The influx of Western culture here is astounding. I'm at the mall again, and they just randomly turned on the TVs here in the food court. So far they've shown music videos by Christina Aguilera (well, at least she's Latina), The Fray, and Pink. American songs play on the radio all the time. The other day I was walking down the street and I heard “Single Ladies” coming from some car. When we went to Machala and Guayaquil we heard something by Pink Floyd, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “Kung Fu Fighting,” “It's Raining Men,” and “Summer Lovin'” from Grease on the charter bus. I've heard Switchfoot, and I've even heard Across the Sky, which you almost never hear at home. Disney Channel is everywhere, especially High School Musical and Hannah Montana. My host nieces love Mickey Mouse, Barney, and Hello Kitty (and I realize the latter is Japanese, but I bet it became popular here after it became popular in the U.S.). It's really weird and sometimes a little frustrating to still be surrounded by so much American culture. I've seen twelve-year-old girls wearing T-shirts with the Play Boy logo, and I have to wonder if they understand what that actually means. From where I'm sitting, I can see a Burger King, a KFC, a GNC, and a Sony store. There's a soup and sandwich shop down the street from here that's called PoPe, but its logo is almost an exact copy of the logo for Panera Bread.
The obsession with our culture even extends to product manufacturing. Ecuador is the largest exporter of bananas in the world (Brazil and India actually grow more but they use most of them domestically), and a lot of those bananas come to the United States to be processed into pudding, baby food, and other products, which are then shipped back to Ecuador and sold in the stores. Ecuador would really benefit if it processed its own bananas. Jobs would be created and money would be saved, both on shipping and because American goods are just a lot more expensive. There's this general attitude, though, that American (or European) products must be better than domestic ones, so Ecuadorians continue to buy expensive, American-made, Gerber baby food. The one thing that I'm surprised that I haven't seen is Starbucks. Ecuadorians are so obsessed with their instant coffee and their NesCafé, though, that I'm not sure they would allow Starbucks in the country.
This will probably be my last blog for at least a week. Tomorrow we have an all-day trip to Ingapirca, a town with a lot of Inca ruins in a neighboring province, and then we're leaving Sunday evening. We're flying to Quito, spending the night, and then flying to the Amazon on Monday. We'll be at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station until Friday, when we come back to Quito for a day and a half. Then we're going to Intag to go to the cloud forest, we're going to the city of Junín (and I'm honestly not sure what's there), and we're going to Otavalo, a town very famous for its artisans – so that means shopping! Then we come back to Quito once again, and then we travel down the Avenue of the Volcanoes. We'll stop in Baños, which is famous for its natural hot water baths, and we'll end up in Riobamba, where we'll get to climb Chimborazo, the highest peak in Ecuador (we're only climbing up to the glacier line, which is at 5,000 meters above sea level). After that, “we hope to catch a train” (direct quotation from Dr. Melampy – he inspires a lot of confidence sometimes) back to Cuenca. It's a seventeen day trip in total, and hopefully I'll have Internet at least while we're in Quito, but no promises.
Today marks the halfway point of my time in Ecuador, and when we get back from this long trip we'll have less than three weeks left. Sometimes it seems like time is going really slowly and other times it seems like everything is flying by. I'm still having a blast and I'm really looking forward to everything we're about to get to do, but I'll admit that I'm anxious to get home too. Sometimes it's hard not to think about things I'm missing, like NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. It officially began on November 1, and there's obviously no way I can write a novel in a month if I'm spending 75% of that month traveling around a foreign country. There's always next year, but I have novel ideas (pun indented!) right now! Also, I wish so much that I could go back to the States just for this weekend, so I could go to Wrockstock III, a huge wizard rock festival in Missouri. It's basically summer camp plus music and magic, minus the summer part.
I really should stop complaining. Sorry. Oh, the rough life of a world traveler.
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"something by Pink Floyd?" Obviously I have work to do when you get home!
ReplyDeleteYour comment about bannanas being shipped to the U.S. for processing and returned to Ecuador for purchase reminds me of when we were living in Nigeria 40+ years ago. We realized that it was unfortunate that Nigerians had to purchase cocoa-based products (confections, cocoa powder, etc.) that were imported from England, because that's where all the native cocoa was shipped. But then that's the reason England wanted the colonies in the first place: economics.