Day 6: Rage Against the Machine
Since I didn´t sign up to have classes on Saturdays, I was able to sleep in for the first time in two weeks. However, my internal clock has reset to the point that ´sleeping in´means waking up before 9 AM.
Two days ago, I discovered a Porta phone service center in the basement of the Supermaxi mall, so after breakfast, that was where I headed. I explained the problem - that my phone could make international calls, but had trouble receiving them - as best I could in my still-limited Spanish, only to have the service person conclude that my phone was simply inferior, and only Porta´s better quality phones could easily receive calls from outside Quito. None of the phones she named cost under $100, and for reference, the phone I bought cost just under $45. I suspect this is at least partly a ploy to take more of my money, so nothing doing - I don´t want to waste cash if the more expensive phone also doesn´t work.
My next stop was a nearby cabina (similar to an Internet cafe, but for telephones) to explain the situation to my family. I´ll keep the cellphone, since I can still use it to call people in Quito, and hopefully the one waiting for me in Puerto Lopez will work better. In the meantime, I´ll keep in contact through the cabinas, and give Isabel´s number if I need to be reached in an emergency.
To cheer myself up, I went back to the mall and bought shampoo, makeup, and stockings. I then returned to Isabel´s and spent the rest of the afternoon practicing my reading Spanish and trying to think of lesson plans. There are several songs I know that might be very good for teaching vocab, so I had fun translating those in case I need to explain their meanings. Current numbers include the Beatles´¨All Together Now¨, a cleaned-up version of ¨I Got Life¨from Hair, and Tom Chapin´s ¨Sailing to the Sea¨and ¨Long Way Home¨¨. I´m definitely open to suggestions, so long as they´re appropriate for elementary school and ones I´m familiar with.
The evening was fairly uneventful. I had another try at Ecuadorian TV, and discovered a showing of Beethoven´s 2nd (perritos San Bernardos!). It´s not a great movie, but it´s one I know well, so it was fun to watch it in Spanish and see how they translated things.
Normally on weekends I stay up very late, but my internal clock has kick in so strong that I was asleep before midnight. Oh well.
Day 7: The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Volkswagens
Today was an interesting one. Isabel´s staff don´t come in on Sundays, so it was just me and her, and since she´s not very mobile, I did things like fetching the telephone and answering the door. She invited me to go out with her and her friends later in the day, and I accepted, not yet realizing what that would entail.
I´d told my mother the day before that I would experiment with calling her cellphone today, so I headed out on the town after breakfast, only to find that all the cabinas I knew were closed. I´ll have to remember this in the future.
Isabel´s friends arrived in the early afternoon, and we all piled into the car and drove to Mitad del Mundo, a tourist spot built on the Equator. On the way, we stopped to shop for a few things, and since there were lots of dogs roaming around (my favorite was the black Sharpei in the hot pink sweater, being carried like a child by one of the other shoppers) we all chatted about our dogs. Isabel has two who´ll be coming home next weekend, and I´m looking forward to meeting them.
The drive to Mitad del Mundo was amazing. It´s located outside Quito, further down in the valley, so there were spectactular views of the mountains, as well as more views of Quito itself (from below, a lot of the buildings look like Lego constructions!) Mitad del Mundo itself, though, wasn´t that great - a tourist trap on a grand scale, complete with small carnival rides. Actually, we didn´t go into the site itself, because we were trying to find a restaurant with close enough parking for Isabel to walk it.
On the drive, we passed by a restaurant advertising ´Pollo y Cuyes´(chicken and guinea pig). Tryng to make conversation, I remarked on how it was interesting for me to see this kind of thing, since in the US, guinea pigs are pets. The Isabel gang thought this was very funny, and talked about ways to serve cuy, asking if I would eat one (I said I would, if it wasn´t one I knew personally). The discussion continued into lunch; we went to a buffet-style restaurant, where the name of the game was ¨What Can We Make The Gringa Eat?¨I was big entertainment.
Not that the food wasn´t good, though. There was a lot of chicken, fish, potatoes, unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, and a dish whose name I never caught: it´s a sweet, squashy thing made with eggs and fruit, wrapped in a big leaf. The only trouble came from the fact that the Isabel gang doesn´t understand concepts like ¨my stomach is full¨ and ¨I have a low alcohol tolerance¨ (we all shared a bottle of wine). When they realized they couldn´t stuff any more into me, we drove back to Quito, where I was very quiet due to the views and the wine.
Back at Casa de Isabel, the rest of the group went off to play cards or something, while I crashed hard and didn´t emerge for the rest of the day. Those egg-fruit-leaf things will knock you out.
One more thing I must mention. You know how in the US, the old Volkswagen Beetles are considered unsafe? Well, they must have retired them to here, because I´ve been in Quito only a week, in a radius of only a few miles, and I´ve counted well over two dozen, not to mention a few old minibuses as well. It´s kind of fun - Herbie´s Family Reunion in Ecuador.
Now that I´ve been here a week, I think I have a pretty good idea of where things are and how long it takes to get there, so tomorrow I´ll begin playing tourist. Let the photos commence!
