Top Ten, Ecuadorian Style
Quito is a marvelous city: it has great public transportation (a trolley!), walkable streets, a beautifully kept-up colonial district that has managed to remain a center of daily Quiteño life instead of a tourist trap, and hot showers. But, because it’s so great, nothing very bad or very interesting has happened to us here. So, to continue our great blogging tradition in times of lull, here is a random Top Ten list of interesting tidbits that have not made it onto our blog so far:
1) Riding on a bus to La Mitad Del Mundo, we spotted the following block-letter graffiti, in English: “Black People.” Yup, just “Black People,” nothing else. It reminds me of a kid from Wesleyan who wore a shirt with magic marker-writing proclaiming “Eco-Feminism” (yup, just “Eco-Feminism”) just to, as she said, “let people know it’s out there.” Or, perhaps the “Black People” graffiti is in protest to the used-book shop named “Confederate Books” that is a few blocks from our hotel.
2) At La Mitad Del Mundo (the equator), really funny things happen. For one, you can balance a raw egg on the head of a nail. For two, water will drain directly down without swirling to one side or the other. For three, if you do competitions of strength on the equator line and off the equator line, differences in strength will be magnified the farther you are from the precise middle of the world. For four, you weigh less on the equator. How cool is that?
3) On our travels, we have run into approximately ten Spaniards. Based on our rather limited sample, we have made an observation: all Spaniards have mullets, unless they are from Basque Country. If the Spanish people are on the cutting edge of fashion, you can expect to see innumerable fashion mullets in the coming years.
4) We did not get sunburned in Nicaragua, where the sun was scalding and the temperatures averaged 85-90 degrees. We did not get sunburned in Panama, despite similar heat and sun. We did, however, get horribly sunburned at the equator, where it was cloudy and 65 degrees. Megan’s legs still hurt.
5) When Sarah was in Xela, Guatemala (a little late, but bear with me), she ran into a girl she knew in Ithaca but had not seen for 6 years. This girl was dating a Spanish teacher at Sakribal. Small world…
6) The Sarmat Porter that Megan was so excited about had expired on 1/15/2005. It turns out that Ukrainian beer doesn’t have much of a market in Ecuador.
7) The Panama City Airport really sucks. In addition to not having any magazine stores, they took Megan’s swiss army knife, broke our camera, and made us forget that we had brought Snickers with us. It is the worst airport in the world.
8) However, COPA airlines is great! They serve you an actual snack, consisting of a sandwich and chips, and offer you free alcohol.
9) Within the space of two days, both Megan’s and Sarah’s backpack clasp shattered. Megan’s broke on the cab ride with the Peace Corps girl, and Sarah’s broke in the Panama City Airport (worst airport ever). These clasps are the important waist strap clasps that allow you to heft the weight of your bag with your hips instead of your shoulder.
10) We shared a room with a very strange French guy. He arrived at 5 pm, immediately lay down on the top bunk, and did not move. At some point, he smoked a joint, still lying on the top bunk. He said maybe three words then entire night and left the next morning at 10. At least he wasn’t sporting a mullet.
-Megan (with help from Sarah)
Tags: American Identity, Central America, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Quito, South America, Transportation, Travel
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Well, today Katie-Louise and I went down to Ricochet, our Philadelphia hair establishment (which, for those of you in the know, means that we are no longer hauling our hairy selves up the coast for haircuts). And how relieved we were to arrive home and learn that, having instructed Kurt, our stylist, to give us MULLETS, it is apparently all the RAGE!!!! Yes, readers, Kate and I now sport matching mullets, and proud we are of it!
OK, just kidding.
In fact, Kate still has the red and black striped hair, and I still have boring old “long” hair, going gray at the speed of sound.
But all of that is just about as boring as yesterday’s toast, compared to the ten things you are able to dredge up as “not interesting enough to make it into the blog first time around!” How are the two of you going to reenter mundane old North American existence???? I suppose you don’t have to think about that yet . . . . and PLEASE, don’t wish for scary things to happen jsut so you can blog about them. We are all — and I think I can safely speak for all of us here — perfectly happy to hear about how you can balance eggs and weigh less at the equator. That’s quite enough excitement for us, thank you.
