Category: Bad Stuff

Springtime Web Maintenance

I so rarely check look at my own website when I’m not in Ecuador, that the most common occurrence for the last several years is for me to find it totally broken when I do bother to check on it. So if you notice the face-lift, that’s why things are different. I logged on last night, and lo and behold, the front page simply wouldn’t load.

I chalk it up to laziness on my part in updating. Somebody found a flaw in WordPress and exploited it so that the theme I was running got messed up. I switched themes, and most of the content is back. But it doesn’t look like “me” around here at the moment.

I tell you that to tell you this. Once the school year starts and I return to a normal schedule, my plan is to begin a youth ministry blog, and split my website into two sections. One for my Ecuador writings, and one for my musings on the oddities of working with students and getting a paycheck from Jesus. So that face-lift will continue, but hopefully that’s a reason for me to actually create content here more often. And keep my website updated. And not get hacked. Again.

Keep checking back.

Be Yourself When You’re Uncomfortable

Since the day before the team arrived, I’ve been a little under the weather. I wrote about altitude affecting me by making me tired. But it can also occasionally cause some digestive issues. In 9 years, I’ve never had that problem, but apparently I do this week (EDIT: turns out I actually got an intestinal infection. Awesome!) At any rate, it sucks. And it’s sucking energy out of me, not being able to keep food in my system.

The other fun thing about this situation is that I’ve been up every few hours during the night, so I’m way low on sleep since I’ve been here. I can function when I’m sick. I can function without food. But since my first summer here I’ve known that I just don’t function well when I don’t sleep.

In the States I can pretty easily just decide “I can work from home today.” But when your job is translating and going on home visits and transporting people and paying for food, you can’t really Skype in for that. So my first couple of days with this team have been somewhat uncomfortable. I gave somewhat lethargic orientations at the Basilica and at Plaza San Francisco, and I’ve been doing all I can to take it easy in Argelia Alta (including taking a couple hours off this morning to go to the doctor for the first time ever in Ecuador). I don’t like not feeling like me when I’m with the team. And I thoroughly dislike feeling like I’m less than capable of doing the job that I’m here to do.

But one of our team members said something tonight at debrief that struck me. She was speaking in terms of cultural adjustments, but her advice to herself and to the rest of us was “Be yourself even when you’re uncomfortable.”
Yes, being sick really bites. And as I’ve been getting better I’ve described it as feeling “more like me.” But I get to choose to be me however I feel. And I’m glad that I took that opportunity at a few points. Full of or lacking in energy, I did stick with the team as much as possible, and I do feel like Quito Quest is one of those things that makes me me. And still not at 100%, I can choose to be me. I can choose to find my identity and my outlook in Christ instead of in this sickness and how it has physically made me feel. I’m not saying I’m great at making that choice. But in a new way, I’m aware of my ability to keep making that choice now.

Bus Buddies (or Tuning Out and Tuning In)

This is going to be a long one, but it’ll be worth it to read all the way through. Trust me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It blows my mind that I can go literally weeks without unexpectedly bumping into someone in Elizabeth City, a town of 18,000 people, and yet in the 2,000,000-person city of Quito, I can’t walk down the street without running into multiple people I know. This phenomenon has resulted in being accompanied by friends on every single one of my bus rides for three days straight.

First Miguel rode with me back from Guajaló to my neighborhood, which resulted in another unexpected meeting with Roberto. Then the next morning I got on the Metro instead of my usual Trole adventure, and as I was standing in line, Jorge walked up. That one was definitely a God thing, because he explained to me that on the North-to-South route there is potentially more bus-changing involved than on the reverse trip. I wouldn’t have felt quite so much the master of Ecuadorian public transportation finding myself at the total opposite end of some random route I didn’t know I was on.

At the end of that ride, I walked into the tienda and just behind me was Maria Jose (who had apparently been chasing me… I need to take off my headphones when I get off the bus). I had just been wondering when I’d get to see her, having already run into her brother and sister more than two weeks before, so it was just another bit of amazing timing. And then at the end of that same day, I was thinking it strange that I still hadn’t run into her mom, Maggi. But after hanging out upstairs with Adrian that afternoon, I “happened” to choose the 30 seconds that Maggi was downstairs to leave. Lo and behold, Maggi became my third consecutive Bus Buddy for the week, as she was taking the Ecovia almost as far North as I was.

