Ecuador Omnibus

Quilotoa Loopy

After a stagnant past several weekends here in Ambato, I finally packed it up and made a trip out of the Big-A with two of my friends, Caitlin and Ariana. We headed to a natural formation about two and a half hours away from Ambato called Quilotoa.

Ari and Caitlin riding dirty

We left Ambato bright and early at 6:45am to catch a bus to a nearby city called Latacunga, immediately followed by another bus to a town called Zumbahua. Once at Zumbahua we paid some guy with a truck to take us through the Saturday market and afterward drive us to Quilotoa. I still don't feel comfortable when random strangers approach me and ask me if I want a ride in the back of their pickup truck, but sometimes in Ecuador that is the only option to get to less visited places.

Quilotoa used to be a volcano, but through some process that I still do not fully understand after reading the Wikipedia article, it collapsed and is now a lake at the bottom of a crater. It is a particularly interesting sight because the water is a dark green color due to the dissolved minerals in the lake. When we arrived at Quilotoa we talked to some people and learned that while the hike down the crater to the lake is manageable, the hike back up is quite difficult. We resigned to hiring some guy to bring horses down to us at the bottom so we could ride them back up when we were done looking at the lake.

Quilotoa from the outlook above

Just like the man had said, the hike down was not too bad. Due to the high altitude, the weather in Quilotoa is quite chilly so we had a comfortable trip down to the water level of the lake. Contrary to what the man had said, however, when we reached the bottom there were not three horses waiting for us. He apologized for not having enough horses and we were faced with the decision of how to get back up the crater (NB: The night before in a discussion about how we all control our weight in Ecuador, Ariana was quoted as saying, "Exercise just isn't my thing."):

Horse Guy: Here are the horses and you can all go up right now... psych, psych, psych! We can either make two trips up with the horses we have or you all can walk.
Krishna: Walk.
Caitlin: Walk.
Ariana: There isn't even a donkey or something we can take up?
Krishna: Well he's got the two horses, but by the time we make two trips up to get us all to the top it will end up taking longer than if we walk.
Ariana: O.K., but I'm warning you two that I haven't done anything even closely resembling exercise in several years.

Ariana was hesitant at first, but she quickly jumped on the champ-wagon and we started up. After a long, hour and a half hike uphill, we finally reached the top and were able to eat lunch and head home exhausted.

Taking a photo break during the hike. No one said Ecuador would be easy.

On the ride from Zumbahua back to Latacunga, we got on the smallest bus I have been on yet in Ecuador. I was the last person to get on and there were no seats left, so it looked like I would have to stand up for the hour and forty minute ride. To make matters worse, the ceiling was about five and a half feet high, so I had to tilt my head at a 45° angle to stand up straight. About two minutes in the lady working on the bus came to the rescue and, demonstrating typical Ecuadorian resourcefulness, gave me and Caitlin stools to sit on in the aisle.

SECAP: Pros and Cons

I have talked about the advantages and disadvantages of working at a broke government school before, but a recent incident was the best example of my love-hate relationship with SECAP yet.

A few weeks back, the lights in my classroom stopped working so my evening students and I had to move to a classroom in a different building. The second day that the lights weren't working, my class saw I was upset about having to move to a really beat-up classroom to have class, and as we were walking around outside to get to the new room someone asked if we could play soccer on the small SECAP field we were passing. I called their bluff and said, "Sure, who's got a ball?" When no one had a ball to play with I dragged them into the classroom and I tried to teach them something as usual.

The next day the lights still weren't working and I was furious that SECAP still hadn't fixed them even though I asked them to two days earlier. Again we walked around the building outside to get to the other classroom and one of my students asked if we could play soccer, only this time someone actually had a ball. I was so angry that SECAP wasn't paying attention to my complaints that I gave in to my students' request and instead of having class we just played soccer outside for two hours. I was impressed that every one of my students was excited and played really hard except for two: Angel because he has a (alleged) heart condition and Heliana because she was wearing heels.

So while it is nice that the well-run schools in Ecuador provide their teachers with books and curricula, it is definitely not bad having the option of playing soccer instead of teaching English if I'm not feeling the crappy room I was assigned.

Another advantage of working at SECAP that I have talked about is that most of my students are adults so they like to take care of me. After class last Thursday I was telling one of my students that my host family doesn't eat dinner so I always have to find food for myself at night, so four of my students took me to a restaurant and bought me dinner. Today one of my students invited me and Caitlin to her house for lunch and even took us out and bought us ice cream afterward.

