Welcome to the All New TheGlobalTrip.com!

When I originally started this website last year, it was just supposed to be a simple, single page where travel editors could quickly review my clips of published work.

Over the months, it has evolved into the place where people would come to see my videos and pictures, plans for my upcoming trip, and above all, that "Would You?" slideshow that seems to have been forwarded all over the world so far (and continues to be.)

Each section of the old site was produced at a separate time, and it was difficult to find things. So it was about time it was all consolidated into one simple design, with an easy pull-down menu to navigate through all the sections.

As you may have noticed, the new design has been cleaned up and finally has some consistency throughout, including the blog. (Chris, Sean, this is the final design.) There's even an Easter Egg which links to a surprise video if you can find it.

As you may have also noticed, the most noticeable change in the site is the first announcement that I'm finally going to be published in a book that's actually to be sold in stores! When I started getting in travel writing, I read the stories of Bryson, Lansky and Cahill, and now I'll be in a book alongside them... wow.

Anyway, the trip is less than three weeks away! NOW I think, it's starting to sink in...

The Music in "Would You?"

Because so many people send me emails asking the same question, I've decided to answer it here:

Q: What is the name of the song in "Would You?" and who is the artist?
A: The name of the song is "Nara" and the artist is DJ/composer E.S. Posthumus.

I first discovered E.S. Posthumus when I was trying to figure out who did the music for the turbo-charged Spiderman trailer in 2002. Based on that song, titled "Pompeii," I bought his CD and discovered an even better track, "Nara."

I fell in love the track immediately with its perfect blend of being melancholy, uplifting and powerful, all at the same time. Not many songs can pull this off.

I played it over and over on my iPod while riding the subway and it inspired me to storyboard "Would You?" on a scrap piece of paper while I was under the Hudson River somewhere. A couple of weeks later, I combined it with some of my best photography shots from around the world and the "Would You?" slideshow was born.

Originally, I made it just as an inspirational presentation for myself to keep my sanity for giving up my apartment and adjusting to a new lifestyle of travel, but I had no idea it would become such a hit with others. It continues to be forwarded around the world, and I always get e-mails from strangers asking about the music.

You may have heard "Nara" in a couple of movie trailers and in an HBO promo. Surprisingly, the CD which it is a part of, entitled Unearthed, is not available in any retail store. You have to purchase the CD through his website: www.esposthumus.com. If you like "Nara," the entire CD is great and I highly recommend it. That and Rob Dougan's CD Furious Angels, which you can actually buy in a store.

Special Thanks to Risa Cantimbuhan and Betty Valdez for pledging The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive! You are guaranteed some postcards!

Last Licks

Well, I'm officially within the 10-day countdown to The Global Trip 2. The past couple of weeks has been less about planning the trip and more about finishing up things in New York -- including being a tourist in my own home city and seeing things that I wouldn't be able to see abroad, like the newly renovated Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History. I have fond childhood memories of the great hall and its big lifesize model of a blue whale, and I just had to see it one more time in its new "underwater hall" environment.

Other than that, I've gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, done more barhopping in the Village, and even attended the last outdoor roller disco of the year in Central Park. In a way, my tour around the world has already begun.

I've been finishing up projects this week and taking care of loose business ends, the major one being the sale of my car. Today, I just sold my ol' 1994 Honda Civic to my friend Shea, and now I am officially carless. That car's been with me on many a roadtrip -- as far north as Montreal and as far south as Key West. But now, I've passed it on, and know it will be in good hands.

For the past couple of months, everyone's been asking me if I'm excited about my trip and I've been really indifferent. "No, not really." This is mainly because I've been so busy that I haven't had a moment to let it sink in. But now, with my car gone, "sinking in" just took a nosedive down to another depth.

Just about eight days left! Wow. Perhaps I should start to think about packing soon? Nah...

Special Thanks to Paul Respicio for pledging The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive! Paul, send me your address and you get a postcard from the road!

A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned...

...but 35 lbs. (15.876 kg) of pennies, is how much earned?

I've had this empty tin can from Danish Butter Cookies that I've filled with pennies over the years, whenever I've remembered to. Realizing that I'm about to leave for a really long time, it's about time I cash it all in and see how much it actually is.

How much do YOU think it's worth?

Post your guess as a comment. The closest guess without going over (Price Is Right style) gets a postcard!

I Broke The Bank And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt

So I went the other day to Commerce Bank in Hackensack, New Jersey to cash in the 35 lb. (15.876 kg) can of pennies I had collected over the years, to see how much it would add to my trip finances. Commerce has a machine that counts coins for you, targeted for kids (but not exclusive to them) called the "Penny Arcade." Basically, it's like the CoinStar machines in the supermarkets, only free-of-charge and more accurate.

The machine interface is a touch screen presentation with a cartoon character named "Penny" (of course) and she talks you through the process. Penny told me to pour the contents of my jar, and so, I poured the entire 35 lbs. of pennies into the little orafice, probably only meant for a small piggy bank worth of coins.

"Uh oh. Something doesn't feel too good. Could you ask the teller to come over and fix the machine? Thanks!" Penny shook her head back and forth as she spoke.

Mind you, it was lunch time and the only two tellers were swamped with the lunchtime crowd, and all the desk bankers were all out to lunch. So I waited and waited, and I couldn't just leave and come back because all my pennies were still in the machine. I waited a good thirty minutes patiently -- I had nowhere to be really -- and figured it was good practice since patience will be a big virtue on The Trip, especially on the upcoming 21-hour bus rides.

During this span of time, Penny's voice repeated over and over every 2-3 minutes, the same phrase:

"Uh oh. Something doesn't feel too good. Could you ask the teller to come over and fix the machine? Thanks!"

"Uh oh. Something doesn't feel too good. Could you ask the teller to come over and fix the machine? Thanks!"

"Uh oh. Something doesn't feel too good. Could you ask the teller to come over and fix the machine? Thanks!"

Pretty soon, one of the tellers couldn't take it anymore and picked up the phone. "Could SOMEONE please come down here and fix the machine!"

Soon, a young guy in a tie came over to investigate. "Whoa. I've never seen THESE many coins in this thing before."

The guy rebooted the system several times and eventually, the pennies started pouring into the counting mechanism. The counter climbed up and up, passed $10... $20... $30... Penny came on again and said that the penny bag underneath was packed and need to be replaced. For this, she said I had won a prize, and a prize claim coupon spit out like a ticket out of a skeeball machine.

The guy replaced the penny bag and the counting continued. $40... $50...

A claim ticket was printed and I brought it to the teller to get my paper bills. I gave her my prize claim coupon and she told me it'd be a T-shirt with a cartoon version of the Commerce logo on it. I asked for a medium, but she said they only had youth sizes. I took it anyway, as cheesy as it was.

In the end, the total amount was $56.63, which makes the winner mtl. (Give me your address and you'll get a postcard on the road. And, what the hell, I'll buy you a drink at the Bon Voyage, Birthday and Book Buzz bash on Friday.)

Special Thanks to Alan Javate and his lovely baby daughter Penny, Don Wilson and Cheryl Triviño for pledging The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive! Send me your addresses and you'll get postcards from the road!

Extra Special Thanks to Donatella Pereira for her awesome bon voyage/birthday gift, a fancy engraved "The Global Trip 2004" pen! (I'll try not to lose it right away. ;P )

Missing: One Drunken Monkey

A tradition has developed between one circle of friends of mine: when we all go out partying, whoever does NOT decide to go out that night is inendated with a series of drunken voicemail messages. There'd always be at least one person who didn't go out on a night of partying, and to this person (different everytime), we'd call, pass a cell phone around, yell at them for not coming out and lay on the guilt trip. And we'd always end the voice message with crazy monkey noises.

My friend Mienri said it best when he said, "If everyone goes to your bon voyage party, who's gonna get the drunken monkey noises?"

Point well taken, the drunken monkey never came about. My "Bon Voyage, Birthday & Book Buzz Bash" last Friday had about 80-90 people in attendance, including friends who flew in from Colorado and Miami, drove down from Canada and drove up from Philadelphia.

