well, well, well...

It's been a crazy few weeks what with Fiestas de Quito (bullfights, Chivas, parties), then a weekend in the Jungle... now I'm off to the beach for the weekend and next week i'm heading to northern Peru for vacation! Life is hard. Much much more to come soon.

in which i encounter The Best Dancer In The World

Since coming back from Baños, I've been spending all of my weekends here in Quito, in part because there have been a bunch of things going on around here, and in part because I contracted an upper respiratory infection and have been doing my best to lay low-ish. Strangely enough, almost everyone I know seems to have something these days, and we sit around at bars with our glasses of Coca-Cola, comparing symptoms and antibiotics. I went to see a wonderful Doctor Rosenberg here (locally known as the gringo doctor) and as I was waiting for my turn in the waiting room, talked to a British guy who had just come back from an extended stay in the jungle and was covered with all kinds of strange open sores that no one could seem to identify. Needless to say i was thrilled to sit on the examination table after him...

It's funny to think that in the middle of what is undoubtedly winter here, I've regularly been going to outdoor barbecues. First my co-worker Lorena , the one who recently became engaged, decided to have a barbecue one weekend for everyone in the office, and we drove out to her house near the valle de los chillos, which is a gorgeous valley area outside of the city. Her house and the surrounding grounds are amazing! She happens to have a giant trampoline in her backyard, as well as a basketball court overlooking the valley, so after a huge meal of shrimp ceviche, grilled veggies, barbecue chicken, grilled sausages, creamy potatoes, and Lorena's famous blackberry cheesecake, we ran around on the basketball court (girls kicked boys' asses) and jumped around on the trampoline and took stupid pictures of each other.

My room-mate flaca recently turned 26 and we also threw her a barbecue, complete with heart-shaped balloons and a giraffe piñata. She made all kinds of awesome salads (she's a really great chef) and asked that everyone bring their own meat. To give you an idea of how into cooking she is, we gave her a mixer for her birthday, and when she opened the box her eyes popped wide, a huge smile stretched across her face and she said "Oooooh! Black and Decker!"

Luis, who recently acquired a position in the newly formed Ecuadorian assembly also owns a tour company and is one of my room-mate's bosses. He came to the barbecue, and a friend and I bartered with him for a free trip to the Jungle. We agreed upon a four-day free trip to the jungle in exchange for editing the English text on his website. Sounds like a sweet deal to me! We are going out to the jungle from the 6th to the 9th.

Those of you who have seen the photos I sent of my house may remember that the room I currently live in has no windows. Well, excellent news! One of my room mates is moving out to live with her boyfriend, and i get to move into her room, which not only has a huge window with a view, but is far away from the dogs we have which i am convinced are at least partially responsible for my respiratory infection! So i am really happy, and am moving all my stuff into the new room today.

And now a few words about work: This past week our company held our first-ever travel writing bootcamp seminars, and they were a great success! 11 students from the US, Australia, Germany and Canada arrived at our office on Monday morning, and were put through an intensive crash course on travel writing, taught mostly by my seasoned co-worker Crit. They went on field trips to review restaurants, hotels and activities in Quito, and took a field trip to a town called Cotacachi which none of them had been to before, and had to run around collecting information about history, climate, safety, services, transportation, etc. There were lectures on photography, web research, travel writing ethics, how to pitch your stories, etc. The students were all very enthusiastic and had lots of feedback, which was great because our first bootcamp was almost free for students and was held in order to get feedback for more expensive bootcamps that we are having later in the year in Buenos Aires, and more are planned in central america. As V!VA staff, we couldn't go to every single lecture or field trip, but in many cases we helped prepare the lectures or organized the field trips, so we got an understanding of what was being covered. I did, however, run around Quito reviewing restaurants and hotels, which was great fun and really interesting! It's exciting to walk into a place with a really appraising eye, and ask all kinds of questions and pretend to be a customer. In most cases, once you've gotten a solid impression of the place, you can blow your cover in order to get nitty-gritty information that an average customer might not inquire about (seating capacity, wheelchair accessibility, etc.) I really loved doing this and spent a long time chatting with business owners and customers at all the
places i was reviewing.

This weekends marks the start of fiestas de Quito, which is a weeklong celebration of Quito's independence, with crazy street parties going on 24 hours a day all week. There are also bullfights, and many people rent Chivas, which are open-air buses that you sit on and you usually have a band in the back, and everyone drinks Canelazo (a hot fruity Ecuadorian drink) and makes lots of noise as we ride through the streets. The South American Explorers Club, which is a wonderful organization with resources for the traveller (and also where i had a great home-cooked thanksgiving meal) is organizing a Chiva and most of my office is going to be on it.