Dealing with the unorganized administration at SECAP is frustrating sometimes, but being fed by students is certainly better than taking paper balls to the back of the head like some of my other friends who teach high-schoolers.

Silly Americans, Spanish is for Ecuas

As much as I try not to, I frequently laugh out loud at the things my students say because they just sound so funny saying English words with their Ecuadorian accents sometimes. Because of this it is always a relief when I say something incorrectly in Spanish and my class gets a chance to laugh at me and see that people mess up speaking a foreign language even when they have been studying it for close to a decade.

My class couldn't stop laughing at me the other day when I was introducing someone to them and said Esta es mi ex-alumna (This is my ex-student). Apparently my translation was too literal because my students informed me that what I said came off as offensive because demonstrative pronouns are only used for objects, not people. I learned that the correct way to refer to someone is to use the subject pronoun, and I should have said Ella es mi ex-alumna (She is my ex-student).

This week my class had a chuckle because I couldn't pronounce the word desestresante after multiple attempts. I gave up when my ego could no longer take the building hysteria of giggles closing in around me, and I had to resort to threatening to draw marker mustaches on them (my go-to disciplinary technique) to get them to calm down and continue with class.

Caitlin had a real winner at lunch today when she recounted our failure to acquire horses on the climb out of the Quilotoa crater. She said something along the lines of Quería montar en un caballero (I wanted to ride a gentleman) instead of Quería montar en un caballo (I wanted to ride a horse).

Another Caitlin classic, and perhaps my favorite "I don't know the word in Spanish, but I'll take a guess assuming it is something like English" attempt was when she didn't know the word for sneeze. She was banking on an onomatopoeic word with a typical Spanish verb ending and threw out achuchar. Coincidentally, chucha is a strong, vulgar word in Ecuadorian Spanish that means "cunt". My director heard this story and suggested that achuchar would probably translate to something like "pussy-up", an undefined term which is nevertheless one of my favorite English expressions now.

Teacher Talk

My Spanish teacher also happens to be an English teacher, and sometimes during class we have very interesting discussions about the differences between English and Spanish. I have a lot to say about how they are different from the perspective of a native English speaker, but it is always enlightening to hear how he views their differences as a native Spanish speaker.

One of the differences he mentioned the other day was prompted from a question I had about which vocabulary word fit better in a sentence about shortening a trip, abreviar or acortar. He told me they both worked fine and was confused about why I was unsure because he was aware that we have a cognate in English, "abbreviate."

I explained to him that in English we only use abbreviate for technical situations, and while someone would be understood if he said "We can abbreviate our trip by an hour if we go by car", it would sound very unusual. He noted that in Spanish there are not many distinctions between formal/technical and informal vocabulary as in English, and that most of the time in Spanish you will be just fine using the fanciest word you know in a sentence.

In Ecuador, people always use the word cachar to check for comprehension and find out if someone has understood something ("Catch my drift?"). It can also mean "catch" in the sense of capture or grab, although it is used less frequently that way. I always thought it was a coincidence that cachar sounds so much like "catch" and they have almost identical meanings, but my teacher told me it is an adapted word from English. I'm not entirely sure if I believe him though because they don't use that word in Mexico (from what I can remember), and it would be strange if American English has had more of an influence on Ecuadorian Spanish than on neighboring Mexico's variety.

A long time ago I noticed that the Dictionary.com Word of the Day "lagniappe" came to American English from Quechua, the indigenous language of the people of the Andes. It is interesting to see how even words from an indigenous language can penetrate the vocabulary of the language of a more dominant culture quite a distance away.

In my Spanish class I also have painfully static arguments with my teacher over punctuation every time he reviews one of my essays. We argue because he is convinced that the punctuation rules are different in Spanish and that I need to use less periods in my essays because regardless of how they are used in English, my usage is considered incorrect in Spanish. I am all about learning Spanish and familiarizing myself with their syntax and orthography, but as long as I am writing from left to right I will never change my beliefs on where a comma, period, and semicolon should go. Never.

Don't You Dare Touch My Cat!

Bus Entertainment

Very often in Ecuador people will jump on the bus and do something to make money. They all apparently go to the same bus performer school because there are only a few different routines and I see them executed by a new person every day. For example, one of the most common shticks in Ambato is the magic eye drop vendor. The guy will come on the bus and give an inspired speech about all the miraculous health benefits that come from using vitamin enriched eye drops (and for only one dollar!).

