I Make Art

I figured I'd take this time to talk a little bit about my artwork.

I also wanted to upload a picture of my latest soap sculpture. I woke up one morning and there it was, and I was covered in soap shavings.

Yes, this is the dread Great Old One Cthulu, who slumbers beneath beneath the waves in his dead city R'lyeh. Fear him.

The real art of this piece isn't the actual sculpture, but the story behind it. I went to turn this in yesterday, but the teacher had already left and his room was locked. This was at 10:20, okay? So, Richard Aldaz, Blanca Tuqueres, and I were standing there, like, Um...? We checked around for broken windows to try and put our sculptures in the room so we could say we turned them in when they were due (Friday was the last possible day), but there weren't any. Except one over the door. But we didn't want to drop them in, because we figured they would break. Finally, we put them in a bag and lowered them down onto the ledge with a stick. We attached a note, explaining that we had turned them in on time. I wanted to include a poem:

Por favor, Señor Licenciado,
Ud. es un hombre bien estimado,
No sea carajo,
Acepte el trabajo,
Y por nosotros estará muy amado.

But the other kids said no.

I've been reading a lot of webcomics lately, and talking with one of my friends about making a webcomic, so I though I'd try my hand at it, just to see whether I epic failed or not. It's autobiographical in nature, and I'm using it to show you in a graphical nature how extremely interesting my life here in Ecuador is. So, without further ado, I present issue #1 of

The Adventures of Jacob in Ecuadorland!

I drew another one, but I accidentally deleted the picture off my camera. Guess you'll have to wait. Sorry. It's meant to be read from left to right in a continuous horizontal strip, but Blogger decided that was too wide, so I had to format it funny.

Thanks Mom, for commenting, as well as Kristina, Silvia, and Victoria.

That's all for now. ¡Ciao!

I Just Found Out It's "Blah-GOY-ya-vitch"

So, I've been following the Blagojevich impeachment trial with some interest, mainly because it allows me to laugh at my friend who lives in Chicago. Of course, his dad got to go to the Inauguration for free, so it's a trade-off. Anyway, Blagojevich just got removed from office, and then summarily REJECTED from ever holding public office in Illinois ever again. It's like getting pimp-slapped by the government. CNN had this picture of Blagojevich's reaction:

Blagojevich wins my choice for "Most Photogenic Politician in the Way that Lets You Make Fun of Him" award. I'll add another post later tonight, so until then, ¡ciao!

Chapter Fifty-Eight

In which Jacob goes on a retreat,
Breaks his New Year's Resolution,
Takes a trip to far-off reaches, and
Learns why Never to piss off Anita.

I really wasn't sure how to organize this post, since a lot of important things have happened to me in the past four days, so I figured I'd just go with chronological order.

This weekend, AFS had the Mid-Stay orientation. Suzanna (AFS volunteer), her niece Lady, the other AFS kids, and I all got on a bus and traveled to the Valley of Chota, the place where all the black people live. Well, not all of them, but lots and lots of black people live in Chota. Since we couldn't leave the hotel, I only got a few pictures. Sorry.

The trip started off in a rocky manner. Anita and I showed up first, ten minutes early, and sat around for a while. Then Suzanna and Lady got there, and we sat around until 8:10, waiting for the other kids. They eventually arrived, but Lotta was alone. As you may or may not remember, Lotta and Daniele are living in the same house, so it was strange for them not to arrive together, but Lotta said Daniele was sick and couldn't make it. Suzanna flipped out, and said if he didn't go, he'd be sent home. So Daniele showed.

Traveling in buses is always difficult for me. I keep trying to read my book, or sleep, but I always end up watching the scenery. Ecuador is such a beautiful place.

The hotel was a pretty nice place, with a pool, and banana trees, and stuff.

From left to right, Alexandra, Hannes, Lotta.

Well, on the first day, we had to do some stupid orientation stuff, filling out questionares about what our family was like, and how we were getting along. It was really boring, the kind of stuff I expected to be doing. AFS isn't real big on the creative aspect. This meeting was the first time in a long time that all the AFS students were together in one place. Usually one or two people, often Alexandra and/or Hannes, don't show, but this time we were all there.

Before lunch, Suzanna went around and asked us all about our families. Now, because Anita's one of the most involved volunteers in AFS, I get to hear everything that's going wrong with all the different families, so it kind of upset me when I had to listen to people telling blatant lies about how well they were doing. For example, Johannes's family is extremely upset with him, because he's never at home. His mother complains that he uses their home like a hotel, just comes home from school (if he even went that day. He's missed two days of school every week since forever.), maybe eats lunch, goes to Ibarra (he lives in San Antonio), and comes back at 9, 10 o'clock. Yet, there he was, telling us about how he's doing so well with his family, how he's got such a "special" relationship with his mom. It made me want to puke.

