Detained

If you haven't seen the movie The Terminal, I'm sorry, because I'm going to give away the plot now.

In this movie, Tom Hanks' character is flying into the United States when an uprising happens in his country. He basically becomes a man without a country, and is not allowed to either return to his country or to leave the airport and enter the U.S. He ends up living in the airport for weeks, detained and completely helpless.

             (This is pretty much exactly what I looked like in Migration on Friday. Except maybe add in a lot more tears and some shrieking.)

While my situation is certainly much less dire, Tom Hanks' characters and I have a few things in common:
1. Neither of us may leave the place where we currently are.

2. Both of us are in the country illegally.

3. Both of us are really freaking confused.

This is pretty much where the similarities end, because unlike Tom Hanks, I have food, a place to stay, and money. I also have freedom to move about the country I'm in, just not the freedom to leave it.

So, this is where I'm at. I'm trying to enjoy my last few unexpected days in Ecuador, though I'm disappointed that I missed my own college graduation and I'm anxious to see my friends and family outside of a computer screen. The worst part of this situation is that it was preventable and is a result of my total and complete ignorance. I don't really like when that happens.

A Whole Bunch of Bull-****

Quito is currently in the midst of a ten-day celebration marking the foundation of the city. Part of this celebration is a series of nine corridas, or bull fights. I’ve been conflicted about my feelings toward bull fighting since I arrived and was first introduced to this tradition, but as it is a huge deal here, I figured it was something that I shouldn’t miss. 

So, last night I went to the Plaza de Toros, the bull fighting ring, with a group of people. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but what I definitely did not expect was to have tear-filled eyes within the first thirty seconds. I felt AWFUL. I can’t stand seeing animals in pain, and as much as I try to avoid judgement whenever I travel, this is one tradition that I just don’t understand.  For this reason, I will be posting only photos of bulls triumphing over matadors in this post. 

                                                 (Fun fact: the average bullfighter is gored at least once every season.)

As painful as it was for me to sit there, I didn’t want to offend or upset any of the people around me. So, every time I was asked “Te gustan los toros?”. I just smiled and nodded my head in a completely incomprehensible way. I’m not sure that my companions were convinced. 

To cope with the emotional hurricane raging inside of me, I came up with a genius plan that consisted of drinking the better part of a bottle of wine and looking absolutely anywhere but at the spectacle going on inside the ring. I also chanted “Libertad” pretty steadily with the crowd at one point, but I’m pretty confident that they were protesting the President’s new rule for bullfighting, and not for the freedom of the bulls as I was. 

                                                          (Who's in charge now, you pink-sock-wearing torturer?)

So, the President’s new rule: this year he decreed that no bull can be killed in the ring. This doesn’t mean that the bulls are spared, simply that they cannot be killed in front of the public. Instead, they are merely stabbed several dozen times in the ring before they are made to chase a cape through a corridor that leads to the place where their throats can be cut under the ring, without any glory or audience applause. Yes, because this seems much more humane. 

Maybe the worst part was the other animals that become involved besides the bull. In one of the first fights, the horse that the carries the picador, a man who stabs the bull from above, was badly attacked by the bull and ended up flipping completely upside down onto its back.  First of all, I had no idea you could even do that to a horse. Secondly, because the armor that the horses wear for “protection” is so heavy, it took six men to lift the horse back onto its feet so it could take some more abuse. 

Here's a picture so you can imagine what the armor on the horses looks like: 

                                   (So now, we have people attacking animals, and animals attacking other animals. Fun for all.)

I do plan to do some further research on the history of bullfighting in an attempt to find a valid reason for the love and respect that so many people have for this tradition. If you're interested, I highly recommend you read a little about the history of bullfighting. It's a really complicated tradition that I can't even begin to explain because I don't even understand all of the parts of it. 

There were probably one hundred other things that offended or shocked me in some way last night, but I’m trying very hard to practice cultural acceptance or at the very least, lack of extreme hatred and judgement, so I’ll just leave you with a small anecdote that shows the absolute lack of belonging that I exhibited last night. 

After the slaughter, I mean bullfights, we went to McDonalds, the home of all that is cruel and disgusting. While the rest of our group enjoyed cheeseburgers, I delighted in a bun with a slice of cheese and pickles. Nope, I didn’t stick out at all. 

                                                                        (Face down in all that blood. Delicious.)

The Anti-Thanksgiving

Having had to deal with crappy cooperating teachers, a ridiculous amount of errands, and the return of my not-so-favorite friend the parasite, I have been feeling less-than-festive lately. I am really in no mood for a holiday, unless that holiday involves laying in my bed and groaning for two to three days. The fact that I'm in a country that does not celebrate Thanksgiving further adds to my feelings of holiday non-cheer.

