A little bit of information super highway can be dangerous

I was in the CVS on Spring Garden St. getting some pictures of Peru printed for my Mother. The man at the counter was flipping through them and ventured a guess on where I had been.

Elderley Gentleman: "That high plain, where you were, what's that called?"

Me: "Machu Pichu?"

EG: "Yeah, that's the one, they found some whale bones up there, if you can believe it."

M: (Absently, feigning interest) "Wow, that's incredible"

EG: "It's only incredible if you believe in evolution."

M: (At this point he has my full attention.) "Oh yeah? It's from the flood?"

EG: "Yes it is. I have learned a lot about a lot of things since I got a computer."

M: (Disengaging, slowly...) "Well that's really interesting, thanks so much."

EG: "Have a blessed day."

Futures

Of course, while I have been here, lots of people ask me what happens after Peace Corps, and I cheerfully tell them the truth: I have no freaking clue. Of course I have ideas, there would be ways to stay in Ecuador or ways to extend this period of travel in another part of Latin America. Presumably, there are jobs for which I would be a convincing candidate in New York or DC or some part of North Carolina. But these are only ideas, and as of yet I have no strong feeling about what the right move would be.

Riding the subway, walking the streets, I remembered how it felt to live in the city. But I found myself here, feeling very much like I used to the first day back from vacation. You know that sense of peace and well being and ability to put things in perspective that goes away about halfway through the third day after you go back to work? I suspect that taking up residence again there woul be like the life-scale version of that. Right now, the part of my brain that was always occupied with work, social life, apartment details, where to buy groceries that day, how much I spent on dinner last night and what have you, is curiously still. And I thought: if I could live in New York without it generating the list of complaints, anxieties, and heachaches that New York seems to produce in me then I could really enjoy it. It would be a great place to return to.

What I note is an absence of a distinctly unpleasant feeling that I often had for many years while living there. Something like guilt, a nagging sense of having let many people down, of having done things badly or shoddily. I do feel preoccupied with things in Ecuador the collective I have been organizing, the complicated details of my friends' lives in which I am much too involved, but there is a safety valve. When I go in August or whenever that happens, my responsibility and ability to be affected by them simply come to an end. And right now all those challenges seem remarkably far away and short lived. I suppose the question is how to design your life so you feel that way anywhere.

Lord knows how to do that.

Winter, trees, food, and light

Mainly, this week. I ate. I will leave it at that.

I did go jogging every morning but one. If I never had a day job, I would be super athletic. Today and yesterday, I went down Second Ave. to where it become Chrystie and followed it out onto the Manhattan Bridge. I do love that part of town, the way you see where it was Puerto Rican, but before that Jewish and before that who knows what and then you pass into China Town in a part which was once Little Italy, and of course most of the Lower East Side is terribly gentrified, and there is a ginormous Whole Foods on Houston, cause apparently the the one at Union Square isn't sufficient. But its still charming retaining its edge even with all the boutiques and cafes.

I passed the warehouse where a friend of mine lived back in the day on the corner of Chrystie and Grand. It wasn't zoned for residence, their roof deck was bathed in fumes from the industrial dry cleaner below, their neighbors were a brothel and a sweatshop, and they ended up moving out because a man broke into the apartment while his girlfriend was sleeping there. Still it had its own urban gritty new york story charm, the entire episode. He now lives in Europe and I miss seeing him here.

Back home side

New York. I love that city. I was walking around Herald Square with my backpack on wheels, looking at the people, looking at the Christmas mania happening around me. It's like no place on the world. How could I think about not going back, I thought in that moment.

Then I waited an hour and forty five minutes for a bus to Boston, simply because it didn't occur to the people in Port Authority to tell me that the ticket for a 5:30 bus they sold me didn't actually mean there was a bus a 5:30. And I remembered how enormously complicated everything is here.
In Ecuador this kind of thing should be attributed to cultural norms having to do punctuality, efficiency, and customer service. In New York it should be attributed to everyone being an asshole.

Now I am in Cambridge, a charming city full of excellent cuisines from all over the world, stunning late afternoon winter light, and a river I can jog by.

Despedidas

Three weeks between one vacation and another went by in a flurry of writing reports, drafting bi-laws, making lots of pumpkin pies for people, lots of bickering between my friends, workshops on homophobia that someone had to give and who knows what other details. I ate crabs from the shell and kept up with my jogging. The time to go to the states was forever getting closer but I didn't ever really have time to get excited about it until I was on the plane to Panama.

To say good bye a couple friends of mine I went to sing karaoke. It was one of those plans you have always pending until someone Yeah. This is the night we go. The place turned out to be a little disappointing. It was smokey and full of big groups of men without dates and no one would take our song requests for a really long time. Everyone, especially the men, were singing the most sentimental ballads ever thought possible. The microphone got passed around tables and people sang from their seat, an arrangement I only can describe as merciful. I chose Brian Adams' Heaven (sentimentality and all) and was a conscious of the expectant rustle when a song in English came up on the screen. I have had some bad moments singing with a microphone in front of people. Once in college, I sang in front of A LOT of people, and once in a karaoke bar and it was scarring. So I don't want to sounds too arrogant but this was different. And I could hear my little voice coming out of the speakers and knew I had them, my audience, my fans in my pocket. When I finished there lots of cheers and some kid came over to congratulate us. I finished my set with Mama Mia, following the wise cues of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

Beach Baby

So there was a trip to Machu Pichu, which despite being inundated by thousands and thousands of tourists, was very impressive. (Angkor Wat may have ruined the cities of every other ancient civilization for me to be quite honest, but it was cloud-covered, green, and crazy to imagine a city up so high on the hills.) Then a final short morning in Cusco, a last minutes dash to the airport, of course only to find that our flight was delayed. There are thousands of bus companies with buses that run up to the beaches near the Ecuadorian border, our final stop on our trip, but they all have separate bus terminals all over Lima, a notoriously large and dangerous city. As the afternoon wore on, it became clear that we were going to miss the one bus we knew about, which we were told had big comfortable sleeping beds, key to a 16 hour bus ride. We got a list of other companies from the tourist info desk in the airport and sucked up the $13 dollar cab ride to the one that seemed the most likely to have evening buses going vaguely in the direction we wanted to go. We got to see some of the slums of Lima, and its true that Lima has some very poor sectors, but we also got to see some of the center of Lima and some of the 19th century architecture. Stuck in traffic in front of a different bus terminal, I looked in at the board showing departures and we realized that this company had a bus going directly to Mancora, our planned destination in only an hour. We hopped out of the cab and were soon on our way.

Today we spent all day on the beach and I got sunburned on the back of my legs. I was thinking how I´ll need to be draped in my sarong all day tomorrow, which reminded me of beach trips from days past. My travel partner Lindsay got a big kick out my memories of the time at the beach with my parents when I got sunburned and I had to wear a white turtleneck under my little red bathing suit. I really did look like a geek. Somewhere there are photos.

Choquequirao

OK, so BEFORE I made the mistake of checking my email, and finding out that everything fell apart the minute I went on vacation, I want to report that I did a four day hike to Choquequirao an Incan ruin far far away from anything convenient. I have not done any real hiking (meaning more than a few hours) since college, so I was a bit apprehensive, but the whole thing went off pretty well. We did it in four days and three nights, cooked on a camp stove, slept in a tent. We did not backpack, though. We hired mules and and a kid to take them along. I think I might have fallen off the mountain if I had had to carry anything more than a water bottle, a camera, and a jar of Nutella.

Machu Pichu tomorrow.

The L Word

You know, I should know better than to check my email on vacation. And its too long a story to explain fully in a blog post, having to do with a large well known gay organization from a large coastal city in Ecuador, coming to Cuenca and doing a song and dance about organizational strengthening for the GLBT community but really just wanting to fill their numbers for their funder in their project on HIV prevention. So when we send mixed group of leaders to their seminar they say, oh no, its only for men, because its a project for prevention with gay men. But if they want to strengthen gay, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender communities, being as GLBT is the operative acronym in wide use, um, everwhere, you need to pay attention to the Lesbians, at the very least. I mean at least let us include a lesbian in our strategic planning weekend. Jeez.

Folks, never take the feminist movement for granted. You do not know how much you will miss it, till you start working with people who have no freaking clue what you are talking about. People who believe an appropriate intervention in homofobia is to educate women so they can raise their sons to be less homofobic.

