10/17

Work has been exhausting me so much lately that I haven´t had the energy to blog afterwards. It seems I´ve inserted a much larger lapse between entries than I had intended; sorry. Yesterday the kids had a field trip to the presidential palace. The one day I go to school in my pajamas, we go somewhere important. Figures. Since I had no idea about the trip, I didn´t bring my ID, and because of that, couldn´t get into the tour of the place. Another volunteer, Andre from Austria, was in the same boat as me, so we sat in the Plaza de Indepencia until the kids came out. All the other children from all the other schools were quiet and lined up politely, but our kids came out of the place screaming and running. Andre and I went over to the gate the kids were behind, and they started chanting ¨Tio, tio, tio¨ which is what they call the boy volunteer. Literally it means uncle. Then they started chanting ¨Tia Krystina, tia Krystina¨. That was really cool, and when the guard opened the gate, the kids came flying out and into our arms. There were a lot of tourists around, looking really touristy (with cameras around their necks, and sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts) and the kids pointed at them and shouted ¨Gringo¨ which means ¨whitey¨ essentially. That also made me feel cool because the kids have never called me a gringo, even though I am.

Last weekend was my favorite so far. Sean and I went camping in the rainforest of Mindo. We actually did some really arduous work on a research project (http://www.lifenetnature.org/). We did a lot of hiking through mountainous rainforest in a reserve called Las Tanagaras in the town/forest of Mindo. What a beautiful town! The scenery was breathtaking. The research was pretty cool. We went along with Sean´s frind, Carlos, from school. Carlos is annoyingly rich and also annoyingly in love with birds. He set the whole thing up. We worked with this wonderful guide named Pasqual Torres. The four of us set up fifteen big mist nets in the forest. Birds would, from time to time, fly into these nets and get tangled up. We would untangle them, put them in a bag (I got to hold real, live, wild birds!) and bring them to our main station to record data about them. I now know waaaaay too much about birds. We would put a little metal ring-tag on their leg and let them go. I can now tell if a bird is an adult or juvenile, if it´s pregnant, or has had an ectoparasite. Waaaay too much... Anyway, we caught a few really cool birds. Ecuador is famous for its hummingbirds, and I saw a ton of them around the guide´s cabin. Oh man, every day we had to wake up at 5:00 am, while it was still dark out, and begin our work. Tough stuff. The guide told me that I can put this on my resume as research work, though, which I´m pretty thrilled about. We also hiked about a half hour up a mountain to see this really beautiful bird, called the Cock of the Rock, do it´s mating ritual. There weren´t as many birds there as the guide was hoping, but I still got to see a few of them and I also got an amazing view of the rainforest. On the last day, Sean swam in this amazingly beautiful waterfall. It was a little paradise away from all the other troubles of the world.

About two weeks ago, Sean was robbed of his backpack by old men in suits. While he was on the bus, or right after, someone squirted mustard onto his backpack and pants. Some old guy was trying to help him clean it off, and some other guy offered to get water. Sean took his backpack off and put it in front of him to clean it. Somehow his attention was drawn away from his pack for a second and when he turned around it was gone. The people around him gave him conflicting info about where the thieves ran to. It seems everyone was involved in the thing. Nothing too important was taken, and Sean has his sweaty groin cup from Tae Kwon Do class in his bag, so he was happy that the thieves would be confronted with it. Sean was actually really cool about the whole thing and he said that it made him wiser.

10/3

Elections for twenty assembly people were held last weekend. There were well over 200 people on the ballot, each with a tiny headshot next to their name. I saw a copy of the ballot and it´s a bit confusing. Encouragingly, there were information booths set up around town to inform people of how they can vote. Every citizen has to vote, or they´re fined, like $16, if I remember correctly. That would be a lot of money to an indigenous person. The camp of people the president was endorsing ended up winning about 60% of the votes, followed by the group of people that were just first on the huge list. These assembly positions are really important because President Correa is creating a new constitution for the people and these are the representatives that will be writing the new document.

I had convinced Sean that the Warhol exhibit is the cat´s pajamas, so we went on Saturday. He seemed to like it. We also walked around two cathedrals, one of which I pretty much got kicked out of for taking pictures. It was the Cathedral of St. Augustine and there were some really cool pieces of artwork in it. We also spent an hour at a really great national museum. We could´ve stayed all evening, but they were closing. I can´t wait to go back. The museum is sponsored by a huge bank here. They have a noteworthy collection of gold artifacts and the museum was formed to ensure the people that the bank wouldn´t destroy their culture by melting these artifacts into currency. The museum grew from there to include really great clay and stone pieces which they keep on their anthropology floor. There is also a floor of amazing religious artwork from Ecuador. They seem to be more gruesome in their representations than I am used to. It´s really fantastic stuff. I think I´m going to go back this weekend as Sean´s on his next school outing, to check out the Republican art collection and the Contemporary art.

On Sunday, Sean and I had a huge lunch at a great place in Mitad Del Mundo. Sean also bought himself a new voice recorder. He calls it his second memory and he carries it around like a safety blanket. After he lost his other voice recorder in a cab, he´s been mentioning how much he wants another one, oh maybe every 2 hours or so. Needless to say, I´m happy for him.

The kids at school finally got their class periods structured. No more ¨perma-art class¨ as Sean called it. I´m scheduled to teach English, with the other class assistant, to the second graders every Tuesday and Thursday for about 45 minutes each day. Yesterday we worked on colors. The ages of the kids ranges from 5 to 11, and none of them can read or write. So, it´s a little weird to pick what to teach this group. The ¨Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes¨song is a big hit. If anyone else has any ideas, especially of kids songs, let me know.