itchin' for an update?

I am currently in Glasgow, Scotland. About 6 hours in the future of all you central timers, in a place where there is no daylight savings, but boy do they save daylight. The further I get into winter, the shorter the day will get... to a point that the sun will be setting at like 3pm or something.

This is a very different experience from Ecuador so far. In Ecuador I felt like I was exploring another world and discovering it on my own terms and for my own reasons. Here I have my little dorm room in a university that is full of beligerantly drunk "freshers" who play bagpipes at 3 in the morning. Ok so in hindsight that was pretty cool, but it is still very familiar in a very foreign way.

The City Center is a step off of campus and is full of shops and cafes. Signs like Starbucks and Subway grace the fronts of ancient, pollution stained, gargoyled buildings along with other trendy shops. Glasgow was an industrial city and not a tourist destination. And for this I am thankful. while I did take a double-decker open top tour around the city, Glasgow is not nearly as touristy as Edinburgh where there is a kilt shop on every corner (so I hear).

I have wondered why the international students stick together on WUs campus, and now I have an idea why. So far my roommates are international and we keep going to international student functions. I have encountered many a Scot, but not in the socially intimate way of a pub or what have you. So thus I went to the club fair. I signed up for SUDS the Strathclyde University Dance Society, the Strathclyde Fusion the radio station (catch my show mondays at 4pm) and the mountaineering club all for the sake of meeting Scots, who thus far have been exceptionally warm and friendly.

I am also looking for work and have targeted a small cafe close to campus called the Tinder Box which I will apply at tomorrow hopefully.

So here I am setting up my old life in a new town. But to get over how similar the lifestyle here his, I have to realize that this European tradition is where our country came from. As a white person in the US I have often wanted the cultural and traditional ties that so many people of color have. I am a mutt. There is German, Scotch Irish, English and French in me, but do I feel any tie, whatsoever, to any of these countries? Absolutely not. A white mutt.

But here people have traditions and cultures. Not that every person in every country in Europe is pure whatever, but there is still that national pride, personality and ancient history that keeps everyone united. So in a way, here I am discovering my ancestors and a piece of what could have been my culture in another universe.

Just my thoughts so far. Class starts tomorrow. Might travel to Edinburgh this weekend.
Cheers!
Madeline

Vocab:
Toilets- Bathroom
Timetable- Schedule
Brolly- Umbrella

tear gas

So the other day I was studying in my room, and all of the sudden I felt terrible, and I didn't know why. But it turns out, that tear glass was flooding in the windows because they were using it on high schoolers who were protesting across the street. My whole family got rags and put them over our mouths. It was kind of fun.

Second Collegian Column

Mindo is a small town in the cloudforest. It’s small enough that two churches and one school serve the entire population, and that naked children play up and down their porches. Yet, on the main street, there are seven pizza restaurants and three internet cafés. There seem to be enough beds for rent to host the whole town once over.

This is because Mindo has the mixed fortune to be the closest cloudforest town to Quito, the capital of Ecuador and the point of arrival for nearly all international flights.

Though the town is relatively close to Quito, it feels a world apart. Quito lies in a high, dry valley between two mountain ranges. But Mindo is near tropical, with tree frogs and large spindly bugs, giant ferns and wetness all over the place.

Tourism has taken hold in Mindo, and it caters to the aspiring Indiana Jones in us norteamericanos. As you walk out of the town, hostels lining the gravel track pump out ambient jungle noises à la Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise. Thatch-roofed bamboo huts serve up fruit smoothies, and you can buy fresh-roasted, fair trade robusto coffee—a rarity in a country that drinks mostly Nescafé. If you’re feeling more adventurous, you can zip on cables over the forest, or innertube the Río Nambillo.

It’s amazing how Ecuador presents itself to you, in the manner of an overworked policeman trying to direct attention away from a particularly gruesome car wreck. The country knows what you think you want, and what you expect, and it’s ready to give you that. An uninquisitive visitor gets caught in this whirlpool of the Ecuadorian façade, this sweetly, faintly familiar fragrance, and lulls you to sleep, gently now like chloroform, soon you’ll be back at the airport going home.