And no I am not making this up.

Cuenca to Cuzco

Listening to Duran Duran in the the backpacker hostel in Cusco, and thinking about how nice places like this can be, with free internet and big pots of free coffee all day. I left on vacation with my friend Lindsay yesterday and we travelled for 24 to get here. A three hour bus ride to Machala, another two hour bus ride to Huaquillas on the Ecuador Peru border, then a walk across the border in which some policeman picked us up and told us it was dangerous to cross the border on foot, and left us in front of Peru immigration where I almost transformed into a crazy gringa because we got directed into the wrong line by some sketchy guy selling currency, but the immigration guy was nice to us and took us to the front of the line.

Then we argued with some guys that tried to cheat us with a taxi ride to the airport in Tumbes (Five dollars!) while we were waiting for a colectivo, the guy offered to give me his cell phone if we could get a colectivo ride to the airport for 1 sole, the peruvian currency. And we did get it for 1.50, but I didn{t try to take his celular. And all this time I had a horrible head cold and brutal cough, so when we got to the airport in Tumbes, I fell asleep for several hours in the chair and only woke up to check my luggage and get on the plane. In Lima, we stayed in the hotel belonging to perhaps the nicest man I have ever met and I found that supermarkets in Lima make Supermaxi in Cuenca look like 7/11. I bought some cough syrup and Lindsay made me take it in the airport, while I savored my Dunkin Donuts coffee. The woman swore the the cough syrup would not make me sleepy, but did not mention it make you super loopy. So as we were getting off the plane, I felt like I was completely stoned and I proceeded to enter Cuzco, another lovely south american city beginning with a c, feeling no pain.

Off to find an ATM and organize our hike and see the sites.

Latest musical obsession

Why is it that you find this music you love singing along to in the house or in the care you sometimes listen to it too much and then you can´t hear it anymore? That is the story with me and the Killers new album.

Now this is even though this album did my wrong from the first night that we met. My friend Becca loaned it to me right before I got on a night bus to Cuenca and I liked it sooo much that when the Benadryl kicked in and I started to get very sleepy, I failed to put away my disc man, which also had eight of my favorite cd´s. (Marcus and Cynthia´s wedding compilation for one, Tom Waits´ Frank´s Wild Years for another, along with Lucinda Williams Live at the Filmore Volume II, Yo La Tengo, Electropura, Moby, Play, and the kicker, U2 Achtung Baby.) In the morning when the dew was just starting to dry over the hills of Cañar, I woke up without my discman, without my disc´s and without the Killer´s new cd.

Fortunately I have nice parents and they went out and bought it for me and sent it along. Since then its been a nonstop love affair with me and this album. I don´t listen to the radio. I don´t listen to any of my other music. Just the Killers, at top volume with my singing along and dancing, if anyone needs something to giggle at (nicely, now.)

I realize my tendency to eschew little gadgets is again at fault here. It´s much harder to walk off with an mp3 player that is clipped to someone´s shirt than it is to walk off with a cd player only slightly concealed in the top of a backpack. Yeah, yeah.

Ironically, Pitchfork media draws a comparison between just the U2 album of which I was bereft and this one.

Other places indicate that the band may have just gone for the wrong rock-icon; the reverb-chirp "higher and higher" peak of (seriously) "Bling (Confessions of a King)" indicates that the Killers are more successful impressionists of Achtung Baby-era U2.

Life has been---

--Hectic to say the least and although its a sorry excuse to not have written. Reduced access to internet, an enormous and costly event celebrating gay pride (which was very successful), and the personal lives of friends remaining loca have all contributed to me not making a peep for many many weeks.

I´m in the stage now where if I don´t make a clean to do list everyday and move forward the things that didn´t get marked off on the last one, that nothing gets done and I feel like I am drowning in details. I can see the end of service too, and given my projections for the next ten months, it seems hard to see how I will accomplish everything I have committed to do. I scheduled vacation first to Peru and then the EEUU! When that finishes I will be in my final six months and dear lord how is that going to be?

The good thing is that being busy means things are happening.

A couple days late

It would have been much more timely to post this exactly seven days ago, but I´m slow on the uptake these days. In observance of the anniversary of 9/11, I recommend Pastor Heidi Neumark´s sermon from September 12, 2003. In it, she talks about the rush to war, the effect of 9/11 on workers who lost their lives in the towers, what the prophets say about religious leaders who don´t speak out against lies and injustice and abou September 11, 1973 in which Salvador Allende was deposed in Chile, with US support. Our leaders have not told the whole story about detentions and disastrous impact on vulnerable communities in the United States.

"Instead, we heard of war as a way to secure our lives against terror.
Instead of the whole truth, we heard a partial truth and we heard lies. To honor the dead and the dying, to heal our hearts, our city and our earth requires that we speak truth and live truth."

I love that girl

Charisse on a proximate visit to New York:

"The New Yorker Festival may be my last chance to convince Malcolm Gladwell that
we belong together."

Recording

I talked with Erik who said he thought I should be writing more about what is happening around me and less about the things that affect me personally. Nothing like the friend you have that makes poop jokes to shake you out of the agonized, confessional mode. He also pointed out that I don´t sound like my fabulous New York self, although I don´t remember being particularly so. I remember being anxious about a lot of mundane details and angry about ridiculous stuff too much of the time. Is there something about living in a foreign country that puts one off balance like that, or is it just me here in Cuenca?

Intercultural Exchange

One of my projects has been to work with a group of gay kids who are trying to form an organization, the only one here in Cuenca. Of course I call them kids, and find myself feeling dangerously maternal towards them, but they are all in their twenties. There have been enormous moments of highs and lows in this effort. We have developed a little core group of people who show up every week at my house on Sunday afternoons, we got a grant from a foundation in Quito and opened a bank account to put it in, some of them got asked to speak on the radio on a couple of occasions. Other days, the work seems to move at an almost glacial pace. They want to open a microbusiness, they want to find an office, we need bi-laws, legal status and all this is years away.

Last week though I got a look from the outside, at what we have accomplished together. A group of Peace Corps aspirantes came to Cuenca on a technical trip and we all squeezed into my living room. The idea was that the Peace Corps volunteer practice leading activities in Spanish. (It really is very intimidating the first few months) And then the people from our group could talk about issues they face as gay people here, homophobia, families, what volunteers could do to do education in this area. Anything they wanted to share.

I didn´t know how this was really going to go. What if no one talked? What if the games fell flat? What if two groups stayed on opposite sides of the room the entire time, like boys and girls at a middle school dance? What if no one came?

It all went wonderfully though. I should probably have remembered that Peace Corps seems to screen for introverts, and all the aspirantes who showed up at my house were exceptionally outgoing and friendly. They had cute group activities, and when we all settled down to talk about gay issues in Ecuador, they were all super interested and drew out the kids in the group.

And I got to feel good about something I have done here. Even if nothing else that I do turns out to mean anything, I’ve helped create this space where people can articulate these painful, life-shattering issues. Eventually one of the Ecuadorians said that they wanted to hear what the gringos thought of them. And somehow I had the wherewithal to chime in that I thought it was very likely that some of the volunteers had experiences with gay friends and family and perhaps they could share their perspective on these issues in the United States.

Really I was proud of the gringos. You could have heard a pin drop when they were talking. Several of them had gay family or gay best friends and had thoughtful things to say about what is was like to support them in a variety of situations. But when a young woman announced that her father is gay, I think that the Ecuadorian folks did a complete double take. No one was expecting that at all. What she said that really moved me though was how being from a big, liberal city was great and all, but if you go one hour down the road in any given direction you find more conservative communities where there is great resistance and in some cases physical threats. And several other people echoed that, they feeling that on one side you have enormous liberalism, but there is always a community or movement working in opposition to that. Which is one of the things that is crazy about living in the US right now, I think. The polarization.

Today, today

When I took time to think about the fact that its the anniversary of 9/11, I just felt sad. Sad that it happened, sad for the families who still must be devastated by grief, and sad at this wrong wretched war that we are now in, because of that day, which had nothing to do with it. Then I saw the Yahoo headline, "White House and Pentagon commemorate 9/11." And I thought: typical, they freaking got hold of this day and used it for everything it was worth.

