El Centro de Muchacho Trabajador

So I suppose its worth writing a blog about the work that I have been doing down here for the past three and half weeks. After about a month of Spanish classes I was able to get a job volunteering at El Centro de Muchcho Trabajador with my cousin Stewarts help. El Centro, http://www.centromuchachotrabajador.org/ , was established in Quito over 40 years ago and their goal was to provide food and an education to the countless number of kids in Quito that have to work for a living. Spend 2 days here and you will know what I am talking about. There is a veritable army of kids who spend their days polishing shoes, or selling packs of gum. Some kids have stands with chairs, although the majority just walk around with small wooden tool boxes full of the different kinds of polish and a dirty cloth or rag. Most of these kids actually have families, but the families are so so poor that they cant even afford to house and feed the kid without the extra income earned from the child.

The kids usually spend about half of their day working in the streets, and then come in for the morning or afternoon to get two meals and classes. The genius of this program is that they incorporate the whole family, because the parents can be the biggest hindrance to the childs education. Before the center, most of the families viewed school as nothing more than wasted potentially productive hours for the kid. Well, maybe not quite that harsh, but at the very least they didn’t think they could afford to loose the money while the kid was in school. So the center brings the families in too and shows them the value of an education (the free meals help as well in this regard).

Within the center I specifically work with a group of boys that, for whatever reason, are behind the rest of the class. Many have easily recognizable learning disorders that will probably remain untreated. Everyday I work with a small group of 4 to 5 boys in a classroom and we go over basic mathematics, reading, and writing. The kids I work with are between 10 and 14 years old, and we will spend several hours every afternoon going over fundamental addition and subtraction between 0 and 20. I never truly appreciated the value of the education I received at a young age until I was working with 14 year olds who were having trouble adding 6 and 9 (that’s 15 for all you liberal arts majors). Through different exercises involving flashcards, holey cards, and math games, we also tackle a fair amount of reading. While my Spanish skills leave much to be desired, Spanish is such a phonetic language that I can read a word and pronounce it almost perfectly. Most letters only have one sound, unlike English where they can have 2 or even 3. So I read with them, and help them with parts they don’t understand. While I might not understand every word, I can pronounce it well so they can understand the meaning and incorporate the look of the word with their already existing vocabulary base.

One of the hardest parts of the job is the stories these kids come from. On the outside they can seem like happy, care-free children, but when you dig a little beneath the surface and stress them out, you see a darker history. I was sitting in class the other day and had a kid go completely comatose on me for the better part of an hour. I was asking him the answer to a question which he must not have known, and got this glazed over look on his face and wouldn’t respond to questions for about an hour. Obviously this was some kind of defense mechanism that he had learned as a child when confronted with a situation or problem he didn’t know the solution to.

Many of the kids have obvious cigarette burns on their arms, and seem to come back every week with some new scar.

The other day one of the my kids (11 or so years old) came in with gritty black mouth, and I asked him what he ate. He didn’t say anything, but halfway through the lesson I realized that he was chewing on a pencil lead. I asked him why? He liked the taste.

It took me about a week to figure out what was going on, but all of the Ecuadorian kids in my class kept talking about this ¨Agua Sucia¨ (dirty water) kid, but there was no one in my class named that of course. Then after about a week I realized that they were talking about the only black kid in my class.

I watch one of my kids (of 11 years) with a usually a nice normal demeanor, drop kick and start throwing punches at the other kids 10 year old face. I mean this kid was punching harder that I have ever seen any 20 year old ¨gentlemen¨ punch at Sewanee. When I pulled him off and took him into the office and asked him why he did it? He said the other kid wouldn’t give him a paper airplane.

I will reiterate what my cousin said in an earlier blog several weeks ago, that I have earned a true appreciation and respect for all people who work with special needs children. It takes a constant ingenuity and an ability to see the world from their eyes. You have to try understand what they are thinking, when they are going to loose interest, and find a way to keep them motivated to learn the task at hand. You have to stay one step ahead of them at all times because the moment you loose one they are gone for the rest of the day. Some days I have a hard enough time motivating myself to learn, much less 5 other kids from Quito who have never excelled in school.

It is a challenge everyday, but one that is teaching me worlds about the pains and joys of working with people much different that myself.

