Guayasamin, Twenty dollar bills, and Scary phone calls

Hi Everyone,

Even though I just updated yesterday I wanted to write a quick post to tell you about my day today. We had an excursion with our spanish classes this afternoon, and my class and another class went to a museum called La Capilla del Hombre, which showcases the work of Oswaldo Guayasamin. Guayasamin is considered to be the best Ecuadorian painter, and is probably the most famous. He came from indigenous roots, and many of his paintings explored race and race relations. His style is kind of Picasso-ish, and all of the paintings we saw were really, really cool. I highly recommend looking up his paintings on Google Images, because they're awesome. His most famous work is called "Ternura" and depicts a mother embracing her child. Most of his paintings are about the suffering and misery of the human existence, so this one really stands out because of the bright colors he used and the loving scene he depicted. Hearing the stories behind the paintings were also really cool, he has one work called "Mutilados" that he made in remembrance of all those who were tortured and mutilated during the Spanish Civil War. The painting is actually six different canvases which can be rearranged into almost 3 million different placements, but the meaning of the painting remains the same no matter what arrangement the canvases are in.

The museum was really cool, and we were all really glad that we went there instead of somewhere else. We all hit up the "gift shop" before leaving, where they had everything from 40 cent postcards to original paintings priced at over $2,000. I bought a small poster sized reprint of one of his paintings called "Quito Negro" and a postcard of another painting that I really liked called "Lagrimas de Sangre" that was a little too dark for me to buy in a full poster size.

This brings me to another topic which has recently become an annoyance for most of the group: money. The official currency of Ecuador is the U.S. dollar, which makes things easy for us because we don't have to learn a new currency, but also hard because money has a much different value here. At this point in the trip almost everyone has taken money out of the ATM, which, just like American ATMs, gives you mostly $20 bills. In the U.S. it's perfectly fine if you pay for something that costs $1.50 with a twenty, because there are very few stores that won't have change for that. Here, almost nobody can make that kind of change, only big stores or supermarkets, and even they will ask if you have something smaller. So we've all had to learn how to pay with twenties strategically, which is really really annoying. I used the last of my small bills buying my poster at the Guayasamin museum, and all I was left with in my wallet was a $20 bill and 45 cents (and four more twenties at my house). In order to have bus fare for tomorrow I had to go to a papeleria (paper store) near my house and buy notebooks (that I don't really need, although I'll probably use them for ISP) and pencils. Thankfully they were able to break my twenty, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the other four that I have...

When I got home I had to call my ISP advisor to set up a meeting before we leave for the Galapagos (Tuesday, I can't wait!) which was definitely the scariest phone call I've ever had to make. Talking to people in Spanish in person is one thing, but on the phone is a whole different story. Since you can't see the person you can't pick up on facial clues or body language, which makes it a lot harder to understand them (the whole talking fast in Spanish thing doesn't really help either). But I made the call and set up the meeting (thankfully my advisor speaks very clearly) and now I'm getting even more excited for my ISP!

Hasta luego,
Caroline