There are several reasons that it’s fun to have someone to ride the bus with, especially since I take these long rides on a regular basis. Not the least of these reasons is that if you are talking to someone, you are much less likely to get asked to give up your seat (being a young, male, gringo, I’m at the very, very bottom of the pecking order for seats on the bus, regardless of the fact that I’m riding it literally from one end of the city to the other). But more than that, you just get to have some real conversations and find out what’s going on in people’s lives. I thought I was tired the other day until Maggi mentioned she had been off one job just long enough to go home for a bit, but now it was 5:30ish PM and she was heading to her other job at the hospital until 6:00 AM (Oish!).

Now we’re getting to the reason that this post has such a Tolkien-esque title: because it’s almost two separate trains of thought. Just pretend it’s a Family Guy episode, where the second half is always completely unrelated to the first.

Anyway, The time that I’ve spent on the bus/Trole system this week has remnded me a lot of the time I spent on it last year. And I spent a lot of time on it last year. In fact, as I was fond of saying, I spent my life on the Trole. And in one of my meetings with Brad (director of Youth World, and one of my supervisors last year) we were talking about that. He said something that I really took to heart, which was pointing out that I wasn’t exactly driving for my commute to and from the office. I was not, in fact, doing anything other than sitting (or hanging on to the “‘Oh, crap!’ bar,” before I figured out how to get a seat that old ladies wouldn’t take from me1). The point was, especially since the Trole isn’t really book- or laptop-friendly for various reasons, it was (is) a great opportunity to take some quiet time.

“Quiet time” is, of course, a very relative term here. The Trole is never quiet. Aside from the honking and squealy brakes and the recorded voice telling you the next stop (which I now have memorized thanks to hearing it so much), there are people talking, and generally someone selling something or singing. And when I say they are selling something or singing, I don’t mean in an unintrusive way. It’s generally at the top of said someone’s lungs, and prefaced with a long story, and ends with them shoving their way through the way-too-crowded space collecting money. You can’t possibly hold a conversation while this is going on, or even attempt to ignore it without headphones. So even as easily-distracted as I can be, that was why I started taking my iPod on the Trole.

I know I can probably sound a little cynical when I talk about “ignoring” people and “tuning out.” And I certainly don’t want to seem that way, either to the two of you who read my blog anymore, or to the people I’m talking about. But that is an entirely different post, so suffice it to say that it’s on my mind, both as a topic to write about and as a conscious effort in my life. So back to the “quiet” time.

After the multiple times I’ve been pick-pocketed and held up in Quito, taking my iPod on the Trole is probably slightly stupid. But I figure if I’m actually listening to it, I’ll know if someone messes with it when I suddenly go from listening to “The Sound of Silence” to the literal sound of silence. So I throw on some Hillsong or Jeremy Camp, cram my earbuds in to the point that I’ll have no sense of hearing by my 32nd Birthday (I picked a number more random than 30 so people wouldn’t think I was implying that that’s old), and bask in the lack of overly highly-pitched sales pitches.

Sometimes it’s still pretty hard to shut things out. There might be somebody leaning on me (we’ll come back to this example momentarily), or making out directly in front of me (and I do mean directly, and not far enough away), or I might see something out the window that sends my A.D.D. mind in another direction, or I might just get too caught up I the words to the song that’s damaging my eardrums so. But the goal is to tune all of that out. Because as Quito Quest reminds me, I don’t ever want to waste a day when I can be growing or just worshipping. And as Mrs. Dwan taught me, having God time is less about taking the time you have, but about intentionally making time and setting that aside just for Him. Because there are tons of other things Brad could have suggested I do in all that commute time. And sure, God doesn’t function on my schedule. But when was the last time I made time for something other than a song and a half of Taylor Swift between Winfield and Ehringhaus Street back in Elizabeth City? I can’t think about ridiculously long bus rides now without having the positive thought of “Hey… God time” now, and that is a great thing.

So I’ll round this one out with a return to the “Bus Buddies” subject and the aforementioned potential somebody leaning on me.

I’ve been super unlucky with the Trole rides since my string of bus buddies that I actually know ran out on Thursday. I accidentally hit on a girl on the Trole today (Si estás leyendo esto en Español por Google Chrome o algo así, el frase “hit on” en Inglés significa “coquetear,” o “flirtear,” no “golpear”). But still much worse than that was the guy who sat down next to me yesterday afternoon.