Here Again

Im sorry it has taken me a week to put anything up, but a lot of things have happened to me in the past week. I have been doing some incredible work tutoring math and spanish at el centro de muchacho for street kids and will blog about this as soon as I feel up to it.

Just Thoughts

No picutres this afternoon, just thoughts about this place.

1.) To cross the street here, just like in the states they have lights that show a green person moving, or a red person standing up. Now they might have this in the states, but here the green person is actually an animated LED display that shows a green figure walking. And what does this figure do when the light is about to turn? It actually starts beeping faster and running! The animated display speeds up!

2.) I went to eat KFC (Its HUGE down here) the other day because I was simply had the urge for Fried Chicken (don´t tell me you´ve never had it). And next to this KFC joint is a joint that says ¨Menestras de Negros¨ which literally means: ¨Vegtable stew of the Black People¨ and what do they have next to the sign? A picture of a little black baby with a piece of fried chicken in its mouth! And guess what else? Its a chain! Now I´m not one for strict political correctness, but I think this crossed the line.

3.) I don´t know why the record industry is going after the single mom in Minnosota to something to the tune of like 80,000 dollars when pirating DVDS and CD is like the third biggest industry in South America (alright I might have made that last part up). There is an actual store (and this I am not kidding about) on every block selling pirated DVDs. So I go to get one and buy the Bourne Supremacy for a dollar. I throw it in and I am sort of getting into it despite the really really bad quality, and then I notice something´s wrong. This is not a sitcom, but I still hear laughing at the punch lines. Then people start getting up to go the restroom towards the end of the movie.... I was had again.

4.) For any of the curious out there, there is a hotel Alcatraz in San Vicente, Ecuador on the coast. It was hard, but I decided not to stay there when I went to beach last weekend.

5.) (this is for dad) Second story concrete forms here are held up by several hundred bamboo trunks.

6.) Passed by a dirt bike today, with one seat, and how many people were on it? 4: Dad, Mom, 15 year old kid, and 4 year old. Hey, at least if they had a wreck there wouldn´t be anyone left behind.

Hope everyone is well and has a good thanksgiving. I will be teaching a class; turns out they don´t celebrate thanksgiving down here even though they have a street named after ¨Jorge Washington¨

MHS III

More pictures from Mindo one week ago

Here are some pictures from over a week ago in Mindo, but be sure to check out the blog below I put up yesterday, because I´m probably not going to post for another week. (this stuff takes time!)

The restaurant we discovered at the very bottom of a 45 minute hike down the only foot path in 50 miles. 800 meters below the main road and in the middle of nowhere.

The waterfall that Stewart and I jumped off of. If you look closely you can see the rope you have to hold onto as you slide down to the edge trying not to slip.

The idiot in me forgot to bring chacos to Ecuador, and if you have ever worn leather sandals in the water, you know they don´t exactly hold your feet. So I jery-rigged straps to the back of these so I could take them rafting. Actually turned out alright.

Moss growing next to our table at the restaurant at the bottom of the gorge.

Mindo and the local guy who walks around town with his big green wagon.

How goods are transported in Mindo

Main street Mindo in the middle of rush hour

The hostel we stayed in in Mindo

Here is a boy that hitched a ride on the back of our pickup truck as we climbed up the side of mountain in search of Al Roker.

The filming of the the Today Show. Notice the guy on the right is the chef from Alabama that works here and started the first catering buisness in Ecuador. He gave us a ride back to Quito.

Continued filming of the Today show. Here they have a traditional Ecuadorian band on the left, and they are doing a segment on how the first Panama hat was actually from Ecuador. But now the original company is so highly saught after, that the hats are too exspensive for most Ecuadorians to own at around 1000 USD. So they are exported...

Canoa, and other issues

I would first like to address an adequate complaint of this blog: that it appears like I have been on a four week vacation and I am not really getting around to doing any real service. Well, from the looks of the pictures in the blog, that is a just take. But what have I have not been bloging about is the 8 hours a day, everyday, of studying and working on my spanish. I figured you would never come back and read the blog, because the studying is the antithesis of exciting. Instead I chose to focus on exciting weekend trips. And while the Spanish has not progressed quite as fast as I would I have liked, learning a new language is hard. The spanish training was a necessary precursor to trying to get any work here, volunteer or not, and now I have reached a level where I feel comfortable enough to try and get some work. I start work this upcoming Monday at El centro de Muchacho Trabajador , or The Center for the Working Boy. There I will be helping kids who have to work polishing shoes or selling gum just to make money to eat and live. I will be helping them to read spanish, do math and other basic skills.