Other times people who jump on the bus don't sell things to make money. Rather, they do some kind of performance like hold up an x-ray image while pleading the bus riders for money so they can get a brain tumor removed or dress up like a clown and perform a monologue. I don't believe the x-ray guys and I never understand the clown jokes, so while some Ecuadorians enjoy the performances it is just annoying for me.

The other day on the bus I encountered the most obnoxious bus performer yet. The guy just stood in the front of the bus and announced that he would kiss anybody who didn't give him money. That's it. What's worse, nearly everyone gave him money as he walked down the aisle puckering his lips and moving in for the kiss on passengers. He got to me just as I was leaving the bus and yelled at me that I needed to give him money. When I walked off the bus without having paid him he yelled at me (and this is a direct translation), "I hope when you go back home you discover your house robbed and your cat raped." Well the joke's on him because my host family doesn't even have a cat so half of that insult didn't even make sense.


Ricky's Wedding

The main event of this week was my host brother Ricky's wedding. The ceremony and reception were both on Saturday night at a chapel and restaurant in Ambato.

The ceremony was pretty much identical to what we do in the States. The bride and groom go to the front of the room, exchange words with each other and the priest, then they kiss and as they are leaving the guests throw rice at them.

The bride, groom, and army of small children in ridiculous costumes

The biggest difference that I noted about Ecuadorian weddings is how relaxed everyone involved was. In the States every little detail about the wedding is planned weeks or months in advance, and if anything doesn't go according to plan people freak out. Ricky's wedding was supposed to start at 7:00pm, and at 6:53pm he walked into the kitchen of our house still not ready to leave and asked me what time it was. I went to the church with my host parents and we didn't get there until at least 7:20pm.

Even during the ceremony it was much less planned out than what we expect of a wedding in the United States. There were a number of children running around during the ceremony—like, literally running up and down the aisle while the priest was talking and the bride and groom were saying their vows. They were climbing on the benches, stepping all over the bride's veil that was draped across the floor, and being all-around brats the entire time. Towards the end one of them was running behind the altar, fell down, and burst out in hysterical crying. In the States, a kid that made noise during a wedding ceremony would most likely be smacked upside the head and told that he is going to hell if he keeps it up.

The reception was also very similar to what we do in the States, with the big exception that the people here started dancing as soon as they got to the restaurant. In the U.S. people dance at weddings, but I imagine that more often than not it is alcohol induced and it doesn't last very long. At this wedding every single person got out of his seat and danced for the entire time he wasn't eating.

I don't remember why I thought that pose was a good idea

After dinner they started serving whiskey so the alcohol inspired dancing did eventually come, but it wasn't until the last couple of hours. I'm glad I got the opportunity to experience a wedding here in Ecuador and it was a good reminder of how little I want to get married myself.

Me and my host dad. Ricky wasn't drinking that night.

More whisky-based pageantry with my host brother Santiago

In the end I didn't get a chance to say a speech like I originally wanted, but now that I've been to a wedding I'm more motivated than ever to get a microphone in my hand at the next one I attend.

Grammar Talk: Indirect Object Pronouns

As usual, the ambiguous constructions of Spanish and its differences with English has driven me to hit the grammar books, and this time it is to figure out why indirect object pronouns give me so much trouble.

Anyone up on his English grammar knows that an indirect object pronoun can replace any person or thing gaining from an action. Spanish indirect objects can perform this duty as well, so sentences like Le mandé la carta and Te digo la verdad are easy enough for English speakers to understand. In school we learn how to use Spanish indirect object pronouns from examples like these, so the connection is made that indirect object pronouns are used in sentences that would utilize the prepositions to or for in English.

One of the major differences with indirect object usage in Spanish, however, is that an indirect object can also replace a person or thing losing by an action—sentences that in English would utilize the prepositions of, from, or by. Examples from B&B include:

Mario le ha quitado a Ana. (Mario's taken Ana away from him)
Les han robado un millón de pesos. (They've stolen a million pesos from them)
Se le ha muerto un hijo. (A son of his has died)


The variety of relationships that indirect object pronouns can indicate sometimes leads to notably ambiguous sentences like Le compré un vestido, which can be read as "I bought a dress for her" or "I bought a dress from her." Similarly:


Cómprame algo (Buy something for/from me)
Ángel me robó una manzana. (Ángel stole an apple from/for me)

Although meaning is usually clear with knowledge of the flexibility of indirect object pronouns, sentences can always be rewritten to specify meaning, such as Le compré un vestido para ella.