This guy took the seat next to me when its previous occupant got off the Trole. The previous occupant was a rather large woman with a baby. I don’t know how, but this single old man took up literally twice as much space as two people, one of whom was twice as wide as him. I guess it’s just one more way that the Trole is not real life. Conventional physics do not apply. So aside from the fact that this guy was leaning on me and had no “bubble” whatsoever, he had a briefcase of sorts with him, which he felt the need to open. This necessitated throwing his elbows out to either side. The side I cared about, obviously, was the side that meant his right elbow was basically up my left nostril. And my right ear was already up against the window, so it’s not like I could have done anything to rectify the situation short of saying something to him.

Now, something that I learned from my dad (despite my mom’s best efforts) is that you never ever ever ever ever complain to someone, no matter how obnoxious they are or how uncomfortable they are making you. And I also recognized the war going on in my heart and my head between his culture and mine. My culture has large personal bubbles his culture has very small bubbles. In his particular case, no bubble. Now the fact that he was old could have pushed me either way. Because I think you should just be nice and respectful to old people. However, you know how some old people are just cute? This guy… Not so much. The words that come to mind were more like “chapped” and “oozing.” (Aren’t you glad you’re still reading at this point?) So while agedness was pushing me not to say anything to him, gnarliness was pushing me to say something. Gnarliness won out, but it won out in the sense that I didn’t say anything for fear of his potentially gnarly reaction. But at this point I was quite simply seething and I had to do something.

So I started praying. And it might have been the most selfish prayer of my life. Rather than asking for patience or some other virtue that would mean I had to continue putting up with this situation while I learned that patience, I asked God to impart the knowledge directly into this man’s brain that gringos have bubbles and he was all up in mine. I truly believe that God was listening and answering, because a few seconds later, oozey geezer man put away his briefcase, and fell asleep. On me.

So God taught me some patience after all. And fear. Because the old man got really still for a while. And I started thinking, “What if this guy dies right here on the Trole… on me?!” It may sound like a leap of logic, but you didn’t see this guy. So there I am frantically praying that God’s sense of humor not be as sick as those of a couple members of my family, and scanning this guy for any movement at all. His fingers twitched a couple times, but that just made me worry that these motions were really tiny death throes. Finally, as it was becoming more and more likely that I’d be the one having a heart attack or something, he grunted and titled his head to the other side, and from there on out he’d open one eye and check our location out the window every time the Trole stopped, so at least I knew he was alive up to the point I had to climb over him to get off at La “Y.”

All that to say, he became my most recent Trole Buddy to encourage my relationship with God. And extra 25 cents or not, I’m sticking to the Ecovia route from now on.

 

 

1You try properly punctuating that parenthetical sentence on an iPad!

Laughing and Crying

Part of the culture of Youth World is transition. There are always people coming and going, but lately it seems like there’s just a lot of going. Quito Quest officially ended yesterday afternoon. The last of the summer teams has been gone since last week, and our summer hosts started disappearing yesterday. Even knowing the calendar dates and all of their flight schedules doesn’t really help that to sink in, though, especially with the range of emotions and activities that have taken place over the last 48 hours.

Saturday evening, after a day of games, debriefing, encouragement, and a brief frightening moment when we thought we had nowhere to sleep, we went to the famous (for good reason) hot pools in Papallacta, Ecuador. For three hours, we just got to relax and hang out in a way that just doesn’t happen very often in the craziness that is Quito Quest, and in stark contrast to the hectic schedule after we returned to Quito. We had just over two hours to prepare for our Youth World Picnic with all of our in-country staff (a strangely low number right now) and groups from some of our partner ministry sites.

I planned on making a dessert for the picnic, but on the way I to pick up some ingredients, I ran into Juan Miguel, Jose Luis, Alejandro and Alejandro, four of the guys from Casa G. One of the things that I’ve learned here is that you don’t just wave to someone you know from across the street as you continue along your merry way. You stop and talk to them, no matter where you’re going, what you’re doing, or how late you are. Especially the Casa G boys. They were trying to get into the girls’ house, but apparently nobody was home. Fortunately, nobody in the entire building was home either, because instead of giving up and going home, they were just hanging around buzzing every doorbell at the gate and hollering at the building. I stopped and hung out with them for a while, and discovered they thought the picnic was an hour earlier than it actually was. They were bored and starving, so I took them to McDonald’s. For those of you who don’t know these guys, you can’t imagine just how scary and hilarious that statement should be.