KISSES!
I was almost as frightened by the thought of Bethany and Katie Louise in matching mullets as I was by the account of Sarah wading alone miles under the earth.
Ten things in my life:
1. work
2. work
3. work
4. work
5. Five Golden Bl(ogg)ings
6. work
7. work
8. work
9. work
10. work
You make me very very excited for my upcoming trip to Quito. Also, what you say about spainards is completely true. I met a good handful of them in Honduras and they did all sport mullets–male and female alike. They also made me feel like Spanish was a language I had not been studying for 6 weeks, what with their lispy lisp and all. Also, I am sorry to hear that camera number 2 is now broken…what are you doing???? Backpack straps, agh. Nightmares abound. See you in the south!
I’m curious about the mullets. Could this be a return to the seventies? But why the Spanish? Hmmm. We need to get to the bottom of this. The Panama City airport, however, your knew intuitively would suck, somehow. How, i’m not sure, but it fit.
Well, I bring greetings from your home city of SF, where I am… actually tonight in Oakland with Bill, Amy and the boys, who send best wishes. Working here today/tomorrow. It’s still very welcoming and hip here.
Thanks to Bethany, Megan/Sarah and Becca for the good wishes on the doc premiere. Still working the audience development on that and after the TV thing, we’ll definitely do a screening sometime and ship a DVD to South America for your travelers.
…and thanks for the good wishes Laurel!
PS- Haven’t heard back from Kelly… not sure if she’s at that address.
I just wanted to update you all that my friend Rachel is studying abroad in Spain — so obviously I had to ask her about the strange Spanish Mullet Phenomenon… she confirmed my suspicions that Spain is teeming with them. In fact, she said that even the children and the dogs are sporting them these days. Be afraid.
-Sarah
I’ve been away — literally, in Florida, watching tennis with Nina, Paul and Natty, and learning a thing or two since it looks as if tennis is here to stay in the person of Nathaniel Schneider!! So I have some catching up to do here.
First — Bill, that’s totally fantastic! Peter and I send our love and in the words of Minnie Pearl (am I the only one out there old enough to remember Minnie Pearl?) “We’re jist so proud to know ya!” Please let us know when we can see it!
Second — Megan and Sarah, I whole-heartedly agree with Bethany — give us boring, any day. We don’t need any more scorpions or scary games or wanderings through town dumps!
Last — News of Loki: I came into my office and found her curled up sound asleep on the keyboard of my laptop. I have learned that she is very jittery around loud noises or sudden moves, so I gently picker her up — she was zoned out, her “down” side (the one on the keys so warm she must have thought she was a lion on the veld. I carried her over to my big chair, gave her a long smoochy love, which she appreciated with a loud purr. Then I put her down and went back to my computer. It was missing three keys! Apparently she had been scratching up the grasses on the veld before she lay down to sleep. Aaaaaaaargh! It’s all repaired now, as you can tell by the fact that this letter contains commas and the letters k and L.
All is well here. We have had only a tiny dusting of snow, and a few days of real cold. Peter and I were glad to get back to the cold, actually. We love sleeping in bitter cold weather with a window open and a pile of feather comforter and the blue wool blanket that Kate & Bethany made over us. I woke up in Florida in the middle of the night sort of disoriented by the balmy weather wafting through the screen from the giant palm and avocado trees.
Be safe, be happy, sweethearts.
G’ma
about the mullets on dogs…at first i had a hard time imagining kirby, the now 5 month-old beagle, with a mullet. but then again, her ears are soooo long that they could be fashioned into the -do. my only attempt at sculpting ear as hair is to sweep one ear across her forehead giving her a resemblance of “the donald”. be very scared!
smooches.
I most definitely look forward to seeing Kirby with her new doo.
-s