Thursday, May 30, 2013

The spear, the machete, the penis



Thursday, May 30, 2013

As anyone can tell you, I am horrible at waking up. Despite how often I practice (maybe the snooze button is a bad personal trainer…) I can never seem to get it. But by 7:45 I convinced myself to get the heck out of bed because Quito was waiting. I was greeted by el desayunito de las facturas y el té, que son típicos en la Argentina también, así que me puse contenta y empecé a pensar en mi amiga, Angela, con la que compartía mi experiencia argentina y nuestros viajes por el país. Siempre comíamos las cosas así en las hotelerías. Fue un buen momento a tomar el mate. Se me despertó inmediatamente. Gracias a dios, porque el tour estuvo por empezar.
Sorry. That’s going to happen a lot. There are some thoughts that no se me ocurren en inglés ni resultan tan lindos en inglés.

We went to La plaza de la independencia that was indeed lovely, but its loveliness was far exceeded by the interesting statues and events that happened there. Normally during city tours when I learn all these factoids, I tend to forget all the dates and anything that wasn’t immediately interesting so I was expecting to do the same when our guide, Carlos, told us about the independence statue that had a lion being defeated by a condor. The lion represents the Spanish crown and the condor, the Andean peoples, which is also its emblematic bird (second only in size to the albatross…). Apparently there used to be a spear in the lion’s side to further rub in the defeat, but some time ago it disappeared. So now only a hole remains in the side of the lion; meanwhile, rogue Ecuadorians are presumably using the Spanish-ass-kicking spear of independence to fight the injustices of the modern world. VIVAAAAA LA PATRIAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

And for anyone who knows the history of why La casa rosada argentina is “pink” (it’s painted with blood that used to flow freely through the open slaughterhouse that was Buenos Aires), it’s hard to top. Apparently a former Ecuadorian president was having an affair with the wife of his vice president and would randomly send him into the jungle on all kinds of abrupt and aimless missions without explaining why. Eventually Sr. Vicepresidente se dio cuenta y le mató al presidente con un machete en la espalda…en las escaleras del palacio! And lucky us, we were standing right where the pile of hot, adulterous blood gushed out of the poor man all those years ago.

But neither of those top the trick the indigenous workers pulled on the Jesuits who contracted them at what was effectively slave labor wages. To enact revenge for such stinginess (and you know, all the killing and pillaging of their culture and peoples if they didn’t conform to Jesuit standards…) when they had to mold the angels for adornment on the building façade, they made a few adjustments. The first is the angel that is flipping the church off. Then, on the building directly across from the la Compañía de Jesús, they made one angel that wasn’t so angelic…and gave it a giant penis…

I like you, Ecuador. 


More to come!

Ecuaaaaaaadoooooooorrrrrrrr!!!!!!!



Tuesday & Wednesday, May 28th/29th, 2013

I’ve been looking at the calendar since, oh, October for this day to arrive. Not because I’m necessarily impatient for springtime, but because this marks the day that I leave for Ecuador to do my research with the University of Idaho. I applied way back in September and took a class all last semester to prepare my research ideas and questions. Essentially we are trying to figure out how the landscape is changing, how people are using it and what could be some possible options towards accountable, sustainable and fair governance. Even better is the fact that the trip is sponsored by a NSF grant, meaning I actually get paid to do the research! Not very much, but coming back to Latin America is the only thing I thought about since leaving it and I’m happy to be back under such circumstances. But I’ll explain more about all of that later on…

