In March my lease is up. My roommate wanted to move to Astoria. My former upstairs neighbor already did. When I learned that my potential roommate replacement was currently subletting in Brooklyn, my heart sunk, assuming she’d want to stay. It’s hard being hipster-age in upper Manhattan. Sometimes I feel like I’m locked in an undeclared competition against Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Astoria, Queens.  One friend that moved to Astoria recently posted a picture of the beautiful, vibrant graffiti near her new neighborhood. It spreads across the roof of a huge old building, and is even considered officially sanctioned tourist-material, easily viewed from an above-ground 7 train.

Really, when facing the outer-boroughs crowd, the trains are the one thing I can still use to justify what used to be the enviable choice and understandable concessions one makes for prime real estate. Here in Manhattan there’s no sometimes L train, no freezing cold above-ground J or 7, and certainly no dreaded G for me. Mine is the oh-so-reliable 4,5,6 that drops me ½ block from my doorstep. For the same low rent as my East Harlem digs, my friends in Brooklyn and Queens get more space and more green. Yet my address is still NYC, NY.  I cherish my short commute as much as my friends cherish their little backyards, their unconventional lofts, and their gentrifying neighborhoods. And honestly, I never wanted to be part of gentrification anyways- in fact, as a conscientious sociology student I dreaded the fact that my adventurous spirit, fair complexion and artist’s budget were probably going to force me into neighborhood invasion against my will.

Yet as I watch this exodus from El Barrio with a twinge of regret I also am reassured— despite the new high-rise on Lexington and the tiny increase in my rent this year— El Barrio is holding its ground. I’ve been saying for the past few months that the only complaint I have about living up here is that there aren’t many people my age and the few that are around spend all their time somewhere else. But I long ago came to terms with the fact that my neighborhood isn’t cool. For some of my peers, El Barrio is more like transit ground while you get your footing for something better. I say let ‘em go.

I knew El Barrio was a proud place when, only a few days after move-in, I stumbled upon a meeting about a local community garden across the street from my building. A handful of neighbors had gathered at our local café to meet with representatives from the non-profit organizing a renovation of the space. Glossy plans of the Disney-sponsored new playground were posted on the walls for people to discuss. But what I remember most was the insistent, circuitous arguments that one neighbor in particular was making. The argument was over the details of the playground flooring: residents had asked for rubber mats but we were told the budget only permitted wood chips. These aren’t safe for the kids and they will encourage the feral cats, argued the man, who considered himself an unofficial guardian of the space. He cared about every detail because he knew the space better than anyone. Sitting and listening as he dragged the meeting on, I remembered every community meeting I’d been to in Ecuador. The kind of meeting where Peace Corps volunteers would roll their eyes at the deceptively common phrase “ya mismo” (which translates to “any moment now” but really denotes any times span other than the immediate present). In the eyes of the coordinators, we were getting nowhere fast. After all, the plans weren’t really up for discussion since the contracts had already been sound, the dates set for a ground-breaking. But in my opinion as a new community member, I was thrilled to be participating in community development, but this time as a community member, rather than a community organizer. And more importantly I felt honored to be neighbors with people who cared enough to defend their interests even in the face of well-meaning outsider “charity”.

As it turns out, a few weeks later I found another community garden that far surpassed the now Disney-renovated one, and it served to introduce me to a new cast of El Barrio characters. Middle-aged women, old men who hang out on the streets, and a few stragglers like me all have come together to support the incredible space where we grow an amazing array of vegetables, listen to birds and in the winter have the best Christmas-light display in the area. I was carrying my laundry basket the other day, when I heard one of those old men call out “Sarita!” (the nickname most of my friends called me in Ecuador). In that moment, I knew I was home.

But I want this post to be a realistic portrait of the neighborhood I call home. This is a blog to El Barrio, not an ode. I feel the need to confess that my self-proclaimed position as “girl from the barrio” is selective at best: there are homeless people in front of my building that I never talk to. They hang out in front of the bodega that I never go into. That bodega, frequented by men who stand around watching T.V., always feels more like a clubhouse that I’m intruding upon. So despite the fact that it is below my building, I usually walk a block uphill to the more family friendly Mexican grocery. There are also quite a few nice restaurants that I’ve never been to since I just assume from the presence of wine glasses at the table settings that they are out of my price range. But there are also countless local businesses that just intimidate me: a perfumed oils seller on the corner of 104^th, the numerous “cuchifrito” places (Puerto Rican junk food, I think?) that I haven’t ventured to try since I don’t really know what cuchifrito is. I’m on email lists for the East Harlem Film Festival, a local theatre, a café and a gallery, but I’ve never actually attended any of the events that I’m proud to know are going on.

We just got a new bakery called MY NY where I can finally get a decent bagel and cream-cheese within a few blocks radius, AND at El Barrio prices! We better “patronize the hell out of it”, said one of my neighbors when I ran into her at out our one hipster burger place — after all, a local Italian bakery was foreclosed upon a few months ago. When I was first feeling worried about the implications of gentrification one of my friends reminded me that patronizing the local business is the best way to ensure you doesn’t become a neighborhood parasite. But then again, I’m not sure how directly my minimal leisure spending budget contributes to the neighborhood economy. Since I more often find myself meeting friends in Brooklyn or near where I work in Union Square, I wonder if my grocery bills, laundry tab and occasional midnight snack spending in El Barrio could really be a more significant contribution than what I spend as I traverse the city during the rest of my day. For as much as I love where I live, I’m really only home on Sundays.

I didn’t make any resolutions over New Year’s (which I guiltily admit I celebrated in Brooklyn). Often when Jan 1 rolls around it just feels like an arbitrary date that doesn’t reflect any specific renewal in my own life cycle. A friend of mine recently started a conversation about how best to teach Chinese New Year in her classroom without becoming the “token crazy Chinese lady.” The suggestion I liked best was to focus on the fact that different people celebrate different New Years’ dates. I remembered that I actually have three: Jewish, Chinese lunar, and the good ole Roman calendar. Which one is more meaningful? Well simply because February responds to my lease renewal, Chinese New Year seems more significant this “year”. I reflect on my life when an important personal event marks the significant passage of time. Returning from Ecuador was one such event. Committing to a second year in NYC is another. So as I’ve been composing this post I’ve come up with a resolution to mark this new cycle in my life:

Refocus on myself, both as an artist and a person.