Rene Bryans told me one time how many funny looks she gets driving the guys around. People stop and stare as if to say “Why does that gringa have 10 black boys with her, yelling and hanging out of her SUV?” I’m at least around the same age as some of the guys, and I’m a guy, but still, being a gringo with a pretty feo accent, we did get some strange glances. Nevertheless, it was pretty great to hang out with the guys, most of whom I haven’t seen much of this summer since teams started showing up. We talked about guitars and language and how things are different here than in the U.S. Alejandro M. sang Miley Cyrus songs and asked me how to say phrases in English (a couple of which I refused to tell him for fear he’d say them to some unsuspecting teenage girl on a team). It also always impresses me that these guys are completely ridiculous 90% of the time, but will jump at any opportunity to share their faith with the people around them, and I love listening to these guys pray1.

Juan Miguel, Alejandro, and I eventually headed back up the hill to hang out at my house and help watch the girls finish making their dessert their before heading up to set up and welcome people at the Picnic, which Quito Quest was hosting. It was really fun to hang out and say hi to everyone as they showed up: the Short-Term department staff that I know really well, the El Refugio interns that I’ve maybe spent a total 20 minutes with all summer, friends from Carmen Bajo and Emaús. It was also incredibly weird knowing that as much as this was a celebration of everything that God has accomplished in and through all these people this summer, it was also a good-bye to many of them, including me.

I’ve said a lot of times this week that I’m really tired of despedidas2, and this new round would already have done me in if I hadn’t had to talk. We said farewell to the El Refugio interns, most of whom are heading out at the end of the month, and then to Quito Quest summer staff, who for the most part only had hours left in the country. Then it was my turn, and my brain wasn’t functioning well enough for me to even express my plans and prayer requests in English, so I have no idea how Cameron managed to make in coherent as she translated to Spanish. We broke up and prayed in groups for the QQ staff afterward, and then the party was over. All of my friends from ministry sites came over and hugged and talked to me before they left, and I managed to stay emotionally shut off, fake smiling and laughing until Queña from Carmen Bajo came and gave me a hug. She whispered her good-bye and a prayer in my ear, and something about that made me realize “Wow… this is done…” And even though I knew it already, it really sunk in right then that I wouldn’t be seeing any of this crew for a while. I was really glad that I did get a chance to talk and say goodbye to her and Rosa and Rocio and Rueben and Esperanza and everyone else, but I’m choked up even writing this just thinking about the past year almost that I’ve gotten to spend with them (and knowing that I’ll say my real goodbyes at Emaús this Wednesday and Sunday as well).

I was glad to have a few minutes to pull myself together after that, but then we headed over to Christy’s house to spend some final official Quito Quest time together and get our traditional QQ team photo, which turns out to be super-cool this year: Jose Manuel3 from Carmen Bajo made all of the picture frames for us (and if there’s one footnote out of this you want to read, it’s that one). Definitely a cool touch. There were some really funny moments, especially Rachel’s downhill string of comments starting when she took until 3/4 of the way through passing them out to realize that all the gifts were the same. We watched a couple of episodes of Friends (the oddly super-popular TV show in Ecuador) and hung out with each other until the chiva arrived.4

A chiva is an Ecuadorian party bus that you can rent, and which drives all over the city and plays music at decibel levels that would warrant a citation for disturbing the peace in the US. We piled in, and although there were seconds where you would think “how bipolar I’ve been today…”, we had an absolute blast singing, dancing, blowing whistles, drinking canelazo4, and generally being total high-profile gringos for our last ridiculous night together.

When we finally made it home, we were totally exhausted, which didn’t stop some of us from staying up several more hours, watching movies and talking, until one by one the guys had all crashed. This morning when I woke up, three more of my friends were already on airplanes heading home, and the rest of today has been a smaller-scale version of the same thing: shopping, hanging out, laughing, talking, hugging, and airport runs. I’ve gotten to talk to some friends who are in the States and in the jungle, and tried to figure out what I’m supposed to be feeling as I enjoy the little time I have left with each of my friends here and mourn each of their departures.