*Most of the blog material comes from trips I have taken over the weekend and not from working life during the week*

Now that that has been said, I´ll give you my usual two cents about interesting goings on in Ecuador. For the past few days I took a break with Stewart to check out the coast of Ecuador before he had to go home. Yes, the studying down here was not quite as intense as in Quito, so shoot me, but it is the last weekend I am going to leave Quito for the next five weeks. We stayed in a small hostel in Canoa, Ecuador right on the beach for 5 bucks a night and soaked up beach culture for a few days.

The town of Canoa from the air (see below)

The beach of Canoa at sunset

The town was really small, but had a relatively large population of gringos who had all said to hell with life in the states and lived in Canoa year round. The first guy we met while were down there was a guy named Greg from London, Kentucky. He was in the furniture manufacturing business up until 4 or 5 years ago, when he saw it was headed for China. He tenured his resignation, and moved his small paragliding school he had started (in Huntsville, AL) down to Canoa, Ecudaor. After marrying a Columbian, and buying a hotel he was set.

The local occupation: fishing boats are just left on the shore because the property isn´t quite as valuable as that in the states

So the other evening I am sitting around the hostel, when a group of students studying down here from Washington state pull out a couple of guitars and mandolins. Fortunately for me they were all in bluegrass band back home, and had an extra guitar. For 3 to 4 hours we sat around and entertained Greg and others with traditional bluegrass songs by Old Crow Medicine show and others. Greg was so thrilled, having not heard live bluegrass, and being from Kentucky, that he took us all up paragliding for free the next day.

Paragliding over the pacific ocean

Its a lot cheaper that flying small planes and a lot less noisy!

The next gringo we met down there was on Saturday as Stewart and I were again struck trying to find the Auburn game. This time it was actually on CBS, which we could have gotten on cable in Quito, but of course they don´t have cable in Canoa, just direct TV. Greg tells us that if there is one guy here who would have it, it would be a guy named Tripp who runs the ¨yacht club¨ in neighboring Bahia de Caraquez. At first we were surprised that there was a yacht club in Ecuador, but after a 20 minute bus ride, 10 minute ferry, and short walk, we found the Puerto Amistad Yacht Club http://www.puertoamistadecuador.com/.

Boat Ride to Bahia de Caraquez, there is a reason that everyone has to wear lifejackets...

The reason Greg recommended this place to us was that Tripp was actually from Dothan, ALABAMA. He went to Auburn and was in the telecommunications industry until 5 years ago when he too handed in his two week notice, bought a boat and headed south. He met and married a Columbian, and started this yacht club here in Bahia about 3 years ago.

You too could leave Alabama and start a yacht club!

Or just quit your job and buy a boat!

A few points on Ecuadorian culture I want to get off my chest:

-With gas prices at an all time high in the US I can´t help but bring up the huge discrepancy with Ecuador where a gallon of gas might cost 1.20 and diesel around a buck a gallon. The government clearly subsidizes the gas here either directly, or simply not getting the going rate and selling it to their own country at pennies on dollar. This is something that each and every Ecuadorian can see, and has a daily impact on the cost of their lives. This in turn keeps the costs of buses and taxis down, cars are relatively cheap to operate, and affects the bottom line of every business. No one sees where the government money COULD be going if they simply charged the going rate, and allowed the market to sort it out, and then spent their money on areas where the market will never help:

-Infrastructure down here pales in comparison to everything that you know in the states. I took a 10 hour bus ride from the coast to Quito the other day and we used dirt roads practically the entire route. When you were actually on asphalt, you got sick as the driver swerved from one side of the road to the other to avoid potholes the size of small cars.

-While at the beach, you can´t drink the water just like everywhere here, but on top of harboring disease, the water was actually SALTY. Apparently they have a hard time finding fresh water so they will just give you diluted saltwater...

-Tripp (alabama yacht club owner) says that he pays 250 dollars a month for an internet connection based off of speeds he was getting 12 years ago in the states.

