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.