The culture that we’ve developed here necessitates all these despedidas. And again, I’m really really ridiculously tired of them. But, like the friend I jokingly hollered at least night to “pick an emotion!”, I’m thankful for the opportunity to celebrate each one of the friendships that I’ve gained here, and I’m thankful for each of those people having been and continuing to be a part of and an impact on my life.

1Especially with Spanglish phrases like “Thanks for Danny, porque tuvimos full hambre.”
2Despedida is a Spanish word for “goodbye” or “farewell” or “goodbye/farewell party”. It’s a tradition at Youth World to do a despedida for anyone at the end of their time with our team, to celebrate them, to hear a little bit about what’s next, and to pray for that person.
3Jose Manuel is an awesome friend and a part of the community in Carmen Bajo. He has been confined to a wheelchair for a number of years now, and has to do all his work from home. He is an incredibly gifted carpenter, and makes beautiful and intricate wooden doors, among other things. I was really glad to know that our frames had his personal touch and that Quito Quest was able to support his work. Ours also have the distinction of being the first picture frames he has ever built.
4I stuck with the non-alcoholic version.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

Tolerance, the First Amendment, and Islam

I really try to keep my blog from being political in any way. But there are some things that just piss me off. One of them is Newt Gingrich.

Today, Gingrich became the latest in a line of politicians to denounce a proposed Mosque to be built near the World Trade Center site1. For some reason, it offends these guys that a Mosque will be that close to a place that was destroyed by terrorists who happen to (theoretically) share the same religion, and even then, it only offends them because they’re afraid of something different. Now I know this is stretching my point a little bit, but does anyone care how close the closest Catholic church is to the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Timothy McVeigh always claimed to have held onto the “core beliefs” of Catholicism2. It’s ridiculous and idiotic how much people fear and hate people who are simply different, and it’s pathetic that we let the politicians who represent us express that idiocy out loud.

As quoted on nydailynews.com, the former Speaker of the House said “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”1 I’m just wondering what a cultural center and house of worship is doing to destroy our civilization. Ever heard of the First Amendment, Newt? It seems to me like freedom of religion is a pretty big part of our civilization.

New York state Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino even said he would use imminent domain to stop the building from going up. Now, come on! Imminent domain is a scary enough concept without being used to blatantly stop someone from expressing their religion.

About.com has compiled a list of at least 59 victims of the September 11th attacks who were Muslims3. One man, Salman Hamdani, was an EMT whose remains were discovered next to his medical bag. This guy went into this situation trying to save other people’s lives. 59 out of 2976 is nearly 2% of all victims of the attack, which is pretty representative of the US as a whole. The upper estimate of the number of Muslims in America is about 2.2% of the population4. Muslims suffered losses on September 11th just like the rest of the country. Why should they be disallowed to worship in a particular place because of something a group of extremists did?
I’ll leave you with my thoughts on a Sarah Palin quote in the same article, obtained from her Twitter account: “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts,” she wrote. “Pls reject it in interest of healing.”1

How about in the “interest of healing,” we stop hating people by association?

 

 

 

 

1Source: New York Daily News article Newt Gingrich comes out against planned Cordoba House mosque near Ground Zero.
2Source: Timothy McVeigh.
3Source: Muslim Victims of September 11th Attack.
4Calculated by Danny based on the Muslim population statistic from this article and the total population statistic from this one.

Virus

For those of you who actually read my blog here on www.dannypeck.net, I have a virus. Most of you are probably already aware of this due to the unfortunate side effect of being redirected to some adsite. I’m in the process of fixing it, but I have the odd problem of having TOO good an anti-virus software, and I actually am unable to see the effects of the virus myself.

For the rest of you, you should still be able to use my RSS feed without any problems. Link below, and I’ll be sure to post a “Virus Fixed” post when that statement becomes accurate.

http://www.dannypeck.net/?feed=rss2

Christmas Party to Remember

Tuesday, we had our Youth World Christmas party, a day that I won’t soon forget. I think I must have eaten something sketchy on Monday night, because I felt slightly strange most of yesterday morning, but not bad enough not to work. After lunch, though, Cameron told me I was looking pretty pale, which I’ve learned is a sure sign I’m about to lose whatever food I’ve got in me. Cam drove me home and I actually did get sick, but then slept it off and felt pretty good by 4:15 when I needed to head down the hill to the office for the party. I figured I’d be fine.

