alright i think im gunna give up trying to finish this tungurahua report for volconology---i realized that i cant find everything in the books theo gave us, so im just gunna hope that i can answer everything in the next 3 reports that were on crucita---cause i filmed all of his lecturing when we were there.
this weekend is the first weekend in 5 weeks that im not traveling. i went to: 1- galapagos 2- amazon 3- banos, cotopaxi and tungurahua with volconology 4- guayaquil and montanita (the coast) 5- crucita with volconoly (coast again)
guayaquil was okay---i didnt like it all that much. montanita was out of this world---tiny surf town, lots of rasta folks, lots of weed (my mom asked me "did you try any weed?!"), lots of partying. had a freaking amaaaaaaazing time for only being there for a day and a half.
there are some things im beginning to realize about small countries, or at least ecuador in the way that its a small country. its like everyone is even more closely connected that you would think people can be in a country---for the next month and a half there are going to be 4-hour power outages every day in different parts of quito cause there hasnt been enough rainfall to generate energy, and the city needs to conserve energy. quito's a pretty decently-sized city, and eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverybody is affected by this ev.er.y.day until the year 2010. my host mom said they may even eventually require everyone to start their schedules an hour ahead of sched, so as to start the day off immediately when the sun comes up so they can take advantage of the daytime hours to cut the electricity. THE WHOLE CITY will go to school and go to work an hour earlier----i would have to go to my volunteership at the IEPNI school at 6:30 instead of 7:30am. and people who start classes at 6am will have to go at 5am. but she says they're hoping it doesnt come to this point....
and then-----there are lots of....negative, things about quito. ecuador too, but i can speak for quito the best. and i've heard it a few times now from different people how they dont like ecuador. they dont like quito. they wont really miss it all that much when they go home, they dont understand how ppl could miss this place after leaving it.
the negative things i see are like......poverty. but worse than that, HUGE socio-economic gap. filthy rich living among dirt poor. and along with that comes political gap---the current prez, correa, is "communist" and all of the lower class peeps are for him. my host dad just talk about how nuts he is........
the culture here is.....not cool sometimes. conservative. altho ppl themselves may not be conservative, the CULTURE is. my host mom is wonderful, she's so damn hip, cool, with-it. independent, and yet i can still see how the machismo culture controls her in a way----how my host dad is "the head of the house" and hes the boss. i cant really think of any examples of when i saw this but....its just this constant feeling that i get. not that it limits her from things she's trying to do or be, but sometimes i just see this sad look on her face, when she's eating her food or sitting among her chatty sister and mother-in-law not interested in the gossip theyre yacking on and on about.
i empathize with my host mom so much sometimes----actually, its really great. im so fortunate to have been placed in this fam so i could meet my host mom-------somehow ive been able to build a relationship with her like i have with my own mom. i think i must've grown up to this point of near-adulthood with the value in a mother-daughter relationship, and i have my real mom to thank for that!! like this one time at a toso at hanzawa-san's, i remember feeling emotional (as i tend to get here when my emotions get pent up and then they can finally come out when chant to a full-size gohonzon again and with other ppl) and my host mom came to mind, and i just wanted to cry cause i love her so much and im so appreciative of her life.
but yeah, i was reading about collective karma, maybe of a society of group of people, in DI's "unlocking the mysteries of birth and death." i...cant remember exactly waht it said, but it talked about collective karma as opposed to the karma of an individual. i think that....ecuador has some serious karma. and to think im living inside it right now. with buddhism, can my human revolution shine brighter in a place like this than in a huge country like the US? but still man......my own karma is stronger here. and......considering how sansho-shima works, i think that answers my question.
ah okay anyway......i NEEEEEED to determine to chant. i dont care if its not even at least an hour a day. i need to go for some consistency!! there is no consistency right now and so my life here has still been inconsistent.
gotta draw a portrait for art tomorrow. eduardo wants to talk to me about different careers in art, and his specialty is animation! ive always been interested in animation........lets see what he says
11-10-09-------------------
November 1, 2009
--TO MY FRIENDS-- The month of Soka Gakkai's founding annniversary is upon us. Let's launch a fresh start with the determination of one reborn and create an unforgettable drama of personal victory.
