Adventures in Cahuasqui
After Alex, Tita, and I explored the coast, we went north to visit my friends Miguel, Nick, and Lily. We went to Ibarra first, then Cahuasqui, and stopped in Cotacachi and Otavalo on our way back to Quito. Here´s Alex and Nick in the back of a pick-up truck in Ibarra.
Nick lives in Cahuasqui, the island in the sky. The town is surrounded by mountains but bordered by sheer drop-offs. Very pretty and dramatic. The area reminded me of southern California, near Alpine.
Nick took us to some hot springs near Cahuasqui, which was fun. I can´t remember the name of the place. Anyway, there were lots of pools, so we swam for a bit. There was also an open air gondola thing that we rode for $1! Here´s a picture from the gondola, looking down at the hot springs.
The gondola ride was pretty high up, but I´m not sure if you can see that from this photo.
Alex being brave!
Nick enjoying the company of beautiful ladies =)
View from the gondola.
There was also a zip line canopy ride that crossed above the hot springs. That was a little scary. I went on a canopy tour in Costa Rica, but that felt a little more safe. But I was brave, and enjoyed the 25 second ride. I made Nick go first =)
Getting ready for our big trip!
Nick and I doing a turtle headbut. There is no way a person cannot look dorky while wearing a helmet and harness. But who looks dorkier, Nick or I?
Whee!!
This is the launch on the other side of the valley.
Nick having the time of his life!
Notice my big, goofy grin.
Auntie Tita meeting one of the local kids in Cahuasqui.
Pretty flower in Cahuasqui.
Nick started feeling sick after we left the hot springs, so his counterpart said he probably had been exposed to "bad air". So she offered to cure him. Here she is blowing cigarette smoke on him and letting an egg absorb the bad air.
Nick looking like a scary zombie.
After his bad air treatment, Nick´s counterpart made him lay in bed for a bit.
Alex and Nick and the family of his counterpart, waiting for Nick to feel better.
Nick with his best friends at a neighbor´s house.
This is my favorite mural in Santo Domingo. It says, "Manage with your head!" and shows a blonde girl talking on her cell phone, and then driving over a cliff and being eaten by a shark.
Let this be a warning to all drivers who like to talk on giant cell phones! I also like the fact that the girl is blonde and driving a convertible.
Not only does she drive over a cliff, there is also a shark waiting to eat her. Also note that we get a great shot of her underwear before she is eaten. I wonder what inspired the mural artist? Is there a deeper meaning to this painting?
Boom boom boom
My Aunt Tita and cousin Alex just visited me, which was super fun. After visiting three malls in Quito, we went to Valle Hermoso and stayed there for a couple days. We went on a hike in the local forest preserve, the Pearl. This is a picture of a walking stick insect (I think).
This probably looks like a bunch of leaf bits, but it is actually a picture of leaf cutter ants. I have to figure out how to take a good picture of them!
Cool mushrooms growing on a fallen tree.
Lindsay and Alex emerging from the middle of a strangler fig. Strangler figs start off as epiphytes on a tree, and then they send down roots which encircle the tree they´re perched on. Eventually the roots come together and strangle and kill the tree. So all strangler figs have a hole in the middle, where the original tree once stood. All those holes and nobs provide habitat for mammals, reptiles, birds, and other animals.
I think this is a gigantic ceibo tree.
Massive trunk of a ceibo tree.
Belkis and her mom Leonor. Belkis was pretending that she doesn´t like having her picture taken.
Neighbor of Belkis, I can´t remember her name.
This kitten is the half-sister of my kitten Lina. She lives with her mom and sister at my friend Trent´s house. Poor thing got her head stuck in Trent´s Nalgene bottle. We took a couple of pictures of her before Alex rescued her.
Alien-looking plant at Trent´s site.
The famous Trent! Here he is showing us what cacao looks like.
Trent told us that this tree species is called the "tree of love". According to locals, if you go out at midnight on the night of a full moon and hug this tree for 15 minutes, you will get a boyfriend or girlfriend soon after. Here´s Alex looking for love =)
Giant land snail. Trent said that some people eat these snails.
Trent lives in a Tsachila community, an indigenous group that has retained many of their traditions. Here are two little girls, wearing typical Tsachila clothing. I love their bright skirts!
The two little girls did a dance for us while the adults played some instruments.
The little girl on the left took her dance very seriously, and it was hard to get a good picture of her. Lots of foot stomping and big smiles!
Trent with his secretary, me. Trent is having phone issues, so some people contact me to try to get in touch with him. It´s fun being his keeper, it means Trent has to call me at least once a week =) I bought that necklace from the Tsachilas. I think it´s made of seeds.
