dos fiestas

One of my favorite things about latin america is the fiesta. Granted, after having travelled a bit, i'm not too big a fan of romanticizing what one culture has over another. We've all got wacky things that we take for granted that make life incredible. Westerners/Gringos in particular seem blind to the fact that we, too, have culture (elusive though it may be in the midst of day after-blank sales)

Cultural relativism aside, me likey the parties.

Last weekend was when the quaint little town of Guapulo just outside of Quito has its fiestas. I went with my delightfully anglican roomie Tim (he watches his home football team every saturday morning grunting go on, go on! only to be followed by a dissapointed sigh... they have yet to win a game since i've known him) and his ecuadorian novia Monica, clopping and plodding down the steep incline of the neighboring mountain like clydesdales reined in by a tipsy coachman. It's funny watching our legs trying to negotiate this new face of gravity, challenging befuddled ankles and knees.

It was clear how to get to the epicenter of the fiesta, following the sounds of music and firecracker explosions as unpredictable as the backfire of public buses here. We arrived at the town square dimly lit by unshaded incandesent 40 watts, densly packed with people around a bandstand the way that 6 year old soccer teams crowd the ball. We made our way through the crowd, Tim and I both intensly eyeing the street food (me from curiosity and fanatical penchant for challenging my gut, Tim from disgust and disdain) pushed by mongers only half visible in the partial party light.

We ended up at a dance circle, and we joined in to have a go. Only, no one would let me leave. I kept trying to nudge away, to no avail. I was having fun too until they started joking about meeting the rest of the family and, ahem, planning a wedding date... Gotta go. They chilled out after a bit and then the real fireworks started.

The two most notable features of the spectacle were the vaca loca and the huge exploding tower. The vaca loca is a wire framed, paper mache cow rigged with eplosives that some nut puts on his shoulders. The loon then proceeds to charge through the crowd raining sparks on the delighted bystanders. The tower is a 30 foot tall wonder that they spin in a circle as the fuse makes its way to the top with increasing explosive splendor. Half the folks present at the fiesta insist on dancing in a circle around the tower, including my new found matchmaker friend. Vamos! He shouted and before i knew it i too was in the thick of it. I've got wonderful holes singed in my blue striped shirt to prove it.

The next day was the mmhfff (insert unintelligible spanish word) of the oranges. Trucks packed with people and oranges parade down the steep alleyways escorted by kids costumed as gorrillas, grandmothers, cowboys and the occasional clown. The whole way down, they pelt perfectly good oranges at the crowds waving as they go by. From the balconies too, oranges are lanced like shotputs - at times 4 or 5 at once. Great fun, i ended up with a grocery bag full and didn't pay for juice for a week!

The other fiesta i wanted to write about is the Festival de Esperanza, that is, the festival of hope. You see, Billy Graham's son is coming to town. I know, i know, it's almost too much to bear in one blog. Fireworks, shotput oranges, and... Franklin Graham. But they've rented out the giant soccer stadium in town for three days. And, my spiritually permiscuous self simply can't wait to see what they're gonna do with all that space. Maybe the giddeon's will come and shotput new testaments... better yet, maybe they'll shotput each other in a jesus-praising-gravity-defying feat of faith? It's just a shame that I won't be able to share this with anyone as me brother Andy and a church buddy Ben arent coming until next monday. Think of me and mini Graham this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

¡tengo una lechugita!

¡I have a little lettuce! Well... kind of.

When we were last in touch, i was pretty anxious about how everything was going to go at this dance. High pressure to date this girl. cute as she is, i don't know much about her. We went, listened to quality andean pan flute music, danced some merengue, some salsa and a bit of reggaeton. I also talked a lot with my buddies from physical therapy, my great canadian buddy jessica and a bunch of german volunteers from the hospital. Notice anyone missing? So did I.

