Brainframe

We are all either victims or champions of our own past. Constrained either way, we consider ourselves products of our experiences and our environments. But just as buddhism teaches that you are not your thoughts, and to be present in yourself, your body (which is implicitly included in the self, but often thought of as seperate to us westerners), the same is true of your experiences and your past.

In this i am a missionary, a zealot and a mendicant: the human brain, biologically speaking is the most amazing organ in all existence, precisely because of its ability to change and manipulate itself. How it does this is still a mystery to modern medicine. We claim to be able to control and manipulate it through things like surgery and medicine, the truth is that we have only begun to unlock its interlocking, interwoven secrets. We do know this, the human brain has an inherent ability to change, in biological terms, be "plastic," maleable (even according to the Dalai Lama). Neuroplasticity describes this growing field.

This video shows the physical effects of mind on the brain, literally mind over matter. Simply by exercising, by focusing energy and attention in the right places, the physical shape of the brain can be molded and expanded.

Hope, belief, faith, these things become much more than immaterial things created by religious institutions to keep the masses in order, but exist as energy and power that can be tuned to create, to produce, to manifest physical reality. The belief that you will be healed, produces its own healing effects.

Like anything else, it takes hard work and practice to get out of the well worn trenches of habit. In the end "It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation." Rudolf Virchow

Ultimately, it is up to us. The power to choose.

थिस इस वहत इ'म तल्किंग अबाउट!

(for those of you who can't read Hindi, sorry about the confusion)

THIS is what I'm talking about! Stewards to our planet! encouraging of things that grow and develop. We have the capacity to concieve of things such as responsibility and fostering growth, so why isn't our ultimate potential as catalyst to help life around us reach its fullest potential as well?

Genetic Identity

Global climate change is coming and we're all going to die.

It may be a little melodramatic. It may be the latest conspiracy to control the consumeristic tendencies of the world, conceived of by a well-intentioned activist scientific community. Conspiracy theories aside, whether or not our species lives to inherit the Earth for another couple of generations doesn't mean that life is gone. It just means that we are. Life on this planet is an incredibly robust thing that doesn't particularly care about you or the things you buy, your family or where you'd like to go on your next vacation, or even what kind of car you drive.

And why should we try to change our ways? Why should we reform, short of our own selfish needs for survival? It was global climate change in the first place that brought about circumstances for our species' rise to our current position in the world today. We're not even the dominant species on the planet, bugs and bacteria not only outnumber us by billions, they have also colonized areas of our planet we have yet to even see. Other species on this planet outnumber us by so much that we do not even know how many other species there are. We know how much an electron weighs, a small subatomic particle that is difficult even to conceptualize much less see. But even the greatest minds of our species have no concept, not even to the nearest order of magnitude of how many living organisms we share this ball in space with. Estimates of the number of insects species alone range from 30 million to 200 million. A small difference in interpretation, really. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-10/ff_barcode?currentPage=1

The majority of our actions separate us from the planet. How many times a day do you think about the fact that the world is round not flat? How about that the Earth is but one rock orbitting this wussy star that we have developed to be perfect at living with and not the other way around, with the universe revolving around you? Maybe it’s egocentric of me but even as a student of biology (the self-proclaimed ‘study of life’) I know I don’t think about those things very often.

Our talents as storytellers have completely outstripped our capacity for survival, deceiving each other to believe that ‘I will just die! without this consumerist product!’ while we let our decision makers get away with denying water (a substance, mind you, that makes up 60% of who and what we are) as a basic human right. We actively engage in forcing groups of other human beings right here in the United States of America to "sell" their water, compete in the world economic house of cards that's really just a game of pass the debt. And when the music stops? Wall Street gets bailed out and the rest of the world is told to pinch pennies.

Imagine for just a second a world based on collectivity. I’m not talking about communism or socialism, although some will view it as such. I’m talking about a world based on the principles of commonality and the dogma of pragmatism. The internet has already done so much to create this sense of a shared reality: the ultimate marketplace of ideas. A place where we are all creators and contributors to the collective consciousness and do not have to simply accept what we’re told by the people with more money (read: access) than we have. Imagine a world where we were all contributors to accepted scientific knowledge. It has pretty much already happened with the media.