After lunch, we had a couple of hours free until we had to continue, so Camille and I hung out, talking about Harry Potter (I told her my awesome 19 Years Later idea), listening to her iPod, 'n' such stuff as that. Suzanna was on a tear about no one talking in Spanish, but everyone pretty much ignored her. Eventually, she just gave up.

Lady was really nice. When Camille and I had exhausted our ideas over better names for Harry's children and listened to about every song by Weird Al Yankovich, Lady came over and offered to teach us how to play "40", which we accepted. Now, 40 is a game so complicated it makes Mao look like tiddlywinks. There are maybe a hundred different rules, and it wasn't until the very end that I actually caught on. Camille, after trying and failing, gave up, and went into her room and listened to her iPod. There are some things that just don't change. But I played for a bit, and I taught her Go Fish and Egyptian Rat Screw, and we found out the they play Gin Rummy in Ecuador and in America. She was really pleasant, and open. Which was good, since I successfully alienated myself from most of the other exchange students.

At 6:00PM, we met up and we had to give presentations on different subjects. I think it was at this point that I realized I was going to break my eighth New Year's Resolution, Don't get mad at people and never talk to them again. We all talked about different topics, like I did Religion, and some other people did Social Relations and Sports. Now, this should have been a way to objectively examine the differences between our home countries and Ecuador, but instead, it degenerated into a pity fest where everyone talked about why they hated Ibarra. It was disgusting. People said things like, "Everyone in Ibarra is a hypocrite," or "Everyone in Ibarra lies." It was the worst display of stereotyping I think I've ever seen. And Alexandra and Hannes were like, "Oh, and my house is so dirty." Now, unless your house is crawling with cockroaches and taking a shower actually makes you dirtier, I think that saying your house is dirty is an incredible insult. That's just me. Apparently, it wasn't so for Alexandra or Hannes, or they just didn't care. I don't know Alexandra's family at all, but I met Hannes's sister, and she seemed pretty nice, so it upset me to hear them talk so cavalierly about how nasty their homes were.

But that wasn't what made me most upset. No, Suzanna wins the "I Pissed Jacob Off the Most" Prize. I expected Suzanna to be at least a little upset, but on the contrary, she encouraged them. Suzanna made a big deal about how she was NOT from Ibarra, that she studied in Quito in the American school, and had traveled all around Europe, and had a white, blonde-haired daughter, and in short wasn't a filthy Ecuadorian. I wanted to say, "Your daughter's about as white as I am," though of course I didn't. Now, there's a very clear reason why Suzanna's like that: Internal Racism. That's where a person emulates another group (usually Europeans) to the extent that they begin to hate or stereotype the ethnic or national group they come from. Here's my Dragonball Z example, to help you understand:

This is Goku. He's the most powerful character in the anime. No, Gohan is not more powerful than Goku, I don't care what you say. Now, Goku usually comes in two styles, Regular Saiyin and Super Saiyin. Super Saiyin's the more powerful one. See if you can pick which one of these is the Super Saiyin photo.

If you picked, European Goku, you're right! The weaker form that Goku keeps trying to change out of has black hair and black eyes. The strong form that always amazes people when he changes into it has blonde hair and blue eyes. That's what I mean by internal racism. The Japanese makers of the show are consciously or unconsciously portraying Europeans as more powerful and desirable.

This is external racism, for comparison.

Now, Internal Racism is a very sad thing, and, truth be told, I expected to see it sooner or later, with all the American influence there is here, and I sympathize with people that suffer from it. At least, I thought I did. Then I met Suzanna, and listened to her pandering to a bunch of snot-nosed brats just because they were white, and I can't bring myself to think, Well, it's not her fault. I was disgusted.

Then we had dinner, and I gobbled down my food and disappeared into my room and read my book. Throughout most of the orientation, I had been drawing, or writing my graveyard story, but after that session, I just needed to crash and lose myself into the story of the Joads. I was reading The Grapes of Wrath. Evetually, people started drifting in, and we formed a mutual ignorance, where I wasn't there for them and they weren't there for me. Lady came in and asked if I wanted to play cards, which I did. Turns out, she didn't like most of the other AFS students either. She asked why I didn't get along, and I said that it seemed to me like they had just come here like it was a trip. Which is exactly why I don't like them. The program is not so they can go to Baños and Peñas every five minutes, ditching their families and not asking for permission even. I also don't appreciate them taking potshots at America every other sentence. Suzanna was like, "Oh yeah. Europeans learn their own language and English. I know English and my language. How many languages do you know?" I was like, The only reason you're learning English is because America is so awesome. You don't see every country in the world trying to learn German, or Spanish, do you? No. You don't. So shut up, and sit down. Well, you are sitting, but stay sitting. I keep wanting to say "Hitler!" whenever Johannes tries to badmouth America, but I'm saving that for a later time.

