the latest from limbo: you can find me in the club

...and in countless other places!

Mis queridos amigos,

I am learning and doing so much that I hardly have the time or focus to sit down and escribir about it! The more I do, though, the more I want to write about it, and the more opportunity I have to be reminded of all of you, things that would interest you or gross you out or make you feel something...

My story starts, as usual, on Friday. My class finished early, at 10am, and I found myself carrying a large chocolate heart-shaped cake (out of the sun!), pulling off an incredible balancing act into the backseat and across town to El Condado, the posh country club where Natalia was costar of a 12-year-old birthday party. There were probably around 30 girls and a few boys there, running back and forth from various swimming pools and water slides to the cotton candy machine and lollipop bowl. Fortunately, I get along great with 12-year-old girls, and am tall enough to be something for them to grab onto in the just-too-deep section of the pool where they set up camp.

I caught a ride back to the hotel with one of the girls and her mother, neither of whom I knew; but her husband is a sociologist and her daughter is 19 and studying in Sorbonne, so we had enough in common to basically be family. Fortunately it was a quiet Friday night, because I had to get up early to see off some of the guests on their weekend trip, and meet up with the OSU kids for our Saturday excursion to Cotopaxi, one of Ecuador's active volcanoes, the summit of which is the furthest point from the center of the Earth. The activity?

Mountain biking. Something I had never done and never thought I would ever do. At the base we stopped to gear up on alpaca winterwear, hats and gloves and sweaters, which we needed when we got to the starting point in a cloud of face-stinging sleet and bone-chilling cold. It was a 30km ride, the first 8km being nearly straight downhill over loose gravel, sleety mud and ruts like you've never seen. The challenge of the next 12km was shifting sand, and the last stretch was loose rock. We rode through all four seasons, saw wild horses, mountains, rain snow sleet clouds and beating sun; a hummingbird nest in the wheel well of a tractor; and Megan and I between us ate at least 7 baby bananas. For the next 2 days my entire body hurt, all my muscles and my joints and the rest of me covered in bruises... but it was 100% worth the pain.

When we got back to the school we heard some raucous music winding over from the Plaza, and Don Carlitos the guard told us that Ecuador was celebrating Gay Pride Weekend! Which was especially funny since I had just been reading in the Rough Guide about traveling for same-sex couples, and from what I'd read I never would have expected anyone to dare show their face at the parade, two scantily clad drag queens tossing their hair around onstage, and a whole troupe of drag queens dressed as indigenous Otavalan women! For us students, of course, it was the Fourth of July. I managed to get half the night off and met up with some friends at PapayaNet, the superhangout for hip foreigners who like the internet. And massive amounts of beer. Megan, Tyler and I got there first and decided to take advantage of the 2x1 cerveza deal of Pilsener's from the tap... Thinking we were getting single drafts, we ordered four beers for the price of two. They turned out to be pitchers. Fortunately our friends showed up and helped us finish them off... and a few more too.

For dinner that night I decided to try out the tiny new restaurant, 4 Ases, that opened kiddie corner from the hotel. It had five small tables crammed into a little space and was run by an Otavalan family, who all greeted me cordially and introduced themselves. As soon as I sat down, a whole band piled in with three guitars, three flutes, and various other everyday objects used as percussion instruments. They all greeted me too, offered me cigarettes and picante chips and caramelos, and then when the other tables filled up they started sitting down at my table. I met a girl (whose name I am now kicking myself for not remembering) who makes jewelry. She made me a green bracelet, to bring hope to my life, and a warm-colored necklace that matched my sweater, and I gave her a dollar. She chatted away while I ate my huge plate full of good solid dinner, with yucca and meat and salad and everything else I could ask for. The most well-balanced plate I've had since arriving.

