Friday, December 14, 2007
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.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
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."
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."
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