-Electricity is expensive everywhere, particularly because the electricity companies don´t do anything (don´t care) about the fact 70% of the people in Canoa get their electricity by just trying off to a power line next to their house (no meter). As a result of the overtaxed system, the power will go off for18 hours stretches. The meter men say it is not their job to get those people in trouble because they simply check the meters that do exist.

-Education, while in upper level universities is somewhat cheaper here, has problems elsewhere. It takes the children going to school in Canoa 6 or 7 years to finish 3 to 4 years of school, because the school board will simply run out of money and teachers quit.

-The dutch guy, Frans, who ran our hostel (http://www.hostalcocoloco.com/) says he was on the street last week talking to a fisherman about why he wasn´t fishing on what was a great fishing day. This fisherman who is just living from catch to catch in a wooden shack with his family said, ¨I went out yesterday and have enough money to eat today, so there is no need to go out today.¨ Now I am supportive of the live for today lifestyle, but when you have a family to feed as well, and you might get sick next week, I think that he is missing the bigger picture. This is problem indicative of many attitudes here: a lack of planning.

-There is not a city in Ecuador that doesn´t have a building on every block consisting of a concrete form finished to about the second story and then rebar continuing on up to a possibly unfinished roof. The building might be anywhere from a year to ten years old. Ask anyone what happened and they will tell you that so and so got a lot of money one day, had a big idea, and started building this building without the funds to finish it. Now they are losing capital, stuck with an unfinished building, and have no way to finish the project. It almost a culturally accepeted practice to not have a long range plan or any planning in general for that matter.

On a nicer note, you can get shrimp as big as lobsters there for 5 dollars a pound. Stewart fixed this fisherman´s ear the other day and the guy gave him 2 actual lobsters for breakfast!

I´m also planning on putting up some more pictures from Mindo later this week so check those out. Hope all is well stateside.

-MHS

Pictures from Mindo

Here are a few more images I was able to get through, be sure to notice the blog below these explaining some of the images.

Elementary School Playground in Mindo

Unloading the rafts from the truckwith people underneath

An afternoon with Al Roker

Bridge at the bottom of the waterfalls leading to the jump off of the rock ledge

Mindo

*This blog does not have many pictures because I am having a hard time finding a place with the bandwidth to upload them. I hope to have the NBC pictures up on a few days time*

I just got back from another weekend excursion away from Quito. I took classes and worked until about 2 o´clock on Friday afternoon, and then we caught the 3:30 bus (turned out to be the 5:00 bus because our bus broke its axel on the last trip) to a town about two hours north of Quito called Mindo. As we would later find out, Mindo was created by a rich businessman from Quito that had made all of his money writing a ¨history of alcohol¨ and used the proceeds to buy this large piece of old growth cloud forest to harvest the timber. Well, while this guy is out surveying his newly purchased timber has an epiphany, he sees god, and god tells him to protect the forest and not destroy it. From hence was born the Mindo cloud forest and tourist destination.

The journey begins actually before we arrived in Mindo, because as the giant coach bus wound its way around the curvy roads that descend from 9,500 feet to 5,500 feet, the driver must have been in a fight with his wife ON THE CELL PHONE. He barrelled down the road, passing cars at 80. In Latin America it is considered customary to pass when ever given the option, and so our driver was often three wide across blind turns while on his cell phone. Needless to say I never want to sit up front of a coach bus here again.

The Hostel in Mindo was recommended by a friend from the South American Explorers, and at 5 dollars a night, how could we turn it down? The nicest old lady in the world shows us our rooms. As she showed us the first room (Stewarts) and she opened the door, something was immediately different. It was then I realized that Stewart’s room was simply missing a wall! Situated on the second floor, his room consisted of a ledge built underneath an overhanging barn roof, just wide enough to hold the bed, and with safety board built in. My room had walls and windows, but no glass in the windows...

