As I sort of thought, I didn't keep up with this, and now tomorrow morning I have a plane to catch.  And you know, all in all, I'd rather stay a little longer.  I'd like to keep on meeting people, get better at Spanish, go and see the places I still haven't gone to.

This trip has been very difficult at times.  I won't go into details about that-some of it was the normal abnormality of being in a foreign place, some of it was extraodinary.  But all told, it was great.  At the end I met up with a friend from home, and ended up in a strange coastal village far away from where I lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  We came to Quito together, up a terrifying, spectacular mountain pass, and then he spent today introducing me to a Quito I could love. 

So, what do I know now?

I know how deeply important individuals are to me.  The relationships I had with my PCV site friends are as strong as ever.  Stronger, because now I can be honest about things I felt I had to glaze over when I had an official position-like, that sometimes, it was really difficult to live in Ecuador.  They cried when I left, and I cried when I left.  And the whole time, I missed my family too.

I know that if I start really disliking a temporary situation, a good meal will likely straighten me out long enough to figure out what the real problem is. 

Rest and action, company and solitude, work and laze, nature and city-balance is key.

Letting go of needing to control is the hardest thing.  But it's the path to freedom and it's easier with a friend.

And.  I need to make some changes.

(Chocho ceviche is delicious.)

Ecuador

Today was my first whole day in Quito-it´s been relatively uneventful.  Mostly, I bought things.  Sunglasses, a spanish lesson, 5 liters of bottled water, a cheap cell phone, scissors, 4 mandarinas, a new shirt with long sleeves. 

It´s a little strange not having to count every dollar, like when I was in Peace Corps.  Tomorrow, like magic, my PTO will be deposited. 

In a lot of ways, this country is far more convenient than the states.  Everywhere street vendors, phone cabinas, cheap internet, snacks of varying quality.  I asked the man behind the desk at the hostel where I could buy scissors to cut cloth.  The store was a block away.   Or maybe I¨m just idealizing things here.  Afterall-I have lots of luxury here. 

In Seattle, I sort of felt like going home, like I had learned all this fascinating information in Vancouver that I wanted to put into practice right away.  But as soon as I got on the plane, I completely changed my mind.  Partly because the experience of a flight that is 75% ecuadorians has more in common with a bus ride than you would think.  There were two incidents, just in the seats around me, of people deciding to sit where they wanted, not where they were assigned.  Which resulted in some polite drama that turned into less polite drama, with lots of people not directly involved interceding.  And in the middle of the scuffle, two passengers who knew each other but apparently hadn´t seen each other in a long time spotted each other and there was a lot of cheeking kissing and exclaiming.  All in all, a pretty great start. 

I started talking to my quite gregarious seatmate-we were lucky enough to have an extra seat between us.  She is 62, and works with an indigenous women´s group that makes artesania-they do some natural dying with cochineal and some other substances.  She invited me to come and visit, and I hope I can squeeze that in.  The only thing is that the group is near Ambato, which means I would have to take a trip down a stretch of highway I´d decided never to traverse again.  But if there´s a reason.

My seatmate got up to go to the lavatory, and then I heard my name-it was E, a guy I was in Peace Corps with, who happened to be on the plane with me.  Such a great coincidence, and once we landed, I got to see the people who were picking him up who were from the Peace Corps office.  So it was something like coming home.  You know, in a way.

I´m staying at a hostel which is somewhat outside of the tourist district.  It´s nice, and the bed is comfortable-which is good, because I´m tired from all my travels.  My strategy for today, and probably tomorrow, is to venture out for a couple of hours, and then come back and rest.  I´m a little dehydrated-I was cautious about water last night, and after a couple of long flights, and some time on the beach in Miami, I definitely felt out of sorts this morning.  But as I said-it´s wonderful to be here.  Quito is a long, narrow city hugged by mountains.  It has terrible traffic, and the street signs are all black because of the exhaust from the buses, and it´s constantly under construction-there are lots of holes in the sidewalk, so you really have to be careful.  This is not a country plagued by lawsuits. 

After Quito I will go to Mindo.  And then the coast, and then Cuenca, and then my old PC site.  I look forward to eating pan de yuca from the bus vendors.

This morning was sunny, then this afternoon it rained hard and even hailed for a bit-this is because it´s winter here. 

Well.  back to the hostel.  Tomorrow I´m going to the Parque carolina to see about running.  We´ll see how that works out.  I´ve researched it, and apparently single women don´t have a problem if they are running on the track there. 

If for some reason you want to call me my number is 069609867.  But it´s up to you to figure out how to use it.  I think I can accept calls without charge, but I can´t call out unless I want to pay a lot of platita. 

