¿Quieres ir al doctor homeopático o gastronómico?

If you speak Spanish and are wondering why I ended up in a situation where I was asked whether I’d like to go to a homeopathic doctor or a gastronomic (regular typed) doctor, well that’s another, not quite so funny story. You see, I’ve predominately blogged about my funny or interesting experience, but things are not perfect. I have a sort of “coming clean” blog coming about some of the challenges of studying abroad so as not to deceive anyone, but for now I’m going to continue to blog about my weird and great experiences. So alas, let’s begin with me being asked about which doctor I would rather go to.

When Brianne’s host mom (whose family I stayed with for a few days) asked me which I’d prefer, I thought for a minute and decided on the homeopathic doctor. I figured it would be a little more natural and a little less weird for me. Right before I left, Brianne, who had seen this doctor in the past, came in to the room I was staying in to explain what I needed to bring and then as I was leaving she said “oh yeah! He sometimes does a little acupuncture – just so you know.” I didn’t think much of that because I figured Brianne and my situations were probably pretty different and maybe the doctor had asked her and decided it was the best way to go about treating her.

Anyway, I got into the car with Brianne’s mom and tried not to cry out of gratitude as we speed towards his office. Well, in theory it was an office. In reality, I think it was a house converted into a doctor’s space. He greeted me, asked a few basic questions, and then asked me to lie down on his doctor’s table. This is all in Spanish, of course, and while my Spanish has improved a ton whilst being here, I was pretty frazzled and I don’t know doctor speak all that well. Eventually, I was lying on the table and he asked me to take off my shirt. Or, at least that’s what I thought he said. My hesitation must have been evident because he asked me again. Since Brianne’s host mom was in the room with us, I tried not to think about it too much as I stripped down to my bra and then also unbuttoned my pants per his request. I was biting my smile at this point, because I couldn’t help but enjoy the ridiculousness of what was going on, but I also didn’t want to look like a crazy person grinning as a doctor examined my bare belly. For anyone that knows me – taking off any clothes is not a forte of mine, so my grin was also simply uncomfortable embarrassment. Alas.

He poked and prodded around, eventually determining what the issue was. I was looking at the ceiling because oh my goodness I am not wearing a shirt and my pants are unbuttoned in front of a stranger?? How awkward. So when, at one point, there was suddenly something sharp poking into my stomach, I was a bit surprised. Soon afterwards another needle typed feeling thing was stuck into another part of my stomach. At this point, I wanted to know what was going on so I peered down only to see two thin needles sticking out of my skin. The acupuncture had begun. This was a first for me and I found it extremely strange to see needles sticking out of my body, especially as he added more to my stomach, feet, and hands, so I looked back up and hoped that it wouldn’t be like that SNL skit where Kristen Wiig and Aidy Bryant try to do acupuncture and end up with the patient spurting blood everywhere. As I am alive and typing this, rest assured that no SNL repeat occurred.

After leaving the needles sticking out of me, the doctor messed around with my ears for a little while so I assumed he was putting more needles there. Finally, he got some very hot scented object and began hovering it directly over my stomach. This was uncomfortable. It also smelled suspiciously of something I often smell at Pitzer, but can’t quite put my finger on what it is. After my belly was sufficiently scorched and the needles in my belly were removed, he asked me to flip over. Keep in mind, I’m still convinced that there are at least six needles poking out of each ear and I wasn’t too keen on pressed them farther into my skull by lying with my head on the side. However, the doctor was waiting so I flipped myself but then kept my chin on the pillow rather than one said of my head. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Finally the doctor came up to my head and forcibly made me choose a side of my head to lean on. Surprisingly, there were no needles there. This was comforting in that I knew nothing would end up spearing the inner working of my head, but also confusing because what had he done to my ears??? After more needles pierced my back and the Pitzer smelling hot stick had sufficiently covered my back, the doctor told me I was good to get up and get my clothes back on and such.

 

He explained to me and Brianne’s host mom what was going on and what I needed to do. This included not eating milk, yogurt, chocolate, or costal fruits (yeah, weird I know) for a week nor running. NO CHOCOLATE FOR A WEEK??? Was pretty much all I could think until he pulled out two small squeeze bottles, each with a psychedelic print on the side and was clearly explaining to me that these would be my natural medicine that I needed flip them over, hit them seven times and then drink 20 drops every morning and night until they ran out. I’ve included a picture, Please enjoy the professional and totally legitimate feel you get from looking at them. Yes I still take them every day twice a day. No I did not go the whole week without chocolate (although to be fair we all went to Mindo last weekend [two days after my appointment] and Mindo is known for it’s chocolate tours, so I couldn’t just not do that). I did manage to go the rest of the week, aside from that day, without it.

