Viva Cuenca

The celebration of Cuenca days was quite fun, though we also missed a fair amount, since we had two papers to write.

Anyways, the first highlight was the craft markets. There were artesians from Cuenca as well as Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Spain. I loved just looking at everything that they had. There were just so many that I discovered new things every day.

Monday afternoon we went to the burro race having no idea what to expect. It ended up being a huge deal with tons of people completely circling the track. We were right on the corner and Coral was worried that the donkeys might be going too fast to make the turn and run into us. She needn't have worried. The donkeys weren't going that fast, and it turned out that they weren't the main highlight. Instead, their riders were wearing all sorts of costumes: clown, priest, drag. It was hilarious to watch, especially when we weren't expecting it!

Another highlight had to be the fireworks on Monday night. We had been warned that they were a bit extreme, but we thought it had been hyped up... until we saw them. First, there were the globos, which are similar to the tissue paper hot air balloons that I made in 6th grade, except that they used actually flames to carry them into the sky until they were almost indistinguishable from the stars. Then, there was the vaca loca, which was probably the highlight of the evening. It's a paper mache cow with fireworks attached. One guy runs around carrying the vaca loca over his head once it's lit. Basically, he runs at the crowd while shooting fireworks are shooting of it. We definitely got charged as streams of sparks were exploding from the horns. Of course, after this is a sort of tower that is also covered in fireworks, but most of these are attached to pinwheels so that they are going off in crazy directions, though of course, always towards the crowd. There was a lot of crouching and huddling in fear.

Tuesday was the actually holiday, and I went to one parade of dancers. It was nice to watch the traditional dances, and the girls' skirts were marvelous for spinning!

Oh yeah, there was lots of food for Cuenca days, most of it fried. I finally tried cuy (guinea pig). It was okay, but nothing that I would seek out.

Basically, Cuenca days were a great time to wander about town, find new places, and have fun experiences! Though I'll probably be fine if I never have fireworks shooting directly at me again.

Trick or Treat

Halloween coincides with Viva Cuenca here. Like Guayaquil and Quito, Cuenca’s independence day (November 3) is a national holiday. Of course, since we are in Cuenca, the celebrations start early, and this weekend, they’re in full swing.

In the afternoon, Jesse, Elizabeth, and I explored some of the craft markets. Artisans come from all over, not just Ecuador, but also Colombia, Argentina and even Spain. So far, I haven’t had to go to the bank to get more money, but after these expansive, I think I may have to visit the bank soon. My most exciting purchase: forks! I’ve had my eye out for an interesting fork since arriving, of course, but had yet to find any worth even inquiring about price. However, at one of the more expensive markets, a glass worker had some beautiful beaded pickle forks. There was no way that I could turn them down.

That evening, Jesse, Elizabeth, Alex and I joined our neighbor Ana Luisa in going to a performance at Cuenca’s cemetery. The performance used monologues, dance and music at various stops throughout the cemetery to tell the story of a poet who committed suicide in Cuenca. Each of us carried a lit candle, and the moon was nearly full, so it was rather perfect for Halloween.

When we returned home, we had originally planned to dressing up, but then decided that it was too late. Plus, most of the fun was in planning the costumes, rather than wearing them. (I was going to be a Shining Sunbeam. One of my favorite hummingbirds in Ecuador, where there are more than 150 species of hummers.) We still had our trick-or-treating fest with each person given out some sort of sweet. I made truffles as my gift. Then, Elizabeth gave out granadillas (a type of passionfruit) with jack-o-lantern faces drawn on them. Coral had bought popcorn balls, and Jesse got wawa-pan, a type of bread specific to this time of year and decorated by children. It was a lot of sugar! We also carved a pineapple, and drew a face on a melon, which looked like a pumpkin. When we bought the melon, we thought it was a pumpkin. It looked just like one! Funnily enough, the first time we tried to by squash, it ended up being a 6-inch wide cucumber! Who knew that squash or cucumber (sort of like cheese or font) would end up being a game for us?

Cuenca Schedule

So we`re back from the field a day early. You`ll have to wait for those stories, but here`s the description of my normal activities, which I promised:

Our schedule varies a bunch, so it is impossible to capture fully what my typical week in Cuenca is, but hopefully this will begin to give you an idea of what we’re up to in town.

First, upon arrival back in town, there is a rush to take showers and do our laundry. We do all of our laundry by hand in a basin in the courtyard. After this decently lengthy process, we hang our clothes up to dry. Thankfully, there are tons of clotheslines to fit everyone’s clothes.