I didn't mean for this to be a muckraker post, nor commentary on capitolism and consumer culture although the appearance of both seems indicative of their pervasive quality on our culture, enough at least to make them pertinent to this discussion. If you've read this far then I hope you would agree that we have a responsibility, at the very least to ourselves and our own self-interest for survival, to try to do something about the state of the world today. We have enjoyed a relatively comfortable existence on this planet thus far; an unusual bout of warm weather and uncharacteristically regular seasonal changes for a few thousand years. It is precisely because we are able to conceive of something called responsibility (the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something) that we must act. Species of all types, shapes and sizes must appeal to this necessity. Sentience, as we define it, is not a requirement to these tasks but a tool that we have developed and honed in order to make us the highly adaptable monkeys we are today.

The root of the word 'apocalypse' comes to us from Old English, via Old French and ecclesiastical Latin from Greek 'apokalupsis' from 'apokaluptein' which is defined as 'to uncover' 'reveal' which makes sense if you think about its context in the biblical book of Revelation. The new religion of science is right: we are on the brink of apocalypse, and it is my hope that we are able to collect knowledge around us, learn from our own mistakes and implement proven solutions without constraint to what is comfortable and familiar. Comfortable and familiar have served us well in the past, propagating our kind to what we have today, language, art, music, space travel, technology, but let's not slip backward when we have come this far. Our large brain size allows us to be the most malleable and adaptable species on the planet. Unlike many other species, we do not need to wait generations for change to figure itself out genetically, and let evolution take care of the losers. Instead, we have the unique ability to choose our own direction and adjust to surrounding conditions.

We are the first sentient species on this planet that we know of. May we prove worthy enough to be the stewards of many more to come.

The Final Everything Ecuador

hey everyone,

as the subject indicates, this will be the last installment of these emails, pretty much because i can tell you right now what my final two and a half weeks here is going to look like: writing, transcribing, translating, more writing, a little bit of travel, and even more writing.  these directed-independent study projects are a little overwhelming.  at least i´m a good way in already and its a topic i enjoy (indigenous medicine for a refresher).  30 pages in spanish here i come!

 

on to more important and actually interesting things:  these past two weeks have been life-changing. 

the first was our rural homestay in Cotacachi.  i was staying in a town called Morochos, about the size of a couple football fields.  there were six people from our group staying in this tiny town.  the rest of the group wass staying in towns in the surrounding area.  we had our own little house with its own bathroom, shower, and 3 really comfy beds and covers, facing the house that belonged to the family.  our family´s house (Vincent Chen was staying in the same place as me, though he spent a majority of his time with Lan who was at another house, just down the road) had four rooms: bathroom, living room (which was also home to the family´s only bedframe, no mattress, just a couple of straw mats, i guess the whole family cuddled up in there to sleep), dining room, and kitchen.  all that blatant inequality was pretty wack, but i guess if those are the furnishings that tourists like ourselves sometimes depend on to actually go visit a that place, i can´t really argue.  i would have been fine with a mat myself, but i know thats not most people.

the family was very very nice, though we often had communication problems.  our host-father and eldest host-sister were the only two that spoke conversationlevel spanish, about at the same level as mine, depending on the subject.  amongst themselves they spoke Quichua, which was fun at times because modern Quichua is a mix of spanish and quichua, because there are a lot of concepts that quichua just never invented (or needed to have) words for.  our host-father worked in construction, and pretty much drops everything when there are guests so that he can be tour guide, etc.  this made the initiative totally and utterly ours, which is why this part of the program is difficult for a lot of people.  the hosting families are very shy, especially ours, because of language and cultural barriers, and they don´t want to feel like they´re imposing on us, because we´re the guests.  but most of our group was really proactive and jumped at every opportunity they gave us.  i got to work in the garden, hoing up renegade weeds and kinoa, i got to shepherd which meant going out with the four cows, one burro, and handfuls of goats and sheep, and chase them around in the hills, making sure they didn´t eat the neighbors´ corn.  then i got really sick.  i think i finally figured out that it was the kinoa which they put in almost every soup (every meal except breakfast, but probably that too if you let them, included a soup and a main plate, it was a lot of food!) maybe i´m allergic?  finally threw up in the shower, because my butt was occupying the toilet.  it was gross.  atatai = how gross!  in Quichua.  that was Monday, by Wednesday i was finally feeling a little better, had my appetite back even if i couldnt keep anything down, so my host-father hands me this cup of clear liquid, says: "here!  herbal remedy!" well, no better way to work on a project that with first hand experience.  it was about two shots worth of the purest alcohol i´ve ever had.  the first meal i had had all week came back up about ten seconds later.  "feel better?" he asked...  kinda...  finally started taking the Traveller´s Diahrria pills my doctor had given me before i left.  turns out thats all it was and it cleared right up.  while being sick sucked, it still gave me tons of time for rest, reading (i started "A Force More Powerful: a century of nonviolent conflict" heady stuff), and more writing than i´ve done in ages.  it was great.

