Quilotoa / Me vs. Quicentro’s food court

This panoramic took some real work ...

I live right next to a large mall, called “Quicentro,” that’s growing larger by the day thanks to a mega-renovation.  It’s clean and non-descript.  Besides a few imitation stores (“Sunglass Hot,” written in identical text to “Sunglass Hut”), I can wander its well-lit hallways and entirely forget that I’m in Ecuador.  But the illusion ruptures in the food court, and not because of the food options which include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Dunkin’ Donuts.  Instead, it’s the gigantic photographs of Ecuador’s beauty that line the walls.  There are seals and blue-footed boobies from the Galapagos, the mighty Chimborazo, Pululahua crater, the patch-work farmland south of Quito, the blue domes of Cuenca’s signature church, Quito seen from the Teleferiqo, and a few more.  I consider these photos a checklist of sorts.  And most of them I could have taken, assuming I spent a few thousand dollars on both a better camera and training on how to use it.

But there’s one photo that taunts me.  The stunning Laguna Quilotoa, a beautiful lake that provides a compelling argument for knowing how to use the panoramic feature on your camera.  The lake formed in a collapsed volcanic crater nearly 12,000 feet high.  There is no entry or exit for the water, and it’s an alkaline lake.  (I asked Miriam what that meant but have since forgotten her answer …)  I’d avoided going mostly because of the lake’s remoteness.  Finally getting there required a two-hour bus ride to Latacunga, another two hours to Zumbahua, and then 45 bumpy minutes on a pick-up truck to the lake itself.  It would have been 40 minutes, but one passenger forgot his “guagua” requiring a turn-around.  We overheard this and assumed “guagua” referred to a little baby-shaped piece of bread which is common this time of year.  It was, in fact, a living baby girl who was amazingly unperturbed at having been left behind.

Finally getting to Quilotoa proved every bit as good as hoped for, in large part because of the great company of Miriam, Alec, Isa and some of Alec’s friends from Riobamba.  Rather than recount the whole thing, I’ll provide a few highlights below, though don’t expect any to top that “guagua” story.

-Before heading to Quilotoa, we visited Alec and Isa in Riobamba.  Both of them were spending three straight nights as actors in a haunted house.  Alec’s boss is a haunted house fanatic and returns from visits to the U.S with state-of-the-art haunted house technology.  He spends more than twenty weekends getting the thing together and has all his teachers work in it for its only open weekend, which attracts huge crowds.  Going through the serpentine hallways, we encountered Isa dressed as a patient in an insane asylum.  She let loose a primeval scream, especially since it was early and she wasn’t yet screamed out.  Then, recognizing us, she smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, hi guys.”

-High-quality ping-pong, while always fun to watch, becomes spectacular when viewed from above.  I learned this while watching Alec and his friend Tommy from the balcony of his school’s rec room.  Incredibly, three evenly-matched Americans (Alec and two friends) moved all the way to Riobamba and found great ping-pong.  Out of practice, I couldn’t keep up and lost multiple games without getting to double-digits.

Aerial View

-The hike around the crater rim was spectacular, although difficult.  The rim’s shape requires that you constantly climb steep hills just to descend again, climb again, and descend again.  But the spectacular scenery kept any of us from complaining too much.

-Eating a communal dinner at the hostel, we were treated to some wonderful tidbits of the kind of unbearable conversation that often occurs amongst international travelers.  A Canadian girl held forth on Obama, and how he’s a sham for keeping the same foreign policy adviser as Bush.  One guy insisted upon bringing the conversation back to marijuana at any opportunity.  Another girl rhapsodized about the mind-opening spirituality of “ayahuasca,” a psychotropic plant found in the Amazon.  All well intentioned, I know, and I’ve been involved in these types of vague, pretentious discussions many times.  Still, nearly every sentence made me cringe.  But the absolute best sound bite goes to this gem of a comment:

“You tell me how you survive a rave without drugs.  You tell me!”  (An Israeli traveler, angrily responding to Alec’s friend who audaciously claimed to prefer drinking to any drugs.)

-To save time, we hired a truck to take us all the way from Quilotoa to Latacunga.  We left early, bundled up, and held fast to the jury-rigged handholds.  Many of Ecuador’s mammoth peaks came out to greet us, making for an unforgettable two hours.

