Soup of the Day

Welcome once again to another exciting entry of my blog... I'm sure you are all thrilled. Today was super cool. We all skipped Kichua class and took a two hour bus ride into a town called Puyo, which is in the next state over (Pastaza). While there we were able to visit the homes of some of the informants that have come to the field school over the past two weeks. One of them is Estella Doua; she is an expert potter, and has pieces in Ecuador museums and has even been to the U.S. to give seminars and classes on native amazonian pottery. She has been teaching us how to make Mukahas, which are the Kichwa drinking bowls used to drink aswa. I'll come back to aswa in a sec. Anyway, we were able to see her studio in Puyo and meet some of her family. She makes some really amazing pots and figures and the cool thing is how they are made. She mines her own clay, fortifies it herself, forms it into the pot with the coil pot technique, makes a paint brush from her own hair, meticulously paints intricate designs all over the pot with this ridiculously thin brush, fires it herself, and then apples the natural sap that they use for a glaze, then she sells them to make a living. She taught us how to make them too, though mine isn't nearly as cool as hers. The second lady whose house we visited is Luisa Cadena; she was/is our professors principle consultant and friend here in Ecuador. She took us to her chagra, which is a plot of land that she uses to cultivate crops. She took us to two of the ones that she works. At the first, we harvested manioc, which is what is used to make aswa (again, more on that later). Its a tuber plant that grows about six feet tall and you basically just chop down the plant and pull out the tubers. At the second chagra we harvested sugar cane with machetes! What are my two new favorite things? Sugar cane and machetes! If you have never tried real sugar cane, you are missing out. When we got back to the house, she cut it up and gave it to us to chew and I could seriously chew on that stuff all day. Thankfully, she sent us home with all the cane that we had harvested! Now, the moment you have all been waiting for, what the huh is aswa? I'll tell you; it is a drink that is a staple in all Kichwa homes. To make it traditionally a woman would harvest manioc (think stringy potato), peel it, cook it, and then masticate it. Once it was good and masticated they would expectorate it into a jar, cover the jar with a leaf, bury the jar and let it ferment a bit before giving it to guests and family. You serve it by putting water in a mukaha, taking a scoop of the aswa paste/muck in your hand and squeezing the juice into the water. This beverage has a very very low alcohol content (less than cough syrup) and so we were authorized by our professor to try it. Its vile. Simply vile. It tastes like pureed manioc (again, think potato) mixed with plain yogurt, mixed with yeast, mixed with vinegar. It is sick nasty. Fortunately, I sampled the non traditional aswa, which is not chewed, but rather sugar is added to jumpstart the fermentation process. (I had you worried, didn't I?)  All in all, it was an awesome day, with awesome food and great fun. A note on pictures: we have somewhat limited internet access, so pictures will be somewhat sparse for now, but I will try to put some more up.

Happy Happy Birthday!

This Birthday was AWESOME!! For all who don't know, I'm 25 now, quarter of a century, menace to society and searching for an accomplice! Here is a play by play from yesterday, or at least the important and interesting parts. The celebration started with a bus ride into Tena, the nearby town. We very quickly made our way to the Waffles and Ice Cream stand and ate Belgian waffles covered in ice cream (mine was chocolate and coconut) and drizzled with chocolate syrup. While we were eating we noticed this weired guy with a broadcast video camera taping us while we were chowing down. I'm pretty sure that he zoomed in just as I was shoving some waffle in my mouth. We still have no idea why he was taping us, he never talked to us, and we only took pictures and gawked back at him. From there, we pretty much just walked around town buying bootleg movies and candy! Note: South America has really good candy and if any of you find something called a Tango at a Hispanic store up there, just buy it, no questions, just do it and never look back. Movies here are something that I didn't really expect to find down here. They must get tons of bootleg files from Russia, because all of the movies I've bought have Russian subtitles. So, without any theaters, and for about the same price as a redbox, I have bought King Fu Panda 2 (before it was in theaters), Thor, X Men First Class, Robin Hood, and Pirates 4 (the ironic thing is that I thought I would be missing out on the new summer movies). So, after wandering and browsing around Tena and just goofing off in general, we went to this really ritzy restaurant where we all got fillet mignon for less than 8 bucks. It was delicious too; mine was nestled in a bed of penne pasta and drenched in Alfredo Sauce and covered in actual cheese!! That has been one thing that I've really missed, because the stuff down here is just not the same, good, just not the same. That about sums it up. Now that I've basically gone crazy for a day, its time to get down to business and get some work done. I hope my birthday was as good to you as it was to me!

