The Battle of the Beards

I have not shaved my beard since we arrived in May. When I went to England for a semester while in college, I didn’t shave during the entire four month trip. When I arrived back home, I was able to walk right up to my mom before she recognized me. I doubt that will happen now - my bald head gives me away.

Because my Spanish class was canceled today, the house is clean and I have nothing else to do before I go to pick up my children, I am soliciting opinions on which is the better beard. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to vote.

Here’s a picture of me then (bottom photo) and two minutes ago (top photo) after about the same amount of time of unclipped growth. Notice the cool glasses in the then picture.

The Origin of the Ritual

There has been an ongoing battle in the DC area, including in Prince William County, Virginia, over laws targeting immigrants by attempting to curb their access to public services and increasing immigration enforcement by local police. You can read the latest chapter here.

Northern Virginia and the DC area in general has a large Latino population. There is an immigrant custom, which I thought was unique to the area, where skilled (or are they unskilled?) laborers congregate each workday at a public place, for example, in a 7-11 parking lot, so that contractors who need day labor can drive by and find the help they need.

In an effort to systemize this process in a more orderly and lawful way (i.e., help people find work, learn English and become part of the community. And, of course, let's not forget the more important issue of making sure the appropriate employment and income taxes get paid) and in response to local businesses complaints about the unsupervised gatherings (littering, unsightliness of large Latino crowds outside a particular business) many counties in the DC area have opened employment centers that offer a range of services to prospective day laborers.

For various reasons that I won't get into, many of these employment centers have been protested by right-wing conservative pigs. In jurisdictions where the local government has no spine or vision, the result has been the immigration policy reflected by PWC.

We have followed this battle closely for two reasons. First, because all issues immigrant are near and dear to Rebecca's heart. Second, because one of her main rivals in high school is currently a big-whig on the PWC Board of County Supervisors and is always getting his picture in the paper over his inane quotes.

Each day on the way to school, Maya, Jonah and I pass the same phenomenon. Dozens of men standing around on the street corners, ostensibly for work.

Each man displays, according to his trade, either a paintbrush and roller, dry-wall trowel, or plumbing apparatus.





























Here is a man and his plumbing apparatus.















And a closeup of some more apparatus.
















Today, for the first time, we saw some of these men get picked up for work. It was exhilarating. As we approached in our taxi, a truck pulled up and a dozen of the guys went running to it as if they were going to receive a free watermelon. Maya and Jonah each had their nose pressed to the taxi window to watch the show.

The truck drove away with four or five guys. It was heartening to see that this corner ritual is not just an excuse for the guys to get out of the house early in the morning to play cards and drink rum with their friends. They actually want to work.

There was visible dejection in the postures of those who did not get selected. Heads hung, no bounce to their step, paintbrushes slung just a little bit lower on their belts. I felt badly for them.

But, it is interesting to see that the method to find employment in Virginia, which I thought was required by circumstance (no papers + minimal English = day laborer work), has its beginnings here in Quito (and, I have to believe, in the other urban areas in Central and South America). It's a learned behavior that is imported to the States. It's interesting, but what would be more interesting is if someone would get it into their head to import chochos con tostados.

There's Always a Bright Side

This past weekend we got out our plaid shorts, pulled our socks to our knees, slung the 35 mm Nikon camera around our necks and played tourist.

On Saturday we took the bus to the zoo. The zoo is located about 32 kilometers from Quito, in a village called Guayllabamba. Guayllabamba is set in a beautiful, green valley with some amazing looking flowering trees that we didn't take any pictures of. But here's a picture of Maya with the valley behind her.

The zoo is set in the hills overlooking the valley and is dedicated to fauna native to the Americas, and primarily, South America. So we got to see monkeys, condors, enormous wild pigs, some kind of jungle cat, the only type of bear native to South America, and a bunch of enormous turtles that are only found in two places in the world - the Galapagos Islands and the zoo in Guayllabamba.


The turtles were pretty cool because they were actually awake and moving around. I think it was the first time I've ever seen a turtle this big get off its duff and walk around for the crowd.


There was also a petting/feeding zoo that the kids liked. For a dime, you could buy a cup of carrots and feed the llamas, cows, goats, sheep, rabbits, or cuy. Or, as Maya chose to do, you could eat the carrots yourself.
Rebecca said the cow reminded her of an ex-boyfriend, but she wouldn't tell me what it was about the cow that reminded her.


