Let Me Count The Ways . . .

I would like to write a post about my two favorite people in the whole wide world. There are two reasons for this: 1. They are my two favorite people in the whole wide world, and 2. It's always nice to be told how great you are, and no matter how much you deny it, we all know it's true (not that either of these two would ever deny it). Oh yes, and 3. I think everyone else should know how great they are too. Wait, wait, and 4. I miss them both terribly and think of their pretty little faces practically constantly. Let me revise; there are four reasons I am writing this.

And my two FAVORITE people are . . . (drum roll. . . . ) . . . Angelica and Julie! WHOOOO!!!!

Why I love Angelica Hatch:

1. She bears wonderful children for me to play with and uses words like "pregnanter"
2. When we get old, we're going to wear multi-colored, hideous thrift store clothing (including, but not limited to large hats and plaid pants) and swear and act completely inappropriately. Together.
3. She has the best hand writing on the planet and her lines are always straight.
4. She laughs at all the right parts in movies.
5. She has perfect style, which happens to be almost exactly the same as mine and gives me clothes when her weight fluctuates... you know, like when she goes and gets herself knocked up again or something.
6. She eats healthy, except when she is eating enormous amounts of junk food.
7. She orders 15 things at a Chinese restaurant even though I am the only other one there and it will all be leftover.
8. She likes sports AND shoes.
9. She reads books, uses big words, and does otherwise intelligent and well-educated things.
10. She watches bad movies with me, laughs at me when I run into trees, tolerates my blunders in cooking and art projects, and always hangs out with me.

Why I love Julie Garbutt:

1. She understands exactly what I'm saying even when all that comes out is a grunt or hand gesture.
2. She has super wicked (you know, in the way that English people use it) style and can pull off anything. Thus, her name is often found in sentences such as "that's cute, it's something JULIE could pull off, I don't really think I could".
3. She tolerates me remarkably well and understands emotional handicaps.
4. She pretends to monitor my junk-food intake but actually just lets me eat tons of it because she knows I want to and acts surprised later when I tell her I feel sick.
5. She might be the same person as me.
6. She likes nude art and other such scandalous atrocities.
7. She acts exactly the same around everyone.
8. She sings show tunes and thinks musicals are the greatest thing ever invented even though the rest of us know they aren't.
9. She jumps around like a wild banshee to express emotion. In public.
10. She walks around barefoot and burps and gets her hands sticky and eats food off the floor and sticks her finger in her nose. And I still like her.

Working It

I have recently started a new job at Dollar Financial Group working in collections. I am a collection officer on Cash til Payday loans. Or, in layman's terms, I call people all day that borrowed money from my company and try to get them to pay their stinking debts. I like to think of myself as a cronie of sorts, using verbal gymnastics and unspecified threats to convince the sorry debtors to give my boss da money. Not surprisingly, my job has a high turnover rate; I guess getting yelled at, hung up on, and bonding with answering machines is not every one's idea of a good time. I've been surprisingly entertained by it though, I see it as a kind of sociological study--I am exposed to a whole other side of the socio-economic spectrum the likes of which I never found in my upper-middle class neighborhoods and schools. For instance (and this is really very factual), I never actually thought there were that many people named Shaniqua out there.
The wide variety of names, answering machines, and occasional vulgarity keep me entertained, and when that gets old, I console myself with crossword puzzles and sudoku games. Much of my day is spent on hold at businesses and leaving messages, and I have become intimately acquainted with every answering service, call screening device, and disconnected number message out there. It is slightly disconcerting when I catch myself having actual conversations with machines, but I brush it off as boredom and hope it doesn't turn into anything that will be expensive to fix with a therapist.
I thought I would share with you all a couple of my favorite calls thus far, which I have recreated below to the best of my ability:
1. Subtlety's Overrated
ring ring ring
Bob: (we'll call him Bob to protect his real identity, which I don't know anyway) Hello?
Me: Hi I'm looking for Shwanda.
Bob: Hold on a second, I'm just comin in the house, I'll see if she's there.
In the background, perfectly audible to me:
Bob: Shwannndaaa!
Shwanda (presumably): who is it?
Bob: Dollar Financial
Shwanda: WHO?
Bob: (in an exaggerated tone) DOLLAR. FINANCIAL.
Shwanda: Hang up!
Bob: What?
Shwanda: hang up!
Bob: WHAT?!
Me: She told you to hang up.
Bob: uh, hold on a sec
CLICK.

