2009

Hi, I'd like to wish every one of you a happy new year!

The new year's celebration here in Ecuador is really fun and different. I daresay it's one of the most widely celebrated holidays here.

I'll tell you all about it in future posts, along with what we did for Christmas and the nine days leading up to it.

Looking back, I personally had a very nice, comfortable year. I liked 2008.

HAPPY 2009!!!
~Joey

My Lucky Boxers

OK, so here's the deal: Almost a week ago I wrote up a nice big blog post but then lost it all. Now I've got some free time again and have decided that instead of throwing one big post at you about the end of the school year and Christmas and all that jazz, I'm just going to put up a few smaller ones and they may come relatively frequently, so if that happens try to keep up. I think one of my big problems lately is I have so much to say I feel like I have to squeeze it all into one post, but really what I should be doing is writing little blurbs as I find time. That way you guys don't have to wait a month between posts and it doesn't become a day-long project for me.

My previous lost post started something like this:

"Hello, all! I hope all of you up north are enjoying the weather. Down here it's a brisk 17 degrees. Oh wait, that's in Celsius, let's see, that would make it about 55 F on this lovely Christmas Eve night. Not too shabby."

And it went on to say something along the lines of:

Well I of course by now have finished up all my school and don't have to go to another real class until Spring quarter starts up back at K, which is March 30. My exams and final projects all went fairly well, but they almost didn't. Here's the story:

As some of you may know, this semester I took a Herpetology class, that's the study of reptiles and amphibians, not a common STD. Well I must say that this class was quite the challenge, even by K standards, and it didn't help that we were used to all our other classes being easy as pie.

For the better part of a month, I'd been working on an experiment for the class testing the effects of fertilizers on tadpole growth and development. On Wednesday, the 17th, not only did we have due the final draft of the paper for our projects, but also a poster for it AND we had the final exam of the class to worry about.

We had turned in the rough drafts the week before, and the prof said he'd return comments within a few days, so I decided to wait until then to correct my paper. As it turns out, he didn't send any word back on our papers until the 15th, 2 days before our final drafts. His e-mail (written to all of us in the class) simply stated that the rough drafts look good and that we should remember to look over the guidelines in the (12-page) syllabus to make sure our final format is correct. Personally I was looking for something a little more substantial, so I sent him back and e-mail asking for clarification on my specific paper. I knew, though, that I'd have to start off just revising it on my own until he sent word.

Fast-forward to Wednesday morning. The test wasn't until 4:30 that afternoon, so I had a good chunk of time to put the finishing touches on my final draft of the paper and come up with a poster. The test was open-note, open-book, open-computer, just not open-classmate, so I didn't have too much to worry about studying for that. But even without worrying about the test, I still had a pretty full plate. During this particular morning, I made some not-so-wise decisions. The biggest mistake was when I told my host father that I'd help him with a little job he had. He said it would take less than an hour, and that it would help him so much if I came along because his normal guy wasn't around to help. Before heading out with my father, I changed out of my pajama pants into my clothes for the day, including my lucky boxers. I figured I could use all the luck I could get.

Well this less-than-one-hour job turned into a 2 and a half hour job, after travel distance, traffic, and other errands were taken into account. I was really worried when I got back. I shoveled down my lunch and went to work, but at this point it was useless. I had gotten my paper done, but the poster still needed a ton of work. The one hope I had was knowing that my prof often allows work to be turned in via e-mail until midnight. Maybe it would work for the poster as well. By the time it was time to leave the house, I was scrambling around like crazy. I ended up leaving the house a few minutes late, and wasn't happy to see those few minutes of lateness grow into more and more minutes of lateness as my buses seemed to refuse to come as frequently as usual, and traffic was crazy. The whole way there, I was throwing temper tantrums in my head because I was so frustrated at how late I was and how I didn't finish all the work. By the time I got to the classroom I was almost a half an hour late to the exam. I wondered if my lucky boxers had run out of luck.

When I entered the classroom, however, I first heard people chatting and laughing. I saw that no one had a test out in front of them. What was going on? I sat down grumpily in my chair and asked my buddies what the story was. They said that our teacher was having problems in the copy room printing the tests. To my luck: half an hour's worth of troubles in the copy room. When he finally came to administer the test, he said that people who did a project were allowed to omit certain parts of the test. Sweet!

I took that test and felt good about it. Afterwards I turned in my paper with pride, and calmly stated that I had no poster when he asked for one. He very reasonably replied that it was OK, and that he expected a digital version by midnight and a printed version by the next morning. Can do. Everything was looking up. I had been feeling really crummy all morning and early afternoon, just trying to make it through the day with this dark thunder storm over my head. But by now, the storm had mostly passed and I could see that things would turn out alright. As I was about to leave, the prof said, "Oh, Joey, I'm going to have to talk with you."
Uh oh, I thought, what trouble am I in now? "Why is that?" I asked.
"Because," he responded, "we're going to publish your paper."
I was stunned. My jaw probably would have dropped to the ground, but my smile was holding it up. I asked him about it and he said that as far as he knew (and he knows a lot), my paper is one of the first, if not THE first, paper on this subject written in tropical South America and that although it's relatively simple, it would be a great starting point for future studies on fertilizer contamination. It will just take a few more revisions and then it will be ready to send out.

Cool! I was walking on sunshine for the rest of the evening, and I probably would have gone out to celebrate with my friends that night, but I had a poster to do. I did that poster, and printed it out the next day (about 3'x4') and handed it in.