Instead of taking the bus home from the zoo, we were lucky to be able to hitch a ride with a couple on their way back to Quito. The woman is American, and is teaching English in some jungle city in Columbia. She and Rebecca had a good conversation about the FARC while Jonah ate crackers and made crumbs all over the back seat of the guy's truck. The woman actually said she felt safer in her city in Columbia than she did in Quito. Rebecca gets the feeling from her work as well that foreigners (i.e., Americans) are relatively safe in Columbia - and that the violence is directed only towards the locals.

One of the fellas that I know from work is currently traveling in Columbia. You can check out his blog here.

As we hit the outskirts of Quito on the ride home from the zoo, I noticed a snow peaked mountain to the southeast. It was Vulcan Chimborazo. Even though there are several snow caps that we are supposed to be able to see from the city, this was the first time that we'd actually seen one, so we were very excited. It was like a postcard - this bright blue sky with a snow-cap stuck in the middle of it. We thought we might be able to see it from the roof of our apartment buidling, but our apartment sits on lower ground than the road we were traveling so we could not. Too bad.

Chimborazo is an inactive volcano thought to have last exploded about 10,000 years ago. We literally drove right past it when we drove to Cuenca with Paul, but it was so cloudy that day we couldn't even make out a shadow. At 6310 meters (about 21,000 feet) Chimborazo is the highest peak in Ecuador and was once thought to be the highest peak in the world. It still enjoys the distinction of being the furthest point from the center of the earth, and the closest to the sun, due to the bulge around the equator.

We couldn't get a picture of it because we were moving, and buildings and what not kept getting in the way, but here's a photo we got from a book. It's either Chimborazo or Cotopaxi. I'm not sure.



On Sunday we took the bus to the Mitad del Mundo - which translates to the middle of the world. In case you can't figure it out, the Mitad del Mundo complex straddles the equator, which, if you remember from geography class, separates the northern hemisphere from the southern hemisphere. And of course, just to tie up all the loose ends - Ecuador gets its name from "equator".

(Column Intermission I - When Ecuador declared independence from Gran Colombia (consisting of roughly the combined territories of Panama, Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador) in 1829, it considered three names for itself - Quito, Atahualpa (who was the Incan ruler who invited Pizarro and his men to Cajamarca, where Pizarro promptly murdered him), and Ecuador. I'd say the best name won.)

At the Mitad del Mundo, we couldn't resist the standard goofy tourist trick - Look, I'm in the northern hemisphere. Now I'm in the southern hemisphere. Now half of me is in the north and half of me is in the south. It was fun. Here, the girls are in the Northern Hemisphere and the boys are in the Southern Hemisphere.


On this particular Sunday, there was a lot going on at the middle of the world. There was some dancing,
some guys dressed up in costumes
and some ice cream eating.


At one point, a shaman came around asking for a volunteer. Rebecca, who is, of course, always up for something cultural, jumped right up. But, I think she's going to regret it this time.

On the bright side, we didn't have to buy her a seat on the bus ride home. We just hung her from the rear view mirror.

Life is a Shit Sandwich

That’s a direct quote from a judge I worked for when I was fresh out of law school. He had issues. Lately, though I've thought about it because I have issues. I feel like a bit of an ass regarding my blog posts recently.

Adventures of the Cuy was recently featured on a blog that my cousin, Jen, writes about her life in New York with a 40-year old husband. Jen wrote some really nice things about Rebecca and the work that she is doing, and even had a compliment for me. She said I’m pretty funny (she meant as in witty, not looking).

But I haven’t been in a funny mood lately. As reflected, I think, in my recent posts about homesickness, street kids, the prices of things, and this one.

So, on the one hand, I feel like I am letting down any of Jen’s readers who actually decided to check out my posts, not to mention what I am doing to Jen’s reputation. They come to me looking for humor and all they get is reality. And everyone knows that’s not funny.

And, on the other hand, I feel like I am doing damage with these sentimental and feeling posts to the macho image that I believe (probably foolishly) I project. But seriously, I’m bald, have skinny legs, and cried at the end of “Brokeback Mountain”. So how macho can I really think that I am?

Early in our stay here in Quito, during our first hitchhiking adventure, Maya, Jonah and I caught a ride from an American who had been here for a year with her family. She mentioned that her sons, I think they were around 7 and 9, were just starting to enjoy the experience. She related their enjoyment directly to the fact that they had only recently made good friends.

