First Day of December

Today is the first day of December and the start of the advent. We found these great retro advent calendars where you open a little window for every day (there is a piece of chocolate behind each one) - do you remember those? I used to love the advent calendar, opening the windows or drawers and finding some little treat. It made Christmas so real, and made it seem so close. I also like it for the kids because it will help them 9especially Tin) with dates and figuring out time better, which has been a bit of a struggle (could it be the age? When do kids start recognizing today, tomorrow, yesterday, etc.?) Actually, Tin was the one who reminded me that it started today, so it's already helping, although he thought that Christmas was tomorrow...

The beginning of December is also a special time here in Quito, when the Fiestas make the city larger than life and an otherwise somewhat conservative little mountain city comes alive. Parties and dancing on the street, traditional food kiosks everywhere, chivas with brass bands taking over the streets. But possibly my favorite part of this time of year is the bullfights.

We won't be going this year, and I'm a little disappointed. It is truly amazing watching a bullfight, and I really want to read the story Hemingway wrote about it now that I have come to understand it better. It isn't just about the fight, it is the bull, the bullfighter, the olés and handkerchiefs, the wine flowing from the botas, and the general festiveness. Every Quiteño putting on a Spanish straw hat and talking like españoles (a little annoying but something you get used to). It's man versus beast, and so exciting to see who will win. (Secretly I always hope the bull gets a piece of the bullfighter.) It's amazing how graceful both are, when the fight is good. Before I had gone the first time, I thought it was like a slaughter, but once you are there in person you can really see the art and culture and history behind it.

I'm thinking about all of this not because it is the first of December, but because today Tin was running around the house playing "bull". "Corre toro que te voy a matar" - singing it over and over. I can imagine that here little boys grow up dreaming not of being firefighters or policemen but bullfighters.




But it has also brought up another issue. Many people have been protesting the bullfights lately, oh, in the last two years or so. Usually college kids, hechos los hippies (acting like hippies), screaming and freaking out outside of the arena. They put up violent images of bulls being slaughtered (not by bullfighters but usually in slaughterhouses - or maybe the images are even photoshopped, not sure), and scream insults at everyone coming out of the arena. It is really distasteful. They call everyone murderers as they chomp on meat empanadas and hamburgers! I'm no tree hugger and I know living in Ecuador for so many years has snuffed out a love for animals I used to have, but these kids really go too far (I'm sounding like my grandpa now!). Anyhow, I was thinking about them because Tin was asking why they have to kill the bull. And I didn't know the answer. And then he said that he hoped the bull won, too.

Arghh!!!... or The Idiocy Behind Bureaucracy

I don't know why certain things about living in Ecuador bother me so much. For instance, the long lines everywhere (having to get up at 4 a.m. to get "a place" in a line), the ridiculous rules and horrible inadequacy and inefficiency of virtually every sector - public or private, Ecuadorians' acceptance of that's just how things "are". Well, I am tired of getting in an outrage about the way people are treated, about the DUMB things that you're told when you are trying to do some paperwork, about the fact that SEVEN months after my son is born he is STILL not registered in the book of birth certificates and therefore we are STRUGGLING to get his passport ready for our trip, tired of worrying about the fact that my mother-in-law is losing her land, losing her retirement, losing her job basically because the doctor says she is absolutely NOT allowed to work and the silly government offices will not respect her doctor's orders. And I am most definitely tired of being in an outrage and then told that I shouldn't be. Why do people tell me these things? Isn't it to make me feel outraged? And, if not, then I refuse to get outraged anymore.

So, basically I will just accept my lot. Granted, once Nicholas's paperwork is out of the way, we will have far fewer things to do. Once I get my foreigner censo, which will now be good for like four years or something, I will have less to worry about. And once I get my ID updated, I will not have to worry again until it is time for my driver's license. Of course, all the paperwork seems to come at the same time.

In the meantime, I will be taking some days off of work in order to get all these chores done - as well as waking up at the crack of dawn and standing in line for eight hours only to be told to come back tomorrow cuz the system is down or they are no longer attending. Worse thing is, we have to go through this all at the U.S. embassy to get Nicholas's passport, and it is no better there. You'd think they were run by a bunch of Ecuadorians. Anyway, that's my rant for the day, and - hopefully I will be able to keep my word for it for a long time from now.

By the way, anyone know if standing in line burns calories?

Disappointment at the Polls

What can I say? Eleven years here and I've yet to see a sound decision at the polls. Noboa or Correa? The answer is clear, in my opinion. But HOW could Noboa and GILMAR GUTIERREZ get more votes than Roldos, and for that matter, Cynthia? I think it is time to get rid of the mandatory vote - get rid of the populism, stop letting (making) illiterate people vote, educating people to vote for the candidate who best represents your interests, not the one who gives you two pieces of bread and a baggie of rice. Some say that that shows just how poor the country is... I don't agree. I think it just shows how ignorant the population is, which is another reason to chuck the mandatory vote, also.

Sigh. Here we go again. I doubt Correa will last, and I predict that Noboa will go no longer than three months (He is barely literate himself, in fact, and shows all the signs of brain damage). Of course, I could always be pleasantly surprised.

I’ll Always Hear the Rooster

There’s nothing like a rooster to wake you up in the morning.

Yes, a rooster has gotten loose in our neighborhood.

He’s living in the park behind our house. I suppose he belongs to someone in one of the housing complexes to our north, so I doubt he will be homeless for long. But, in the meantime, he’s made a place for himself up against our back wall.

Roosters are strange animals. Contrary to popular belief, they do not only crow at the crack of dawn. Actual, they crow all day and all night long. I guess they are actually trying to claim their territory by scaring off predators.

In our old apartment there used to be a rooster belonging to the family behind us. After seven years of its crowing (or that of its successors – I doubt that that rooster was allowed to live so long, I’m sure he made it into a soup along the way) I got accustomed to it. And early this morning, when I heard our new neighbor’s fierce crows, I felt oddly at peace.

They are a cultural phenomenon. Ecuadorians don’t seem to notice them at all. The other day I was in class observing one of our teachers when, to make small talk, she asked the students if the rooster outside the building bothered anyone during class. Now, our school is located in the business and tourist district, and the traffic, especially the bus traffic, is noisy and annoying. The class was at the top of the eighth floor, yet she had heard a rooster at some point that morning, and the noise it had made had registered somewhere in the back of her mind.

I didn’t know what was sadder – the fact that there was a rooster in the city, or the fact that this teacher had never had the chance to actually hear a rooster in “real life”, despite being from a small town in the U.S.

The students never noticed it, they said, and even seemed skeptical of its existence. All I could think of was the fact that, inadvertently, she had set herself apart from the others – made herself instantly foreign.

I myself proudly agreed with the students. I had not heard the rooster. I am becoming more and more Ecuadorianized.

Yet I will never fully be Ecuadorian. Last night's intruder woke me from a sound sleep, and I doubt DH even registered his cries. I will, without fail, always hear the rooster. The difference is, now I will welcome his noise.