Quito, Ecuador

Hi all! I hope everyone had a happy and yummy Thanksgiving! Since all those pilgrims decided not to land in Ecuador, it’s not celebrated here by the locals. However, all of us Kalamazoo students, in an act of tradition and nostalgia had a turkey day of our own. We had it at the host house of one of the K students. Everybody brought a dish to pass and an Ecuadorian guest if they so chose. I made a delicious Cesar salad, which despite it’s soggy croutons (not my fault that we started eating at nine when I’d made the salad at 5:30 or 6) everyone really enjoyed it and gobbled it right up. We had traditional thanksgiving foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and so on, and we also had some less traditional things like spaghetti, which were good nonetheless.

One of the most unique parts about this Thanksgiving for me, despite the fact that it was in Ecuador, was that the house had an indoor swimming pool, so after gorging ourselves on plates full of Thanksgiving dinner and then eating more, 3 friends and I went for a swim. In addition to having a good time floating around and working on our cannonballs, we officially busted the myth that you shouldn’t go swimming after eating. No one threw up or had their liver explode.

Around this time of year, there’s a big thing that goes on called Fiestas de Quito. It goes on for over a week, and everyone just goes all out celebrating as much as they can. There are these tricked-out buses called “chivas” that are filled with people and they play loud music and drive around the city for an hour or two. Also during this time are the “La Corrida de los Toros” or bullfights. Last Sunday I went to a bullfight with four friends and it was quite an experience. In total there were six bull fights. The first one I video recorded on my camera and I might post the videos at some point in the future if I can get to a spot with fast enough internet to do so. The second one was done by a really good matador and he actually let the bull live, which is something very rare. The third one was done on a horse. The matador had three different horses that he used in different phases of his show, and it was a fun, different thing to watch. Then there was an intermission and then the three matadors each went again.

This is basically how a bullfight goes down: First the bull enters the ring, which has a sand floor and several upright wooden platforms around the edge for the toreros to hide behind. First, a man comes out who’s riding a horse that has cloth armor on. This man uses a long stick with a point on the end to jab into the bull’s neck. During this time, the bull is trying to dig its horns into the armored horse and knock it over, but the horse is big and leans into it so it doesn’t move. Then several ‘clowns’ taunt the bull with pink cloaks and tire it out a bit. Then two or three men run up to the bull and plunge these things into the bull’s neck that look like big fluffy colorful cylinders, like paint rollers, that have spikes on the end. This hurts the bull and makes it madder. then the matador comes out and he has a red cape and a sword. He puts on a show waving the red cape and making the bull run at it, like we’ve all seen in the movies and on TV shows. Then, when the matador has tired the bull out and dragged on his show for long enough, he pauses a moment, aims, and then runs at the bull and tries to stab the sword into the upper back of the bull. The idea is that the sword goes all the way in, down to the hilt, rupturing precious internal organs, hopefully the heart. Sometimes the matador misses and hits a rib or something so the sword doesn’t go in all the way. At this point the ‘clowns’ come and distract the bull while the matador retrieves his sword. Eventually the sword does go in and the beast staggers a bit and then falls helplessly to the ground. It’s really powerful to watch such an animal fall. Once the bull is down, a man dressed in black with a cloak around his shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat hosting a single large white feather comes and stabbs a knife in the bull, right at the base of skull. The bull spasms and then lies still. A cart is then dragged out and the bull’s head is tied down to it with a chain. At this point, they bring out what I called the “Horses of Death”, which are two black horses whose job it is to drag out the body of the bull. It takes the men several tries to get the horses to come close enough to the dead body for them to connect the cart; those horses want to get as far away from the blood and death as quickly as possible. The men finally get the horses close enough, attach the cart, and the bull is dragged out of the arena.

It was a very graphic spectacle, especially when the bull started dripping blood out of its mouth. Two men came very close to being trampled to death by the bull: One was pinned against the wall and another got flipped over the charging bull’s head. I’m very glad I went, though I don’t think it’s something I’d be in favor of doing much, if at all, in the future.

Here are some photos from the event:

Here is a shot of the outside of the stadium as we’re entering.

Here’s what the inside of the stadium looks like. This is before the show started. Those two horsemen are there for an opening ceremony of sorts.

A matador with a bull.

Here’s the horse-riding matador. One cool thing he had were these sticks with points on the end. What he did was jab them into the bull’s back and the point would come off of the stick, stay in the bull’s back, and then part of the stick would unwrap and become a flag (that is to say the point that came off was holding the flag rolled up).

And here’s a victory shot of the matador. Here you can see the slain bull and the matador showing off. This guy was really good, and he let his first bull live. This one was obviously not so lucky.