Colder than it looks

Makes your head hurt

Last week, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about football-caused head injuries.  Like everything he writes, it was over much too fast.  I’m sure it’s all over the Internet, but you can find the full article here.  In short, however, it seems that the repetitive head trauma and the inherent violence of the game lead players to premature dementia.  I heard Gladwell a few days later on PTI (he is a very knowledgeable sports fan) and he predicted that football might not be around in ten or twenty years.  If this kind of research keeps pouring in, fewer and fewer parents will allow their sons to play.

So far, I’ve continued to watch football guilt-free, but it raises some questions.  The announcers drool over every crushing hit.  And I’m usually right there with them, leaning forward on the replays and calling over anyone else who is nearby.  I’ve spent some time on youtube watching Lawrence Taylor highlights, finding a certain satisfaction in the twisted beauty of human collision.  There’s an easy cache of justification arguments.  They know the risks.  Look at what they get paid. Yet those aren’t always true, and apply only to the anointed few who stay healthy long enough or succeed enough to play on Sundays.  I’ll keep watching as long it’s around.  But if the sport does somehow die, then I’ll try to remember the merits in that as well.

No head trauma here

Music for teenagers

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when music began to matter to me.  One middle-school year, maybe 7^th, I remember asking only for Nirvana and R.E.M albums for my birthday.  By 9^th grade, however, music mattered more than many other things in my life.  It was a bad year.  I’d moved to a new high school where everyone but me seemed to already have well-established friends and active social lives.  I worked hard to infiltrate groups that showed little interest in adding new members.  Eventually I would succeed, but I first endured many months of unwanted solitude.  Each day, I couldn’t wait to get home and listen to  “Uncle John’s Band,” and that comforting opening, “Well the first days are the hardest ones …”  I paid little attention to the lyrics after those first few words.  Still, I understood that song was about me, for me.

Using the marvels of technology, I’ve created favorite-song playlists for each of my three classes.  They are eclectic lists, and it’s jarring to move from AC/DC to Regina Spektor with no segway song.  Taylor Swift, Jason Mraz, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Coldplay all make multiple appearances.  There are also some surprises – Toto, Dire Straits, Eiffel 65, and Blink 182’s “Dammit,” likely the inheritance of an older sibling.

I’ll put the playlists on shuffle during certain moments of class.  As one song ends, all eyes peer towards the speakers, hopefully.  Some kids actually jump out of their chair when they hear their chosen opening chords.  I struggle to get through a day without music, but my enthusiasm can’t match theirs.  I’m more tempered, usually greeting even my favorite songs with equanimity.  I’m not a teenager anymore, and songs may never again trigger the catharsis once delivered by “Uncle John’s Band.”  But I get to watch it happen a few times a day, and that’s almost as good.

(American) Football

Many of my best memories trace back to informal football games.  I somewhat enjoyed the few years I played real football, though I never got used to the restricted motion caused by pads.  And even my best moments of organized football pale in comparison to the backyard two-on-two games, the snow football tournaments, the Monday night halftime games, and our improbable championship run in the freshmen intramural league.  Unfortunately, the last time I played I twisted my back awkwardly and narrowly escaped a serious injury.  No more creating football memories, it would seem.

Resurrecting an old hobby

Like most of South America, Ecuador is a one-sport country.  Soccer is king.  So it surprised me when a group of 8^th grade boys started playing American football during their lunch.  Granted, their version shared the right kind of ball and little else.  It was more of a rugby/soccer hybrid.  The main objective seemed to be tackling anyone and everyone, regardless of whether they had the ball.  The school administration didn’t appreciate this new sport, rightly assessing its incredible potential for injuries.  So the games were stopped and the boys went back to regular socializing during lunch.

Last week, I made a few attempts to start the games again.  I aimed for something at least marginally recognizable as football, no easy goal.  I’ve taught them words that immediately bring all the memories back: two-hand touch, four-to-score, five-Mississippi, and all-time quarterback.  I can’t claim any great success so far.  More than 50% of passes happen beyond the line-of-scrimmage and most plays still include between 2 – 5 forward passes.  To them, the pausing between plays seems boring and unnecessary.  It must come from soccer, where the ball is nearly always in play.  So most incomplete passes become fumbles, despite my shouting that it’s second down back from the same spot.  Still, it’s been fun.  I just may have a few memories left to create.