If the only goal of the party was to have a grand old time to say goodbye, catch up on old times and get completely and utterly hammered, then mission accomplished.

You can see all the photos from the party here:
http://www.theglobaltrip.com/galleries/TGT2bonvoyage

The photos are in chronological order and you'll notice that as the night progressed, there seemed to have been a lot of middle fingers raised -- but all in good fun. The later photos are a bit blurry, because something got on the lens or something. Oh well.

If anyone has seen my brother's digital camera, a small Sony DSC-U30 (like mine but in silver), please post a comment and let us know.

Special Thanks goes out to Gina Planas, John Yacat & Family, Robin Glowski and Nicole Judice for pledging The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive. You're all gettin' postcards from the road!

Super Extra Special Thanks and Love to my mom and dad for their loving support and generous donation to The Pledge Drive. You'll get MANY postcards and some phone calls too!

Sinking In Like The Titanic

It is the night before I leave (well, technically, the morning of the day I leave) and I'm more or less all packed. Leave it to me to wait until the last minute. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator. In fact, I only tried to reserve my hostel for my first night in Quito earlier today, with no reply just yet.

There is a weird feeling I have; part anxiety, part sadness. Funny how on all my previous trips, the feeling of going away never really sunk in until three days into a trip, and here I am on the eve of The Global Trip 2004, feeling almost nauseous over what is about to happen. (Or is it just the exhaustion of partying all weekend long?) For months, I was notoriously nonchalant about everything, and now, it's all happening so fast. Never before have I embarked on such a grand -- and long -- trip. But, as I've told people before: "If you're anxious or nervous, that's why it's gonna be good."

I said some final goodbyes to family today -- all my aunts and uncles and cousins in the area. We went to a chinese food buffet, where my brother and I played "Iron Chef Buffet" in which we try to outdo each other making our plates of food look all gourmet and fancy.

Afterwards, it was a final farewell to my friends around here, including my friends that flew up from Miami for the weekend. I could definitely feel that it has all begun to sink in their minds, and perhaps it is contagious because I feel it too. It's almost like I have homesickness already.

Not to worry! From what I heard from a guy I know who is currently doing a similar trip through South America as I am for three months, there will be plenty of downtime in which I'll veg out in an internet cafe and chat with people back home. So, it's not so much a goodbye in the virtual world at least.

Post comments as I update the blog everyday with a picture-of-the-day. Drop a hello, inform me of news back home or what's going on on the latest reality show (Did somebody say "The Next Joe Millionaire?"), send me on missions, etc. And forward the blog to all your friends; I want it to be a "travel the world without leaving your computer" thing and really want to develop a cult following -- you know, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, only without Tim Curry in women's clothes or a time warp. Then again, who knows who or what I may meet along the way?

Special Thanks to Brian, Stephen, Tita Bien, John, Tita Nene, Ria, Michael, Tito Manny, Tita Merci, Tita Lisa, Brittany and Stephanie for their contributions and gifts! Expect some postcards!

Extra Special Thanks to Risa Cantimbuhan for her thoughtful gifts: a homemade beanbag to prop my camera on uneven surfaces and a calling card! Guess that means you'll get some phone calls as well as postcards!

The Ups and Downs of Air Travel

DAY 1: After a crazed morning of last-minute packing, a run to the Home Depot for luggage locks and some Dunkin´ Donuts bagel sticks, I had a final lunch at Chili´s with my parents and brother, who all took the day off to send me off. (You can all say "Aww..." in unison now, like the live studio audience used to do on Happy Days.) I short drive down the New Jersey Turnpike, and we arrived at Continental Terminal C at Newark Liberty International Airport.

"Where is your returning ticket out of Ecuador?" the Continental Airlines attendant asked.

"Oh, I´m just gonna take a bus into Peru," I answered.

"Where is the bus ticket then?"

"I was gonna get it there."

"Immigration won´t let you into Ecuador without proof that you are leaving."

I pleaded and pleaded, explaining that I was going around the world, and my flight out of South America would be in Buenos Aires in March. I showed her the tickets and the printout of the itinerary I got from Airtreks.

"Anyone could have made that printout with any computer," another employee butted in.

I was starting to freak out; this was all news to me. I had never heard of that from other travelers. "So, what are my options then?" I asked.

"You can buy a ticket back to here," the woman said.

"And just get a full refund at Continental in Bogota," the other said.

"Quito," I corrected.

"Right, Quito."

"And it´s 100% refundable, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, book it."

The woman got me a ticket, from Quito to Newark, leaving November 30. Total cost: $914.18 (US). In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves, Whoa.

While waiting around the airport, I looked up in my Lonely Planet South America guide, and lo and behold, it is explained the strict rules of Ecuadorean immigration, and that the buy-a-ticket-get-a-refund loophole was a common trick. Most South American countries are not like this, Ecuador is just the exception. I´d have to get a tourist card at customs and keep it with me at all times or suffer deportation.

THE DEPARTURE TIME WAS LATE by about 40 minutes, so I just hung out until it was time to board. "How long is the layover in Bogota?" I asked the flight attendant.

"About an hour," she replied. "Itching to get home to Quito, huh?"

I flashed my US passport. "No, I´m just going to visit."

"Oh," she said with slight embarassment.

This is not a total surprise to me, it happens all the time. As a Filipino-American, I´ve been mistaken for Columbian, Mexican, Ecuadorean, Peruvian, Argentine, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian...everything but a White Guy. Well, maybe on the phone I have been.

I sat in the aisle seat of a three-seater, next to a pretty young woman with an Ecuadorean passport, who was traveling with her mother I assumed. I had noticed her back in the airport lounge. She had dark, Jennifer Aniston hair, a really pretty face, decked out in tight jeans, a belly shirt and Adidas sneakers. Hell, why sugar-coat it, she was a hottie. But she wasn´t much of a conversationalist unless it was to her mother. More or less she just slept or constantly stroked her hair most of the time, like she was her Ecuadorean Barbie doll.

I passed the six hour flight reading The Alchemist, the book I read last New Year´s that inspired me to take this trip in the first place. When the cabin lights went out, I illuminated it with my iBook to work on some pending web design gigs I had. I pretty much ignored the in-flight movie, Foreign Affairs a made-for-TV movie from 1991 with Brian Dennehy. I caught the last half of Legally Blonde 2, which I watched in Spanish to get into the mood. Then I slept until we touched down for our layover in Bogota, Columbia.

I WOKE UP WHEN A TEAM OF COLUMBIANS BOARDED THE PLANE, all decked in black suits, for a security check. One of them questioned me in Spanish, and I was totally clueless. "Oh, sorry, you look like you speak Spanish."

Once back in the air, we were served a stupid little roll of ham and cheese, along with a packet of "Salsa," but upon opening it, it was honey mustard. "What is that?" the Ecuadorean hottie asked.

"Honey mustard."

"You really don´t speak Spanish?" She was probably confused all to hell, especially when she saw me write "TRINIDAD" in my customs form. I explained to her my Filipino roots, and how I was traveling to Quito to learn Spanish. Pretty soon we were chatting it up in broken Spanish and broken English.

Her name was Erika (yes, with a K too) and had been visiting her cousins in New Jersey for the past month. She was on her way home to Quito to chill out for a couple more months before going back for another semester of law school. I showed her my guidebook and she pointed out places in Quito to see and show me where she lived.

"I will give you my phone number," she said in her beautiful accent. Immediately I felt like yelling "SCORE!" like the headbopping Roxbury Boys from Saturday Night Live used to do, but I kept that inside thankfully.

"When can I call you?"

"Anytime."

"Do you have a job until school?"

"No, I have nothing to do."

"I´ll call you Saturday -- Sabado -- then."

"Okay, anytime," she said in her accent. But then she continued, "If I am not there, leave a message with my husband. His English is better than mine."

I´m still debating whether or not I should call or not.

IT HAD JUST RAINED IN QUITO when I touched down and the ground was still wet. It was a little humid, and in the upper 70s, quite a change from the coming New York winter I had just left. I walked to the customs room and waited on an incredibly long line, behind a couple of German guys, one of which farted a stench like his ass had been in a musty old attic for 30 years. Ah, yes, welcome to Ecuador.