2. Past Your Expiration Date
ring ring ring
Joe: Hello?
Me: Hi, joe?
Joe: What? Speak up, I can't hear you!
Me: Joe, this is Lanee from Dollar Financial
Joe: From what? (clearly strained on hearing)
Me: Dollar Financial, it's about loan mart, you owe $315, it's 189 days past due
(Joe can't hear and hands the phone to his wife)
Wife: Hello?
Me: I'm calling about loan mart
(the phone switches hands again)
Joe: How do you know I owe that?
Me: Because I work for the company
Joe: How late did you say?
Me: 189 days
Joe: 189 days?! No wonder I don't remember it!
(at some point during this call I look at Joe's birth date and realize he is 85 years old)

3. Answering Awesomeness
Just a little sampling of my favorite answering machines, in case anyone needs any suggestions:

• Gospel singing, American Idol audition style
• Really obnoxious couples answering in unison with a perfectly choreographed message in which each has separate lines as well as lines they pronounce together in a sing-songy voice
• Everyone in the south that says "have a blessed day" at the end of theirs (which is everyone)
• Scripture recitation (again, mostly in the South)
• Apocalyptic warnings (apparently these people didn't expect to have to pay back these loans....)
• Really loud rap songs about having a lot of money (clearly not accurate representations of their lives)
• kids that you can't understand which basically translates into undecipherable babbling
• Fat Albert impression

Jungle-icious

OK, first let me apologize for waiting so long to finish describing this whole jungle experience (I know you were all hanging on the edge of your seats huh?). I'm going to make this brief, and just sort of give an overview of the rest of the trip, as much for your sakes as for my own.

Our days in the jungle generally consisted of three meals eaten in the village which were cooked for us by one of the local women. The guide had food brought in for us from the city to "prevent depletion of their resources", though I suspect also as an attempt at comfort. This mostly consisted of rice, soup, some fruit, and a loaf of white bread. There were some seriously inaccurate calculations somewhere along the way and this "western food" ran out about day four. After that we pretty much ate yucca and.... no wait, yep, just yucca. This proved to be a fairly uncomfortable diet for someone not accustomed to so much starch and I even got a nice little starch belly (which disappeared days after departure thank goodness). Between breakfast and lunch we would usually go on jungle walks with Abel, our 23 guide from the city, and Gustavo, our local guide. This generally involved trudging through knee-deep mud (don't worry, we had rubber boots on at all times) and occasionally crossing bridges over streams (and by bridges I of course mean trees cut down over the river). The foliage was incredibly thick (as you'd expect in the jungle) and we saw an amazing variety of flora and fauna. Our guides would frequently stop to explain the use of different plants--everything ranging from medicinal to edible.

We encountered a fair amount of animals while we were out wandering (millions of species if you count bugs). Our guides were extremely enthusiastic about searching for monkeys, I think that somewhere along the way they got the idea that tourists are obsessed with monkeys and will not be happy unless they see them every day. So we spent a good amount of time scanning the canopy for primates and spotted some at least five or six times. But by far the coolest animal we saw was an anteater that walked right up to us and then stayed around for awhile climbing trees and searching for food. It was pretty amazing. It frequently rained, which made the jungle walks considerably less comfortable and the mud infinitely deeper. I must say I also thoroughly enjoyed our guides various animal calls throughout the trip.

