Deja tus Huellas

The New Years custom here is to purchase an Año Viejo - literally, "old year," which in this case is a big piñata thing with really hard sides.  They can be anywhere from the size of a regular piñata to the size of a house.  I kid you not.  They are usually in the form of cartoon characters or well-known and well-loathed public figures.  A family will buy one, stuff it with firecrackers, and then light it at midnight.  The symbolism is that the doll represents all of the bad things of the previous year, and by burning it you rid yourself of all of that and welcome in the new year.  In practice, it's an excuse to blow something up.  But it does seem like a big part of the celebration: one of the biggest parties on New Year's Eve is in Salinas, one of the beach towns, and at midnight the whole beach is lit up with fireworks.

A couple weeks ago we went on another trip with the program.  I use the term "we" very loosely here: Luke didn't feel well so he didn't come; Amanda slept late and missed our departure.  So it ended up being me, Daniela, Janett, Luis, and Teresita, the Korean nun.  This sounds like the set-up to a really good joke...  But it turned out to be a good group.  We went to Puerto El Morro, a teeny little town along the estuary where you can see dolphins!  Very cool.  We ate fresh seafood overlooking the place it had been mere hours before.  Then we pushed on to Playas, another beach town.  I went swimming while the others relaxed for a little bit.  We ate empanadas and then came back, exhausted but happy.

The empanadas were good, especially after Janett explained to me that the "monos" (people from the coastal region) like to sprinkle sugar on their cheese empanadas - that brightened things right up!  One of my food addictions that is going to be hard to break back in the States, since it should be a regular food item everywhere if you ask me, is Yogurt Persa.  They use a base of the tangy, fresh-tasting European-style yogurt, add fruit or honey if you want (I usually order it natural, with nuthin'), and then buzz it up in the blender for a minute or two to make it the consistency of a milkshake; it's dreamy!  The classic here is to serve it with pan de yuca, little puff balls of bread made from yuca (aka cassava aka manioc aka tapioca root) and parmesan cheese.  It is one of the best snacks I've ever had!  Maybe I'll just have to open up my own franchise in Woodstock...  One of the food items I will NOT miss is the pop.  Sure, there's Coke and Sprite and the typical American stuff.  But there are also a couple brands of violently yellow pop that taste like fizzy circus peanuts.  And while going out for pizza one night with our urban regeneration teacher, we discovered a classic Ecuadorian "apple" flavored soda.  It's so "classic" that you can't find it in the cities anymore, just in the smaller towns.  After trying it, I wasn't surprised: it tastes like damp, stale carpet.  So maybe I'm just not very open-minded when it comes to pop, but I'll just go ahead and skip those in the future.

The latest addition to the Ecuador Bucket List: city-wide transportation difficulties.  M.O.: broken bridge along the main road in the neighborhood of Urdesa.  Fortunately, it is still walkable, so I could get to school.  But it cuts off Urdesa from the rest of the city, so to get in or out by car you have to go all the way around through the next neighborhood.  For example, when bringing projects to school, I can ride in a taxi for about 5 minutes to get there.  Now, it takes at least 20.  Add this construction detour to the wild holiday traffic and it's gotten pretty tricky.

The last night of classes we went out for dinner with the teachers.  (Another example of the traffic situation: it took Luke and me almost 90 minutes to drop something off at his house, drop something off at my house, then go to the restaurant which would be a 10 minute walk.)  Great food!  I think all of us ordered menestra (bean stuff with rice and some type of meat or fish) except one teacher, who shared a huge plate of meat with her husband.  Then two of the teachers and Luke and I went on to a funky little bar/restaurant along the road that runs along the base of the hill that contains Las Peñas.  It was a riot trying to take a group picture, between the waiter not understanding how to focus the camera, the flash making us all look orange and shiny, and the sans-flash photos finding movement that I'm pretty sure wasn't there.  Even though Luke and I will still technically be around for another week, it was a nice official close to the program.  Earlier that day, Janett had come up to us and explained that of course they will miss us, but we had truly left footprints on the program and with them.  She was deeply touched by us and the semester we spent there.  My cynical side was thinking that she could easily say that to all of her students, but it was so sincere and so spur-of-the-moment that I really do believe her.  I know that we've all been affected as well.  None of us had the earth-shattering, personal awakening, soul-finding experience that some study abroad students seek or find, but I'm convinced we've all started a process of change and personal growth that will profoundly affect us into the future.  There's a quote I've grown to love that explains that traveling is not about discovering a new place, but about discovering yourself within that place.  The inner process is much deeper and much more lasting than any outer process.  And for better and for worse, this been an Experience.  That's the best word I can think of to sum it up, and that's the most any of us could have asked out of the program.