Coming soon: GARDENS!

Things have been busy. I finished teaching in Ecuador. I’m back living in CT and jobhunting in the NYC area. If you know anyone looking for a LAMP or java developer (preferably for a web-based entrepreneurial-type company) please let me know. I’ll try to start posting more often since I’m unemployed and all. Chao chao

One of my students’ t-shirts was black, but it said “CRACK” in big white all-caps on the front. On the back in odd configurations were the following phrases: “What’s are you doing?” “Absolutely not” “ONLY THIS TIME” “Don’t tell me abouti” “You’ll be ok” “NOTHING SPECIAL” and “CAST”…

Perhaps a mangled reference to the crack rock? My real question is why my student would buy this shirt. She’s in the highest grammar level we have at our school, and she’s a good student. She should know it sounds ridiculous.

The magazine is new, its called Transit. Its all in Japanese. They did an entire issue on traveling in the Andes. They sent me a copy in Ecuador. First time in my life I wish I read Japanese.

The cover:

Cover

They included lots of gorgeous photos like this:

Macchu Picchu and Llama

And here is my photo. Its only about an inch by an inch and a half, but heck, it says copyright Matthew Murchison, which is quite enough for me:

Semana Santa in Quito

We went to the second annual international “cuy” festival. For those of you who don’t know, “cuy” means “guinea pig.” This was not a petting zoo type event. This was for eating cuy, which wasn’t really very tasty.

Lizzie’s sister Erin came and left. She was here for a month as our “teaching assistent.” After she left we frustratingly had to start making our own copies and preparing our own materials by ourselves. During our break between teaching cycles, Liz and Erin went to Baños then the three of us went to Mindo for a night and then into the jungle for 5 days. We were deep into the Cuyabeno reserve and saw these animals in the wild: a few kinds of monkeys, sloths, a jillion different birds, several kinds of ants (some scary), caiman, dolphins, anacondas, piranas, a tarantula and more. Liz’s pictures are up on flickr right now and mine will be soon.

Liz and I have joined the South American Explorers, a club that provides resources to travelers in South America. They have discounts all over the city for members and it’ll be great when we eventually actually leave Ecuador and do some serious traveling. Its also good to support because our good friend Cameron is the co-manager of the Quito clubhouse.

We saw these movies in the theaters (listed in order of quality): Kung Fu Panda, the new Indiana Jones, and Prince Caspian. I also got Lizzie to sit down for the Godfather parts I and II.

I play soccer in the “Liga Mariscal.” The Mariscal is the bar/restaurant neighborhood in town. Its referred to as “gringolandia” affectionately by the locals. 6 bars and restaurants compete in a soccer league and I play for an Irish bar I’ve been known to frequent called Finn McCool’s. We are doing pretty well and play our final match tomorrow against Bungalow 6 (a dance club). Our team’s mostly foreigners and their team’s mostly Ecuadorian. It’ll be a good game. Last time we played them they beat us but not badly (and I was terribly chuchaqui at the time).

I got my midi controller to work, so now I can play with fake instruments on my computer all day if I want to. I also bought a charango, which is a mini-guitar they play here in traditional Andean music. It has ten strings, they’re doubled up so its 5 different notes. They tune it CGEAE (low to high) and the middle E strings are an octave apart (they love octaves in Andean music). Its got a cool sound. I think I’m going to tune it like a regular guitar some time and see how that sounds cause I can only play a few chords in that weird open tuning.

Our classes this cycle are going great. We continue to be grammar dorks at home (with 5 teachers living together its tough not to) and talk about it way too much. I signed up to take PHP and MySQL classes. I have to wait for the minimum class size to fill up before I really know if its happening, but they’d start late August and run for about a month, four days a week and two hours a day. And they’re free because they’re at the same university I teach at. Plus it would surely be good Spanish practice.

Well thats somewhat of an update for you all.

Take care

Brunswick

We spent the rest of the week working until Friday, the main event. Here they follow the tradition from Spain of having a huge procession imitating the stations of the cross graphically. Included are cucuruchos (the anonymous penitent with scary purple hoods (yes the kkk got the idea from this stuff, so its a little weird for the American psyche)), female veiled mourners, people bearing crosses (complete with “Roman soldiers” whipping them along the way), Jesus impersonators, and finally 2 floats. Both floats are adorned with flowers. One features Jesus and the other Mary. When I saw these processions in Sevilla there was an individual procession for each congregation in the city, each with its patron version of the virgin Mary, each with its own color hood. All the processions would end in the central cathedral. But here in Quito, there was just one procession, but it was monstrous.

We walked around it in the hot sun trying to get as good a view as we could when Ricardo, our resident guide and incidentally now Abigail´s boyfriend, suggested we climb the towers in the basilica (just a $2 entry fee) to get a better, more comfortable view. It was a complete success. Actually, even better than the high up views was the super close up views I got when we crossed the procession to get to the side where we could get to the basilica.

After the procession we headed (starving) to Ricardo´s family´s home in the south of Quito to have fanesca, the traditional semana santa soup. It has 12 grains in it, representing the 12 apostles, and tasted fantastic. Apparently they only eat it once a year around here, but I want to learn how to cook it so I can make it from time to time anyway. Ricardo has been extremely welcoming and helpful to us. Check out the Viernes Santo set on my flickr.