Mountain ID, fantasy blunders

Cotopaxi's easy, I'm lost after that

A minor goal for this year: labeling Ecuador’s major mountains by sight.  I observed this knowledge on Sunday while hiking up Pichincha.  Jeff, my companion, spouted off the names of each distant peak as easily as if he were matching fast food restaurants with their logos.  Despite more than a year here, I’m still a mountain-identifying novice.  My guide pointed them out when I was nearly atop Cotopaxi, but I was half-dead by that point, badly hindering my retention.  During my Earthwatch, monkey-following trip in Kenya, our lead scientist used the monkey faces as his screensaver.  That way, he saw them throughout the day.  By the time we arrived, he’d studied those faces for hours and could differentiate between the monkey faces as if they were his own cousins.  I’m considering the same strategy here, we’ll see.

In other weekend news, I moved into sole possession of last place (0-3) in the fantasy football league I created.  Last week, I lost by two points because Joseph Addai cannot seem to run for more than 50 yards and because he’s replacing the injured Ladanian Tomlinson.  This week, however, all the blame falls on me since I forgot to move my defense and kicker into the line-up before the games started.  With them, I would have won easily.  Nothing to take seriously, of course, except that even writing about it now still makes me wince.  Might have to put a sticky-note reminder to check my roster right there on the desktop next to the revolving behemoth peaks of Ecuador.

Busyness at hand

Ridiculous as it seems, my laid-back, stress-reduced life in Ecuador seems to have somehow become too busy.  Just two years ago, I worked seventeen hour days – teaching, attending graduate school classes, tutoring – setting aside only the minimum number of minutes to shove down meals, chug coffee, and nurse tea for the perennial sore throat which accompanied such a lifestyle.  On such days, sitting in L.A traffic became the highlight of my day.  At least I could switch off my brain and body for a few precious moments, soaking up favorite albums or listening to inspiring audio books about Ernest Shackleton that made my fatigue seem obscene.

At first, my weekday routine here felt like moving from a Norwegian winter to the golden, constant sunshine of L.A.  But I’m passing that stage, spoiled too quickly.  I no longer have a direct comparison constantly in mind.  I’m wishing for more hours in the day, getting less than an ideal amount of sleep.  I’m noticing all the obligations, however, small, that I can’t fulfill as quickly as I’d like.  The Hatchet quizzes which remain uncorrected, despite coming home with me all week.  I’m struggling to keep up with Mad Men, and both Hung and Entourage have already fallen by the wayside.  Unreturned emails.  Too long without a blog entry.  Underperforming fantasy players left on my active roster.  Ridiculous stuff, most of it.  Still, I don’t like the feeling.

Churchill said that history is just, “one damn thing after another.”  It’s the same with daily life.  Almost everyone I know claims to be overly-busy.  But I think that’s a half-truth.  We just fill our lives to capacity based on the context of the moment.  And occasionally something new comes along that rearranges the priorities, but the fundamental idea of being “really busy” doesn’t change.  Or maybe I’m completely wrong.  And maybe I’ll realize my naïveté when I have kids and quickly learn that I never knew busy or stress or sleeplessness before.  For now, however, I’ll enjoy the languid hours of the weekend and attend to all the uncrossed items that the weekdays forgot.

Not too busy here ... In Mindo

Back at it

I just finished Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide.  It’s the finest book about teaching I’ve read.  (Although it’s probably only competing with five or so other books).  I love that Conroy’s job, teaching on an isolated South Carolinan island, is Teach For America well before TFA existed.  But there’s very little of TFA in his approach to the classroom.  He never once mentions reading levels, assessments, or backwards design.  He plays games, plays music, takes young adults trick-or-treating for the first time and pulls of a remarkably ambitious trips to Washington D.C.  Yet he ruefully admits that his year with them probably did little to alter the general course of their lives.  Reading that book, I felt the immediate urge to teach the hell out of this year, much as watching the U.S Open makes me want to do nothing more than pick up a tennis racquet.

