My first two weeks in Cuenca, Ecuador

Hello from my new home town, Cuenca, Ecuador. I have been having a good time here and learning a lot. For the past two weeks, I have been taking four hours of Spanish lessons every day. My Spanish teacher, Maria Elena, also has a weekly gathering of students to go to a museum or have dinner together and practice Spanish. The Spanish Schools all charge five to seven dollars per hour for lessons. Maria Elena teaches at a school, but I take my classes at her house for only $3.50 per hour.

Maria Elena also helped me to find a family to live with. I live about thirty minutes, walking, from the center of town. Downstairs, lives Olga and her two younger children; Diego (22) and Maria Eugenia (27) and the dog, Otto (3). I live upstairs with Olga's older daughter Sylvania (28) and her husband Mario (29). Sylvania is pregnant and expecting her first baby (0) on my birthday, in early December.

They are a fun family to live with, except Sylvania works too hard. She works five hours per day at a school as a secretary and also makes all of the meals and cleans and does laundry. She does a very good job on my clothes, especially considering she washes them by hand. For some reason, she will not let me help much in the kitchen either. Once, when she was not looking, I cleared my own plate and washed it, but usually she stops me before I even stand up from the table. Maybe after the baby comes, I will be able to help out more. Not that they expect me to help out much. I could get a decent apartment for $100 per month in town and I am paying them $270 for the month, and that includes meals and laundry. I have my own room and bathroom and TV.

In the poor neighborhoods of Cuenca, people use dogs for night time security. In the middle and upper class areas, they use guards. Every few blocks there is a small shack on the sidewalk, that if fixed up, would make a good chicken coop. The night time guard is based out of the shack and walks around the neighborhood all night, guarding. The obvious problem with this system, is how do people know that the guard is guarding and not sleeping or drinking? They have reached a very interesting solution. In front of every house, each time he passes on his rounds, the guard whistles very, very loudly to let everyone know he is working. Usually, he does this only between two in the morning and five. Each house pays two or three dollars per month to the guard. In the days leading up to the 1st and 15th he works harder, to earn the money. The first week or so, it is mostly quiet. By the second week, he is waking me up about once per hour. In the days leading up to payday, he might pass by the house five times in an hour. I am considering giving him $30 and telling him to take the month off. As I told my new family, the thieves make less noise.

My Spanish lessons are going well. I am learning a lot from my family and a lot from my teacher. I am happy with my progress, even though I still can not speak too fast. I learned a bunch more verb conjugations and it takes for ever for me to sort through them in my head before I try speaking. I read "The Little Prince" in Spanish and am now working my way through "Robinson Crusoe".

On my first weekend with my family we played volleyball on Saturday. On Sunday we woke up early and went to mass at the church. In the afternoon we went up to the nearby National Park of El Cajas. We went to a well stocked lake and caught a bunch of trout.

This past weekend I headed up to Cajas on my own for a day of hiking. I left the house at six in the morning. I got a lot of bad information about buses, but finally left the city at eight. The ride up to the top of the park was short, and by nine I was hiking. I started well above tree line and hiked up a ridge, to a bit over 10,000 feet. Cajas has over 275 named lakes and is popular for fishing. I hiked for many hours, over mountains and around lakes. Around 3:30 in the afternoon I met some fishermen. Like every one else in Ecuador, they asked if I was cold because I was wearing shorts. I wasn't. They told me that I could continue down the valley and get to the highway in about an hour. I started down and soon reached the cloud forest. The going got very slow and my arms and legs got very scratched. I did see a deer though. After two hours I made it down the steep mountain side of trees to the valley floor. Another hour or so brought me to the highway. The sun sets a little after six in the afternoon, so it was good and dark by the time I got to the highway. I was about 12 miles from Cuenca. I had planned to take a bus back, but they do not stop for anyone after dark. They are afraid of being robbed. So, I walked about five or six miles to the edge of town and caught a taxi home. All in all, I walked about 18 miles, for ten hours and got all scratched up. Obviously, it was a great day. I can not wait to go back next weekend and camp out.

Yesterday we went to another town, with a nice church for mass. After that we took a driving tour of the area and they showed me the sights.

Cuenca is a bit bigger than I first thought. Every estimate of population I see is a bit bigger than the previous one. Now, I think the city has about 600,000 people. There are some nice hot springs nearby and the city is surrounded by mountains. The biggest problem, for me, is air pollution in the city center. They have a lot of old buses and they still use leaded gasoline. A river bisects the town and I enjoy walking along it. They have made a bunch of nice parks out of the river and have lots of playgrounds. They have fun toys in the playgrounds that you do not see in the U.S. anymore. They have flying foxes and see-saws.

Soccer is very popular in Ecuador. Two weeks ago, Ecuador qualified for its first ever trip to the World Cup, which will be held in Japan and Korea next year. The day after the game was pretty much a national holiday. They have several hours per day of soccer news on the TV. The newscasters are reading Japanese phrase books on the air, to prepare. The commercials show Ecuadorian people putting their fingers to their eyes and pulling on them to make slanty Asian eyes. The whole country is very excited.

People seem fairly politically active here. Last week a bunch of young men marched to protest the price of electricity. They threw rocks and the police tanks launched some sort of gas. There is also a lot of political graffiti in the city. Some of it is anti-CIA and anti-U.S. war in Afganistan. Apparently, the capital city of Quito is famous for its graffiti and has museums for it.

I am enjoying my studying down here and learning a lot of Spanish and a lot about Ecuador.
Ooh, this is exciting. I think this week's riot just started outside. This week it is against the high price of buses, which cost about 13 cents each trip. A bunch of people just ran by covering their mouths and noses. I guess the police are shooting tear gas in the center. I think I can smell it a little in here, but it not as strongly as in Denver last June. The Internet cafe where I am at has closed the metal front door so I can not tell what is going on anymore. Luckily the protests are generally short-lived and don't really get out of hand. It seems to be a pleasant diversion for the young men.

....I just had to change Internet cafes. The police let off two tear gas canisters right outside the last one and we had to go to the back room and light a small fire. Once the air cleared, I decided to try another Internet cafe off of the weekly riot route.

This all reminds me of something I realized last week. I think one of the things I like about third world countries is the fact that not everything always works the way it is supposed to. Because of this, I am always learning something new, and I like to learn new things. For example, if I want to take a hot shower, I may not be able to because there is no electricity. Or maybe there is no water, or maybe the hot water maker is not working, or who knows why. The point is, there are always reasons why things don't work that I could never imagine on my own. So, I end up learning something every day.