There were definitely some amazing experiences in the jungle, but by the end, I was more than ready to leave. This unfortunately did not happen as planned (as nothing really did). On the day that we were supposed to leave there was bad whether in Shell (the city the plane leaves from) and we couldn't fly out. I don't think I have ever been more devastated in my life. Wait, that's not true, on the THIRD day of waiting with still no sign of a plane I was significantly more devastated. Finally, at the end of the third day our salvation arrived. The plane had left just as bad weather was rolling into Shell and the pilot was freaking out and yelling. At one point we were in the air in the middle of a gray cloud where we couldn't see anything, I really thought we weren't going to make it.

Because of our delay in the jungle we ended up missing our flight back to the States and couldn't get out for another week. At first this thought was horrifying, but after a massage and a facial and a couple of days in incredible Colonial Quito at churches and museums, my hope in life was restored.

It's been almost three weeks now since we've been home, and the whole experience is getting rosier in my memory. Though I do STILL have bed bug bites that itch every once in awhile. I'm not sure if I'll ever be completely healed.

Welcome To The Jungle (think Guns n Roses)

The next morning luck (or some other universal force, after reading our experiences, you decide) was on our side and we made our way bright and early to Shell, a neighboring city where the plane would be leaving from. I will admit that I was a little worried when I saw the old 4-seater plane that looked like it could be straight out of 1978 waiting for us. It didn't help when the pilot immediately began praying and crossing himself, but I guess it's always better to have God on your side.

After an hour and a half flight over miles and miles and miles of absolutely nothing (seriously, nothing) during which I began to question my decision, we arrived on a hand-cut landing strip in the community of Juyuintza. The culture shock set in almost immediately as we stood in the middle of a crowd of almost the entire community in the bazillion degree heat (that's a technical measurement) watching confusedly as naked children ran around and the adults had some sort of heated discussion about who would take the plane ride back to the city. We understood none of this, as the community speaks an indigenous dialect called Shiwiar and our guide had apparently momentarily forgotten about us. We were finally led to what appeared to be a community hut (which we found out later was the home of the teniente who was away in the city, but seemed to be a popular place for community gatherings) where we sat down on wooden benches and again commenced listening dumbly to a community discussion in Shiwiar. After awhile our guide told us that we were waiting for the president who lived a half an hour away on foot. We sat like that for another hour or so while the chicha was passed around and everyone talked (except us of course, who probably just stared wide-eyed).

Chicha is a traditional Shiwiar drink that makes up the staple of their diet and their primary beverage. They drink what appeared to be gallons of this stuff a day, drinking it out of bowls that they pass around, and always served to the men by the women. Now I don't mean to sound culturally insensitive, but chicha is quite possibly the most foul liquid ever created on the face of the planet (needless to say, I passed on trying it). Allow me to explain: chicha is made from Yucca, a root plant similar to a potato that makes up the bulk of the Shiwiar's diet. They harvest the Yucca, peel it, cook it, and place it into a huge canoe-shaped bowl to prepare the chicha. Once in the bowl, the women mash it up and then begin filling their cheeks with the stuff after which they proceed to chew it up until it is almost completely liquid at which point they spit it back into the bowl and continue mixing and chewing. Once this step is complete, they allow the mashed up and salivated yucca to sit for a day and ferment (they sometimes let it sit for up to three days if they want alcoholic chicha). Then they mix it with river water (brown, and taken from the same part of the river in which they bathe and wash clothes and dishes) and serve it in community bowls. When the women are serving it, they frequently stick their hands into the middle of the bowls to squeeze the yucca fibers and then run their fingers around the mouth of the bowl before handing it to a man. When drinking the chicha, they sometimes get yucca fibers in their mouths and so they hock massive loogies throughout the whole experience. It's all very appetizing. Chicha is one of the most important parts of Shiwiar life and, as explained by our guide: "Chicha is life".

