The Notable & the Inconceivable

The Notable and the Inconceivable

Recent Notable Events:

1) This past weekend was Fiestas de Quito. I only truly partied one night, but it was enough for the weekend. I went on a chiva (open-air party bus which has a band playing on the roof) and drove around Thursday night. It was incredibly fun. I also met a very nice man, and we went dancing. One of the best nights I’ve had here. Too bad I’m leaving in two weeks...
2) Friday I went to the mercado artesenal with Susie to do some Christmas shopping, which was fun. Ali, Steven and I went to a very cheap Chinese restaurant in la Mariscal for dinner and it was delicious. We walked through the Mariscal (basically the center of all the bars) for a bit. I loved it- tons of drunk people singing and dancing, but Ali and Steven were not having it. I was going to meet up with my friend Ben, but couldn’t find him, and was still exhausted from the night before, so I went home.
3) Yesterday (Saturday) I went up the Teleferiqo with Steven and Ali. The Teleferiqo is basically an enclosed skilift that goes all the way up Pichincha, the volcano right next to Quito that I can see right now from the window in the living room of my house. It was a great view going up but there was so much fog that we could barely see the city from the top, which was sad. We walked a bit and you could feel the altitude- it is something like 3400 meters, Quito itself is at least 500 less than that. I was definitely breathing hard when we hiked uphill.
4) Ali and I hung out at her house while Steven went to a Persian class (?) Then he came back, we wanted to go to dinner at this Mexican restaurant on our block, but it was closed due to the holiday, so we got in a cab and ended up at S’pan’es, a Colombian fast-food restaurant, which was delicious. I had an arepa with guacamole and cheese and mini chicken empanadas. However this was not a happy meal because Ali had just lost her phone in our cab and thinks her iPod was pickpocketed earlier this week... somber dinner. Steven went home and I slept over at Ali’s.

And for the inconceivable...

1) Exactly two weeks from this moment (clearly as of time of writing) I will be sitting, most likely exhausted, in George Walker Bush International (will they rename it Barack Hussein Obama? Could Texas do that?) airport, waiting for my connecting flight to take me home.
2) In ONE week from today, I will be flying to the south of Ecuador and traveling with my friend Carmen for the week.
*This weekend I was seriously considering backing out on this trip, due to money issues and feeling like I should stay in Quito my last week, but I realized how terrible it would be. Ali is gone next Sunday, and any foreigners staying in Quito will be doing so for exams or to spend time with their Ecuadorian boyfriends, neither of which I care to participate in (I have already arranged to take my exams early and do not want to change that now and study more). So I will be traveling.
3) I will not see any of my friends here for a very, very long time, and I won’t process this until I’m gone.
4) My schedule for this week is as follows: TUES: Literature presentation. WED: MUN Final exam. THURS: LIT Final Exam, Anthro presentation, Anthro Final Exam. ... NOT looking forward to it.
5) Of course finals have to be at the end of the semester, which of course is when you are feeling the most confused, vulnerable and emotional (at least in my case). I spent so much time here seemingly just floating through my days, and now that I am truly happy I have to spend this week studying and stressing about finals, money and packing to go... home? I cried Thursday night, Friday morning in my room, Friday afternoon waiting for Susie at the bus stop. I am a bit more put together now. A bit.
6) Not that I am dreading being home. I think it will be lovely... I’m just not ready.
7) I will be back at Beloit in a bit over a month... I got into all of my classes, which I believe is the first time that has happened since my first semester. So I will be taking:

Politics of Latin America and the Caribbean
Women’s Health
Economic Development
Nicaragua in Transition
Claude Levi-Strauss at 100 (.5 credit)

It is an amazing schedule as I don’t have class til noon on Tuesday and Thursday, and 11:15 MWF. I didn’t do that on purpose- I am actually fond of morning classes- but I think it will be very nice to have mornings free. The classes (I anticipate will) also complement each other extremely well, at least Nicaragua and Economic Development, along with POLS.

Let me know if you are in any of them. Also, anyone know anything about the proposed Spanish minor? Jenny?

8) The economic situation in the US (slash, the entire world). We have been raised in a time of plenty and I think, especially for my/our generation, to see the economy fall apart like this will have an incredible impact on us for the rest of our lives, the same way September 11th did.

I still remember when I found out about what happened. I was in 8th grade at a public middle school in uptown Manhattan (nowhere near the towers), and that morning, parents began coming in and taking their kids out of class one by one. We had no idea what was going on and were quite scared. Finally, between periods, I asked my math teacher what had happened, and she said two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.

“Cool,” I said, having absolutely no understanding of what kind of damage she was referring to, my childish mind unable to imagine the damage which had occurred only miles south of where I lived. I remember walking to my brother’s school to pick him up (about two miles away) and going home with him. I don’t think buses were working after the attacks. When I got home I watched the coverage on TV for hours, and cried.