I had my passport, declarations, and newly-purchased return ticket ready for my proof of departure. The line was so long that the customs officer didn´t care to even look at it. Then I asked him about the tourist card I read about in the Lonely Planet guide and he told me it wasn´t necessary. All that stress for nothing.

A taxi took me through the dark streets of Quito. It reminded me of Lima, Peru and the northern section of Melbourne, Australia in a weird sort of way. We drove to the gringo district, so I didn´t have to deal with the language barrier so late at night. My hostel, The Magic Bean, let me in, and they did in fact, get my reservation via email.

It was nearing midnight and everything was closing up, so I just turned in to my bed in my four-share dorm room. The pounding of techno music of a nightclub a block away echoed through the night, and its hypnotic trance put me to sleep...until the DJ mixed in "Jungle Boogie."

Special Thanks to Jenn Agas for pledging The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive. (Hope you like that mug.) More Special Thanks to Roslyn Agas, Ryan Dunlavey and Marsha Steffen for their generous donations as well! I´ll send the first round of postcards when I get to a more interesting place, perhaps the Galapagos Islands.

Has anyone out there from upstate New York tried to send me a FedEx package? It was signature delivery, and I wasn´t around, and now it´s in FedEx limbo.

The Ecuadorean-Looking Gringo

DAY 2: I actually slept for a good nine hours, three times more than my usual back home. Outside I could hear the pitter-patter of rain and cars and trucks whizzing by. I just laid there for a while until I leaned over and noticed I had a roommate in the lower bunk across the way. "Hello," he said.

His name was Yigal, and he was an Israeli -- and an almost dead ringer for Steven Spielberg -- who had been traveling through Ecuador for the past month. Ironically, my first day was his last day. We went down for our complimentary breakfast and talked about our travels. He told me about his past travels in India and Nepal and raved about the Galapagos. He suggested the cheapest way to see them, is to just fly to the main island and book from there.

It was raining pretty steady, so I decided to stay in and chill out and acclimatize to the altitude. Quito is about 9,350 ft. above sea level, and I didn´t feel like risking altitude sickness like in a previous rushed trip to Peru in 2001. I vegged out for a couple of hours in an internet cafe down the block and wrote the previous blog entry.

The rain was slowly dissipating, so I headed out to the streets to explore. Quito is divided into the New Town and Old Town, and I just walked around the New Town for now. It was more of less a modern town, business buildings erected in the middle of old Spanish colonial ones, complete with plenty of air pollution. It wasn´t helping my acclimization very much.

After about half an hour of aimless wandering, I gave myself a mission: to find the Continental office and get my ticket refund. I asked for directions in a Hilton hotel, but I didn´t understand any of it. I asked the man to write the address for me, which he did.

I wandered without a map, following street signs. I saw many parks, churches, office buildings, a political protest rally...you know, the usual South American things. I stopped in at a "Fono Pollo," which seemed to be an Ecuadorean version of America´s Ranch 1 chicken stands. I saw a poster that an arroz con pollo was just 99 cents and went to order it. The cashier said something in Spanish that got me totally confused, but I tried to play it off like I didn't understand because the baby nearby was crying too loud.

I wandered around some more, cluelessly looking for Continental Airlines' office like a mouse in a maze. I asked for directions and never understood what people told me, so that was a big part of it. But I managed to figure out through body language, where it was. And luckily for me, the Continental agent spoke English, and she refunded my credit card for the full amount.

Then I got lost. I wandered and wandered just to see things an explore the New Town. I walked and walked and walked, up hills, downstairs, through parks, passed stores -- all while adjusting my lungs to the unavoidable bus fumes. Pretty soon, it was getting darker and all the shops were closing. I looked at my maps and couldn't figure out where I was and I got lost some more. Well, I thought I was going in the right direction until I noticed the same part three times and realized I was going in circles. Luckily I found a trolley stop and figured that I was in a neighborhood way off the map in my guidebook and found my way back to the gringo district.

Throughout the afternoon, pretty much everyone I asked directions from was confused all the Hell why a guy that looks like me doesn't speak Spanish. I can only assume that in all my constant sayings of the phrase no entiendo (I don't understand), people must think I'm deaf or a retard or something.
So there was a building for a Spanish school on my way back the hostel, and I went into check it out. I figured if I walk the walk, I might as well talk the talk. The woman there explained the way it works: $4/hr for one-on-one sessions, complete with homework and books, and a free total Spanish-speaking workout during a city tour. I have the option to live in with a family for total immersion at night. And, if I buy 20 hours, I get free laundry service!

With that said, I signed up for 10 day course, four hours a day, with flexible days. At $160, it's a budget breaker, but a total investment since I'll be in South America til March. Plus, someone else will get the honor and privelage to wash my dirty socks and get rid of all my shit stains in my underwear.

BACK AT THE MAGIC BEAN, I was walking to my room and met a Swiss woman named Gordana who has just arrived and was looking at the flyers for things to do. I ran some errands for a little bit, but then ran into her at the cafe downstairs, who was with another traveler from Chicago named Josh, who was waiting around in Quito until he got word via e-mail that his service work in the Galapagos would start. I went and grabbed Yigal, and we all went out looking for a cevicheria for dinner.

Gordana was obsessed with her Lonely Planet guide and was determined to find one of the recommended places. We wandered down the streets and kept on getting lost with her directions. And whenever we'd finally find a place in the book, we'd find out it didn't exist anymore, or that it was closed for a private party, or that it had become a furniture store. "Great, we'll just eat office furniture for dinner," I said.

Eventually we settled on any old cevicheria -- which was nothing shorter than the truth, because it tasted like old ceviche. I ate it anyway realizing that most of the food was actually cooked by heat. (Ceviche is a popular South American dish with raw seafood that is "cooked" by the acidity of lime juice.) The four of us spoke of our travels around the world -- each of us had already done some extensive traveling.

Josh and I hit Papaya.net, this weird blend of a bar/coffee shop/club/internet cafe, to do some work. Basically, they play loud techno clubby music while people check their email and drink, which is quite a concept. But I couldn't hook up my camera and went to my regular spot.

Back at my hostel, I was more or less going to chill out in the lounge. There I met Judy, an American girl from New York who had also just left her job to travel, right after her birthday. Small world. We got to talking about this and that until she was ready to pass out from her crazy three layover flight. Her bed is the lower bunk underneath me, and she warned me about her snoring.

Back to School

DAY 3: Yigal managed to leave for his 3am flight in the middle of the night without waking me or Judy. The only thing that woke us up was the sun blaring through our window around 8am.

Judy and I had breakfast at the Magic Bean Cafe downstairs. It didn't occur to me until then that "Magic Bean" was a reference to the fact that it's a coffeehouse as well, and I mean that in the coffee way, not the Amsterdam way, so there was no waking and baking. I introduced Judy to Josh and Gordana, who were at the next table. We all ate our free jugos, café con lechés y "toasted bagels."

KNOWING THAT I WAS SPENDING $160 ON CLASSES, I tried to figure a way to cut my day-to-day costs. I went looking for a cheaper housing in the area (close to school). There were tons of hostels in the gringo district, but none of them really shouted out at me, and in the end, I decided to stay at the Magic Bean because their price factored in breakfast which some others didn't. Besides I already had three friends there. But when I went to extend my stay, they told me they were booked, and I had to check out, at least for the night. Later I found I was replaced by a Swedish girl.

I wandered across the street to Crossroads (picture above), built out of an old Spanish colonial house. It's fairly nice, and all for $5/bed/night. They have kitchen facilities for visitors, a TV lounge, and a rental library with fairly recent video releases for only 50 cents.

I bumped into Judy on the street who admittedly was looking like a total gringo tourist with her beach hat, stripped shirt, neck pouch hanging around her neck and a big map of Quito stretched between her arms. I was expecting Chandler Bing to pop out of the bushes and say, "Could you BE anymore of a tourist?" I told her I was moving, so we exchanged e-mail addresss. She went off to shop for a Spanish school that suit her.

