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!