Español v. English

Have you ever thought about how fighting the good fight is...a fight? Fights in and of themselves are not easy. I know. Ben is my younger brother and for the first few years of life I could take him. But then, sadly, the younger brother that is Ben (though he would wish to be known as the older brother) could take me. I imagine this is still the case, which is why I am rather inclined to pacifism these days. Thanks to Ben...Thoreau...and Jesus.

That being said, our fight here is a battle against English. I apologize for the violent verbiage but for me it is very hard. I just want to swim in a sea of English. I want to approach random white people for conversations...sometimes this results in conflict between Brigitte and I. Here is a photo of Brigitte and I after we began fighting because she wanted to speak English and I wanted to speak Spanish...

Brigitte has been doing an incredible job of speaking Spanish, and I am jealous of how quickly she is learning Spanish. Her determination, energy...and creative use of hand motions get her far. When others learn that she has only been studying Spanish since the end of July, they are always impressed. But we still have a long way to go.

Oftentimes Brigitte struggles with the difference between "buenos dias", which is good morning, and "buenas tardes", which is good afternoon. My approach to this is to simply utter, "buenos..." or even the more brief, "bueno...". This has resulted in many instances where we walk into a store in the afternoon, and Brigitte boldly begins, "BUENOS DIAS!" to which I quietly add, "tardes", we laugh...the clerk laughs...and then we move on with the conversation. Today we went through these motions. She declared BUENOS DIAS, I corrected her, but then she pointed out that the man at the store had initiated with a "buenos dias". I was appropriately chastened, because it was 11: 45. Still buenos dias.

We like the bread here a lot. While my brother is learning how to slang bread, I am continuing to hone my ability to consume it. Last Friday our teachers took us to a panaderia (bakery) where they use a wood stove to cook their bread. I know man "cannot live by bread alone"...but this bread does make it tempting...

It was warm and it was good. So good. Brigitte has had to physically restrain me because I want to quit school...quit everything in fact, and just eat bread at this panaderia.

This bakery was found in the old school bakery sector. That is how it is here, things are divided into sectors. The furniture sector. The car repair sector. The school supply sector. If you walk a few blocks and only see hats in every shop, then you guessed it, you are in the sombrero sector! During our Friday field trip, guess which sector we went to?

No, it is not the crazy monument sector. Instead it is the blacksmith/ironworking sector. And in it, they have the coolest monument that we have ever seen. This is a monument of a blacksmith exploding out of a volcano, anvil in hand, ready to pound some iron. You can see the mosaic "lava" flowing from the "ironman". Don't worry, neither myself nor Brigitte were injured while shooting this picture.

On Saturday we went to a national park that is an hour from our house. Sometimes...well actually a lot of times...our lack of fluency makes things take longer. We left that house at 8:30. We walked to the main bus terminal. We asked the a women working at a ticket office how to get a ticket to the national park. She said we had to leave the bus terminal and get on the local bus number 11, and then take it to the "Occidental" bus station where we could find a bus to Cajas national park. We ran out of the main bus terminal. We jumped on the first number 11 bus. After two or three stops we decided that we never got a second opinion. So we got off the bus. Walked back to the bus terminal. We asked another ticket agent for which bus we needed to go to Cajas National Park. She pointed outside to a bus and said, "That one!". We ran out to get on the bus. The man said something in Spanish that seemed to mean there was no space. We went outside and waited. We walked by each bus and said, "Does this bus go to Cajas?" They all pointed to the bus that had no space. We walked back to that bus again. We asked the conductor again if there was space. He said maybe. We waited. Then another conductor came and said, "There is no space." We went back inside the station. We asked another ticket agent where we could get a bus to go to Cajas. She said, and this may sound familiar, take the local number 11 bus to the Occidental bus station. So again, we left the station...took the number 11 bus. But this time we stayed on it. We finally made it to the station. And we finally made it to Cajas!

For those of you who do not "hablo espanol", 4 horas muy dificil is translated as, 4 hours very difficult. And here is why. You spend 1 hour trying to find the trailhead, even after you have a big green sign pointing at it it is that hard to find. Then, once you find the trailhead, you spend 3 climbing straight up, because Cajas does not believe in switchbacks. Finally, you spend 1 more hour being lost again, because suddenly the trail disapparates and you have to bushwack your way to home. But it was incredibly beautiful...and we loved every minute of it!

Oh and I have now texted myself 20 more times.