Which brings me to what I think will be my final paragraph (my fingers are tired and i haven't had breakfast yet.) Last night a bunch of us went to a big outdoor party for fiestas de Quito, pretty far out of town (near where Lorena lives.) It was held in a big barn and there were three bands playing and dozens of whole fried pigs, as well as half-naked dancer girls who dried their hair under the hand-dryers in the bathroom. As one of the people in our group knew the guy who organized the party, we arrived pretty early and puttered around for a while, chatting, eating, drinking and joking around. Eventually people showed up, the bands started playing, we all started dancing. Now, in the circles i run in, i am considered a good dancer, and the others in my group last night are also good dancers. All of this changed when we spotted The Best Dancer In The World, an Ecuadorian guy with sweat running down his face, big white smile, dust rising around his frenetic feet. The girl he was dancing with could barely keep up. We stared, we pointed fingers, we were mesmerized. Who among us, guy or girl, didn't pine to dance with The Best Dancer In The World? Imagine my shock then when a little while later, I feel a light tap on my shoulder and turn to face The Best Dancer In The World in all his sweaty, resplendent glory. He would like to dance with me, and with a loud laugh I say yes, grab his hand, and proceed to be put to shame. Let me just say for the record that I have only taken three Salsa lessons so far, and get by with a hearty "fake it till you make it" attitude. This is sufficient to impress most average dancers, but there's no fooling The Best Dancer In The World! Within seconds he was flinging me around, feet doing things my mind couldn't even begin to process, and I am laughing, my friends on the sidelines cheering me on, one of them whips out a camera and begins to film me and The Best Dancer In The World, and he catches on and actually turns up the performance! I believe I now have what could be a major Utube hit. Needless to say we watched that video several times on the long bus ride home. I am considering making a t-shirt that says "I survived The Best Dancer In The World and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."

catch-up part 2

I'm sitting at the computer here at home (1 of 4, Mauro who who runs the house is a computer programmer and this is his workspace), the kitchen door is a ajar and inside my housemates are toiling over dinner (I worked on the salad, I figured that gave me a little bit of time to slip away and write this). I got back from my belly dance class about half an hour ago, and Flaca (spanish for skinny chick-- I don't even remember her real name as I only ever heard it once when I moved in) is busy making Shnitzel, such care put into the seasoning and battering of every individual cutlet. Eva is taking out her aggression on Spetzle batter (not sure if I spelled that right), Aline is reading a magazine at the table (Cosmo in French I think), Sabine is chatting, making herself useful wherever she can, the music is going (programmed by Mauro to turn on at exactly 9 AM every morning and play a random shuffle of songs all day long, speakers hooked up in the kitchen, the living room, the computer room...) and Mauro, whose main dinner responsibility is to set the table and do dishes later, is in his room, door closed, probably reclining. Alfonso and Sebastian, our regular dinner guests, are on their way, probably with bottles of wine in hand. It will be another romantic candle-lit dinner for 8.

I feel like there's so much to catch up on, I'm a little overwhelmed. A quick observation about work-life, and then on to other news. We've all become accustomed to the power going out at least once a week in our office, and generally in our office neighborhood. We never know when it will happen, but what's certain is that it happens with frequency, and when the power goes out a resounding "motherfucker!" (or something to that effect) can be heard all over the office as people's computers shut down mid-article, mid-editing, mid-research. After the initial anger a calm fills the place, people leave their desks and shuffle to other people's desks, prop their legs up on chairs, chat, read, take little naps, do Spanish homework, plan their weekends, laugh about nothing in particular. Sometimes the power comes back on quickly and we resume work, sometimes it doesn't and we go home. We've become so accustomed to these power outages (and mini-vacations) that when a week goes by without them, we all feel a little cheated. Power outages are the single best metaphor I can think of for life in Ecuador (and life in general): Shit happens, you can get angry if you want, but it makes more sense to recover quickly and enjoy the moment as it comes.

Back to what's been going on: A feel days after we got back from Guayaquil it was Halloween, and after discovering a costume store across the street from our house, renting wings, buying some cheap fabric and making pixie skirts and dousing our faces in glittery makeup, we were ready to celebrate. Only later would we find out that Ecuadorian President Raphael Correa has recently outlawed Halloween in Ecuador, an attempt to fend of Americanization in the spirit of Hugo Chavez, who he admires greatly. As such, costumes and decorations for Halloween are officially against the law in Ecuador, though you wouldn't have known it if you had been out that night in the Mariscal, Quito's main bar and gringo area. My fellow Pixie and I were outside of a bar, waiting to go in, when the bouncer told us there was an 8 dollar cover charge. For shame! I would never even pay that in New York City, nor did I have 8 dollars on me that night. We tell yell to our friend, who is already half inside the door that I don't have the 8 dollars, that we'll go somewhere else and meet her later. A gringo dressed as Burt (of Ernie and Burt) overhears us and says "Who doesn't have 8 dollars?", as in , how could you possibly not have 8 dollars, and we get angry and reply "we aren't tourists, we live here, that's a lot!" but he doesnt seem to grasp this concept and replies with something snarky. Just then I wished that somebody around as had a video camera, so that they could film two pixies kicking the crap out of Burt, and we could becomes the next YouTube stars, sponsored by costume companies all over the world. We want to tell him to take his rich ass to the Galapagos Islands (basically only the wealthy can visit the islands these days) but he has slipped away into the night before we get the chance.

The following week was a bit of a blur, the only thing I remember with certainty is that I spent 2 mornings in the Migration office, trying to get my Ecuadorian ID card and exit papers. The first time I was sent away because the migration official laughed at my fake letter from my fake spanish school for my fake student visa, and told me to come back the next day with a better letter.

This past Friday was Day of the Dead, which we had originally wanted to spend in a city in the south called Cuenca, but its a 13 hour bus ride and we didn't have it in us to get on yet another overnight bus so soon. Instead we spent day of the dead in Calderon, a town outside of Quito, and wandered around the cemetery all day taking pictures of people hanging out on top of their dead relatives (literally, the cemetery is small, there aren't any paths, and the only way to get around is to step over the mounds of earth that hastily cover the bones of the deceased.) Whole families drank beer, caught-up, children ran around the cemetery, people prayed, cleaned and decorated graves, and offered the dead their favorite foods and drink. Some graves were unvisited, no flowers made of colorful foil, no glasses of soda, no candy wrappers or bread rolls. These are the ones whose family is also gone, the forgotton, the ones we feel terrible seeing abandoned, the ones we will all eventually become.