The next day, Sunday, Lady left early in the morning to go back to Ibarra, and the rest of us stuck around to talk more. I bolted my breakfast and hid in my room again until we had to talk. I could tell Alexandra was starting to get pissed off, but I didn't care. Sunday only brought more fuel to the "I hate the other Foreign Exchange Kids" fire. Alexandra and Johannes both said flat out that the reason they came to Ecuador was as tourists. Alexandra was complaining about how her school gives homework (Gasp!), and if one of her friends came over and wanted to go out, well, she sure as hell wasn't going to stay shut up inside doing work. "I came to Ecuador to have fun, not to go to school," I think were her exact words. Johannes, in complaining that AFS never takes them anywhere, said, "I came here to get to see the country." Now, AFS is not a tourism program on the year-stay. The summer-stay, yeah, because there's no school, but not the year-long program. But more than that, it's an insult to the work Anita and the families are doing. They're not bending over backwards so a couple of rich kids can stay and live it up. They really want us to be here so we can see how people live, get to know another culture, the school system, etc., and to flat out say that doesn't matter, they only want to have fun, is like spitting in the faces of the people who work so hard for them.

Oh, and Johannes's family had the option of picking an American (me), or a German (Johannes), and they picked the German, not knowing anything about us other than our nationalities. WELL. Looks like you made the wrong choice! Sorry, but Johannes was really laughing at me and America about that, so I can only laugh on my blog about him. I'm not an America-phile, but you step on Barack Obama, them's fightin' words.

Suzanna, though, still wins. Rather than, you know, correcting them on their mistaken belief that AFS is a touristic program, Suzanna said, "Oh, that's terrible, I'll organize trips myself for you poor suffering children." Sorry, but when you can shell out three hundred bucks at the drop of a hat to go on a trip around the country, you lose any "poor suffering child" status you may have had before. I was talking with Anita about how they didn't invite me on that trip, and she said it was probably because I was living with her, and she would have put a stop to it.

Lunch, though, was where it finally hit the fan. I didn't think quick enough to ask to take my lunch in the dining room, so I had to sit out there with everyone I had been avoiding. Alexandra in particular was pretty upset. She said, "Suzanna thinks you're being very impolite by not talking." My response was a "And I care because...?" I thought it was phrased very well. I asked if it bother her that I didn't want to be around them, and she sort of huffed at me. In the words of the Immortal Dwight Schrute, "Reject a woman, and she will never forget it." It's a good thing I don't care.

So, then last night, I get back, and hey! Carlos is there! Carlos, for those of you not in the know, is Anita's son. I told him about how upset I was with the other exchange students, and that ate up some time until we had to go get Magna! Magna, not Magma. Magna is a Norwegian guy who's thirty, and he was one of Anita's first exchange students that she hosted, 12 years ago. He's back, and he found himself an Ecuadorian girlfriend! I told Magna about the other AFS kids, and he was like, "Screw 'em." He's a good guy.

On Monday, I ditched school and went to Ambato, which is the capital of Tungurahua. Yay hypocrisy!

What a beautiful place!

Anita had to go because Carlos is in some kind of trouble. He wanted out of a company, so he took his computer and desk and stuff that was his out. The other people were upset, and put out a warrant for his arrest. So, Anita had to go and sort stuff out. I also learned that it's not a good idea to make Anita angry. The phone rings, and I hear Anita say, "You say 'Let him deal with it by himself' NOW, but when this company was first getting started and you needed money, it was, 'Where's Mrs. Anita?' Well, Wars have two sides! YOU WANTED WAR, YOU'VE GOT ONE, YOU LITTLE SHIT." I've been keeping a low profile.

I haven't been in a large city in ages. It was really fun.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that a blue-and-grey version of the Thundercats symbol?

And now for an interim segment of

JACOB'S EXTRA-SPECIAL RACISM PIC OF THE MONTH

La Mama Negra is apparently a funtastic celebration held every year in Tungurahua on October 11th. Erm...

And, to round things off, a fun picture of Me, Anita, and Carlos.

Thanks for commenting, Silvia. I'm glad you like the photo. Yeah, I just ignore all my teachers now. I know what's awesome, and what's not! Thanks, Ezra, for commenting. I'm not changing my Extra-Special Racism Pic of the Month segment. That's here to stay. :-)

That's all for now. ¡Ciao!

Epipheral Vision

This post is about Four things.

There's been a problem building with Camille for a while now (character-driven plot FTW). She's been pretty despondent with her family, not talking very much or "integrating" into the home, as Anita says. Suzanna, apparently, has talked with Camille about it several times, and is tired of trying to deal with her. I'm not sure of the veracity of that statement, since Suzanna is an old woman suffering from some disease which makes her go to Quito every so often for treatment, and she probably has the mental force of a tomato. She does make good turkey, though. But I'm getting off-topic. The upshot of it all is that Anita asked me to talk to Camille and see if I can get her to change.

