La · Gansada

Yesterday I thought, Oh! It's the weekend! I should blog. I should write that follow-up post about crime. I was about to head out on a long bike ride, and I thought I would think about it while I rode. I've often blogged mentally during bike rides, then typed the thoughts up at home. Bike riding can be good for thinking.

Shortly after I set out, I noticed a sign: "Hillel High Holiday Parking." It read almost like a tongue twister to me. That made me think of "Ed edited it," a favorite tongue-twisting term among my English-speaking friends in Ecuador. Then I thought of one of my favorites from among the twisters I inflicted on my more advanced students:

I wrote a long time ago about not being a fan of the crime aspect of living in Ecuador. Not just the crime, but the having to think about safety all the time. I held back a little when writing that entry, because I didn't want to cause worry at home. Now I can give you a fuller picture.

I had no idea how much crime would be an issue in Ecuador. I never saw it myself, but plenty of things happened to friends and acquaintances of mine, both foreign and Ecuadoran. One of the three friends that I mentioned had been robbed last December was actually attacked and was stabbed in the abdomen. He is fine, I'm glad to say.

On the other end of the spectrum was a friend of mine, an American woman, who had her purse snatched by little old ladies. A bump and a shove, and her wallet, credit cards, and passport vanished, before she even realized what was happening. That was in the market I went to alone dozens of times. I'd been warned about it, and I tried my best to remember to be careful while there. I never had any problems, never so much as saw anything suspicious.

I also had a good friend whose own host family stole from her repeatedly. Well, at least one member of the family did. Small personal items, her camera card (containing all her pictures from her time in Ecuador), and a significant amount of money. It was an especially disappointing and complicated story, because she had been very close to them, and her family really needed the money that her staying with them brought in. But when she tried, in the least offensive, most careful, most respectful way possible to address the problem without accusing anyone of anything, the mother of the family hit the roof, made all kinds of crazy accusations herself, and kicked my friend out of the house.

I know of two volunteers who were on buses that got hijacked for purposes of robbery. On one, nobody was hurt that I know of, but shots were fired. My friend, a college kid who was trying to shield a young kid sitting next to her, was smacked on the head. When she handed the thieves a five, though, they moved on, not noticing that she also had an iPod and other valuables with her. Very lucky. I heard that a woman was raped in the other hijacking.

Another acquaintance was on a bus that rolled down the mountainside when the driver fell asleep in the middle of the night. He, as is practically expected, fled the scene, leaving at least one of the passengers to die. My fellow volunteer had to find her own way out of there; there was no ambulance. She was cut up a bit and had to go to the hospital but was okay.

So, though when I went through orientation, we were encouraged to travel and given tips on how to handle overnight bus rides, a year later, volunteers were forbidden from taking them.

In the most sobering incident, four of my colleagues were kidnapped by a man with a machete and a gun while they were hiking just outside Quito. They offered him their money, but he didn't want it. Instead, he forced them off the trail and down the mountain. Luckily, he was idiot enough to leave them and try to kidnap additional victims, and they managed to slip away and hide. Luckily, they weren't tourists there only briefly, and they had cell phones and people to call. (They called 911 five times and were hung up on five times. Staff from our NGO had to get the embassy involved, because nobody in the Ecuadoran police was willing to do anything.) My friends got to safety that day before anyone was hurt. But how terrifying that must have been! And how much worse could it have ended?

Later in the year, one of those same four volunteers was in an internet cafe that was held up by a gunman. That was in a notorious city far from mine, but I heard about a similar case that happened just around the corner from my first house in Ibarra, at an internet cafe I used sometimes. And, on a street one block from my second house, a city bus was held up, also with a gun, in the middle of the afternoon. Now, city buses charge 18 cents per ride in Ibarra. I don't think the driver could have had very much cash from the fares. I suspect every one of the bus's passengers was robbed.

So, why this laundry list of crime stories? I'm not trying to brag, or whine, that I lived in a place where things can get a bit rough. After all, none of this happened to me. And I'm not sure how I would have reacted in any of those situations. Nor am I trying to put this out there as a warning to those who might be thinking about vacationing, volunteering, or living in Ecuador or South America or any other developing country. Maybe I should feel an obligation to warn anyone I know is considering a move to Ecuador, so they can make a more informed decision than I did. But honestly, I'm kind of glad I didn't know what I was getting into. I'm not sure I would have bailed, had I known all that, but I know I would have been more reluctant and less excited to go. And I'm still glad I did go. I'd still go back.

I mention these things now for two reasons. First, it was a big part of my experience in Ecuador, even if indirectly. It was on my mind, as I mentioned, more than it ever has been during my time in the States, including now, in my somewhat dodgy neighborhood. Second, it raised a lot of questions, most of which I've yet to resolve in any satisfying way. I'll write about those in part 3 of this series.