I’ve done a lot of dancing this year, and really more so than that, a lot of a lot of things (Oct 2011 post: Todologia). And while I’m motivated by my desire to be active and involved in my various passions, running from rehearsal to office to teaching means endless commitment to other people. I work for other people, I dance for other people, and sadly I’ve even lowered my cleanliness standards to those of other people (those of my soon-to-be leaving roommate thank god!). So now I’m starting to test the idea of being someone who brings people together, as opposed to being one of the brought. I’ve proposed an artistic space share to a small group of artists, hoping that as I address the personal need to develop a movement practice and a solo voice, I will also plant the seed for a community of peer collaborators and supporters. As I define what I’m interested in, I’m able to find more motivation to make those things a reality on my own terms. And probably, it’s about time. I’ve seen a number of my peers starting to produce work, create websites, and even develop their own businesses. Well I’m not quite there yet. But just over a year ago I was spending yet another tearful lunch hour in Quito with a friend who suggested that if I wanted to dance in Ecuador then I needed to start a project to make it happen. I responded then that I wasn’t ready; I wanted more experience and less responsibility. But when I wasn’t getting invitations to join others projects in Quito, I left. Here in New York, I’m starting to find some footing. This time, I chose my roommate (a cleaner one!) rather than she choosing me. And as for dance and professional life, I’m thinking seriously about getting business cards…

I wish I could say that I’m connecting the space share project to El Barrio. But unfortunately, I don’t know of any spaces around here, I don’t have the time to search them out, and I don’t know how I’d convince my collaborators to travel uptown. So there’s certainly still some work to be done- both on my commitment to my neighborhood as well as to personal goals for my art.

“Refocusing on myself” is a luxury only afforded by gaining a modicum of stability. As my father recently pointed out to me, that’s what renewing this rent contract really represents. After 2 years of never living in one place for more than 9 months, I’m signing on, here, for 12 more. I’m staying. Yes, partially out of inertia, partially because I know I won’t find cheaper rent, but more importantly because I’m comfortable here. And moving to where all the other young artists live, well that would be a peer-pressured move about joining others, rather than forging a path myself. It’s my language ability and affinity for Latino culture that makes me comfortable in El Barrio when my peers are not. Why waste what I’ve worked so hard to earn? Or more importantly, why move to a community whose gentrification politics might force me to choose one side or another?  And while we’re back on the topic of comparing neighborhoods, we do have inspiring graffiti in our neighborhood too. Even more emblematic than our countless community murals, are artist De la Vega’s signature messages of hope scrawled in impermanent places.

photo courtesy of another East Harlem blogger, Gloria of http://eastharlemnyc.blogspot.com. 

What better place to launch an artistic career than from a neighborhood that greets each day with a tag painted on the discarded cardboard and mattresses: Become your dreams. Gracias el Barrio, for giving me a space to dream.

My Mixed-Ass

 

It all started with a story I told Sydnie (my choreographer) during rehearsal. Since joining The Window Sex Project this summer, I’ve been viewing my everyday interactions through the lens of topics discussed at the community workshops and rehearsals: personal space, our rights as women and people to exist in our neighborhoods, and how small instances represent larger threats.

Looking through this new magnifying glass at my daily movements in public spaces, I noticed a parallel invasion of my daily commute was happening in the form of marketers, missionaries, merchants—all trying to get a minute of my time. Much like potential “hollerers” they were looking at me, and making a snap judgment before interrupting my daily routine.

Blue-shirted Children International campaigners would often say “You look nice…” before trying to get me to pledge to their charity.

Slick hair salon promoters would say “You’ve got great hair… Can I ask you a question about it?”

And most invasive of all are the black-clad Jewish missionaries called Chabad who seem to pinpoint my Jewish nose and fluffy hair from a mile away, in order to say “Excuse me, Ma’am, are you Jewish?”

In rehearsal I told Sydnie how after a day full of such small harassments and instant profiling, I found myself scheming about clever retorts to launch at the Chabad men before I finally snapped at them: “Jewish?” I scoffed, “Not like you!” While I told this story with remorse, the strong women of Window Sex of course reminded me that I was well within my rights to be a little rude when someone’s not only invading my space, but racially profiling me on the street.

So now we are creating a solo about the many ways I am perceived and the also the ways I choose to present myself. To set the record straight, I am a multi-racial woman, coming from a German-Jewish mother and a Chinese father. I grew up in a heavily Christian, although not-quite as racially homogenous as most Easterners would think, small city in the Midwest. After college, I achieved Spanish-language fluency from studying, dancing, and working in Ecuador. I look ethnically ambiguous and have endless stories to tell about the faux-pas (or revealingly racist slips) that people make while trying to figure me out in a single glance.

If I had to pick a single piece of text for the solo, it would be the question “What ARE you?”. This seems ridiculous when you say it here, in New York City, in 2011 right? The answer should be “A human, duh.” But growing up in Illinois I used to get asked this question all the time. It would go “What ARE you? Black, white or mixed?” I can’t remember ever feeling particularly angry about this, just sort of exasperated by other people’s ignorance. The answer they were looking for was a list of my minority heritage, “half-Chinese, half-Jewish,” which is usually what I would say. But what I really felt like saying was “Well, think about it a second… I mean look at me, if I’m not white, and I’m not black, then I must be…mixed.”

I wasn’t even annoyed at the dehumanizing aspect of the question as much as the fact that with such narrow categories the answer seemed self-evident. People would ask in genuinely curious ways, not necessarily maliciously at all. It often happened with total strangers including the girls bathroom in high school! Much in the same way that transgendered and queer people deal with mis-classification, this question highlights the embeddedness of social categories, and the rejection or confusion that is created when someone renders grey what was thought to be black and white. I can’t recall the exact words, but my parents received similar questions during their marriage or when my mother was pregnant with me, such as “what kind of babies are you going to have?”
The other high school memory I have is of a guy at work who I later realized was trying to hit on me by asking/answering that question ["What are you?"]. After I responded with the usual sigh and standard answer, this coworker of mine said “Oh I thought you were half black because of your ass and your hair.” He was trying to say I had a nice (black) ass I guess, which was meant as a complement. But at the time I was an aspiring ballerina who wanted to be pale and slim, so it just seemed totally out of left field. I wasn’t even concerned with the racial implications, but just offended that he thought my butt was big! Once I left Illinois and before I became fluent in Spanish, this actually was quite a common assumption (especially in college when I lived in a residence for “people of color,” which ended up meaning mostly African American students). Of course after gaining a fluency of Spanish in college, Latina is now the more common guess.

And although I don’t get butt comments on the street, I often get ass-related compliments from men when I’m in bed with them. Guess my mixed ass isn’t big enough to get called out when I have clothes on, but it’s still enough to get noticed when they’re off! The other night this happened and I quipped to the guy that I don’t know where it comes from ‘cause it’s certainly not Chinese. He responded that actually Jews are known for being more curvy, at least more so than other white people. I fit another stereotype, who knew? You can perpetuate stereotypes without knowing they exist, since an outside gaze is doing the assigning (of stereotypes). So perhaps the ultra-religious Jewish guys harassing me in Williamsburg aren’t looking at my hair or my nose at all, but at my Jewish ass … now wouldn’t that be something to throw at them next time I get stopped?