It was a beautiful day in Quito, the sun shining, sky blue, temperatures in the 80s F. Funny, unlike America, no one was wearing shorts.

I wandered around looking for an eyeglass case since I forgot one, and managed to use my broken Spanish at an optician's store. The guy there was also surprised I didn't know Spanish, but I told him I was going to learn. Or rather, I figured he was asking me, "Are you studying Spanish?" and I simply said, "Sí." I pretty much say that word to answer any question. If someone asked me in Spanish if I wanted to be locked in a closet with 100 rabid monkeys, I'd most likely say, "Sí."

I wandered around the city to kill time, stopping by the Iglesia de Sainta Theresa where I sat inside for a while. I had lunch at some place with almuerzas, the "lunch of the day," which many restaurants have. Basically, for a buck fifty, you get a two course meal that they made for the day, no matter how random the combination. I had oxtail soup, followed by a spaghetti dish with a sort of tuna casserole sauce on top, with a side of rice. Random? Sure is. But cheap and filling.

I went back to my new dorm and met two new (German?) roommates: Lars, who was outside the room smoking a cigarette, and Matt, who came in and started talking to me in Spanish.

"Uh, no entiendo," I told him.

"Damn, I was hoping I could practice my Spanish." He told me that Spanish classes are great, but you really need to live with someone for total immersion. Hostels are full of backpackers who more or less speak English, French or German, and there is no practice.

The rest of the afternoon, I went to the Beraca school for my first four-hour class. It's not so much a class; it's a one-on-one tutoring session. My teacher was Carmen, the woman I had booked with the day before.

Each session is held in a little closet-of-a-room with plexiglass windows to help combat the inevitable claustrophobia. Basically, it was a police interrogation room, and the interrogation began with the basics, ¿Como te llamas? and ¿De dónde eres?

The one-on-one tutoring was great. It more or less was structured like any old class -- first salutations, then verbs -- but it was very loosely structured, and Carmen and I went off in tangents. Casual conversation spawned more vocabulary and more nouns, and it was a great way to learn. In the end, I came out a lot more confident with the language, and just after the first day. Another couple of classes, and I'll be ready to call Erika (aka "the hottie") and wow her with my Spanish.

During our fifteen minute break, I met another guy from another interrogation room, Sean, a Canadian from Ottawa. He told me about his experience with his live-in setup by the school. He said that if and when I decide to do a live-in, I'll get to shop around for a family, interview them, and get to either deny or accept one depending on whether or not I like them. (Having said that, I'm sure every 14-year-old in America with teen angst is looking up flights to Ecuador right now.)

I went back to my usual internet cafe, yard@net, where I bumped into Judy, who gave me unfortunate news: Rerun from What's Happening? died! I chatted online with Scott, my traveling IM buddy who had been traveling through South America for the past three months, and he broke his unfortunate news: he was back in Wisconsin. He was envious of me being back in Quito and told me about all the cool bars to hang out in.

And so, the internal debate from years ago arose in my head again: go out partying or do homework? Yup, I'm back in college.

I decided on the latter because Scott also told me the importance of knowing Spanish at the border crossings -- and messing around with immigration isn't something I want to fuck up since I look Latino anyway. I went back to my hostel to study -- but ended up vegging out in the TV lounge with my roommates, watching Loco por Mary (There's Something About Mary) on CineFOX.

Yup. It's just like college.

Old School

DAY 4: I woke up an hour before class and was off to take a shower, when I ran into Anna, this girl from Nebraska that I met in the TV lounge the night before. "Wanna get some breakfast?" she asked. I saved the shower for later and went out with her.

We went wandering for a really cheap breakfast place. "Most of the places in the gringo district are pretty expensive," she said. "I've been going to places about four blocks away where it's a lot cheaper." We found a small sit down restaurant where a full breakfast -- including bread, eggs, coffee and juice -- was only a buck sixty. "It's funny when you think a whole two dollars is too much for a breakfast," she said.

Anna was blonde and really tall (perhaps 6' 2"?), which here in Ecuador screams "rob me." She had been extensively traveling Latin America for a while, but the one time she let her guard down on the Quito city trolley, her passport was stolen. For the past five days, she'd been trying to recover it, and for the most part it has been a nightmare. After el desayuno, she went off to get a new passport photo while I went to class.

I had a different tutor this time since the one from yesterday, Carmen, had to tend to a special Japanese student. No matter, I had Rosa, a Quito-native who actually thought the 70s-80s temperature was too cold for her. The two of us had our four-hour session in a bigger interrogation room that wasn't so claustrophobic. We worked on more verbs and continued to converse -- or at least tried to. One conversation involved her telling me how she had parasites in her digestive system. ¿Como se dice 'That's a little more information than I needed to know.'?

AFTER CLASS, I was feeling a little more confident about my Spanish, and so -- by popular blogfan demand -- I decided to call up Erika, the "hottie." I used the pay phone in the hostel and dialed the number she gave me.

"Hola. ¿Ésta Erika?"

That was about all the Spanish I had prepared.

The voice on the other line went off in Spanish like a rocket. Now what I learned from this is, if there's anything harder than trying to communicate in Spanish with people who assume you speak it in person, it's doing it on the phone. When it's just voices, there's no body language or frowns, or my stupid, confused looks for them to realize, "Hey, maybe this guy is deaf."

I managed to realized that I wasn't talking to Erika, or her husband, but her mother, which really spawned a tricky situation. I didn't know if I should have hung up the phone just then, but I tried to stick with it. With the help of the young, bilingual hostel guy Carlos, I managed to give Erika's mother the number of the hostel, and hoped for the best.

LARS THE GERMAN was in my room, just hanging out, looking quite bored. He did a lot of that; he had been living in the hostel room for eight weeks, waiting on a job offer as a German tour guide, and was pretty much over all the touristy things to do. He told me about the Old City, and so I decided to go there solo, to check out the vibe. For an adventure, I took the city trolley, the same one that Anna got pickpocketed on. I figured I could blend in better than any 6'2" blonde gringa. However, I looked like a total dumbass when I unknowingly inserted my 25 cents in a newspaper vending dispenser instead of the turnstile.

The trolley was pretty much as crowded as a NYC subway during rush hour. We were all packed in like sardines, and I could definitely see how easy it would be to get pickpocketed with all the pushing and shoving around. I felt a tug on my bag for a little bit, but realized it was just a little girl playing with the hanging straps.

THE OLD CITY (picture above) is the old colonial city of Quito, sandwiched in between two mountains, each with a grand religious artifact on top. I went to the top of one mountain, the Basilica, an enormous gothic structure towering high above the city. I bought an entry ticket and explored on my own.

I was all alone as I wandered the massive church. I explored the mezzanine level, and went out to a terrace and accidentally walked in on a couple making out. As I left to leave them alone, a clueless Japanese tourist walked in on them.

On the third floor, I noticed an open door and a sign and pathway that led you over the old church stone ceiling. The path was made of rickety wood, and the room was dark, and I felt like Indiana Jones at the third challenge in The Last Crusade. I took the Leap of Faith -- only this leap of faith had safety ropes.

On the other side of the Survivor challenge was a ladder that lead up to the roof, and on the roof, there were two more ladders that led up to the Bell Tower. It was windy, and the ladder was steep, but I climbed on up, as acrophobic as it was.

On my way back down and out the cathedral, I accidentally walked in on that couple making out again.

THE OLD CITY differs from the New City in that is architecture is more colonial Spanish. Narrow cobblestone streets created many hidden alleys, and I could see why everyone suggests not to be there at night. But, it was mid-afternoon, and I went walking around. I saw the Iglesia de Santa Barbara, the Grand Plaza, and the Plaza Santo Domingo. The Spaniards sure did have hard-ons for plazas.

I HAD TO GET A NOTEBOOK FOR CLASS and so I went looking for a place where I could just pick one up, on my way back to the hostel. I felt a little awkward about my Spanish, particularly in a neighborhood far away from the gringo one, so I was sort of nervous about asking for un cuaderno. Everytime I'd see a stationery store, I'd walk in, hoping the notebooks would just be in a pile where I could take one and go to the cashier without having to say anything, but all the stores I saw had all their notebooks behind the counter, or in a glass display case. I felt as awkward as a teenage boy on his first trip to buy condoms.

