A New Hobby

I guess the rainy day yesterday was good for more than a nap--I picked up a new hobby: guitar! Alejandro has taken it upon himself to teach me how to play (he´s self-taught). Everyone makes playing the guitar look so easy, but it´s kinda tough! At least at the beginning stages it is. I mean, I have never received any kind of guitar lesson, seen a guitar book, nothing. I think every time I´ve come in contact with a guitar I´ve just picked it up and randomly strummed the strings and then got bored because I didn´t know what I was doing. Anyhoo, yesterday I learned 6 basic chords (I hope I still remember them today) and am learning a very, very basic ¨song.¨ Alejandro is great at explaining and showing me how to play, despite the fact that he´s never had a formal lesson himself--he taught himself from books. He´s also very patient and sat through my initial complaints that my fingertips hurt, my fingers are too small, maybe I need a smaller guitar, etc. But slowly but surely I´m picking this guitar stuff up! I´m excited to learn to play another instrument because I have to admit, I kind of miss playing the piano and will have to wait until I´m back in DC to start practicing that again. Who knows, maybe it won´t be me returning to the states but the next Jimi Hendrix (riiiight......). hah

It´s almost Carnaval time here, which is February 5th. All that means is that there´s a 4-day weekend, which means hopefully I´ll be doing some traveling. Also, it means that people throw water balloons at each other in the streets, and gringos are often a prime target. (I still don´t understand why getting people wet is part of this holiday, but whatever.) Someone tried to soak me from a car last week, but they didn´t have very good aim from a moving car and the water balloon hit the pavement right in front of me but didn´t even get my shoes wet. Booyah! Anyway, I feel a little paranoid walking around during this ¨holiday¨ time which apparently lasts like 2 weeks. Last week I saw two gringos get water balloons dropped on them from an open window. I can´t say it looked like much fun. I guess I have good reason to be paranoid. I´m planning on staying alert and making it past February 5th nice and dry (not counting the constant rainstorms).

Corporal Birthday Punishment

Okay, finally a real update not involving tennis or celebrities. The family and I went to a double birthday party this past weekend for 2 of Alejandro´s cousins, and I got to witness firsthand another Ecuadorian tradition that I had no idea about. Okay, so you know how in the states a birthday ¨tradition¨ supposedly is to hit/punch someone the number of times of their new age. However, no one seems to actually do this. Maybe the US has become too PC. Anyway, the tradition here is for all the family to line up and hit the birthday person in the BUTT with a BELT. Birthday asswhippings! Yesss. So anyway, the poor girls were turning 36 and 38. I felt for them, I really did. But I gave the beltwhippings anyway. Okay, it sounds a lot worse than it is. First of all, pretty much every woman and most of the guys gave soft taps, I guess because we were all feeling somewhat sympathetic or something. And only a few people really wound up and gave a big slap (including one little girl--she wound up like she was swinging a baseball bat, haha). Plus, to get from hit 20 to hit 3o, there are lots of little taps. So all in all, it´s not so bad. Although there were some resounding slaps. I guess that´s what I have to look forward to shortly...

As I´m writing this, it´s soo overcast and rainy--and it´s been raining for 3 days. Good for the plants, bad for my trying-to-.stay-awake efforts. Hopefully I can manage to stay indoors allll day today, and maybe even snag a rainy day nap. Those are the best.

Have Fun Watching the Finals at Home, Rog!

This doesn´t count as substantial updates at all, but I have been enjoying watching the Australian Open, especially now that Roger Federer lost. I can´t deny that he´s a great player, the problem is he knows it all too well. He strikes me as pretty full of himself and lately has been what the Yankees were during their various eras: boring to watch since you already know the outcome before the game even starts. So, finally things have gotten interesting again. Now that it´s finals time, I´m rooting for Sharapova because she´s a freaking machine and seems pretty chill, and the unranked random guy Tsonga who has been playing his hindparts off and is making a name for himself.

Ahh, it´s almost the weekend. Hopefully something fun is in store!

Month of January--Here, Then Gone

Wow, I can´t believe it´s almost February. Time is really flying here, especially when I´m not looking at calendars or remembering what day it is.

Nothing too huge to report here. I have a few new students, so that´s good and keeping me a bit busier. I briefly got to see some NCAA volleyball games on tv here, so that made me kind of nostalgic. I think I need to find an intramural league either here or in the states. No traveling in 2008 thus far, but I´m thinking of spending my birthday at the beach, so hopefully I´ll make that happen. In sadder news, my mom informed me that Heath Ledger died. It was kind of weird--when I found out, I was partly shocked and even a bit sad, which I find strange because I didn´t even know the guy. Maybe it´s because he died so young, I liked him as an actor, and as a teenager I had his face plastered all over my walls and practically wanted to marry him. Anyway, reading the story gave me pause today and made me wonder what´s going on with Hollywood and lots of celebrities in general these days. It seems like everywhere you look someone either has a mental disorder (ahem, B. Spears), substance abuse problems, or accidental/purposeful OD´s. I guess the pressure and lifestyle are heavier than many people can imagine. At any rate, sad.

Well, when I have actual substantial updates, I´ll post something a bit longer. Hasta la vista!

Bienvenido 2008

First post of 2008, woot woot! New Years was a lot of fun and really different tradition-wise. First, almost everyone dresses up with masks and costumes, kind of like Halloween Part 2 (but not like a crappy horror film). At 5:30 or so on New Years Eve, I walked with Alejandro on one of the major avenues here called la Amazonas. The street was completely blocked off and was packed full of pedestrians. There was lots of music in the air and stages with big ¨dolls¨ on them in various scenes. I´m not sure what the dolls were made of but they were life-size or larger, often of political figures and sometimes other random characters like landlords, movie characters, etc. with speech bubbles and involved in some sort of scene. These dolls, and other smaller dolls that were sold on the street the past couple of days for the public to buy, represent the old year 2007. They´re actually called ¨viejos¨, which means ¨old man.¨ At midnight, people burn their dolls in the street, which symbolizes bidding the old year farewell. The dolls you can buy on the street are varied, and included President Correa and other political figures, the Simpsons, and characters from Shrek, just to name a few.