I can just imagine it:

“Excuse me, are you Jewish?”

“Excuse me! Were you looking at my ass? ”

I feel guilty thinking about how embarrassed the poor guy would probably be if I accused him of sinning and checking out a woman who wasn’t dressed in an ankle length skirt and long sleeves rather than doing his religious duty. That’s probably taking it too far. But then again,going to the extreme of caricature is a tactic we’re using in the project – blow it up for entertainment so that everyone can see what was so ridiculous in the first place. And once you start thinking about it, there’s a lot of ridiculousness to point out.

Growing up in Illinois I just didn’t have that much exposure to racial stereotypes. It was a whole process of discovery when I got to college. At Barnard, the “what are you” question melted away and to my slight dismay I realized that for the first time in my life I kind of did look like everyone else. No longer surrounded by blondes, African Americans and a handful of Indians and Chinese (this was the makeup of my high school), everyone just assumed I was Jewish—how many short curly brown-haired girls do you find on the Upper West Side, right? I missed my rare-specimen status, and in college it became a game of proving I was different.

Once in my Intermediate Chinese class at Columbia, I said “wo baba shi zhong guo ren.” (My father is Chinese.) My teacher actually stopped the lesson, looked at me and broke into English to say “Really?”. I got used to carrying around a picture of my family to prove my Chinese-ness. This happened when I joined the school’s Chinese Lion Dance Club as well. I remember recruiting junior year and being the token “white girl” to attract more diversity to the team. There actually was another half-Asian girl, even half Jewish, I believe, but she looked ostensibly more Asian, and had grown up speaking Cantonese. I still carry that picture in my wallet and pull it out from time to time, literally pulling out the “race card” when I need it. 
Now, I’ve come to really embrace my racial ambiguity. It’s become a game I love to play, the chameleon, carefully code shifting as needed. I actually think I’m most comfortable in the role of “closeted token [insert racial category here].” Perhaps that’s the anthropologist in me, or just an exploitation of the privilege of racial ambiguity, but I actually feel most comfortable when I’m blending in with a group and yet keeping my official racial identity in my back pocket for when needed. I’m often in the situation where I’m the only white girl, Latina girl, Chinese girl, Jewish girl, American girl, or mixed girl, depending on the crowd.

I grew up being the only Jew with my Mom teaching my classmates about traditions like Hanukkah and Passover. When I work in the community garden in my neighborhood in East Harlem, speaking in Spanish alongside all the local immigrant moms, they take delight in telling their un-initiated friends, “Did you know she not Latina? She’s actually…” and then they will rattle off my whole racial profile! The same thing happens when I hang out with my Ecuadorian friends. And I realized that in the Window Sex Project, I’m the only dancer not of African American descent – interesting, and also for me, delightful! Being the only one (of whatever) highlights my ability to successfully transform, or simply to be open-minded enough to break the racial boundaries that I never really saw in the first place. One thing that growing up multi-racial subtly taught me was that racial categories are fluid and not really that important. In my family, culture was celebrated, but not puritanically preserved. Mixing, shifting, creating new identities—nothing new there— that had happened from the moment I was born.

In Ecuador, I actively sought out places where I would be the only American, a position I coveted while I snubbed my fellow Americans for being obnoxious expats, ignorant volunteers, or silly tourists. A good Ecuadorian friend of mine once observed that I was always defining myself by what I was not i.e. “not one of those.” I keep my individual self distinct and play-up my repertoire of identities as the situation presents itself. When I attend a synagogue where I need to be Jewish I put on a silver mezuzah necklace (a Jewish religious symbol), make sure my hair is curly, and that I wear a long skirt and nothing too revealing up top. For Latina, it’s about speaking the language, listening to loud reggaeton, reading books on the subway in Spanish, and using ambiguous statements like “I just moved back” (I’ve been taken for an illegal immigrant when speaking Spanish in immigrant areas of Queens!). For Chinese, which was never really possible, I would tightly braid my hair so that you couldn’t see the curls. And for “half-black” I would put my hair in a ponytail close to the top of my head, letting it frizz. I always said that if one day I auditioned for Alvin Ailey I’d make sure to get a tan and cut my hair short (then it’ll curl tightly close to my head)! In Ecuador I even passed for indigenous by wearing local traditional dress and adopting mannerisms of the people where I was. Curiously enough, each time that I did this I would get more attention from local men – as if by embodying their familiar idea of beauty, I was suddenly accessible (and beautiful) in a way that I wasn’t before. 

In general, I thrive on this identity hide-and–seek because it allows me to teach the world about the fluidity of identity that I’ve always seen as natural. Race to me was always secondary to humanity. When I look at my father my first association is “there’s my Dad,” not “oh look, a Chinese man.” Playing with people’s presumptions is my way of showing them that race isn’t as obvious and fact-like as they thought.

I think that’s why the Jewish missionaries always bother me. I hate being in situations where my ambiguity is taken away and like most everyone else I’m assumed to be one flat thing. In Ecuador it infuriated me when taxi drivers, hoping to add a gringa surcharge to my fare, would ask me where I was from. I would always avoid the direct answer saying vehemently “I LIVE here, I live here” in my best local accent. I reserve my right to be an exception, thank you very much. 

Like any minority group, the best tactic is to turn positive what was once used against you. As a “mixed” or multiracial person, I know I’m the future, but until I become a majority, I’m basking in the interesting, complicated, fun that is being something different. I decide who I am. What I am is not any concern of yours, especially on the street. 

Come see me both expose others pre-conceptions, and celebrate those I choose to embody at The Window Sex Project on Saturday Nov. 12th!

Where am I and WHAT am I? Take a look at the different contexts in these photos…

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The days before leaving for Maine, I practically wrenched myself away from the dizzying matrix of dance and odd jobs that comprise my daily New York life. My overwhelming to do list of people to see, bills to pay and jobs to work meant that only by adhering to the “city that never sleeps” slogan could I get through everything on my type-A to do list. This self-centered island metropolis makes you feel not only like this world is your only world but also that you owe the city your participation. The endless opportunities it offers merge with the desire to be an engaged participant of my world, which means that for someone like me the temptation to overschedule is just too great. Perhaps because of this, more than anything else, my trip to the Bates Dance Festival was such a wonderful experience. Being at Bates took me out of my urban comfort zone and gently forced me into a simple daily schedule, always the same, and always revolving around the one activity that is the most difficult to schedule here in NYC: dance. It was heaven, enough said.