Eaten Alive and Loving It

So, the past few days have been pretty awesome and I feel like I've actually started to accomplish things as a linguist. With my trusty recorder I was able to record some really interesting data in the form of some stories. A lot of these native Kichwa stories have to do with people who permanently transform into plantthis or animals,  mostly because they couldn't cut it as good people. There are three basic laws in Kichwa culture: Don't Steal. Don't Lie. Don't Be Lazy. If a person couldn't follow these in the past, they would decide to turn into a plant or animal that was useful to humans in order to make up for their ineptitude. I was able to record a few of these stories and I'll be analyzing them later for my project. On a more fun note. We went into town yesterday and I bought a hammock!! It was sweet, the guy started at $19 bucks and I talked him down to $8 after some nice haggling in Spanish. I'll be going back for another one and a machete this week.  Those are probably the most exciting things that have happened since my last post. The picture I'm including is a very pretty one, but its for all of you who may think that its just a party down here in the jungle. These are my legs, and they have been the subject of over 300 insect bites since I got here (its only been a week) and this is with bugs spray. Don't worry though, they don't itch too bad, but I am, quite literally getting eaten alive. But in spite of all of that, this is one of the best things I've ever done. Samashun.

From the Banks of the Napo

Wow, I'll tel you what, wow. This is officially one of the coolest things I've ever done. We stayed in Quito for Sunday and left on Monday morning. We were lucky to find a church in walking distance, so we went to the ward and were surprised to find that half the people were American. There was a nursing group, and ROTC group and some church auditing people along with two sets of full time missionaries, two sets of senior missionaries and a member of the mission presidency. One of the girls was alone, so she hung out with us for the rest of the day, and when we went out to eat (cause how else were we going to?) I found some new favorites. I had something called papa rellena (stuffed potato), which is like deep fried mashed potatoes with ground meat, onions, veggies and egg in the middle, it was ridiculously good! New favorite soda: Naranjillo flavored. Naranjillo is a little fruit thats related to the tomato but looks and tastes like a citrus fruit and the soda is like drinking candy. Also, my new all time favorite candy is Tango. Its a chocolate covered cookie sandwich that tastes like vanilla, almond, coconut, graham cracker and happiness, all at once. Anyway, I've spent too much time on food. The trip down to the field school was really long, but we broke it up by visiting some hot springs halfway between Quito and Tena. The water was perfect, and it was super relaxing after spending two and a half hours going through winding mountain roads on a bus. The remaining time was really interesting. The entire time my group and I were kind of geeking out. Our conversations ran the gambit of linguistics, music, geology, cooking, and everything in between. We passed out of the highlands and through the cloud forest and into the rain forest all the while pointing out waterfalls, glacial valleys, cool trees and odd rock formations. The field school itself is beautiful. It is right on the banks of the Napo River (a major tributary of the Amazon). The plants and animals here are amazing (I'll put pictures up later). The groups that is studying here are really cool. We are the only linguists and everyone else are anthropologists. There is a group from Appalachia State and a group of grad students from around the country, and they are all pretty cool and chill. Anyway, this blog is getting long, so... Samashun (Let us end).

Llegado

Woohoo!! I'm finally here! After 24 hours of standing in line, sitting on planes and waiting in airports I am now sitting in a little internet cafe after eating an empanada from a little tienda. The flights were pretty uneventful, but mostly they were long. The interesting things that happened were once we actually got to Quito. Tyler, one of the other students, procured us a "taxi" that in reality was just a random guy's van. We all just ran with it though, and even though he initially took us to the wrong hotel, we eventually got to our destination, and it was cheaper than a taxi and we got a free map of Quito (that we are pretty sure he had gotten for free anyway). The most exciting thing that happened was breakfast. We went to a little cafe that ended up being heavily influenced by European cuisine (they had schnitzl). They had the absolute best honey I've ever had, ever! I don't even know how to describe how good it was, but I had it over a fresh crepe. The only other thing we've done is sleep in our hotel for about 5 hours to recover from sleep deprivation. No jet lag, since there is only an hour difference between here and Salt Lake.  Well, thats all for now.