a difficult airport.
ok, after that, my impressions: so far i like almost everything. it´s different, for sure. it´s absolutely beautiful, the food is great. what i love: the fruit juice. oh man this is not like Dole. i´m in love with it. it´s basically like a rich smoothie. and it´s so good. also my family. i have a bother, 27, who works in some computer company i think, a sister, 22 who is studying biochemistry and farmacy. and another sister who is somehwere in the 20´s and i don´t really know what she does. and of course, mom and dad. all the kids live at home. my house is sort of large, very open, all hardwoord floors and has a very upper class look, to me. i love my family although they are very quiet. when they are talking amongst themselves, i can´t really understand them. when they talk to me, it´s louder and clearer and i might need repeating once. but i feel like i haven´t talked in a long time. the group was separated yesterday at noon when we met our families (nervewracking). i´m timid around them but we´ve had some good laughs so far. trying to speak a language is fun. i was pretty nervous but i have found daily communication much easier than i thought and the whole thing is going smoother that i would have expected.
i went to mass with the women today. it was very similar to mass at home but because it was in a huge cathedral, there was an echo and i couldn´t understand very well. the priest was very passionate though, that i got. later we took a ride to a small town outside Cuenca. we crossed a river (on foot) on one of those bridges that don´t look safe but it was fine really. a fun experience. and it was so beautiful.
along the road, you can see lots of barbecues, mainly chicken. we stopped at one and had a delicious lunch. i´ve been eating vegetarian but i had a little chicken.
i still feel uncomfortable in the house. this is normal i think. for the past two days, ive had absolutely nothing to do, so i don´t really know what to do with myself around the house. but they invite me everywhere, or rather, insist that i go (not in a bad way, i like it).
i kind of miss the group. i love them all and we have a lot of fun together. actually the first several days were rather rough because i was missing greece a whole lot. i felt like i was reliving the trip, only with different people and in a different place. and everything is new now, but i could think back to greece and remember every step of the way and i missed it so much. it´s a little better now that we´ve stopped traveling and i´m with my family.
i think this is a little long. tomorrow i start classes, for which i´m very excited. thanks for reading, bye.

the last minute

2006-03-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

well it's early in the a.m. and this feels awfully familiar. when i was leaving for greece exactly one year ago, it was the same situation. me, at the computer, doing last minute stuff while i should have been in bed 4 hours ago. in a perfect world. i remember i was frantically printing out the 100 pages of articles we needed for the history part with bill. (i've decided i'm not going to explain many names and past references. if you know it, great, if not, ask me if you want to know.) so although i planned on being prepared, packed, and ready, i'm not. this is no surprise.
to be honest, i wish i was leaving for greece and i wish i was doing that whole trip over again. but i only feel that way because i've already been and had a great experience and just want to relive it. i won't let you know how much i still think about greece...
so i'm not excited yet. i think it's because i'm tired and stressed out. it took a lot to prepare for this trip. a lot of blood was spilt (figuratively) but hopefully it will be worth it. i'm nervous. everyone's told me not to be, but i can't help it.
what has been on my mind the most is the language: i just can not imagine myself speaking another language as my daily communication. it completely weirds me out. i know tons of people do it, in fact most of my friends, but i'm just...it's weird.
i'm really going to have to learn to keep my posts succint yet descriptive, informative and comprehensive. i tend to ramble if i'm just writing. so i'll go. tomorrow i'll be in ecuador. traveling weirds me out too. but ever since 2 fridays ago, my bones have been ready to go. that nice weather (which didn't last) said to me, "get out of here." so i'm going.

hello

2006-03-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

hi. i don't know what to write. i feel like i'm meeting someone for the first time but i can't say "what's your major?" "where are you from" "when's your birthday?"
or it's like the first page of my diaries i wrote when i was little. "today i sat next to my crush. it was great. when i came home from school my mom made me macaroni and cheese. i lost my favorite pencil today."
ok, i'll figure this blog thing out. i promise it won't be like my 3rd grade diary.
until then...