They have no shame, man.

My Simpson's Avatar

It´s All Good

So that no one reads the last posts and worries. Yesterday was dreary and overcast. I was licking my wounds and indulging in some first class melancholy. I´m much more like my normal self today. I organized "My Documents" and my flash drive. I thought to lighten the mood, I should post some pictures, but blogger didn´t oblige me in this.

Cinematic Moments

In English first...
I had a fight with a friend, having to do more with our own personal demons leaking through our respective veneers than any real conflict or tension between us. Us both being at the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. But, like bruising, dignity-taking fights do, it got me thinking. About my mental health and such. My ways of depending on people around me for attention and company and how it’s so much easier for me to subsume myself in the lives and dramas of others than it is for me to focus on my own solitude, or to do something constructive about it. And here it’s even trickier, because I’m here for such a comparatively short time, so my whole life here has this temporary feel to it. Buying furniture or doing all the things that one can to make a love affair materialize seems like an unnecessary and wasteful investment.

But it’s dangerous because one year in, I have suddenly found myself without any life of my own. The last few weeks, I have had the sense that rather than living a life here, I am more of a movie goer, watching all the people around me, among my friends, in my various locales of work, between the Peace Corps and the rest of the world. And sometimes the feeling of being by myself in my house or in a party becomes almost intolerable. But it backfires to be the rock for someone else, as a solution to this, because eventually it happens that that person much to busy with their own emotions to be your rock, and you’re left spluttering and speechless at how someone could be so unkind. Although of course you know, its never as simple as good and bad with friends.

Cuenca’s orientation around extended family networks which take priority over everything else only adds to this sense of watching everything from the outside.

I often find myself wishing I was a fiction writer here, because I have watched so many things happen that are rich with human drama, meaning, cultural conflict, and insight into the silly and mostly ineffective world of development, if I were more of writer, I could write the new great american novel. But, I’m only a lowly blogger, so the novel will have to wait for someone else.

En español, para mi co-blogger estimado
Tuve una pelea con un amigo, que tenía más que ver nuestros demonios personales saliendo que con un conflicto o tensión verdadero entre nosotros. Digamos que estábamos en el lugar equivocado al tiempo equivocado. Pero, las peleas que se magullan y sacan su dignidad, también se hacen pensar, en este caso sobre mi salud mental y cosas así. Es mucho más fácil involucrarme en las vidas y los dramas de las otras que enfocarme en mi propia soledad o hacer algo constructivo sobre el mismo. Y viviendo acá, es peor: comprar muebles o hacer algunos de las cosas que una persona se puede hacer para hacer aparecer una relación de amor parecen como una inversión innecesaria y gastosa.

Pero es peligroso porque con un año acá, me encontró en un sentido sin mi vida propia. Las últimas semanas, tenía el sentido que soy una visitadora al cinema, mirando todo las personas, al dentro de mis amigos, en mis ámbitos de trabajo, entre le Cuerpo de Paz y el resto del mundo. De vez en cuando, el sentido de ser sola en mi casa o en una fiesta vuelve a ser insoportable. Pero es contraproducente, a veces de ser la piedra para otro persona, como solucion a la soledad. Eventualmente yo me encuentro en un momento en que el o ella está mucho demasiado ocupado con su propias emociones de ser mi piedra también. Y se me dejó sin palabras, preguntando como alguien puede ser tan mal conmigo. Aunque yo se que nunca es tan blanco o negro quien es lo bueno o malo en un amistad.

El hecho que Cuenca está completamente orientada por la familia extendida solo añade a este sentido de mirar al todo del afuera.

Muchas veces acá, quisiera ser una novelista, por que he visto tantas cosas lleno de drama humano, significado, conflicto cultural, y discernimiento en el mundo, un poco tonto de desarrollo. Si fuera un gran escritor, podría producir el gran novela americano. Pero solo soy una blogger sencilla entonces esta cuenta tendrá que esperar otra persona.

The Dozens

I watched some of the Nutty Professor tonight, or was it the Nutty Professor II? (It had Dave Chappelle and Jada Pinkett-Smith.) It totally cracked me up and made me think maybe I was a little homesick for the States. Nobody makes jokes about anyone´s mama in Ecuador.

Waiting

Yes, like he said, Pablo and I are drinking beer and he is learning to manage the magical technological interface of Blogger. And, as I said to him, whatever it is that he cannot tell me for four months will have most certainly changed fifteen thousand times before he actually gets around to telling me, so fine. No answers. Just cryptic comments and pleas to "please not ask any more questions." Fine. Provides suspense.

And now I realize we are exposing the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD to our old middle aged married couple dynamic. Hopefully it will be entertaining for those of you who can pick through the Spanish and English.

On another front, here´s the top 5 things about the visit of Robert McCluer Calhoon to Cuenca, Ecuador:

1) How he loved Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore so much he wanted to listen to it twice in a row.

2) How he related to all my friends by speaking about me as if I was still 2, 5, 11, and 19, and it made them like me more

3) How he helped me plan a dinner party, soup to nuts, a relatively spectacular success. I didn´t really have soup or nuts. It´s an expression.

4) How everything was described in superlatives. The best examples of Cañari and Incan archeology and 18th century architecture. The best Italian food. The richest coffee. The most interesting tea. The best banana bread. Etc.

5) That I got to dance with him at a party I took him to, and that he let me lead.


Thanks, Pop.

¿Ciudad chica o pueblo grande?

Hoy es la madrugada del jueves 9 de agosto del 2007. Estoy aquí, en mi casa, con mi amiga Claudia que no deja de hacer preguntas...no tengo respuestas.... más bien sí las tengo pero le pedí que espere hasta diciembre... pero ¿Cómo haces esperar a una mujer 4 meses? Mala idea... jamás debí abrir la boca...
Yo soy el Chilenito... sí, el mismo... del que Claudia les ha comentado en sus escritos antes... Acá estamos, tomando cerveza, cocinando y conversando mucho...
La idea de mi participación en este blog es que les cuente algo... algo sobre como es la vida acá en Cuenca para nosotros los extranjeros.... podría decirles muchas cosas... pero ahora solo puedo decir una cosa... "no hay lugar como el hogar" donde sea, menos acá !POR FAVOR¡¡¡¡¡¡
Besitos a Charisse, !QUE GUAPA ESTA CHICA¡¡¡¡¡ dueña de una sonrisa precioso y un sentido del humor increíble....
Luego, cuando estemos menos borrachos podré contarles como es vivir en este gran pueblo para nosotros... solo les garantizo... no es nada fácil...

El Santeguino

English
The other night my friend Pablo said to me, "I want us to have write a blog! On what its like to be a foreigner living in Cuenca. I want us to do that together," he said.

"Um. I kind of already have that. That blog you never read, because its in English? That´s pretty much the concept of it. But you can help! Why don´t you drop in every once and awhile and add your own special touch?"

So that´s how it started. Pablo, also not from Ecuador, but from Santiago, Chile might post some stuff here. He might talk about Cuenca, he might talk about HIV (he knows quite a lot about it.) If you ask nicely he might talk about all the Latin pop music sensations he interviewed when he worked for a magazine in Santiago.

He will most likely write in Spanish. I´ll try and translate. And in the spirit of bilingualness, I´ll try and write this one in Spanish, explaining and stuff.

We will see how it works. It´s a little experiment.

En español
El otro noche, mi amigo Pablo me dijo, “Quiero que escribimos un blog juntos sobre como es de ser extranjero acá en Cuenca. Quiero hacer eso juntos” dijo.

[¿Como se traduce “um”?]

“Um. De hecho, ya tengo eso, ¿ese blog, que nunca lees, porque se escribe en ingles? Eso es más o menos el concepto. ¡Pero tú puedes ayudar! ¿Por qué no nos visitas de vez en cuando para añadir su propio toca?

Así empezó la idea. Es posible que Pablo, que también no es Ecuador sino de Santiago, Chile, escriba algunas cosas aquí. Es posible que hable de Cuenca, de VIH (el sabe un montón sobre el mismo) Si le pides de una manera muy bien educada, capaz que el cuente sobre las sensaciones de música latina que el entrevistó cuando el trabajó para una revista en Chile.

La cosa mas segura es que el escribirá en español. Cuando pueda, voy a tratar de traducir. Y intentaré de traducir esta presentación, explicando y todo.