While my friends and family in the States finish up their workweek today and head home for some family time, I am planning stupid Holiday "learning activities" for my classes and the classes of every other teacher I have contact with. Cheers to being the only gringa and therefore the resident Thanksgiving expert.

Tomorrow, my family and countless other families across the nation will stuff themselves with pounds and pounds of potatoes, cranberries, and pie; I, on the other hand, plan to enjoy a delicious meal of antibiotics and crackers. Yum!

Despite my Scrooge-like approach to Thanksgiving this year, I genuinely hope that everyone out there enjoys a delicious meal with friends and family and that everyone takes the time to be grateful for their loved ones and the abundance that they have been blessed with.

Now, to lift your spirits and detract from the stress of cooking, traveling, and having to have countless conversations with your crazy uncle, please enjoy this photo I found of the first animal Thanksgiving:

Happy Pumpkin Pie Day!

Hallo-what?

I have always had mixed feelings about Halloween. On the one hand, I genuinely enjoy dressing up like my favorite alter egos/heros/stupid puns. On the other hand, nearly every other female seems to enjoy dressing up like a ten-dollar-hooker. I'm not sure of the exact history of Halloween, but I'm pretty positive that it did not involve skanks at the beginning of the tradition.

Luckily, this year I was able to escape my Halloween hesitation and ignore the holiday completely (besides all those Facebook pictures of people's hoochy costumes). Why is this? Well, Ecuador does not celebrate Halloween. Not only do they not celebrate, the holiday is actually banned in schools. It is illegal to celebrate Halloween with a party or costumes.

Instead, Ecuadorians celebrate the day of the shield. The shield is the symbol that's in the middle of their flag. "Celebrate" might be too strong of a word however. At school, the teachers still did small Halloween themed activities and the students said "Happy Halloween" to me before sarcastically saying "and Happy Shield Day".

A few days after Halloween is another Ecuadorian holiday that they actually do celebrate. Throughout Latin America, people celebrate "Día de los Difuntos", or the Day of the Dead, though every country celebrates slightly differently. In Ecuador, people make guaguas de pan, which translates to "bread babies". These are children-shaped breads that are painted with bright colored icings and eaten in remembrance of the dead. This custom doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but when in Ecuador...

They also have a traditional drink for the Day of the Dead, Colada Morada. This is a super purple thickish drink filled with fruit that takes nearly a full day to make. I got the chance to make it a few weeks back at the house of my friend Priscilla. It takes so long to make that we didn't finish while I was there, but here are some pictures of the process.

Here's Priscilla with the many different herbs that are used in the Colada. It can only be made around this time because these herbs are seasonal. I don't remember what they all are, but they smell delicious while cooking!

Here I am chopping up some pineapple. Pineapple is only one of the fruits used in Colada Morada. There's also naranjilla, babaco, blackberries, and blueberries which give the Colada its purple color. They are all cooked together until only small bits of fruit remain in the beverage. Yummy!

Here are the herbs cooking down in some water. I'm pretty sure this takes hours, and so I have no idea what it looks like after it cooks for a while.

Here is the pineapple, blackberries, and blueberries all ready to cook. Again, I'm not exactly sure how they get from fruit form to delicious purple beverage, but I do appreciate the taste!

Let's go take a Baños!

Since I haven't had much time to dedicate to blogging lately, I'm going to go back in time a few weekends and cover some past events.  (Not physically back in time, but hopefully that was obvious.)

The weekend of Halloween, I went with several of the younger members of my family to Baños. Baños is about three hours south of Quito and is right at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest. It's a huge tourist destination and everyone I met had been telling me that I had to go.

We left late-ish Friday night on a bus that can only be described as 70's disco era. It had blue and orange circle lights all over the ceiling and played several different Chuck Norris movies. Apparently people here really love Chuck Norris.

Anyway, Baños is spectacular. It's a smallish town full of tourists on the weekends and hippies during the week. We stayed at a gorgeous art hotel called La Casa del Abuelo that is run by the friend of one of my host brothers. Besides being a gorgeous place with individually painted murals in every room, the owner is wonderfully nice and serves fantastic healthy breakfast and seriously kick-ass fancy chef-prepared meals every night that are included in the cost of your stay. If you are ever in Baños, stay here!

I also made a pretty sweet friend while I was staying in the hotel. I opened my window one afternoon to find this staring back at me:

In related notes, Peacock mating calls are extremely LOUD when you are trying to sleep at 4:00 in the morning. 

We did a ton of different things in Baños (eating, walking, swimming, drinking, etc.), but one of my favorite things was visiting waterfalls. The first fall we visited was located at the end of a 30-minute walk through the rainforest.  The path was gorgeous and looked like this:

We were the only ones at the waterfall at the time, so we spent some time swimming and enjoying the views. The water was icy! but it was still really cool to swim in a waterfall. 