It's very rare that I find myself in a situation where I interact almost only with women for days on end.  The last four have been such a situation.  Aside from the yoga teacher I had yesterday, it's been women I've talked to, learned from and looked at.  We compliment each other a lot.  We tell a lot of stories.  We are subtly competitive with each other.  There's  a lot of talk of relationships of all kinds-in this crowd it was a lot about children, usually grown children.  But there was naturally a lot of talk about passion and creativity-over and over, I heard "I wish I had more time, so I could really do this."  Just about everyone in the room had another, usually unrelated job.  One women drove a school bus, one is a graphic designer, a retired nurse, a retired school teacher, an office worker.  I really, really enjoyed myself.  It was sad to say goodbye today.

Today was all about indigo, which is fascinating.  There's no other natural source for true, pure blue coloration-it has to be indigo.  You'd never guess from looking at the plant, which is a lot like alfalfa, that it would be possible to get deep blue out of it.    Really, I could go on and on about it, but I know I'll lose a bunch of you who are here for the travel stuff.  Sorry-I haven't been touring around much.

We made two different kinds of indigo vats-and both of them smell a lot like swamp water.  Which is not truly offensive to me.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drop my bags at the train station and spend the day exploring.

The thing that started me planning this trip was the workshop that I'm taking this week.  Somehow, I found out about MAIWA, and the fact that a fairly comprehensive natural dye class existed back in May.  I got really interested in it, and also discovered that it filled up extremely quickly.  Opening day for enrollment was a tuesday back in July, a day that I happened to be off work.  It started at 10 AM pacific time, so right at noon, I got online and signed up for it.  I was kind of amazed that I got in, even with the diligence.

The fact that it was in Vancouver was actually a plus.  I'd always been vaguely curious about this city, and it seemed like it would be pretty easy to fly into Seattle, and take the train up the coast, thereby seeing two Pacific Northwest cities in one trip.  And I like have a purpose to be somewhere, so having this class was perfect.  Then, just for the heck of it, I looked up multicity plane tickets, and found that it really wasn't much more to fly to Quito, too.  So I asked for October off at work, and now here I am.

The class started Monday.  I like to go out for coffee in the morning when I'm traveling, and I like to go to the same place everyday, to set up a little routine.  So I took the bus to commercial street, and found a cafe with outdoor seating and tables made out of sections of tree trunk.  They had a little free library, most of which was kind of bad, but I did find a book about the making of one of my favorite movies, Water.  I'm saving that to read in Ecuador.  I walked over to the studio around 945.  It's in a warehouse building.  Downstairs is crammed full of artisan furniture and textiles, mostly from Asia, mostly India.  Upstairs is the studio for classes.  There was a huge table set up, covered with shawls and clothing and tapestry that had all been naturally dyed.  There were also my fifteen workshop mates-all women, all ages, lots of different backgrounds.  Everyone is really nice and interesting-although, we've only known each other three days, and that doesn't reveal anyone's true nature that much.

I don't want to bore you with the details of our class, but it has been very worth it to take it.  Monday we had a slide show of all the various dye plants and their uses, and then we learned about tannins and mordants.  Tuesday we dyed silk, cotton, hemp, wool yarn, linen, etc-I think we ended up with 64 different combinations of dyes, every color except blue.  It was a lot of steamy work, but it was also completely fascinating.  Today we divided up the samples we made yesterday, learned about shibori and started planning the projects we'll finish tomorrow.  Tomorrow we're learning about indigo, and dying a whole lot of different projects-I should really be stitching, not writing this.

The woman who is teaching is the owner of MAIWA handprints and the founder of the MAIWA foundation, which works with artisans to preserve and revive skills in the textile arts.  She is very dynamic, and someone to admire-she seems like she travels constantly, presents all over the world, and runs a complicated business.  And she knows so much about natural dyes and textiles, development work, etc...it's really been a blessing.  I don't want to go to far into it, but one thing that stands out is how bad for the environment new textiles like bamboo and soya are.  It's really misleading, because they've been marketed in a way that makes people who want to do the right thing think that they are.  But the process to turn bamboo into something you can knit with uses a lot of chemicals, and essentially turns it into a synthetic.

Oh!  So much to say!  And so many stitches to make!  Good night!