we got back on Thanksgiving Day to Quito.  we went out to our favorite falafel bar.  we all went around and said what we were thankful for.  it was precious.  i felt a little sacreligious not eating meat on Turkey Day, but we at least got the gluttony part down.

Friday morning we got to the airport, flew to Coca (half hour flight), total petrol town, then got onto a chiva (these huge buses that are open on either side and fit as many people as you can squeeze onto each bench, they have seating on top too, but thats where our luggage went) which took us to the Rio Napo, got on a boat for two hours, another chiva for another two, and another boat on the Rio Tiputini for an unmeasurable amount of time.  the whole process took the whole day and we finally got to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon jungle after it got dark.  what an incredible place.  apparently its one of THE most biologically diverse spots on the planet.  other than the occasional sounds of helicopters going in and out of oildrilling spots, and the generator which went on only to prepare lunch and then again for dinner, you´re surrounded by constant nature sounds.  i am even more of a believer now that the Amazon invented everything first.  there were so many sounds that should have been coming from a DJ´s board or a synthesizer or some other computerized thingamajig, but they were birds!  or poison tree frogs!  or monkeys!  it literally got to the point that we would be walking along one of the many trails and say casually "oh it´s just more monkeys"  it was sooo cool!  i quickly figured out that this would be an awesome place to stay and talk to someone about medicinal plants that could be found there.  so after wrestling with our director (grrr), i got to stay until the next boat left, the next friday.  i got up early with everyone else (breakfast was served daily at 630...  not that you could sleep much past that with all the birds heralding the sun) on monday, watched them pack up and waved to them from the dock.  while our whole group was there (both the university and cultural exchange programs from Pitzer) there was another group from BU of bio students who had been there for a month, but they left on monday with our groups.  this meant that once they were gone, it was only me on our side of camp.  the nicer cabins on the other side still held two primatologists, and three researchers working on insect substrate-communication.  it was so much more quiet.  especially since our cabins were essentially wallless, having screens facing out, and the walls that separated the two cabins per building were so thin that you could almost hear people breathing through them.  gone from filled with college kids, to just me.  it was weird.  every morning i went out with one of the guides, who was a local guy of the Quichua people (who had actually only been in the jungle for about 400 years, so their knowledge of the surrounding plants were not as vast as, say the Huaorani, but knowledgeable nonetheless), i got about an hour and a half worth of video footage of him talking about plants. disp? yeah, i did that.  we´d return for lunch, after which i would take a nap to sleep through the hottest part of the day.  reminded me of it when you said that tara.  its so humid there that we had to keep our electronics in a dry box in the library which was the only building at the station with electricity 24hrs a day, except when we had generator problems... that was almost a disaster)  woke up whenever (or when the heat woke me up) continue reading, and get up to go on a hike by myself, coming back in time to watch the sunset over the Rio Tiputini.  tried my damnedest to get that on film, but it just does not compare.  we got to see tons of monkeys (woolies, howlers, spidermonkeys, squirrelmonkeys, and capuchins) when the whole group was there because they were as curious of the racket that we were making down on the ground as we were of their racket up in the trees.  but once people left and it was quieter, i got to see a giant ant eater (so big!  and it has these really long fingernails that it can use to kill jaguars if it wants cuz they´re made for ripping trees open to find the termites, so we had to be wary of its short-sightedness), squirrels (ooo, squirrels... how nice... they´re actually pretty rare in the Amazon), an aguti (pretty much a giant guinea pig), a weasle thing, and two snakes (called wind snakes because they´re so fast).  i didnt get to see any big cats, mostly because they nocturnal, but they have a bunch of motionsensor cameras around the trails that pick up all the wildlife, so we got to see those photos, for a lot of these animals its the first time they´ve been photographed in their natural habitat.  funded by national geographic.  amazing amazing amazing place.  if you go to one place in ecuador go to the galapagos, if you go to two, go to tiputini.  there´s something magical about being that isolated (you could travel for days in any direction (except the one we came in) and not find another human being or sign of "civilization"), in the center of nature´s biggest metropolis, there´s just such a feeling of living things all around you.  oh yeah and the ants suck!  some are as long as my finger, and pretty much all of them bite, a stinging sensation that lasts for hours.  you don´t touch anything you havent inspected first, and even then, only when you need to to not fall down in the mud.  the galoshes that they provide for everyone are really fun, makes you want to romp through the puddles.  unfortunately i had to refrain because i had only packed enough clothing for the weekend... not an entire week.  on wednesday i finally asked one of the directors if they had any tshirts for sale because i was out of clean ones... he said "oh yeah, i thought you might have that problem.  did you want us to do some laundry for you?"  i have never been more thankful.  now i´ve seen everything, washers and dryers in the Amazon.  i bought the shirt anyway.