It's funny, a few Ecuadorans I met—only a few—wanted to tell me all about America. As though I had never been there and they were kindly going to shed some light on it for me. I'll admit that, just a few times, depending on my mood and what was said, I got a little cranky at hearing what were sometimes context-starved, unfair condemnations of my home culture being spouted by people who've never been farther north than Colombia.* But for the most part, I was eager to hear their perceptions about my country. That's part of why I went, right? I would have liked a little more light shed. I wish I'd heard more about how the North and Northerners look to South Americans. But you can ask only so many times before feeling like the friend who constantly tries to turn the conversation back to herself.

In part because I've filled a bit of blog space with how Ecuador looks from my perspective, especially voicing my frustrations with the things that don't make any sense to me (it's harder to put into words the things that amaze and charm me), it seems that the least I can do is provide a glimpse of the other side.

Unfortunately, I'll never be able to present the Ecua perspective fully or authentically. But here are a few snippets of what we look like to them.

• North Americans are being self-absorbed and ignorant when they refer to themselves as "Americans" or "Americanos." Every North American and South American is an American. (The word they would most often use for someone from the U.S. is gringo, which to them is not as pejorative as it is to us. Those who've been told we don't like that use the term norteamericano.)
• North Americans are obsessed with germs. Everyone knows that it's being cold or getting rained on, being exposed to wind, not wearing socks, etc., that makes you sick.
• It is thoroughly absurd to think that food goes bad as quickly as gringos say it does and that you have to refrigerate as many things as they refrigerate. For example, leftover rice requires no refrigeration. Keep it in the oven. Leftover soup need be refrigerated only if you're going to keep it for more than a day or two. Keep it in the oven. Eggs can be kept at room temperature. Etc.**
• North Americans are very often egoistas (which I would translate as something more like "selfish" than "egoist" or "egotistical.") They don't share! (Example: When some young boys in a host family went into his room and ate his chocolate chips [a precious commodity to a gringo in Ecuador, where they don't exist], they tried to justify it by saying what an egoista he was, having something like that and not sharing it! They still got in trouble.)
• George Bush was a terrible president, his policies harmed Latin America, and the Iraq War is senseless and disastrous.
• It is bizarre that North Americans eat vegetables like celery raw. You must cook such things.
• North Americans eat weird things in general. (I really enjoyed seeing one friend's reaction when I told him about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and suggested I'd bring some on one of our hikes sometime. He was visibly grossed out, and he said something like, "I don't know! . . . It could be okay, but. . . I mean, with the peanut butter, and the jelly!? Bleh!")

Here are a few items that I can't claim reflect widely held beliefs, but I still think they are interesting.

• The sporting goods store owner who rented tents to me on more than one occasion was a little nervous about it and agreed to it only because "gringos are very serious." That is, he thinks we're responsible and honest, so he trusted that I would bring the tents back in good shape. I sacrificed idealism for pragmatism, refraining from telling him not to be so biased against his own people, just because I wanted to go camping so bad. I also didn't mention that most of the people I was going with were Ecuadorans.
• Americans, my CECAMI boss announced to me, don't know how to cook. This came immediately after Marni and I had spent a good chunk of a week cooking for the 200-some people who came to the Fourth of July party we threw for CECAMI, and immediately before all that food was served. I was sleep-deprived and stressed and actually got pretty pissed at her for this statement. I backed down when I realized that "no saben cocinar," though it literally means "they don't know (how) to cook," in Ecuador means "they don't cook much." I hadn't realized that the "they suck at cooking" meaning was one I was reading into it, not something she actually said.
• The secretary at CECAMI repeatedly told me that people in America eat everything out of a can. The way they cook in Ecuador, with everything fresh and natural, is better, she insisted. I'll note that it's also a heck of a lot easier to pull off when locally grown vegetables are harvested year round and sold dirt cheap.
• My host told me over and over again that Americans are very organized. By this she basically meant that they have it together and know how to get things done. For example, if they say a class is going to start on a certain date, it really is going to start on that date! (As you may have gathered, not so in Ecuador!) And the instructor might even, on day one, give out a syllabus with all the readings and assignments for the whole term. He's planned it all!
• The same host sent her daughters to be educated in the U.S. because she thought the education was superior there. In Ecuador, they just don't teach critical thinking or creativity. They teach memorization and appearances—that is, how to jump through hoops and make a nice show of things while not necessarily learning anything. Perhaps some of these words are mine, but I'll give her favorite example. One of her daughters was asked, in a U.S. school, what color the moon is. A typical Ecua mom, she was helping with the homework, and they began to panic when they couldn't find the answer in their books. If it wasn't in there, how would she complete the assignment? Because of the habits the Ecuadoran school system had taught them, it didn't occur to them to answer the question from their own experience. They assumed they were supposed to get the answer from some authority.
• My other host (the one I stayed with in Quito during orientation) couldn't disagree more. The U.S. education system is inferior to the Ecuadoran one, she says, because an Ecua kid who goes to the U.S. for a year will have to repeat that year when he returns to Ecuador.
• A taxi driver once asked me why gringos slam car doors so hard. He asked me nicely, but just after I had just closed his door in what I thought was a pretty normal way. An Ecua friend postulated that perhaps his compatriots close their doors gingerly because the car is often in bad shape and they're afraid any kind of slam will cause it to fall apart.
• The same friend's family had been hosts to foreign students and volunteers for years. He told me that foreigners have a different, er, personal smell. He declined to supply details.
• Finally, back to that first host. She'd lived in the States for about six years. And though she's wealthy enough to have a live-in maid in Ecuador, in the States, she cleaned other people's houses. I remember how worked up she got when she told me about one home she loathed. The people had cats. In the house. All over the house. This is not so common in Ecuador, where attitudes toward household animals are very different, and cats are not so common. She is terrified of cats. She thought it was bizarre that anyone would let them have the run of the house. She said that she would just freeze in fear in that house and could never wait to get out of there.