The next day was one of my best friend’s (still a best friend’s) birthday, and school was cancelled, and we had a quiet lunch. There was a thick layer of dust on the windowsill of our apartment, which had drifted uptown and settled, one of the few things that remained of the Towers.

One night when I was falling asleep- I think my parents were going out- I remember being terrified that an airplane was going to crash into my bedroom, and that nowhere in the city could be safe.

My point being– well, I don’t have a point, but I have many thoughts. How will what happens to us when we are children affect our long-term development? Will we believe we are more prone to disaster? Less likely to trust the people around us?

But then– how can we rebound so quickly? I have no fear riding the subway in New York or walking in crowded areas, and very minimal fear on an airplane. Is it naivety? A necessary mechanism to keep me from going insane? Will these economic events affect our decision-making for decades to come? Will teenagers entering college lean more towards a career path than freedom of intellectual exploration? Will college actually become unaffordable for most American families, as the New York Times predicted?

One thing that scares me is that statistic that graduating from college during a recession decreases one’s income by 10% (that is probably entirely wrong, but it was some significant number). If half a million people lost their jobs in November– people with decades of experience and loyalty are getting fired– how on earth are we going to get jobs? I hate when people deem the current crisis more or less equivalent to the Great Depression. It is not. That Depression has 25% unemployment. We are at 6.7%! Although that number is not considered truthful, as many people have dropped out of the workforce due to the inability to find a job- as well as their lack of hope. It is still not on equal terms, the same way the Attacks on Mumbai are not India's September 11; their death toll not even close to one-tenth of what was experienced in 2001. Not to be callous. It's just one way of determining it. Not to make these issues seem less important than they are or give them less attention than they deserve (uhh, does anyone even read this?), but scaring people with incorrect information does not help anyone.

Depressing, isn’t it?

If you like reading about this stuff, a blog I like is Econowhiner. There are usually two or three posts a day, various things about the economy or tips to save money/ your sanity. It’s interesting. Go look at it.

I should go study or something. I should also start packing (I am determined to have one suitcase packed before I leave to travel next week), but I doubt I will start before Saturday, because it will make me too sad. I am not looking forward to goodbyes. Sorry to conclude this entry about something that happened seven years ago. Processing all my thoughts about the present has been too overwhelming.

Two weeks?!

Puerto Lopez: Isla de la Plata, snorkeling, stirfry, and smiles

So I just got back from my trip to Puerto Lopez, a small fishing town on the beach (Ecuador's coast is on the Pacific). I'll tell you about my trip, starting with the horrible bus ride. The "10-hour" bus ride went something like this:

Wednesday

6:10 PM: Kimberly leaves house to walk to Stacey's.
6:25: Arrives at Stacey's block, tries to call Stacey to open door on street, finds out phone is surprisingly out of minutes, freaks out at the idea of being stranded on a Quito street at night, presses every buzzer on Stacey's building, some male godsend answers "ahh si, un momento" to my stressed "STACEY ESTA ALLI??" and lets Kim.
6:40: Get cab with Stacey and Susie to the terminal.
7:10: Still in cab. Massive amounts of traffic. Pick up Jennifer on her block.
7:20: Arrive to bus terminal, cabbie tries to charge us $1 extra because Jen got in cab, even though we told him we would be picking up a friend. She feels bad, I tell her to get out of the cab. We wait for 8PM bus departure.
8:00: Load onto bus, put our bags below although have extreme desire not to.
8:25: Bus finally leaves. We are agitated.
8:50: Oh, bus is just going to another terminal, not going to start journey! Ha-ha! How funny! We pick up passengers for half an hour, although this is supposed to be a safe bus with a direct route which doesn't pick up passengers.
9:10: 8PM bus starts departure for "10-hour" bus ride to Puerto Lopez, Ec.
10:oo: Scary-sounding noise comes from bottom of bus. I of course start to panic that something has been planted on the highway to stall our bus so it can be hijacked and we can all be robbed at gunpoint. This is due to my paranoia, but actually happens in Ecuador.
...10:something: Bus drivers stand around talking and doing nothing, finally decide to call for another bus.
11:45: (Yes, over an hour and a half later) Second bus arrives. Tired but non-robbed, we all pile on.
1:00 AM: Second bus breaks down. Yes, not kidding, second bus breaks down. I should go into comedy.
1:30: Bus drivers MIRACULOUSLY FIX BUS!!! All passengers in love with said bus drivers!!! Except they fixed the bus in the rain, and come back on and start stripping and drying themselves off with towels. It feels like an odd Ecuadorian bus driver-Chipmunks moment. Stacey and I are sitting directly behind the bus drivers, separated only by a glass panel, and feel quite awkward.
8:45 AM: ARRIVE IN PUERTO LOPEZ!!!! Almost 13 hours later.... exhausted.