Saturday morning we headed to Baños, a small town surrounded by a curtain of lush green, an an active volcano, an easy 4 hours away. Baños is a haven for hiking, biking, rafting, bunjee jumping, horseback riding, and just about anything else out-doorsy you can think of. We checked into our Israeli hostel and went out to find Cuadrones (pretty much like Go Karts) to rent to ride around the town and up to the lookout point for the waterfalls that Baños is known for. Amanda has her license on her and so she is allowed to be the driver, I get in and ride shotgun beside her, the go kart guy quickly shows us how to drive the thing, gives us helmets, points us in the direction of the road we are supposed to go on to get to the waterfalls, and with a screeching vroooom we are off! Within ten minutes we realize the road he has directed us onto is not the peaceful dirt road we had imagined but more like a two-way highway! Two crazy girls riding in a tiny go-kart among cars, buses, trucks... we are pretty sure this might be the end of us. We tell each other that its fine, we can always turn back, we don't have to go through with it, but by now the adrenaline has kicked in and there's no way we are turning back, wether we are shrieking the whole time or not! We ride on, eventually the highway becomes a narrow road, seemingly more manageable but with many a hairpin turn. At a certain point we decide to turn back, it is only halfway through the turn that we realize there's no way to reverse in a gokart, and now we are stuck in the middle of a narrow 2-way road, with no clear vision of what's coming from one direction as we are right in front of a pretty steep turn. We freak out, jump out of the "vehicle" (we named her Martha) and start pushing like crazy, trying to at least get the thing on the side of the road before anyone drives near. Martha is heavier than we thought she would be, eventually we enlist the help of an amused onlooking driver, straighten her out, and jump back in. We drive to the top of the road, get an amazing view of the city below, and drive back, never once stopping or attempting to reverse.

Next day I spent much of the day hiking to the mirador del Virgen, a statue which sits atop 700 very steep stone stairs! Along the way i met a very nice German couple and a local guy from Guayaquil (the city we had visited the weekend before) who I swapped contact info with and who I hope to see if I ever make it back to Guayquil. Then I met up with my friends again (who had gone biking during the day) and we rushed to the bus station, to catch a bus back to Quito. Of course as it was a holiday weekend, Baños was flooded with gringo and ecuadorian tourists, and of course the bus for which we had bought tickets earlier was broken, so it was a mad dash to get on all the remaining Quito-headed buses and see if three seats were left anywhere for us. On one bus the driver assured me there were seats for three, but when we got on we discovered that it was really just seats for two, and that he had forced a woman with a baby in her lap and her 8-year-old child next to
her to squeeze into the space of one seat, the 8-year old standing in her mother's leg space. I refused to do this to the woman and told the girl to take her seat back. We got off the bus and looked for another.

Finally we found a bus with seats, and the three of us got on and found our assigned numbers. Of course I end up in a broken seat with no leg space at all, my knees crunching painfully into the seat in front of me.The woman next to me, sitting in the window seat, has a sleeping 1-month-old wrapped in blankets in her lap (so many children in Ecuador! Babies are wrapped in blankets and taken everywhere, children are always sitting in people's laps or on the floor.) Within the first half hour of the ride, I'd been enlisted to pass chunks of bread from the father's hands behind us to the mother's hands beside me, and to pass the infant back and forth from the mother's hands beside me to the father's hands behind us. We hadn't gotten very far when the bus stopped. Looking out the window, an endless line of cars and buses stretched in front and behind us. Volcano Tunguragua had erupted, had been erupting in small bursts all day, (sounds kind of like a car engine exploding) , shooting sheets of ash all over the road. After the eruptions it had rained, turning the ash into thick mud, so thick that no vehicles could drive through it, and we were stuck on the road, not moving at all, for 4 hours. I assumed we would eventually just turn and drive back to Baños, but our driver seemed to be waiting for something though no one could explain to us (in slow enough Spanish) just exactly what. I read Milan Kundera, listened to someone else's Ipod, passed the baby back and forth a few more times, napped, got off the bus a few times, made dinner out of potato chips, wanted to pull my hair out, massaged my bruised knees, and then the bus started moving. I guess the mud had been cleared out though I can't say I understood how, when, or by whom. In any case, 4 hours more after that, at 1:00 AM we were in the bus station in Quito, arguing with cab drivers over the price of our ride home.

OK, OK HERE GOES...

Probably best to start with my birthday, as I can't remember exact events before then, and hell, birthdays are generally fun to talk about.

So on Thursday, the evening of my birthday, my roommates and I went out to dinner at one of Quito's coolest bars. We basically sat around at the place until midnight, at which point they sleepily sang happy birthday to me and then we left and drove home, during which time I fell asleep in the car (embarassing photos to prove it.) This how I know I'm getting old: I can barely stay awake for my own birthday.

Friday my boss threw a housewarming party at her new pad as well as a celebration of my birthday (it started at 8:00 pm thank god!) Burritos were made by a coworker's scrupulous Danish boyfriend (you shoulda seen the way he hacked at those unripe avocados.) Wine was passed around, more wine was passed around. Coworkers, house mates and friends arrived. A cake was put in the oven, baked inside a cat-shaped tin. After a few drinks the cat cake was named the Pussy Cake, and the Pussy Cake provided hours of entertainment throughout the various stages of it's being baked. The following content is unsuitable for children, though all children like cake, so what can ya do.