Vamos a ver como funciona. Es un experimento.

Welcome to the Dark Side

Charisse, reader of fat books of 18th century french literature and charmer of jaded south americans extraodinaire, has a new blog. We welcome her to the blogoshere.

Lots going on, but nothing much to say about it.

Life is nice, and relatively uneventful. Various notes of interest include:

I got robbed, mid-day, in a cafe where I go almost everyday. Of all the things I lost, (camera, flash, calender) I can´t decide which is the biggest loss, I think the calender is the thing I am the saddest about.

My friend Charisse was here and charmed the socks off of all my leftist, anti-yankee friends.

I went out dancing and was endlessly amused by a twenty two year old Manu Chau fan who decided he should talk to me. When I told him I was older than him he started guessing. 23? Hmm. Higher. 24? Higher. 25? Higher. I got bored of this by the time we got to 26 and left it at that. I confessed that I was actually 34 after a couple more songs, and he claimed he didn´t believe it. But it was dark.

In my inbox this afternoon from "Serious Singles"

Being over 40 doesn't mean you have to be alone. claudiacalhoon

Ouch.

A bad combination

One of my chief roles in lots of my different roles is to motivate people. I´ve found that my tendency to be a process person, insisting on discussion when the conclusions seem obvious to everyone, including me has served me well (and nowhere better than in my last job.)

Process doesn´t stand up well in the face of mulled wine and beer. My plans to write a grant proposal with members of one of the groups I work with were rudely counteracted by a box of Pilsener.

In Which Claudia Goes on a Long Journey and Falls Off a Horse and Leaves her Camera Under a Tree and Finds it Again

This spring, I did some workshops with a group of jovenes in a community outside of Cuenca called Sayausí. Last week, I was invited to go with the priest from there and a couple of teenagers to go visit a remote community in the mountains, out of the reach of telephone service, running water or anything outside of the most basic electricity. There was a wedding and a baptism, and a meeting to talk about building a road. We went on horseback, which was interesting considering that I once went on a trail ride in, um 1994. Despite one or two moments where I was cantoring across a meadow in which I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings, riding the horse without any idea what I was doing was hard. And coming back, going down steep slippery rocks, the horse jumped and I leaned forward and over I went, right over his head. Fortunately I clung to his neck and didn´t hit anything. When I got back to the road, I had to make a pit stop in the woods to use the bathroom (bear with me here, its relevant to the storyline) which I did in a hurry because we were trying to leave. I had to rush back to my office to check in on a taller I planned, where I discovered that my much beloved camera was not with me. It took me a second to piece it all together, but I knew that it had fallen off my belt loop in the middle of Cajas National Park when I was squatted under a tree. So this morning, I bribed my friend Pablo, with a promise of pancakes after, to go out into the mountains. A quick trip by bus out there and back again. I didn´t want to think about how irresponsible and horrible I was going to feel if the camera wasn´t there. But it had to be. It took us two hours to find a bus out to Cajas, every second I was looking up at the clouds hanging over the mountains and imagining little water droplets condensing inside the plastic bag that held my camera. It was ridiculous taking a forty minute bus ride out in the wilderness to look for a camera under one particular tree. But we got a bus and it dropped us off right in front of the tree in question.

And there it was, lying right where I left it. It worked and everything. If it sounds too incredible to believe, I should mention that Cajas is a spooky often deserted place, and there are millions of corners in which things that fall could sit undisturbed for all time. Pablo and I rode back to Cuenca in a pickup truck and watched the mist covered hills go by, and give way first to high green slopes and then the hustle of Sayausí.

Now, I´m leaving out the real part, which was the visit to the community. The women cooking dusk til dawn for all the people that rode in for the fiesta, the smell of smoke from the wood fire on the floor. The incredible succession of food I was offered because I was a guest who came with the padrecito, the aguitas of cinammon and herbs that they gave us to warm us up, the grinding poverty that the community lives in, the stunning rugged land, the problem posed by a toilet unconnected to any sort of plumbing that at least 15 people had used. I want to say more, but I´m processing everything I saw, everything that everyone said to me, the people who were extraordinarily warm, the ones who were more guarded, how much of an outsider I felt, how much of a gringo I felt. How I ate chicken, beef, rice, yucca, guinea pig, potatoes, eggs, habas, everything fresh, everything made from scratch.

So more when I can.

Tony, Tony, Tony

The Sopranos is coming to an end shortly and I´m not going to see it, but will wait til I can buy the entire season, and spend one sordid, darkened weekend, soaking it all up.

The actor gave an interview on the end of the saga.

"Nursing coffee from a foam cup, he shares nearly an hour in agreeable give-and-take, only drawing the line when one too many questions delves into his acting technique: "Oh, please! Who gives a (crap)!" he scoffs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be abrupt.""

What a freaking nice guy. A friend of mine who shared my passion for the New Jersey family once found herself in an elevator with James Gandolfini on the west side of Manhattan. She commented favorable on his banter with a third person in the elevator. Obviously part of the appeal of the character is the nice guy warring with the bad man, inside.

How I´m Feeling

For so many months I had nothing to do, and I was busy running around finding places I could plug in, and within a series of weeks all of that work came to fruition and I found myself resolutely overcomitted. It´s good, but not sustainable, for me, or for the folks I working with.
I tried to do the human knot in my jovenes group saturday and couldn´t help them get out of it. We spent like ten minutes standing there looking confused, them totally unenthused and finally I was like, do you kids want to do something else?

I found out afterwards there´s a solution to the human knot, a technique to helping people solve it, in the one manual we have that I didn´t think to consult. When they issued me my duct tape the U. S. Peace Corps forgot to mention the solution to the human knot.

(The Peace Corps doesn´t really issue us duct tape. I had to buy mine.)

I´m happy to have stuff to do, but now worried about not doing it well enough, not being so focused on one thing because I am doing too much, not doing things sustainably, having everyone depend on me too much. Losing patience with people and demotivating them instead of motivating them. That kind of thing.

Go Tarheels!

From the New Hampshire Democratic Primary Presidential Debate Transcript

John Edwards:

"But what this global war on terror bumper sticker -- political slogan, that's all it is, all it's ever been -- was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he does: the ongoing war in Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, spying on Americans, torture. None of those things are OK. They are not the United States of America."

I don´t know man. I like Obama, but if Edwards keeps saying stuff like that, he´s gonna get my vote.

Just saying.

Gym

I started working out three weeks ago. I re-joined the gym in my neighborhood and have been alternating shoulders/back, pecs, and legs. I´m often the only woman in the gym. And we are in Latin America where, even more than in the States, the gym is a male environ. This leads to lots of interactions that I take way more personally than I should. Why is the trainer having me work out with little four lb pink weights, for example? Or why is that man trying to help me unload these weights when its perfectly obvious I can do it myself? Why did that guy saludar a my male friend and not saludar a me. There is an art to being nice to girls who are (trying to) pump iron that walks the delicate line between being helpful to someone who may only have a vague idea what they are doing, and being a paternalistic jerk. But after one particular work out, where I didn´t feel good at all afterwards, and I hated everyone in the gym, I sternly told myself, like my shrink used to say, "well you just have to keep going until it gets more comfortable."

Did I go this morning, when I was awake at 6:45? No I did not. But I have hopes for tomorrow.

I´m It

I got tagged by Jordancito at Pigeontoes. He wrote about five reasons he blogs, but I´m hoping that he isn´t expecting me to come up with five things to say about why this page exists. I´m hoping its sufficient to say that I do it because it seems like a good thing to do and leave it at that.

Five People I Miss at Home.
Not the Top Five. Not the Only Five. Just Five, among many, many others.

Karen. Karen and I eat Vietnamese and Thai food in Hell´s Kitchen. We drink white wine in her house in Washington Heights. (She can´t come to my house because she is horribly allergic to my cat.) We talk about how silly it is that everyone feels the need to get married and have children. We talk about our families. We complain about work. Karen also lived in South America, long before I did and made me want to do the same thing. Karen lifts weights three days a week, at least and can squat more than most folks I know. She also has fabulous long curly black hair.