Stacey ran off to the scuba shop and got to scuba dive that day, which was awesome, and Susie, Jen and I checked into the hotel, slept and were lazy bums as we we waited for her to come back. We had planned for a beach-bum day after such a long drive, but there was sadly no sun the entire weekend. At all. So we lazed around, had lunch and then dinner with Stacey when she came back from an awesome scuba dive, and went to bed early because we were still tired from the lack of sleep and as this is kind of the off season, not much was going on.

Friday we had arranged a tour of Isla de la Plata, which is known as the poor man's Galapagos, and it was well worth it. We left at 9, took a 70min-sh boat ride out there where we saw whales in the distance (they are usually only there May-Sept., so we were lucky), and walked around on the island. I opted for a shorter walk, an hour and a half opposed to 3 hours, because I wanted to do more snorkeling and I didn't think we would see much more in 3 hours... it's weird, the island is like a desert, everything is dead but there are lots of blue-footed boobies everywhere and another black bird which I don't remember the name of. I also liked that my shorter walk only had 2 other girls on it, Germans, whom I spoke with in Spanish, and our guide was awesome.

I love snorkeling! It was amazing! I'd never done it before and it was hard at first because it is absolutely against human instinct to breathe with your face in the water, but once I got used to it I loved it. I saw a lot of different kinds of fish, and our guide swam down and pulled up a purple starfish for us to see. It's amazing how clearly you can see underwater! We saw tortoises from the boat, but not in the water, because they are very afraid of people. I got to go back a second time when we picked up the whole group, and Stacey took pictures with her waterproof camera. I love swimming so it was really fun.

The ride back... was indescribable. At first we were frustrated that the guides were spending so much time looking for whales because they are supposed to be gone by now... and then we saw two, flipping through the water, they are such huge and majestic animals. We followed them (this part is kind of bad, as the boats here don't really follow any regulations regarding wildlife and we got too close to them, although we didn't harass them in any way except being right next to them) and found ORCAS as well!!! It was amazing! And they were right next to the boat. Then it was sad because the orcas started to eat the baby whale, because its throat is a delicacy... but it was so cool to be right in the middle of all this action and these huge amazing animals. I was honestly afraid they were going to capsize our boat because it was relatively small, and they were swimming under and around it! Unfortunately I didn't get any great photos, but it was wonderful.

That night we just showered and went out to dinner, and woke up early to take a bus 20 minutes north to go hike to a smaller, more secluded and prettier beach. It was about an hour and a half hike, and the beach was really nice, and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (still on a budget!) and went in the water although there was still no sun. After a few hours we walked back, found the bus, showered, had an AMAZING dinner at an Italian place (run by real Italians)- I had legit pesto, DELICIOUS- and took the night bus back.

While it was definitely an enjoyable weekend, and I'm glad I went, I was happy to leave- Puerto Lopez is not a nice beach or a nice town. The streets are falling apart- it looked like they were under construction, but everything was just torn up, and even on the weekdays I didn't see any work being done. There were stray dogs around whenever we were walking outside. We were walking back to our hostel around 9PM- a block and a half off what could be considered the boardwalk, I guess, the road on the water- and these two dogs started fighting with each other and looked like they could be rabid. In addition, three guys started walking behind us, not saying anything but obviously following us... it was uncomfortable, but we got back to the hostel without incident. That is the thing I hate about Ecuador. Always feeling uncomfortable, always feeling that I am being watched, that I am not safe, that I need to watch my back, even in the daytime, even in a smaller town where I know it is not likely anything will happen.

This night bus also left at 8PM, but we got back to Quito before 5AM- so our first bus ride was almost 13 hours, and the second not even 9! Oh Ecuador. We all shared a cab back and passed out because it was close to impossible to sleep on this bus ride as it went so fast.

This week will again be busy as I have real work to do, and birthday festivities to participate in (my birthday is Saturday!!) I am trying to not be upset that I have to go on a trip with a class I dislike and probably wake up around 6AM on my birthday... partying too hard Friday will be regrettable, but probably occur. Sorry mom and dad, you only turn 20 once. Just imagine what will happen next year! Ha ha.

I only have a few more weekends that I can plan trips for, and need to figure out if I actually can travel during finals week, and where to go... I want to do Macchu Picchu, but think it will be prohibitively expensive, as is the Galapagos- although after Isla de la Plata, I don't feel the need to go there. I would love to, but it's too much money right now.

I have to say I am already a little excited for Beloit next semester, except the weather... I miss you all!

Love,
(still a teenager) Kim