Of course, food is another necessity (one that we worry more about). We have grocery shopping trips for each length in Cuenca or the field. We try to buy everything that we can, mainly fruits and vegetables, from the local markets. We have now ventured far enough to buy a chicken from one of the meat stalls, but typically, we use beans as our source of protein. So far, we have used two markets. The one that we found recently has lunch vendors on the top floor, and we’ve had a couple of delicious lunches there. A fish soup once, and potatoes the other time. Mmmmm…. Most of our bread, including rolls, baguettes and regular loaves, comes from local panderias. Then, other basics like cheese, olives, tea, peanut butter, spices, and dried fruit are bought at Cuenca’s one supermarket, SuperMaxi.

As far as preparing the food, when we’re in town we have a rotation wheel, so that we alternate between chef, sous chef, dishes, counter, and being off at dinner time. Usually everyone makes there own breakfast and lunch, but sometimes someone will make pancakes for all or fry up a couple of plantains. We also occasionally eat out for dinner. This is more likely if we’ve been out all day and haven’t had a chance to start cooking by 6:00 pm. So far, we’ve gone out for Ecuadorian, Colombian, and chifa (Chinese).

We typically cram a number of classes in when we’re in town. Two of our instructors, Katherine and Theresa, live in Cuenca, so it is easiest to have their classes then. Also, we’ll have a number of Con Bio and Natural History lessons, since we have a bit more time. Usually, we’ve had one or two classes every day or two, but it varies a fair amount.

Every couple of days, we either have a morning or afternoon off. Some of these are recommended reading times, in which case, I usually walk down our street to the river and sit in the park to read. Elizabeth and I have also gone into town and bought juice (yay for mora!) and bread from a panderia, and then sat there doing our reading for a couple of hours.

Sometimes, we have free time without pressing readings. Usually, we head into town, check email and spend some time on the internet checking the news, and then find a new area to explore. Elizabeth and I have spent a day wandering craft markets and trying pan de yuca at a number of restaurants.

One other pattern in my schedule is Ecuadorian middle-aged woman workout. Coral discovered this, and Elizabeth and I decided that we had to try it, too. It is in the park down the river from our house and starts at 7:00am M-F and 7:30am on the weekends and lasts an hour. Basically, the workout is a combination of aerobics and salsa set to old Latin American and US pop music (e.g. Volverte a Ver, Toxic, and Thriller). In fact, I think that it would be a great Ebony dance. It isn’t necessarily a great source of exercise, but it is hilarious and a good way to wake up. Plus, it only costs a quarter. After the workout, we stop by a vendor to buy hot aloe drink. We aren’t entirely sure what all is in it, but it includes aloe, black tea, honey and flaxseed. We looked up consuming aloe, and it is supposed to be incredibly healthy and good for the immune system, so we fill really good about waking up to exercise and drink aloe. However, we only go to the class every few days because a) we like our sleep and b) occasionally we have other morning appointments or class before 9.

Speaking of sleep, we go to bed slightly later here than in the field, but I’m still usually asleep by 10:30. I’ve realized that I really do enjoy going to bed somewhere from 10:00 to 10:30 pm and waking up between 6:45 and 7:30 am. It’s quite nice.

We also take some day long adventures as a group from Cuenca. Ingapirca is one example. Also, we will visit Cajas National Park soon.

The long awaited description of our house in Cuenca...

The house is beautiful! In fact, I’ve pretty much decided that it is ideal, though larger than I’d ever need.

To begin with, there are three floors. The first opens into a very open living room/dining room area with wooden floors. It isn’t really furnished but we have a table with chairs, a bookshelf, a mattress for sitting, and four poster sized maps. The openness also lends itself to practicing handstands.

The first floor also has the bathroom and kitchen. The kitchen is decently spacious (much better than Goodhue!) with a gas stove but no oven. We also keep bottled water for drinking there. The one thing about the bathroom is that the shower is rather creepy. It´s an electric shower, but the switch to turn on the heater is inside the shower and there are wires all around. It just seems to be the perfect way to be shocked.

The second floor has Jesse and Coral’s rooms and a small outdoors balcony. (Jesse’s room has an awesome mural of dolphins.) We usually watch movies in the open area of this floor. This week, we actually watched three very different movies. (Baraka was my favorite.) This floor also overlooks the first floor, and along the staircase, there are trenches were you are supposed to plant flowers. We all agree that it would be beautiful with filled with plants.

There is only a small, skinny staircase leading to the third floor where the students live. There is one large room, which Elizabeth and I share. Since this is the attic, the ceiling slopes downward, so we both have our mattresses in corners with the ceiling barely above us. It’s cozy. We also have a window looking out over Cuenca. One of the greatest features of our room is hammock hooks! We immediately wanted a hammock and ended up buying a rainbow one in the market downtown. It really brightens up the room.