Angela. Angela was witness to my first halting attempts to learn Spanish. When we worked together at the Medical Center in Washington Heights, we used to go eat Dominican food three or four times a week and complain about our office. I feel my stomach bloat up when I think about those heaping plates of yellow rice. She always has beautiful silver jewelry and her husband Benjamen, (also someone I miss) throw lovely dinner parties.

Laure. Laure writes pithy commentary on film and hockey. She always has excellent shoes, and the best color lipstick. Laure thought she could escape from New York, and successfully stayed away for almost nine years, but now she is on her second stint. We fought over a boy in 1989, a very silly boy, we both repented of it later, but of course at the time, it was terrible painful.

Marcus. Marcus was one of my chief inspirations for doing the Peace Corps. I´m still haunted by his stories of Cameroon, and the first conversation I had with him, he was peering at a map of Africa, explaining to me how he wanted to be there and not in North Carolina. He is one of those people to have gotten married and just had a baby, little Vaughan, who I hope to meet at Christmas. Marcus and I shared many New Year´s Eve´s together, one time we fought for five hours to ring in the New Year. I recall that I went down in Round 6, at about five in the morning.

El. Elliot is an artist. He has a gigantic loft in Los Angeles and a solo show in New York. He lived in Rome and dated a beautiful Italian pop singer. But Elliot is also the salt of North Carolina red earth. Elliot and I used to warm up Stouffer´s Corn Pudding in his parent´s kitchen in North Carolina. El still has a southern accent and sings me James Taylor and Patsy Cline.

I tag Emily, Erik, and Laure. Give me five answer. You can pick the question.

La Gringuita

Last year when I was preparing to come to Ecuador I wrote for the following in preparation for Peace Corps service.

"No matter how much I prepare, I suspect that the impact of a transition of this magnitude will be huge. With respect to my own cultural background, I presume that being a North American will have an enormous impact on how people interact with me. I’m a fair-skinned, single woman in her thirties. For better and worse, I will surely encounter people with stereotypes about white women from the United States. It will be important to try to not take anything too seriously, especially at the beginning. Communicating respect and openness to people in my community with help me establish my own uniqueness."

Um. Yeah. This, as you might imagine turned out to be the understatement of the decade. This is my life here. As a norteamericana, I realize that I am always under a certain level of scrutiny. What do I think about Bush? What do I think about Iraq? What do I think about Hollywood? Why are they building that wretched wall on the Texas border? How much do I pay for my apartment? What do my parents think about me being here? Where on earth are all the children I should have at age 34?

And, I came in trying to have a tough skin, especially where the image of the United States in the world. I can´t defend that vast majority of US foreign policy, especially in Latin America, much less in the Middle East these days. I can´t defend that fact that right has been systematically chipping away at the safety net in my country for twenty years and that no one in the states has any guarantee of being seen by a doctor unless they cash on hand or an insurance card. I wouldn´t presume to argue with my friends who grew up on the left in various countries in and whose families or they themselves were persecuted by regimes that were either tacitly or explicitely supported by the United States. I came prepared to absorb some of the shock of criticism of mi tierra.

It gets complicated though. On at least two occasions, I´ve still gotten my back up about blanket criticisms of the United States. Not because there aren´t legitimate critiques to be made, but it gets under my skin when people make across the board statements about how it must feel to be norteameriana, or how things came to be this way, because invariably people from outside the States do not get that part. Be it bad or good, I find myself wanting to have the last word on how things came to be this way and what must be done about it. I don´t get bent out of shape when people criticize my country. I get bent out of shape when people think they understand how we got to be this way.

James Baldwin said it better, and think this is from The Fire Next Time.

"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

I grew up in a resolutely Democratic home and was raised with the attending ideology: the US has made some errors from time to time (Vietnam, Jim Crow, genocide of the the Indians, what have you) but we have been working on all of that and are on a resolutely upwards paths towards being a force for good in the world. The good things would include the Constitution, the 14th amendment, the New Deal, storming the beach at Normandy, and Stonewall, to name a couple. And I want all of it to be true. But like all myths, I am confronted all the time with evidence that its not. And people here who look at me appraisingly and say, now what exactly do you make of the war in Iraq, are ultimately not the ones who have to live with the disonnance. Its people from the United States who have to live with the ambivalence, the reality that for all its potential, the U.S. has been responsible for some dreadful things both at home and in the world and what means for us who benefit and stand to lose the most from it. The potential exists that instead of being a flawed system which a lot of the time works for a lot of people, its a rotten system, designed to only work for those with money, education, and access to power.

I´m still mulling over a lot of this stuff, but will say close this bit with another James Baldwin quote, though its still not the one I was looking for.

"American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it. "

"We Are One Signature Away From Ending The Iraq War"

Wow. Finally some good news.

Bloggers

Julie Campbell and I also had the same blogger page format.

http://juliainthephilippines.blogspot.com/

Sad things

A hard week here, with workshops that didn´t go as planned, and resulting procrastination on other things coming up. I still struggle with a low-level lack of purpose and relevance, which ebbs and flows, and sits in contrast to my nice life and kind friends here in Cuenca. The missteps involved trying to learn how to do good education on HIV, family, violence, sexual health, and self esteem with women and families are supposedly the things that you learn from, but it´s brutal when you do something wrong, or even just adequately, and have to admit the mistakes and think, how on earth could I have done that differently and what in God´s name am I really accomplishing for anyone anyhow?

Took note of a Peace Corps volunteer who was killed in the Phillipines. Her name was Julie Campbell and I was struck by some uncanny characteristics which I had in common with her. She was a New Yorker, older than your typical volunteer, who left a sucessful career (in this case as a journalist) to do the Peace Corps.

And this of course was eclipsed by what happened at Virginia Tech, which I didn´t mention here up to now because I hadn´t really been able to process it from so far away. Reading Emily´s words over at I´m So Pretty helped make it all too real.

"And I'd give myself a harder time for taking it all so hard if I thought any part of my reaction were controllable. But it's not. I can't not feel this sad. I can't not be totally normal and laughing one second and on the verge of tears the next, the lump in my throat swelling for the millionth time in a day."

I do remember this same ragged, visceral grief from the weeks following September 11, 2001. The guilt for being sad even though it wasn´t something that had happened to you exactly countered by the physical pain that accompanied sudden and unexpected and senseless death close to home.

Over at Washington Monthly, I found Kevin Drum´s comments on press coverage and policy implications somehow comforting. Because it does seem to be that out of all the screwed up things that happen in the States, more screwed up things tend to get done in response.

All I can say is: I still hope everyone takes this very, very slowly. There might be lessons we can learn from Monday's tragedy, but our first reactions are almost certain to be wrong. Probably our second reactions too. Whatever we do, let's not make the cure worse than the disease.

Amen to that.

I love when I get all officious and business-like sounding

In an effort to find some relevance for myself last fall, I found myself as the volunteer coordinator of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Interest Group here in PC Ecuador, a group of mainly straight volunteers who were interested in working on homofobia here in Ecuador. We had grand visions of building a nationwide network of glbt activists, planning leadership camps, and helping to spur the creation of gay liberation movement here in Ecuador.

We haven´t quite gotten to that yet. I think the email I was working on this morning pretty much shows where we are in the process.

Hi All,

A few updates.

1) Jambelí was great although we missed Eva and Farrah and Amy and Susanna. Thanks to everyone for making such a nice weekend and "teambuilding event." I´m working with Paulina to get the reimbursements out so hopefully you should get something before the end of the month.

2) Meeting on Thursday, June 28. Please block off the entire day 9-5 pm and the evening for PRIDE in Plaza Foch. Please note, this meeting is mandatory and will be fully funded,w transport, two days of $8 per diem and one night of hotel. If you cannot make this meeting and Pride, it counts as one of the two absences after which we would have to ask you to forfeit your seat on the group. If you are trying to coordinate your mid-service medical exam with this meeting, porfis, schedule it for the 26 or the 27!

Here´s why it´s so important: As you know, we have been asked to perform as part of the program for Gay Pride in Quito. We discussed this at Jambelí and the consensus was that a good lip sync piece would be Better Shape Up from Grease. (Stay with me here, folks. And Dana rest assured that we want you to participate in this important cultural integration activity here as well, so please mark your calender if you are available!)