As the cake baked, first it was wet Pussy, then hot Pussy, then firm Pussy, then, when covered in thin frosting, dripping Pussy. Somehow this never got old. And yes, when the cake was ready, everyone ate some Pussy, though not before my face was shoved right into the Pussy cake (tradition.) Photos of said Pussy cake are also to come.

In short it was a grand celebration, and at around 10:00 p.m. a bunch of us said our goodbyes, kissed everyone in the room on the cheek, and headed to the bus station, for we were taking an overnight bus to Guayaquil, a city in the south, to see the one-time reunion tour concert of Soda Stereo, a hugely famous Argentine band that broke up in 1997. Dozens of buses heading to Guayaquil were in the station, teenagers swarming inside of them, singing songs, giving each other shit. During the course of the long overnight bus ride, I would routinely wake up, remember the Pussy cake, chuckle to myself, then pass out again.

In the morning, groggy, rough, unbrushed teeth, we made it to Guayaquil, where it was warm and cloudy, and where we had a hostel booked but hadn't taken the address. We stumbled around a bit, got on a bus where very loud music blasted us awake, and realized we were heading in the wrong direction. Off the bus, back on our feet, we landed at the Hilton Hotel, where their glorious bathrooms were used, their glorious buffet breakfast ogled, their glorious clean pool pined for, and where, consequently the above mentioned band was staying at. Using only the charm that a dirty, tired white backpacker girl has in the Hilton (a mix of intrigue and pity) I was able to get one of the Hilton guys to find out the address for our much less appetizing hotel, and then we were out the door and off in a cab, towards a very seedy part of town.

Our hotel was called Delicious, though I'm sure you can already predict that it was not. Still, the entire city was booked, full of Soda fans from Quito, from all over the country, and we were lucky we had a place to stay at all. It was three of us staying here, in a room with red polyester curtains (the kind you'd take off the window and drape over your shoulders to be superman for Halloween,) a toilet with no seat, a fan that whirred noisily over a bare lightbulb, giving the room a dizzying strobe-light effect. When you opened the curtains you were greeted by the welcoming sight of a brick wall with a large rusty air conditioner attached. It should be obvious that there was no hot water.

We left our things at Delicious and headed out for sightseeing and dinner with a large group of friends of friends, then off to the concert, which took place in a huge soccer stadium, and which, I read in the paper the next morning, would hold 40,000 people that night. Alcohol was forbidden inside the stadium and so all around it the streets were covered in bottles, in wrappers of all kinds. We arrived late, and inside, every inch of the stadium was taken. We made a human chain, maybe 10 of us, and started snaking and pushing our way towards the center of the field. Once there, everyone is abuzz, expectant, looking longingly towards the empty stage. We wait. A cover band comes on stage and plays "We don't need no education." We wait some more. There are apparently some technical difficulties, as none of the 6 huge screens meant to let people have a glimpse of the band are working. 40,000 relatively sober fans begin to become antsy. We ask ourselves how long we will wait, at what point will the first impetuous onlooker leave the stadium angrily. We begin to take ridiculous photos of each other, of strangers around us. We sit on the ground, gossip about work, consider the moon, which is huge and yellow, shining right above the highest seats in the stadium. There is a yawn or two, blinking that lingers longer than it should.

The lights shut off suddenly, the moon is at its brightest, a guitar chord reverberates in the stadium and pushes everyone to their feet, hands in the air, mouths screaming. Soda Stereo begins to play. The screens turn on slowly, one by one, until finally everyone can see something, even if its just one guitarist's forhead or another's left ear. Friends climb up each other's shoulders. Cellphones are pulled out, held in the air, lighters for the new millennium. In front of us are a large group of guys who despite their machismo bravado, can't seem to stop clutching each other once the music starts. Hands remain permanently on shoulders, a kind of huddle/hug we can't be part of.

Surprisingly, despite the size of the stadium, there are many songs in which the crowd is tranquil, and you can feel that same expectancy in the air -- they are waiting for the song they know the words to, the song that is on the radio so frequently. If you close your eyes you could be in a small room, listening to good music on a great stereo. The band is great but doesn't put any effort into riling up the crowd -- this is a reunion tour after all, they don't need new fans.

Finally they play the song that 40,000 people have been waiting for, and again cellphones go in the air, blue lights like stars, fists raised, hips shake, this is what we came here for. It is an amazing finale and we slip out of the stadium before we are trampled.

(10:00 pm, so tired, have not started my Spanish homework yet--what else is new-- but must keep going, will at least finish telling about the concert weekend, will write more this week.)

So here we are, three of us again, outside of the stadium, bladders full, looking for a place to pee in the middle of nowhere when we notice a large neon glowing sign for Juniors, a bar across the street. We hurry across the street and try to push open the door but find it locked. Out of nowhere appear three guys, one with a key. "It's a club" the keyholder says with a little smile. "Fine" we say, "can we use the bathroom?" "Sure," he says, still chuckling, and unlocks the door. Amanda, a coworker, is in front, then I, and in back is Lorena, also a coworker. We rush in, past little tables full of talking men, through a hallway towards where we imagine the bathroom to be, but simultaneously in front of us we see an upside-down naked woman, wrapping herself around a pole, bathed in bluish fluorescent light. Amanda stops short, then I, then Lorena, a train wreck of naivety, there's some yelping, I decide it's fine, we'll just walk past the stripper to the bathroom, but the others are already running out the door and outside the keyholder and his posse are laughing, laughing at us as we push past them briskly down the street.