The rest of the third floor is split into two sections by our room. The guys sleep on one side, and the other has the communal bookshelf and mattresses for hanging out. This floor also looks over the other floors, and right above the staircase is a huge skylight. My favorite part of this house is how well it uses natural light. This skylight floods most of the house with light, and downstairs, a number of the walls are simply windows, so that in the day, we don’t need to turn on the lights. I love it!

The house is also right next to our landowner`s, and there is a courtyard between the two where Luna, our neighbor´s dog, lives. We also do our laundry here. We have a nice backyard which overlooks Cuenca. We´re on the side of a hill, so the view is pretty good.

Also, last night we added a tree climbing rope to the house. We needed to test it before our adventure tomorrow, so we tied it off on the third floor and then practiced climbing inside. Additionally, Elizabeth used to do web in the circus, so she taught us a couple of the basic holds. Yay for circus tricks!

I´ll try to post about my normal schedule in Cuenca next time we´re in town. (Probably about a week.)

Scavenging around Cuenca

Well, I definitely didn’t promise frequent updates, but here’s an overview of my past few days…

This week has been a lot of fun. On Wednesday, we split up into two teams for a scavenger hunt around Cuenca. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Jesse and Coral declared Tim and me a team against Elizabeth and Alex, but our groups weren’t very competitive and only spent the last of six hours apart. The scavenger hunt included making copies of the house and gate keys, finding a woman named Maria, and asking what type of biology classes the University of Azuay has. The University question was a bit annoying. First, we ask a couple of students, who took us to an admin secretary who sent us all the way to the registrar! We became rather proficient at describing our task and asking questions in Spanish. We also had to find a Chifa, which is a chinese restaurant. While the other team was waiting on our keys to be copied, we found two Chifas and thus won. We are such cheaters.

We also were supposed to buy pan de yuca for Coral. Unfortunately, we became too caught up with other things that we didn’t buy any. Thankfully, Coral accepted this and bought us some the next day. She was definitely telling the truth—it is delicious!

While on the scavenger hunt, we found an orchid nursery on the map and decided that we wanted to visit. Jesse and Coral surprised us by taking us there Thursday morning. There were three green houses completely filled with gorgeous orchids! I ended up taking over 100 photos of just flowers. This was my favorite of the orchids. It looks just like a monkey!

Yesterday afternoon, we had our first anthro class at the Pumapongo museum, which included Incan ruins. So far, we have syllabi for 4 of our 5 classes, and all of them are reading heavy classes, and we have one paper assignment already. In fact, we’ve spent most of our past two evenings reading and still are not ready for Monday’s class. And in case any of you were wondering, the Grinnell journal system is going to be a pain.

Today, we have been preparing for our first venture into the field. We are spending a week at Rumi Loma, the higher of our two field camps. It is up about 10,000 ft. It should be quite an adventure.

And so it begins...

I arrived in Ecuador Sunday night after two flights, and then in Cuenca yesterday afternoon. Although we´ve had a decent amount of free time, I feel like I have been quite busy and don´t have much time right now, but I´ll try to hit the highlights.

First, my group consists of four students (Elizabeth, Alex, Tim and me) and two student leaders (Coral and Jesse). So far we are getting along really well, though Alex has suffered a bit from adjusting to the altitude. We are at about 7,500 ft in Cuenca and were at 9,000 in Quito. Despite being at such high altitudes, both cities are located in valleys. The views of the mountains are gorgeous!

Elizabeth, Tim and Jesse are all really into food and cooking, so we´ve had fun discussing our favorite dishes and planning what to make. Early this afternoon, we went to the supermarket to go grocery shopping and then to the market. The actual market was amazing! There were so many fresh fruits and vegetables. Some of them I didn´t recognize, but we still decided to try them. I´m quickly learning to recognize passionfruits, of which there are two varieties. Maricolla, whose spelling I need to look up, is the one I´ve had so far. It is the more bitter of the two, but quite delicious and makes a wonderful juice. We didn´t buy any meat but did walk down the aisle. It was strange to see the whole animals hanging up, or the hooves and heads near by.

Although this trip is not focused on Spanish and does not require that we have any background, I am getting a fair amount of practice and am a bit surprised that I am doing okay with it. We are planning on having dinners where we can only speak Spanish to practice, especially when we´re in the field and won´t have the same opportunities. In the local villages, the indigineous speak Quechua, which is supposedly an incredibly difficult language to pick up.

We have a beautiful house in Cuenca, which is quite large for the six of us. The ground floor includes the kitchen, dining room, and living areas, while we have two more floors where we sleep. The house has a few balconies, huge windows, and skylights, so that we only have to use the lights at night.

Well, we are heading back to the house now, so I´ll have to describe it better later.