Jen has (pretty much?) agreed to help out with choreography and I believe that Brian and Becca have agreed to be take on the gender inverted roles of John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. And they were entirely sober when they agreed to do this. The idea is that women in our group would be the T-birds and we would search out interested male Peace Corps volunteers to be the Pink Ladies. We have about $100 to spend on Pride so some of this could go for costumes. I anticipate that we can have a relatively short meeting to do business in the am of the 28th and devote the rest of the day to pulling together our performance.

If any of you are thinking some crap like "I´m not going to get up in front of hundreds of gay Quiteños and make a fool of myself," just try to let go of that. Please. I have.

Based on all this, here are a list of to-do´s to prepare for Pride. If everyone signs up to do one thing, it won´t be so stressful, for, um... me.

Performance
Burn discs with "Better Shape Up" and send to everyone in the group - Rachel and Becca
Choreography - Jen?
Send email to other Peace Corps volunteers to participate -
Find and design costumes -

Table
Get a banner made with Peace Corps log and glbt groups name -
Design folletto on the glbt pc group -
Secure condoms to give out at our table, and perhaps lube? -
Confirm all arrangements with los organizadores- Claudia

Thanks all

Claudia

Warts and all

This is ridiculously Peace Corp-ish post.

I have a wart. On the bottom of my foot. I think its a plantar wart, the one caused by a virus. It bears a striking resemblance to one I had when I was a child which just went away on its own. But sometime during the early 00´s (how does one read that, the early naught´s?) I developed another one. And it was here to stay. I had my fancy upper west side podiatrist freeze it off, over two sessions, for which I am sure he billed my insurance company handsomely. So you all don´t think I´m an absolute lunatic, I won´t share how much pleasure I derived from having something frozen off and then dug out of my foot with a scalpel. Well, oops, I kind of gave it away there. My foot was baby soft for maybe six weeks and then its started to come back and it was even bigger and more crater like than ever.

I had come to peace with the wart. I even kind of liked it. It was always there tucked away on the bottom of my foot, not on my hands or anything where anyone could actually see it. It doesn´t hurt. It doesn´t intefere with the ever important task of walking, like my flat arches or my strained tendons do.

The thing is last week I noticed it was growing. There were a couple little baby warts around it, and it seems to have an adjoining friend. I already know the futility of hi tech solutions, so I was open to other suggestions. In the Peace Corps they tell us to strangle it. Cover it with duct tape so the virus can´t breathe, they say. Because all the health care protocols of the Peace Corps is centralized through a medical office in Washington DC that oversees medical officers for every post, this means that young americans all over the world are wrapping their feet in duct tape and running out to give talks on cow castration or self esteem. One wart I could deal with, but multiple ones enter into the realm of gross. So yesterday I wrapped a huge piece of duct tape around my foot and ran out to give a workshop on parenting.

I´ll refrain from keeping you posted.

That email you should never send

Yesterday just seemed to be the day. I wrote that email to my ex that I had been thinking maybe I should send. You know that email. The one where you say all the stuff you miss about him, all the stuff you are still mad about, all the things that remind you of him (he is also from South America although, mercifully, not from Ecuador.) And then I hit send.

And I immediately regretted it. Silence had seemed so safe and so comfortable. The thing is that silence is a lot of freaking work. You have to steel yourself to stay angry, stew to sustain your righteous indignation, and hold yourself apart to remove yourself from their sphere. And I guess yesterday it just seemed like it didn´t vale la pena.

And when I sent it, I remembered the pain, the anxiety, and the thrill of those months. It´s funny how you miss that pain of being in love with someone, and when you open the door to that person who made you so sad, the pain feels good, the way it feels good to worry an infected hangnail. It´s good to remember someone can make you feel that way. Instead of the vicarious, muted feeling of watching friends in love, when you yourself are solita.

UPDATED: One other thing I should add is that I received a kind and thoughtful response from the young man in question. It was definitely the right thing. I have to give credit where credit is due.

Weigh in

Hanging in there at 65 kg. No less, but no more either. Started counting calories yesterday again, which worked fine until about 2 pm when I went to the post office. There I found that Erik sent me a package with the best cookies in the world. And everything went to hell. Fortunately they are almost gone.

Vuelve corazon a mi lado

Today was cloudy and cold (relatively speaking) and I spent that day in the house, drinking endless pots of coffee, listening to Mana and preparing a workshop on sexually transmitted disease. I took a nap at mid-day. It was luxurious til the sun came out and then I got cabin fever and wondered where my friends were.

Just happy

Its a beautiful day, kind of like spring, if we had it here, which we really don´t. I had the nicest vibe going today, lots of work to do (including a workshop on HIV with pregnant mothers that I can´t quite get nailed down.) My friend Andy, who I love so dearly, visiting from the States. I have been introducing him to new friends from here and we have been drinking the bourbon he brought me and talking our heads off. When you see yourself through your friends´ eyes you suddenly become aware of the sense of peace and well-being that you give off when you are happy somewhere. And because we are both doing well, he in a PhD program with a high powered job and I living in Latin America, we have fallen into this comfortable little rhythm during his visit here, which is much too short. It is easy to be together, and it hasn´t always been like that.

Don´t freak out, Mom and Dad. After having lunch with him, I walked along the river from the center back to my office and thought to myself: what if I never went home?

Feliz Dia

I got a text message from a co-worker at 8:30 saying Happy Day (in Spanish) and had to stop and think what on earth my he was talking about. It is International Women´s Day (IWD), observed in Ecuador by men (in the non-profit world at least) wishing women a good day, in honor of us being women. It bears saying that this isn´t the first time I´ve found myself in another country, observing the holiday. 13 years ago today I was a college student in Northern Ireland and I helped plan an event, which I vaguely remember involving a Tai Chi demonstration and little sandwiches. (The highlight of that was that I got to go out and illegally flypaste our posters all over Derry, Northern Ireland, with my punkie friend Leah, on whom I had a tremendous crush.) Anyhow, today I started wondering today why on no one in the states ever seems to remember March 8, at least outside of explicitely feminist places like the offices of NOW or NARAL.

Wikipedia had some insight:

"Started as a political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries (primarily Russia and the countries of former Soviet bloc). In some celebrations, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their sympathy and love to the women around them - somewhat similar to Western Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day mixed together. In others, however, the political and human rights theme as designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner....The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America."

So, it´s a holiday started by American socialists, and was often celebrated in conjunction with commemorations of events important to American labor like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. No wonder it doesn´t get any play in the mass media. Leaving aside the fact that the United States seems to be oblivious of a) its own social history and b) the global observance of women´s rights and talents, here are how IWD is observed throughout the world. Again from Wikipedia...

"In Italy, to celebrate the day, men give yellow mimosas to women. [1] [2]

In the UK, women take their work colleagues out to lunch.[citation needed]

In Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, the custom of giving women flowers still prevails. Women usually get gifts from their employers too.[citation needed]

In India, IWD holds a lot of significance. One can see a lot of celebrations going on on this day. This portrays the power of women in the modern era and how vital their role is in the society.[citation needed]

In 1975, which had been designated as International Women’s Year, the United Nations gave official sanction to and began sponsoring International Women's Day."

So, here is my suggestion, if there is a woman in your life, especially one who has been doing cool stuff for other women, in whatever form or political ideology that might take, do something nice to acknowledge that. We can all use a little encouragement these days.

Happy Women´s Day, Comrades.

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

So two things happened this weekend that were hard, although in both cases I found myself in the uncomfortable position of helpless spectator. One, the shelter for women in domestic violence situacions where I have just starting giving workshops on family relations and communication had a suicide in the facility. The details were bad (it was a young woman coming from a situation of extraordinary violence, a child who lived in the house found her, she had only been in the house a few days.) It was one of the those situations where there is nothing you can do but go to the service or give people hugs and try to stand in solidarity in the face of the reminder that people do horrible things to one another. The universe is a destructive and dangerous place. People who get lost and are damaged by something brutal beyond our imagining and must come to the conclusion that the pain of living is greater that the fear of dying.

Second, and this is somewhat my own doing, but on the same day, I found myself hopelessly involved in a nasty breakup of two friends here. One person not speaking to the other, one person being summarily thrown out, it was the really unpleasant time in which the relationship ends and the only way to manage the change is to be mean. I say its my own doing simply because sometimes when you are living in another country, you (OK, I) seek to develop the intimacy you lack in your family and friends by making yourself indispensable to those around you. Being a rock for one person, providing the focal point for a couple when there is a conversation that neither of them wants to have, you (OK, I) distract myself from my own demons. And then I realize that what I must avoid at all costs is to be alone in the same room with the two of them, if possible ever again. It´s terrible to have love come to an end, and in some ways even more unpleasant to watch.