Conclusion

As a native English speaker, I tend to specify as much as I can with prepositions like in the last example. However, I have been told by Ecuadorians that it sounds odd to them, and I have been advised to "use less words" on a number of occasions. Oh well, when in Ecuador...


Note: There are a number of other relationships that can be expressed using indirect objects, but those cases are much more confusing and I wouldn't attempt to describe them until I am sure that I completely understand them myself (although I'm not sure I'll be in Ecuador long enough for that to happen).

Fiestas in Review

From last Thursday to Tuesday of this week, the majority of Ambato took a five-day weekend to celebrate the city's signature celebration: The Festival of Fruit and Flowers. My mini-vacation started on Thursday when I went to a carnival with my students after class.

Playland Park

Amusement parks have been set up in a couple of locations in Ambato for a few weeks now, but this past Thursday was the first time I have actually entered one. Since English class Thursday night was the only thing standing between my Advanced students and the Fiestas, they were getting unruly after the first half hour and pretty much refused to do anything I told them to. A student suggested that we go to one of the amusement parks called Playland Park, and she promised that if we went every student would get on the scariest ride. Always the cool teacher, I said yes.

After doing the Tarzan Swing in Mindo, I didn't think I would be scared by any of the rides the dinky amusement parks in Ambato would have. I was right that they were dinky, but wrong that they wouldn't be scary. Take for example this carelessly thought out ride:

Safety harnesses are for pussies anyway

When I did a lap around the park to see which rides I would want to go on, I spotted this one before it started going. It appeared to be a tame ride that just tilted back and forth. I was right that it just rocked back and forth and bounced around a bit, but the kicker was that there was nothing that held the riders in their seats. People were forced to hold on to the metal bar along the outside of the circle while their bodies were flung into the air and slammed onto the hard plastic chairs on the way down. My tailbone was hurting from just watching it in action.

After checking out all the rides Playland Park had to offer, we agreed that the scariest ride in the park was a huge spinning/rotating attraction called Evolution.

Unlike the first ride I described, to get on Evolution you actually had to be strapped in. The ride didn't seem like it would be scary because it was moving very slowly. Terror only struck me when the ride inverted us and brought us far into the sky and all my weight was being supported by the harness I assumed that I was locked into.

It was at the peak of Evolution's motion I realized that my life was resting on the functionality of the safety harness, which was put together by carnies working at a traveling amusement park in a third-world country. I was preoccupied the entire time by thoughts of falling to my death before I even got to go to the Amazon Forest, but I survived and it turned out to be a cool ride to be on because we got a great view of the city (even though it was upside-down) when we were at the top.

Only one student didn't go on Evolution because he claimed he had a "heart condition." Lame.

I Want My Ambato Back

During the Fiestas there were fun events going every day like parades, concerts in the streets, and live music at most venues. The only problem was that there were so many people in the city that Ambato really lost its best feature, which is the fact that it is a calm, small city that is cheap to have fun in. During the fiestas, bars that are usually free to enter were charging upwards of ten dollars to enter and I paid three times as much to get a taxi from my house to the neighborhood where my friend lives.

Matters weren't helped by the fact that the only public transportation we have here in Ambato is the buses, and they stop running after 7:30 pm. This means that the traffic is atrocious from all the people trying to drive to where they are going (further complicated by the main streets being blocked off due to parades), it takes forever to get anywhere, and taxis charge whatever they want because they know you don't have any other options.

That is not to say that the Fiestas were all traffic jams and ten dollar covers, however. The most fun night I had during the Fiestas was when I just walked around the main street in Ambato with my friends enjoying a free outdoor concert and dancing outside.

Ambato is noted for being one of the few cities in Ecuador where people do not throw things at each other in the streets during Carnaval. In other cities like nearby Guaranda, the masses toss around water, eggs, and flour. While there was no aerial exchange of food-stuffs in Ambato, lots of people did spray colored foam at each other. While it was sometimes annoying to get foam in my eyes or have my shirt dyed green and orange for the night, it was all in good fun and I was surprised at how every single person I saw get sprayed was a good sport about it (except my friend Will who had his phone stolen while being sprayed; he was kind of a baby about it).