 

still haven´t heard back from the study abroad office about china, so its becoming less and less a possibility.  which means i´ll be returning to Pitzerland in the spring.  but a lot can change in two weeks.  even if i do go to china, the program doesnt start until midfebruary, so i´m planning on spending some time at pitzer in the interim (stupid major declaration form...).

 

alright i´ll let you guys get back to your finals studying, you procrastinators.  and if you left this for after finals, you have more selfcontrol than i would.  cheers.

 

miss ya.  hope to hear from ya.  see ya soon!

 

smiles

Ben

Everything Ecuador III

hey everyboday,

 

i realize its been a long time since the last one of these, so get comfy.  two weeks ago today we officially finished classes here in quito.  it was kinda sad cuz we had to say goodbye to our favorite teacher on earth, Raquel who had lead us through a great literature class.  poetry, types of literature.  parts of our exams were simply, interpret this poem, or even better, write a poem about this image.  it was great.  though admittedly the prevailing feeling was relief, at being done with the academia, done with quito.  quito is a dirty city.  the cars are fast and reckless and use their horn at any tiny opportunity.  its still amazing to me though how something, even something i wouldnt normally like, could feel comforting just because of its familiarity.  i can successfully find my way around, get myself lost and back, know the general cost of a cab ride from A to B (and accordingly debate it out with taxistas trying to rip off the knownothing gringo).  even more so now that we´ve been gone for a bit and come back to it.

 

my birthday was wonderful though i was feeling a bit of the touristas (translation: uncontrolable colon).  i chose to look at it as a bodily cleansing in preparation for my 22nd year on the planet.  the day saturday before, devon and i had gone to see an indigenous shaman just north of quito in the highlands somewhere, in preparation for our directed-independent study projects (his on shamanism, mine on indigenous medicine), and we both got spiritually cleansed there by him.  it was kind of a weird experience though because we went with a class from the bourgie Universidad de San Francisco de Quito.  we all had to wait outside the tiny, electicityless healing room in a bare room (with only one lightbulb, three benches, and a curtain in the doorway to the outside).  the cleansing consisted of us taking our shirts off, getting eucalyptus branches and fresh eggs shaken all over us, and chewed up flower petals, tobacco smoke and alcohol spit on us.  there was a lot of chanting in Quichua which i wish i could have understood. 

thanks for all of your bday notes and love.  it was all greatly appreciated.

 

we had a fiveday vacation after classes were over before we had to be back in time for the plane to peru.  many plans fell through before we (devon, dane, dane´s hostbrother jaime, and me) just decided to go back to Mindo, since Dane had never been anyway.  we jumped the 12m (apparently it had grown since i had been there last...) water falls like 5 or 6 times a piece, hiked to others, went ¨tubing¨ (just like what it sounds, 7 innertubes, lashed together in order to get down a river too shallow for rafting; we had the added luck of it being REALLY low so we got stuck on a lot of rocks:) down a river for three hours (devon and i forgot sunscreen on our legs, we´re still peeling right now...), and went to a butterfly conservatory, one of the only in south america, which was great because they´re totally used to human interaction and will just come to chill on your shirt or in your hair for an hour. 

 

at this point we ran out of money because i was stupid enough not to get money before we left and Mindo doesnt have any banks.  so we pooled together what we had left and convinced a bus driver to give us a discount (even though ¨you guys are from the richest country in the world!¨) to Santo Domingo de los Colorados. 