The day was ending, and a lot of stores were closing and I still had no notebook. I had no choice but to go to the next stationery store and get one, with awkward Spanish or not. Luckily, I found a store where the supplies where out in the open and so, I only had to say three magic words: Necessito un cuaderno. It was an easy transaction -- until the cashier needed a price check on a cheap pen I bought and I confused her all to hell with my Latino-looking gringo ways.

One day in the future, like the legend of El Mariachi in a Robert Rodriguez film, the people of Ecuador will speak of the mythical Latino Who Couldn't Speak A Word of Spanish.

THE REST OF THE NIGHT was pretty chilled out. I had dinner at my little local place that none of the gringos went to and had a HUGE two course meal for $2.50. I hung out back at the hostel with the"regulars," including Dave, this American guy who was in Quito for a while teaching English. We all sat around and made fun of that movie Vertical Limit which was on TV. I also got around to some homework with some help from Anna who, despite her 6'2" blonde gringa presence, was fluent in Spanish.

Erika the hottie never called.

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Class Trip, Road Trip

DAY 5: I checked out of the hostel room around 8, managing not to wake up Lars, who was pretty much out cold anyway since he drank half a bottle of rum the night before in front of the TV. I left my bag with Carlos in the office and went off to class.

Every Friday at the school, the second half of the morning classes go on a field trip somewhere in town. A las once, four of us students, plus all of our teachers headed off to a museum of Ecuador's history, in the Old City. One of the students was a tall, lanky Dutch guy named Hugo, who towered about 6'5". He was one of those goofball gringos that didn't care how embarassed he'd get talking to locals, knowing that they'd just brush him off as a gringo. Using his broken Spanish, he managed to buy candy off a blind man on the bus.

All of us hopped on a public bus to the Old City. Hugo was too tall to stand, so he had to stand one step down just to keep his head from hitting the ceiling, like a midget in a doghouse. He had fun anyway, hanging out, talking with me and Anita, a Swiss girl from class.

I paired off with my teacher Rosa in the Old City, and for some reason it was easier to have a conversation with her in Spanish outside of the classroom. Or perhaps my Spanish is just getting better. We went to the museum, and followed around a tour guide who conducted the entire tour in Spanish, so that perhaps we could learn a thing or two. But, like most Latinos, he spoke WAY too fast for us students, and I could only pick up on certain phrases. Out of the entire 30 minute presentation, the only thing I managed to comprehend is "gold is precious."

BACK AT THE HOSTEL, I went to go grab my bags and head off to the bus station to go away for the weekend. I had heard that the smaller town of Otavalo, about two hours north by bus, was famous for its Saturday morning markets, and it was recommended to go there Friday night to get a head start. A big guy named Navid from outside of Reno, Nevada -- who reminded me of Gung Ho from the old 80's G.I.Joecartoon -- was looking at the brochures for Spanish lessons.

"I'm headed off to Otavalo, wanna come?" I asked him, in attempts to find a traveling companion so that I wouldn't have to take my first bus trip solo.

"Sure, I'll go."

Navid checked out and we went off to the city trolley.

AT THE TROLLEY STOP, I noticed a shady looking old guy with twitchy fingers and a blazer hanging down one arm. I noticed he was checking out our bags and had a bad feeling about him.

The trolley was packed as usual, with the normal pushing and shoving, making it impossible to notice any unusual pressure on your bag or pockets. I kept my big bag on the floor in front of me, and held my daypack on my chest and kept my eye on the Shady Guy. He was always glancing over at Navid's bag, and I could see him trying to reach his hand over with the hanging blazer as his cover. But he noticed me noticing him and was hestitant. Eventually I stared him down and he went away like a frightened squirrel.

Navid and I managed to figure out how to buy tickets easily, but made idiots of ourselves when we didn't know that you had to pay an additional 20 centivos in a turnstile to get into the departures area. We waited about 20 minutes, and soon our bus came and picked us up. We were the only two passengers on board, and we rode with a driver and a bus conductor who would stand on the bus platform, lean out and get people to come aboard: "Otavalo! Otavalo! Otavalo!"

We stopped anywhere on the road someone wanted a lift, and eventually, we had a jam-packed bus. To calm the masses, the conductor put on movies on the TV monitor in front, the French-action film Le Transporteur, dubbed in Spanish. It was followed by the first half of Die Hard With A Vengeance.

We drove through the majestic Andes, along windy but fairly modern highways. Little villages scaled the rocky slopes and for a while, we got a glimpse of Volcan Cayambe, the highest point on the equator. At one point, an indigenous woman and her daughter sat next to me, and she tried to ask me something in Spanish. I managed to know enough Spanish to tell her that I didn't know that much, but was learning, in hopes that perhaps I could practice my Spanish with her. But she just left me the fuck alone.

The bus dropped us off on some random street, four blocks from Otavalo's town center, and we wandered around looking for a hostel. A friendly woman with her daughter approached us with a business card for her hostel about four blocks away, and we followed her. The hostel was nice; humble, but decent. We got a room with two beds and a private bathroom and shower for four bucks per person per night, settled in and then went out for food.

Unlike the metropolis of Quito, Otavalo had a small town feel with not as many places to eat. We found a small place run by a Columbian family that sold those fried corn tortillas with the mozarella in them -- the kind you can get at a street fair in New York -- only with added chicken or beef. We had a couple with a couple cervezas.

We wandered into the main plaza where there was a big crowd around a stage, watching some sort of live variety show. It was just like the kind you'd see on the Spanish channel in the USA, complete with audience participation, live instruments and corny jokes.

I waited around for a guy in a bee costume, but he never showed up.

Ay Caramba.

Shopping Spree

DAY 6: A rooster crowed around 5am and wouldn't stop until we had no choice but to get up. Navid sat in his bed all groggy-eyed. "I hope that rooster ends up in a cock fight today."

Once an empty city on a Friday night, Otavalo becomes a jammed marketplace on a Saturday morning. Villagers from near and far set up their stands to sell anything and everything, from fine alpaca woolen hats to fresh pig heads. Gringos come to these markets to bargain the former and cringe at the latter.

We started our wanderings of the famous Otavalo markets at the animal market which -- you guessed it -- is where you can buy live animals for meat, pets or sexual-deviant things whose pictures require adult ID checks on the internet. A crowded area with cow and pig feces everywhere, villagers came to sell their livestock. The sounds of pig squeals and cow moos filled the air, with an occasional "baaaa" from a sheep.

Interested in the price of really fresh beef and pork, I used my limited Spanish to ask around prices. Cows run about $120-$150 while pigs range from $25-$30 (US) -- although those prices are probably marked up since they figured I was a gringo. But think of all the hamburgers and pork chops!

Navid and I went off to the food market, full of many different fruits on one side, and meats on the other. It was sort of like a supermarket without the annoying Musak or pimply-faced teenage cashiers.

The meat "department" could make any carnivore a vegetarian; I saw sheep carcasses without the heads, chicken heads without their bodies, cows' eyes and piles of various unrecognizable cow pieces that I'm guessing will eventually end up in a hot dog somewhere.

At the Plaza des Ponchos, we wandered the rows and rows of stands selling woven goods. Navid bargained down a woven alpaca woolen hat from $6 to $3.50, while I went browsing for other hats. I recalled an episode of Globe Trekker when Justine Shapiro was at these same markets buying a genuine Panama hat (made in Ecuador but made famous by Panama) and I saw many stands that sold them. But I noticed that none of the locals wore them, and they were a total tourist thing. So I decided to buy one of the hats that the locals wear, a short-brimmed fedora, and bargained one down from $10 to $6. I wore the fedora in attempts to blend in with the indigenous people, but it was no mistaking I wasn't from around there when either Navid or I busted out our big SLR cameras or mini-camcorders.