I’ve been thinking about that idea lately, primarily because I have no friends here. Certainly, my Spanish has improved a lot – I can order food and beer and get us around the city fairly easily. But, that gets old pretty quickly when you are trying to make a friend. My other problem is that although I can get my point across (I’m pretty sure), I have a hard time understanding when people talk back to me in sentences. It really limits relationship building when you can’t understand what people are saying to you.

So, in the earlier post about homesickness, I said that I was the only person in the family that wasn’t homesick. That wasn’t truthful, I now realize. I think that I am some degree of homesick. Not homesick for the lifestyle or comforts, but for the people that I can’t be with.

I want to drink a beer with my friend in his backyard. I want to play a game of backgammon with my friend that lives across the street. I want to bullshit with my neighbor in the park while he walks his dogs. I want to hug my mom again.

I wrote a poem about my condition.

Stranger

There are a million people in this city. But I can’t talk to any of them.
My best friend is the garbage man.
But all I dare say to him is hello and how are you doing.
I want to tell him how I imagine the tired, dusty women
hawking their candy and cigarrettes look at me like a modern day Jesus
and the New Man that El Che died for spends his afternoon in the park watching a volleyball game.
I want to tell him how the boot blacks have more polish on their faces than they do on their own shoes and the children juggle hope in the street.
I want to tell him how the dogs scavenge at night with their tails tucked between their legs and when the clouds part, I can hear centuries in the sunshine.
But I don’t tell him any of these things. I’m afraid that I won’t understand his reply.

So there it is. Another, unfunny, melancholic blog post from Comedy Central. But, truly, I don’t really think that life is a shit sandwich. I just used the quote to get your attention. Life is more like a salami and cheese sandwich with lettuce and spicy mustard. And that’s good.

The Year was 2008 . . .

Ever see those lists that tell you what the price was for an item in a particular year? Like, in 1970, a gallon of milk cost this much and this much would get you a loaf of bread?

An ex-pat told me that you could live very comfortably in Ecuador on about $30,ooo a year. Of course, he told me, it's costing him about $60,000 a year to live - but chalk that up to his house being over the top, the full-time hired help that he employs, and the fact that he smokes. At a pack a day, two bucks a pack, that can add up.

As for the $30,000 figure he threw out there, I'll let you be the judge.

A liter of milk in a bag costs sixty-two cents. If you want your milk in a carton, it will cost you about thirty cents more.

A loaf of bread will run you about $1.20. A gallon of regular gas costs $1.48 and a few hectares of rainforest. Super costs $2.19 a gallon and the same few hectares of rainforest.

You can buy a fixed lunch at a restaurant - which means you get a bowl of soup, a piece of chicken, some rice, salad, desert and a fruit juice - for anywhere from $1.25 to $3.00. A whole rotisserie chicken costs anywhere from $5.99 to $7.50. We hired a cook and she charges us $10 a day to cook us dinner, not including the cost of the food.

A six-pack of the national beer - Pilsener - costs $2.90. Lately though, I've taken to buying my beer in a 22-ounce bottle at the local convenience store. Depending on who is at the counter, I'll pay between seventy to ninety cents for a bottle. I've started buying the larger bottles because they are returnable. The 12-ouncers get thrown in the dump, or the street. Recycling is a foreign concept here.

Moving on with the essentials, an ice cream cone - 2 scoops - is fifty cents. A grilled banana is twenty-five cents. A bunch of bananas is about fifty cents. Ecuador is the number one exporter of bananas in the world by a long shot. I think you can buy a whole banana tree for around a buck.

Fruit, generally, is cheap. A bag of strawberries - about 30 - is a buck. Six apples for a buck. Five pears for a buck. A papaya for a buck. You can get a dozen eggs for a buck too.

I got my hair cut for a buck. Apparently, this is based on how many hairs need to be cut. Maya's haircut cost $1.50 and Rebecca paid $4. PoPo had her hair dyed for $17. But don't tell her that I told you.

A bottle of water is a quarter. A five-gallon jug of water is $2.50. We boil water from the tap at who knows what cost. Someone told Rebecca that it's not the water that has the bacteria, but the pipes that the water runs through. So, if we could dunk our heads right in the reservoir, we'd have no intestinal worries.

The propane tank of gas that we use to fire our stove to boil our water costs $2.50. The same tank also heats our water for showers and laundry. We've gone through about five tanks since May 15.