 

we found the Tsachila outdoor museum where we got to play with the paint that they use from fruits on their bodies and the bright red on their hair.  the black is now finally fading away.

 

the Incan trail took us 3 days.  Cusco is a cute, very colonial, very touristy town that sits in the mtns higher than Quito.  every day of hiking was a full one.  it felt like all we did was sleep, eat, hike, eat, hike, eat, sleep, but not always in that order.  our first pass was on the second day.  its call the Paso de la Mujer Muerte (the pass of the dead woman) and sits at 13,487 ft above sea level.  we all felt like we had asthma when our last footstep hit the top.  we got extraordinarily lucky with rain, it only rained once while we were hiking, the rest of the time only at night, safely in our crappy leaking tents.  don´t put anything you want dry near the edges, like your feet or head.  yay fetal position!  still not sure why dane, devon and i, three of the tallest guys on our trip shared a tent.  yay body heat!  there´s really no fair way to describe the trail nor arriving at Machupicchu itself.  i´ll send photos when i get a chance.  its a magical place that sits on a mountain ridge at the very edge of the Peruvian Amazon.  our second day at Machupicchu we got up hella early to avoid the crowds and watched the morning fog lift from the sight, then climbed Waynapicchu (picchu means mountian in Quichua, the lengua franca of the Inca), the hill in the background of the famous photos of Machupicchu.  the view is 360 degrees at the top.  its amazing how stairs can change your hiking style.  i look back at the 166 photos i took on the trip and still have a hard time telling myself that it really happened.  definitely one of the coolest things i´ve ever done in my life.

 

tomorrow we leave for our 10 day rural homestay with indigenous communities in Cotacachi.  i´m really looking forward to that.  i´ll be sure to let yáll know how that all goes.

 

hope that you´re all doing well.  i know i´ve forgotten something to tell you that i meant to, but its getting late here, i haven´t packed and i had to spend all day today in an internet cafe picking classes for next semester that i may not even end up taking if i end up getting to go to china.  cuidense todos, y diviertense demasiado. (i love that asha :)

 

smiles

Ben

Everything Ecuador II

hey y'all,

sorry this has been so long in coming.  but here it is.  so there.

just after sending that last check in ecuador thingy i got mugged.  i figured out that my bus wasn't running so i decided to catch another one that was conveniently situated on the other side of la Parque Carolina.  three guys vs me. no knives or guns, gracias a dios. they made off with all my electronic things but i managed to beg with them in spanish to leave me my backpack, schoolbooks, and the clothes i had been carrying from being away for the weekend.  oh and the clothes on me.  it would have been a drag to have my shoes stolen (as is pretty typical) because they don't sell shoe sizes above like 9 here (mine are 12-13).  i was physically unhurt but pretty shaken, and i still tense up at odd times walking around the city.  perhaps the worst part was that the following thursday, i was walking with Laura (she goes to Wesleyan, is on our program, is awesome) got robbed right outside of la Mariscal aka Gringolandia by two black guys with a butter knife.  but believe me, when a knife of any kind is pointed at your chest in the dark, you can only really see long and shiny and a strong arm behind it.  they only got ten bucks off each of us before one of the guardias came strolling up and scared them away.  probably the universe telling me that these things happen.

the weekend before last we went to Mindo which is in this tropical, jungly, mountainous area.  its gorgeous and was wonderful for soothing the anxious, "i've just been robbed... twice" soul.  we ate churrasco which is a local specialty of two fried eggs, beef, rice, and avocado, cucumber and tomato.  mix it all together and of course a healthy helping of Aji (i'm honestly thinking of setting up an importation business for Aji its the most amazing hot sauce ever).  it was really good.  we also hiked to a couple of the million waterfalls around, jumped off of a 36 ft high waterfall (WHAT a rush!), hung out at a reggae bar, and kicked it with the local hippie jewelry makers from all over the world (Carrie kept saying "i wanna go to the hippie plaza!").  its one of the first places in the world that i've actually fallen in love with.  we're going back again for my birthday weekend.