And since I returned to the city last Monday, I’ve felt the city slam into me like an ocean wave. I’m still reeling from the blow which included the the not-so-welcome back of having to lug a suitcase across 5 avenue blocks and then purchase a $104 metro card, all before I’d even arrived at my front door. Suddenly I’m feeling the same amount of disorientation and nostalgia as when I arrive from another country- yet this time I wasn’t in Ecuador for 7 months but Maine for less than 1. Hardly a comparison, and yet this dejavu culture shock is a testament more to New York’s own exceptionalism than to any other location’s difference. Returning from “outside” makes more evident to me than ever the truth behind that New Yorker cartoon map showing essentially New York vs. the rest of the world. My cousin laughingly referred to this as the provincialness of New Yorkers. At times more narrow-minded as the southerners and midwesterners that we dismiss, we refer to it as the city, as if every other place but here was some sort of deserted countryside, or in the very least as if it is the only city that matters.

Having lived in other cities, of course I know New York is not the only place that matters. Indeed in the post-college struggle and after returning from Ecuador, for me, the city lost much of its glitter. But it has consistently been the best place to dance. Dance opportunities are what drew me back from Quito at the end of last year. So this time being away from New York, for dancing, has got me questioning the nature of my relationship to the city.

While at Bates I went to see a dance performance at a nearby farm- performed not in say, a barn, but actually right in the pasture with horses and hay. What struck me more than the novelty of people and animals dancing together was watching my art performed under circumstances so different from the minimum requirements that I usually require for modern dance: a surface that is smooth, open, uncluttered and almost always enclosed. Despite my travels dance has always been for me an urban art. It has tied me to cities both because of physical facility requirements and also for access to artistic opportunities. Yet there we were in rural Maine, dancing in school gymnasiums and lecture halls (granted with state of the art sound systems and special floor overlays), watching dances performed inside and outside. Furthermore, most of the people I met were not from New York, and stranger still the majority were from the Midwest! Meeting so many Ohioans and Illinoisans, I find myself reclaiming my Illinois identity even though I had proudly changed my license to New York only a few weeks ago.

It was empowering to see the successful Midwesterners that seemed to abound there- professional dancers with companies I admire from backgrounds more humble than mine, and choreographers and teachers who now live in cosmopolitan cities like New York and San Francisco. At first when I saw them onstage or in class I marveled at the magnitude of their journey. For example one dancer and teacher whom I greatly admire turned out to be an outreach scholarship student from inner city Columbus who trained at BalletMet (where I spent a year between high school and college)! Seventeen year-old me and seventeen year-old her were physically in the same place- could it be that say 25 year old me will be as kind, confident and successful as she? But as I met more and more of these people, I reproached myself for thinking like a New Yorker: that the Midwest is a dead-end place of hicks and cornfields and anyone else is an exception to the norm. These dancers are living proof that Midwesterners can dance. Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota seem to be unremarkable places to come from but conversely desirable places to go to study dance, if not also teach and work. Perhaps I should humbly reclaim my place in their ranks.

Yet I am proud to be from New York. It continues to be the mecca for so many young dancers. I found myself advising other dancers, mostly recent grads but not all, who are moving to the city after Bates. I caught myself thinking about how naïve they must be to think they can just move to my city with no plans except to dance. Yet I also admired their bravery and understood their aspirations, because in a way that’s what I did too. Get here any way you can and then survive any way you can. “Making it” in New York is first about making it to New York. And for us Midwesterners that can often be an achievement in itself. One of the choreographers that I danced for at Bates told me about how it took a major foot injury to force her to leave her position with the Martha Graham Company and subsequently New York City. In hindsight she says it took divine intervention (“God pushed me down the stairs”) to make her quit a job that was considered “success”, even when she knew she wasn’t happy. Hearing the way she used “success” made it sound like a mental trap, an (unnecessary?) struggle. She was a midwesterner too. If I wonder what on earth those other dancers are thinking by moving to New York, I can just ask my sixteen-year-old self. Living in New York is an achievement about independence, mobility, worldliness and self-invention. And yet, as that choreographer pointed out, sometimes the achievement isn’t really sustaining by itself.

Saying I´m from Illinois makes me feel younger, more naïve, and also humble; whereas presenting myself as a New Yorker highlights the strong, independent, capable, worldy me. But New York me is also overwhelmed, competitive, jaded. In high school I wrote my college admission essay about how I could relate to Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Holly (Audrey Hepburn) goes to great lengths to present herself as an independent woman and New York socialite, when she is actually Eulemay from Texas, a little girl who used to steal turkey eggs from her nieghbor´s farms. For Holly, it took a visit from her long-abandoned husband to make her confront her childhood identity. For me, its been this experience seeing reflections of my life through the mirror of others´ lives.

And now in dance-camp withdrawal, I’ve been watching videos posted on the festival´s website- including one where a high school camper is so enthused he just yells “go to Bates! Go to Bates!” while jumping up and down. I wonder is it the immature midwesterner in me that completely understands his feeling of unbridled enthusiasm, or the jaded New Yorker that sees how rare and precious of an experience camp was?  Either way, I didn´t want it to end. Bates affirmed for me that I want to dance, that I´m happiest dancing. New York, in all its multi-tasking fervor, had me convinced that I needed to live a Liberal Arts life- dabbling in many passions in order to feel whole. But it turns out that after 3 weeks of nothing but dance 8 hours a day, I wasn´t bored, or unfulfilled, or even really tired. I wanted more. And if anything, Bates reminded me of what probably seems obvious to everybody else who knows me: I always dance wherever I go- be it a jungle in Ecuador or a small city in Illinois. Location has never stopped me before, so why do I put so much emphasis on where I´m from? Perhaps rather that worrying about being a closet midwesterner, or a wannabe Ecuadorian, or an almost-New Yorker, I should just be a dancer. That identity, free from the confines of geography, is probably more consistent than any of the others. If, as a dancer, I can be a citizen of the world, why look any farther? I´m already home.

For a taste of what I did at Bates take a look at this video of one of my classes. Sometimes images are worth more than words.

This blog is usually about Ecuador,  or living in New York while thinking about Ecuador. Sometimes its about dancing, sometimes not. It sort of traces a personal journey (you might call it coming of age) about relating to the places where one lives. However, for another essay about dancing take a look at  this one from 2009.

New York City is a place of literary inspiration for so many writers and yet since I have moved back “home” (?) I haven’t been able to access the elegant ability for reflection that made this blog thrive while I was abroad. The wordpress folder on my computer has various starts and attempts reflecting on reverse-culture shock. In one I wrote: “Reverse culture shock is always more difficult than culture shock, I think because it is missing the element of thrill”. Perhaps that lack of excitement towards the mundane is linked to the inability to extricate oneself from one’s own normal. But if being from a place means it glitters less, it also means it is easier to slip back into routine and comfort there.