We were eventually led about five minutes away from the main part of the community to the school, a cement building with a corrugated metal roof and the only closed in building in the community since it was constructed by the government. This was where we would be sleeping. They set up some one inch thick mattresses with sleeping bags and pillows and left us there to rest. It turned out that they actually cancelled school while we were there so that we could sleep in the school, an idea I found to be a little unsettling but didn't have much control over. Overall the mattresses weren't too bad as far as comfort goes (nothing even rivaling a motel 6 but I wasn't expecting much), although when we discovered that they were infested with bed bugs it became significantly more difficult to sleep on them. Still, I was grateful for a little privacy and a bed somewhat protected from the elements. From what I gathered the people slept on wooden planks under their huts, some of them with mosquito nets and a few with sheets. I was grateful we had somewhat better accommodations. I did find it a little weird when our guide told us he would be sleeping in the one room school house with us, but we just went with it. It was a little awkward when my mom asked him where the bathroom was for the school and he looked around a little confusedly and, with a vague motion to the surrounding area replied "anywhere". When in the main part of the community there was a three-sided outhouse with more species of insects than I have ever previously encountered; I learned to prefer the greater outdoors.

After a day or two of sweating profusely and trudging through knee deep mud, we finally brought ourselves to inquire after bathing accommodations. Our guides obliged very kindly by hauling two kettles of river water up to the school for us (these looked VERY heavy). We managed to achieve a mediocre level of cleanliness (which lasted all of an hour before we were just as dirty as before) and even succeeded in washing some clothes in the leftover water as we had already dirtied half of our clothes by the second day. I soon learned to accept the stench coming from virtually everything I owned as inevitable and we just did our best for the rest of the trip.

Well, I think I've at least covered the basics of jungle living, though I haven't even begun to cover all of what we did there. I'm going to have to stop there for now, but I promise to get into some wildlife descriptions in the next post; I can only take so much reminiscing in one day :).

Monkey Business

To be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure where to begin this post. I have recently returned from a trip to the Ecuadorian jungle and want to share all the gory details, but there are almost too many to think about. I find myself torn between getting my feet wet and just jumping right in. I suppose if you're going to get wet you might as well go swimming right? Consider this a bucket of water dumped on your head. So, per the Von Trapp's excellent musical advice, I'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

The original plan was to spend ten days in the Ecuadorian jungle, working through a very, very small, virtually unknown tourist agency to live in a small Shiwiar indigenous community. [Anyone seeing any warning signs yet?] A little apprehensive about this expedition with no reputation that she found on the Internet, mom opted to pay only half before we arrived and put up the rest of the money when we met Pascual (owner, director, and tour guide) and confirmed the existence and legitimacy of the trip. When we arrived in Puyo, the day before we were supposed to fly to the jungle, we met Pascual, decided that he seemed legitimate enough, transferred the remaining money, and packed up our stuff.

The next morning, we were met with what would prove to be a common occurrence on our expedition, bad weather and a change of plans. Because of the weather, we were unable to leave for the jungle, since we would be flying in a small, 4-seater plane into, well, the middle of nowhere. After waking up at 7 am as directed, we waited around the hotel for a couple of hours awkwardly attempting conversation with our 23 year old and clearly inexperienced and less than social guide who kept assuring us that the weather could clear up any minute and we thusly had to be ready to go on a moment's notice. [It should be noted that this guide was not the aforementioned Pascual, but rather his younger brother Abel. Pascual apparently decided that since we didn't require an English-speaking guide (of which he spoke a little), he would take this opportunity to stay home and work at his various pursuits while sending us out into the jungle with his kid brother.] The team (by which I mean Pascual, his wife, and Abel, which, from all that I saw seem to be the whole of the company) eventually decided that we should do something other than sit around waiting, since, by all calculations, the plane would not be flying today, and we were still paying for a day's accommodations and activities. (This thought had occurred to me hours before).

After a sufficiently awkward lunch during which I discovered that they believed that vegetarians only eat vegetables, we headed to a sort of nature preserve outside the city for jungle animals. Here we were introduced to many of the animals native to the jungle we would soon be exploring. Unlike any zoo or preserve I've been to in the United States, they invited us right into the cages where I came into much closer than comfortable contact with several unsettling reptiles.