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*One example that comes to mind was a self-important pseudo-intellectual who told me that American parents don't really love their children, because if an unmarried American girl gets pregnant, she gets kicked out of the house. And single women actually raise children by themselves in the States—can you imagine?—but he loves his daughter, so he would never do that if she made such a mistake. . . . See, in Ecuador, an unmarried young mother is more likely to live the rest of her life, or at least until she gets married, with her parents. (My gutsy roommate was an exception.) I know that there are girls in the U.S. who suffer the fate he describes, and worse. But I don't believe that's as widespread as he thought, and I don't believe a woman living away from her parents equals a woman who is not loved by her parents. It's just our culture's different approach that makes it more possible for a single parent to head a household here.

**I'm not weighing in either way on the rest of these, but I have to say I have largely come around to their way of thinking on this one. Okay, I do refrigerate my eggs and my leftovers. But I no longer freak if something stays out of the fridge for a bit longer than the experts say it should. And I do believe Americans go way overboard, wasting untold energy on needless refrigeration and discarding tons of food that's perfectly good.

It is puh-thetic how long I've been meaning to get back to this blog. I'm more than a little embarrassed. By the time I left Ibarra, I probably had about thirty blog entries in my head, walking around with me wherever I went. Just things I wanted to tell y'all about. Long before that, I'd accepted that many of them would never make it to La Gansada, but I did have a few last Ecuador entries that I wanted to post.

At one point, a friend mentioned that I hadn't written anything here since April. April? Are you kidding? How could that possibly be? Actually, the real killer is that it's already August. How could that be?

Weeks and months have just been whipping by like I can't believe. It's finally starting to slow down perhaps a little. I guess my energy has been pretty much absorbed by my new job, settling into my new home, and getting back in contact with old friends and trying to make new ones while attempting, without much success, to stay in touch with the people who were so important to me in Ecuador.

You know, I heard over and over and over from Ecuadorans that life there is more tranquilo, that it's too fast-paced in the States. I never really bought this. After all, teaching kept me pretty busy in Ecuador, and other aspects of life there were not exactly worry-free. As much as I valued my experience, feeling tranquila was not a huge part of it. But maybe they were more right than I realized. Time does sort of just fill itself here. Especially in summer.

Anyway, without further apology or dilly-dallying, here I go again.

Gosh, I can't believe how fast time is flying. In a way, it seems like years ago that I was in Ecuador. (It's actually two months today.) On the other hand, weeks have just been slipping by, and for three weekends in a row, I've thought, "I'll make sure for sure to post to my blog this weekend." And here I am, very near bedtime on another Sunday night. I'll post a few pictures, anyway. Here are a bunch from my last few days in Ecuador. The one at the overlook is from a little longer ago. Sorry for the sucky layout and messed up alignment. I can't do anything with LJ.






My dear morning glories on a rainy day. (They grow wild and in some places are as thick as dandelions. I planted these from seeds I gathered from ditches in the countryside. I think the locals thought I was nuts.)


This is a sancudo (sp?). It's much like an obscenely huge mosquito. I was told both that they bite and that they don't. I made a point not to find out through direct experience. Luckily, you'd probably notice if it landed on you.
 

Some doors in my neighborhood.

 
Details.



A stretch from my commute to CECAMI.


Some of the expats of Ibarra, in our favorite restaurant in town, Una Raza Una Cara, aka Tiziana's or The Italian Place (on Sucre just north of Borrero, but it may be moving soon if it hasn't already).



 With another lovely expat friend at the overlook in Ibarra. Off-kilter picture taken by a willing stranger. See the lake in the background? I rode my bike around it possibly hundreds of times.




Other good friends at my good-bye party.




My roommates and I.

It was just about two and a half weeks ago that I came home. Since then, I've found an apartment, moved, and started a new job. My parents helped me extensively with the first two. It would have been really tough to get it all done in that amount of time without them. They are both incredibly good to me. My dad, in particular, was with me every step of the way on this move, from the first apartment showing (and I saw an obscene number of them this time around) to the hefting of the last piece of furniture up the three flights of stairs to my new place. What's more, he generously lent me his laptop while I am settling in and waiting for my new computer to come, which has made this and the last two blog entries possible. So this post is dedicated to him, with gratitude. Thanks, Pops!