THERE'S ONLY SO MUCH PRETENDING TO SHOP you can do, so we pretty much just had a lazy afternoon, just wandering town and its Plaza Bolivar, and hanging out in the backyard of the hostel. I lay in a hammock reading a book while Pablo, the happy adolescent son of the family-owned hostal, was using a hair dryer to start a fire on a grill. He and his friend Christian grilled up some platanos, which they shared with us. Nancy, the little 9-year-old daughter that we met the night before, was just playing around and we shot some hoops with her at the small basketball court.

The Otavalo markets pretty much died down by 4pm when all the gringo daytour buses leave. Most of the other stores closed by 7pm and there wasn't much to do. We went to the meat market for dinner and found a place that served cuy, deep fried guinea pig -- an Andean delicacy famous in Ecuador. Say what you will about eating rodents, but I'm of the mentality that anything that is fried must taste good. To avoid the cliché, "tastes like chicken," I'll say that it's chicken that tastes like cuy. I recommend you go out to the pet store and get some now, before Colonel Sanders catches on.

We went out to a couple of bars for drinks to kill time until the nighttime cockfights, at a small arena near the meat market, which is a pretty convenient place for a cockfight arena if you ask me. The crowd of locals and a handful of gringos sat around the ring to cheer on their favorite rooster. Owners brought their birds to the ring and had them taunt each other, until they were let loose to fight to the death -- sort of like Pokemon but with a lot more blood and no weird animals called "Squirtle."

The cockfights went all night, but the period of time in between fights for preparation and betting was excrusiatingly long (about half an hour), and we left after two fights. We never did find out if one of the losers was the one that woke us up so early that morning.

Money Matters

DAY 7: I learned a new expression in Spanish today: "Su banco es està fuera de linea." Translation: "Your bank is off-line." I have decided this is my least favorite Spanish expression so far.

I wandered around Otavalo's streets in search of an ATM so I could get some cash to pay my hostel bill. Leave it to me to be so accustomed to ATMs on every street corner in New York that I just assumed finding an ATM wouldn't be a problem. But it was. I only found three open ATMs in Otavalo, all from the same bank, and each of them told me that my bank was offline and to try again later. All the banks and money exchange offices were closed because it was Sunday, and the one bank that was open wouldn't let me cash in any travellers' checks.

Luckily for me, Navid -- with this G.I.Joe Gung Ho demeanor -- had enough cash to spot me and helped me out, like in a public service announcement at the end of a G.I.Joe cartoon. So next time, I'll have enough cash in a small town on a Sunday. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle!

One thing about money in Ecuador; they use the US dollar. They used to have their own currency, the sucre, but in the late 90s, its value tanked down to the value of a dotcom stock option in 2001: worthless. In 2000, despite protests for national identity, the government switched over the US dollar. Now they use the same paper money as the USA -- I don't know if they've seen the new 20 yet -- but their coins are different. Well, the size and weight of the Ecuadorean coins are the same so you could probably get away with using them at an American laudromat. The use of the golden dollar with Sacajawea on it is in wide use here, probably because she looks like one of the indigenous people anyway. I love using the golden dollar whenever I can; I feel like I'm in a fairy tale, buying things with gold coins.

Another thing about money... no one here has change! If something is eight dollars, and I give a ten, they sneer at me like "You stupid gringo, don't you have eight gold coins?" Then it's a big to-do when the person has to go out to another store, or send their kid out, just to get me my two dollars. ("Give me my two dollars!") I swear I almost gave a guy a heart attack when I gave a five dollar bill for something that only cost a quarter.

WE BID FAREWELL TO THE FAMILY of the hostel. Pablo and his dad -- I never got his name -- drove us to the bus station, where we hopped on one of the many buses that were going to Quito. The bus rode on the windy roads through the mountains and over the equator again. We stopped along the highway to pick up any villagers who needed a lift, including a family near the Cayambe volcano.

Since it was Sunday, there wasn't much traffic and the trip only lasted about 90 minutes. Instead of movies, the conductor just played a mixtape of soft rock tunes from the 80's, like Lionel Richie and Bryan Adams. It just put me to sleep.

I WOKE UP TO THE STENCH OF AIR POLLUTION and knew immediately that we were back in the big city. Navid and I split a cab back to the backpacker district and checked back into the Crossroads hostel, just in time before it started pouring rain. Lars was still there, bored in room #1 as he had been for the past eight weeks, but he told me he actually had a good weekend mountain biking with the hostel owner.

I went over to the ATM that I used the week before and it told me the same thing: "Su banco es està fuera de linea." A bank across the street said the same thing: "Su banco es està fuera de linea." It was raining and everything was closed, but I pressed on. Luckily I found another ATM that had some cash and went out to get something to eat.

DESPITE BEING IN THE BACKPACKER DISTRICT, everything was pretty much closed at 4pm on Sunday. Luckily I found this middle eastern restaurant and hookah bar and managed to order a falafel sandwich. I was sitting alone in the dark room, surrounded by pictures of Iran and Saudi Arabia, until a teenage boy came in the door.

"¿Tu hables inglès?" he asked me.

"Sí...um, yes."

"I am a student and was wondering if you could help me with my homework." I had noticed him and a girl at a table outside, fiddling around with a microphone connected to a boombox. "I just need to interview someone who is native English speaking." I brought my food outside and hung out with the two of them.

Luis was in college in a suburb of Quito, and he and his cousin Carolina decided to go to the one place in the area that they figured they could interview some gringos for his assignment. All he had to do was tape an interview with someone and prove to his professor that his English was good enough to conduct an English conversation with someone who doesn't really know Spanish. On tape, he asked me simple questions -- Where are you from? Do you like Quito? -- but off tape, he helped me learn some new words, including putaand cucho. He played the tape back to me, and I sounded like a bumbling moron.

After he finished his homework, he and his cousin drove home and so I went off to do my own homework. I wrote a story using the verbs ser and estar, based on my conversation with Erika on the plane.

If you pledged The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive, please email me your postal address to theglobaltrip@yahoo.com if you haven't already -- even the addresses that you think I know by heart.

AOL IM USERS, FYI: Even though most of the places I go have internet, I'm discovering that most don't have AOL Instant Messenger (and Quick Buddy doesn't work). However, MSN Messenger is on almost every computer, with Yahoo Messenger in second. My MSN name is theglobaltrip@hotmail.com

Shit Happens

DAY 8: I checked out of the Crossroads Hostel while everyone was still asleep and brought all my gear to class. Class was more of the same -- more verbs and vocabulary, and conversations with Rosa that went off in tangeants. During the break, I met a new student, an English girl on her first day of class, who -- unlike everyone else I met so far -- actually thought I was Asian and not Latino. (She had just flown in to South America after six or so months wandering Southeast Asia.)

After class, I was picked up by Blanca, the woman whom I would live with for the next week, as set up by the school. From what I've heard from other travelers, living with a family is essential in learning Spanish -- if you go to a hostel, you revert back to English and forget everything you learned that day. Immersion is the key and I was ready to dive in.

Her apartment was just half a block from the school in a building above shops and restaurants. Her place had four bedrooms -- one for her, one for her 21-year-old daughter Gabi, and two for students. My private room was fairly big, with a twin-size bed, a desk, and armoire space.

It was just me and Blanca when I got there in the afternoon -- that is, if you don't include a scruffy black dog named Cometa and a cat that I forgot the name of. Blanca didn't speak much English at all, which was exactly what I wanted; no choice but to speak Spanish. She was surprised I was taking a class because she thought my Spanish was pretty good. In fact, she thought I was Haitian because she knew some Haitians spoke Spanish. She showed me around the house and explained to me that there was something up with the plumbing, but a plumber was coming to fix it soon.

I went out for lunch at my usual restaurant that none of the gringos frequented. For just two gold coins and a 50 cent piece, I had churassco, a traditional Ecuadorean meal with a decent sized steak, two eggs, a salad, fries, rice and a juice. I filled my stomach as I wrote my daily notes in my notepad entirely in Spanish, so I could get the practice.

It started pouring and I found refuge in an internet cafe and finally got around to sending a mass announcement for this blog via Evite. I digested my massive lunch pretty fast because soon I ran off back to the house to take a major dump.

