kick ass
While I was on the bus today, some dude pickpocketed my phone but I managed to steal it back! Here´s the story: I left my house early this morning to meet Pierre at the airport. I was pretty exhausted because some people decided to play music at 3am last night. I´m not sure if this was a weird Christmas thing because the big Christmas mass is tomorrow for some people, or it was just some drunken idiots. Anyway, even with my earplugs in, I could still hear the music. Plus I was really mad, so it took me awhile to fall back asleep again. So, I get on the bus leaving my town carrying my smaller backpack and a rice sack with my large guanabana. The bus looks pretty full, but I get on anyway because I was worried about today being a big travel day with the holidays, and I thought the earlier I left, the better. I end up standing in the aisle with my bags at my feet. I was also carrying my purse, but I was wearing my pants with those cargo pockets. I usually put my cell phone in one of those pockets because it takes me forever to rummage through my purse to find it when someone is calling me. Also, I thought it would be harder for pickpockets to get it.
Standing in the aisle on a crowded bus sucks, but is tolerable. People were able to squeeze by me and my stuff to get off the bus. Then my stop is approaching, so I start making my way to the front of the bus. I´ve got both bags in one hand and am trying to move as fast as I can. Then I see that my leg seems to be stuck and this guy sitting down won´t let me pass. I keep struggling and then I realize he is fiddling with my pocket! I look down and I realize that he is trying to steal my phone! So I reach down into his lap, grab my phone, say ¨Mi telefonó!¨ and then get off the bus. I realize I could have come up with something better to say, like stupid thief or something. He looked like an innocent enough guy, older, maybe in his 50s. But it just shows that you really can´t trust anyone. I told one of friends this story, and she said I should have punched the guy in the face. But I was holding on to my backpack, a rice sack, and my phone, and I think it would have been pretty difficult to sock someone while holding all those things, even if the thought had occurred to me. I know this story would be better if I had karate chopped the guy, or booted him in the head, but I am proud of myself for being able to get my phone back from him while also still holding all my stuff. I was pretty shaken when I got off the bus. I felt the need to check to see that the phone was really mine. I looked at the address book, and saw my cousin´s number, Alex, which was so reassuring, because obviously no one else would have her number. My adrenaline was pumping, my hands were super shaky, and my heart was pumping. I can´t remember the last time I felt like that, so the experience was also physiologically interesting.
I have to admit, it´s things like that that make me excited about finishing my Peace Corps service and returning to the U.S., where I don´t have to be constantly vigilant about thieves and pickpockets. As my friend Cindy says, let the advent of Ariana begin! For those who are counting (Pierre and Cindy), only 93 days until my return =)
On a completely unrelated note, the question of the hour for all telenovela fans is: Are you a Divina or a Popular? All the kids are now into the telenovela Patito Feo, so I have to watch it too, so that I can relate to them =) The Divinas and the Populares are the two rival cliques at the high school in Patito Feo. Patito Feo is the main character, and she and her friends are the Populares. They´re the nice girls. Then there´s Antonella and her crew, the Divinas. They´re always scheming and doing mean things. I, of course, am a Divina, because it is always more fun to be bad. I am continuing my dance exchange (under goals 2 and 3 of the Peace Corps, we are supposed to participate in cultural exhange, and I think learning and teaching different dances counts) by learning the Divina and Popular dances. Belkis was showing us the moves yesterday. It was pretty fun, dancing around in Leonor´s kitchen with Belkis, Leonor, and Nayeli. Maybe I can make Pierre join the Divinas with me! If anyone asks what I am doing in the Peace Corps, the answer is simply that I am dancing and trying to avoid having anything else stolen from me.
TV star!
Last week, my friend Megan and I became local TV stars! Megan has been working with a group of blind people in Santo Domingo. The municipal office had decided to give the group some land to build a center where they could hold classes and other activities. The group had planned a little event for the day they were supposed to be given the land. They were going to build a fence to mark off the perimeter and maybe do some other work. Megan invited me to attend, so I showed up, ready to work!