Now, it is absolutely not my place to have that conversation, but from what Anita said, the people whose place it is have had that conversation, and it didn't work. Now, Camille is the only other American here, and, if she goes home, as Anita's told me is the next step if Camille's family decides to let her go, I'll be alone. Not alone, but there'll be no one else to understand how awesome going to KFC is, or to laugh at "What's that over there?" I don't know if you know why that's important, but it is. So, I agreed to have a chat with Camille and see what was what. As I've been giving "English lessons" to Camille's sister, Andrea, for a while, it's not weird for me to be over at her house. My original plan was just to take a few minutes and say, "Hey, Camille. Let's talk, huh?" Didn't quite work out that way.

Camille showed up around four o'clock, but left to go to the internet right away. Which was actually a good thing, because I wanted to okay my talking to her with her family first. I don't want to be stuck in this kind of drama. So, it was just Andrea, myself, and her two sisters, and so I asked Andrea about it. Andrea stopped just short of saying "PLEASE TALK TO HER. DAMMIT." She then went on to tell me about all of the horrible awful things that Camille's done, and they were pretty bad. Again, I don't know how much of it is true, because emotions tend to get the best of people, but it was pretty consistent with what I've seen of Camille. I can't write most of it here, because Andrea made me swear I wouldn't say it (I think she was worried that her mother would find out she told me), but it boiled down to a couple of things: Camille stays in her room all the time, and doesn't talk to people, Camille won't help with housework at all, Camille eats everything ("You see that basket of eggs? That won't last until Monday.") or refusing to eat ("She just sort of throws it away."), and Camille hates sharing.

I'm going to talk about that last part. Sharing is an incredibly important thing here, and I never realized until Andrea told me bluntly. She said something to the effect of, "Here, everyone shares. If you have something, you offer a little bit to everyone around you. You don't have to share all of it, if they ask for more, you can say, 'I already gave you one,' but you have to share at least a little bit. No matter how small it is, you take it and cut it into little pieces and give some to everybody." She went on for a good, fifteen minutes about sharing. And it's true. Every time during break at school, when someone has a bag of chips, the first thing they do is offer some to everyone around them. I hadn't noticed before, but it just works out that way. And if they (usually me) don't offer, people ask for some. Of course, I never refused, and now that I understand, I'm always going to offer. It doesn't really work like that in the U.S. There's a real idea of "I bought this with my own money. It's mine, and you can't have any." that gets inside of you. It's not even something I ever really thought about until this happened. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just the way we are. Of course, not everybody, and not all the time, but that idea's there. It's not in Ecuadorian people.

As if to epitomize this thought, Camille refuses to share with anybody, even refusing to get something for herself if it would make her feel uncomfortable about not sharing. Andrea finishes telling me this, and I'm like, I had no idea sharing was so important. Why don't you tell her that? No one sat down with me and had a talk about sharing things until now, and I know Camille hasn't had one. That was my basic response to each of the points, that if you don't tell her, she won't know. Of course, some things, like not helping when being asked, I couldn't explain, but I'll get to that later.

So, about that time, Andrea's mother and grandmother (the "I hate America" grandmother) showed up, and Andrea explained that we had been talking about Camille. The two women basically confirmed what Andrea had told me, though not as explicitly, and when I asked if they wanted me to talk to Camille, they said, YES. The mother's the only authority figure in the house, since the dad has a two-week on, three-day off, deal as a police chief in Azuay (another province). She told me that she didn't want to discipline Camille, or tell her to do stuff, for fear of upsetting her. I explained that this was a common problem among first-time host families (Johannes's family had this too), and stressed that they should talk to Anita.

Then Camille showed up, and, as it was seven o'clock, it was time for me to leave. I told Camille to walk with me for a bit, and tried to explain delicately about how my mom had asked me to talk to her to see if she was having problems. We talked about it for a little while, and I made a very startling connection. Now, because Camille's host mother is very timid, she doesn't ask anything of Camille, leaving it up to Andrea, two years Camille's senior, to make requests. When I asked why she didn't do things her sister asked her to, Camille told me that back in the States, she's the oldest child, and so it's very strange and upsetting to her to have a sibling tell her what to do. The pieces fell into place, and I said, "Why don't you say that? I wouldn't have to be here!" Again, my mother's right. Every problem in the entire world stems from people not talking to each other. Except, like, um, Earthquakes. And diseases. But everything else, yeah.

After promising me that she would talk to her family as soon as she got home and see what she could do to fix things, we said goodbye. I don't know if she did or not, I'll find out later today or tomorrow, I guess, but I did my part.