After settled into the Hostel, we heard the crickets for the first time since leaving the states, and faintly, far off, Roadhouse Blues by The Doors being sung in perfect English. Following our ears across town, we found an open air bar with dirt floors, selling nothing but the local beer in bottles, and a bunch of pictures of Bob Marley up on the walls. After asking the barman for his best beer (he only had one kind) we saw a three piece local Ecuadorian band wailing out some Eric Clapton. Keep in mind that this is the FIRST time I had heard American music in about a month... Upon set break I find out that the singer/lead guitar player is a 45 year old English teacher at a high school in Quito, never been to America, and ¨learned all his English from rock n´roll.¨

Awesome

The next day we went down to the center of town and caught a ride up to the waterfalls with a bunch of study abroaders from Oregon (don’t worry; they didn’t know you Bobby I asked). Now a ¨ride¨ in Mindo consists of jumping onto the back of a pick up truck that has been specially outfitted with metal bars to hold you inside as you pay a dollar for the scariest and fastest ride you have ever been on up the side of a mountain. We got to the top only to find that we were going to have to walk down to the waterfalls about 700 meters, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize that’s over 2000 feet, and its not horizontal, that’s 2000 vertical feet. So we hike down the skinny, narrow as all get out trail only to arrive upon a huge house with concrete water slide and 40 foot jump over the waterfalls!

This is a side note about SA (South America) in general, in America if you arrive upon a house or other large edifice in the woods, you are used to having some kind of access road that you used to get here. Here you can walk along the most unrecognizable trail in the world only to arrive upon a mansion because all the materials were brought here by hand down the same scary narrow trail you walked down

On the way back we stopped by at a local coffee plantation and for the first time I saw what a coffee bush looks like. This is a beverage that I have consumed on a weekly basis for the past 8-10 years, and to date I had no idea what a coffee plant looks like.

The plant can produce 30-40 pounds every year for up to 20 years I think it was. The bean (surprise) is actually green with a red outer covering when ripe.

The next morning we got up and went ¨tubing.¨ Again to harp on a familiar refrain, the Ecuadorian idea of tubing is a little bit different. They take about 6 or 7 18-wheeler tubes (with scary metal air input still attached); lash them together, and then put 4 to 5 people on them as they ride down a river that rivals the Ocoee. These too are lashed to the top of a big pickup truck for the ride up there (see soon to come picture).

We came back that afternoon (Sunday) and began our search for the Today Show crew. Stewart and I became friends with a local guy, Milton, who ran the tourist information office, and together we called all of the rich haciendas around Mindo to see if any of the NBC crew was staying there. No luck with the first five, but at last this guy Milton calls his friend that works close to one the places called Bella Vista, and he says that he ¨thinks¨ that the NBC crew is up around this town that calls itself Mindo, but is actually separate.

Off of this tip Stewart and I paid another truck driver 10 bucks to hitch a ride up to this bird preserve/fancy resort called Bella Vista. Sure enough after a another 70mph harrowing ride for thirty minutes in the back of a truck, we rolled up on three very large vans full of technical gear, a bunch of cables, and several mean looking security guards armed with sawed off shotguns. We had arrived, here was NBC! We off-loaded and began to walk through the gates to this Swiss-family Robinson style series of houses perched on the top of a cloud forest mountain, over 7000 feet up and on the equator. You could tell Stewart and I were not their usual fare because we were immediately surrounded by people offering to help, asking if we had reservation. It was a little intimidating at first, but then we saw why we came: there sitting quietly on the porch of one of these houses was the man himself, Al Roker. We talked to Al briefly, asked the usual questions: ¨how’s the weather?¨ ¨so where you from?¨ ¨what do you think of Ecuador¨ etc. Then we got a picture and were invited to come back the next morning for the show.

Sure as rain, we came back the next morning for the show, and got to watch it live in person. Stewart and I were the ONLY two Americans there that had any idea of what the show was or the fact it was being broadcast live to 30 million Americans. While we were there watching the show, we got to talking to chef who was doing all of the food for Al to eat (clearly a native Ecuadorian but with perfect English). He asks us the standard questions, but when we responded that we were from Alabama, he was taken aback a bit. Turns out that this guy’s dad was from Alabama, he lived there for 10 years, and went to UAB! He came back here and started Ecuador’s first catering service (needless to say this guy is really successful) and the short of it was that this guy gave us a ride back to Quito for free while we caught up on the goings on in Alabama.

While we didn’t get interviewed on the Today Show, we still got to hang out with the crew and met a new friend. All in all a good weekend! I start work next week teaching Ecuadorian street children math and how to read!