By Sunday, needless to say, Taylor and I were both exhausted, and we had to get up early to serve a 30-person breakfast to the student group from ASU. Instead of sleeping all day, though, we decided to catch a cab through the empty streets to El Panecillo, a strange bump in the middle of the city on which is stationed la Virgen de Quito. As it turns out, she is actually La Mujer del Apocalipsis, from Revelation 12, a monstrosity of a woman with a crown of twelve stars, perched upon a giant globe and crushing beneath her feet a dragon. El Panecillo, Taylor tells me, is also one of the best kite-flying sites in the world -- so of course I pull out $1.50 for a cheap little cometa and we fight to keep it in the air and away from wires and other kite strings, laughing as we hide our faces from the pros with miles of high-quality thread, whose kites literally disappear into the clouds. We wonder what would happen if it crossed paths with a plane...

La Mariscal is eerily silent when we get back to the hotel, and nothing is open. Without thinking I plunge wholeheartedly into a shop that says "cebollados" on the awning, and we buy $1.75 bowls of the soup of the day. Taylor is so afraid of stomach bugs that he hardly finishes half of his bowl, but I pour several spoonfuls of salsa picante on top of mine and inhale it. I spend the rest of the afternoon (and my first busride back to Cumbaya, solo) hoping I don't get deathly ill. I don't, and I am very grateful.

On Monday after school we drive up to North Quito to visit Grampi and Helen, and Natalia and Nicolas' other grandmother, and to pick up the three kids that are sleeping at our house tonight. We don't get back until after dark, but I volunteer to put up the tents for the kids while Lori cooks and Juan Miguel builds a fire. It is total chaos, of course, but everyone is happy, and presumably not too cold, and I drift off to sleep to the lullaby of boys and girls screaming and laughing back and forth across the yard.

Tuesday after class the students and I go on an excursion to the fruit market, where we break up into teams and go on a scavenger hunt for a few different types of fruits each. I'm not quite sure how to bargain for it this time, but my food buddy Megan and I take notes. She buys a bunch of baby bananas and I buy some frozen chocolate-covered baby bananas, and we vow to return, find a nice little bakery, and thoroughly enjoy the next two months.

I have been noticing the grafitti, which smacks less of art and more of politics on the walls of this city. It seems that those wielding the spray cans are sometimes poets, often agitators, and almost always aware of their social and political context. I have noticed the pervasive public religiosity, after trying to escape from being converted by my Seventh Day Adventist coworker, the afternoon guard Javier. His passion is inspiring, until he starts trying to literally pass some of it onto me. Today on the bus on the way to the Registro Civil to get my Ecuadorian ID, two guys jump the bus with shoulder boomboxes and start rapping a prayer to God about all the things that are going on here now, and on the way back a man stands in the front of the bus and recites the Parable of the Prodigal Son in a way that made me see new parallels with Jesus' story like I never had before. After their performances they walk the aisles asking for "ayuda" -- help. More directly, money.

The business is picking up considerably, and I have just taken on some more heavy-duty marketing and research projects. At the same time, I'm starting to plan trips and pack my days full of everything and everything I could possibly want to do. A trip came up very quickly this weekend, to take a taxi down to the jungle with my cousin Matt to visit Uncle Tod and his biology field station. I am also looking forward to a week in the Galapagos, and a couple of weekends at hot springs, day trips to Otavalo and the Cloud Forests full of hummingbirds and ziplining.

I hope I have not gone on forever. I'm starting to think more about the things that are happening, and I am kind of in awe of it myself, everything I am doing and everything I could do if there were more hours in the day. As it is I have been trying to mail some postcards for at least a week, and my journal has only a few pages left in it! I have a few trips to the Mercado Artesanal on my brain, and the hotel phone waits to ring until the moment when three people are waiting to talk about different things, two more guests come back and need their keys, and I absolutely have to go to the bathroom. I am happy, though, I am finding the strength I've been missing and I am becoming more independent, while more confident to ask for help when I need it. I can't believe how much the world holds, and all it takes is the guts, or the one moment where you just close your eyes and hope, and jump, to grab onto it and ride it like the wind, or the water.

As I have said before, I love hearing back, about what is going on in other corners of the world or what is on your minds. You are in my brain at different turns and in my heart at all of them.

Abrazos,
Clarita