We walk one block, find another bar with a locked door. "Is this another club?" Amanda asks the keyholder here knowingly. "Yes," he says, with the same smirk we recieved at Junior's. Our bladders decide we have to go in, we'll stick together, it will be fine. We walk inside but this time there are no tables, no pole, no dancer even. It's just a room, dark, with flashing strobe lights, empty save for a man or two lurking in each of the corners. We run to the bathroom, all of us get in, we lock the door. Amanda pees ("Don't look!") while Lorena and I discuss our gameplan. I tell her to get out the hotel keys, instruct her that when we leave the bathroom we are going to run for the door, and if anyeone approaches us she is to stab them in the eye with our keys. I find my eyelash curler in my bag, not as effective as the keys but anything jabbing your eyes is relatively effective. They think I am crazy, but I'm from New York and I like to have a plan. Amanda is not worried about being attacked by shrouded men in corners, she's just afraid they are going to make her dance ("Dance Amanda, Dance!" we'll joke for weeks to come, saying it in a preposterous British accent that has nothing to do with anything.) We don't even use the bathroom, just open the door and run for the door, weapons in hand. Lorena makes it out first. I run by bang my leg against a speaker and end up limping out the door, Amanda doesn't see the speaker either and hobbles out the door as well. Once outside, keys and eyelash curlers are replaced in bags, and we get in a cab and head for the bars. It's time for a drink.

Alright, I think thats all for tonight... more tomorrow!

Vaca...

So, I´m taking about two weeks off in December, planning on going to the jungle for a week and then the beach for a week or so. Anyone else have vaca then, want to join?

a little behind

No, I have not been strangle-mugged or left to dry out at the bottom of a ditch... it´s been a busy week or so.

Last Thursday evening my boss threw a barbeque at his house for everyone in the company with birthdays in October. Boy, the man can cook! It was plate after of plate of chicken, beef, sausage, sides, salad, glasses of wine, three kinds of cake. At around 10:00 or 11:00 pm, full-bellied, we dispersed to our respective homes to pack for a long weekend at the beach! At midnight, nine of us, bags packed, flip flops on, waited outside for our short bus to pick us up. (Yes, we took an overnight ride on a yellow short bus to get to the beach.)

Piled into the short bus, rum was passed around, people made makeshift pillows out of towels and sweatshirts, most of us eventually got to the business of sleep. I lingered awake for a while, eyes passing lazily over towns and cities whose names I might never find out. 2:00 am, pitch black outside, cold, a strange yellow short bus transports sleepy gringoes through a town shrouded in mist, streets deserted save for here and there a man waiting to sell popcorn or sausage to no one in particular. My eyes close.

At 5:00 am I awake as my head is banged violently against the glass windowpane. We are driving down gravel roads now, I look out the back window behind me, and replacing cities and towns are flourescent-green trees, cows grazing, open space. It has gotten hot in our bus. Sweaters and socks have been removed, dampness fills the air. We are getting close.

At 9:00 we arrive to the tiny beach town of Canoa, greeted by a light, cold rain and thick fog. Breakfast is had at our hostel made of bamboo. Everyone orders coffee and crepes. It is a holiday weekend, and from our breakfast table we see hoards of locals arriving into town, standing on the backs of huge pick-ups. Hammocks are found and claimed, we read for 10 minutes and fall asleep, awake, take a dip in the ocean, the rain has stopped now, the air is clearing.

For lack of better things to do, we have dinner at 5, drinks, more drinks. We play drinking games for hours (2 truths and a lie, never haver I ever) but it is still early, only 9, and a couple of us decide to go dancing.

Saturday is much the same. Limbs akimbo, we swing in hammocks, talking and reading. A swim in the ocean, laying out in the sun, which is mostly covered in clouds but is still strong, as this is the closest beach to the Equator. Breathing easy, ocean rythms having become incorporated into us already. Sunday comes too quickly, and before we know it we are settling the bill ($20 for two nights inthe hostel including breakfast and copious amounts of drinks) and Moises, our driver, is waiting for us in his short bus.

Monday evening my housemates and I decided to cook a big meal together, using everybody´s leftover ingredients, so it was a big salad made of my leftover lettuce and one tomato, somebody´s can of corn and somebody else´s stray carrots and cucumbers. Frozen beef leftover from a barbeque 2 weeks ago was cooked, along with a mushroom cream sauce. A carrot cake was made using more stray carrots, and for frosting, some spoonfulls of someone´s cream cheese. It was by all accounts a feast, and we had over a few guests and the 8 of us sat down (on stools) to a candlelit dinner (partially for atmosphere and partially to save on electricity.)

Tuesday morning I became violently ill. No one else got sick, so despite what you are thinking, I don´t think it has to do with our feast. I dragged myself to work, only to end up laying on the couch at work for an hour, and going home. It was gatorade, crackers, Lolita, and sleep for the rest of the day. Today I feel a thousand times better, it is possible I was made sick from the changes in altitude between Quito and the beach, and back. In any case, ti was only a matter of time before I had stomach problems, I´m actually suprised it didn´t happen sooner.

Finally, in my last piece of news for this entry, I am becoming the one-woman publicity department for my company. I will still have plenty of time to do all kinds of writing, but my boss would also like me to focus approximatrly two days of my week on publicity, which I have been doing some of until now and which I have been enjoying. I´ve been given a book called "the new rules of marketing and pr" which is all about marketing in the digital age, and it is now my new project to read this book and implement its strategies for our company. I´ve been told that when the new intern comes, she can be my publicity assistant, so as to ensure that i would still have time to do other kinds of writing.