Please check back in a few days to see if I got the pictures up…

Till next time

Merrill

Four points on Ecuadorian Culture

I thought I´d leave a short simple post, sans pictures, about a few funny things that I´ve noticed around here in case you don´t want to dig through a long post. However, if you haven´t done so, be sure to check the one post previous to this, and my buddy Bobby´s blog: http://bobbyinrwanda.blogspot.com/ he finally put some pictures up, and his work is in a lot of ways more interesting than mine.

1.) So the first time I saw this I couldn´t believe it, but now I have seen it several times. For those of you who aren´t aware, the light emited from an arc welding torch is one of the brightest sources of light that people come into contact on a daily basis. Ask my friend Micky Momen and he will tell you that just a few seconds of staring at one left him in tears for days, with possible permanant retinal damage. The only way to protect youself fully is to have a full helmet that not only proctect the eyes, but shields the skin from an almost garaunteed UV skin burn. What do they do here? They JUST CLOSE THEIR EYES! I have walked by at least three men with peeling faces and probably just the hint of a retina left as they have succumed to the UV burns induced through the eyelids.

2.) Do you ever ask yourself what happens the maniquins from the early 90´s with the bleach blond steller swept back haircuts? The kind with a permanent plastic coiffe that are deserving of a pair of cut off jeans, a kanarly neon wind breaker, and some really sweet Ray-bans? Well, I really didn´t until I got here and saw them in every store window, towering two or three feet above the average ecuadorian they are catering to... I guess they are cheaper?

3.) So Stewart and I are riding to school this morning in a packed trolly bus, and I look over at the bus next to me. There pressed up against the window of a commuter coach bus was a mom. The mom was supporting her 5 year old boy who was even more pressed against the window. The lower half of the window was open. The boy was slightly bent at the waist as a stream of urine came out from his nether regions, out of the bus, 10 feet of the ground, and onto the taxi waiting below. I´ll just say that no one watching this affair had any questions about whether he was circumcized... When you´ve got to go I guess you´ve got to go.

4.) For those of you somewhere more remote that Quito, Ecuador, I´m happy to let you know that yesterday was Halloween everywhere except Quito, Ecuador. Thats right, in the 12th hour the new president, Rafael Correa, embolded by recent sucesses in .... ? decided to make Halloween illegal. Annoucend in a national press conference yesterday by the man himself and his sidekick the chief of police, anyone caught wearing abnormal costumes of any sort would be arrested. Any bars displaying Halloween decoration (most of which were already displaying at the time of this announcement) would be shut down and the owner would be thrown in jail for seven days. Think about this the next time you think your freedom is speech is being trampeled!
Happy Halloween! This weekend Stewart and I are going to Mindo, Ecuador where Al Roaker (so?) will be broadcasting LIVE the Today show. They are do a special on the climate and have someone on the Equator, and at both poles. So look for us Monday Morning in this secluded cloud forest hiding between the trees with signs that say: HEY MOM IM ON TV!

Ruca Pichincha

I probably should be studying and not making another blog entry after the most recent one this past Saturday. However I can't help not telling the everyone about an incredible experience I had yesterday. Several students from the spanish school I have been studying at, and I, decided to hike up to one of the peaks of volcanos that surround Quito. The combined peaks are known as the Pichincha range, and the one we chose to hike up is known as Rucu Pichincha. The young English guy in our group assured us it was an easy ascent and I, not having a guide book or any other source of information, agreed to come along. We actually were greatly helped in our ascent by a new cable car that the Ecuadorian government has built called the teleferico. This brand new cable car took us from the floor of the city of Quito which is about 9,500 feet, up to 12,800 feet (according to the altimeter on my watch).


We began our trek along some gently sloping hills, gradually easing along with no idea of the trip we were about to undertake. Slowly but surely the nicely sloping hills turned into a steeper and steeper vertical challenge. This would not be thought of as particularly intense, but due to the altitude, the lack of oxygen made each step just a little more difficult.


Our grouped hiked along the ridge of a vast expanding sierra plain, with little more that the occasional bush to break the sea of tundra grass tufts. As we ascended higher, breaking 13,000 feet, the altitude began to really take its toll. The Ecuadorians don't believe in switchbacks, and so I would have to hike for 10 minutes only to rest for five. Remarkably once you stopped you quickly recovered as the the oxygen content of you blood climbed back up.