I bet you’ve forgotten about my ears, haven’t you? I certainly had until I arrived back at Brianne’s house to find my new host dad [told you there was a longer story] there to meet me. I was nervous because I wanted to make a good impression, so naturally I resorted to my oldest nervous habit and began touching my ear. Only this time, there was something there. At first I thought it was a zit and then I realized that there was no way it was that and when my new host dad slipped away to answer a phone call, I asked Brianne’s host mom if there was something there. “Of course!” she said “they’re [insert Spanish word that I don’t know]!” “ohhh” I exclaimed, as though I knew exactly what she was talking about. When she looked the other way I asked Brianne was that meant and she told me that they were magnets. Brianne’s mom overheard and explained to me that the doctor had put magnets in my ears in order to balance out my energies. Well, there you go. Apparently a lot of my energy needed balancing because I had at least six magnets per ear and you’re supposed to leave them in until they fall out. It’s been over a week for me and most of them are still there. Does this mean my energy is really off???

Well, if it is, now I have my own set of acupuncture needles to use.

Servicio Comuntario (o mi tiempo a Centro de Muchacho Trabajador)

The long promised volunteer blog (Sorry it took so long Grammy!): 

I have been trying to write this since I visited the volunteering sites the first week of being in Ecuador. Now I’ve been here for over 100 days (woah) and I am just about to go into my last week of volunteering. It’s hard to write about, because it has been a significant part of my time here in Ecuador and I have found it to be overall very rewarding, but it is an incredibly tough job.

First off, I wrote this part in January right after we visited: “Yesterday we got to visit a couple options for our volunteer work while we’re here (volunteering twice a week is part of Pitzer’s program). I liked the idea of many options that we were told about, especially the ones that worked with kids, but in the end I think there is only one place for me. I fell in love the second I walked in the door to find the walls painted the color of the schools in Peru that I had helped teach in with my NLC class the summer after my sophomore year of high school. I continued to fall in love as I read the values on the wall and saw kids playing games in a courtyard. I fell even deeper when I heard about what the volunteers do (help the teachers teach the kids!!!). However, it was when we walked by one door filled with, I’d guess five-year-olds, and a couple girls ran out yelling “¡Hola!” and hugged me that I was sold.”

A lot of that is still true for me. I love walking up the stairs surrounded in the blue that only signifies good things to me and I love the values that the center is striving for and I love when the kids come up and hug me. But it is definitely different than I imagined.

First, let me explain a little about this very worthy place. It is called “Centro de Muchacho Trabajador (CMT)” and it works with the whole family of children that work on the streets. They ensure that the kids are getting an education and know how to work safely (rather than steal or any other host of things you can get into on the streets) as well working with the whole family on how to save money, help others, etc. I love the values and more than anything, that is what encouraged me to choose CMT. One tough thing, however, is that the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has changed a bunch of policies in Ecuador that look really good on paper, but do not always work out as planned (as happens in politics) but one of these is that under this government, if children are found working on the street, their parents will go to jail. Say whatever you want about child labor, but I will tell you two things that I have learned: 1. It’s easier for the kids to get away with robbing people and selling drugs than doing honest work right now and 2. This change happened during my time at CMT and the kids were significantly worse behaved without their goals or their confidence that one can only get from being fairly self-sufficient and by helping out their families.

Now, my experience.

I work at CMT twice a week for three hours each day and afterwards I come home and often just want to crash onto my bed and never move again. The kids need a lot of love and a lot of discipline and it is hard to strike the right balance. One time I raised up my hands towards the sky in front of one of the kids in the exacerbated “what???” gesture and he veered back as though he thought I was going to hit him. That was a real eye-opener for me and anytime I’m really mad or frustrated I think about that moment and about how more than anything, they need someone who isn’t going to hit them – who’s going to care about them and give them a hug instead.

It doesn’t always feel that simple, although I know it should. I work with kids from the age of about 7 to about 12. It is hard to gain their respect, not aided at all by the fact that they clearly respect my male co-volunteer more than me. The boys – at the tender age of 8 or 9 – will make sexual gestures at me when they think that I am not looking. They can be incredibly rude, they constantly hit each other or just bother each other incessantly, and one boy even hit me one day.