I guess my lucky boxers still have plenty of luck in them. It just took them a while to turn the day around from the direction my day was headed before I put them on.

Writing about the end of November in early December

Hi all! I hope everyone had a happy and yummy thanksgiving! Since all those pilgrims decided not to land in Ecuador, it's not celebrated here by the locals. However, all of us Kalamazoo students, in an act of tradition and nostalgia had a turkey day of our own. We had it at the host house of one of the K students. Everybody brought a dish to pass and an Ecuadorian guest if they so chose. I made a delicious Cesar salad, which despite it's soggy croutons (not my fault that we started eating at nine when I'd made the salad at 5:30 or 6) everyone really enjoyed it and gobbled it right up. We had traditional thanksgiving foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and so on, and we also had some less traditional things like spaghetti, which were good nonetheless.

One of the most unique parts about this Thanksgiving for me, despite the fact that it was in Ecuador, was that the house had an indoor swimming pool, so after gorging ourselves on plates full of Thanksgiving dinner and then eating more, 3 friends and I went for a swim. In addition to having a good time floating around and working on our cannonballs, we officially busted the myth that you shouldn't go swimming after eating. No one threw up or had their liver explode.

Around this time of year, there's a big thing that goes on called Fiestas de Quito. It goes on for over a week, and everyone just goes all out celebrating as much as they can. There are these tricked-out buses called "chivas" that are filled with people and they play loud music and drive around the city for an hour or two. Also during this time are the "La Corrida de los Toros" or bullfights. Last Sunday I went to a bullfight with four friends and it was quite an experience. In total there were six bull fights. The first one I video recorded on my camera and I might post the videos at some point in the future if I can get to a spot with fast enough internet to do so. The second one was done by a really good matador and he actually let the bull live, which is something very rare. The third one was done on a horse. The matador had three different horses that he used in different phases of his show, and it was a fun, different thing to watch. Then there was an intermission and then the three matadors each went again.

This is basically how a bullfight goes down: First the bull enters the ring, which has a sand floor and several upright wooden platforms around the edge for the toreros to hide behind. First, a man comes out who's riding a horse that has cloth armor on. This man uses a long stick with a point on the end to jab into the bull's neck. During this time, the bull is trying to dig its horns into the armored horse and knock it over, but the horse is big and leans into it so it doesn't move. Then several 'clowns' taunt the bull with pink cloaks and tire it out a bit. Then two or three men run up to the bull and plunge these things into the bull's neck that look like big fluffy colorful cylinders, like paint rollers, that have spikes on the end. This hurts the bull and makes it madder. then the matador comes out and he has a red cape and a sword. He puts on a show waving the red cape and making the bull run at it, like we've all seen in the movies and on TV shows. Then, when the matador has tired the bull out and dragged on his show for long enough, he pauses a moment, aims, and then runs at the bull and tries to stab the sword into the upper back of the bull. The idea is that the sword goes all the way in, down to the hilt, rupturing precious internal organs, hopefully the heart. Sometimes the matador misses and hits a rib or something so the sword doesn't go in all the way. At this point the 'clowns' come and distract the bull while the matador retrieves his sword. Eventually the sword does go in and the beast staggers a bit and then falls helplessly to the ground. It's really powerful to watch such an animal fall. Once the bull is down, a man dressed in black with a cloak around his shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat hosting a single large white feather comes and stabbs a knife in the bull, right at the base of skull. The bull spasms and then lies still. A cart is then dragged out and the bull's head is tied down to it with a chain. At this point, they bring out what I called the "Horses of Death", which are two black horses whose job it is to drag out the body of the bull. It takes the men several tries to get the horses to come close enough to the dead body for them to connect the cart; those horses want to get as far away from the blood and death as quickly as possible. The men finally get the horses close enough, attach the cart, and the bull is dragged out of the arena.

It was a very graphic spectacle, especially when the bull started dripping blood out of its mouth. Two men came very close to being trampled to death by the bull: One was pinned against the wall and another got flipped over the charging bull's head. I'm very glad I went, though I don't think it's something I'd be in favor of doing much, if at all, in the future.

Here are some photos from the event:

Here is a shot of the outside of the stadium as we're entering.

Here's what the inside of the stadium looks like. This is before the show started. Those two horsemen are there for an opening ceremony of sorts.

A matador with a bull.

Here's the horse-riding matador. One cool thing he had were these sticks with points on the end. What he did was jab them into the bull's back and the point would come off of the stick, stay in the bull's back, and then part of the stick would unwrap and become a flag (that is to say the point that came off was holding the flag rolled up).

And here's a victory shot of the matador. Here you can see the slain bull and the matador showing off. This guy was really good, and he let his first bull live. This one was obviously not so lucky.

My host dad read in the paper the next day that this bullfight was a really good one. One bull lived and lots of awards were given out.

When I got home, I found my family decorating the house for Christmas. I showered and freshened up and then went down to help them. I'll say it was pretty weird putting up Christmas decorations when it felt like summer outside. Over the course of the afternoon, my 4-year-old host niece, Paula, came over with her family. The two of us are buddies. We get along really well and play games together and everything. She helped decorate the tree, which was pretty funny because she hung most of her ornaments in one area of the tree and we had to tell her to spread them out a little and that she could only put one ornament on each branch. After all was said and done, she found some Santa hats in a box so we both put one on and had our picture taken in front of the tree!

Happy December, everybody!
~Joey