In an unrelated occurence, I had a strange and rather disappointing series of epiphanies this week relating to my school. Remember that one post where I said I was just going to stop listening to my painting teacher? I think I should just apply that to all my teachers.

In Artistic Drawing, we're working with drawing ink, which is very difficult-to-use stuff. I've been in a nostalgic kick in my artwork lately, because of my homesickness, and so when ordered to draw a landscape in ink, I made the ocean, with a guy fishing:

I happen to kind of like that picture. It's silly, yes, but I like it. I go to turn it in, and hear the teacher saying, "INVENTED. ZERO." to other students. So, I quietly slipped this picture back into my tablero. The assignment for the day was to do it over, though, so I couldn't hide it. The teacher came by, and sure enough, "INVENTED. ZERO." He never said it couldn't be invented before, so I added him to my mental list of teachers that change the rules for the assignment after I've already done it. Anyways, he takes one look at my picture and says, "Putting rays on the sun is childish. Don't do it anymore."

I can picture my mom's face as she's reading this. It's funny.

But anyways, the inner artist in me said, "This is my god damn art, and you can't tell me what to do." I didn't say that, of course, but I was thinking it. And that makes the difference, and led me to my second epiphany: I'm through letting my art suffer for my grades. My grades mean absolutely nothing to me. They don't help or hurt me with colleges, which is about all grades are good for at this point. If I want to put rays on my sun, I'm going to put god damn rays on my sun. If I want to draw the ocean, I don't care how many times they order me to make a mountain. Now, I didn't feel like going at it just then, so I redrew the sun as the moon, which doesn't require rays. But that's the last time. That's all I'm going to say about my art school right now.

Oh, and I hate my Painting teacher. That's really the last thing.

Hey, Racism! There's a fun topic.

JACOB'S EXTRA-SPECIAL RACISM PIC OF THE MONTH

Next to the Church of Santo Domingo is this stately statue. It's a fun thing, with a couple of young poor children making do with what they have. But the message to poor people ("Stay in your place. You have it good enough.") is something I'm not going to get into. Instead, I'm going to focus on the black kid in the back.

This picture seems innocent enough, with the white kid with blue eyes flying the kite while the black kid looks on in admiration. But let's get a closer look at these two upstanding young gentlemen.

Yes, as you can now clearly see, the white kid is looking on in wonder as his kite (I like to think of it as his dreams) fly up to the Heavens. Sitting on the rock, the black kid is watching the white kid fly the kite, his hand outstretched. The real message was probably Ibarra promoting its diversity, but the artist managed to slip in his thoughts. Study the black kid's expression, and you will see the look of apathy. This is a kid who has realized that everyone else will always have more than him, and has accepted that fact. So, he must sit idly by while other, whiter kids fly their kites and live their dreams. Walk by this on your way to church, all you black kids. Just be thankful you don't have ragged clothes. Oh, and he has giant lips.

Spain's legacy of Purity of Blood ("Cleanliness of Blood" in literal translation) lives on!

I went to take pictures of the Indigenous strike (stayed home from school for it), but they didn't show. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was there at ten o'clock, when they said they'd be there. I should have been there an hour and a half later, at 11:30, when they were there. Oh well. Instead, I watched Obama get inaugurated and got some interesting pics.

This is a crazy old black man preaching about how Jesus Christ died for our sins. He said, over and over, "ONE DAY, GOD WILL JUDGE JESUS CHRIST FOR OUR SINS." I'm like, I'm not all that religious, but I don't think that's how it works...

The Chinese food place lied to me. IT FREAKING LIED TO ME.

Okay, that's all. Thanks for the comments, Mom and Silvia. I'm looking forward to your visit!

¡Ciao!

My Mom Is Always Right (or I Hate You All, You Ruined My Life)

Today, I was waiting for my friends in the park, and I sat down on a bench next to this really old black guy. I'm not sure if he was homeless or not, because his clothes were all right, but he smelled kind of rank. But I'm not writing this post about homeless people. I'll save that for another time.

I said Good morning to the guy, and he sort of smiled and said Good morning back. There was a band playing, and I was just going to sit there and write and listen to the music (I've started my graveyard story). But then the old guy leans over to me and says, "Hey, are you Catholic? Or are you Evangelical?" Now, usually, I have a whole song and dance about how I don't really have a named religion, and then we get into this discussion about whether I believe in God or not, and it's a giant mess. So, instead, I just said that I was Catholic. So he says, "That's good. There are a lot of Evangelicals in Hell right now, repenting for sinning." I don't really have a response to comments like that, so I just sort of nodded. It's my all-purpose defense against people who say stupid things to me.

We're sitting there for a while, and out of nowhere, the guy asks where I'm from. I tell him the United States, and he says, "Say, there's going to be a new government there, isn't there?" Everyone knows about Obama. I told him about how I hoped this president would be better than the last, and so that was nice.