All in all, I think what I realized is that I should never have expected it to be like my experience in Peru. They are, of course, different kids living different lives and quite simply are in a completely different situation. That doesn’t mean it’s worse or better, it’s just different. I’m finding it difficult to reflect fully on the time that I have spent there. It is a huge challenge and I have never doubted so sincerely whether I am going about something the right way or if I am making any difference at all, but I am still so happy that this is what I get to spend my Monday and Wednesday afternoons doing. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that the little girls and boys still run up to hug me on occasion. 

La Amazonía

This blog is really about my trip to the Amazon last weekend, but first I have a bit of advice: at some point in your life, I would suggest that you have a Latin American lover. Now, I do not have a Latin American lover and thus cannot speak from experience per se, but I can tell you after going to a discoteca last Wednesday (we didn’t have classes Thursday, don’t worry Mom) that hearing about your smile and name and such in romanticized Spanish sounds quite nice. I do not intend on actually having a Latin American lover whilst here, but still, I’d recommend it. Anyway, this blog is about the Amazon. First: look up Yasuní. This is [basically] where we stayed and long story short it is arguably the most bio-diverse spot on the planet.

What an adventure. I hardly know where to begin. The first thing that strikes me when I think about the Amazon (aside from the densely humid heat which I am already semi-used to from living in St. Louis) is the views. We passed by constant luscious green growth sprouting out of a brown river popping with almost unreal colors and the occasional visible animal as we boated into the depths of the jungle. As we got deeper into Ecuadorian Amazon, I couldn’t help but think of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the feeling began to hit me that this wasn’t really a place for humans. As amazing as it was to be there, that feeling never really left. I was more of a foreigner there than in any other place I have ever been. The jungle is the domain of the animals and plants; it isn’t for my tramping around. Even so, I loved getting the opportunity to be there. 

Within four short hours of arriving to the Amazon, I had seen many birds, the elusive Amazon River Dolphin, some monkeys, and a sloth. A SLOTH!!! Sloth in Spanish is “perezoso” which also means “lazy” so a group of sloths would be called “lazies” and I just really love that. Anyway.

We arrived to our lodge just in time for dinner and after eating some delicious food and hearing about our 6am meet-up for the next day, we headed to bed. Although, let me say here that “heading to bed” is not quite as simple in the jungle as it is in most circumstances. Brianne and I, who were sharing a cabin typed room, walked in to our room and then our bathroom only to find the biggest, most terrifying and simply odd-looking bugs I had ever seen up to that point in my life. I don’t consider myself much of a shrieker, but I will admit that there was some shrieking done upon entering the bathroom and having one fly too close my face. Once braving the bathroom to brush our teeth and such, we then had to maneuver within the bedroom without stepping on any horrifying creatures and make it into our net-covered beds without letting in the hordes of mosquitoes that were assuredly awaiting their chance to attack. To make this more difficult, there is no electricity except from 6pm-10pm and it was past 10pm. Finally we did make it to bed and juuust as we were drifting off to sleep, between the loud chirppings of various bugs and calls of animals, we began to hear a deep and ominous breathing coming from underneath our lofted cabin. Obviously, we chose to hope that our door lock worked against jaguars and went to sleep. I certainly did not sleep well, but when I woke up with there was only one cockroach on my pillow, so I was clearly overreacting. (I'm just kidding, the cockroaches didn’t make it onto my bed- or at least that I know of). 

Our days in the Amazon went something like this: canoe, eat, hike, eat, canoe, eat, hike, sleep, eat, boat/swim, eat, hike, eat, canoe. So we had a fairly even balance of land to water activities. I’m going to group them together as land vs. water to make things easier to describe. First, land.

Our land adventures were fascinating. Our native guide, Livio, stopped and taught us survival tactics along the way. He showed us how to make poison from the bark of a tree and then had us all try it. It was horrendously bitter, but no one died, so that was good. I should probably mention here that it’s poisonous to all animals except humans and chickens ;)
 
As we were hiking along we came to a clearing in the trees where one solo tree was growing. Livio asked us why were thought that might be and we all gave varying responses, to which he went up to the tree, pulled off a pod typed thing and opened it to release a swarm of ants. Then he told us to stick our tongues into it. One by one he held up a new pod of ants to each of us and we hesitantly (or not so hesitantly*Brianne*) stuck our tongues into it. Wow. That was weird. My brain was sending so many “NO!!” messages to my tongue and mouth, so very cautiously I moved my tongue forward and then at the last moment stuck it fully in and then lunged away from it. I could not only feel them, some still crawling, in my mouth, but I could taste their burst of lemon flavor. Yes, lemon. They were actually pretty good, a natural lemon flavored (ant) snack to brighten up your day, but when someone told me one was crawling onto my lip from my mouth, I recalled exactly what I had just done and was sufficiently creeped out again. 