Going to Seattle. I got up and puttered around the house, putting things in my bag, taking them out, washing the plate I’d used the night before, tossing out the eggshells and tea leaves in the compost so E would have as perfect a home to stay in as I hoped to find in Seattle. Suddenly, I really didn’t want to go. That happens to me sometimes, when there’s something I’ve planned for months, looked forward too and imagined but also barely considered in reality. Staying home starts to seem really relaxing-my apartment was so clean and bright, and all my clothes and art supplies were there. And, I really hate the first flight of the trip. Once I’m in the air for the first time, I let go of my fear, but the first one is anxiety provoking. For a few minutes, I let myself decide not to get on the plane. But A came home from his walk and offered me a ride to the lightrail, and I took it. Of course, because after all I am someone who follows through, and also, those plane tickets cost a lot. I always think there’s going to be good food at the airport. There’s not. A hemp seed bagel is not that great anywhere you buy it. The flights were smooth, and I got to Seattle on Friday afternoon. I’d arranged to stay in the Ballard neighborhood, in a little cottage behind some people’s house. The pictures on Airbnb made it look delightful, and indeed, when I finally arrived 3 hours later, it really was great. I wish I’d gotten to stay there longer, or at least taken advantage of it more, but I spent Saturday running errands and going to see the fish ladder at the Ballard locks. There’s nothing like figuring out a new city’s public transportation on your own while wearing a heavy backpack to make you wonder why you travel. The lightrail from the airport was easy enough, but there was a car accident on the tracks, and so it took three times as long as it should have to get to the Pioneer Square station. B, the husband of the couple that had the little cottage, had told me vaguely to take the 17 or 18 bus from downtown. It seemed like common sense that there would be a map or an information booth-but there really wasn’t. So I left the station and went out onto the street, where there was some kind of protest going on. It wasn’t very big and it was somewhat unclear what was being protested-in a less hungry and tired and backsore frame of mind I would have been curious, but the only thing I cared about was the 18 bus roaring by. I managed to find B and L’s place. B came to the door on one of those little knee scooters-he'd recently had ankle surgery. He talked a mile a minute, telling me about his daughter’s need for money, the weather pattern this year, and where I should go to eat that night. The cottage is L’s art studio. There were clay models, drawings and paintings on the walls and shelves of books. A black cat named Jasper visited me whenever I was around. There was a little bathroom, a futon and a sink. It was very comfortable, and if you ever go to Seattle, and are a responsible person, you should definitely stay there. Saturday, to my annoyance, I discovered that my iPod charger wouldn’t work. So I had to make the trek to the Apple store to get a new one. I’d had thoughts of not bringing it with me but I’ve got some long bus rides in my future, and music really is kind of necessary to drown out the noise of Cliffhanger or Anaconda dubbed in Spanish. So that ate up part of my day, but it’s all an adventure, really-I got to see more of the city than just Ballard. I also took my bike bags to Swift Industries, the place that I had them made, to get some new quick release fixtures installed. I ordered them online a year ago, and was too cheap to get what I turned out to want,. Swift is run by a couple who are the epitome of hipster bike kids-they’d fit right in in NE Minneapolis. Or maybe it’s vice versa. So I’m picking those up this weekend, and then I’ll mail them along with some stuff I won’t need in Ecuador home to MN. REally early Sunday, a cab picked me up and took me to the Amtrak Station to catch my train to Vancouver. It was a beautiful trip, part of the time in fog, part of the time on the water, clicking through neatly painted towns, and industrial heaps and farmland. I saw two bald eagles land in a swamp. In Vancouver, for some reason, possibly just chance, I got pulled aside for extra special customs attention. The uniformed official asked me all kinds of detailed information, and my answers, even as they were coming out of my mouth, made me sound like the earthiest hippy ever (although later, when I went to Commercial Drive, I realized that I am NOT EVEN CLOSE to that. Well, realized again.) “I’m in town for a natural fiber dye class at an arts center. I’m staying with some people I met on the internet. In Seattle I was staying in someone’s art studio. One time I had to testify for my friend who got arrested at a war protest. I’ve worked at a food coop for four years and before that I was on a farm. And what’s that in my bag? that’s bead work from the women’s group I worked with in Ecuador. And that other stuff? Those are my essential oils and natural remedies.” I gave him addresses and showed him my return tickets. He was way nicer than the guy I had to deal with when I went to Montreal-but seriously, the Canadian border guards are the strictest I’ve ever dealt with. My first impression of Vancouver was that it was noisy and full of exhaust fumes. But once I got settled in where I’m staying, and walked around a bit, I started to like it a lot. It’s very culturally diverse. It’s still really green here-it seems like fall has not quite arrived, and there are many natural foods stores. I’ll have more about Vancouver later. I’ll be here five days, and although I’ll be busy, I will have time to explore too. What I notice about this western cities is how neatly everything fits together. There’s lots of well manicured vegetation, small yards with lots of details. Just when you’re hoping there will be a path or a bit of sidewalk there is one. It feels a little magical. The houses aren’t as rambling as in the midwest. And neither Seattle nor Vancouver seem to be on a convenient grid. Maybe I just don’t understand it yet. I”m in the haze that happens before you get used to a place.