man lately....lately has been rough. ever since that thing happened with santiago, ive been feeling kind of alone. yesterday i think a whole bunch of stress thats just been piling up finally came out, i freakin balled on the bus ride/ walk home -__- it was good i had my sunglasses. but what made me so bad yesterday was mainly the people i find myself around lately. in school: honestly, im not really into USFQ. the ppl in general (yes in general) are hard to approach and come off as prissy, superficial, exclusive....all that stuff. and i think the american students might be worse. ive been tending to find myself around fellow exchange students who 1. bitch 2. moan 3. complain 4. talk about people they dont like 5. complain. and some ppl in my classes for me are just identicle in personality to the people in elementary school that made me cry for making fun of me for having glasses in 1st grade (no one makes fun of me, but they just have that same attitude and cruelty about them). it is so exhausting to be around! seriously just...........unbelievably exhausting. its sad to think that great young ppl have to go to universities with these other shitty-attitude, tainted young ppl. its so sad that young ppl are like this sometimes.
so today....today was better. and riri has been confiding in me a lot lately about the way she feels about the culture here, and jean also explained to me what latino machismo is really like. and it opened up my eyes to something new.
riri and i talked about the indirectness of the culture and speech here, and i was thinking about what santiago did and how manipulative and indirect it was. jean told me that machismo culture isnt just sexism and putting women down, but actually more like getting under a girls skin by treating her really nice, putting her on a pedastal, showering her with nice things....and then once hes gained enough of her trust or loyalty, he starts to act dominant. i didnt experience that, but i can understand how that can difinitely be true. sometimes i feel like when a guy talks to me here hes jsut trying to act like the way he thinks i want him to act. i was talking to this guy on the bus to cotopaxi with volconology class and he seemed really interesting, and like he had some cool values taht i could relate to. and then after i told him that i wasnt planning on going out tonight in banos, he just stopped talking to me. i asked him what was up and he said he was dead tired from partying the entire night last night and not even sleeping, and then i realized that yeah, he actually did smell like he'd been partying.
anyway, that right there just made me wonder. i dont really talk to ecuadorian girls, but the ones taht i have talked to just seem to want to hang out with american guys and they literally travel in pairs (except for a select few, fortunately one of them being my amazing host sister). i cant say i know if they gossip or are manipulative and indirect in the way ive seen that some guys can be, but tonight when i asked my host mom about it she confirmed that for me. she says here, in ecuador (not latin america in general) women gossip a LOT. and that it is honestly difficult to find a true friend that you can confide everthing in. she told me that she really only confides in her sister, because she would just never go behind her back and ruin their friendship by spilling her secrets---i mean, its her own sister. and she told me shes never really had a big group of friends, because the politics are to malicious. she only has individual, close, long-time friends.
and then ive been thinking. the way i walk around on the streets, the way i am when i take public transportation here. im so closed off, i see other ppl so closed off. i have to constantly keep my guard up. i keep hearing more and more petty crime stories from fellow exchange students, and i feel like sometimes im just waiting for my personal criminal to come rob me. and this whole......this whole attitude and wall that you have to put up is kind of suffocating. i know i do taht in NY, too. but here it just feels more suffocating. and when i have gotten personal and intimate with an ecuadorian, whether in some sort of relationship or just casual conversations, i feel like they dont really want to share anything with me. but they way they pretend that they do.......and then get two-faced and drop it, it makes me feel violated. its been making me feel pretty helpless.
city cutlure is one thing, and then combined with ecuadorian culture, its another. its really testing me.
when i was chanting tonight i was thinking how freaking disconnected from the SGI i felt, and damn, taht just makes you feel like a fish without water. like.......so helpless.......and i dont think i even realized it until yesterday when i really creid about it. then i thought about what my dad told me when i got really upset that i my mom was so against my piercing: he was like "natalia, you are on a wonderful, beautiful adventure right now where you are gunna learn so much and just grow tremendously. and if you suffer.....if you let yourself suffer, it is just going to be so much more difficult to enjoy yourself. everything is going to be so much harder"
ive been just hanigng out, chilling, letting myself suffer. and i thought "well, i still have amazing things in my life. i have my parents, i have SUA, i have such a wonderful, bright future to make for myself. all is really not lost. what am i gunna bring back to NY after study abroad? what am i gunna bring back to SUA from all this?" and.....i realized that i just gotta create value. i cant tell you a recipe for value or a step-by-step procedure to follow through on. but i just know that i have to step up, and i have to really actually develop my stand-alone spirit. and do something that when i look back on, i will be able to say for SURE, wow, look what i did! i created value. i have to create something w o n d e r f u l to make apart of me when i can return to whats the places that have made me what i am.
damn dude. its so obvious, but you just really dont realize the "duh"ness of it until you go thru some shit.
this feels like a potential turning point. let's make it one.