Among the reasons for leaving Quito was a growing weariness from fighting the uphill battle of being a foreigner, even if I was an incredibly well-adapted one. Upon returning to New York I’ve enjoyed a much quicker restart than I ever did in Quito: I resumed my old dance job, deepened relationships with old college friends, and found a day job before even physically arriving. And I had an outpouring of family support that no amount of friends in Ecuador could ever have matched. Sure, it took me two months to find an apartment, and at least as long to feel comfortable at my new teaching job and learn to manage the delicate balance between it and dance, but I also found myself swept back up by the breathless rhythm of the city with little difficulty. And it is on this fast-paced, present-focused life that I would like to blame my lack of inspiration: too much doing, not enough sitting, relaxing, thinking. But maybe that’s just another excuse.

Every time I come back I renegotiate my relationship to Ecuador. This time I’ve tried not to idealize the memories into an aching nostalgia but rather remind myself that leaving Ecuador doesn’t make the country any less a part of me, nor prevent me from enjoying many parts of Ecuadorian culture. Now when Spanish speakers exclaim over my Ecuadorian accent and wonder about my relationship to the place, I tell them it is my “patria adoptada” (adopted country). And the anthropologist adventurer in me has turned from exploring jungles and mountains to exploring New York neighborhoods, especially, but not limited to Spanish-speaking ones. Besides being a proud resident of El Barrio (the historic Puerto-Rican neighborhood in upper upper East Manhattan), I teach a Saturday dance class in Jackson Heights (predominantly Colombian). I often visit a friend in “pequeño Gualaceo” (the Southern Andean-Ecuadorian part of Brooklyn) for Ecuadorian food. A few weeks ago he took me at an all-night baptism party where incredibly, I could once again experience that delightful anthropological thrill of being the only “gringa” around. And yesterday I traveled through the Bronx for the first time on my way to Inwood/Washington Heights (predominantly Dominican) where another Ecuadorian friend of mine lives.

Though I often groan about making the slow commute on the 7 or the L train, I also like to reason that an hour and $2.25 is little sacrifice compared to a 6 hour plane ride. My Ecuadorian friend in Brooklyn has been living here ten years and still has not needed to learn English, showing that yes, being in these neighborhoods is actually like being in another country. And when old friends have actually come to visit from overseas I ‘ve enjoyed playing the role of the native New Yorker and showing them simple pleasures like Central Park, good bagels, and apple cider from the green market.

Meanwhile, spring has come intermittently, teasingly (hopefully finally?) to New York and the cool rain always makes me think of Quito. Perhaps that’s why tonight, sitting on the bed that takes up the majority of space in my small room, I can listen to the rain out my open window and finally write a few reflections. There are a few things I have seen in new light since returning to this city:

1. Contrary to popular stereotypes, New Yorkers are MORE POLITE on public transportation than Quiteños. The first time I hit a morning rush hour on the six train I as so pleasantly surprised to find myself waiting to one side as the people came out of the train. The elbowing and squishing that begins the instant the trole doors open in Quito is at least post-poned until after the exiting passengers have left. Who woulda thought we were so organized up here?

2. The people of New York often create the scenery, or at least are more exciting than it. Today, at the suggestions of my Mom, I went to the Easter Parade. I’m not usually much of a photographer, and the conscientious social researcher in me usually scorned taking pictures of people. But while the images of Ecuador that I most miss are the vista of the Pichincha (a mountain) on my walk to work in Quito, or the glistening silver Napo River, today for the first time since I was given a camera (for Christmas) I found myself clicking pictures like a tourist. And what was finally inspired me to take out that camera? The ingenious and exhibitionist public creativity of fellow New Yorkers’ heads. As I hope my photos reflect below, I was fascinated and amused by the variety of items that can be balanced on top of, or used to construct, an Easter bonnet. While I certainly don’t claim to be a photographer, I purposely left my shots rather candid because I think what I loved even more than the hats themselves was the fact that everyone was out walking down the center of a New York street and taking pictures, of each other!

My final goodbye gift to myself before I left Quito was a small ankle tattoo of an ear of corn; a tiny cropped replica of a mural on the wall of one of the universities in Quito. It was as if I wanted to say, instead of missing what I have left in Ecuador, this time I will take Ecuador with me wherever I go. Sara, the name for corn in Kichwa, represents the connection between my real home, Illinois and my adopted one, Ecuador. It’s those global connections that I’m now trying to nurture, but also not let pull me apart.

I’ve only been back four months, and am certainly still shaping my new New York life. And though the one year lease on my apartment is the most permanent thing I have done since entering college, I still feel like my life is shifting and potentially changing as much as it did in Quito. In Quito I chalked that instability up to the country itself, but here I’ve been wondering what I’ve been doing wrong. A college friend of mine recently published an article about sports and national culture that paralleled the Latin American love of soccer with an appreciation of chance and randomness as compared to the American love of baseball’s methodical fairness. So perhaps here, back in the land of individual empowerment and organization, I’m feeling a little pressured to live a more stable life. But then again, what I’ve been trying to do since my return is live as a person, not a place. So maybe it’s just me. At least I’m dancing, surviving, working, and look, even writing! Maybe I’ll start putting down roots sometime soon too?

Nueva Renacer is the name of the barrio that serves as the only suburb of Mondaña, the riverside village near Yachana. I always thought the name “New Rebirth” was funny in its redundancy. But well here I am starting over, again. So although the Chimbo family (who founded the neighborhood) will never know of this little homage to them, my blog has always been about sharing bits of my other worlds, so this post, I’m borrowing their oh-so-Ecuadorian insight of constant new beginnings.

During my “despedida” week in Quito I took myself to my favorite indie movie theater to see a documentary about Mercedes Sosa, an Argentinian singer and activist, and her return to the stage after imprisonment by the government. Though of course I have never faced a dictatorial government, her words of personal resistance and perseverance deeply resonated with me as I start yet again, anew in another place.