I´m also fairly certain that after a year of working here in Quito, I will be able to take my show on the road and move to Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, or whatever other guidebook we are working on will be, and essentially travel around and write the guidebook for that country, solo. So that´s really exciting! It would be amazing to have that kind of experience under my belt.

OK, that´s all folks! Would love to hear from you.

i now have a landline.

As I now have a home, I also now have a landline. Tel number is (593-2) 245.5968. Your best bet to give a ring is in the evenings. My housemates are Mauro, Eva, Sabine, Katerine and Alin. Talk soon!

necesitamos mas cerveza!

It´s been a crazy week here in Ecua-land. I finally found a place to live! It´s a house in the north part of town, a nice residential area, and you know its sort of fancy because guards wearing bullet-proof vests patrol the neighborhood 24 hours a day. I live with an Ecuadorian guy who works on the net, three German girls who work in tourism, and a French girl who I haven´t actually seen or met yet, though I think she is around. So far the vibe in the house is great and the people are really friendly. I also happen to live on the same street as three of my coworkers, which is cool.

I would write more but I´ve got me a CHUCHAQUI (which means hangover in Spanish,) and lots of things to do here at work!

tales from a house-hunting gringa

Today I saw 4 apartments. This was not the plan. The plan was to see the first one, like it, and move in immediatly. My local friend Tamy lives in the first one, so it seemed like a perfect fit. I wake up pretty early to go meet her and her live-in landlady at their place. The first thing I notice is that the landlady has the most annoying yappy little dog I have ever encountered, which would bother me even if I wasn't allergic to dogs. Some dogs, like our awesome huge gray friendly dog in the office, who eats everything in sight and can't seem to stop farting, are worth allergic symptoms or taking medicine regularly. Other dogs, like the little rodent in this apartment, who sits on the arm of the whatever seat the land-lady takes, are not. The land-lady shows me around the apartment, and it seems nice enough. The living-room is spacious and the kitchen is do-able. While she is showing me the place, she says to me things like "you can't have friends over, ever. oh, and I don't cook." She seems to think it's hilarious and strange that i didn't bring bedding, or a bed, with me to South America. "Just your clothing?" she repeats, like its the most ludicrous thing she has ever heard.

In the fairily drab and unremarkable room she shows me, there is in fact a bed, so I don't know why she is insistent that I bring my own bed. In the corner of the room there is also a bowl of greasy leftovers on the floor, and right next to it, laying right on the carpet, is a chicken drumstick. She sees me eyeing what I assume is the dogs food, and crouches down to pick up the bowl. She leaves the drumstick where it is. I decide right then that no matter what else she shows me in the apartment, good or bad, I am definetly not going to live here.

Next, I head to the center to check out a kind of ramshackle travelers compex in a totally non-touristy (and consequently kind of rundown) neighborhood. The owner, Pedro, is a really friendly guy with lenses in his glasses that change back and forth from from dark blue to translucent depending on how sunny a spot we are standing in. I wouldn't call it a house or even an apartment building, as all the individual rooms are entered from open air corridor type things. The rooms look pretty much like dorm rooms, with nothing in them but a bed, and if you are lucky, some kind of small desk. The walls are exposed brick. Pedro happily tells me that once I move in I can do whatever I want to my room, decorate it any way I like, and when he showed me a room that somebody else was actually staying in, a Spanish girl, I saw that she had created a collage/mural of Spain right on her wall. So I guess he isn't kidding. He takes me up a precarious flight of winding stairs to the roof, where the kitchen is, where you can get a really good view of all the pastel colored houses that line Quito's mountains, and also, where his little daughter is playing with two bunny rabbits. While I like Pedro, and even like the kind of laid back dingy atmosphere that the place engenders, I was hoping for more of a home feeling, less of a college/flophouse/hostel feeling. Still, at 90 dollars a month, its the best deal I've found so far.

Sitting on a stoop on the corner, I call (with my cellphone! yay!) another number for an apartment that I've picked up info on from an internet cafe. Dante picks up and tells me to meet him in an hour at the Casa de Cultura de Ecuador. I get there pretty early and with a bit of time to kill, I check out the art there, hoping to catch some of Eduardo Guayasamin's art, who is Ecuador's most famous painter, but the Guayasamin room is empty. Instead I check out a Bolivian artist whose name escapes me, but who paints very haunting portraits of Bolivian misery, and occasionally, still lifes of Bread loafs on tables. With half an hour more to kill, I cross the street and circle around the El Ejido park, where every saturday local artists prop their work on the fencing. I see enough Guayasamin imposter paintings here to make me want to see the real thing even more than before. In fact, most of the local art is more or less apalling, the kind of thing you might buy from a frame shop and hang in a dentist's waiting room. The only piece that caught my attention is a very long and narrow minimalist painting of a nude woman, except at the knees the painting ends and the rest of her legs are on a canvas an inch below, and the two are framed together. While walking around the park, I see an adorable tiny old man, in a tan suit, tan hat, and big wire glasses getting his shoes shined by one of the local street kids who walk around begging everyone to allow them to shine their shoes, especially white girls wearing sneakers. The pair catches my attention and I kick myself for not taking my camera with me, but I stand there for a moment and take a mental snapshot, just long enough for the two to notice me, and as always happens when a photographer tries to capture a scene unnoticed, those in the picture stop what they are doing and suddenly make you their focus.