However, things didn’t go according to plan. The land that the city wanted to donate is occupied by a squatter/invader (I don’t know what the correct term is, sorry!) who didn’t want to leave. This family has no written title to the land, but had been living on it for awhile now, which under Ecuadorian law, gives them some right over it. Even though the city had told them two weeks ago that they would need to relocate before the groundbreaking day, they still had not left. So, the leaders for the blind group and the city officials talked with the family for quite some time to resolve the situation. Finally, the city decided to give the family another piece of property in town and gave them another 2 weeks to move, along with a promise of help moving.
Then our work began, though we couldn’t do too much. We did unload a truckload of wood for the fence. I joined the line of people passing the wood from the truck to the lot, and that is when the local tv channel showed up. The camera guy stood right in front of me, so according to Megan, there was a shot of the two of us giggling and smiling and passing the wood. I didn’t actually see the report, but I hope I looked like a hard working Peace Corps volunteer! Megan was interviewed, and she did a great job. Her host family said her Spanish was flawless, and they couldn’t even tell that she was a gringa.
The next day, I went to my friend Miles’ site for his town’s fiestas. I could only stay one day because I had to be back at my site for my Saturday kids’ club. So we tried to pack in a lot of stuff! That night, we had a dance exchange with some of the girls in his site. Katie and Ariana, 12 and 11, love dancing and apparently spend their free time making up dances and then performing them. This is exactly how Sasha and I used to spend our weekends when we were kids. We would make up dances to an entire album, like George Michael’s Faith, and then we would perform them for our family. The girls were a little shy at first, so Miles told them we’d do the Thriller dance for them. We put on the video, and I have to admit, I really need to practice more because I didn’t do a very good job. I know I will never be as good as those Filipino prisoners! Then we tried to do the dances from Black or White. Again, not very successfully, but by making an ass out of myself, the girls felt more comfortable around me. Then the girls finally showed us one of their reggaeton dances (to the song Fanatico) and made Miles and I do it with them. That was pretty fun. After that, we moved on to High School Musical. I really don’t like that movie, but Miles and the girls are big fans. Now those stupid songs are stuck in my head! The girls knew all the moves to Bop to the Top and We're All in This Together, and again, insisted that I do the dances with them. I didn’t do too horribly, considering this was my first time. This reminded me of when I watched Dirty Dancing with Cassie when she was a kid. She made me dance with her during all the dance scenes in the movie, and then when the movie was over, we had to listen to the soundtrack and dance again! Of course, I am always happy to oblige to such requests =)
The next morning, Miles told me he was getting up at 5 am to go jogging with some of the boys in his town. I agreed, though I knew I would be pretty grumpy in the morning (as I always am). We had a pretty good turnout, about 10 kids. I haven’t jogged in over a year, but I was able to keep up with them. Admittedly, we weren’t working too hard. I had forgot how much I enjoy running, and I am looking forward to running with Pierre again when I am in the states. We jogged 3km to the nearest major road and then back to town. On the way back, some of the kids cheated by jumping in the back of passing trucks or hopping on buses. Wily little buggers!
Yesterday we had a little holiday party with just the Santo Domingo volunteers: Trent, Megan, Lindsay and I. I tried to make stuffing for the party, and it was a disaster. But my friends were nice and said it was okay and ate it. It never actually became solid, so it was more like gravy. If anyone has a good stuffing recipe, let me know! But my Christmas cookies and egg nog were good. We had a Secret Santa exchange too. Our price limit was $6. I told some of my Ecuadorian friends that, and they thought it was hilarious. The stereotype here is that gringos are rich and Ecuadorians have less money. That is not necessarily true, however. Some of my Ecuadorian friends definitely have more money than me. I get about $9 a day, and all I have in the states is debt and more debt. (Although I do have a sugar daddy named Pierre.) Anyway, I was at my friend Sonia’s house and they had also gone to the mall that day to buy Christmas presents. Their presents were huge; monster trucks and dolls that cried and laughed and talked. I told them I also had gone to the mall that day to do my Christmas shopping, and I was only allowed to spend $6. Sonia’s mom said “Chiquita!” which means very little. So we got a good laugh out of that and then went back to watching our soap opera “Patito Feo”. (Patito Feo is my current favorite Spanish soap opera. It is kindof like Rebelde, though not as good. But still entertaining and funny.)