Internet costs $50 a month, we think. This is the price our landlord quoted us, but we haven't seen a bill yet. Electricity cost us about $20 a month. The phone was somewhere around $20 a month also. Haven't seen a bill for water.

We pay around $600 a month for a furnished apartment, but we have seen similar furnished apartments for less. I understand you can buy a pretty nice house for around $150,000. Security is extra.

A bus ride is twenty-five cents, and most cab rides are a buck. Renting a car is about $1,000 a month. We rented a car from our landlord for $30 a day - a bargain since that works out to $900 a month. Because Maya and Jonah ate crackers in the back seat, we had to pay to have the car cleaned - which ran $12 for a full detail.

Twenty-five roses costs a buck. Flowers are the second highest export product of Ecuador (behind bananas). In fact, I've heard that because flowers are so cheap, it is an insult to bring them to someone as a gift. That didn't stop me from buying Rebecca two dozen roses for our 8th wedding anniversary on July 2. She already knows I'm cheap so what did I have to lose?

Fish, especially sea bass and trout, which for some reason are in abundance here in the Andes, can be had on the cheap. Shrimp farms line the coast of Ecuador. So, ceviche is generally less than five bucks. I've seen it for less than $2, but intestinal worries have scared me off.

You can get a dish of something called chochos and tostados for seventy-five cents. Chochos are similar to a lima bean (except they are white) and tostados are roasted kernels of corn. They'll also throw in some onions and tomatoes. This dish is missing the tomatoes because Maya ate them all.


You can also get a bag of something called mote with a word that I forget for eighty cents. The bag has three small potatoes, a big pile of boiled kernels of corn, and a few pieces of pork. Yes, it is as fantastic as it sounds. Every night there's a woman who wheels her mote cart to the front of the convenience store where I buy my beer. I love her.

So, I think that about covers the cost of essentials.

As far as recreation goes, a zipline through the tree canopy costs $15. But that price is negotiable. You can rent a four-wheeler or dune buggy for $10 an hour. And you can drive on the street with it.

You can buy bootlegged DVDs for a buck. A movie in the theater is four bucks. I already mentioned in the essentials section that beer is cheap. Wine is cheap too. A bottle of a Chilean red is less than five bucks. We purchased a bottle of $3 rum that tasted every penny of its worth. I put it in the freezer for a few weeks and then it was alright as long as I had plenty of Coca-Cola in the glass. There are more expensive options for liquor.

We had a suitcase repaired for $4. The cost to repair a bedroom door after you've kicked it in to free your child is $61. That was kind of nice. I'm sure that in the states, the contractor would not even have considered repairing the door.

Which reminds me, the other day Maya, Jonah and I spent about an hour watching a man repair the bricks in a parking lot. We watched him smooth sand into the work area, fit each brick into place, hammer each brick down with a mallet, and make sure it was all level by placing a 2x4 over the top.

I've seen guys here smooth concrete with a 2x4 as well. It's funny, because they don't build here using wood. All the structures are concrete. Many of Rebecca's clients at home are construction workers, and she has mentioned that they all mention how amazed they are at the flimsiness of U.S. construction. But, even in a country that builds with concrete, the 2x4 has a place. Whoever invented the 2x4 must be rich.

Work Ethic

Occasionally, after Rebecca goes to put Maya and Jonah down for the night, I'll go to the convenience store near our apartment, buy a beer, and sit at the sidewalk table to people watch. The first time I did this, a boy, probably about ten, hit me up for some change.

He had the dirty look of a street kid. I asked him if he was hungry and he said yeah. I gave him some money and he went into the bakery next door and brought some bread. Now, every time I go out, before I even get to the store the kid is there asking me for change. It's like he has gringo-radar.

That first time, after I got settled at the table, I could see the kid juggling four or five balls in the street at the traffic light. From the vantage point I have from the table, I can just about see the top of his head and the balls making their arc in the air.

I don't usually pay much attention to him after I give him change. There are more interesting things going on. But tonight, I decided to change my vantage point and I got a better look at the kid at work.

Tonight, I could see that the kid doesn't only hit me up for change. He asks just about everyone that passes the corner. This didn't really make me feel any better.

I could also see that he isn't alone. There are two other kids there with him. Another boy and a girl. Both younger (at least smaller). They take turns juggling balls when the light changes red.