i found a capoeira class last week that meets in the evenings, which is making it even harder for me to see my host family ever which sucks, but its a lot of fun and i'm making a lot of local friends through it, not to mention kickass exercise.  Laura taking the classes too.  our mestre is Marco who is 22, which i just found out from Laura, but he looks like he's in his late 20s, maybe 30.  its weird, but his story checks out.  its so great to finally be playing capoeira again! (stupid rugby shoulder)


we went to the beach this last weekend, just north of the touristy beachbum town of Atacames, called Tonsupa.  we stayed in a house owned by Dane's host family and packed 8 of us in two rented cars.  we went a little nuts at the grocery store so we barely fit into the tiny tiny cars they gave us.  yknow those tiny cars they have in ireland to fit between the hedged wall and the oncoming mack truck?  that small.  the whole weekend was really relaxed.  the house was only a 5 minute walk from the beach and we met up with another part of our group that was staying in a hostel in atacames.  the water was really really warm (almost 80 degrees) but compared to the beating sunshine out of it, it felt wonderfully cool.

we ended grammar classes for spanish last week, and this week started studying Indigenous Cultures of Ecuador, basically an anthropology class all in spanish for 3 hours every morning.  we went back to the Museo Del Ecuador today for a look at colonial up until today art.  its a really interesting class and i'm grateful to be learning stuff, but we dont get much spanish practice, so we have to rely on our own devices for local practice.  the teacher is from the University of San Francisco de Quito, which is where the other Pitzer program is.  she's very nice but refuses to have people disagree with her ever, so we get to argue semantics with her in spanish which is fun.

thats all for now.  hope you all are doing great.  if you write me i swear i'll write you back, i'd love to hear stories from the homefront, whatever they entail.

smiles
Ben

Everything Ecuador

hey there everyone,

 

as the title suggests, i´m in beautiful Ecuador at the moment!

it´s really hard to believe that i´ve only been here for two weeks.  wait, not even that, 11 days.  it always amazes me how differently time moves when you get to a new place.  there´s so much new information to absorb that its hard to keep up, never mind things like actually communicating in a different language and adapting to a new culture.  and believe me, they are many: our spanish teacher was absolutely astonished to here of all the liberties and options a woman has surrounding pregnancy, and namely abortion; its very, very normal, in fact in many cases actually encouraged, for a man to have a mistress while he also has a wife(amante, is the official spanish word for it, but only while married), or multiple girlfriends at the same time.

 

the food has also been a big surprise: someone i ran into while travelling with soni in guatemala had said that the food here was kind of bland and that they didnt have much hot, spicy things.  this could not be further from the truth.  everything here is so tasty, and they have this amazing sauce called Aji which they put on literally EVERYTHING, soups, vegetables, rice, meat, deserts, you name it, they do it.  it is some of the best hot sauce i´ve ever had.

 

we started off staying in a hostel with the whole group to kind of meet and get aclimated to each other and the altitude (i´m now sitting in the middle of Quito, at 9,300 ft above sea level.  in those first couple of days we would get winded just walking the stairs to our rooms, and i only had two sets of two stairs apiece.  now its a little bit better, but i still had a really hard time playing soccer with the kids at my volunteer sight yesterday, which is even a little bit higher into the mtns in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city (and therefore the stereotypically ¨BAD¨ neighborhood; we got warned not to carry backpacks and that our shoes might get stolen, even though no one in the country has feet the size of mine, unless they´re also studying abroad here).  but hands down, this volunteership is the coolest thing i´ve ever done.  the kids range from about 4-16 and are SO happy to see us there, and so eager to show us around and be patient with our varying levels of spanish.  working there are me, nathan, and devon from pitzer, and simone and dwight who both go to swarthmore college (how uppity is that name, i mean really! try saying it with a british accent).  although, now that i think about it, the hard of breath part may have been in part due to the fact that the soccer field is actually a dirt field, so i wasnt even inhaling air.  dwight and i had a black boogers contest at the end of the game.