A few words on the new stuff. First, the place. It's a vintage apartment—I'm not sure what vintage—as far north as you can be and still be in Chicago. Some of the neighborhood is, I'll admit, a bit sketch. But I picked this location because, from the closest El station, I can easily get to the city or to work, in the opposite direction. And the place is a good deal. It's a one-bedroom with hardwood floors, free wi-fi, a big kitchen (well, for the city), fifties-ish metal cabinets, and a happily sunny living room. Plus it's really close to the lake. A hop through the gangway, a skip across a parking lot, and a jump to the other side of the street, and I'm there. Who wants to be first to come visit?

Just give me about a month to unpack. Almost everything is still in boxes and chaotic, partly because I was kept pretty busy last week by . . . you guessed it: my new job!

I thought I had a pretty good idea what it would be like from the interview, but you're never quite sure how it will feel when you get there. And during the selection process, you're trying so hard to put on your best professional face and convince them that you're perfect for the job that it's best not to allow yourself much doubt that you are. But later, at least for me, the uncertainty creeps in. The thoughts, "Will I really be able to handle this? Is my experience relevant? What if I suck at it?" The night after I got the job, the anxious dreams started. I dreamed a gunman loose on campus broke into our office shooting. I dreamed I was just generally incompetent. The last place I worked had about 200 employees. This place has less than a tenth of that. What will that be like? Etc.

The job will be a challenge for me; I have no doubt about that. But I'm pleased to say that my first week at work allayed a lot of those fears I had. The people have been great. They're really relieved to have someone in my position after it had been open for a while, so I think I'm automatically appreciated. I really like the atmosphere so far. I like my office in the attic of a little house on campus. I like the birds I hear outside my window and the promising little flower shoots by the entrance. I'll be working on some interesting stuff. And the work will be, I think, a bit more editorial than I was guessing. In my book, that's a good thing.

Remember that nonsensical conversation about empanadas from a few posts back? I guess it wasn't necessarily a matter of mutually unintelligible languages or cultures. Here’s a phone conversation I had with a worker at a property management company here in the States:

Her: [Company name], how can I help you?

Me: Hi. I was calling to ask how much a furnished one-bedroom is.

Her: Okay . . . were you interested in a studio or a one-bedroom?

Me: A one-bedroom.

Her: Furnished?

Me: Yes.

Her: Well, we do charge more for it being furnished.

Me (impatiently): I'm asking for a number.

I wrote this message last Sunday but am just getting a chance to post it now. A report on my first week at work will follow soon.

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Physically, changing worlds was a bit more of a haul than I'd expected. I'd planned to take a shuttle to Quito the day before my 7:30 a.m. flight home and stay in a hostel that night, but I called too late and there was no room left in any of the shuttles. I wound up paying five times as much on a private taxi. It worked out better in many ways, because I had a driver I knew and trusted, and he dropped me right at the airport, right on time, and he helped me with my embarrassingly numerous and heavy bags. I would have been an easy and very visible target schlepping all that stuff by myself before dawn. Unfortunately, you always have to think about that in Quito.

Still, this meant leaving Ibarra at 2 a.m., after just an hour and a half of sleep, which was interrupted by the sudden realization, who knows how, that the power was out and therefore my alarm would not work. I set my cell phone alarm but did not rest well after that. So I was tired when we started, to say the least.

Note to anyone flying out of Quito: As with other airports, they say that you need to be there three hours before your flight. I say you will waste most of that time if you do. Even if you wait half an hour for them to open the counter for check-in, as I did, and then in a half-dazed state fail to follow the huge numbered signs in the correct order to pay your airport tax and go through security and all that, as I did, and even if you forget to put all the liquids in your carry-ons in one clear zippered bag and have to go through your chaotic luggage and round everything up, as I did, you will still likely have two hours to kill at the gate. As I did. This somehow seems like a bigger deal when it happens at 5:30 a.m. and you are thinking about the additional time you could have spent sleeping.

All went fine with my first flight, but I had less than an hour in Houston to get off the plane, retrieve my luggage, go through customs, check my luggage again, and get to the other end of the airport for my second flight. I'd tried to be cunning and changed my seat the previous day to one as close to the front of the plane as possible (so as to be able to get off of it faster), and I high-tailed it through that airport like you wouldn't believe, but I still missed it. (The bastards had actually taken off early. I hadn't even known they could do that!) They put me on the next flight, and it was supposed to land just a few hours later than the original, so I was okay with that. But then it got postponed because of storms in Chicago. And then it got postponed again. At some point, all my airline's flights to Chicago were delayed, while all the other carriers were following their normal schedules. We finally boarded about five hours after my original flight. Then we sat on the ground for maybe an hour, because they'd decided to delay takeoff again. Then they rerouted us over Memphis and who knows where else, because of the storms.