I'd bet the girl is Maya's age. She was out there juggling two balls, slowly, up and down, once in a while under her leg. She didn't drop any while I watched. The other boy is better, faster, but the older boy is the best. He has a bunch of balls in the air at different speeds and is juggling them under his legs and behind his back. More practice, I guess.

The kids aren't there during the day. I guess they must be at their other jobs. During the day that corner is the domain of the newspaper saleswoman and the old indigenous woman that sells mandarins or lemons, or whatever fruit she has that particular day.

Begging for Money

From uninvited Guest Blogger, Rebecca:

On my bus ride to work in the mornings, someone begging for money usually makes an appearance. It's interesting though how different it is here, as compared to the US. First, the beggar gets on and recites a story of how he (or she) is blind - or otherwise desperate - and without any means of earning money except to sell these delicious caramels for 25 cents. I don't think selling small trinkets of stuff is really common practice on the DC Metro, but I'm not a regular commuter, so I couldn't say for sure. Secondly, I'm always surprised at how many people pull out their change purses and either buy the candy, or just gives some money to the person outright. Ecuador's a poor country already, but it seems that the people are relatively generous - at least the people on the buses that I ride. (Likewise, I'm often offered a seat when one becomes available, or even sometimes someone stands up and gives me his seat. The same happens regularly when I get on the bus with the kids. It doesn't seem to work as magically with Paul, even when he's holding a sleeping Jonah. I guess there's something to be said for machismo.)

Anyway, consider this post to be me getting on the bus with a bag of caramels and giving you my spiel:

As you probably know, we're here in Ecuador because I'm volunteering (as in getting no money whatsoever) for Asylum Access, a very young non-profit organization that provides free legal assistance to refugees in Ecuador. By advising refugees of their rights and representing them through their refugee status determination hearings, Asylum Access is helping refugees get legal protection so they can assert their human rights. It's a pretty original idea, and one that no other US organization is doing: providing rights-based aid to get people legal refugee status so that they can get out of limbo and begin to rebuild their lives.

I am constantly amazed at the stories I hear from the people who walk through our doors. They tell of scenarios that we Americans only see in the movies, literally. For example I'm currently working with a 23 year old car mechanic from Colombia who set up shop in January. One day in May, four FARC guerrillas came into his shop, dropped off their car and told him to fix it, "or else." Unfortunately for him, he is a diesel engine mechanic and the SUV they brought in was a gas engine. Apparently there's a big difference, at least for him. He spent 2 days working on the car and it ran okay when the armed guerrillas came to pick it up. Unfortunately, he didn't do it right, because shortly after that, the car broke down on the side of the road, smoke spewing from under the hood. The guerrillas stopped a passerby and sent a message to my client: "We're coming for you." When he got the message, he and his assistant took off immediately, abandoning their shop, and a week later were seeking refugee status in Ecuador.

Another client I'm working with is a 30-year old mother of two young children. (I'm most affected by the clients with little kids. I always imagine myself in their place, fleeing with Maya and Jonah in the dead of night, with no snacks or toys.) She was lucky enough to find a job in Medellin, Colombia, where unemployment is pretty high. She sold shoes and earned a decent living. Unfortunately her boss was involved with the paramilitaries, sold stolen cars, and probably was a big time drug dealer, based on the enormous amounts of cash he kept hidden in his mom's house. Her aunt worked as a cook in the boss' mom's house and unwisely started stealing some of the cash. Three weeks ago, the aunt decided to take advantage of the boss being out of town, enlisted my client's husband, and planned a larger theft. They were caught in the act by the boss' sister. The next day, the aunt's body turned up decapitated and otherwise mutilated, with obvious signs of torture. She hasn't heard from the husband since then. That night, she fled Medellin, with her 7- and 2-year old children. She arrived at the Colombia-Ecuador border, alone, afraid, and penniless at 10pm. Maya and Jonah would have been absolutely melting down. I can't even imagine. She crossed into Ecuador, arrived in Quito, and tried calling her family to tell them she was okay. She hasn't been able to get in touch with any of her three sisters or her mother in the 2 1/2 weeks that she's been here. The boss knew where they lived and she now fears that they're dead.

The mechanic's case was initially denied and we're helping him prepare an appeal.