My secret santa was Trent. He gave me provolone cheese, because I love it and since it´s expensive here, I rarely ever buy it. He also gave me a giant guanabanana, which is one of my favorite fruits. It´s about the size of a pineapple, green on the outside, white on the inside, and so yummy. It won´t be ready to eat until Friday, so I can share it with Pierre when he gets here! I think this will be the only time in my life that I will receive a guanabanana as a Christmas present. I gave Lindsay a neck pillow, which are great for long bus rides, a box of Cap´n Crunch cereal, because she loves it, and a dvd of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, since she and I are big fans of the book series. After we ate all our delicious dishes, we watched the Sisterhood. Such a good movie! I felt like I was having Christmas at home, with the traditional dishes, a movie, loving friends around, and a Christmas gift exchange. =)
Cat and frog
Last night, I awoke to find a frog hopping around near my feet. My dear kitty, Lina, had caught the frog, brought it back into my apartment, and placed it in my bed. What a malcriada! (Malcriada is one of my favorite words here. It means brat or ill-bred. It was one of the first words I learned, and I still use it all the time.) Just in case I didn´t notice the frog jumping near my feet, Lina was repeatedly attacking it under my sheets. I do believe this was a Godfather-esque threat. Granted, Lina was not sophisticated enough to chop off the head of the frog, but she did use her knowledge of what I love (frogs) to intimidate me. By placing a frog in my bed while I slept, I think she was trying to send me a message: Give me more milk and tuna or you will find more "presents" in my bed. Well, her diabolical tactics won´t work, and I think she just lost her green card to the good ole U.S. of A! If that´s the way things are going to go down, I am not taking her back to the states so that she can just terrorize Pierre and I there. Oh, and the frog survived. I put it outside and it hopped away unharmed =)
Multimedia
In this video, Lindsay, Trent and I demonstrate some common gestures here in Ecuador. This was all Janet´s idea. Here are her explanations of what the gestures mean in order of their appearance in the video:
Ojo! Ojo means eye and this gesture is used to tell you to be careful as in...look around!
Coño. (I didn´t know this gesture, but Trent insisted on it and it is quite fun to see..so here it is.) It means you are cheap. So, if you are having lunch with someone and they aren´t going to pay for you, you might give them this gesture.
No. No means no, but the gesture here is the shame shame no, when really it doesn´t ALWAYS mean a shaming no. Some volunteers say that on the coast it´s a bit of a condemning no, but I feel in my community it´s just an easy way to say no. It´s more commonly used than shaking your head no.
Robo. This gesture is used to tell you that there is a robber around, and it´s used to explain what happened to something if it was robbed. A guy was telling me he didn´t have a cell phone anymore and he made this gesture by way of explanation.
A little bit. This is another gesture that I don´t see, but it means I just want to talk to you a little bit. And as Linds is demonstrating...here you will often not hear please or the like, you will get a whine or maybe a whiny face.
A donde va? Where are you going? I see this alot since I ride in trucks and people will often do this gesture to us, wanting to know where we are going. I love this one for some reason.
The Lip Point. This drives a lot of people crazy, but I kinda like it. Especially when I was on crutches, it was helpful. So, people here point with their lips or they sometimes just turn their head towards whatever it is to point. (Filipinos also use this gesture. You can see that I have more experience with this one and do it better than the others!)
Venga. Venga means come here. The venga can be confusing to gringos because some people´s venga gesture looks like a shoo! or get away gesture.