Lechugita didn't talk much more than you'd expect a head of lettuce to. It was bizzare, I asked her tons of open-ended questions and threw her tons of opportunities, but she just smiled or giggled at every chance to talk. "she's just shy" they said "she really likes you a lot!" Donkey snot. If you like someone and you're talking one on one and you don't bite at a single one of nearly hundreds of questions, that's pathological. Well, I thought that was a bit harsh and premature, so we decided to give it another shot. We went for drinks and crepes at La boca del lobo here in the mariscal, and had a bit of a better time. Definitely more conversation, it develops ice cream and french pastries are the key to an ecuadorian woman's heart... and mouth. Anyway, she's decided after that date (does that even count as a second date? me thinks no) that we're getting married. She sends me crazy as chuck text messages about our future and asking when I'm going to come back to ecuador...

I was beginning to get really worried about what I'd gotten myself into when, of a completely honest coincidence, I lost my cell phone. Sweet relief! I've never felt so good about losing a personal electronic device like this. Well, I'd feel terrible about what this might do to my leafy friend if i just dropped off the face of the earth, so I'm gonna find her number one way or another, but it's going to be tough. She and all her friends are on vacation now, and she's out of quito for the week.

So that's the deal with lechugita.

¡vamos a la peña!

let's go to the dance! a bunch of med students are putting on a dance here and invited me and some of the other volunteers along... i have no idea what to expect other than they're trying to set me up with one of the girls. i hope they know mikey's not trying to marry a quiteña he just met a few days ago... Anyway, it's a good thing i've been taking salsa lessons since i've been here so i'll have something to do to at least try to keep up! Over a few drinks they were interrogating me with a veritable barrage of preteen quesitons, "what kind of girls do you like?" "which one of us do you like?" "what do you think of latin girls?" It was everything i could do to squeak out some words in spanish, my face was so tight from smiling streched cheeks and my tattletale of a flushed face giving away my embarrassment. They asked me to say some nice things about them in french and the first thing that popped to mind was "ma petite chou," my little cabbage, a nice pet name which doesn't translate very well. "Lechugita!?" they exclaimed, and a nick name was born. They tell me that gringos aren't the best dancers because even when they know the steps they're a bit rigid. This is almost too much pressure, i feel like an ambassador for my people, i'll report back with details.

it's going to be two guys and five girls from quito that i've known for a week now, four chicas from germany and a great guy from australia that's living at our house for a week or two working on picking up spanish.

wish me and mi lechugita luck i'll need everything i can get!

¿tienes phobia?

my volunteer position with the hospital is pretty flexible. i've got eight weeks in total, and i'm starting my fourth week next monday. it's hard to believe how quickly it's going by. my first two weeks were with men's internal medicine. a bit of the run of the mill hospital life. hanging out, passing out pills, taking temperatures and chatting with the characters on the ward.

this last week was with minor surgeries. it's great because doctors have to be there and there's no where for them to hide so i'm seeing a lot. they don't have any nurses, just a guy named johnny that's a med student taking some time off to make some money. He's a fantastic guy though. We spend a fair amount of time chatting and working on his english. He showed me where i can find free lunch in the hospital if i bring my own spoon.

The first two or three hours of every day involves taking vital signs for the day's patients. I've learned a lot and can corral folks and get the info we need almost as well as johnny now. The rest of the day is watching as doctors meet with their patients evaluating either the need for surgery or their progress in recovery post-op. Lots of taking out stitches, though i'm not quite there yet. two or three times a week we've got minor operations. This is the toughest part for me and one of the reasons it's really good for me to be here.

The first day we had a woman with a hurnea. I was supposed to assist, handing gause and scalpels etc. but it was a bit much to take in and i had to sit every ten minutes or so. Cold sweats, pale in the face, the whole nine yards. Eek. Thankfully everybody's got a fantastic sense of humor and we could joke about it. Everybody loves talking about my phobia now though i really don't think it's that fair of a characterization. If i was afraid, i wouldn't be in the room. It's just the physiological response i get when people are cutting other people. I think that's perfectly normal. The second day was much better. A cute nine year old girl had a fibroid tumor on her arm, which they took out in a jiffy. Hopefully I'll be super tough next week.

After next week, I'll have to see what's next. I'm hoping to see a few births while i'm here so I may take a rotation on neonatology, but I'm really curious about the pediatric ward here and the challenges of the E.R.