I get back to the Casa de Cultura just in time to meet Luis, a well-dressed and friendly faced man who seems to be in his early thirties. We take the bus together to the house he is going to show me. Along the way I learn that Luis is studying to be a Spanish teacher for foreigners, but that he also writes. We agree to exchange short stories in the near future. Luis's house is in the colonial part of town, which at first I didn't consider, as its relatively difficult to get around and doesn't have much in the way of supermarkets, internet, and other stuff that a poor foreigner might need in Quito. But as we get off the bus, (a stop early, so Luis can show me the neighborhood) i begin to change my mind. Here the streets are all cobblstone, the houses different shades of cupcake frosting. This might be my winner after all.

We arrive at the house, in which two English girls currently live, but are not around. The first two floors of the house are empty and gutted -- I've caught Luis in the middle of a project to turn the house into a Hostel. 3 flights up is the furnished apartment. Luis shows me yet another unremarkable room (this begins to be a running theme), with a bed whose mattress sags in the center and a small kitchen area adjacent, though the kitchen only has a rusty sink and a hotplate that doesnt seem to work. The rest of the apartment is quite spacious with 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen, and a living room whose focal point is a humungous rug made of mouse-brown alpaca fur affixed to the wall.

I ask Luis to show me where I can find the nearest pharmacy, bank, food, etc. and he takes me on a 10 minute walk down a steep hill and into a seedy plaza. Along the way, amidst midday hustle and bustle, my eye catches a scene in which a policeman is frisking a teenager with meager cornrows against a wall (what kind of cornrows can you expect with such sleek hair?), and right beside them, unfazed, a woman sells fried pig heads on a fold-up table. I stop and take another mental photo, framing it just right, but this time make damn sure those in question don't notice me.

As Luis walks me to the nearest bus stop to get back to my hostel, I understand why we got off the bus a stop early. The area quickly devolves from quaint streets with beautiful architecture to a dirty neighborhood with packs of teenage hoodlums on every corner, drunkards touching themselves, parapalegics dragging themselves along the sidewalks, their mangled feet dragging behind them.

Now I am exahausted, am not in the mood for my 4:00 pm appointment with Angel (roughly pronounced, for the non spanish speakers, ON-HELL) and my last apartment of the day. I meet Angel ( another 30ish man with deeep acne scars) at a cafe by my hostel. He picks me up in his car and we drive back to the neighborhoof where I saw my first apartment, a more or less rich neighborhood where all the shopping malls are, and where you can find a KFC, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Fridays, and Curves Gym without even turning your head in both directions. Along the way, Angel tells me that he studied engineering and works on the production end of concerts and large parties -- he's in charge of lighting, lasers, special effects, waterfalls, and the like. His sister, 24, who also lives in the house, is an economics student. We arrive to a quiet street in a nice neighborhood. For the third time today, i think things may be looking up.

Angel unlocks the door and a huge, cold, expensive house opens before me. Every room in the house is furnsihed with the same shiny rich wooden furniture. The house has three floors. There is a dining room which he says is only used on Christmas, and a cabinet filled with chrystal china. There are at least 5 empty bedrooms, all roughly double the size of my New York living room. A large wooden cross hangs over every bed. The beds look like they were made years ago and have never been sat on. Angel points to two bedrooms and says I can have my pick. When I ask him why the other bedrooms aren't up for grabs, he says he likes to frequently switch between them, though to my untrained eye they all look exactly the same.

His sister is out in the yard hanging clothing. We kiss hello and then stand there awkwardly as the pair waits for me to say things like "my god, what an amazing home you have" which I know I should think, but its so big and so empty (the last tenants just left) and so clean and so sterile and so expensive looking that I just want to hang out on the veranda for a moment. Angel opens the door to the veranda and we stand outside, overlooking the yard. In the yard are two large cisterns holding water, and also in each, some sort of electrical machine. I ask Angel what those are, and he tells me the'yre part of his work. He practices making streams of water leap from one cistern to the other, and then reenacts that on a large scale at concerts. I excitedly ask him if he can demonstrate, but my question gets suspiciously lost in translation.

On our ride back to my hostel, I ask Angel where his parents are, why they don't live with him and his sister in the large empty house. He tells me they died two years ago, were both killed upon exiting a bank with large sums of money in their pockets. He tells me to be careful out there, kissing me on my cheek, and with that I am out of his car and waving to him as he drives away.

It's windy outside, I've got a dollar in my pocket, and with a deep sigh I resign myself to the fact that I'll probably be living at my hostel for a while longer.

i have a cellphone!

That´s right, the girl who absolutely hates cellphones and never used hers in NY got a cellphone in Quito, Ecuador. Mostly because it was starting to be really annoying that I´d attept to make plans with people via e-mail and they would go something like this "So, if you get this email in time, we can meet up at 6, or email me back and I can call you..."

In short, my number here, called from out of the country, is (593)99-24-6957. From inside Quito it is 09-924-6957.

Talk soon!

Oh and

Did I mention (Nicole!) that i´ve been eating salami sandwiches every day for lunch, and semi-attempting my hand at the South American custom of having just a coffee and pancito for dinner. I also found really delicious variations on Meusli cereal at the supermarket -- currently making my way through a box of Peach Meusli.

The hunt continues...

Hmm, I feel as though lots of stuff has been going on lately though of course when it´s time to put fingers to keyboard it all sort of turns into a blur.

