Lots of 8-year olds

All is well in Quito. Actually that's a horrible statement to make - all is probably not well in Quito...but I suppose most is well for me.

I really like my school. All of my teachers are excellent. I'm taking 3 Spanish classes to finish up my minor, experimental drawing, experimental painting, and - for the first time in 7 years...piano lessons! My favorite without doubt is my painting class. My professor is teaching me how to mix my own paints and is really helping me expand my creativity. I had drawing for the first time this Monday and when I rolled into class the new Radiohead was playing - one of the students' cds - it was so comforting to hear "my" music not through an iPod for the first time in 3 weeks. I realize that probably sounds lame, but it remains a highlight of this week.

The one frustration I am having is that it is difficult to make Ecuadorian friends at school. Our group from U of I has gotten really close and we've made some good friends from Madison (WI), but the Ecuadorian students are generally not all about branching out of their cliques to befriend Americans. Mind you this is also the upper-tier of Ecuadorian society, so there are designer labels staring me in the face in every hallway, high-heels, designer sunglasses, etc. - and while I'm not one to necessarily rule people out because they're clad with labels, I wonder and perhaps hesitate that they might not accept my plain t-shirt that, despite the fact that it is FROM American Eagle doesn't yell "AMERICAN EAGLE" across my chest at everyone I pass. It's also difficult because all the students in my Spanish classes are gringos. I'm really glad that I have the boys my age in my family to talk to and hang out with when I come home...but I really want to meet more people at school.

Speaking of home, my brother Gabriel came home two Thursdays ago. We hit it off right away when I took him out to La Mariscal with some friends that night. We get along really well, play Fifa '08 soccer on Xbox, have similar musical tastes, and he helps me translate things. He and Carlos came out with me last night again to La Mariscal and we had soooo much fun. It's awesome that so many boys here can dance so well - they're teaching me, for once, how to move my hips. And I'm getting pretty decent at, at least, following their lead. I'd love to take some dance lessons so I know what exactly it is that I'm doing.

A ton of our monsterous U of I/UWMadison group took a trip to Atacames this past weekend. It's a beach on the coast in the province of Esmeraldas - almost directly west from Quito. After the 7 hour bus ride from 11:30 at night until 6am, we were so excited to get on our feet again. The stops that the bus made to let people off were hilarious. Apparently they were scheduled and were at designated locactions, but many of them seemed to be no more than random stops on the side of the road. I was really curious about where those who hopped off were going and how they were going to get there at 4am. One time these two guys got off and pulled this HUGE cooler out from the bus storage, threw it in the back of a pickup truck that was already waiting on the side of the road, jumped in the truck, and drove off. Interesting.

While driving along as the sun came up I felt like we were approaching the edge of the world. Although it had been dark early on in the ride I could distinguish really thick brush along both sides of the "highway". But eventually the heaping palms and ferns thinned into flat terrain with an occasional tree or shrub and bunches of shack-like shops and hotels scattered along the road. As we got closer to Atacames I swear I could feel the ocean. We arrived at the desolate bus station at which there were tons of guys swarming around us to get us in their taxis to take us to our hotel. So we took probably the most laughable mode of transportation ever to our hotel - motortaxis, which consisted of either a bike or a motorcycle in either the front or back of a open-air metal cart with a little leather seat to sit 2-3 people and a joke of a tarp over our heads. I took a video on the way to our hotel - this is one of the main strips of the "town", so you can get an idea of how intimidatingly large and busy it is.



We slept for a few hours and then headed to Beach Sua (of the town adjacent) all day. It was so much fun! We went on this banana boat ride (a giant blow-up banana that seats 6 and is pulled by a boat) and got thrown off it a bunch of times...someone has pictures of this, I'll put them up if I get them - it was funny. There were crabs all up and down the beach. And actually, for dinner I ordered Cangrejo (crab) and had my first pound-it-out whole crab (actually 2) and it was really, really good. That night we just stayed in at our hotel (there were about 16 of us) and everybody got thrown into the pool in their clothes. Luckily I was not one of the ones who had already gone to sleep and got pulled out of bed and thrown in :)

The next day we went to Atacames Beach, which was a lot larger, with a lot more people and a lot more shops, and Reggaeton playing all day long. I almost got pulled into the ocean forever because the rip tide was so powerful; I was swimming as hard as I could in place for about 2 minutes, but I finally got out of it. And I wasn't even far out. It was an extremely strong undertow - it was like, if you couldn't touch the bottom, you probably shouldn't be there, and even if you could touch the bottom, it would still pull you. Three other people in my group got "rescued" by a boat because they couldn't swim back a little bit later...haha...kindof. Lots of other funny things happened. Lauren ordered a rum and coke when this guy came around asking us for drink orders, and he returned with a fifth of rum and two liters of coke...hahaha. But we weren't exactly upset. These little kids befriended us and stayed by our chairs the whole day - 5 little kids all about 8 years old. We wrestled and played all kinds of games with them, and then after 5 hours of fun they started crying and begging us for cookies because they said they were starving (they were obviously poor/homeless) so Lauren and I went and bought them this huge thing of cookies for 90 cents - big deal, right? One of them was at the beach bar we went to later that night (the whole coast was lined with bars, music, dancing) just chilling out watching everyone on a barstool (odd?) and we shared our potato chips with him.

Tuesday I started volunteering at a school in Lumbisi - an indigenous village near Cumbaya (where my University is) - about an hour away after I get on the different buses I need to. When I got there they just said to me "You can teach music, right?", handed me a drum, a xylophone, and 5 recorders, gathered "the band" - eight screaming, running, frantic 8-year-olds - and led me to my room. I was never introduced by the administration to "the band" or given any instructions, so...I just...started. After I finally convinced "the band" that they had to stop playing the noise they were making (with the instruments they had grabbed as soon as I had set them down), I had their attention for a little while. It's difficult to explain to them that they should probably know the basic components of rhythm, counting, and how to read a little bit of music before they can produce actual melodies. They just want to play SO badly that they are nearly unwilling to sit still and listen for even five minutes. Their logic is pretty frustrating. But when I start playing a little bit they get really excited, really quiet, and will sit and watch and then listen to my lesson because they want to be able to do it too. It also didn't help that there was no supervision at the school to help control the herds of out-of-control kids who decided to run into my room and start banging on things and fighting my students during recess. I quickly figured out to put together the phrase "Silencio, o afuera!" (Be quiet or get out!) But I did gather a crowd of about 15 "good kids" who came in from recess and just sat and watched filled with wonder - probably 50% at the fact I was teaching music, and 50% because I am white and have blond hair. A bunch of kids would just come up to me and touch me and try to hold my hands and the girls would tug at my hair. I'm going back today (after I finally get to sleep) for my second exhausting yet rewarding day.

The greatest lesson I've learned so far is to stop thinking, and just feel. The first day my painting teacher told me that to let my creativity go was to - "No pensar - solo sentir" (It's not about thinking - just feel). Since then I've tried with more purpose to stop being so ridiculously analytical about everything and go with what seems natural.