Her fans affectionately called Mercedes Sosa, La Negra, either because of her indigenous heritage or perhaps her black hair, but it was her image as the voice of strong women everywhere that reminded me of the well-known words of resistance of another powerful woman (and coincidentally also considered “negra” or black in our country), Maya Angelou.  As I move on, coming back to life or simply rising again, I seek renewal and inspiration in the words of these women:

Still I Rise Maya Angelou	Como La Cigarra Mercedes Sosa Composed by: Maria Elena Walsh	Like the Cicada (my English translation)
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.  Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got oil wells Pumpin’ in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.	Tantas veces me mataron, tantas veces me morí, sin embargo estoy aquí resucitando.   Gracias doy a la desgracia y a la mano con puñal, porque me mató tan mal, y seguí cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, después de un año bajo la tierra, igual que sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra. Tantas veces me borraron, tantas desaparecí, a mi propio entierro fui, solo y llorando. Hice un nudo del pañuelo, pero me olvidé después que no era la única vez y seguí cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, después de un año bajo la tierra, igual que sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra. Tantas veces te mataron, tantas resucitarás cuántas noches pasarás desesperando. Y a la hora del naufragio y a la de la oscuridad alguien te rescatará, para ir cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, después de un año bajo la tierra, igual que sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra	So many times they killed me So many times I died Yet still I’m here Coming back to life.  I give thanks to Disgrace And to the hand with the knife Because it killed me so poorly That  I am still singing. Singing to the sun Like the cicada does After a year underground The same as the survivor Returning from war. So many times they erased me So may times I disappeared I went to my own burial Alone and crying. I made a knot in the handkerchief But later I forgot That it wasn’t the first time And I continued singing Singing to the sun Like the cicada does After a year underground The same as the survivor Returning from war. So many times they killed you So many you will come back to life How many nights will you spend desperate And at the hour of despair And of darkness Someone will revive you To continue singing Singing to the sun Like the cicada does After a year underground The same as the survivor Returning from war.

Last post I wrote about falling down a rabbit hole…and now that I think about it, it has been nearly 6 months and I’m still falling. Incredible no? This “finding oneself” thing is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought- not to mention that it was never my goal to go searching in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve gone in circles. The other day a dance teacher of mine asked me what it is that I love so about Ecuador. Remember my first post from May? — I wrote about the little things, because I couldn’t answer that question with one solid reply. This time, I didn’t know what to say. My default response has always been the people, but it’s been people that have been making my life here difficult pretty much from August on. So instead I said, “It thinks it’s becoming an addiction.” That’s how I once described dance. Some things become such an integral part of your life that it is hard to articulate why they are there. They are the reason you live (dance), or they are simply where you live (Ecuador).

The other day I found myself searching for a café run by the Amazonian foundation, Kallari, that I had heard of from my time in the jungle, but I had never sought out. And while I was sitting there reading the Kichwa phrases on the wall, I fell into eavesdropping on the only other party in the store, an obviously gringa girl was just happened to be talking about Yachana. Hearing her frustrations with the school did not make me feel vindicated for having left, but rather gave me those pangs of longing for my beautiful Napo River, and that crazy school full of amazing kids. Those were feelings I thought I had suppressed for the time being because as I had told myself, now is my Quito period, now is my time to dance.

And I’m reading for pleasure again. I’ve picked up an ethnography about conservation and development in Papua New Guinea. Written by my first anthropology professor, recommended by my anthropologist roommate. Professor West highlights the discursive process of understanding indigenous people, explaining that “While, in the past, this was the role of anthropology, NGO’s and conservation NGOSs in particular have usurped the traditional role of anthropology: speaking for and about “the other” (Conservation is Our Government Now, 9).” Hearing it put this way makes what I’ve been doing so obvious- from one way of getting to know and experience rural indigenous life to another. I’ve done both anthropology and conservation development, the two most obvious paths for a foreigner to get to immerse herself in the foreign. And somehow, like dance, or Ecuador itself, the Amazon has become an addiction. I went home and sent a cover letter and my resume to Kallari.

And right now believe it or not I’m listening to the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker is to dancers like Matzah to Jews— when you don’t have to, when it’s outside season, you don’t volunteer to experience it. Yet here I am humming each tune with anticipation and tracing my childhood through these melodies. I went to a contact improvisation workshop this past Saturday that took place at the national ballet company’s studios and while we rolled on the floor upstairs I could hear the party scene playing downstairs. And thus began the onset of another wave of nostalgia.

It’s not even new years, and I’m only 22 years old! How can it be that I am suddenly longing for every life experience that I in my short life have had? Good lord, what will this be like when I am 40, or 80? How many addictions will have turned into nostalgic cravings? One way to look at this is to conclude that my life has been so full that every moment is worth reliving. That’s a nice way to think about it. I have always thought that we are the sum of our experiences. Maybe that’s why now, when I’m lost in the present and struggling to define my future, I’m missing my past. Am I thinking about my past because it’s an important part of understanding my future or because in hindsight I can see how it all worked out then? That apparent neatness is of course what I’m longing for now.

I have developed the habit of teaching my English students American sayings and I recently wrote on the board “Today is a gift, that’s why we call it the present.” Supposedly that’s the lesson that I am always learning here in Ecuador. Yesterday I spent the afternoon in my favorite café with a friend of mine who was trying to convince me of the value of “hacer para hacer”… doing just to do. Not the why or the how, but the here and now. In a way, being present is mandatory when you are in limbo. My example of this quintessential Latin American lesson was from my trip to Venezuela (see post “Patume Shirapta”  from May 7, 2009 ). I remember being so amazed and delighted at the way a broken down car in the middle of dusty rural village turned into a unique opportunity to lunch on green mangoes. But how long can I go on eating mangoes?

One of my friends here has begun his subtle campaign to convince me to stay. So far his most compelling argument is that here everything is in the process of being built, here you can construct your reality. (Can you tell that I’ve moved on from hanging out with socialists from the public university to post-modernists from the Andina, the cultural studies university?). In some ways this IS what I love about Ecuador. I often say that things are reborn here every week. You can start fresh whenever you want- I’ve written about that before. One friend leaves and I magically meet another. I leave the jungle world and immerse myself in the dance world. Although judging by this circling back that I’m doing, maybe it’s more like reincarnation than rebirth. In any case, being born seems to be easier than growing up. I wonder when that’ll happen?

And that’s my biggest frustration here. Things are always starting, but rarely finishing. The aerial dance lessons that I was so excited about have happened a grand total of two times. Pilates never earned me a cent. The past few months of dance classes and dreaming towards a position at the National Dance Company ended on Tuesday when I was told there were only slots for Ecuadorians. As a consolation prize I got called to replace a friend of mine in a sort of Christian Christmas spectacular. So I’m dancing, but what I’m getting paid to do is jazz steps to songs whose lyrics endlessly repeat words like “Christmas gift, child of god.” So we could say, starting is easier than sticking. I worry about that a lot. Is starting anew or less optimistically put, quitting and moving on, being prudent and resourceful or just a bad habit? Is reinventing different that running?

There are always opportunities, but are they the opportunities I want? As September’s political events underlined, everyone here is a revolutionary. I’ve caught myself adopting this embattled sense of being when people ask me how things are and I respond “sigo en la lucha” (Continuing with the struggle/fight). But is waving fabric for Jesus really what I was fighting for? Speaking to my Dad, my friend Lorene in NYC and my dance teacher Esteban who lives here but did his dance MFA in the states, we all summed it up pretty clearly— the question is simply about where to struggle.