I am still living in my hostel, though as its a total rip-off and not a great place to live anyway, I´m trying to mardest to find a place to move into. Last night I went to go check out my Ecuadorian friend Tamy´s apartment, who is a girl I met on a bus last time I was here (see e-mail from two months ago.) She´s renting a room in a place that has an extra bedroom, so I think thats a pretty good option, though last night her and her sister and I were talking about trying to find a place of our own, minus the landlady who also lives in the apartment and another girl who nobody ever seesm to see. It´s harder to find a place then it seems though, so i assume that won´t happen for a litte whil.e Its great though, even her apartment, which is a lot nice than most of the other places I´ve seen, is way cheaper, solely because she is Ecuadorian and not a gringa.

It´s funny, her apartment -- it´s safe, there´s a guard, its right by all the fancy Quito shopping malls, and inside its decorated with chandeliers and faux victorian-themed furniture. Part of me is asthetically repulsed by it, the other part of me thinks its hilarious and can´t wait to live in an apartment with a chandelier. So, she´s going to talk to the landlady and see how much the extra bedroom will be, and we´ll see.

Other than that, let´s see: I´ve been given a cellphone in the office here that belonged to Paul, who used to work here but left it when he went home, but its missing a SIM card, and i´ve already been into 5 cellphone stores and watched as they put in a card, the phone doesnt work, they look confused, they fidget with the phone, they open it up and find some phone number inside, make a call, and then turn to me and tell me "Your phone doesnt work because it has been tagged internationally as stolen property." Then I go through my shpiel of "no, you don´t understand, its my friends phone, theres a box for it and everything." they shrug, I leave. This happened to me this morning for the fifth time, so today at lunch I´m caving and buying a new phone. Either Paul partook in some very shady afterwork activities (waiting for people to pass buy with new phones in their boxes before pouncing!) or the cellphone people are full of shit. Either way I can´t win.

It´s an election weekend here, for a 130-person constituent assembly. As there are literally hundreds of people to choose from, this is Ecuador´s most complex election to date. Apparently no political experience is required to enter into the race. The drinking of alcoholic beverages is prohibitted all weekend, and its required by law that everyone votes. All day long at work for the past week camionetas have been passing by, which are trucks filled with people, blasting loud music, sometimes people are dancing in the truck, holding up signs for their candidate or party of choice.

That might be all I can report from the front lines for now.

So i´m a blogger now...

Well, well. Here it is, my first blog entry ever:

What to say about my first few days in Quito, Ecuador. I moved down here to work for a travel website and guidebook publishing company... and I have to say from the moment I got to my new workplace they kind of just threw me right in. For the past two days I´ve been working on writing an introduction for a page on our website on Tanzania -- how cool that I get to sit around reading, daydreaming, and writing about Africa and it´s actually what I´m meant to be doing at work! Tomorrow I´m going to start researching the drug trade in Colombia for a box in our as yet to be published guidebook for Colombia. Apparently there isn´t much out there written about Colombia and seeing as though its a country that travellers actually fall in love with, we are hoping to capitalize on that niche.

Other than that, theres a lot of ¨back end¨web stuff, which i´ve probably only grasped a handful of so far, but its really interesting! Search engine optimization is kind of my new favorite thing that i´ve learned about in the past two days.

As for other stuff: I´m living in this hostel right outside of the main gringo slash going out area, and its really noisy and kind of shady, to the point where i take all my valuables to work with me on the bus everyday, and that actually seems like a better option then leaving it in my room, which is a private room and kind of pricey for what it is, considering i hear peoples conversations from across the street all night long.

Last night was pub quiz night at the ´Reina Victoria´pub, which is an expat bar, and apparently my new supervisor runs pub quiz night and convinced me to stay for it, despite the fact that i hadnt slept in two days. My team consisted of one of my coworkers, Crit, an american guy from Rochester who has been living here for years and is married to an Ecuadorian, another american guy whose name and biography i have forgotton, and a british guy who had the keenest pub quiz skills i have ever encountered and am likely to ever encount. So, we won second place (no thanks to me sadly... apparently i don´t know enough useless facts, must get on that immediately), which resulted in free pitchers of beer and of course glory. It was about 10:00 pm and my hostel was probably only 5 blocks away from the pub, and i thought i would walk home but when i mentioned this people around me freaked out. Apparently, in Quito, you can{t walk anywhere afer dark, even if its 5 blocks away. So i sucked it up and payed a dollar fifty (highway robbery!) to take a cab back to my place.

Today after work I went appartment hunting with this semi-broker guy who i randomly found on the net, a canadian who has been living here for a little while. I saw 3 apartments, two of which were pretty much no good, and one tha was actually pretty cool -- the walls of the entire room are made up of windows, and you get a clear view of the whole city. The lady ´who owns the apartment lives there with her small daughter, and there are four rooms for travellers/students/tourists. The price is so- so and its kind of on the outskirts of the tourist area, which means at night it will be a mad dash to the door. So i figure i´ll keep looking and see what else i can come up with, though this isnt a bad option.

Other than that... its wierd, i havent really had a chance to speak much spanish, as we speak english in my office and that takes up most of my day. Even Lorena, who is my age, ecuadorian, and started working at my office on the same day as me, finds it strange that in her own city and country, she speaks english all day. But apparently, we have a deal with some company we advertise for, they send spanish teachers over to us for lessons and we advertose for them for free. So next week i´ll probably have my first lesson, which i am really looking forward to! Over the wekend i´ll probably also look into salsa lessons, as i promised myself i would be a salsa fiend when i got out of here.

hmm, that might be it for now....

Raising my Pilsner to you all!

besos,

Nili