After so many solitary hours in my classroom these past few weeks, it felt strange to have students finally filing into the room and filling the seats.  But it was a welcome sight.  And the three days of teaching passed quickly, unlike the glacier-paced days of planning, meetings, and professional development.

Back in Los Angeles, a day of professional development was a get out of jail free card.  On weekdays when I didn’t have to teach, I felt ridiculously happy.  Knowing that I wasn’t headed to my classroom, I could notice the blue sky, enjoy the coastal wind, and feel the joy of suffering avoided or postponed.  As a teaching friend put it, there was “no finer feeling known to man” than hanging up the phone after calling our automated LAUSD “subfinder” and ensuring that there’d be a different body in front of your students the following day.

But there’s none of that this year.  Instead I linger around the locker banks after the day ends, joking with students and reminding them which books should go home and which should stay in their heavily decorated lockers.  I’m teaching three sections of 8^th grade this year, which means I have many of the students I taught last year.  They already know me well.  Well enough to crack jokes about how the Lakers beat the Nuggets last year.  Well enough to observe that I always eat a granola bar between 10:25 and 10:40.  Knowing each other steals some of the beginning-of-the-year excitement and nerves, but it also feels like returning home.

Mood Music

My girlfriend and I were in the back of a taxi.  It was a beautiful afternoon and the taxi radio was blasting Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.”  To me, it seemed an incongruent pairing, the dark sound of the song at odds with the bright midday sunshine.  Like wines with food, (of which I know almost nothing about) some songs are perfectly constructed to match a time of day, a mood, or a certain weather pattern.  These songs may hold up reasonably well in all varieties of daylight and climate.  But, place them with their proper situational partner and they seem divinely placed as if written for the exact moment.

I’ll try and prove my case with noteworthy examples; but I suspect that all music listeners have their own such lists and ideal pairings.

Situation: Running

Musical Pairing: Say Anything – “…Is a Real Boy” – In writing this, I stupidly put on the opening song “Belt” in order to write with greater detail.  And immediately I just wanted to go run.  I’ve burned innumerable calories to this album.  More importantly, I’ve burned off excess frustration and aggression, clenching my fists and gritting my teeth to the thirteen tracks on this masterpiece.  It even clocks in at just under an hour, ideal length for a straight-through listen while running.

Situation: Falling Asleep

Musical Pairing: Rocky Votolato – “Burning My Travels Clean” – In high school, there was an intimidatingly smart, fiercely independent girl in many of my classes.  I knew her only for her shaved head and for her occasional insights in English class that made the rest of our discussion seem juvenile.  I didn’t dare talk to her, fearing immediate judgment for my conformist outfits and lack of tattoos or piercings.  But during our senior year, we finally became friends.  I will be forever indebted to her purely on the basis of her music recommendations.  The gem of them all, however, was Rocky Votolato.  I’ve listened to this album over 500 times and probably less than three of those occurred during the daytime.  It’s an intensely personal album, and the searching lyrics fit wonderfully with the wandering thoughts of semi-consciousness just before true sleep.

Situation: Daytime Driving, Sunny Day

Musical Pairing: Limbeck “Hi, Everything’s Great” – In this case, Limbeck may have intentionally written the album specifically for motorists.  The lyrics seem inspired by a road atlas, mentioning state names and freeway numbers in almost every song.  More than that, it just feels good to have these airy hooks blasting through rolled-down windows.  At red lights, I’m always certain that other drivers will hear it, turn down their own music, and immediately recognize the puzzle-piece agreement of Limbeck and a blue-sky afternoon.  It’s yet to happen, but I cannot imagine my own excitement if I ever hear these songs coming from a car next to me.

Situation: Watching Friday Night Lights

Musical Pairing: Explosions in the Sky – On individual merits, both the band and the show are exceptionally good.  The haunting, circular sounds of Explosions in the Sky  justify the lofty album title, “The Earth is Not A Cold Dead Place.”  And Friday Night Lights already has more emotional firepower than any show on network television.  But when you add that ethereal music to a Julie and Matt kiss, or to a rain-drenched night practice session, then you’re left with something truly sublime.

