I Understand That Something Is Wrong with My Blog

And I'm trying to fix it.  But the first and last programming class I took was C, and that was in 1997.  I know that my photo is now near the bottom of the page instead of at the top. 

Hopefully the problem will take care of itself.

If not, I'll call the experts.

English Exam

Quick Quiz...

1. Which of the following sentences is correct?  And why?
a) We were going to paint the house, but Carlos was sick.
b) We would have painted the house, but Carlos was sick.
c) Both
d) Neither

2. Please explain why different tenses (present perfect versus present perfect continuous) are used in the bolded sections of the following sentences:
a) Since 2000, I have been traveling on my own.
b) Since they met, they have become better friends.

My iPod is Possessed

I have an iPod Touch.  The problem seems to be that the screen moves before I even touch it, when my finger is hovering a few millimeters away.  Maybe I will bring it with me to get exorcized the next time I go to the curandera.

Kilimanjaro

McHale and I climbed our first mountain. It was very difficult. Kilimanjaro is 5896m, it took us five days to climb up and a day and a half to get down. The air is so thin at the top that it almost hurt to breathe (but in my case that may have been due to the constant bouts of bronchitis in college).

In Arusha we found a reputable tour company and booked a 6 day/5 night trip up Kili. Our group consisted of the two of us and a Frenchman named Georges, who was traveling alone for a month, plus a guide, asst guide, cook, and six porters. The first few days were relaxing, about 6 hours of hiking per day, we made friends with other tour groups, including some German journalists and a boxer. One afternoon we walked through a hail storm. When hitting the rocks it made a sound like the clinking of glasses, quite eerily. And it hurt when it pelted against our skin. And it leaked into our tent.

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

On Sunday, like most, we spent the day in Challuabamba.  However, our plan was not to relax, but to work.  Since our wedding will be held there in less than two months, some beautifying needs to be done.  Nothing major, but a coat of paint here and a bunch of flowers there.  I was under the impression that Sunday was going to be just a flower day.  It wasn't.

After telling me that we would not be painting, Carlos decided that he wanted to paint.  There is a small house on the property for the kids to play in that was a bit faded.  We thought it would be a perfect background for photos.  So the first challenge was to choose the paint color.  We must have spent almost an hour in the paint shop because every time we came to a decision, we were told something like, "oh, those colors are for the interior, not exterior," or "sorry, we only sell these by the gallon, not the pint, " or " well, the oil based paints cost three times what the water based paints cost."

Baking Soda Post Script

One thing that I forgot to mention in the previous post was the comment of the stock boy to my shocked reaction to there not being baking soda in the supermarket.  He said to me, "Why don't you just use baking powder?"

Any amateur cook and chemist (or professionals for that matter) knows that they are not interchangeable.  Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, a base.  Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate plus and acid. While you can use baking soda in conjunction with cream of tartar to replicate baking powder, there is nothing that you can take away from baking powder to replicate baking soda. 

Maybe the stock boys weren't awake in their chemistry classes.

However, at a baking shop I did manage to find a 70g bag of baking soda.  I bought it.  But while ringing it up, the women told us that it had to be sold as baking soda, not sodium bicarbonate, or it would be illegal :)

Answer: Drugs

Question:  Why can't you buy baking soda in the supermarket?

I asked this to a stock boy at the supermarket yesterday and he replied it's because it is used to make drugs.  You can only buy it at pharmacies.  Seriously, this is Arm & Hammer we're talking about, not Sudafed.  And here in Ecuador it's a controlled substance. 

Actually, besides at the pharmacy, you can buy it at most the corner shops in dime bags.  They look like this.

At it really does cost 10 cents.

I just want to bake some cookies and now I'm afraid of going on a wanted list.  So all foreigners should note well - not a good wedding gift.

Cute Enough to Eat

This is what my kitchen looked like on Thursday night.

This was the prime suspect.

But not the culprit.  The culprit is actually shown in the first photo.

The mess was a result of the immersion blender versus an ice cube, not the pan de guagua (pronounced wa-wa, which is Quechua and means child).  Actually, I think it's a guagua de pan.  That makes more sense since it means that it is a child made from bread, not bread made from children.  I need to remember that - guagua de pan.

This type of bread is starting to show up in the bakeries.  It is typical eaten here on and just before All Souls Day (aka, Dia de Muertos, Day of the Dead) on November 2nd.

This specific specimen was consumed for its suspected involvement in the creation on the mess shown above, though it would not have survived much longer even if it was not suspected.

Are you a Jew?

No matter where you are in the world, taxi drivers seem to love to chat. After just crossing the border from Malawi to Zambia (on foot) McHale and I needed a ride to Chapata, the closest town, about 20 miles away. One driver approached us and let us know that he can take us there for 40000 kwacha ($8). We agree. As we were loading the bags in the back he paused, looked me up and down, then asked, “Are you a Jew?”

At first I was a bit taken aback by this question because I had never been asked that so abruptly, but I still managed to reply, “Yes, I am.”

The driver was so excited.

The mixture of religion is amazing in Africa. Everyone we met seemed so open about their beliefs and very accepting of others.

In the car we chatted even more. I knew that you were a Jew, he said to me, you look like a Jew. However, he then began to tell me that I should become a Christian. He was a Christian, but not always. He used to be a Muslim. He was very devout. But one day he had gotten bewitched (we heard that alot). He had gotten sick very suddenly. His neck was sore and it felt like something was always pulling his head back. The pain was terrible. When his Christian friends prayed for him, he got better. So he decided to become a Christian.