Then the old guy starts asking me about which church I go to. The band was playing then, so I couldn't really make out the words the first few times, but eventually I got the message and said the Iglesia del Quinche, or the Divino Niño. He seemed satisfied by the answer, and since the band was really loud, we didn't say anything until they finished. Then, he asked me what sounded like an incredibly loaded question, Did I like the music? I said yes, and he asked if I thought there was music in Heaven. I said that God gave us the ability to make music, because I wasn't really sure where he was going with that. He sort of ignored me, and said that the music in Heaven was way better than the band playing here, because there were heavenly quires and all the best musicians who ever lived. I was very tempted to make a comment about Azathoth dancing to his mad pipers, but I didn't think he'd get it.

We sort of droned on and on for a while. Well, he droned, and I sort of nodded. But the general focus of this conversation is that my mom is always right about everything. It's not that hard to talk to people, and if you try, it's actually pretty likely that they've been trying to find someone who would listen to them for some time. We'll see if I talk to more people in the future. I dunno.

In an unrelated and more depressing piece (although I have to work to get more depressing than Azathoth eating your brain),

I'm sick of everything. I'm sick of not having internet. I'm sick of having to do Virtual School, and especially Gym class in Virtual School. I'm sick of trying to do Virtual School and the internet not working. I'm sick of having to go to regular school, especially since it's art school. I'm sick of teachers who think they're God with a paintbrush, especially when half of the stuff they tell us is wrong. I'm sick of my art not working out (although this is offset somewhat by my writing). I'm sick of waking up at 5:45 dead tired because I went to sleep at 10:45 the night before, and then listening to my stupid Painting teacher tell me if I really love art, I'd get up at 1AM and paint. I'm sick of the other kids who laugh at my English because they're so bad at it, and my Spanish because I'm so good at it that it stands out when I make a mistake. I'm sick of Sara showing up when she feels like it and then acting superior because most of the teachers treat her like she's made of gold. I'm sick of Johannes acting like he's God's gift to women, because he's white and can play the guitar. I'm sick of Hannes not giving me back my flash drive, even though he's had it for almost four months now. I'm sick of Camille having problems with her family, especially since now Anita and Grace want me to talk to her about it. I'm sick of Grace trying to shove responsibility for Daniele not having a family onto Lotta's family, and causing a whole host of problems for Lotta. I'm sick of AFS forcing Anita to get receipts for every ten cent phone call and then refusing to pay for this or that because of some reason or another. I'm sick of the circles under my eyes and the plaque on my teeth. I'm sick of my short hair and the fact that the inspector's going to make me cut it soon enough anyway. I'm sick of the insect that buzzes around my ear at night and won't let me sleep, and the insect bites I get from said insect.

But I'm also glad for some things. I'm glad for Rodrigo and Chooki, who I can go and play basketball with any time of night. I'm glad for the mountains, which are still I think some of the most beautiful things ever, even if I hate painting them. I'm glad for sunsets, for giving me a reason not to hate painting entirely. I'm glad for Anita, who woke up this morning at 5:45 to make sure I woke up on time, and then made me breakfast. I'm glad for Rosita, whose mother just had a bad turn, but is slowly recovering. I'm glad for Carolina, who still blushes every time I make a joke about Chooki being her boyfriend (he's not, but it's still funny). I'm glad for Andrea, who thinks I own English and laughs at all my really bad jokes. I'm glad for my friends back home (NY and FL), even though I don't get to talk to them as much as I'd like. I'm glad for my friends from MITES, who are always up to talk with me and share weird internet sites and music. I'm glad for my parents, who always take the time to talk me down from the metaphorical cliff whenever I call up in the middle of school, nearly in tears and paying $1.50/min for an international call. I'm glad for EXTRABREAD, the bread store next to the internet store about a block from my house, that sells the most amazing fresh-baked bread ever. I'm glad for the Chinese food place about two blocks from my house, where they don't even bring me the menu anymore because I always order the same thing (if you ask me, Mixto Especial con Cola Mediana is the food of the gods). I'm glad for my teachers who like me and let me out of class early (I know English. I don't need to be there.). I'm glad the Indigenous people are strong enough to have a strike that'll shut down all inter-city traffic tomorrow (Yes. Yes, they can. Hopefully, I'll be able to get pictures.) so I don't have to go to school. I'm glad Obama's going to be sworn in tomorrow as the President of the United States. I'm glad for Steinbeck, who writes amazing things (Tortilla Flats FTW). I'm glad I got into MIT already, and I don't have to worry about other schools so much. I'm glad people comment on my blog, too.

I think that's about everything. Peace out, guys.

¡Ciao!