Two hours into the hike we reached the base of what could be described as the main peak; this is where it went from very steep to veritably vertical. By this time we were all somewhat fatigued, but persevered on.



The path wrapped around the back side of the mountain and timidly hugged the side of a 50 degree slope that at times dropped at least 1-2000 feet to your right before flattening out.



Now I was limited to 100 meter jaunts before I was completely out of breath. The pounding in the back of my head grew louder, and I could hear every beat of my heart as it resonated across my skull.


After about 45 minutes of this we reached the final pitch. Now about at 14, 600 feet, we were approaching the highest altitude in the whole lower 48, and we still had a little under 1,000 feet left to go. Now almost 3 hours into a very strenuous hike, I was more than a little fatigued. As I stared up at the last pitch I was a little disheartened; squinting against the sun I saw a 600 foot 45 degree slope of pure sand, banked by even steeper semi vertical boulders. After you got past the sand, it was all sharp rocks that led to a final scramble for the summit.


Digging foot steps into the sand, I tried not to think about the fact that if I slipped or fell, it would be a nice 1000 foot slide until it bottomed enough to stop myself (although by that time I would probably be unconscious and close to death). I could only go about 10 meters at a time before I had to stop for air, and by now the altitude made me feel like I had had about 4 or 5 beers, stumbling trying to put my foot in the right place. If you didn't stop to get air and get your oxygen levels back up, your vision would start to faintly dim and stars came out. I am sure there are those out there that have been much higher, but this is also the same altitude at which oxygen is mandatory for the cabin and crew of all unpressurized aircraft.


45 minutes later and 400 hundred feet higher we were at 15,000 feet and I was definitely having coordination issues. This is not a reassuring fact when I still had 400 feet left on the most exposed ridge on the mountain with a 1500 drop on one side and 2000 on the other. Clumsily I passed several people too illequipped to go further and scrambled up a pitch that was not actual rock climbing, but more that made up for this in the danger provided by the loose rocks and debris comprising foot and hand holds. And I was still having trouble coordinating my movements as my head now felt like one giant bubble about to burst.


And then rather suddenly it just flattend out. I was there! I had reached the top and felt dizzy just standing up staring out across the plains I had just conquered. 15,416 feet, the highest I had ever been, and higher that anywhere in the lower 48.




After a moment more I regained my composure and slowly made my way back down the crumbling rocks until I was back on the trail again 30 minutes later. While my coordination improved the lower I got, I now had a really killer headache that throbbed all the down, bad enough to throw up once or twice. I was assured that this was normal, and would go away by tomorrow!

Intrigued by the experience, I am going to look into other opportunities for some real mountaineering here in Ecuador!

Three weeks in, 9 more to go

Bird Study #1

Bird Study #2

One of the Main Squares on Old Quito

So because we won the pub quiz last week, we got a discounted meal at this local Vietnamese restaurant run by an Ecuadorian who lived in Louisiana for 10 years. Appetizers: 4 dollars, Entree: 8 dollars, 3 Drinks: 4 dollars, Total cost: 16 dollars, Living in a less developed county: a little cheaper

Bird Study #3

One Saturday later I am here with a status update. Still in Quito, and I have done nothing extremely exciting since last week, but who am I kidding; everyday here is exciting in its own way. I finished my third week of Spanish classes this past Thursday, and now I can carry on basic conversations with people to get the things I need. My basic routine was this: get up about 6:00, take a shower, eat breakfast with the rest of the family and Stewart, and then study till about 8:30 where I would walk down and grab the morning bus in from old town to the area where my classes are (about a 15 minute bus ride, 40 minute walk). Spanish classes would last from about 9:00 to 1:00 and then after 1:00 I would walk down to La Mariscal and catch a cheap lunch or almuerzo for about 1.50 somewhere at one of the countless lunchtime ¨restaurants¨ that that offer this service. I say the word restaurant hesitantly because most of these places are more akin to someone’s garage than what we would think of as a restaurant in the states. There will be a table, some plastic chairs around this table, and if you are lucky a plastic table cloth. There is no menu, but often a choice for beef or chicken for the main course(pollo o carne for the less knowledgable). The one dollar meal will consist of a thin soup (often with recognizable chicken body parts see earlier blog), followed by a main dish of meat, rice, and some kind of green. Juice and a desert accompany this setup. I say all of this only to reinforce that this will be pretty much exactly the same everywhere you go in Quito for one of your meals. If you want to eat other fare for lunch or dinner, there are plenty of options, but expect to pay 3 to 4 times more (4-5 dollars) for a nice meal, and 10-11 for a really, really nice (i.e. Bottega) meal.