“Ecuador is the land…Of plenty of possibilities, although the possibilities are often talked about for years before anyone has the money, time and energy to make something happen.” I wrote that near the end of my August post, implying that things here take time, move slower, might never happen. But on the other hand, they also can move incredibly quickly, and without warning. It’s been a difficult month (thus my absence from the blog) but now that I am finally stopping to take the breather that reflective blogging requires I can’t help but feel look with amazement at the whirlwind of changes.

Last post, I had become a “conferencista” (lecturer), and now I can add to the list of last-minute titles, English teacher, college prep tutor, pilates teacher, and aspiring dancer. Yes, I’m back to that! On Saturday I completed my first course as an English teacher at a local technical university. I then spent the weekend tutoring a high school senior whose dream is to go to college in the United States. And two weeks ago I was given permission to train with the National Dance Company (contemporary).

To be fair, I should mention that for much of the time in-between these titles I could also have been titled “unemployed” and indeed still could be, as each job seems to come and go without much warning. “People come and go here so quickly sometimes…” said a bewildered Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and indeed Quito sometimes feels a little bit like Oz. Or Wonderland… some place with lots of little niche worlds that you can jump in and out of, or alternatively get pulled into or pushed out of.

I flirted with the tourism industry for a bit, even becoming a zip-lining establishment’s hostess for a day (add that to my list of titles!).But since starting classes the National Dance Company (where I take ballet and contemporary class every morning from 8:30-11:30, for free!), I have found myself falling down a new rabbit hole, into a world where being a full-time dancer is way life and a real possibility. Up at the top of that long hole I can just see the light from the jungle which I left, nearly without realizing it, as I plunged. [Now if only I had the “drink me” bottle to shrink to the size of a tiny, and in-shape Ecuadorian dancer… ].

But the real point is, I’m beginning to live the constantly changing, instable and possibility-filled life that I have written about before, but perhaps not truly experienced previously. Sure, given recent current events, the country could plunge into a coup long before I get a chance to cement any one of my temporary titles. But we don’t waste time thinking about that…what would be the point? There’s a sense of just keeping on keeping on and going with the flow. Taking what life gives you and living it fully in that blessed moment that you can. “You experienced your first revolution, Sarita” said one of my friends, implying of course that there will be more to come. Don’t get comfortable, but don’t get too scared either- these things happen all the time.

Dancers here seem to switch disciplines every few years, doing ballet then contemporary then social dance. While my formal, U.S.-trained self marvels at the complete disregard for the need for long-term training and the blurriness among professional distinctions, I also admire these dancers for their boundary-less sense of “why not try something new?” Whether it’s teaching English or becoming a professional variety-show swing dancer, people here don’t seem to think about whether they’ve had the proper training or the official ok, they just jump in, learn while they go and give it a try. Often without even knowing what they are getting into before they do. Here that would be called, lanzado, atrevido, or perhaps for everyone other than me, just normal. Little by little, I too am becoming a “todólogo” (rough English translation: everything-ologist).

Now, as a tutor, I’m thinking about the American elite college system a lot, both how to get in and also the value of that very unique experience. On the one hand I see that my traditional prestige-embedded schooling has left me rather inflexibly thinking that people need titles, , a way of thinking which might not only be snobbish, but worse, self limiting. But on the other hand, I can see how clearly I am living the types of challenges for which elite liberal arts claims to prepare its students— thinking on your feet, problem solving, being able to be professional and intelligent in a variety of situations. It is humbling to think that many Ecuadorians who graduate from a rigid rote education system have somehow managed to gain this latter lesson without ever setting foot in an ivy league. Contrary to the encouragement of my friends, I catch myself worrying, and often protesting that I’m not qualified for the things that I’m doing. But then I find myself doing it, and not feeling too bad. For example, to my amazement my sole pilates student recently told me she had gone down in waist size (sure, I put “loose weight” on the ad—but who ever really thought I could claim real results in three weeks?!). In the very least, at the rate I’m going, I will be qualified soon, in something, or um… everything? And when I come out of this confusing Oz, who knows what titles I’ll have, or better yet whether any of them will really matter.

I know I owe everyone a post for this month but in the meantime here’s the afiche for the talk (or according to this, conference!) that I’m giving tomorrow night based on my thesis. If I survive the two and a half hour class the incentive is that I’m going to get to lead the class trip to Yachana in September, which means mom and I get a 4 day trip to the jungle at national student price! Wish me luck…

So far here in Ecuador I have moved in, worked in development, performed in a modern dance show, quit a job, almost taught pilates and now, given a university lecture. De todo un poco (a little of everything) as they say here.

¡Ali Puncha! I’m writing this from Runa’s house-office in the jungle town of Archidona. On Thursday, I left from Quito to visit the high school where I wrote my thesis. It was graduation for Yachana, and a long-awaited excuse for me to return to the place that began my jungle obsession. I arrived in the high school Thursday afternoon on the same canoe carrying the school’s supplies for the week- toilet paper, chicken feed, tomatoes, sugar. I hiked up from the river with a box of paper dishes in one hand (for the graduation luncheon) and my personal bag over my shoulder (every member of the school is expected to carry up one box of supplies from the canoe- I figured I would make mine in one trip!). I was comforted to find that my feet still remembered the path through the grapefruits and cacao, past the yucca field now harvested, through the banana forest and then onto the high school grounds. Later that afternoon in the nearby community I sat watching the local volleyball game and reflecting with one of the students that I hadn’t seen in a year. Its hard to know where to begin, and how to get beyond the resume-style details when you’re trying to catch up from an absence that long as well as physically and culturally different: I turned in my thesis, I graduated, I switched countries… that was my refrain. We joked that it felt like New Year’s— so many people asking you how you’ve been that you end up turning to question yourself: How WAS my year?

I’m not going to write a New Year’s post, but my Yachana visit did put me in a reflective mood. More than anything else, it’s interesting to be thinking back on the changes of the past year now, when I feel that now my life is more in flux, more apt to change than ever. I’m currently doing a lot of re-evaluating of my plans here in Ecuador. Another month has gone by and I am no more certain of where I am, what I want to do or why exactly I came. To the latter I have many answers: I came to relieve the immense love and longing that I had for a country; and I came for the practical reason that here the few marketable skills that I have gathered from a liberal arts education (or perhaps simply from having been born in an English-speaking country) are more unique than in the states.

It’s here in the jungle that I am most reminded of my love for this place, a sense that somehow, part of me belongs here. Here you can go to the river and lay on top of a sunbathed rock and feel the landscape embrace you: the rocks have just the nooks to hold your body against the current, the sun blankets your body and the verdant green on the riverbanks is all the entertainment your eyes need to lay there for hours. But that same river can pick you up and smash your body against those same rocks, the sun will burn you and the bugs will find your exposed skin. Aware of this duality, I have always related to the landscapes of Ecuador with awe: a cautious mixture of respect and admiration.