And I should become a Christian too, he continued. It's very easy. All I would need to do is let Jesus into my heart. But how does one do that? Again, very easy, I would just need to talk to Jesus, and ask him. But I wouldn't know what to say. The driver offered to assist me with that and started to utter, “Oh Jesus, please help my friend...”

Around this time, the car screeched to a sudden halt beside a guy leaning on his car by the side of the road. The driver made a motion for McHale to lower her window (she was in the front, I sat in the back). He then leaned over her a bit and yelled to his friend, “Hey! Have you ever seen a Jew before? I have one in the back!”

The friend slowly shifts his eyes, then his face, from the driver, to McHale, then to me. My window was closed (the road was quite dusty), and he stared at me for a moment like an animal in the cage. The two men then exchanged a few more pleasantries and we continued driving to town.

All this time, McHale and I were desperate to keep a straight face. We were both about to explode with laughter, but we couldn't. We didn't want to be rude to our driver. But we could see in each others eyes that we were hurting from holding this laughter in.

Around this time we were just approaching the town, and the driver said to me, “I have a Bible for you.” I protested. I couldn't take this man's Bible. I claimed that McHale was a good Christian and had one with her and she could let me read hers. He thought about that proposal for a moment, and decided it was acceptable, but only if I promised, as we were exiting the taxi, to let Jesus into my heart.

Things I Learned Yesterday

• Don't put anything in the oven without turning the timer on
• Walking downhill in flip flops is difficult, especially in the cemetery
• No matter how cautious you are, you still ache after the first time back at the gym
• Everyone in Cuenca knows each other
  

Feliz Aniversario

Today is exactly one year since I started taking Spanish lessons. I wouldn't call myself fluent, but I'm getting closer every day.

Also, it happens to be the 5th anniversary of the purchase of my condo. That means only 25 more years left on my mortgage!

Another Thing That You Don't Want Happening in the Middle of the Night

Like most stories, this one starts before the event in focus actually occurs. It this case, it begins in a different country, Argentina. McHale, Tom, and I needed to cross into Bolivia on foot. The border was about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. McHale and I had no problems leaving, but it turned out that Tom hadn't gotten a entry stamp. That meant that he was in the country illegally. Which meant that he couldn't leave without paying a fine. A 50 peso fine (about $17). We had only 22 pesos between the three of us, since we spent down the local currency because we were leaving the country. They didn't have a currency exchange. They didn't accept dollars. And town was so far away.

But we were so close to the border.

McHale and I had to cross the border, enter Bolivia, change money, cross back to Argentina, ransom Tom and his passport, then return to Bolivia. Not a problem, we had plenty of time, like an hour and a half. Or did we? Once in Bolivia we learned about the time change. The border didn't close at 6PM Argentine time, but at 6PM Bolivian time, which was 5PM in Argentina. In half an hour.

But we made it across the border and rushed to the bus station to find a bus to Potosi. No luck. We had missed the bus by minutes (stupid border troubles). So we spent the night in the border town. There was a morning bus to Potosi, but we decided just to take morning bus to Tupiza and spend the day there and take the night bus to Potosi from there.

Tupiza was lovely. We spent a full day hiking. We saw goats.

Night bus to Potosi. It was supposed to leave at 9PM. It left at 10PM. The seats were full, as was the aisle (the luxury of Argentinian buses was a thing of the past). At the first police stop, some more women wanted to get on, but when they tried to squeeze their way on, there was an uproar from the other passengers. Apparently the driver makes extra money for himself by selling extra “tickets.” The women somehow made room for themselves.

All was well until about 2AM when I was woken up with a thud. Then the bus started to tip over. Shit, I thought, we're going to fall off a cliff. It managed to stop at a 45 degree angle. Everyone was yelling to go slowly, as not to upset the balance. We slowly exited the bus. Half of it was in a ditch, partially submerged.

It was the middle of the night, we were in the middle of nowhere, no food, freezing cold, and the bus driver left. He just left (which I have since learned is standard in Ecuador as well - if you are a professional driver who gets in an accident you run away). We were hours from any major town. Rumor was that they didn't have a spare bus to send, so we tried to fix it ourselves. Of course, since I was a gringa who didn't speak Spanish, I had no say in the matter, though I believe I was the only engineer there. We deforested a small area (not that there was much there to begin with) to make a fire to try stay warm.

Once the sun rose, my suggestion to drain the ditch finally worked its way up the ranks and we basically destroyed the road to drain the water. Imagine one pickaxe slowly creating a canal through the compacted dirt road. We tried the push the bus upright (we meaning me and all the able bodied men), but no luck. Around 8AM we got a ride in the back of a truck full of ore going to Potosi with about 10 Argentinian backpackers and a couple old women. It was less than 300km away, but it took over 9 hours. There was as rise of 1km, thus the truck had to go very slow. And we were stopped by mining protesters that had closed the road (which I wasn't used to at the time, but now it just seems like another day Latin America).

There were about a dozen of us in the truck, sitting on our luggage, which was much softer than truck full of rocks. Once in Potosi we went to the bus company to complain. Unfortunately the bus company only refunded 1/3 of the ticket price, despite the fact that we had essentially been left to fend for ourselves. Typical.

But we had made it to Potosi.