The woman has her interview tomorrow morning to determine whether she is in fact a refugee and whether she will get to stay in Ecuador legally. We think it's a pretty strong case, so we're cautiously hopeful. If her application is approved, this woman will be allowed to start a new life in Ecuador and enroll her children in school. (Unfortunately she's Colombian and black, so she faces enormous discrimination in Ecuador, even if she is legal, but that's a subject for another post.) If her husband is still alive, he'll be able to live here too.

I’m asking you to consider supporting this cause. Our resources are scarce. Of the 9 people on our staff at the moment, only one person, the Program Director, gets any salary at all. All the rest of us are volunteers, committing a minimum of three months to being here and working with desperate people. It's a pretty low-budget operation. Our annual budget for 2007-2008 is only $200,000, so even a small contribution goes a very long way.

Having been relatively successful since its inception less than a year ago, Asylum Access is trying to expand to keep up with demand. Colombians constitute the largest refugee population in the world, and Ecuador is where most of them flee to. Our name is becoming known among the refugee community and more and more people are coming to us for assistance. The clients whose cases we have worked on are getting approved. At the same time, we are working on public policy initiatives to help more than just our clients. The legal standard here is shockingly low and we are working to make the refugee status determination process more professional and up to international standards.

Refugees in the “global south” are generally off the radar for most large funding organizations, and being a young organization, it is difficult for us to run expensive fund-raising campaigns. This is why all of us who work in Asylum Access are turning to those people who we know would take their time to learn about our work and needs (or at least to those people who have enough time on their hands to read this blog.)

I tease Paul about writing long rambling posts, so I will end mine here. If you would like to support the work of Asylum Access, even a small donation will have a great impact. (We are looking to hire a legal director at the bargain salary of $300 a month!) You can donate online here or at http://www.asylumaccess.org/donate.html and you can specify that you want your contribution to go to the Ecuador project. You can also send a check to Asylum Access, PO Box 14205, San Francisco, CA 94114.

Thanks for reading (and donating).

A Trip Back in Time to When MTV Showed Videos

Wednesday was about as hot as it has been at any time since we have been here. Even though I say it was hot, it wasn't hot enough for me to break a sweat. Of course, the most physically exerting thing that I do on any given day is carry Jonah around.

Anyway, in the morning, after Jonah and I dropped Maya at school (where she was making empanadas!) we headed to Gringo-land (aka Mariscal) to inquire about a trip to a jungle lodge. I haven't written much about our August plans - but in a nutshell, Rebecca's last day at work is Friday, August 1. The following week we are planning to spend in the jungle. The week after that, we are planning to spend at the beach. The week after that, we are planning to spend at an organic farm close to the beach. The few days after that will be spent at the beach and returning to Quito for our August 30th flight.

(Column Intermission I - I don't know what has gotten into Maya, but she is currently cleaning the floors in our apartment with a wet rag. Rebecca would never do this. Evidence that Maya is my own flesh and blood. Of course, she's doing it with the rag we use to clean the counters and table, but I don't want to rain on her parade. Go Maya!)

The jungle lodge inquiry with Dracaena Lodge went well (meaning, Jonah hardly interrupted the adult conversation). But because the journey to the lodge involves a three hour canoe ride, I think we will end up going to the Cuyabeno River Lodge, which is only a 30 minute canoe ride.

After we visited the jungle lodge office, I planned to make our way to Rebecca's office to fill her in on what I learned and maybe convince her to come out with Jonah and me for a juice. But, we ran into a couple detours that kept Jonah entertained for the rest of the morning. Breaking dirt bombs on a rock and watching a front-loader pick up stones and empty them into a dump truck.


He and I did stop for a juice before we got Maya, but there was no time to include Mommy.

After we got Maya, we headed out to Parque Alameda to kill the rest of the afternoon. It is getting harder and harder for me to find things to do with them every day. They hate getting in the Ecovia because it is always jam packed with Ecuatorianos. Frankly, I'm not that fond of it either because I have to end up carrying Jonah for the entire ride. And I hate spending the money on a taxi when I could spend a quarter and have the Ecovia take us there. Ah, the price of frugality!

Usually people on the Ecovia will vacate a seat when they see me carrying the boy, but that just means that Maya and Jonah get to fight over who has more room on the seat. This usually ends with me holding Jonah, and Maya sitting in the seat. Lately, they just can't get along over anything. They almost kill each other over who gets to push the buttons in the damn elevator every morning. I think they are ready for a break from each other.