The most eventful part of the day however, occurred when we were walking the muddy path around the preserve through trees and jungle. We saw several monkeys jumping around the trees surrounding us and got pretty excited. The guide mentioned we were in the vicinity of this particular group of monkeys' haunts, so we stopped, presumably, to observe. When Abel took out a banana I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, but certainly nothing even close to what happened. Within seconds there were four or five monkeys jumping all over me and, from the shrieks I heard behind me, my mom too. Alarmed but not wanting to miss the moment, I quickly shoved my camera into the hands of Pascual's wife standing in front of me, as much so that I wouldn't drop it as that I wanted a picture of what was happening. The monkeys were climbing and jumping around excitedly all over me trying to get a piece of Abel's banana. I can't say I really enjoyed the moment at the time, I was so shocked that I didn't know quite what to do and concentrated primarily on how many animals I had on me and where exactly their hands and tails were going (I am fairly positive that several of said appendages made their way down my shirt at some point). I am also pretty sure that I was left with a couple little presents on my shirt, something I think happened sometime while two monkeys were fighting over some banana on my back. It was all over in less than a minute, but it was certainly a memorable experience.

After that adventure we headed back to the hotel for another night, once again anticipating departure in the morning.

Puerto Lopez

Well, we´re just past the halfway point in the trip, and it´s been nothing short of interesting thus far. We just returned from a weekend trip to Puerto Lopez which proved both educational and entertaining.

The first bus from Canoa to San Vicente was crowded, a common occurence here. As usual this did not prevent the ayudante from hailing down more passengers, creating a wonderful mass of sweaty bodies scrunched together in a sardine esque manner in every bit of space avaialable, occasionally venturing onto the top of the bus. Somewhere in this mass of people a very old, very small woman pulled me onto her lap. I tried to protest, assuring her that I was just fine standing in the aisle (just like the other 20 people, a fact that seemed to escape her attention, or else just didn´t bother her), but she was very insistent and continued to pull me onto her lap. Evaluating the situation, I determined that it was better to consent and not offend the woman, even if it was at the risk of breaking her 80 year old, frail looking legs. The woman was very sweet, calling me a doll, and proceeded to wrap her arms around my waist, pat my thigh, etc. Since she was old and female I decided that this was probably ok and hoped it was customary or something. I soon surmised that this was not in fact an every day occurence as I took in the stares from everyone else on the bus. I was sure they were all gawking at this obnoxious American tourist who was crushing a poor old woman´s legs because she couldn't handle standing in the aisle like everyone else. Needless to say it was a mildly uncomfortable situation.

After several more uncomfortable, though comparatively less eventful bus rides we arrived in Puerto Lopez to a very cool little eco lodge called Mandala. Our room was a little private cabaña with two beds complete with mosquito nets and a bathroom boasting some very attractive woodwork. All in all a great place with pretty good food and phenomenal tropical gardens. The owners were on vacation at the time, they had left their friend Walter to run the place. Walter was an older German man with wire rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose and white, somewhat unkempt hair on the sides of his head. Walter became frustrated rather easily and became visibly stressed when Lucy tried to order a drink while he was still checking us in. We soon learned not to burden Walter with more than one simple task at risk of making his head explode. One morning we wanted a taxi but none were available, so a worker at the hotel called one that would be there in ten minutes. A couple of minutes later four taxis arrived and Albert became so flustered that he could hardly get his words out, which quickly became very amusing as he was sputtering in his less than perfect Spanish to the taxi drivers. A very nice man, but not cut out for air traffic control.

On our second night in Puerto Lopez we heard that there was a traveling circus in town, so me, mom, and our friend Gerard from the school in Canoa decided to go. I for one just wanted to see how on earth they got a lion (their biggest draw on the advertisement) to this little town in Ecuador and what state the animal was in. This proved to be one of the more bizarre spectacles I have ever had the privilege of witnessing. The circus was supposed to start at nine, so, obviously, when we got there at five to, the place was deserted. After finally getting in, at the steep price of a buck a pop, we paid fifty cents more to sit in the plastic lawn chairs set up in front of the bleachers and then proceeded to sit around for forty minutes waiting. At one point a dog ran in and peed on a pole in the center, which I mistakenly took for the first act. The show started promptly at ten thirty. I immediately realized that this was not going to be like any circus I had ever seen.