The Tsachilas use this area for their dance and musical rituals, I think.
Giant termite nest in the Pearl.
The title of this blog somes from that wonderful song that is now being played in previews for that cartoon about a bear. Alex, Tita and I saw that preview before another movie in Quito, and then the song got stuck in my head. Luckily I have it on my ipod!
Superbowl shuffle
This is a photo of my uncle Ron, my grandpa, and my dad in Michigan. My grandpa is holding the trophy for our family fantasy football league. My team with Pierre is not doing so well, we´ve lost both of our games so far. But my Wolverines and Bears are having awesome seasons! Of course, the Bears start winning games the year I am out of the country. At least I´ll get to watch some games when I am home for the holidays.
Cover girl
I wrote an article earlier this year for the Endangered Species UPDATE, a journal published by the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan (where I completed my master´s). They used one of my photos of a cricket frog in the field for the cover, woohoo! I am now a cover photo photographer girl (not quite a cover girl). But this will help launch my career as an amateur wildlife photographer =) If anyone wants to read the article (a mini version of my thesis), let me know and I´ll send you a pdf. I thought the translocations of the cricket frog population was a big failure, but one of my collaborators at the Detroit Zoo said she heard cricket frogs calling at two of the translocation sites last summer, so I was wrong. I´ve never been so happy to be wrong! It is still too early to call the tranlocations a success, but at least some of the froggies survived and are breeding. My article and thesis was written with the premise that the tranloscations were a failure. Whoops!
Soy Rebelde!
I wonder how many times I can use song names to title my blog entries. That will probably get old in about a month. This is a picture of some of my students. I am now teaching 73 kids! It´s going to take me awhile to learn all their names.
After class yesterday, I went with a couple of my students and their family to their farm because they wanted to use my camera to take pictures of their ornamental plants. Not sure why, maybe to help market the plants? I can´t take credit for most of the pictures, I let the family take pictures while I walked around with the mom and kids, eating passionfruit and papaya fresh from their trees. Yum! The 15-year-old son, Mentor, also wanted to take pictures of some of the animals on his farm. I thought this pig was pretty cute =)
This is a guantoso, or something like that. I don´t know what the word is in English. Very cute and friendly.
This is Jessenia, one of my students, holding a funny looking duck. It looks like it might be some sort of weird duck-chicken hybrid.
I don´t know the names of any of these flowers, so I won´t even try to label them! But they are very pretty!
More of my students. Eventually I will know all of their names! I am really enjoying teaching. I am now teaching English in the elementary school 4 times a week, for an hour in the morning. Monday is the jardin, which is for the pre-kindergarteners and kindergartners. The kidos call me Señorita Ariana, and occasionally Señor. The kids in the jardin can´t read or write, don´t know the Spanish alphabet, and apparently can´t tell if I am a man or a woman =) I feel like I´m mostly babysitting them, and they are not going to learn that much, so I mostly just give them coloring books and try to teach them colors. Wednesday is the second graders, and they´re a little bit better than the jardin kids. I like working with the bigger kids more. Thursday is the 3rd and 4th graders, and Friday is the 5th, 6th, and 7th graders. I´ve learned the kids will behave and do just about anything I ask if I give them stickers.
Sometimes when my friends and I are walking around Santo Domingo and other towns, people will see us and yell out whatever words they know in English; "Hey man! Where are you from?" or "I love" and "Beautiful". Perhaps I should not be teaching the kids English, and contributing to this annoying way of hailing gringos. But my plan is to teach the kids really obscure words, like u is for umbrellabird, v is for velociraptor, and x is for xenops and xiaosaurus. That way, when my students see gringos, they can yell out "Velociraptor!" But maybe that would scare gringos who are familiar with Jurassic Park.
I think I am going to be a champion bike rider by the time I am done with my Peace Corps service. To get to La Asuncion from Valle Hermoso, I have to take a bus to the entrance to La Asuncion, and then bike for 30 minutes to La Asuncion. The 5km dirt road is very hilly and rocky. The hazards of this commute include scary dogs (the previous volunteer at my site was bitten by a dog), snakes, the usual heckling and harassment and bicycle malfunctions. I have figured out how to deal with the dogs, so they don´t scare me as much now. I figure I could also use my bike helmet as a weapon. There have been sightings of coral snakes on that road, but I have my snake bike kit, and I try to look out for any snakes. Occasionally trucks or buses with workers pass by me, and it seems like there is some unwritten rule that whenever there are 3 or more young men together, they have to harass any woman they see. When I am riding my bike, I usually have both pant legs rolled up and I´m wearing my glasses and a dorky red bike helmet (like Andy in the 40-year-old virgin). So there´s really nothing sexy there, but I still get catcalls. Whatever, that doesn´t bother me as much anymore.