The fuerte. I call this the fuerte or the muy, but it has no name that I know of and most volunteers don´t know how to translate it exactly. Trent called it the chuta. Chuta is used here like we would use SHOOT! So this gesture seems to be used when something is extreme. So here are some examples of when you would use this. If something is really funny, especially at someone else´s expense, you would do this. If there is a close call, as in something dangerous, you would do this. But it´s probably mostly used to denote something bad, or hard or difficult. I need to make the gesture just trying to explain it!
No hay. No hay means there is no....or there are no... and you use this phrase and gesture ALL the time. If a bus is full and I´m trying to flag them down and they have no seats available, they will give me the no hay. If you holler over to a friend to see if someone else is at the house and they aren´t there, they can simply give you the no hay. (This is my personal favorite. My dad loved it too, and learned to use it when he was visiting me.)
Janet is very creative. In addition to coming up with the idea for this video, she also thought up a moniker for Maggie and I, since we are usually inseparable at Peace Corps functions: Magriana. People sometimes get Maggie and I confused, since we are panas (Kichwa for best friends), occasionally dress alike, and have the same songs on our ipods. So, having a joint name will probably make things less confusing for everyone.
I have been spending more time with Janet, which is great because she is hilarious and wonderful. Another added bonus of hanging out with Janet is that we simultaneously make Trent and Lindsay jealous. Maggie doesn’t get as jealous as she should; she really should keep in mind that Magriana could very easily become Arianet (which was also thought up by Janet).
Lately it seems like my friends and I have been so distracting that we’ve caused a few minor accidents. I was talking to Stephanie in Cuenca and a guy was staring so intently at us that he ran into a pole. There are lots of gringos in Cuenca, so I don’t know why we stood out to him. Another incident occurred when my dad was here, while we were visiting the nearby forest preserve, La Perla. The owner’s daughter was not watching where she was going because she was looking at me, so she also walked into a pole. That was kindof sad because she started crying. But it is not my fault that I am so funny looking that people have to stare! Then another time, Lindsay and I were walking down a street in Santo Domingo and we saw a group of guys ahead of us, and I knew that we wouldn’t be able to pass by them without being bothered in some way. As we approached, one guy started crossing the road to our side of the street and he was staring and seemed to be concentrating on what he was going to say to us. He also wasn’t looking where he was going, so he tripped on the curb and stumbled a little. Lindsay and I and his friends laughed at him, but he did manage to stammer out one word in English, hello. That made me very happy, since usually I am just annoyed after being harassed on the street.
In addition to causing people to trip and run into poles, some people (i.e. Pierre) have wondered what I am doing during my mini-retirement here in Ecuador. Well, I’ve been watching So You Think You Can Dance (my new favorite show), making cakes for Trent, Lucy, and Belkis’ birthdays, looking for a job, and cooking up evil schemes. My evil schemes always involve Pierre. First I thought that Pierre and I should elope so that he would have to do my taxes for me next year. But that was silly because my taxes should be easy next year, and people would probably get mad at us if we eloped. Then I decided that I will teach our children Spanish so that we’ll have a secret language that Pierre won’t understand and we can tell each other secrets and make fun of him =). Pierre retaliated by saying that he would teach our kids German. However, my Spanish is much better than his German, and our kids can practice their Spanish with my Peace Corps friends and Cindy and Julia, and Pierre will have to ask Maggie C. to speak to them in German. So, I win!
Pierre is going to be here in 18 days, woohoo! I will be able to irritate him in person rather than just over the phone. I think I like to annoy him because I am the baby of the family and that’s just what we like to do. Leonor asked me when Pierre was visiting and after I told her, her daughter acted like she didn’t know whom I was talking about. She met Pierre last year, so I told her, you know my novio (novio is used interchangeably here for serious boyfriend and fiancé). She asked me if my novio is Trent, whom she met when he came to La Asuncion to work on the school garden. I told her that no, Trent is my husband, and Pierre is my novio. 2 guys for every girl!