Anyway, Parque Alameda had this bunch of guys dressed like American Indians, playing flutes and other wind instruments and singing and dancing. It was hard to figure out what the heck was going on, but it kept the kids entertained for about an hour. Maya said she liked the dancing the best.

When we got home, there was this nice sushi dinner waiting for us from Kumi.


It was good, but was missing the wasabi. Sushi just isn't the same if you can't use it as a vehicle for a few ounces of wasabi.

Today (Thursday) both kids went to school and I had a Spanish lesson where I learned the conditional tense. What the hell is that, right? I don't know. I'm learning more about Spanish grammar than I know about English grammar. I also told Eduardo (my teacher) that I felt like my vocabulary was lacking and he challenged me to learn ten new words a day. So this afternoon, while the kids played on the playground at the nearby strip mall, I learned a bunch of words about cars. Things like wheel, dashboard, front seat, back seat, etc. I have this picture book dictionary and I kept imagining that the other folks on the playground thought I was studying to be a mechanic.

The playground at the strip mall is a plastic contraption that we are familiar with from home, set in the parking lot of the mall. It's not as bad as it sounds. There is one of those green turf mats under the playground equipment and there are guards that patrol the lot (it's a pretty small lot) and janitors that go around and clean it. With the palm trees right there it feels like a vacation spot.

Plus, the parking lot has a soundtrack blaring out from speakers hidden among the ferns and palms. The soundtrack, as far as I can tell, consists only of Alanis Morissette's album "Jagged Little Pill". I haven't heard the song "Ironic" this many times since when it was on MTV's heavy rotation in 1995.

The playground is a relatively new addition - it wasn't there a month ago. The strip mall is just down the block from us and is where the grocery store we go to is located. The mall also houses a KFC.

KFC is one of only three U.S. chains I have seen here. Dominoes Pizza and Payless Shoes being the others. Dolce Gabbini (spelling?) is also around, but I'm not sure that is a U.S. company.

Maya and Jonah are big fans of KFC. Not the chicken (though, they pester me for it continually, and I have to admit, it does look good) but the playgrounds that are inside each KFC.

Picture the McDonald's playground and I guess you can picture the KFC playground. We go there pretty frequently. It's close (we don't have to get in a bus or taxi) and they like it. Jonah will have his head on my shoulder as I carry him home from school, almost asleep, and we'll walk past the KFC and he'll pick his head up and say, I'm not tired anymore. I want to go to KFC.

We have also made trips to other parts of the city specifically to check out their KFC playgrounds. I don't know what I would do without them.

Anyway, I've forgotten what the point of this blog was (I started it yesterday) so I'll wrap it up like this - go to YouTube and type in Michael Jackson Thriller. Check out the casadofantasma edit. Maya says she likes the dancing part the best.

What Didn't Work

Because I've had it up to my chin with Rebecca, and especially Maya and Jonah, lately, I decided a trip to Papallacta would be the best way to be done with them. Then I could make off with what remains of our meager savings and disappear north into Mexico.

Disguising the trip as a "family vacation" I made sure that we got to the bus station on Sunday morning for the couple hour ride to Papallacta. I purchased the first row of seats in the bus with the fair expectation that we would be crushed to death by oncoming traffic when our driver tried to pass another bus on a curve, on a very steep uphill, going about one mile per hour. But this didn't work. The ribbon of pavement (and sometimes dirt) that traversed this portion of the paramo didn't have anything coming in the other direction except the wind.

Instead, we got to enjoy two hours of blood and guts as "Heroes Shed No Tears", one of the early movies that earned John Woo the right to dazzle American audiences with such classics as "Face/Off" and "Mission Impossible 2", aired at full volume. Five plus years of sheltering Maya from the senseless sex and violence of the American media blown up with one bamboo structure teeming with "bad guys" in Vietnam.

When we finally arrived in Papallacta, a one-dirt-road town, 400 meters above and to the east of Quito, famous for its reservoirs (it supplies the drinking water to Quito) and thermal baths, we drove right through it without stopping. That surprised me, but I worked it to my advantage. I had the bus drop us off east of "town", hoping that something dastardly would happen as we hiked the kilometer or so back up the mountain. It didn't work.

Instead, we got bounced around in the back of this pickup truck/taxi, (but nobody got bounced out) on the way to our hotel.


No problem. I made sure the hotel we stayed at, "Pampas de Papallacta", came equipped with three thermal pools. All along, my fall-back plan had been to turn the three into living prunes. Then, I could sell their clothes for a few pennies and vanish into the jungle.