The real Ecuador, a more flawed and perfected Ecuador, is waiting, skating away and out of sight when you blunder too closely, like a family of foxes protective of its young. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of the last particles of dust falling to the ground. These moments taint the projection, the part you’re allowed to see. I keep looking for ways inside, but I know it can’t happen. I’d need years, and a command of Spanish that’s far beyond me, to get beyond the graffito I saw today: “Fuera Yankees de América Latina.”

So I settle for the glimpses: A churchyard after services, crowded with people greeting each other and smiling; night games of pick-up volleyball with the bleachers packed; the man I saw in Mindo driving around in his canvas-topped pickup, preaching the love of Jesucristo through a microphone and a loudspeaker; Quiteño busdrivers on strike, slapping each other jovially and grinning as their machines idle; a little girl smiling at me through the window of a Chinese restaurant, which they call “Chifa” here. From behind each and every feint escapes the irrepressibility of Ecuador.

so uhh...were in cuzco.

Mindo, Ecuador

Well, we're staying in a town in the cloudforest called Mindo, in a hostel called Bambú. They call it that because of all the bamboo around. When it got dark, Travis made a fire with it, which burned very quickly, needing more bamboo often. I've never camped in a louder place; we were beside the Río Mindo, and there were many many noisemaking bugs. In spite of this, we slept quite well. I think it was the washing-machine effect, where constant noise becomes soothing.

Hello, Quito!

Well, we ah heah. Just thought I´d let yáll know.

Travis and Ming’s Journal

Read their first post, about getting lost in Quito, here. I have to say, I think it’s my guidebook that got them lost. I think future posts will appear at the same URL.

"Taking time off and heading abroad"

BY BRIAN GREGGS!

This semester I will not be at Willamette. Instead I will be traveling through South America for three months with five Willamette students and one student from Knox College. When people ask me why I'm going, I get uneasy, because I start to think of all the things I hope for, but don't dare talk about.
What would I like is to be able to state my purpose and intentions nobly, rather than to blanch at this embarrassing cataract of malformed and dubious longings and aspirations that swells up occasionally.
Some of these are hopes for myself: Maybe I'll gain a new perspective. Maybe I'll get in shape again. (Again?) Maybe I'll learn Spanish (unlikely). Maybe I'll learn Kichwa (much less likely). Maybe I'll turn into a man! Oh god...
But even worse are my expectations for the land and the people, the ignoble byproducts of a life of media saturation. These expectations are an unholy gumbo of "The Three Caballeros," "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," "Romancing the Stone," sundry Wikipedia entries, Tintin and more Disney comic book adventure stories that I care to count.
I'm looking forward to seeing cute little gauchitos and cannibals with sharp teeth and glistening yellow eyes. Perhaps a lost cache of molded Incan gold. Has El Dorado been discovered?
Enough of all this foolishness! Of course I know the world isn't really like that. Maybe that's why I'm going... because I don't know what it's like? Anyway. In subsequent op-eds (which hopefully won't be so heavy) I'll report on our own South American adventures, as we make our way south from Quito to Santiago, and attempt to fix some meaning to this trip beyond that of a vacation.

Dream...

So I just had to share this with y all because its funny. So on the last farm I was dreaming alot, every night and I had one with you in it Mads. So you came skiing with me and my parents at some downhill resort, which is weird in itself because we only crosscountry ski. Anywho, I turn around to see how mads is doing and she´s completely naked! Then I turn around again and the guy next to me doesnt have a shirt on. That was all.

PS I´m in Cusco now after about 15 hours of travel hell. I ate something bad in Mexico city and was pretty much running to the lavatory every 20 min.

Natalia and I are back in Salem until Saturday visiting everyone before we head off on our great South American adventure. So far it has been a blast -- meeting Meghan's new cat, Whiskey, and having dinner every night at Brett and Evan's. Last night we ended up eating after 10pm because the pasta and green beans had to share the boys' one big pot. Delicious! Followed it up with some Boggle -- we are all getting very proficient. It's making me very excited for spring semester! OH, and Brian's article in the Collegian was fantastic -- just a teaser, but the (extremely awesome) phrase "unholy gumbo" makes an appearance.

Brian, maybe to save me the trouble of typing it up on the blog for everyone to read, perhaps you could copy & paste it instead?