Then, at one point, the pilot mentioned that we, along with several other planes, were in a hold, waiting to get permission to land at O'Hare. He said air traffic control wanted us to wait 45 more minutes, but that we weren't going to do that because we had only about 25 minutes of fuel left. He said they were working out a solution and would update us as soon as possible.

An hour later, we were still in the air, presumably running on fumes, and he announced we were heading to Cleveland. I didn't have a cell phone or any way of contacting my parents, who were waiting for me at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, so I didn't know what I'd do if they decided to keep us in Cleveland for the night. Luckily, we just refueled and waited for various passengers to saunter back from the bathroom, and then we were in the air again.

We finally landed after midnight. I'd expected to land at 3:30. My poor parents, for whom it was a work night, had been waiting at the airport for more than three hours and had seen two later flights from Houston land while mine was in the air. We still had the drive home to Wisconsin. All in all, the trip home took more than 25 hours.

I would like to say that it's been a whirlwind of activity since then, but it's really been more of a slog. I was starting to get sick my last few days in Ibarra, and a few very short nights of sleep and that marathon travel day clinched it: I've had a terrible, draining cough and cold. I started looking for an apartment my first day home. My dad and I viewed a record number, and I finally found one in Rogers Park and have been gradually moving my belongings from Wisconsin. I've also been doing things like picking out a new laptop and buying other things I need. I start my new job on Tuesday. I'm actually typing this on a borrowed laptop on one of our trips between Wisconsin and Chicago, because it's been hard to find any other time.

And it will be hard to find more time soon. I ordered that laptop, but it could take a few weeks to get it. I'll also be settling into my new place and my new job and, I hope, reconnecting with friends in real life.

I don't want to be the person who comes back from abroad and drives everyone crazy because she can't shut up about it, but I do have a few more blog entries in my head that I would really like to post. Actually, I probably have a year's worth of entries I could still post. Don't worry, I won't. But I will keep this blog going for now. I may just be posting a little sporadically. I guess we should all be used to that by now!

This time, I’m talking about my own ambivalence.

I’m excited to come home . . . sort of. No, really, I’m looking forward to a lot about it. But it’s not proving all that easy to leave here.

Actually, when I was first offered my new job, I knew it was a good thing, and I didn’t think for a second about not taking it. I still feel extremely lucky to have landed such a good job, with great benefits and even slightly more money than I was making when I left, despite entirely having blown off my publishing career for a while. I’m really looking forward to having my own place again and to going back to Chicago, which I love so much. I’m eager to explore a new part of it. Of course, it’ll be fantastic to see my Chicago friends and be closer to my family in Wisconsin.

But still, when I got the job offer, I was downright bummed for a few days. It meant my adventure here was really going to end. There is a lot I will miss about Ecuador.

I was thinking about that yesterday, when I got up at 6:15 and it was already getting light out, as it is every day of the year by 6:15, then put on reasonable clothes, not 15 layers, and went for a bike ride at the lake. I passed hundreds of flowers on my way. Can you believe I have seen flowers blooming outdoors every single day for the last year and a half? I have never had less than 12 hours of daylight per day. And I’ve not seen snow since spring 2007.

By the way, I have not missed winter one bit. To all of you who love winter and the change of seasons, good for you. To those of you who are grumbling and sick to death of this winter, which I’ve heard has been a bear, I have to tell you, there is a better way of life. There are places in the world where you can have a leisurely breakfast on the back patio in your pajamas (as I often do), without freezing your bippy off. All year long. I did it on Christmas. And today.

On the other hand, in such places, you might not be very safe. You might have to boil your drinking water. You might find there’s not as much oxygen as you’re used to. You might get food poisoning with some frequency. The foods you love most might not be available. You may not see dark chocolate for months at a time. You might not be able to communicate with or relate to the people around you. You might not be able to find reliable work, and if you do, you might not be able to count on getting paid for it, and you almost certainly will face frustrations in the workplace that you wouldn’t dream of at home. You certainly won’t get paid on time. Everywhere you go, you may be given contradictory advice. But you will rely on that advice, because you probably won’t be able to find information about anything in the ways you’re used to. You could feel like you’re in the dark all the time. You might face piles of paperwork that make zero logical sense to you, and you may have to go through bureaucratic processes that make you want to bang your head against the thick skull of the person who is telling you that you need to go back to the copy store to make just one more copy of your passport or your diploma or your mother’s cat’s birth certificate, and you will wonder why in the world it is not possible for an office that demands copies of everyone who passes through it to have a copy machine. People will not understand you, either. Many will think you’re an idiot. They may not take you seriously; after all, much of what you say will make no sense to them, either. And you may offend people much to your surprise when you have absolutely no desire to do so.