Turns out the Christmas party was an “Amazing Race” that split us up into teams and sent us out to see who could make it to the “Pit Stop” first. My team was Casey, Phil Payne, Ivet, Jorge, Kyra and Beth. We were sent out from the YW office, all around Parque Carolina, and then finally to Plaza Foch in the Mariscal. We rode bikes, peeled potatoes, bought Christmas ornaments, and rented paddle boats. I was in a paddle boat with Ivet and Kyra and we’d made it almost all the way around the lake when we realized Jorge had gotten stuck in a boat by himself, so I jumped ship and helped him paddle back around the the lake. This definitely helped us pull out ahead, but twice around the lake was not a good idea for my health.

We finally completed all our tasks, and made it to the restaurant that was our end-point, meeting Brad and Sandi and discovering that we had won. I’m not sure if it just took that long for sickness plus ridiculous amounts of exercise to catch up to me, or if my body was like “Oh, he’s relaxing now, I can finally freak out.” But I began to realize as we hung out, waiting for the other teams to show up, that I couldn’t relax my arms.

Before I knew it, my hands were clenched into fists that I couldn’t release, and my upper legs and forearms were starting to tense up too. Dave Gardeen came over to sit down next to me, and I told him “Go get Casey now.” I’m really thankful that Casey had been on my team so that he was finished at the same time as me. Before he moved to Ecuador to work with Casa Gabriel, Casey was a physical therapist. I truly think I would have had to go to the hospital if Casey hadn’t been there, realizing that I was dehydrated and knowing where to put pressure and what to have me consume to get my muscles to relax and blow flow going back through my arms.

Now, I explained all that concisely in one paragraph, not for lack of description, but that I simply would rather not relive the experience. On a scale of 1-10 from least to worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, it was easily a 9 if not a 10. I threw up a significant amount, and Matt took me home (as in, to his home, so he and Marlo could keep an eye on me).

I have eaten a lot of plain food yesterday and today, relaxed and recovered at the Jensens’ house under Marlo’s supervision, and got to go to the regular Youth World meeting this afternoon. At which I was scheduled to lead worship with Brad. So I got to be in front of all those people who saw me in a pretty embarrassing state two nights ago. I decided to just embrace it, so as I got everyone’s attention before we started to play and sing, I made reference to the fact that I tried to die at the Christmas party, but I was wearing my winning-team-Santa-hat, so it must have been worth it. Mary Scholl shouted out in her best mom voice “And what did you learn?”

To which I responded, “Not to try to keep up with Jorge.”

Power

I just realized I haven’t mentioned the current electricity situation in Ecuador on my blog. My apologies.

We’re having rolling blackouts right now because Ecuador is simply running low on electricity. All the power here is hydroelectric, so because of the recent lack of rain (though the President’s propaganda machine is blaming it on all the past regimes) this is a measure to conserve energy and not totally use up what we have.

It’s a little obnoxious because a big chunk of the time that I have office hours built into my schedule, there’s not power here. My house is in the same sector as the office, so the electricity is always out in both places at once. This requires a lot of thinking ahead, particularly because my job involves writing (which I do on a computer, which needs power) and web updates, which involves more writing and communication (e-mail, thus computer, thus power). For instance, today I had a Quito Quest meeting at 9am, which ran past 11:00am, when the power was scheduled to go out today. That meant making sure my computer was charged, all my e-mails were sent, and everything I needed to work on was downloaded already. I then proceeded to go home, take a shower, and go to Supermaxi (grocery store) and lunch while the power was out, and worked on writing an article that didn’t require internet access to complete.

I won’t lie and tell you I haven’t complained a little bit about this, especially since there are days when I’m working at the Youth World office in the North with no power, then return to Lourdes’ house in the South just in time for the power to go out for three hours there. But really, I could certainly have it worse. Although it makes me even more behind on my blogging, it does remind me to be social and not spend my entire life behind a screen. It is a little funny though, when I get voice mail messages from home making sure I’m still alive.

Some vague updates on my life: I’m working on finally finally getting my completed Casa G article into a publishable format with some pictures and other fun stuff, and running with a new theme on my La Red article so that the writing portion of that can be finished this week as well. Tomorrow (Wednesday) my friend John Andrew (who has been working with International Teams in Guayaquil) will be coming up to Quito to hang out for a while, Thursday is Thanksgiving (obviously) so all of the Youth World crew that are in town will be celebrating at Laura’s house, then finally on Saturday the Jensen family and us three interns ‘s will be heading to Mindo for a short retreat. Hopefully that will mean lots and lots to write about, and that I will have some time to actually do that and post it.