I´ve only had one major bicycle malfunction, when my seat fell off while I was biking. I was heading fast down a hill when I heard a loud metallic crack. I yelled "Holy shit!" and then tumbled off my bike. It´s always funny to see what words one uses in crisis situations like that. I like to think that I said "Holy shit" because of the Wilco song "Company in my back", not because I am lame and couldn´t think of any better expletive. Luckily the only witnesses were some cattle, and I only scratched up my arm a little. It was actually pretty darn funny. I picked myself up, put my seat in my backpack, and then I had to walk all the way back home with the broken bike. On my way into town, I had passed the usual motorcycle taxi drivers who hang around the gas station. Then I had to pass them again on my way out. They asked me what had happened, and I told them, and they thought the whole thing was hilarious. I was told during training that one of the other major goals of Peace Corp volunteers is to entertain the locals. I think I am doing a pretty good job of that! When I told my friend Sonia´s dad about my bike accident, he said we should watch the news, to see if my spill made it on to that evening´s broadcast. My seat is fine now, and I´ve learned to go a little bit slower down the hills!
Now I should explain the title of this blog. Rebelde is a popular Mexican band that also has a novela (soap opera). I love Rebelde, and I am not ashamed to admit it. When I first got to my site, I watched the show every night with my friend Sonia. Rebelde is currently on a break right now, which is unfortunate, but I bought myself a Rebelde DVD to help with my withdrawal. I have a Peace Corps conference next month with everyone from my training group, and we are going to have a Battle of the Bands competition in the middle of the week. My friends and I are entering the contest as Rebelde, and so I´ve been practicing some dance moves with my friends Leonor and Lucy, who also did a Rebelde dance number some time last year. After class this week, we watched my Rebelde DVD and tried to learn the moves from their music videos. We practiced in Leonor and Lucy´s store, with two little girls, and other kids watching and mocking us from outside. But I think we are going to be fabulous, and hopefully I´ll be able to post lots of pictures of our awesome performance in a future post. Yes, this is what I am doing as a Peace Corps volunteer; giving kids stickers for learning colors and numbers in English and practicing pop band dance moves. It´s all about cultural exchange and promoting world peace =)
After Alex, Tita, and I explored the coast, we went north to visit my friends Miguel, Nick, and Lily. We went to Ibarra first, then Cahuasqui, and stopped in Cotacachi and Otavalo on our way back to Quito. Here´s Alex and Nick in the back of a pick-up truck in Ibarra.
Nick lives in Cahuasqui, the island in the sky. The town is surrounded by mountains but bordered by sheer drop-offs. Very pretty and dramatic. The area reminded me of southern California, near Alpine.
Nick took us to some hot springs near Cahuasqui, which was fun. I can´t remember the name of the place. Anyway, there were lots of pools, so we swam for a bit. There was also an open air gondola thing that we rode for $1! Here´s a picture from the gondola, looking down at the hot springs. 
The gondola ride was pretty high up, but I´m not sure if you can see that from this photo.
Alex being brave!
Nick enjoying the company of beautiful ladies =)
View from the gondola.
There was also a zip line canopy ride that crossed above the hot springs. That was a little scary. I went on a canopy tour in Costa Rica, but that felt a little more safe. But I was brave, and enjoyed the 25 second ride. I made Nick go first =)
Getting ready for our big trip!
Nick and I doing a turtle headbut. There is no way a person cannot look dorky while wearing a helmet and harness. But who looks dorkier, Nick or I?
Whee!!
This is the launch on the other side of the valley. 
Nick having the time of his life!
Notice my big, goofy grin.
Auntie Tita meeting one of the local kids in Cahuasqui.
Pretty flower in Cahuasqui.
Nick started feeling sick after we left the hot springs, so his counterpart said he probably had been exposed to "bad air". So she offered to cure him. Here she is blowing cigarette smoke on him and letting an egg absorb the bad air. 
Nick looking like a scary zombie.
After his bad air treatment, Nick´s counterpart made him lay in bed for a bit. 
Alex and Nick and the family of his counterpart, waiting for Nick to feel better. 
Nick with his best friends at a neighbor´s house. 
This is my favorite mural in Santo Domingo. It says, "Manage with your head!" and shows a blonde girl talking on her cell phone, and then driving over a cliff and being eaten by a shark.
Let this be a warning to all drivers who like to talk on giant cell phones! I also like the fact that the girl is blonde and driving a convertible.