The other large waterfall we visited is called the Pailón del Diablo, or the Devil's Cauldron. It is so named for the combination of the extreme force the waterfall comes down and the circle shaped rock formation at the base of the waterfall that create the appearance of a steaming cauldron. Here's a shot of the volcano falling. 

Besides visiting waterfalls, the people I was traveling with were playing a show at La Casa del Abuelo on Saturday night. They play mostly Celtic music and have a mix of tons of different cool instruments. Their show was fantastic, and afterwards we went out to have a few drinks, and then ended up at a volcano weather station. It was super dark, really high, quite cold, and extremely fun. Here's a shot of the tree house at the weather station. Look at that crazy cool sky view!

We also visited the baths that give Baños its name. We went for the popular Baños de Cajon treatment, which involves: walking barefoot outside on a path of sharp rocks, screaming at a mountain, sitting in an extremely hot personal sauna/wooden steam box, having ice water poured over you while you are in the box, being hosed down with ice water, and then eating some delicious fresh fruit while wearing a mud mask.

If this sounds crazy, it's because it completely is. It's so ridiculous that it's amazingly fun. I felt great after sweating, screaming, and freezing out all my negative energy. This was one of the best weekends that I've spent in Ecuador so far, and if it's at all possible I will be returning here before I leave!

So, I Rode a Horse Up the Side of a Volcano

So, not my catchiest blog post title, but I think that sentence is hilarious, so I keep taking the opportunity to say/write it.

Last weekend it was finally a slightly less cloudy day here in Quito, so I took advantage of this and went to the Teleferiqo. Teleferiqo is basically a cable car that takes you thousands of feet into the air and leaves you near the top of the Pichincha volcano. It looks like this:

Once you reach the top of the mountain/volcano/clouds, it is recommended that you drink tea and eat chocolate. Of course I did this. Recommended to eat chocolate? Thank you, ideal prescription!

After you have been sufficiently sugared up, you can either hike the rest of the way to the summit, or you can ride a horse. Chocolate and sitting down? I'll take the horse!

Look! It's me on a white horse! Almost like a knight in shining armor, right?

Since it was my second time on a horse, I was clearly a pro. Never mind that horses apparently use different commands when they live in Spanish-speaking countries, I was squealing, grunting, and yelping like a champion jockey.  I even survived long enough to take this classy photo with my friend Priscilla. You can see that we appear to be prize-winning, horseback-riding, fabulous young ladies.

After conquering the mountain on our valiant steeds, we descended the volcano in the cable car once again. Although it was a clearer day than most, it was still really cloudy way up in the mountains, so this is the best picture I was able to take from inside the car. Although foggy, the view is still pretty breathtaking and you can see how high up we were!

Yay mountains!

Little Goodbyes

Today was my last day teaching in seventh grade. Although the girls were talkative, obnoxious at times, and generally a little crazy, I'm really going to miss them. I had a great time teaching seventh grade and I definitely appreciate this age.

To say thank you to my girls, I spent about four hours baking cookies last night. It was a little difficult to find the ingredients I needed, so I ended up making a lot of substitutions and deletions. Here I am completely struggling to mix two ingredients together. I may or may not have broken the whisk.

Despite many difficulties, the cookies turned out quite delicious and looked pretty, even if they weren't exactly what I had initially planned. Look how yummy! Peanut butter blossoms and oatmeal raisin cookies.

When I got to my last classes, I was surprised with two different parties. In both classes, my girls decorated the room, bought or made me gifts, and brought in food. It was so sweet of them and I was really surprised. Because I can't post pictures of students, here are pictures of the rooms decorated and some of the food they brought in.

In 7th B, the girls decorated the whiteboard with messages for me.

So cute! They also all chipped in to buy me this stuffed dog, which they named Septimo B. Here's Gaby and I posing with him.

In 7th A, the girls also decorated, brought in a ton of food, and all made me cards. Each girl wrote her own message and designed an individual card. Incredibly sweet. Here's the delicious food they brought in.

As you can see, typically healthy 7th grade fare: cheese balls, chips, candy, soda, and cake. P.S. Did you notice that the cake has my name on it?  One of my favorite students baked that and brought it in. It was delicious!

Here's a sign that one of the girls made for me to decorate the classroom. She's another one of my favorites (even though I know teachers aren't supposed to have those) and she's really great at drawing.

While it was hard to say goodbye to the girls, I had a really fun last day with them. I got a ton of hugs, ate way too many sweets, and even participated in a Justin Bieber dance party. (I know, I know, but it was my last day. Oh well.)

I start teaching 8th and 9th grade on Monday, which is high school here. I hope the girls are as sweet as these girls are!