La Despedida

La despedida, or leaving, of my friends from the U has not been easy. While several have stayed behind in Quito to finish their theses as I am doing, many of my best friends have left for Bolivia or Colombia or wherever else they call home. It is a major change, especially being in the residency and not having my friends a door or two down the hall.

With that said, we did make sure to celebrate la despedida in serious fashion, with an Ecuadorian friend hosting the goodbye party at his parents' country house where we grilled all sorts of meat and danced until the first flight of the early morning took the Bolivian guys home. We had a great time, and while I could hardly move (earlier that day had been the marathon), I managed to find a drum and bang along with the salsa beat. Bless those 7th grade drumming lessons! However, by midnight the day's exertion had caught up to me, and I was pretty much passed out despite the blaring music for the rest of the night...

Maraton de Quito

Well, so I didn't actually run the full thing, but given that Quito sits above 9,000 ft., doing half of it in under 2 hours should count for something. I ran alone - waking up at 5 AM for a 6 AM 13 mile run isn't everyone's idea of a good time? - but somehow enjoyed myself despite my condition. I was running on fumes the whole way, only two days off of an all-nighter that began when classes ended, salsa dancing started, and then at 4 AM my friends and I embarked on an 8 hour bus ride to the Northern coast, where we spent two days and one night at the beach before the long return in time for the marathon. Maybe that's why I haven't done much running since...

"¡Y llora, y llora, y llora Maradona!"

And cry, and cry, and cry Maradona! is what this chant translates into from Spanish (without the fun rhyming of course.) Maradona is one of the world's best players and the captain of the 1986 Argentinian squad that won the World Cup. Needless to say, Ecuadorian fans do not see him in quite this positive a light. Rather, he is the hated coach of one of the South American soccer teams that stands between the Ecuadorian national futbol team and qualification for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa in 2010.

On June 10, a group of friends (all fans of the Tricolor of course) went to the Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa to sit under the giant flag section and watch these two rival teams face-off. At the time, both teams were about equal in the standings - just on the cusp of qualification. This is not an unusual position for Ecuador - it usually makes the World Cup, sometimes doing quite well. Nonetheless, it is not considered an historically dominant team in the mold of Brazil or Italy.

On this afternoon however, the Ecuadorian team looked the part. A rough first 20 minutes was capped by a penalty called within the box. However, Ecuador's goal-keeper came up huge, making a spectacular save on the penalty-kick that turned the momentum 180 degrees around. For the next 70 minutes, Ecuador controlled the game entirely. They ended up winning 2-0, nearly 3-0 but for a shot that just ricochet off the post. The pictures tell the rest of the story.

Orchids and Guinea Pigs

What do they have in common? Before domestication, guinea pigs had a highly evolved symbiotic relationship with orchids. The males would pollinate the flowers and in exchange would cover themselves in the orchids' odor, an odor used to subsequently attract female guinea pigs...

That's not true. At all. In fact, I'm not even sure if these creatures ever lived in the wild in the first place. I can't see it defending itself particularly well. Evolution would have had a field day with them.

So what do they actually have in common? In May I enjoyed both at Parque Carolina, among Ecuador's largest and most beautiful parks. And when I say enjoy, I mean I photographed the beautiful orchids and ate a grilled guinea pig, locally known as "cuy" for the sounds it makes (try making the noise in a high-pitch, you'll see the indigenous got the name just right.) I know, it sounds terribly cruel, but in Ecuador the g. pig has traditionally been a very important animal for the indigenous people. In addition to providing protein (tastes like chicken, of course), they were kept indoors as guard animals. I'm actually not messing around about the guard animal part. While not attacking, people believed that the little critters could sense bad energy, and when someone entered the house who could not be trusted, would make the "cuy cuy cuy" noise and alert the host.

El Oriente...

...is what Ecuadorians call the portion of the Amazon that lies within their border. It used to be far larger, but regional conflicts with Peru and Brazil shrunk its size quite significantly. It's beauty, however, is not diminished, and during my April spring break a friend and I took a bus 6 hours east of Quito to a rainforest ecolodge called Suchipakari.

As part of the trip we had a local guide named Juan who was a really excellent guy. Having grown up in the area and being the son of a local shaman, he was an endless source of knowledge about local plants food and medicinal characteristics, the various animals found in the rainforest, and a wealth of other information. He could even make eyeglasses out of vines, as can be seen on the right.

Besides several hikes through the Amazon (where we saw a coral snake, look up how their bite kills), we took a boat ride on one of the river's primary tributaries, visited an animal rehabilitation center (monkeys try to steal your bag), prepared and drank chica (fermented yucca or corn, in this case yucca) and ate ants (they were small and you just pop 'em real quick; they taste like lemon!), prepared chocolate with cacao we found in the rainforest (Swiss chocolate = nonsense. They just mix in that country and collect the receipts - the cacao itself is imported. You think it grows in those frigid mountain ranges?) and played with monkeys that live in the small town nearby. I really got into that part.

¡Carnaval!

Carnaval is a Brazilian celebration, a week of masks and mayhem, right? Wrong. Or wrong in that it is only a Brazilian celebration – I think the rest is probably true. Being a very Catholic country, Ecuador also celebrates the holiday, albeit in a slightly-toned down manner. With Monday and Tuesday in early February off, a group of University friends and I left for Baños – a town south of Quito – for an extended weekend. I had visited once before, but was utterly unprepared for the events this time through. There were parades with dozens of dances performed by folks aged 4 to 104. There were solemn processions of the Virgin Mary through the town with people crowding to touch the Virgin’s dress for good luck.

And, most importantly of all, there was espuma. Espuma is basically colored shaving cream that when shaken shoots out from its bottle at dangerous velocities. Moreover, it has an automatic homing mechanism that aims for the eyes of gringos. Or it may be the locals with the homing mechanisms. Regardless, everywhere I walked I heard the warning cry of “¡Gringo!” or roughly translated, “Look, an easy American target that I can shoot with espuma and then laugh at with my friends!” followed seconds later by a stream of foam. I don’t mean to give a negative impression however. The truth is that it was all in good fun, and that five-year old girl who tapped me on the back and then shot me point blank in the eye – nothing but love. Also, I must also admit that I was far from an innocent civilian. I’m pretty sure I went through over a dozen bottles of this foamy joy during my vacation…and you should have seen how that five year-old who started it ended up.

Rotary!

Rotary events have been picking up of late. Several weeks ago a fellow scholar and I went to Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city near the coast. We gave presentations on the United States and our experiences in Ecuador, and were treated to an awesome weekend in the beach town of Salinas. The photo is of the local Rotarian who so generously hosted me for the weekend.

A week before that, I helped the local Rotaract (Rotary for under-thirty year-olds) organize a country-wide conference. In addition to charter and other formal work, we played some mean futbol and went out to a giant discotecha.

Finally, several months ago, I was lucky enough to attend to the reception for Rotary International's President - Dong Kurn Lee. I even got a photo of him holding my sponsor club - Claremont Noon's flag! Not if only I can track the thing down to post it!