The Ecuadorian Adventure

The way I see it, there are three types of stories: plot-driven, character-driven, and setting-driven. Plot driven is where things happen to the characters, and the characters react to them, like in Stranger than Fiction, where a bulldozer goes into Will Farrell's house, and the guy says, "Now that's plot." Then there's character-driven, where the characters are totally nuts and go around and make things happen. Pretty much anything by Carl Hiassen is character-driven. Think about it. And then there's setting-driven, where things happen because of the place where the characters are. I can't think of any examples of this. But what I'm trying to get across here, is that my life is a sum of all three types, a fantastic story I'm thinking of calling

The Ecuadorian Adventure*
(*I wouldn't really name my autobiography this, but it's good enough for a blog post.)

I'll start with Thursday. On Thursday, I went to Camille's house, Camille being the other American here. But I didn't go to visit Camille, but rather Camille's host sister, Andrea. Notice I made sure to get her name. I'm tired of going several weeks trying to catch the person's name offhand because I forgot it the first time, and didn't have the guts to ask again. Andrea's a really nice girl, a little bit older than me, and she wants me to "teach" her "English." No, she really does, I just like saying that to mess with my mom. On an unrelated note, MOM. PLEASE DON'T SHOW THIS TO SUSANNE OR VANESSA. I BEG YOU.

But seriously, what we do is we sit at the table, and I have Andrea read to me out of Danny, the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl. She says that she understands reading and writing well, but that she can't do pronunciation. So I just write down words she's having problems with and try to puzzle out the archaic rules of the English language and explain them. It's difficult, since writing out pronunciation, like "toad" is pronounced "toh-d", doesn't work that way in Spanish, since the letters make different sounds. But I'm getting the hang of it. Now, Camille, of course, speaks English, and so I was wondering why Andrea wanted me to help her, instead of Camille, which would be easier. Now, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, by which I mean I'm not going to ask why a cute Ecuadorian girl wants my help, but it turns out that Camille's just not a very good person to be around, that she doesn't do anything with the family, doens't help or whatnot, and so Andrea asked me if I would. That's not good, because if Camille gets sent home (which is very possible, if the family decides they can't put up with her anymore), I'll be the only American left in Ibarra. No one to go to KFC with, no one to understand why "What's that over there?" is so funny. It'd be a shame. I'd be alone.

Andrea's doing much better with reading, though. She still sounds Ecuadorian, which probably won't change, but at least she'll probably get the visa. She wants to go to America as an au pair, which is a person who lives with a family and watches the kids while the parents are out, and does general servant things. But to do that, she needs a visa, and the visa offices only do appointments in English, and other people Andrea knows who wanted to do this got denied the visa because they didn't speak English. So, she wants my help.

Sometime around five o'clock that day, the power went out. Now, this isn't very uncommon in Ibarra (see previous posts), but it happened in the entire city. Usually it just happens to one sector, like Yacucalle, or something, but it was the whole city. So, I leave around six to start on homework, and I get home and I'm like, Wait, how am I going to do FLVS if the power's out? Dammit! So, I lit up some candles to see if I could do my regular work.

I had this three-candle set-up going, where I put two candles on a plate, and put a third candle in a candle holder. I put the plate next to the candle holder to let the wax drip onto the plate. It was good, but then I went back to hang out at Camille's house because no one was home on my end, and I couldn't do work by the meager light.

As it turns out, all the power in Ecuador went out. 18/22 provinces went without power that night, for some strange reason. Think the Northeast Blackout a couple of years ago, except for the whole country. It was like that. We're getting power from Columbia until we're back up and running. Most of the people I asked about it blame Correa directly, like he was walking through a power plant and accidentally turned off the "Supply Power to Ecuador" switch. I don't really get it. But I went home at around nine, and since the power was still off, went to bed. I got up at five o'clock the next morning, Friday, to do homework, which most people didn't do because the power went out. My 2-D composition teacher likes me.

I think I've figured it out. The female teachers like me because I do my work well and on time, and the male teachers like Sara because she's a blonde Norwegian girl.

So, on Friday afternoon, I got a headache from not having enough sleep, and headed out to the orphanage. Now, last week, I made a promise that I would draw this one girl a picture. That was my first mistake. So, I brought in my sketchbook and a picture of the Little Mermaid to draw for her, and BAM. All the girls wanted pictures. I realized about half-way there that this would be the case, so I had somewhat prepared myself for it mentally, but still, having a bunch of ten-year-old girls clinging onto you begging for pictures isn't something you can exactly prepare for. So now I've got a picture of some Disney princess I'm supposed to draw, and then a Divine Child, and then, who knows?