Wallet

People ask me all the time if it’s dangerous in Ecuador. There are definitely some rules to follow here, especially if you’re a gringo, and like all major cities, there is some violent crime. But the big thing to worry about here on a daily basis is theft. And what an experience I had with that today.

The cheapest form of transportation in Quito is the Quito trolleybus system, a.k.a. El Trole. I walk a few blocks downhill from home each day, then across Av. America, one of the major streets, and go a few more blocks past HCJB and Alliance Academy to Parada La “Y” (pronounced “La Yay”), and hop on the Trole there. It’s five stops (or roughly 2.75 kilometers) South from La “Y” to Colón in the Mariscal neighborhood and then another few blocks walk to get to language school each morning. And at 8:30ish in the morning, it’s usually not to bad a ride.

Coming back on the Trole, though, tends to be a little more intense. At lunchtime when I finish with class, the Trole is packed. If you think you’ve been in a crowded area before, you have no idea. When the doors open, people theoretically use the door on their right, so the people exiting don’t run into the people entering. During peak times though, people are usually crammed up against the doors anyway, and are trying to move further into the Trole if they have a few more stops to go, and people entering and exiting the car are trying to squeeze past in any way they can. You have to be pretty daring sometimes, especially in getting on (see my football example from the previous post). The area closest to the doors becomes a flash mosh pit at every stop, and the area further inside the car becomes this resolutely unmoving wall of bodies.

I told you that to tell you this.

Pickpockets here are good. A girl on one of the teams I hosted last summer had a large amount of money stolen out of her bra (we tell teams to distribute their cash all over their person) and she didn’t even know it until she went to pay for something. And that was at the market, which is crowded, but nothing compared to the Trole. I had even specifically moved my wallet from my back pocket to my front pocket so I could feel it against my leg and could keep a hand on it. Didn’t work.

The problem with trying to hold onto things on the Trole is that you simply spend too much time holding on to the Trole so as not to slam into people every time it starts or stops, which is even more frequently than when it reaches a station, despite the (theoretically) Trole-only lanes on the highway. I realized my wallet was gone even while I was still on the Trole, somewhere between Mariana de Jesús and Florón, so roughly halfway home. When I got out at La “Y”, I dug through all my pockets anyway, just to be sure. It was gone.

Fortunately, there was a grand total of $0.00 in it at the time. Add that to the fact that credit and debit cards are significantly harder to use here than in the States, and the fact that I trucked home to call the bank, and all I lost was a really nice wallet given to me by a friend.

In all honesty, I was really mad at first. I was angry at whoever stole my wallet. I was angry that I didn’t just balance myself without hanging onto the rail in the Trole so as to keep better hold of my wallet. But while it was kind of a hassle this afternoon, it’s really not that bad. Thanks to my Skype account, I called the bank from my computer as soon as I got back to the apartment. Thanks to my trick memory for numbers, I have a new license and a new bank card on the way. Thanks to the fact that I follow the rules and my own advise that I gave to teams all last summer, I didn’t have extra cash on me (would have been a different story if they’d got it before class, though) and I left my PayPal card at home, so I still have access to my money even here in Ecuador while my new cards are en route, even if it is three steps to get it out now instead of one.

Tonight, I’m just thankful that it wasn’t a bigger hassle the way it could have been. And I’m saddened for the people who feel like they have to steal to get by. I spent a lot of prayer time this afternoon asking God to forgive, enlighten, and provide for (in other ways than gringos on Troles) the person who stole my wallet, and I hope you will as well.

Seriously? Again?

I just want to announce that I’m an idiot. I did one of those not-who-I-thought-it-was things again.

One of my friends just got on facebook. I put his name in the seach and found him. The first one that came up said this guy was friends with 4 of my friends. So I added him. Then, upon further consideration, I clicked on the “4 friends” link. It was 4 people from Greensboro who do not know this person in Elizabeth City. They just know some guy with the same name at a school with 14,000 people.

You can’t cancel a friend request, so I was freaking out about how this guy was going to wonder who I was and send me inquisitive wall posts.

I just blocked him.