It opened with four women, scantily clad in thong bikinis with beads hanging down (probably for modesty´s sake) and high heels dancing. Now, I use the term dancing lightly, it mostly consisted of some impressive booty shaking and the occasional turn (so as to see this from all angles of course). They did at one point attempt a sort of can can type move which didn't work out very well due to an apparent lack of coordination. Jim (a man we met on our tour of Isla de la Plata that day) who I was sitting next to suggested that perhaps if this whole college thing didn't work out I could have a career in the circus. We´ll see how this semester pans out. After that spectacle, there were a couple of acrobat type performers (with three guys in the background controlling the pulley system with their body weight and a disturbing lack of a safety net), and a contortionist the likes of which I have never before seen. Next came a five minute intermission that only lasted for twenty minutes and more dancers. There were some clowns thrown in the mix at certain points, I don´t pretend to have understood all of their jokes but their actions made it clear that there was some PG 13 humor being tossed around. There were also some mechanical dolls doing dirty dance moves, which turned out to be a guy squatting underneath some mannequins and moving their legs. And finally, as a finale, some little monkeys dressed as Rambo complete with mini machine guns came out. There never was a lion, but as this didn't seem to bother anyone else I assume this was expected.

A very interesting trip. We head to the jungle on Friday so no Internet for ten days or so, so I guess this is Ciao!

Bienvenidos a Ecuador

SO, after twelve hours on a plane and some painfully long bus rides I am now in Ecuador! We flew into Quito (the capital) at 7 or 8...(ok note: I never have any idea what time it is here as I don´t have a watch and usually just depend on the cell phone). I learned some little fun facts about Quito from our unusually friendly pilot: apparently it´s the second highest airport in the world and they actually have to lower the pressure inside the plane before landing to match that of the altitude outside--I guess they haven´t been flying there very long because of the problems presented by the altitude and such. So now that everyone reading this has officially fallen asleep, please, let me continue.

The first night in Quito we seemed to be staying in the heart of the tourist district and I was ecstatic to be greeted by a hot shower at my hotel. The area, known as New Town, is affectionately (ok, maybe not so affectionately) termed Gringolandia by the natives--not exactly my style. On the first day we went to Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world), and straddled the equator, which my mom thought was stupid and I thought was freaking awesome. Then on Wednesday (I think, I also generally have no idea what day it is) we headed on a ten hour bus ride down down down to the coast. I took some magic little pills (Dramamine for the motion sickness) and was out for the majority of the ride, except for a couple of times when I woke up to the sound of vendors walking through the aisles of the bus and some beggars with elaborate stories at which point I feigned sleep anyway to avoid confrontation. And one time when I was out sprawled onto two seats and a lady came and sat on me instead of tapping me to wake me up first.

We have been at the beach, at Sundown Inn, a hotel-type place owned by a family where we have spanish classes 4 hours a day for a couple of days now. It´s about a fifteen minute walk up the beach to Canoa, a little coastal town known for being a surfer´s haven. This place is pretty much all I could ask for: a stuning beach, plenty of hammocks, and hours and hours of down time to read and sunbathe. Aside from my classes that´s pretty much all I do here, relax and read. It´s phenomenal. It´s extremely humid but really not too hot, at least not unbearably so. Hot enough that you want to jump in the ocean but with the breeze definitely not too uncomfortable. We will be here for two weeks, which should be great, aside from the less than desirable food (including a wide variety of mystery meats--which we can only hope doesn´t include Cuy, or Guinea Pig, an Ecuador specialty) and the really uncomfortable matress.

For those of you who were wondering, I´m keeping the sunburn under control, no face boils yet so it looks like we´re in the clear. I learned my lesson, so you don´t have to be afraid to look at my pictures later :). ¡Ciao!