Despacio

I swore I wouldn´t check the scale on random days and torture and discourage myself with the fluctuations, but today I couldn´t help it. So a report is in order. I clocked in at exactly 65 kilograms, which is 143.3 lbs. Meaning that I lost 6.6 lbs. Which is certainly progress, albeit slow. Considering that I have 7.7 more to go. And of course the lower you drop, the less you can eat and still lose weight, at least according to what Weight Watchers said.

Radio Free

I was invited to speak on the radio this week about HIV in the province of Azuay. This is all well and good, I´ve been through media trainings, have a general idea how to craft a five point message and stick to it. The problem of course was that I was asked to speak in Spanish. It was a pretty favorable set up from the beginning, my friend was the host of the program, I knew what I was talking about.

It went fine. But I still choked on couple questions. There were a couple monents where I got this panicked look in my eyes that made my friend rephrase the question so he was sure I understood what he was asking. There were a few moments in which I couldn´t think of anything to say at all, but having my five point message helped because even if I couldn´t think of the answer for a question, I could always plug in something else that I wanted to say. The host swore up and down that he was happy with it, and my the family that I lived with during the fall sent me a text message to say that they thought it went well.

It highlights for me though, how slow a process this is, learning and mastering another language. You spend years and years studying, practicing, plunging yourself in to another context where you have to sink or swim, and still you reach points where your language capacity does not suffice. I still say stuff that doesn´t make any since on a regular basis because I am simply imprecise, I plug in the wrong pronouns or pronounce something funny, (in a language which has perhaps the most straighforward rules of pronunciation of all.)

Aye.

Con Limon and Sal

It needs to be said that one of the loveliest things about being in Ecuador these past few months has been the ubiquitous presence of the music of Julieta Venegas. I first heard her on the soundtrack to Amores Perros, a song which is darker and more unsettling than most others I have heard. (Porque tus amores perros me van a matar. Because your dogs of love are going to kill me.) During the summer, I was sitting in a night bus coming into Quito when I heard Me Voy (I´m Leaving) which is softer and sweeter but still manages to convey regret, pain and anger, and knowing you are gravely at fault, but still can´t stick around to make things better. (Apparently she wrote that song for her ex-husband.) That was the first of many, many times, so much that her album has become part of my little soundtrack to my life here in Ecuador. Everyone listens to here here on the radio, garage mechanics, teenagers, waitresses. She is everywhere. In stores, in buses, in garages, in restaurants. You can´t avoid her. And unlike the Shakira´s Hips Don´t Lie, which you still here from time to time, when radio play exhausts one of her singles it picks up on the next on the next one. We went from

No voy a llorar y decir,
que no merezco esto porque,
es probable que lo merezco
pero no lo quiero, por eso... me voy

(My rough translation)
I´m not going to cry and say
that I don´t deserve this, because
it is likely that I do deserve it,
but I don´t want it and that´s why I´m leaving

to

Yo te quiero con limón y sal,
yo te quiero tal y como estás,
no hace falta cambiarte nada,

(Trans)

I love you lemon and with salt
I love you just the way you are
Don´t change a thing

to

Eres para mi, me lo ha dicho el viento

(Trans)

You are for me, the wind told me.

She is funky and innocent and vampy and wholesome all at the same time. I recommend her without reserve.

Remiss

Since getting back from vacation things have been gratifyingly busy. First there was a glbt film festival. I didn´t have any particular role in it, except to have suggested a number of possible lesbian-themed films. The one they picked, I actually hadn´t seen, and which in all honesty, wasn´t particularly good. Films that were excellent included Georgie Girl and Muxe´s, a documentary on transvestites in Mexico. After that there was Miss Trans Ecuador, in which I was asked to serve as a judge. My organization was involved because we were trying to use it as an opportunity to do HIV prevention. We wrote questions relating to homophobia, self-esteem and HIV/AIDS issues and asked them as part of the competition. The acts were good, the tension was high. The other judges and I had to leave the room to deliberate. I´ve never in my life had a couple hundred people waiting with baited breath to see what I (and three other people) were going to say. The contestant from the province of Los Rios was the winner, and it was so exciting to go and congratulate this gorgeous being, with a smile to die for. I wish I had pictures, but cameras were banned because of privacy and confidentiality concerns.

In other news, I have kept up with calorie counting moderately well. The first week of course went great, and I lost four pounds. The second week, not so well, but I maintained. The third week I gained 1 kg. That´s 2.2 lbs for those of you who live in the dark ages where they actually use English measurements. And so on. I figure I am in it for the long haul though, at least three months. This week has been good so far.

Today I got Easter presents from my folks, they obviously weren´t taking any chances about things not arriving on time. I have to confess that it being the day after Ash Wednesday, I couldn´t actually wait to see what was inside. They bought me the Dixie Chicks new album, which is lovely, and a composer that I don´t know, but I am sure will enjoy

Smitten

So, in some of my spare moments I´ve had fantasies about the hundreds of of thousands of dollars my coop will bring me when I sell it some day, or the variety of fabulous foreign cities that my new reinvented spanish-speaking, world-travelling self might alight in, but the one where I really had to reign myself in is the one in which I return home from the Peace Corps in August 2008 and work to North Carolina for Barack Obama. If all goes according to plan he will of course have won the nomination and be poised for election as the first African-American president. This is all of course plausible (how great would that be?) but of course its a daydream so I find myself at the center of it. I charm the entire Democratic party of North Carolina with my tireless volunteer work and at some high emotion campaign event they insist they must introduce me to the Senator. In the thirty seconds that I have to speak to him, he is compelled by my dazzling command of health care policy and after winning (again, how great would that be?) offers me a fat job in his administration. People I tell this to are very polite and say things like "well really that could happen." But the probability of all those things happening exactly like that is quite remote.

Needless to say, however, I´m very excited about the incipient announcement of his candidacy.

Since we are on topic, why on earth does Biden need someone to tell him that using words like "articulate" and "clean" with regard to race is charged to say the least? He is not off to a good start there.

Smitten

So, in some of my spare moments I´ve had fantasies about the hundreds of of thousands of dollars my coop will bring me when I sell it some day, or the variety of fabulous foreign cities that my new reinvented spanish-speaking, world-travelling self might alight in, but the one where I really had to reign myself in is the one in which I return home from the Peace Corps in August 2008 and work to North Carolina for Barack Obama. If all goes according to plan he will of course have won the nomination and be poised for election as the first African-American president. This is all of course plausible (how great would that be?) but of course its a daydream so I find myself at the center of it. I charm the entire Democratic party of North Carolina with my tireless volunteer work and at some high emotion campaign event they insist they must introduce me to the Senator. In the thirty seconds that I have to speak to him, he is compelled by my dazzling command of health care policy and after winning (again, how great would that be?) offers me a fat job in his administration. People I tell this to are very polite and say things like "well really that could happen." But the probability of all those things happening exactly like that is quite remote.

Needless to say, however, I´m very excited about the incipient announcement of his candidacy.

Since we are on topic, why on earth does Biden need someone to tell him that using words like "articulate" and "clean" with regard to race is charged to say the least? He is not off to a good start there.

The Weight

As everyone remembers, I sprained both my ankles this year and in the midst of that moved to Ecuador where people eat a lot of rice, potatoes and grilled meat. They sell lard in the grocery store here, with a little pig graphic smiling at the señoras. So per the traditional pattern for female peace corps volunteers, as well as according to all normal logic, I put on some of the weight that I once lost. One of the pictures in the book that Jessica brought me showed a picture of me taken on Halloween 2003 when I was at the very smallest I have ever been. If I remember my weight watchers records correctly I was probably 136 lbs. Hanging out in my bikini for a couple weeks reminded me that I do dislike how I look and how much I want to get back to that. And I live down the street from a gym that costs $10 a month, with all the fresh fruits and veggies I could imagine, for dirt cheap. I have nothing but a good setup for it.