YOU KNOW THAT AWKWARD FEELING you have when you take a dump in your buddy's house, no matter how close you are? Well, imagine that awkward feeling when you're dropping four big logs and realizing that the plumbing doesn't work.

After I wiped my ass and threw the paper in the nearby garbage -- not in the bowl, which is common in the Andean countries since paper usually clogs up sewage pipes -- I stood and looked at my four big turds and wondered what to do. Luckily I realized that Blanca had filled these big basins of water in the bathtub, and I used a nearby bowl to flush the toilet by water displacement. It took four bowls -- one for each turd.

I settled into my room and looked out my window as the rain fell (view above). The rain let up after about an hour, and so I just set my laptop up to render a video for a client back in New York, put on my fedora and took to the streets to wander.

WEARING A FEDORA in a mountain village is one thing, but in the city, it didn't really help me blend in at all. In fact, Navid told me that with my glasses on, I looked like I was trying to look more like Elvis Costello than an indigenous person.

I decided to give myself a mission and find a place that sold mini luggage locks, so that I could lock my bigger cameras to my security cable. It's such a bitch lugging them everywhere in a big city. Using my Spanish, I asked some woman for directions and surprisingly understood them -- even though I couldn't find the place she spoke of. No matter, I found a camping equipment store -- with padlocks in a display case -- and conducted the entire transaction in Spanish without stumbling on words. Pretty soon I'll have enough confidence with Spanish to order condoms.

Back at the house, I chilled out until dinner time. I met the other student, Ani, a German surfer-turned-pediatrician, looking for work in a hospital in Ecuador. We sat at the dinner table with Blanca and Gabi, who had just come home from school. Dinner conversation was completely in Spanish -- even when I spoke with Ani, although at one point, I had to explain something to Blanca in Spanish via the little German I knew. We touched the usual get-to-know you subjects: Where are you from? What do you do? Have you eaten fried guinea pig? I've discovered that many Ecuadoreans do NOT like cuy, it's only a traditional dish served and eaten by a select few. Most people, including Blanca and Gabi, can't get over the fact that it's a rodent. I told them that it tastes like chicken, but still couldn't get over the fact that guinea pigs are pretty much rats without tails. (Okay, now it sounds pretty disgusting.)

After dinner, Ani approached me about the no flushing situation -- apparently he had a turd situation too -- but I told him about the water displacement thing. He told me he was considering leaving due to the lack of plumbing, but couldn't bare to disappoint Blanca because she's such a cute old lady.

Gabi went to do her English homework while Ani and I went to do our Spanish homework.

When You're Sliding Into First and You Feel Something Burst, Diarrhea...Diarrhea...

DAY 9: "El domingo pasado, miré una pelicula divertido sobre una abuela que tener una casa, pero ella le va a perder a menos que gana $250,000. Entonces, su nieto juga golf -- pero dice muchas malas palabras en el television! Hubo un beep y beep y beeep..."

Translation: "Last Sunday, I saw a funny movie about a grandmother who has a house, but she is going to lose it unless she earns $250,000. So, her grandson plays golf -- but says many bad words on the television! There was a beep and beep and beeep...."

"Oh! ¡Es 'Happy Gilmore!'"

"¡Si! Esta muy divertido."

This was just one of the tangeants that sprung out of my daily conversations with my tutor Rosa. She described other movies in Spanish that she had seen, of which I replied, "¡Oh, es 'Demolition Man' con Sylvester Stallone y Sandra Bullock!" and "¡Oh, 'Licensed to Drive' con Corey Feldman y Corey Haim!"

And you thought the Coreys were just washed out child stars that nobody remembered anymore.

TRAVELERS' DIARRHEA IS A TERM used to describe the inevitable case of the runs one gets when eating in other countries, particularly lesser developed ones. For the past week I was fine, probably because I was only eating in restaurants. But now that I'm eating home-cooked meals, my stomach has to adjust to the real local food. It does this by excreting chunky liquid feces as often as President Bush mispronounces a word.

I felt the first bubbling in my stomach during morning class. It must have been from the orange juice at breakfast, or the water the fresh fruits were washed in. Gradually it built up in my stomach and I couldn't wait to get back home. Who cares about the verb for "to be able"? -- I had to go! However, I was detained for a bit because I had shown Rosa the book I was in and she wanted to photocopy it for her English tutoring as well as get my autograph. Oh, the price my bowels pay for a little fame.

I rushed back home and immediately went to the bathroom to let my ass vomit. It made bubbly sounds similar to a drip coffee maker when it's coming to the end of its brew. The water in the house was working again, so it was an easy flush this time -- but I took a picture for my blogfans before doing so.

MY MOTHER BACK IN NEW JERSEY has had this unbelievable power for as long as I've known to scope out a Chinese restaurant in any town whenever we'd go on a family trip, no matter how remote. She's like the Terminator of Lo Mein. Perhaps this gene was passed down to me, because I went out looking for one and found one immediately. I had heard from an Englishwoman that I must try the Chinese food in South America because it's different from the stuff back home.

A Chinese restaurant wasn't hard to find -- there are several -- and I ordered a sopa de wantan and chaulufan de pollo (chicken fried rice). The wonton soup was rather different -- it had smaller wontons, more meat and lots of shredded lettuce -- but the chicken fried rice was more or less the same, but not as greasy.

Afterwards, I ran home with another explosive case of diarrhea.

IT WAS ANOTHER RAINY DAY in Quito, so I spent the afternoon indoors at the Museo Nacional del Banco Centro del Ecuador. It hosts many artifacts from ancient times to the Age of Catholicism. I snuck in some photos (above) with my little spy camera until a guard stopped me, just as I was trying to get a photo of this cool-looking mummy skull. It's a shame I couldn't take anymore photos because there was one classical painting of the Virgin Mary breast feeding Baby Jesus. And why wouldn't the internet need a picture of Jesus sucking on a titty?

I was walking back in the rain with my Elvis Costello fedora on when I felt the rumbling in my stomach again. Inside, it was like a foam party in Ibiza -- bubbly, wild and ready to explode. That and the inhalation of bus fumes really got my sick and I felt like vomitting. When I got back at the house I "perked" some more "chunky coffee," twice within half an hour.

I HELPED BLANCA AND GABI set the table for dinner and then we all dined on more traditional Ecuadorean dishes -- a corn-based soup, salchichas and tortillas de mais con queso -- all of which I hoped had no laxative properties. Dinners are always good because there is forced conversation in Spanish and its great practice for me. Blanca corrects us whenever we're wrong or explains definitions in Spanish. Gabi is more or less your regular apathetic teenager-type; whenever she's home, she just vegges and watches soap operas in her room, but helps around as needed.

I showed my book off to Blanca and she was totally surprised. "Hay un escritor en mi casa!" ("There is a writer in my house!") And with Ani being a doctor, she couldn't be more proud: "Mis dos niños... ¡Un escritor y un medico!" ("My two boys...A writer and a doctor!") All the times I was out late to write in an internet cafe, she just assumed I was out drunk at a bar somewhere.

After dinner, I asked Ani if he was having any stomach problems and he said no. And he had only eaten the same food that I had eaten in the house. Weird.

I went to my room and took an Immodium, hoping that the Ibizan foam parties in my belly would soon come to an end.

My Big Fake Gay Wedding

DAY 10: In South America, I've noticed that most of the hot showers are electric. A pipe runs to a shower head which is connected to two electric wires, which run a power switch. As water enters the shower head, it heats it before it comes down.

The problem I've found with this is, when a fuse blows in the house, like it did in the morning, the water immediately gets freezing cold right when you have shampoo all in your hair. I blamed my iBook in the bedroom, which had been plugged in and rendering a video file for a New York client for the past two days.

If it's not one thing with clients, it's another.

After breakfast, Ani and I went to class like two German and Filipino-American half brothers leaving our Ecuadorean mother. I sat down with my tutor Rosa at our table for our usual lesson. I brought out my notebook to show her my homework, and all of a sudden she started crying. Jesus, was my grammar that bad?

Apparently something in her personal life as intruding on class time.

"Que paso?" I asked.

She whimpered, "Nada...nada...la pasada..."

