Tidbits!

Hey all! It's me again just giving a little update to the blog. I've been here about 40 days, and the mentality is starting to show. For example, just yesterday I was watching a TV show in which a woman drank water straight from the faucet. I wanted to reach into the screen and tell her not to do it until I realized that it was OK to drink the water where she was, as opposed to here where you really have to be careful. The city doesn't have any real tap-water sanitation program so if you drink straight from the tap, you can say good bye to your good health for a while, until they flush the amoebas and what not out of you.

Another example of me getting too comfortable here is that a few weeks ago I was in a grocery store and I made a comment in English about the guy in line in front of me. Most of the time I can get away with this because of that whole different language thing, but then I realized he was from the States. Oops. At least I didn't say anything too embarrassing, I had just been commenting on how much money he was paying. We said hi to each other and it wasn't that big of a deal, but it may just have saved me from a much more awkward situation in the future.

An interesting law came to pass last Monday: street sellers are no longer allowed to enter buses to sell things. If this happens, the driver of the bus is fined 20 bucks and two points are taken from his license. While this has reduced the number of sellers I've seen, they're not completely gone. They still come on the bus from time to time, in fact I just bought a bag of chips from one last night on my way home. The bus driver is too busy driving to kick off the vendors. Maybe after a few fines the drivers might crack down a bit more on who can come on their bus, but so far I've seen a general ignorance of this law, and who can blame them? It's not like their killing people or selling drugs, and for many of them it's just what they do to scrape together some cash to make their living.

Speaking of not paying attention to laws, in general road laws are pretty relaxed around here. I've never seen anyone pulled over for a speeding ticket or a busted tail light. In fact seat belts aren't even mandatory. My family doesn't really use them, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure that the seat belts work in our car. My father has been known to get away with running a red light several times without receiving anything worse than an “Aye papí! El semáforo!” (the traffic light!) from my host mom. But worry not for my road safety, I've only seen two car accidents during my whole time here, and one of those wasn't even in Quito and the other was during a rainy night. People are so used to how everyone else drives that although it would be considered bad driving in other places, it's normal driving here, and some strange sort of harmony has risen from the chaos.

In other news, this Sunday the whole country will vote on a new constitution. Really exciting stuff. The media is flooded with propaganda for the “Si” and the “No” vote. I'm sure many of you know the feeling back home. The interesting thing is that in Ecuador, voting is mandatory. Now at first, that seems like a really good idea, because nothing says “Democracy” more than every citizen putting in their ballot. But, unfortunately this mandatory voting thing may not actually be so hunky-dory. A large portion of the population is of low economic class and uneducated. This means that they're probably not paying close attention to politics and when voting day comes along, you'll find a large number of the citizens making uninformed decisions. Politics are also a lot more mean down here, and by that I mean there are politicians throughout Ecuador who say that if the vote ends up a certain way, they will leave office. Additionally, I heard that the president made an announcement that if the constitution passed, he would double the amount of money that natives receive, but if it doesn't pass, they'll get nothing. Yeah, in the States, we'd probably call that corruption or mass bribery or something along those lines. Personally, I think it would be interesting to see the constitution pass only because it would be unique to witness first-hand what it's like for a country to adopt a new constitution. On the other hand, it seems like many of the people who've actually read the thing are very much against it, so although it may be entertaining for me, it might not be in the country's best interest to adopt it. We'll see. I personally have not read the new constitution, but I do have a copy of it sitting on by bedside table in the case of a rare bout of insomnia. To put it in few words, from what I can tell, it's generally a pretty far-left-leaning document. I'll make sure to let you all know how this important vote turns out. Right now I wouldn't be surprised if it passed, because the government is putting a lot of effort into this campaign, and the whole mandatory vote thing that I talked about earlier. The whole country is taking this very seriously, to the extent that nobody is allowed to be intoxicated in public, it's going to be a dry weekend for the whole country so that people can make as much of a sober decision as possible. I think that's a cool idea. I'll be the bars feel differently (unless the president is subsidizing them temporarily to make up for the lost profit – it wouldn't be the first thing that's subsidized in this country).

On an unrelated note, today I definitely saw a guy riding down the street on a bicycle that had a lawn mower tied to the back. I don't mean he was dragging the mower behind him, it was like perched atop the bike rack that goes over the rear wheel. What makes this even better? This wasn't the first time I'd seen someone transporting a lawn mower by carrying it on their bicycle. Yessiree people do get creative down here.

One last thing: today I finished my first piece in my jewelery class, here's a pic!