Even once you learn the language and culture well enough that you can usually communicate, you will still, from time to time, have conversations like this one:

Me: Mmm, empanadas. What kind are they?

Vendor: They’re empanadas. They’re good.

Me: I know, I love empanadas! But what’s inside them?

Vendor: Fifteen cents!

But at the same time, every day, you’ll be learning something new. (Ideally, you do that in your homeland, too, but not to the extent that you do abroad, I don’t think.) Every day, you notice notice notice things. You think in a way you haven’t before. You see with new eyes the culture you come from. And even the things you groan about in the new land give you a certain, hard-to-explain satisfaction. You are treated as a guest and a novelty and an interesting being just because you’re not from around here. People look out for you. Despite the work and the frustrations and the tough times, it’s a bit more like being on vacation than is everyday life at home. You’re exploring. You make a niche for yourself, you make connections, and you feel like you’re accomplishing something, somehow, just by being there and making a life for yourself.

So, of course, it’s all a big ball of trade-offs. Ecuador is both ugly and beautiful. The U.S. is both ugly and beautiful. Changing worlds, which is how I think of the task before me this week, is both ugly, and beautiful.

I hope you aren’t all getting sick of these! I’m pretty sure this will be the last in the series.

• Ecuadorans cheat more in school because they are a conquered people.
• Community banking might work in  Afro-Ecuadoran communities, but according to one mestizo man, it wouldn’t work in his because mestizos are a mixed race and therefore can’t trust each other the way the afrodescendientes can.
• When your dog is expecting puppies, you have to give her lots of extra love so that she can give that love to the puppies.
• A friend of mine who’s a mother simply has to do her nine-year-old’s homework for her. If the girl does it, the final product won’t look as good.
• The Ecuadoran education system is better than the one in the States, because if an Ecua kid spends a year in U.S. schools, she usually has to repeat the grade when she returns to the U.S. (I’m sure this has nothing to do with the language difference or the wildly different curricula and educational priorities.)
• You get gray hairs from sun exposure.
• If you take the last piece of pizza, cake, or whatever, you’re going to get married within the year. Also, if you are digging in a cabinet and something falls out, it means that somebody is thinking of you.
• If you spill salt, you should intentionally spill sugar in the same place.
• When you are exercising, you shouldn’t take a drink of water until you catch your breath. If you do, the water going down your esophagus can block your heart.
• Drinking water on a long hike makes you thirstier, anyway. Wait until you get to your destination.
• Putting hot food in a fridge can break the fridge.
• It rains in Quito only during the days of the month around the full moon. (From my experience of Quito, if this is true, that city must experience a full moon for more days than not.)
• Crops must be planted paying careful attention to the phase of the moon, or they will not grow well.
• If you have a problem with your ear, you might want to try dripping wax into it.
• Not eating meals at the same time every day can give you gastroenteritis, which is why the secretaries in the English department must all eat together rather than staggering their lunch hours.

Well, I have five days left in Ecuador.

This week I've been packing and tying up loose ends, and trying to absorb everything that I'll be saying good-bye to: the Equatorial sunshine, the Andes, the architecture in this colonial city, the everyday scenery, the flowers, the fruit, my roommates, and other good friends. I've been trying to see everything, take in every little detail.

Unfortunately, it's not all going so great. I had what I thought seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan:

• Run all my errands, make my last-minute purchases, and deal with all the bureaucratic stuff like declaring my taxes and closing my tax ID mostly on Monday and Tuesday.
• On Wednesday and Thursday, finish any of the above that remained and finish packing, for the weekend and to go home. Figure out how to ship whatever doesn't fit in my suitcases.
• On Friday, bake a ton and throw myself a party. (It couldn't be any later than this because lots of people are traveling for the four-day holiday, Carnaval.)
• On Saturday, leave early for Mindo, a cloud forest raved about by gringos and Ecuadorans alike. It's known for orchids, hummingbirds, butterflies, and, especially, exotic birds, and it fit all my criteria for my last getaway here: not a beach, not colder than Ibarra, and not known for the water-slinging activities that will dominate the rest of the country for carnaval. My best friend here last year, who seemed to have been to just about everywhere in Ecuador, declared Mindo her favorite. I haven't been there yet but was really hoping to see it before I leave. This weekend seemed like the perfect time. Or rather, the only remaining opportunity.
• Return to Ibarra on Tuesday, the last day of Carnaval. Tie up any loose ends.
• Schlep all my stuff to Quito on Wednesday.
• Fly out of Quito at 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

In keeping with much of my Ecua experience, a lot of this is not going according to plan. It's Saturday morning, and I'm still facing most of the packing that I'd hoped to have done on Thursday. My room is still a disaster. I am not on a bus to Mindo, as the plan prescribed. I'll force the reasons, and the bright spots, into a list. I live by lists these days.