I belong, and yet no matter how fiercely I love this place, that belonging was something that I have carved out for myself, with effort. For example, I don’t speak the main indigenous language, Kichwa, fluently but if you pronounce my name, Sarah, in Spanish, “sah-rah” it also is the word in Kichwa for maiz, or corn. So in the highschool I got nicknamed Saramuyo (little grain of corn) and when I meet Kichwa people I proudly let them know that I know all about sara: my name means corn, August is my month (saraquilla), and I can sing my song (there is a Kichwa love song about a woman named Sara). When I presented this, my little Kichwa repertoire, to our hostess in the tiny community where we stayed on Sunday night, she laughed, exclaimed with surprise and told me that I could bring people to tears with that song. I felt like something other than another gringa, that is, until she took over my attempt at onion chopping with an air of “it’ll be faster if I do it myself.” While I may know more than you’re average peace corps volunteer or tourist, I’m still not from here and I’ve still got a lot to learn.

But can belonging be learned? Or is it really belonging that I need? Should I give in to the inevitable fact that I will end up in this transnational cultural sphere the same as my boss (who practices yoga and carries a native American flute) and his company that is exporting a product marketed in whole-foods as an ancestral energizer? Could I ever belong if I wanted to? The question becomes what and where is my niche in Ecuador? I look at the Peace Corps volunteers that live in rural communities during the week but come in to Tena on the weekends to party together in american frequented bars and I think that’s not my Ecuador. I see the English teachers who hang out with other English teachers in a bubble of terribly accented Spanish, the NGO-ers who also seem to hang together (for “networking” of course) in expensive bars in the tourist district, the mochileros whose giant backpacks and colorful clothing scream “rob me, I’m not from here!” and I don’t want to be any of them… and yet I’ll admit I’m starting to envy their freedom. While I sit in my typical North Quito office day after day, living the Ecuadorian life of typical Ecuadorians they are making weekend beach plans…

There’s one more category of foreigners: gringos locos… those crazy gringos that fall in love with this place and can’t stay away. In that category goes the choreographer with whom I worked last month (a former Fullbright scholar that is now getting a pHD at Berkeley based on contemporary dance in Ecuador); Douglas McMeekin (the founder of Yachana, who left his life in the states and went from oil company advance man to lauded social entrepreneur), anthropologists, missionaries, random people that have succeeded in building their lives, often leaving everything else behind. The very fact that we would be called locos for wanting to actually participate here says something about the rarity of that achievement.

So meanwhile I’m turning over the options in the few hours I have around work: jungle guide, dancer/dance teacher/English teacher, keep goin’ with the NGO-in’? Go back to school and study development now that I’ve tried my hand in the actual work? Study anthropology so that I can critizice development instead of do it? In schools here, when you fail your finals you’re given a government mandated second try a couple weeks later called supletorios. When my computer broke last year my friends said, not to worry, “todo es posible en Ecuador” (“everything is possible in Ecuador”- in that case, meaning, obtaining pirated software to lower the cost of replacing the hard drive). Ecuador is the land of second, third and fourth chances. Of plenty of possibilities, although the possibilities are often talked about for years before anyone has the money, time and energy to make something happen. Of the life philosophy expressed in the refrain of a popular song: “Ay que bonita es esta vida…con aguardiente y tequila” (Oh how beautiful this life is… with moonshine and tequila). Too bad I’m too tired after work and dance to even grab a drink!

Second, third and fourth chances… in Ecuadorian slang, the word chance, pronounced “chawn- say” is used to mean to mean a little bit of time, space, possibility. When someone’s pressuring you, you say, “Dame chance, dame chance (“give me a second! Give me some space”) to get them to let up on you a bit. Invoking both American and Ecuadorian uses of the term, I say

Oye Ecuador, ¡dame chance!

It’s been a roller coaster of a month… I can’t think of any better way to describe it. Although I knew the charmed-life is study abroad would not be the same, this time, life, work, and Quito have all been hitting me hard. I was adamant that this move wasn’t one of those “find yourself after college” trips but somehow even though I have a job and an apartment and a visa (!!!!!!!), I’m finding myself questioning, re-evaluating, searching.

Work has been extremely challenging, from simply entering a position with no structure, to having to greet 5 volunteers without a real volunteer program behind me, to simply having to face 8 solid hours of a computer screen every day. I’m wondering how all the men and women dressed in those nondescript pants suits and sweater vests, with whom I ride the 8am bus to work, manage it. And I’m thinking about how ironic it is that white-collar jobs carry so much more prestige than the manual labor that makes me feel so much more a part of a place when I’m in the jungle.

My trust for this city which I so badly want to be part of has been sorely tested as in this one week three friends of mine have been robbed- the spectrum from assault to pick-pocketing. Everyone’s fine, minus of course expensive/important possessions and self-confidence.

The dancer in me is crying for more dance, and yet cringing at the state of dance in Quito. This week I saw the best of Quito’s dance (Compania Nacional de Danza del Ecuador) in a compelling contemporary reconstruction of Rite of Spring sandwiched by the worst of dance (a variety of small terribly un-professional groups ). I’m torn between supporting the art community that I have worked participate in, and the urge to disassociate myself completely with the farce that can be independent dance in Quito. Currently I’m taking class three times a week in the evenings from probably the only M.F.A in Ecuador (interestingly enough graduated from U of I- go figure!). And I’m considering teaching, because if nothing else I can appreciate that somewhere between Peoria, Columbus and New York I had some good training after all.

And yet, I still keep moving in, I’m not moving out yet. I spent Sunday covering my room with scarves, and weavings and earrings and I’ve bought a glass pitcher to facilitate my fresh juice habit. Last week I had plans with friends after work every single night and anytime something frustrating or difficult or scary happens in Quito there’s always a restaurant or bakery around the corner with my favorite sweets or some typical dish that miraculously after 8 months, I’ve never tried before. Best of all, my house is filled with music every night (we have a guitar, a charango, a sax, a banjo, and a few voices) and often good food and company as well. I’m considering getting a cat.

And while on Wednesday I’m leaving for the jungle on a whirlwind of a work trip that will hardly count as a break, it is a change of scenery, a privilege that my three Quito colleagues don’t get (or don’t want). For those three precious days in the jungle I’m missing nearly all my dance classes, my friend’s birthday and I’m not even getting to visit my beloved Yachana. But I will breath moist jungle air, and probably get to wield a machete, and someone will call me Saramuyo (my Kichwa nickname), and best of all, I won’t be in the office.

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p.s. I added a new page to the blog (the tab above) with a link to my thesis. Since I’m not sure that the foundation I wrote it about has or ever will read it, self-publishing seemed like a good way to go. And if you’re curious about why, after all this,  I love the jungle, somewhere in those 130 some pages you’ll find the answer.