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.