So. I tell myself. I do remember everything I did to lose weight. I know how to do it all again. I know how to get into the mindset where to decline certain foods, to put something aside feels like a pleasure and not like something painful. I don´t have that much control over my work, how the Peace Corps treats me, whether I get projects off the ground or a bunch of other things going, but I do have control of what I eat. I bought a scale and filled my fridge with veggies and fruits. Saturday I started counting calories and made juice and drank it. I sat in a restaurant last night and refrained from eating until I got home because the only food they have left was plates of rice, beef, and fried eggs. I have to get back to where you break down the larger task to these tiny little decisions and over time they add up to this big, big change in your life.

Weigh in is Monday morning. I´ll start with counting calories this for a week. And hopefully then another. If it goes well. I´ll try to stick with it for three months and see where I am. I was pleased to find today that I am at 68 kg, which is 149.9 lbs, meaning I only gained about 10 lbs. Which is far from the end of the world.

JB and Me

UPDATED ONCE MORE TO CORRECT ERRORS AND COMPLETE THE CHRONOLOGY OF JESSICA´S VISIT

So I did not write for a long time because I was travelling with my friend Jessica who came to see me here in Ecuador. We went to the Galapagos and the beach and the subtropical cloud forest. Lots happened which I will run down quickly below. Yay Jessica!

Saturday, January 13. I go to Guayaquil to meet Jessica´s flight. The bus comes through the fog on the far side of Cajas National Park and the transitional zone opens green and lush at the foot of the Andes.

Sunday, January 14. I turn 34 years old and it doesn´t really bother me. We catch a ride to the airport with my friend Dara´s neighbor´s brother and then end up having to leave the airport to find the TAME airline cargo office to get the tickets to the cruise, where they promptly try to send us back to the airport without our cruise tickets and I wonder how normal tourists who weren´t acclimated to the Spanish would actually get to the islands.

We get to the boat and are all excited about our little bunk beds and tiny shower. There are twelve of us on the boat. For my birthday, Jessica give me a picture book of fotos that everyone contributed that she made on Snapfish (Thanks everyone!) and I get a little choked up. We go snorkling and explore Black Turtle Cove in the dinghy at sunset.

Monday, January 15. At dawn I peek out my porthole and see the red sands of Rabida Islands. We see sea lizards and boobies, blue footed and otherwise. We go snorkling again and I think that I might get sick in the water from all the sun and walking. But I see a little shark and a Galapagos penguin. Jessica and I play cuarenta, the ecuadorian card game, with the crew members and I finally think I understand the basic rules.

Tuesday January 16. We go to Darwin Bay and see more boobies, frigatebirds, sea lions. I tried to snorkle, but my gear was screwy and the visibility was bad I sat on the beach and watched the sea lions. We play more cuarenta.

Wednesday, January 17. We see turtles, turtles, turtles, more turtles at the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora. I remember why I don´t like tours, since it all becomes very impersonal and silly delivering us to the hotel and then to dinner. I´m sad that all the excitement of the boat is over and they play Keane in the restaurant and it makes me feel worse. We want to go out dancing, but neither of us can keep our eyes open.

Thursday, January 18. We see craters made by lava flow on the way to the airport. Jessica and I stand on Baltra island waiting for the bus to leave and take out last pictures of the island. We kill time eating patacones in the airport. Then there is the airport and the bus station and we find ourselves on a bus to Bahia de Carraquez, where we have to catch a boat to San Vicente, to catch a cab to our final destination, Canoa. It all works out perfectly though and at eleven pm we are seated at the bar drinking caipirinhas a block from the beach. I dance with the bartender to salsa esmereldeña but we are too sleepy to stay out late.

Friday January 19. Canoa is perfect. We sit on the beach, it never rains. The hotel is cheap and charming. I eat seafood encocado for every meal I can. The hotel offered a free cocktails for every bag of trash we pick up and I go out and try to collect trash, but the bag they had in mind is a giant plastic rice sack. I only fill up a third of it and the bartender laughs at me when I ask if it is enough for a free drink. It´s turns out to not be enough. We play cuarenta with the guys from the hotel and go out dancing with them, but Friday isn´t the big night in Canoa and we go home early. We sit at the hotel and play bau, Jessica´s game from Tanzania, which makes everyone want to talk to us. I think about how maybe I should figure out how long it will take the get to the Peace Corps meeting at which I am expected on Monday

Saturday, January 20. Canoa is still perfect. We sit on the beach for another entire day. University students that are trying to learn English come to our little tent and give us interviews so they can practice their English and take our pictures. At dinner, I start asking about how to get to Mindo. There is no bus directly there, naturally, but we can go to Pedernales, and catch a bus to Santo Domingo de los Colorados. From there we can catch another bus to Mindo. The dreadful realization that we have to leave the next day dawns on us. Jessica and I sit at our table feeling very sad. We played cuarenta again, but don´t go out for the big night in Canoa. We are mourning the end of the beach.

Sunday, January 21. We leave Canoa. Each leg of the trip takes more time than we expected. In Santo Domingo, it starts to rain. Really hard. The bus is like a sauna and the aisles are filled with people. We are seated by a window that doesn´t open. Eventually we get out of the hottest part of the coast. A guy leans over and starts asking us trivia questions about spicy food and seahorses. We have out own giant tortoise trivia, fresh from the Charles Darwin Research Station.

UPDATED: Picking up with the same post...

Monday, January 22. We started out at a room at the hotel in Mindo which we thought was kind of bad, but when we get moved into our official room, its in the shed where they used to have frogs on display behind the swimming pool. I am in the Peace Corps, so feel that I shouldn´t really complain but I feel bad for Jessica who is on here vacation. She is a trooper and meets all my Peace Corps pals. We go to a bar and dance a lot and get in late, but somehow I get up in time to shower and eat before my presentation.

Tuesday, January 23. I give a presentation on doing education on homophobia with adolescents. I haven´t technically done much of this, so my credentials were kind of dubious, but it is pretty well received and people like my picture of the gay penguins in Central Park.

Wednesday, January 24. I finish my meeting and we head to Quito to catch a bus home. We wanted to fly, but the Quito-Cuenca flight was too expensive for even Jessica with a real job and everything to justify. We have dinner with Jordan and Risa and Angie in El Mariscal and then desert at Cafecito and the catch our bus at eleven. At three pm we wake up next to a rock outcropping because a semi has jack-knifed in the road and the bus sits there for the next three hours. Jessica thinks we are getting robbed, but I managed to sleep through most of the dark, still wee hours. Despite the delay, we get into Cuenca by eleven and have time to explore the city. Jessica thinks Cuenca is just as beautiful as I said it was.

Thursday, January 25. We go to the thermal springs in Baños and chat with yet another pair of Ecuadorians. Jessica is keeping a list of guys she turned down and she estimates this takes her up to five. (Or was it more? She had one more than me.) We get manicures and run to the grocery store and Jmy friends Julio and Pablo come over for drinks. We drink lots of wine and dance a little.

Friday, January 26. I make an appearance at my office which is mercifully short. We go to Gualeceo and Chordeleg, near Cuenca and we both find loads of beautiful jewelry, although Jessica buys way more than I do. We both fall asleep on the bus back into Cuenca and when we get into a cab in the bus station, the streets are wet and shiny and the sun has come out. I have that wierd after-nap feeling you get when you live with someone or spend a lot of time with them, like where you are or what you are doing isn´t really your life per se, rather the backdrop for the movie about your friendship. Like here we are together in the cab in Cuenca which we just add to all the other memories of New York, Boston, and wherever else we may find ourselves hanging out some day. Before we go to sleep, we play bau and it makes me wish we were still at the beach.

Saturday, January 27. Jessica has an 11:30 flight from Guayaquil, so I get up early to get her on a bus there. The bus leaves promptly at 5:05 and I go home and sleep more before going to work.

Nothing Changes on New Year´s Day

New Year´s Day in Cuenca is stunning, clear skies, big fluffy clouds, the hills are blue, the trees are a sparkling green. All this notwithstanding, I woke up this morning and realized that in fourteen days I will turn 34. Getting older has never been what bothered me, but this year, wow. It sucks. Despite all of the lovely things about being here, the list of things I have accomplished is dangerously short. I´m going back to work tomorrow with a list of ambitious projects in hand and no particular idea about how to make any of them real, except for the ones that involve me showing up and sort of helping out.