Carnaval foam-warriors

Fruits and Flowers

I had joked earlier on during the Fiestas that there were not many fruits or flowers to be seen in Ambato, but my criticism was finally addressed when they put up a huge mural on the cathedral in the center of the city made up entirely of fruits, flowers, and bread.

Things to find in this picture: Jesus, dove, sunglasses, Winnie the Pooh

For the entire five days the streets were packed with vendors selling all kinds food. The first day at Playland Park I even saw some guy who was selling pizza that he was cooking in an oven on the back of his motorcycle. I have no idea what was powering the oven because after I took a picture of his bike he got mad and started yelling at me before I could get a closer look.


From the start of the Fiestas I had been eating questionable street food multiple times a day and I felt fine, but it finally caught up with me on the second to last night of the long weekend. I had one too many fig and cheese sandwiches from a lady in the park and I had to sit the final night out, which was just as well because by that time I was done with the congestion in Ambato, and I am relieved that we are back to being a city that no one cares to visit.

Ambato Classic

There are two soccer teams in Ambato that share the same home field, Bellavista Stadium. Today was the Ambato Classic when the two teams, Técnico Universitario and Macará, play each other for Ambateño glory. Both teams are in the "B" division of Ecuadorian soccer so the games at Bellavista Stadium normally do not draw many spectators. Today was certainly an exception, and when I arrived at the stadium an hour before the start of the game there was already a line extending across the street to enter.

I went with my friend Caitlin, and when we got to the stadium we had to make the important decision of which team to root for since they were both from Ambato. The decision was crucial because the stadium was essentially split in half, and each side was filled with fans of only one of the teams (side note: the stands looked awesome because one half of the stadium was all red from Técnico fans and the other half was all blue from Macará fans). We decided that since the line to get into the Técnico side was longer, we would be Macará fans for the day, so we bough a couple of knock-off jerseys outside the stadium and headed to the Macará section.

Casual Macará fanfare

The game was fun, but not nearly as crazy as I have heard the "A" division games are in the bigger cities. If anyone was looking forward to a story about me getting into a brawl with an opposing fan or getting tear-gassed by riot police, I suppose it will have to wait until I make it to a Liga game in Quito.


Speaking to Writing

One of the unlikely advantages of having learned Spanish from mostly non-native speakers in the States came of the tendency of many English speakers to overlook the fact that in Spanish, the letters "v" and "b"—as well as "s" and "z"—sound the same. Because of this oversight, I have always been able to spell words with these letters correctly because I say them differently in my mind. For instance, when I was learning Spanish I always read the word hizo with a voiced consonant sound, and that word would sound different than hiso in which the "s" is not voiced.

Since I have been paying more attention to my pronunciation and trying to eliminate my foreign accent the best I can, I have noticed that my spelling is getting worse. Now that I pronounce letters the way they are supposed to be pronounced (identically), I am making orthographical errors that I never used to make before. Just today I wanted to type vaya, but as I said it out loud my fingers instinctively typed baya to correspond with how I was pronouncing it.

Similar to my spelling regression, my attempts to sound like a native speaker are creating unforeseen problems for my spoken Spanish as well. In English, the "b" sound is bilabial, which is to say that it is articulated using both lips. In contrast, the "v" sound is labiodental, which means that it is articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth. In Spanish, both of these letters are bilabial and they both sound like our English letter "b."

As I am eliminating my use of the labiodental "v" sound, I am also accidentally eliminating other labiodental sounds that Spanish does have. For instance, I have told cab drivers multiple times in the past few weeks that I want to go to Picoa (bilabial "p" sound) when what I really wanted to say was Ficoa (labiodental "f").

Wedding Crasher

I guess I'm not really a wedding crasher since I got an invitation, but this weekend my host brother Ricky is getting married. Thankfully I brought my interview suit back with me from my last trip to the States so I have something to wear. While I have never been to a wedding in my adult life, I have a hunch that I am awesome at making wedding speeches, so I hope I can make it to a microphone before anyone realizes I am not part of the family and don't really speak Spanish that elegantly and tries to stop me.


Tsunami

Due to the massive earthquake near Japan, there was a tsunami warning all along the Pacific coast including Ecuador. Luckily I live way up in the mountains in the center of the country, so everything was fine in Ambato. Even on the coast of Ecuador, a state of emergency was declared and people in danger had time to evacuate, so as far as I know Ecuador escaped unharmed from the potential threat. My thoughts go out to everyone affected by the tsunami.