Our other hiking experience was done the second night we were there after dinner, in the dark. We were told to gather our flashlights and wear our rain boots because “you could get bitten by a poisonous bug!” I was dubious about whether I wanted to subject myself to something that involved poisonous creatures sneaking around in the dark, but I had no choice. The first thing we saw was a nice little frog. The second thing, however, was a gigantic tarantula. I was done after that, but no, we needed to press on deeper into the Amazonian jungle and into the darkness of the night. We saw very odd-looking insects and creatures and every time a new one had light shone upon it by Livio, Marley and I would look at each other, horrified. To be honest though, it wasn’t so much the things that we were seeing that were bothering me (although I certainly lost some sleep that night after knowing that there are such things as scorpion spiders and that they are bigger than my face), what really bothered me was the question that kept coming to my head: “if this is what we are seeing, what are we NOT seeing?” My worries were eventually interrupted when something very bit my hand quite painfully and I had a minor panic about whether it had been something poisonous and my final moments would be in the dark jungle until I saw a tiny ant crawling away from the spot that felt like fire was burning off my skin. Thanks little guy.

So that was that for land adventures until the last day when we went to a tower in Yasuní and climbed up… I don’t know… 12 flights of stairs? In order to see the spectacular Amazon from above the trees. That is not a view I will soon forget. There were monkeys hanging out in a nearby tree and just beyond that tree was the river. If you can ever get above the canopy of the Amazonian Jungle, do it.

As far as water adventures, we were in a boat for over four hours the first day and then nearly eight the last [no there is no bathroom on this boat and it isn’t highly suggested to go in the water due to a certain fish that may or may not exist, but anyway], as well as many canoe escapades, including a 6am one. In the canoes we saw many types of birds and monkeys and even a sea lion (river lion?) and a crocodile, but predominantly we got to enjoy the tranquility of the calm river as we navigating through the trees that grow from the ground beneath the river so that it appears as though their thick trunks are growing from the water. They also reflect perfectly down onto the still water (in day and in night) so that a disoriented person could easily mistake the water for the sky.

The second morning of our stay, our first activity was fishing for piranhas. Our lodge is located on a lagoon part of the river called “Piranha Lagoon” if that tells you anything. There are vegetarian piranhas there and there are also carnivorous piranhas. We all fished unsuccessfully for awhile – though we did get a few bites and definitely lost a few chunks of the raw meat we were using for bait. To be honest, I was exhausted from having stayed up too late the night before and decided to nap in the slowly rocking boat rather than attempt to catch fish (and I regret nothing). Finally Livio caught a carnivorous piranha that we later ate for lunch. Piranha is delicious. 10/10 would eat again.

The point after finishing fishing was the point that I had been looking forward to all trip. We would get to swim in the river and lagoon with the piranhas. Although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time (thankfully) this river is also home to anacondas, boa constrictors, and crocodiles, among other things. Luckily however, I wasn’t thinking about those things so once I saw Livio and then Sebastián jump in, I stripped to my bathing suit and followed their lead. I did not get attacked by piranhas. Sorry to ruin the myth, but even carnivorous piranhas don’t eat humans – well, at least that’s what Livio, Viviana, and Sebastián told us. It was actually quite lovely. The water is refreshing, but wasn’t too cold. Slightly more disconcerting, however, you can’t see your feet if you look down and your whole body is tinged with a brownish-orange hue. Eventually everyone got in and we began our swim back to the lodge. I swallowed a ton of lagoon water, but didn’t have time to dwell on it in the magnificence of the moment. This was another one of those times that I will simply never be able to describe sufficiently. As Marley, Ami, and I neared the lodge, rain began to fall from the humongous Ecuadorian sky and I looked up to see Marley and Ami grinning genuinely and oh-so-happily at this beautiful moment. I know my face reflected theirs and, as I had thought many times throughout the trip, the words “que rica esta vida” popped strongly into my head. Because it’s true, what a beautifully rich life to be living.