Every week, I go back to the same classroom. Not really out of choice, but rather because that was the first class I went to, and no one really said anything about going to other classes, so it's always the same one. But yesterday (Friday), one of the older girls came and asked why I never go to their class. So now I'm promised to go to the older kids' class next Friday. The girls there have this really big thing about pinky swearing, and they get really upset when I'm "breaking" a promise. I had to sing three songs to get out of there, and that was only with me fighting them to get out. There's another American guy, 25 or so, who goes there to help out, but the girls don't like him. They keep telling me that, and trying to pit us against each other. There's also a German girl, 20, who lives at the orphanage and helps out. The girls are trying to hook me up with her for some reason, trying to get me to say that I love her. It's kind of weird, like having a ten-year-old fan club that's always trying to distract me.

In a stroke of extreme brilliance, I said that it wasn't fair for me to be the only one making drawings, and got them all to rush off and start making drawings. Or give me drawings that they'd already made.

This is the drawing that Amelia made me. She's the girl I drew the picture of the Little Mermaid for. She pasted the picture of Bugs Bunny in my sketchbook and then drew around it. She reminds me a lot of Pam N., for some reason. I do this a lot, in that I'll see people and consciously connect them to someone I know. Random people, too, like people I barely know, or haven't seen in ages. She was one of the two girls who fought with me to keep me from leaving ("But I'll be back Wednesday!" "I don't care!"). They really, really like me. I guess I'm just that awesome.

When I got back home, I went to bed. I woke up at 9:30, realized the internet was closed, and went back to bed. I had an epic struggle with my body trying to get more sleep, in which I woke up at four, five, six, and seven, and then lay in bed until 8 trying to fall back to sleep again. I have a physical inability to sleep past eight o'clock, no matter how late I go to bed. Much as I kick and fight and scream, I'm a morning person. Argh!

I did some watercolor work for 2-D Comp (Nothing special, mom, just colors). My Comp. teacher is really impressed with me, that I actually do my work. I think they've had problems with past foreign exchange students. She complimented me on my watercolor set, too, so, thanks for that one, mom. I actually like watercolors, which just gives more fuel for the hating my painting teacher fire. He totally spoiled them for me.

At ten, I went back to Andrea's house to help her, but we ended up going out. We went to one of her friend's house to get Andrea's dog to mate with another dog. I told them (Andrea and a couple of her friends were there. Camille was still asleep.) that in America, we don't have to deal with this, because we spay and neuter our dogs. They were all upset and said, "That's so awful!" I'm like, we don't have stray dogs running around the streets eating garbage. That's why. After that fun time was over, we went to the cemetery. They were exhuming a body to bury the son with his parents. I was going to ask where the son's body was, but then they pointed to a garbage bag, and I was like, Oh, Okay. So the caretakers pulled the coffin out, and the bottom fell out, spilling thirty-year-old bones, clothing, and rusted metal all over the place. Gag. Barf. So, being the only young male there who wasn't terrified of dead people, I got the fun task of helping clean up the junk, after all the bones were removed, and tossing it into the giant pit of death in the middle of the cemetery, with the other rusted coffins that they weren't using at the moment.

It was really interesting, though. We were there because one of Andrea's friends is in an anatomy class in college, and the professor assigned them to get a nose bone. Yes. Yes, that actually happened. I think I'm going to write a short story about the experience, since it was very surreal.

When we got back to the house, Andrea had the grandmother blow cigarette smoke on us, to make us better. Or something. The grandmother was weird. She told me that she'd been to the United States several times, but hated it. I wasn't really sure what to say, but she went on to say, "Yeah, because there's all these really fat black people. Like, really fat. And dirty. Black people. I don't think they even wash their feet. I hate America." So that kicked off a good thirty seconds of extremely awkward silence. I almost made the awkward turtle sign, but no one would have understood it. Then the grandmother went away, and I went back to "helping" Andrea with the vowel sounds. One thing I've learned from all this is that English is a very, very stupid language.

Thank you to Pam, for commenting. Glad you liked the story. There's no second part, but there is another story set in the same town, with similar craziness: "The Strange Case of Randal Skall". Thank you, Kristina, as well. It's okay if you don't get the Lovecraft joke. Not many people would. Thank you, Victoria, for commenting. Just send 'em over when you get 'em done. And I beat up Jesse all the time anyway. Especially since he's smaller than me.

That's all for now. ¡Ciao!

Finished Heat Resistant

Well, I finished my story, Heat Resistant, that I've been working on for a while. Any comments or compliments would be greatly appreciated, though the former moreso than the latter. I'm hoping to enter this one in the Writers of the Future contest, so it needs to be in top shape. Check it out, huh? Thanks.

To commemorate my epic story, I made a cheesy HP Lovecraft joke in Paint:



Thanks to Victoria for commenting. You're like, the most dedicated commenter I have. I seriously appreciate it. If you ever need me to do anything, like, um, I dunno, beat someone up for you, or something, just say the word.

¡Ciao!