• The bureaucratic stuff went better than expected. For example, I made a total of four trips to the SRI (sort of like the IRS), but they were all reasonably quick and, relatively, not frustrating. On the last visit, I actually was helped by a woman who spoke clearly and explained everything I needed to do, i.e., exactly where I needed to sign the six or so forms and what else I had to put on them. I thanked her and told her that if everyone in positions like hers were so helpful, I would have had a much easier stay in Ecuador. It's true. 
• I was also successful in getting the anti-parasitic medications I'll be taking when I get home. Very exciting: for a buck-fifty, eight little pills should clear out any intestinal pets I've picked up here. This deserves its own blog entry, and I hope to provide one eventually. I will be sure to start it with a warning for the squeamish.
• Packing sucks. Packing is a butt-munch. I hate packing. Packing hates me. It's amazing how much one person can accumulate in a year and a half. Especially when that person is a natural born packrat. And when she has been beneficiary of the giveaways of others who've left before her. The above-mentioned friend from last year, alone, gave me four boxes of crap when she left. Big boxes.
• The party went decently. I gave away a lot of stuff, and said good-bye to lots of friends. Unfortunately, I was not the hostess with the mostest. I forgot to buy plates and cups, so we just used regular ones, and I'm now facing a mountain of dishes. I did not get to all the baking I'd intended to do (though I did make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies [with chocolate chips I brought from the States and have been hoarding since September], cardamom coffee cake, and peanut butter chocolate bars). I way overbought food, and friends overbrought booze, and I won't be around to eat and drink the leftovers!
• Last night I was actually in bed not much after 2:30. And I "slept in" until almost 7, which is about the best I can do nowadays. But I really didn't sleep for much of that time, because of the neighbor dog, who howled pretty much all night. He's about 20 feet from my bedroom window and makes the most mournful, siren-like noises I've ever heard come from any animal.
• The one friend I found to join me on part of my trip can no longer go. He works for a relief agency and was called away to help people in a flooded area. I know this is important. Of course it's more important that the people of Lita not have cholera than that I have a great last weekend in Ecuador. But I can't help being selfishly disappointed. I was going to have to travel there and back alone, but I really wanted to have somebody to spend some of the weekend with. I don't look forward to traveling alone much more than I look forward to packing.
• He was also supposed to take away a bunch of my stuff that I intended to donate to his relief agency. I'm not sure how to get rid of that stuff now.
• Oh, and the road to Mindo has been washed out. Some people say it's totally closed. The hostel where I made a reservation swears it's open part of the day. Others are telling me that the people at the hostel are lying to me. There's no way to find out for sure except to go there. The normal buses aren't running, so yesterday, my roommate and I spent what seemed like a few hours trying to make phone calls and figure out how I could get there. The latest prospect is a convoluted route which daunts me a bit, because it requires making lots of connections. And they aren't the kind of connections where you get off at a well-marked stop and wait for a well-marked bus. They're the kind where you ask the driver to tell you to get off the bus at the intersection of two country roads and wait for such-and-such a bus, but don't take it to its destination, rather, ask to get off at a certain landmark, and from there hail a taxi or a passing pickup truck. . . . So, I'm not sure now whether I'm going at all.

Anyway, you get the idea. I'd better crack to it. Those dishes await.

As has been noted, one of my two roommates is a baby. I thought it would be interesting to live with a baby, and it has been. It’s a part of the human experience that I’ve not seen a lot of up close, since I’ve never had babies, and I was the youngest in my family, and I don’t see all that much of my young niece and nephew and cousins. Infants are fascinating. All that development and learning and emotion going on right there, behind speechless lips. Also, it’s interesting to see a different family’s or a different country’s take on how to care for a kid. We think so many of these things just are how they are, that there are universal truths to child-rearing. And of course, there are. But there’s a whole lot of culture in the mix, too.

Here are some of the things I’ve heard and other observations I’ve made about babies and baby care that I don’t think I would have been as likely to hear at home.

• Wind will make a baby sick, so there must be no open windows near a baby.
• Wearing a certain kind of red bracelet will protect a baby from negative energy, bad spirits, and the evil eye.
• The baby’s food must never be microwaved, because the waves are bad for him. (For that matter, I’m told they’re bad for all of us. You shouldn’t use the microwave too much!)
• The baby’s clothes must always be hand-washed.
• It is normal, however, for a very small infant to ride in the front seat of a car in his mother’s arms on a three-hour drive on winding Andean roads where traffic laws are seldom obeyed and triple- or quintuple- passing on blind curves next to precipitous drop-offs is common practice.
• Babies can also ride on motorcycles without protection and without even being held well before they are old enough to walk with any grace. Just put them on the seat in front of the driver. They hold on pretty well on their own.
• A plastic bag is a good toy for a baby, even an unattended three-month-old who likes to put it in his mouth. The texture is good stimulation.
• A baby must never leave the house without a hat on and should wear one almost all the time in the house, too.
• If the baby, who is wearing two layers of clothing, swaddled in two blankets,  covered with a comforter, and topped off with a knitted hat (in the middle of a day on which even I find it warm enough to wear short sleeves) wakes up screaming and soaked in sweat, it’s not that he’s too hot. This is normal. And it is necessary if the baby has shown any sign of having a cold during the last week or so.
• After giving birth, a mother should eat the placenta. Or perhaps drink it in a shake made with blackberries.
• If a new mother’s hair starts to fall out, that means her baby is beginning to recognize her.
• You shouldn’t drink alcohol if you are holding a baby, because the baby will smell the alcohol on your breath, will develop a taste for it, and will be more likely to become an alcoholic later in life.
• If you want your child to have dimples, when she’s a baby, use Scotch tape to affix a dried pea to each cheek. (I just love the visual I get on this one! And yes, it was presented as a serious suggestion.)

