Hello all,

Another week closer to learning where we will be for the next two years.  Things have gotten a lot more interesting since we have begun going into the schools and actually teaching..or at least helping with the English classes.  I have some interesting photos.  PC took us back to Otovalo and they had arranged for us to visit an indigenous medical facility..where they fuse ancestral/tribal medicine with western medicine.  Earlier in the week, PC  took us to visit the Asemblea National...basically their seat of government.  I have some good photos from there and especially a huge mural spreading across the whole front on the assembly chamber, by Ecuador's famous artist Guayasamin.  Its sort of a collage made up of a series of paintings depicting various parts of Ecuadoran society and culture.  He was from an indigenous tribe  ( died in 1999) so a lot of his art shows the oppression they have suffered.  There is only one reference to the USA and that is in the form of a CIA malevolent looking face.  Scary.  It looms over  their legislative chamber.

This is a series of pictures I should have included last week.  The handler is displaying one of the two bald eagles they have.  He released them and they flew out over that small hill you can see in background...they did not come back right away but he was not worried. I guess they always come back...they are not native to the Andes.  They also have a captive Andean Condor..my picture is not too good.  They are huge and endangered.

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In this photo you can see the CIA painting but you can also see the Andean Condor with its wings spread.  They are not red in nature...the red means something but I can't recall.  The mural is beautiful and incredibly large.

THis is  series of photos from our trip to tour the Asemblea Nacional.  You can see the painting depicting the CIA.  Our guide was a very well versed and proud indigenous young man who did a great job...all in Spanish so I missed some but was able to get a whole lot.  His Spanish was very high quality.   The photo of him with his hands raised is when he was explaining the painting with the hands raised to the sun symbol....the artist, Guayasamin,  depicted many of the situations of the indigenous people.  You can see how big Quito is and this is just in one direction...we were sort of in the central of the city so it is HUGE!!!    Also, the picture of  two of my companeros and me shows that we were missing our teacher, Paulina,  that day.  We were on the roof of the Asemblea building where they have some interesting displays and great views of Quito.

THis is a diagnostic procedure at the indigenous medicine place.  That lady rubs a live guinea pig all over the patient and when the guinea pig dies they slit it open and examine its innards to determine where the disease was in the patient.  They tried to convince Mattie that she had back pain but I don't think she gave' in.  Anyhow, the poor little guinea pig died for nothing.  They eat guinea pigs here, they call them cuy, and they are somewhat of a delicacy.  I don't know if they eat the ones they use for diagnosing or not but....I'll bet they do. 

First this lady squeezed the pee out of it, then she skinned it.  I hope it was dead by then.  Ick, sad....This little lady seems to be the cuy expert......curadora I think they called her.  The also have a procedure where they rub an egg all over you to draw out the bad energy.   Then they crack and egg and examine the yolk and white.  They saw that little red spot in the one they used on one of our trainees and said it meant something about his energy.  I muttered to myself...yeah, it means the egg is fertilized !!!  duh....I think....

Our group was respectful but not thrilled.  In the background you can see some of Otovalo...really a pretty place..high in the Andeas so the weather is cool...very nice.  The kid in the blue jacket graduated from CU Boulder.  The other elder trainee, Linda, is in the picture.