no body here, or at least the people i meet, likes correa (current president of ecuador). hes proposing this new law to make all private universities public so that higher education becomes standardized. yesterday there was this organized peaceful protest that like, a looooooooooot of ecuadorian university students attended to protest this new law. my school, USFQ, richest school in ecuador, has beef with correa because he used to teach there but then they fired him, he sued them, and he won so the university had to pay him $$$. there was this huuuuuuuuge gathering of the entire USFQ community to promote going to this protest on wednesay---all classes were canceled. its so wierd and different................but US citizens arent allowed to participate, its illegal and probably really dangerous. this is such a tiny country. sometimes i wonder how much political controversey there is here and how the government can be so unstable like this
IEPNI was hard on wednesday. javier and daniela were fighting the whole class--daniela probably has the most profound mental retardation in that class, and she kept taking javier's book. everytime she did, javier would make sure he hit her. and then whenever delia, la profe, leaves, even just for a few minutes, they all go crazy and take advantage of the fact that its just me watching them. i guess i have to be more stern? man i dont really like doing that
so much work to do. group projects, tests, essays, art projects. these weekend trips. im getting sick. i cant be sick this weekend
sometimes i forget who i am here, and just a lil lost in small insignificant things.
the amazon was bastante chevere (pretty cool). so humid, but so GREEN. so many bugs, like big, dinosaur bugs, but i actually didnt get bitten that much.
went all by my lonesome to yachana with this new group of 9. they were people my age who had been volunteering in orphanages in quito and cuenca for the past 2 and half months. i think the organization they were a part of was religious is some way, and i the majority of them were mormons from utah. they were the coolest, nicest people. we had so much fun together in just 4 days. now they're back in the states, im not really sure if ill ever see em again. but they were so great, im never gunna forget that amazong trip!
abel, our guide, is nuts. nuts but hilarious. loves to flirt with the girls. he grew up out there, his first language is quichua (indigenous language), second spanish, third english, fouth french and fifth something else. he made everything 10 times more fun. he is also amazing at spotting small things on the ground, camaflouged things, things miles away atop huge trees.
last night on the way home from hanging out with my new freinds for their last night in quito, the taxi driver was telling me about his life. he was telling me how he teaches math at a public university during the day and drives at night. he loves teaching, and loves studying english. he learns english thru reading books, and seemed immediately interested in me because im an english-speaker. he also told me how he doesnt like driving taxis, and how last friday he was robbed at knife point while driving thru the steets--they took his radio and his money, i believe. he says he needs to work these two jobs so that he can put his 3 sons thru college.
i was thinking---im so lucky to meet such great people here. i wanna meet more!! my time left here is una locura (madness): i have something going on almsot every weekend:
2 weekend ago: galapagos last weekend: amazon this weekend: banos, tungurahua and cotopaxi wtih volconology class (climbing some volcanoes) next next weekend: guayaquil (the beeeeeeeach) next next next weekend: crucita (beach again) with volconoly next next next next:: nothing next next next next next: parents arriving in QUITO to stay here for a week :D that next weekend well be going to mindo together weekend after that: fiestas de quito. apparently its craziness, parties everywhere, and unlike anything ive ever experienced, according to my host fam in the following days: leavin for peru for 9 days and once i get back to ecuador: only a few days left before i go home to the US
the galapagos! it was like an island paradise, plus really wierd natural characteristics. iguanas, sea lions, turtles, blue-footed boobies, pelicans, sharks, penguins...all these crazy animal living harmoniously together, not bothering each other, and not bothered by all the tourists that visit. the air was PERFECTLY uncontaminated, and we were at sea level. we had so much energy as opposed to when we're high up in the andean, polluted atmosphere of quito. we snorkled 3 times in water bluer than the sky, with turtles, fish, sharks, sting rays, sea lions, penguins...and among amazingly white sand and mysterious volcanic rock formations. water was the perfect temperature. hiked 9FREAKING MILES for 5 freaking hours around the 2nd largest volcanic crater in the world, and up in the rocky summit of volcan chico, whose last explosion was 2005. everything looked like mars, but we were literally ontop of a mountian observing the wierd wierd terrain from miles around, like in an airplane. ive never been so burned or tan in my life.
tomorrow: leaving for the amazon. its finally my turn to go to the yachana lodge since i missed out on going with my program when i had swine flu in august. im going with a group of 18 and 19 year old volutneers from the US. all packed. finished my homework thats due early next week. lacking chanting, but waking up early tomorrow. gotta get the most out of this amazing trip this weekend.
its interesting. as unpleasant nature-wise and atmosphere-wise as qutio seems, i was glad to come back on tuesday. its really my home now---how am i gunna feel when i leave for good? oh man
gotta connect with more people. all this traveling is making me feel a little detached. will return with too many pictures and vivid, glorious images of a different tropical paradise etched in my mind
