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!