Greetings from the Middle of the World!

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! While I did not celebrate it here, I was able to watch Texas defeat Texas A&M, courtesy of the cable TV in the gym!! Hook 'em, Horns!

Surprisingly, I only have a week remaining in my travels. What have I been up to? My second weekend, we went to the equator, know as Mitad del Mundo, or middle of the world. There's a sizeable monument erected by the French to mark the equator, but the French got it wrong. The actual equator as indicated by GPS is about 200 metres north of the monument. Once again, I was reminded of high school chemistry class . . . one of the demonstrations performed relates to the Corealis effect. The museum at the real equator has a portable sink to show water draining. In the northern hemisphere, water swirls in a clockwise direction; in the southern hemisphere, it rotates counterclockwise. On the equator the effect is almost nonexistent - water drains uniformly from all sides without a swirling motion!!

I've patroned a couple of music venues in Quito. The first is the recently-built La Casa de la Musica, which promotes high culture - classical music and the like. We heard a flutist and harpist play . . .I expected to be mesmerized by the harp, but the flutist (flautist?) blew us away with his talent! The other venue is La Casa de la Pena, which is a bar with live music on Friday and Saturday nights. It's in an old house originally owned by a doctor and used as a hospital . . then by an artist who became famous for killing one of his students so he could have a model for his painting of Jesus Christ's suffering! It is now preserved for historic reasons, and it has to be one of the coolest bars I've patroned. The first band we heard fell under the catch-all category of pop-rock and played both Latin and US music (including The Outfield and The Divinyls - takes you back, doesn't it?). This past Friday night, there was a band playing blues music, which encompassed Billy Joel´s Piano Man and bluegrass music.

My pedestrian commute to school is worth mentioning. The sidewalks are filled with vendors selling all kinds of products. Some sell newspapers or fruit or sunglasses (or all of the above), all of which makes sense to me. Other vendors selling one product bewilder me . .. there's a man who sells extension cords. Only extension cords, and as far as I can tell, his inventory is what he can hold in his hand, which is about five cords. They sell for a dollar a piece. There's a woman, probably a few years younger than me, who sells ankle support (ACE bandage like) in a similar fashion - she has about four bandages in her hands and verbally advertises to anyone passing by. If I ever needed an extension cord or ankle support, I'm not sure it would occur to me to hit up the street corner for those products. While slightly amusing, it's also sad . . .even assuming they sell their daily inventories, the profit is probably $2 - 3 total.

Tuesdays through Thursdays, I pass a line of police with plastic shields just before entering school. The school is just across from the congressional building, and the police stand ready for the three days when Congress is in session because the indigenous people are known to demonstrate in the afternoons. (Here, the indigenous people have few rights and usually have very difficult lives, farming or making and selling crafts.) This past Thursday we saw the President make his entrance . . .with all the traditional pomp and circumstance, including the red carpet and military band!

This past Thursday marked the beginning of Quito's annual festival. It commences with the Reina de Quito, which is similar to a beauty pageant, but the winner also has the responsibility of working to help Quito's children. The winner this year has made sex education a priority, I think to alleviate both child molestation and teen pregnancy. The festival lasts until December 6th with all sorts of musical and cultural events. Last Friday we watched fireworks and a parade with local high school bands.

Next time, I'll tell you more about the city's fiesta and wherever I wind up this weekend!

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