I didn't know what to do, so I just behaved as usual. We eventually reverted back to normal class stuff, which was good for her because it got her mind off of other things. Three pages of verb conjugation has that sort of affect on people I guess.

I met my German brother Ani after class and we walked downtown to the house of South American Explorers, a long-standing, reputable non-profit organization founded in Ithaca, NY (of all places), which aims to provide practical and informational advice to visitors of South America. Ani and I went there because the Lonely Planet book said they had walking tours every Wednesday and we wanted to join up. We found the house (picture above) and I immediately recognized it from a Globe Trekker episode on PBS.

It's the off season (aka rainy season) in Quito, so there weren't many members around to set up a tour. However, I ran into Judy, my one-night roommate on my second night in Quito, who had joined in Ithaca before heading south. She was just hanging out and looking up stuff.

THERE WAS AN AMERICAN GUY there looking into membership, and the director of the place, an American gringa named Mary Ann, started giving us her spiel on the benefits of membership.

"Basically, we've been around for 25 years, as a resource to those traveling to South America. South America always gets a bad reputation from the media, and we aim to change that. Did you know that the United States and France labeled Ecuador as their number one most dangerous country to go to? In spite of that, you came down here anyway to see it. The only way people will know that South America is a beautiful place is by you guys going back and telling people. However, there are a lot of tour companies out to rip foreigners off, and we want to let you know what people have been saying about places before you do business with them. We give you that facts and you decide. We want you to have a good time here, so you can tell people back home. We've also got offices in Lima and Cuzco."

"Wow," I said after her long-winded speech. "The US and France actually agreed on something."

ALL OF THE VALUABLE RESOURCES provided come at a price: a $50 annual membership fee. "There's a list here of reputable tour companies that give discounts to South American Explorer members. Most of them are 10% off. A $400 trip to the Galapagos, and you already get forty bucks back," Mary Anne pitched.

I was intrigued, as was The American Guy. Ani was skeptical because he wouldn't have any use for them after Quito as he was headed northbound.

"It's fifty bucks per individual," she said. "But if two or three join up, it'll be $40 each."

Janet the Latina office secretary started getting the paperwork ready. "For forty dollares, you will sign up as a couple," she said. The American Guy and I looked at each other.

"So I guess we're getting married then, huh?" I said.

"Yeah. Sure."

"What's your name?" I asked. It was the least I should know in a pretend marriage.

"Mike."

"I'm Erik."

We shook hands and were hitched. On a backpacker budget, you'll do anything for a discount.

MY NEW HUSBAND/WIFE/LIFE PARTNER (take your pick and say it with air quotes) had just arrived in Quito the night before and was staying in the Old City. Originally from Long Island, he had lived and worked in New York and California and Miami, until he quit his job and flew to Quito for a long-term trip all around Latin America.

Janet gave us the tour of the multi-level clubhouse, including the lounge with a fireplace, the library, the kitchen and the map room. I got many excursion ideas, including a river trek through the Amazon rainforest from Coca, Ecuador to Iquitos, Peru. Ani, although he didn't join, went around the house with us, and managed to peek at the medical volunteer listings.

Ani went home to take a nap, so Mike and I went walking around, despite the slight drizzle. Mike only knew the Old City, so I played tour guide for his first time into GringoLand. For lunch, I turned him onto the little restaurant that none of the gringos went to. The food, although as good as it was before, didn't bode well with my quesy stomach, and I ran off to the bathroom. But there was no toilet paper so I just had to concentrate all my energy and make my ass do a reverse swallow.

The two of us went looking at the recommended tour companies with weekend excursions -- rafting, mountain biking, kayaking -- and discovered that membership really does have its privelages. Afterwards, we just wandered around aimlessly. We went looking for a movie theater that the Lonely Planet book had mentioned, but it didn't exist anymore. (FYI: So far that makes four errors in the Lonely Planet book.)

During our stroll, I discovered my new fake spouse was quite the catch. He was an All American Pretty Boy-type, about 6'0". If I had to compare him to a famous person, I'd say a cross between Carson Daly and Ray Liotta, but not really. Well, he was no Don Knotts. He was getting cat calls from ladies on the street, giggling and yelling, "Hey Guapo!" At one point, two girls showed their pace down to hear our conversation and I noticed one pushing the other to just approach him and say "Hello." They were too shy and just giggled away.

I left my husband/wife/life partner in air quotes in GringoLand and went home for dinner. Dinner conversation with Gabi, Blanca and Ani was quiet, until I starting about las malas palabras (bad words). That spawned some interesting Spanish conversation.

Dinner was good, but still reacted as a laxative and I ran to the bathroom again -- this time without my camera.

The Secret of My Success

DAY 11: I think that I'm learning Spanish a lot quicker than the other students in school. I don't know if it's because I took French in high school and the language is very similar, or because I come from Filipino heritage and Tagalog borrows many words from Spanish. All I do know is that most students I've spoken to are doing way more written exercises in class (and for homework), while I've moved on to more conversational work.

As the days go by, my tangeants of conversation get longer and longer and get farther and farther away from the usual getting-to-know-you-traveler-chit-chat. My Spanish has risen to the level where I can -- very slowly mind you -- talk with my tutor Rosa about such topics as the underground women's liberation movement in Latin America and parapsychology.

"Did you learn anything new today?" I asked Pamela, an English girl, at our coffee break.

"I learned how to say, 'Soy una tarta,'" she said. "I am a cake." In Spanish, this is the equivalent of calling yourself a retard.

THE SECRET TO MY SPOKEN SPANISH IS SIMPLE: when using a verb, always mumble the conjugation at the end and let the context of the situation define it. In Spanish, its common to drop the pronoun (I/You/He/She/We etc.) in a sentence because the different conjugation defines it already. Mumbling the verb is particularly handy when you ask your house host, "¿Puedo lavar mi ropa?" ("Can I wash my clothes?") and she hears "¿Puedes lavar mi ropa?" ("Can you wash my clothes?") and is kind enough to take your dirty socks and underwear and wash it for you.

AFTER A NAP, I went out for a walk. It was a sunny day for a change, and I wandered the New City, near the Casa de Cultural Ecuadoriana (picture above). I went out to a city park, where I just sat and read a book, while watching a couple of school boys play a game of soccer. On my way out of the park, I saw three teenage boys peeing in a little ditch, right in front of everyone, without a care in the world. And you thought America was free.

I wandered into the Centro Comercial Espiral, this shopping mall downtown that designed as a spiral. It was sort of like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, only with stores that sold clothes, bootleg DVDs of movies that are still out in theaters, and those coin-operated kiddie rides you'd see in front of a WalMart -- one of which took the form of an imitation Mickey Mouse bent over like he was in a gay porn, waiting for kids to "ride" him.

BACK AT THE HOUSE, I noticed my clothes hanging out in the backyard and mumbled to Blanca, "¿Pued...ooesss... traer mi ropa?" I said the last part of the verb like a tape recording gone bad. It didn't really work this time, but she led me outside where my clothes were hanging. Half of them were still wet, so I left them.

At dinner, I met a new housemate, an Aussie named John, who was one of last week's house guests back for an extra day. His passport had been stolen on a bus ride and he just need a place to crash while he tried to get his documents together. Blanca was more than happy to let him stay another night.

So far this has been the fifth case of theft I've hear on public transportation since I've been here. But everyone that I've spoken to that got stuff ripped off always blames him/herself. "If I had just locked my bag, it wouldn't have happened" is usually the thing they say when slapping themselves in the face. A lot of it has to do that they are gringos too I think. Perhaps my looks will come in handy after all.

At night, Ani and I went out drinking with our new one-night Aussie brother. We went out to some bar and met up with a new group of compadres: Ani's German friend Jurgen; Bettina, from Cologne, Germany; Tonya, from German-speaking Vienna; and a Russian girl who spoke German. If there's anything that Quito has more than Latinos, it's Germans. They are everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if I opened up a refrigerator and found a German guy in there passing me out a beer.

John and I just sort of sat there while the German words flew, but luckily everyone knew English and we got along together. I was thinking that perhaps after Spanish I should learn German, but then again, the only German you need to know to get by is "bier."