I took these snapshots of one wall the other day. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting overly reflective about my experience here, or even sappy, trying to look for meaning in too many places, but what struck me about the graffiti on this particular wall was that they are so representative of the different ways Ecuadorans regard the States, the seemingly omnipotent beast to the north.

First you have the resentful: "Contra el yanqui opresor a las armas Ecuador," in case it's not obvious, means "Against the Yankee oppressor take up arms Ecuador." And in the second picture, "enero combativo a las calles a luchar" is calling for a violent January of fighting in the streets. I've never felt remotely unsafe here for political reasons, but I do see a bit of anti-American graffiti. Or rather, graffiti that is against U.S. policies and U.S. military presence in this neck of the woods. About a year ago, when Colombia raided a FARC camp in Ecuador without getting permission first, lots of "fuera de base de Manta" messages cropped up overnight. They were urging the States to close its air force base in Manta, Ecuador, because the Colombian military is largely financed by, and therefore closely associated with, the States.

Then you have the embracing: "The Simpson" is a slightly grammatically misguided attempt to refer to The Simpsons, and not only that, but to bother to translate its name back into English. (You see, in Spanish, it's Los Simpson.) People adore The Simpsons here, despite the fact that most expats I know here can find nothing funny about the Spanish version. I taught family vocabulary six times, and it started going much better when I began drawing, instead of a generic nuclear family on the board, Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. My renderings were terrible, but they never paid closer attention. In case you were wondering, they also love Malcolm in the Middle, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Julia Roberts, and lots of U.S. pop music. And ultra-violent action flicks about American soldiers, which is about all they ever play on inter-city buses. (I can't tell you how many times the sudden, deafening sounds of gunfire, screaming, and severing of limbs have awoken me on long trips.)

Then, alongside the love and the hate, there's the everyday, unrelated stuff. "For rent" with a phone number. A smiley face. And the "4:10" and "G.C.P." I actually can't tell you what those last two mean. Ah, symbolism.

I wanted to live abroad, in part, to get a different perspective, to try to see things through the eyes of a different culture. Living in Ecuador has not disappointed me in this respect; indeed, the Ecuadoran worldview, to the extent that you can generalize such a thing, varies significantly from the one I come from. Of course you can make observations and pose theories about, say, the effect the Spanish Conquest or the concept of purgatory has had on the collective mindset of the people here. You can note how different values have led to different rules of etiquette. At a simpler level, you can just appreciate some of the things that come out of people’s mouths that you’d be less likely to hear at home.

I’ve heard some pretty interesting assertions made in the time I’ve been living here, and I’ve listed some of them below. I was going to write some kind of carefully worded preface to the list to try to convince you that I’m neither a judgmental, imperialist/elitist/racist/know-it-all jerk nor such a cultural relativist that I’ve lost all skepticism and am hoping you’ll all adopt all the native wisdom below. But I decided not to bother. Just try to give me the benefit of any doubt you have. To do a little disclaiming, though, I am not saying that all of these are necessarily held very widely or taken very seriously.

I’m a little dazed here. A job just kind of fell out of the sky and landed on me.

Here’s the story. I’d decided to contact some of my former colleagues in publishing to see if anyone would send me freelance work I could do in Ecuador until my visa ran out. I found nothing in the way of freelance work, but one of these contacts mentioned that her office had a full-time, in-house position open, and she encouraged me to apply. I did. And I got it. It happened just like that.

It seems kind of like a miracle, considering the current economy.

I’ll be working at another university press, a very good scholarly publisher just outside of Chicago. I expect the environment to be a bit like that of my former workplace on the other side of town, which is to say, very cool. Good benefits, progressive work policies, and smart, interesting coworkers. I’d thought about moving to another part of the country, but it’ll be nice to be back in Chicago, where I already have some friends and will be reasonably close to my family. When I went home for vacation last summer, I spent time in the city, too, and I couldn’t get over how beautiful it seemed to me after a year away. So leafy. So clean. So many people who are dear to me.

I’m now flying home February 26 (just over two weeks from now!) and starting work early in March. There’ll be a lot to do between now and then! Man, and there’s so much left to tell you about Ecuador! I’ll try to keep posting in the next few weeks. Watch this space.