Tape job

Two English teachers in Ecuador

Over the last few days, I’ve hung dozens of posters, planned weeks worth of lessons, copied hundreds of worksheets, labeled myriad file folders, created study guides, and rearranged multiple bookshelves.  I may have even ripped off some skin from my thumb after peeling one-too-many of those little tape rolls that turn single-sided tape into double-sided tape.  It’s certainly not the work I enjoy about teaching, but I’ve tried to be productive.  In weaker moments, I’ve stared blankly at my computer screen or a notebook page for minutes on end, tired of being buried in textbooks and “enduring understandings.”  I’ve snuck in a few Bill Simmons’ columns and managed frequent US Open score checks.  I passed the time in less stimulating meetings by creating pop-culture quizzes for the people around me. (Examples: match the lead singer to the band, match the athlete to his alma mater, and match the television character to the proper show).

Originally, we were scheduled to begin teaching on August 27.  However, the Ecuadorian government pushed our start date back to September 7 and recently moved it again to Sep. 9.  As a result, I won’t see students until almost a month after returning to the country.  It feels a bit strange to have so many student-less days on campus.  I’m ready for them to start pouring in and bringing with them the vitality, laughter, and mood swings that define adolescence.

On the other hand, the extra time opened up a few free days to spend with my little brother and his girlfriend.  The two of them are moving to Riobamba, a town of about 100,000 people and four hours south of Quito by car.  Despite coming here with no concrete plans, he impressively landed a job teaching English in his first week in the city.  His girlfriend will be working for a medical organization.  Their presence here, along with a new crop of American teachers, has already given this year a different feel than last.

I’m planning on coaching basketball this year, at least in a support role.  I’m excited about it, but expect some disillusionment as well.  In my first year teaching, you could have driven an entire continent in the chasm between my idealistic notions of the teacher I’d be and the actual teacher I quickly became.  I expect a similar learning curve with coaching, but at least I’m better prepared for it this time around.  But that won’t start until late September and I still have a lot of tape rolls, paper clips, and sticky notes to burn through before then.

New living room

Done with Bungalow 6

I’ve mostly avoided any consumer complaints in this blog.  It’s not something that normally interests me; I’m usually quick to forgive or forget poor service.  But there’s a hugely popular bar in Quito, Bungalow 6, which finally awakened my latent consumer ire.

My roommates last year went there often and I joined them a few times.  I also ended up there on Sunday afternoons because they received a few football games each week.  It’s hot, dark, crowded, loud, and sweat-drenched  – all the qualities people want from that kind of place.  I’m uncomfortable in these atmospheres by definition, but I can tolerate and even enjoy a few hours in them occasionally.  But I hope never to patronize Bungalow 6 again, despite its dominance in Quito.  Here are my reasons.

1. A few months ago, they refused to let in a group of Ecuadorian rainforest guides.  I know one of these guides, and he’s a fantastic guy.  Apparently, these guys weren’t dressed well enough and looked too Ecuadorian (read darker-skinned) to be allowed into a club in their own country.
2. Entering the club last night, I tossed my $5 bill (the cover fee for guys) into a tiny window.  Seeing this, the bouncer informed me that it was rude and uneducated to throw the bill down and he wouldn’t like it if he were behind that tiny black window and customers just tossed bills in rather than placing them down politely.  Indifferent to entering, I told the bouncer I’d just take my airborne $5 bill back and leave.  Hearing this, the man behind the window slammed it shut in my face, $5 bill unreturned.
3. Inside the bar, trying to shake off the frustration of our entrance, I went to grab the beers included in our cover charge.  The tickets said that they could be exchanged for one cerveza. I asked for two Club’s, a common Ecuadorian beer.  The bartender grabbed them, popped the tops and set them down.  When I handed him the ticket, he told me that I could only use the ticket for Pilsener, another Ecuadorian beer of equal price and quality.  Since he’d already opened the other beers, it was too late to switch the order.  I’m fairly convinced he would have done the same thing if I’d originally ordered Pilsener.  But at least he didn’t lecture me when I tossed another $5 bill onto the bar.

Okay, the 2^nd and 3^rd complaints are somewhat petty, I know.  But since we have abundant choices in where to spend time and money, why waste either in a place so prejudiced and hostile?