After lunch I´d find a cafe somewhere and work on the computer for an hour or two, study for 2 or so, and go home for dinner (which I have with my family and Stewart every night).

So Stewart and I got booted from the Marine mansion last week in the middle of the Florida game, because apparently the guy who we were a guest of wasn’t allowed to have guests (got busted with his girlfriend last month). They just got a new sonofabitch CO that lives in the house and likes to enforce rules. But before I go on I have to tell you a little bit about this house. The house was built in the 1970s, BUT somewhere along the lines one of the Marines requisitioned 50 grand a year to pay for ¨house expenses¨ in addition to their own salaries, and a cook, maid, and Ecuadorian security guard (for 6 people). So they have a huge green backyard, the first one I’ve seen since I’ve been here, barbeque pit, and gym. They have a huge movie theater room, with stadium seating and plush red leather sofas as seats, and through the armed services they get new movies on DVD within two weeks of coming out in movie theaters in the states. They have a giant pool room, fully stocked-aged oak bar, dance floor, library/reading room, and industrial kitchen. I guarantee you they will never be stationed somewhere so nice for the rest of their lives.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I want to talk about shopping here. In Alabama I am used to having to go to a store just for what I need; if I need office supplies I go to the office supply store, if I need clothes i go to the one big clothes store, etc... Here there a very few chains and no large stores; there are not even areas just for shopping (bad zoning) just lots, tons, of tiny shops selling everything from motorcycles and washing machines, to just socks and beer. So finding exactly what you need can be kind of a hassle. You have to plan what you need probably a week in advance and keep this in the back of your mind the whole week while you walk past shops on you way to work, and then hope that you find what you need eventually. It is definitely a different way to doing business than I am used to.

After Stewart and I got kicked out of the Marine’s mansion last week we were stuck trying to find a spot to watch the Auburn game that came on later that night. (In hindsight I wish I had not spent so much time trying to watch a game that killed our chances of SEC championship) So we went to the fastest connection in town, this coffee shop in la mariscal, hooked up Stewart’s computer, and watched the game off of a technology known as sling box. One of Stewart’s friend’s has a machine hooked up to his cable television at home, and through a special program over the internet we were able to watch his cable television on a laptop computer in a small coffee shop with wireless internet in the middle of Quito, Ecuador. For three and a half hours we stared at the small screen, trying hard not to cheer too loudly in what I would describe as the worst atmosphere to watch the game. (Small quiet sophisticated chic coffee shop). In a strange series of events, the coffee shop was actually owned by a graduate of Ole Miss.

1.) The 25 cent bus that I take everyday gets absolutely packed, as do all the busses here during rush hour. The north to south layout of the city affords for some fantastic bottlenecking with traffic in a city that doesn’t quite have an integrated traffic net system. So yesterday afternoon I finally find a lamp that I need for my room (see point above on stores). And buy it only to realize as I walked out of the store that it was 4:00 pm on a Friday afternoon, and I had no way to get home sans bus. Nonetheless I persevered and rammed myself into the sea of people already on the bus as the doors opened. The trick is that you have to do this right before the doors close so that as the doors close behind you, they push you into the crowd without effort and there is nothing the people can do to stop you. Sitting there on the bus I am trying to make out the broken Spanish over the intercom as it calls out the stops. I manage to catch that my stop is out of order and the bus is going to go on past it (which would have been a 20 minute walk). I realize all this as the better previous stop is closing. I rush out through the doors as they close, but do not make it in time. As the doors come to a complete close, I have one foot, one arm, and a lamp outside the bus while the rest of my body remains inside the bus. The bus drivers starts out of the station while I try to hold onto my lamp that is hitting the street signs along the way outside of the bus. Eventually with the help of the people around me yelling puerta (door in spanish), I get the guy to stop and hop out unharmed except for a scratched lamp.

Till next week...

Merrill