 

my host family is very very nice and welcoming but pretty upper crust.  they had to ask the live-in maid, Maria, about the buses that i should take to get to my classes because they´re the top percent of the population that only drive everywhere, like maniacs, dare i say it, even more maniacly than costa ricans.  i have my own section of the flat with my own bathroom and shower.  my ecuadorian mom, Lucia, and dad, Gustavo, work they´re own company, she´s an architect, he´s an engineer.  and no moms, i havent told them yet that you´re a landscape designer, and that grampa was an engineer.  i havent really found an appropriate moment to talk about my family with them yet, cuz that stuff is very shush shush here.  but dont worry i will.  so because they own they´re own business, and have a live-in maid, neither of them really work with a real definite schedule, so these last couple of days i havent seen them more than to just say hi, because i leave before they do on the bus in the morning, and they don´t return until right around the time that i´m leaving to go meet up with friends.  i´m also one of the furthest from the school so i dont have time to make it back home for lunch like others do.  its definitely nice to have the alone, down time, but it gets kinda lonely too.  i was excited to stay in quito this weekend to spend some more time with them, but they already have plans to go to the beach, and won´t be returning till monday morning which is when i have class.  my host brother is also very nice, Juan (but they call him Juannico) and clearly the baby of the family.  he´s in his second year of university as a med student, and his mom still treats him like he´s seven.  she calls him her ´rey´ or king for the nonspanish speakers.  i also have a host sister named Ana Lucia (or Analu), who´s 26 and has two darling little girls seven and five who´s names are escaping me at the moment.  i watched Lady and the Tramp dubbed in spanish with them the other night, and got to say EEEEW at the spaghetti kissing part with the five-year-old as she jumped under the covers of her grandma´s bed.  the seven-year-old just thought we were being way too immature.

 

classes are classes, that at least has a familiar sense of boredom surrounding it.  we´re finally kicking into our normal schedule next week (what we´ll have for the months of sept and oct, then travelling the entire month of nov).  so that will be nice.  it is interesting to learn about the new culture and to begin to express myself in spanish, but classroom learning it so monotonous, especially when you´re in a different country.  is there really a point to studying a different country your in from a classroom?  why can´t we be outside all the time?  and yeah i´m definitely aware that that ruins the necesity for tests, but why does book knowledge have to count for so much more than the experiential kind?  doesnt that kinda defeat the purpose of studying abroad other than just an escape from the classrooms that you´re used to?  i can´t wait to go back to my volunteership.  sorry i´ll step down from the soapbox now.

 

last weekend we went to the Festival de Yamor, which was a very touristy indigenous festival of some kind in a town called Otavalo, just north of Quito.  it featured a parade on friday night, tons of dancing and suspiciously similar music (i still say they used to same song over and over again, but that might just be me being culturally insensitive), and literally endless street markets.  i couldnt help myself, i bought some really really comfy house-pants that i wear around the house every chance i get, even though everyone makes fun of me for it, especially juan and maria.  they have a similar solstice celebration up there on the 21st of sept to celebrate the fact that the sun is directly in the middle of the sky, so we´re definitely going back with all the people that for whatever reason couldnt go last time.

 

my spanish is definitely better than it was at the beginning of the costa rica program this summer.  and as marcus so eloquently put it, i´m beginning to actually have a personality when speaking it, not constantly monotonous translation and information exchange.  i´ve met some pretty cool people here, striking up conversations with taxi drivers and the guard that sits in the wooden box on my street to guard us from the dangerous have-nots.  eveyone says quito is super dangerous, but its not any more dangerous than san francisco, berkeley, boston, new york, definitely not more dangerous than oakland.  of course i´ve now doomed myself on the walk home tonight (straight up hill by the way, and i´m not talking about claremont uphill, this is like lombard street steep without the switchbacks).  i´ve been feeling kind of lonely and homesick lately, but its probably because i´m tired, we´ve been going out to the party district a bunch(Gringolandia as the locals love to call it); its definitely not for lack of food!  the other night, Dane´s host brother, jaime, was out with us at a club, grabs me and throws me at this pair of girls dancing together.  he strikes up a dancing conversation with one, forcing me into a dancing conversation with the other.  she was from Cuenca (just south), which i happened to be a recent expert on, since that was where my taxi driver was from on the way over, very conveniently.  i left with devon not long after that, which was good because jaime later told me that the boyfriends of the two girls were eying the two of us a little intensely.

 

alright already, thats enough for now, should keep you busy trying to read that whole thing for the next couple of weeks until i have more fun stories to tell.

i wish you all the best this semester and whereever you may be.  and write me back please, it lets me know that you´re actually recieving this (i dont entirely trust the computers in this country, this one randomly shut down on its own while i was trying to write this, thank god for gmail autosave), and i love to hear of any and all things going on back on home turf.  i promise write back if you do, there´s your incentive carrot.

 

love and miss you all.

 

smiles

Ben