After walking around on the Amazonas for awhile and taking in all the sights, we finally got tired of the jostling crowd (ex.: we saw 2 guys exchange naughty words and almost get into a fight for bumping into each other), and we headed on out, but not before snagging some cotton candy and some masks for the party later that night. On our way home we saw another common tradition: lots of guys dress up in drag and pretend to be the widows of the ¨viejos¨ that will be burned later that night. They dance in the street, impede traffic, shake their booties in front of each car possible, flirt with the people inside the car, and then ask for money (we´re talking small change here, not dollar bills). We saw a group of these guys on our walk home and they were frickin hilarious. Not only did they look ridiculous, their ¨seductive¨ dancing really topped the whole thing off. We watched them for a little bit stopping cars and dancing provocatively with each other before going on our merry way. There was this one widow in particular who took the cake: he was super skinny, had on lots of makeup, wore a short wig with two little pigtails in front framing his face, black booty shorts, a spandex black tube top that exposed his entire midriff, and a black sheer cover-up that hung open. He also had something in his hand that he would shake in the air. It looked like a rubber goldfish but I´m sure it was something either dirtier or more random. In front of every car trying to get by, he would put his hands on the hood of the car, shake his butt in the air, and then a second guy would come behind him and they would semi-grind. Words definitely don´t do this guy justice--he was very, very entertaining to watch.

When we got back to the house, we sat down to write the last will and testament of the viejo we were going to burn later that night. In the will, the viejo leaves something for each person in the family to use in the next year. Normally that would be modertately easy to write for 20 people, except that the will has to be funny and rhyme. Hah, we definitely had our work cut out for us. Finally after about an hour and a half, our mission was accomplished. After that, the whole family and I made ourselves pretty and headed out to a party at another family member´s house farther north in Quito, where Mayory´s whole side of the family congregated to celebrate. We had encounters with various widows on the way there: 2 guys pressed themselves against our windshield and then flirted with Alejandro, another guy had on a thong and mooned us while dancing, and a different guy got down and dirty on the pavement with various ¨exotic dancer¨ type moves.

Finally, after all the widow excitement, we arrived at the fiesta. The party started off with picture taking and mingling. Then we played a party game called ¨Cat and Mouse¨: everyone sits in a circle and there are 2 ties (tie as in suit and tie). One tie is designated the cat: you have to put it around your neck and tie one simple knot before passing it on to the person next to you. The other tie is the mouse: you have to tie 2 knots before passing it on. Thus, the cat will obviously move around the circle faster than the mouse, and whoever ends up with 2 ties receives a punishment of some sort. As it turned out, two couples ended up losing so their punishment was that they had to do a couples dance contest. The game was certainly nervewracking but definitely a lot of fun with people laughing, shouting, and yelling at people to tie and untie faster.

After the cat and mouse game, it was time to read the viejo´s will. Everyone seemed to enjoy the fruits of our labor, which made it all worth it. This is what the viejo left me in his will:

¨Para Gabriela le dejo mi enciclopedia favorita por ser una mujer bonita, y una canción de tango para que lo baile con Alejandro.¨

Translation (more or less): To Gabrielle I leave my favorite encyclopedia for being a beautiful woman, and a tango song so she can dance it with Alejandro.

I think I made out pretty well!

Anyhoo, after the reading of the will came a toast with champagne maybe 10 minutes or so before midnight. Then, another tradition: I think technically you´re supposed to eat 12 grapes right at midnight, one for each chime of the clock. However, the grapes here are rather large and have seeds, so it would pretty much be impossible to eat 12 of them in 12 seconds. So instead we ate the 12 grapes right after the champagne toast and then made a wish for the new year when we finished. After the grapes, we all ran outside to see the fireworks people all over the city were lighting, burn the viejo in the street, and at midnight run around the block with suitcases and backpacks, which signified that we would do lots of traveling in the new year (the young folk were more into this tradition than the seniors). The fireworks were beautiful and fairly non-stop from all directions, the bonfire with the viejo was cool, especially because there were more fireworks packed inside of him, and the running with the suitcases was pretty amusing, although a bit less amusing after a ways because I was wearing heels. That´s when I converted the running into a walking, but I think it still counts because I had the suitcase. One of the coolest aspects of those traditions was that everyone was outside celebrating, there were no cars, and there were tons of little bonfires lining the middle of the streets. As I´m writing this, I realize that lots and lots of bonfires sounds reckless, but these people know what they´re doing and keep it under control. I wish I could bring all the traditions back to the states with me, but I have a feeling starting fires in public wouldn´t go over too well. I guess I´ll just have to stick to costumes, party games, and running around with suitcases.

After we burned the viejo, it was chowtime! (I have to admit, before living here I had never had a dinner past midnight before, but that´s just how it goes here on Christmas and New Years.) We ate ourselves silly, sang and had birthday cake because it was Manoly´s birthday as well, and then worked the calories off for 2 1/2 hours with dancing, dancing, and some more dancing. When we could dance no more and were yawning every other 2 seconds, we rolled on out back to the homesteads. I think I ended up going to bed around 4 am or so. Needless to say, January 1st itself was a day chock full of laziness. I mostly slept, ate, and watched movies with the fam.

Now it´s back to the grindstone for everyone. Not that we´re necessarily ready for that, but at least we can go back to work knowing that we celebrated the holidays to the fullest.