Firstly, for the one, two or maybe even three people that actually consistently read my blog, I apologize that it appears that I died a year ago in Argentina because there is no information after June…I am still sitting on the document that has a bulleted list of all the things I did in my last month and I remember them quite clearly. I even went to Machu Picchu too. And after that, it also appears that I died on my ASB trip to Atlanta. Oops. Again, it’s all written down, but the actual blog entry still eludes me. Aaaaand I might have been in Dubai for my Spring Break…The problem with loving to write is that you constantly face a sacrifice between enjoying where you are in the moment and making a few new memories, or stopping to write about what’s already happened. To blog is to choose to sit and write away from these adventures sometimes. And I guess I just wasn’t in a position to do that…it didn’t help to have such little free time to begin with this year. This research project was only 1 of 4…but now that I’m graduated, I have to write again.
Ok, but back to Ecuador…

My alarm went off at 2:30am because by 2:45 our bus from Moscow would be taking us to the Spokane airport. I turned it off and sat there for a moment, alone, in my half empty apartment. Well, it was half empty with respect to the items in it, but completely full of memories. And like many other spaces where I’ve been my glowing happiest and my turbulent worst, fallen in love and made the best of friends, I didn’t realize how important it all was until I had to lock the door and turn off all the lights. Despite being a traveler, I still struggle with embracing where I am until it changes again and realize the beauty of even the smallest, mundane moments. It’s human nature, but still it seems worthwhile to overcome.

So we arrived, a bit worse for the wear, but smiling and chipper for the journey ahead. Nothing was all that notable until our final flight from Atlanta to Quito.

In the world of airplane rides, the majority of them are uncomfortable and uneventful but the ride to Quito superseded all of that. Upon finding my seat, 24f, I saw that somebody had mistaken it for theirs and had diarrhea of the mouth trying to explain the situation because my brain told me Spanish, but my mouth said English, and my voice ended up going for both. He looked at me confused, but knowing what I meant. After I collected myself, I looked over at my neighbor’s iPhone screen, which was fluttering all over with various news bits. All in Spanish, some talking about Ecuador. So I bit. After proving that indeed I could speak Spanish, I found out that my seemingly random seat neighbor was actually a strategic person for me to meet. He is one of the owners of a newspaper called El migrante that deals with issues of immigration worldwide as well as telling stories of these people while providing the backdrop of the world in which these things are occurring, thereby extending its reach to the realm of international studies in general. I/e: my field. Oh, and I have a bit (read, HUGE) interest in reading, writing and even though I didn’t study journalism, it would be a fitting career for me. After talking for a while, he gave me his information and said that perhaps he could at least organize a visit to the office for me in addition to finding the means to give me an internship. And bam. I wasn’t even halfway to Ecuador and I was already scheming on how to get a job there. Granted, we’ll just have to see how that pans out exactly, but it’s encouraging to already have even the remote possibility of that happening after talking to just one Ecuadorian! And that’s the power of random.

But I guess I was getting ahead of myself, dreaming of being a journalist in my apartment in Quito, because we still had to land there…We began the measures of the final descent and after some unnerving chattering and circling around for a bit, our captain informed us that due to bad weather and the lack of fuel to wait it out, we’d have to divert to Guayaquil (where there is no actual Delta airlines, so even more awkward). I won’t lie and say I was totally calm, but for the most part, my thought pattern didn’t involve scenarios of flaming death, nor did I release any kind of “what the #%$@!?!?!?!?” complaint. Commence Latin American Nikki mode. You can’t change anything, so just go with the flow and talk to everybody around you. I guess everybody else got the same memo because somehow the majority of us stranded passengers were in good spirits and just happy nothing terrible happened in a failed landing attempt. It was hot, crowded and a bit nerve-racking, but finally our pilot came on the line to tell us we were going back for round 2. As the landing gear descended 45 minutes later, my heart was beating fast because the fog was coming in quick…we dropped lower and lower and finally I could see the runway and—PLUNK! We landed. It was a rough landing—the kind where you think maybe those little wheels in the front are just going to fly right off and you’ll go screeching down the runway. But finally we got off the plane, got our luggage and headed out in a fully stuffed taxi off into the soaking wet streets of Quito. By 4 am, I was finally asleep—24 hours after my journey had begun, 4 hours until the next part of it was to come… Matáme