However, four straight hours of soaking in the pools was still a few hours too few. And, to make matters worse, everyone had fun!


I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. But my plan to starve them by feeding them only crackers and chicken soup didn't work either.


I made a quick call to "Stealth Is Us" to provide some cover while I slipped away into the mist. And this fog provided some real nice cover - for the mountain a hundred yards from the hotel. I understand a bull was able to dash its way to freedom.


After the fog didn't work, I placed my hope in fire. I had made sure to reserve a room with a fireplace. However, before striking the fateful match, I decided that since I would be sleeping in the same room, and there were a group of young locals partying in the room next door until the wee hours, burning the place down would take too many innocent lives. So, instead, we cozied up under the covers with a nice, warm fire smoldering nearby. It was kind of nice, actually.


But not nice enough to change my mind. This morning, after a few more hours in the pools resulted in prune-like tendencies, but no actual-fruit results, we managed to hitch a ride back to Quito with a tour of high-school age Londoners. In my chat with their chaperon, I learned that it was a class of biology students. After picking his puny little brain, I learned that they had practiced some pretty interesting experiments while among the ants and other creepy bugs that call the jungle their home. Some experiments that, with just the right twist, are guaranteed to bring results.

For our planned "family vacation" to the jungle in August, I'm going to be packing a little something extra to make sure a few certain somebodies have the sweetest of sweet dreams. A little sugar in your bed anyone?

Picture Book

Here are some pictures from the last few days. Rebecca played hooky on Thursday and we went to the old town to feed and terrorize the pigeons. They like to hang out in the plaza fronting Iglesia de San Francisco - shown here. The church is something like 500 years old. It really shows its age when you are inside. But it's kind of cool - walking on the bare wooden planks really makes you feel like you are being cultural.

Maya has taken to not liking crusts on her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She eats one every day, so the crusts accumulate pretty quickly. Every two weeks or so, we come to this plaza and feed them to the pigeons.

Here are Maya and Jonah plotting their next move.


And executing it.
The Ecuadorian soccer team has recently won some tournament. It seems everyone owns the shirt. Maya, Jonah and I wanted to be part of the "in crowd" too. Rebecca did not. She said she is going to make us wear these shirts on the plane ride home so she can keep track of us in the airport.

We also visited the Camilo Egas Museum. Camilo Egas is an early twentieth century Ecuadorian painter, famous mostly for his paintings of the indigenous women doing what they do - ceremonial dancing while naked. It was pretty good.

Rebecca and I tried to go this museum by ourselves one afternoon, but it was closed in preparation for an event that night. So, we were happy to make it on Thursday. Afterwards, we got to sit in the courtyard of the museum and make our own art.


Non-sequitor, but here's Jonah looking at some chicks for sale in one of the shops in the old town.
Today (Saturday) Rebecca had to work a half-day so she could take the day off on Monday, when we will be in Pappallacta. So, Maya, Jonah and I lit out for Parque Carolina. We were happy to stumble onto this fair . . .
. . . with everyone's favorite fair activities - bouncing on a rusty-spring trampoline.


There was also a platform about ten feet above a stretched out parachute. You can make out the parachute suspended above the ground in the background of the above picture. The objective was to jump into the parachute from the platform. Maya did it five times (it was a dime each jump). Jonah climbed onto the platform but ultimately would not jump. I only took a video and it won't upload.

The other fun thing was this fleet of Peg Perego battery operated cars. Both Maya and Jonah loved them. It cost a buck for them to take two laps around the sidewalks. The first time they went, Jonah was in this dune buggy type thing that was balls-out fast. I had to run to keep up with him to make sure he didn't steer into anybody. So I had no time for pictures. Maya was on a super-slow three-wheeler - so I had no concerns about her.

The second time they went I switched their vehicles. Maya lapped Jonah twice. And Jonah handled his hog like a veteran. I started to take a video of them but the camera memory card was full.

On the way home, we stopped to watch the Pinguino Ice Cream guys who ride around the park on bicycles with coolers welded to the front of them, play some volleyball. You can make out the front of one of the bicycles with white cooler to the right of the picture. We were rooting for them to win.

Anyway, we are leaving tomorrow (Sunday) for an overnight in Pappallacta. In the meantime, here's a picture of my smart, beautiful, and very sexy wife, Rebecca, hanging out with Jonah in the Plaza de Santo Domingo.