Have a happy week

Mom and I followed flutes when we were in Quito and found these dancers.

Little girls balancing bottles on their heads.

Older ones swinging hats and hands.

Don't they look happy?

Testicular solvency

Nadie, hasta este momento, ha tenido la solvencia testicular de ponerme una demanda penal,

says Fabricio Correa, brother of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. The bad brother is under investigation for money laundering and dirty accounting, etc. The usual. I just love that he said this in a press conference. Translation:

No one, until now, has had the balls to call me out!

Oh, the things you can say. In Canadian parliament, there are quite a few things you cannot say, as I discovered by watching CPAC and then calling the House of Commons.

Back to the future

"Live in the present."

The problem is, without a plan for the future--an exciting, romantic, and inspiring plan, no less--I can't. I think and plot and scheme and worry, all the while living in my head, in the mist of the maybe-future. The funny remedy is a booked flight. As soon as the confirmation screen appears, I come back to the present. Seven more weeks here? I look around with new eyes. Seven more weeks, then; I better make the most of it.

The good humour of my students, the sunset behind the volcano, the iguanas on the beach, the adolescent white flamingos in the lagoon, the smell of the panaderia, the hammock hours--these things become more valuable because I've stamped them with an expiration date. With the future sorted, the present is easy to live in.

Dubious compliment of the day

Hola, amiga. Que buena que eres.

Thank you, young sir on the bicycle.

In country X

Ecuadorian women were not trained to be companions nor did they know how to carry on a conversation.

From Living Poor, written by a Peace Corps Volunteer who came to Ecuador in the 1960s. He lived in a village on the coast long enough to start a cooperative, avoid a few drunken machete fights, and discover the impossibility of an 8-hour workday on a diet of bananas. I put down One Hundred Years of Solitude and finished it in two days, it was so good. Not everyone can breathe through months of true cultural difference and not everyone can write well. Great literary non-fiction is special.

As for the quotation, I had to read it twice, because it smacked of ¨In country X, the people are Y.¨ Then I counted my conversations with Ecuadorian women. Beyond superficial chats at the beach and the bar, and the bilingual comedies with my language partner, none.

Chavez!

Mom flew in Saturday night, and after promising that she didn't have swine flew, she was released from the airport into my custody. I took her to the Secret Garden, a hostel in the Old City, where I had failed to procure a private room. Later Mom discovered that the dorm room was for both ladies and gents (Oh!). Props to her for rolling with it.

Sunday we walked the Old City, a place as colonial and thief-ridden as the books say. By luck, it was Independence Day, so streets were blocked to traffic and cyclists emerged in packs to enjoy their annual day of relative safety.

We wandered into a square full of people. 

Que pasa? 

Correa y Chavez vienen!

More luck by the minute. Ecuador's president and the crazy Venezuelan himself were on their way. We waited. Heladitos were sold. We waited some more. And then, with helicopter racket overhead...

The crowds went wild. Dorm or no, not bad for one's first 24 hours in Ecuador.

Shot in the ass

Went to the health clinic at the naval base today.

"My legs have been hurting for a few months."

"No, I'm not running more than usual."

"Yes, I'm drinking enough water."

"Not, not a sharp pain."

"When I lie down, they ache and feel heavy."

The doctor prescribed a vitamin injection, to be taken in the ass cheek. This is their Tylenol, their Aspirin, their salt water gargle--the ass injection is the cure-all of Ecuadorian medicine. When Josefhine had the flu. When David wasn't feeling 100%. When my legs hurt. Shot in the ass. I said I would come back on Monday.

Vitamin deficiency is probably it. Not enough iron in my cow-less and now tofu-less diet. But part of me says it's psychosomatic. Every day, I wear the same bikini under the same bright sun and watch that sun slip into the exact same spot on the watery horizon at the exact same time. The people, the breakfast, the Reggaeton, the slow internet--it's always the same. It's wearing on my health. I need not a shot in the ass but a kick.

Level One

We have an exam today and I'm really excited, because my students are going to pass. They're Level One, which means they aren't confused yet.

They arrived five weeks ago with blank canvases. We have written words. We have drawn lines. But we have preserved space around the words and the lines. The paper isn't crowded. Eventually, inevitably, we will scribble and cross out and cover this first draft, because language learning is messy. Which is why perfectionists suffer and creative people excel. 

Do you know the word palimpsest?

The men are shorter and so are the sentences.

Que haces hoy? What are you doing today?

No sé I don't know

I know that this is the easiest language I will ever learn, so I'm trying to savor it.

To the winners!

This post is dedicated to Parker and Kai, good friends and winners in the name-that-movie contest. See "comments" for the answer.

Their secret prize is this virtual beer. Pilsener, of course. It's the only beer here. I'm no expert, but it seems okay, provided it's served really cold.

I'm reminded of Turkey, another one-beer country. There you'll drink Efes Pilsener, which apparently gets its unique taste from rice added at the brewing stage. Its been described as having "a tangy malt and hops aroma, rich malt in the mouth, and a bitter-sweet finish that becomes dry and hoppy." Thanks, Wikipedia. Ecuador's Pilsener, meanwhile, "has a noticeable corn edge to the flavor and it reminds me very much of the flavor and feel of Miller High Life." In addition to being corny, Ecuador's beer of choice is a measly 4.2% beer, compared with Efes's 5.0% Sorry, boys.

two beers, please:

iki tane bira, lutfen

dos cervezas, por favor

Taking shots

A Russian photographer took this in the President's Square of Quito when we weren't looking, and then walked over and asked if he could email it to us later. We watched him work for a few minutes. He was wearing brown and he moved very slowly to get different shots of people. He blended in quite well, but still, people noticed him.

I think that's why I'd prefer to be a writer than a photographer. To be a photographer, you have to wear the technology around your neck. Everyone knows what you are doing. To be a writer, you just have to have a memory. I could sit down and write an article about the quiet protest that was going on behind us, or a short story about the woman selling gum next to the fountain, and no one from that day would remember me taking the mental shots required to do it. Writers are sneaky in that way, I think.