My host dad read in the paper the next day that this bullfight was a really good one. One bull lived and lots of awards were given out.

When I got home, I found my family decorating the house for Christmas. I showered and freshened up and then went down to help them. I’ll say it was pretty weird putting up Christmas decorations when it felt like summer outside. Over the course of the afternoon, my 4-year-old host niece, Paula, came over with her family. The two of us are buddies. We get along really well and play games together and everything. She helped decorate the tree, which was pretty funny because she hung most of her ornaments in one area of the tree and we had to tell her to spread them out a little and that she could only put one ornament on each branch. After all was said and done, she found some Santa hats in a box so we both put one on and had our picture taken in front of the tree!

Happy December, everybody!

Hello! For starters, here’s a picture of Quito from the east side. Quito is one long, thin city oriented North-to-South. This is looking across the city towards my house, which is somewhere over there. I’ve looked but so far haven’t been able to pin-point exactly where it is, but I know it’s got to be almost straight across, maybe a little left to center in this picture. This picture was taken from the entrance to a great big park on top of a hill. In the back of the picture, you can see the mountain Pichincha, that towers over the city.

There’s not too much to report at this time, my life’s been pretty constantly good, though I wish I could say that much for others in the program. Within a week, three have been robbed and another is now so sick that she has to return to the States because five doctors here weren’t able to figure out how to make her better. Fingers crossed, she’ll get all healthy and be able to return in January.

Tidbit: Did you ever wonder what happened to all those Sacagawea 1 dollar coins that were minted back in 2000? Well they all found their way here. It could have something to do with the fact that in 2000, Ecuador changed its currency from the Sucre to the American Dollar. Regardless of the reason, you’re much more likely to get Sacagaweas as change than paper dollars. People here are all about the coins. Let’s say you’re on a bus (25 cents) and all you have is a 50 cent piece on you (yes, 50 cent pieces are as popular here as the Sacagaweas). Well you give the bus-money-guy your 50 cent piece and from here, two things might happen. He might be nice and give you a quarter, but there’s also a pretty good chance that he’ll use this opportunity to dump some other change on you. It could be two dimes and one nickle, or if he’s really in a bad mood he could even give you like three nickels and ten pennies. Yeah, crazy. The good news is that what goes around comes around, and chances are you’ll just pass off your handfull of change to the next bus guy.

Contrary to the general opinion held in the States, here I would rather carry around a pocket full of 20 Sacagaweas than a 20 dollar bill, simply because shop keepers are stingy with their change. You try to buy a 2 or 3 dollar thing with a 20 dollar bill and it’s possible that the guy behind the desk will just stare at you with an unamused look and shake his head. He’d rather you didn’t buy anything than give you that much change. Luckily, there are ATMs around town that help you out a bit. It’s common here for ATMs to give you 10s and 5s. I think one of my friends even said he got 1s out of an ATM once.

I sometimes wonder why the dollar and 50 cent coins haven’t cought on in the States. I guess it’s a matter of convenience: easier to carry around several pieces of paper than disks of metal. Maybe it’s also because things are more expensive in the States, or possibly it could be because cashiers don’t mind giving you a ridiculous amount of change. I wonder if I’ll start carrying around more coins when I go back to the States. We’ll see.

I’ve posted a picture of the front of my Spanish classroom. I’ve been staring at this twice a week for the past um-teen weeks and every time I’ve wanted to take a picture of it and now I finally have. Now I didn’t take a picture because I thought it looked nice or because it reminded me of something, I took it because there’s something interesting about it and I want you guys to try to figure out what’s weird, or unexpected about this picture. It’ll probably help if you click on the picture to enlarge it.

For those of you who can’t quite get it or who are not quite sure if you’re right or not, I’ve written out the answer below in a simple substitution code.

A=N, B=O, C=P, D=Q, E=R, F=S, G=T, H=U, I=V, J=W, K=X, L=Y, M=Z

Answer: Gurer vf n penpx va gur jnyy orybj gur punyxoneq gung unf orra cynfgrerq bire. Guvf penpx pna or frra rkgraqvat hc guebhtu gur punyxoneq, vaqvpngvat gung gur punyxoneq vf abg n punyxoneq ng nyy, ohg engure vg vf whfg gur jnyy cnvagrq bire jire jvgu punyxoneq cnvag.

Interesting, huh? I’d be interested to see if anyone got it or if you saw something else unexpected in the picture.

That’s all for now, take good care everyone, and for those whom it applies, keep warm. I hear thigns are starting to get a mighty bit chilly up in the more northern regions.