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…
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