Cultural Diversity Class Trip
For my Cultural Diversity of Ecuador and Environmental Diversity of Ecuador classes we have day trips on the weekends to supplement the course work we learn in class with real experience. On those weekends, we are not able to travel outside of the city and instead get to spend the weekend exploring our home of Quito and relaxing.
On Friday we went to a soccer game, Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito to be specific. I wish this blog could be long enough to account every detail of this night, but alas it must just scratch the surface. Liga is one of the best teams in the league lucky for us their stadium is located on the outskirts of Quito and only costs $8 to sit in the fun section. Getting to the game was an experience in itself. I was forced to take two different taxis because the first driver didn’t feel like driving so far in all the traffic…I ended up sharing another taxi with a talkative lady with a neck brace who was so distraught about being late for her movie date with her boyfriend that she fell over in the middle of the street trying to hail a cab. The traffic was terrible—it took me an hour and a half for what is normally only a twenty minute drive. When I finally arrived at the stadium I looked on the taxi metro and saw 525. My American ways assumed that the 90 min taxi ride would cost $52.50, and was shocked when the taxi driver corrected me and said it was only $5.25. WOO HOO! Excited to be at the game finally, I attempted to call my friends who were already at the stadium having come from Mitad de Mundo. Unfortunately, for the first time in my entire two months in Quito, I ran out of minutes on my phone the second I got to the stadium. As I stood quietly thinking of a way to fix the problem, many Ecuadorian men decided they should come and ask me if I was waiting for my boyfriend and to chat it up with me so I decided I better think of a solution sooner rather than later. I asked a policeman to borrow his phone and thankfully the cop easily obliged and stayed and talked to me as I waited for my friends (making me feel more comfortable since the men were still following me around,)
After Liga scored with three minutes left
Once in the game, it was even more craziness. The South Section consists of fans that chant and sing 100% of the time. Everyone wears Liga jerseys and they toss toilet paper on the field and call the refs and other team’s players highly offensive and derogatory names when they disagree with their calls (Funny enough it reminded me of sitting next to my dad at my sister’s games except for that this was in Spanish). The game was tied with three minutes left when La Liga put the ball into the back of the net. PEOPLE WENT CRAZY running and pushing people over, jumping on the fence, screaming at the top of their lungs. It was definitely something to remember and something I will definitely be going back too.
Quito never disappoints and the craziness continued on through the weekend.
An old healing ritual being performed by a curandera in Ilumán , Ecuador
On Sunday, I had a Cultural Diversity field trip to an indigenous woman’s house where she performed an ancient medicine ritual on one of the guys in my class. As you can see in the video, they believed that cigarette smoke, fire, and strong alcohol rids the body of all things bad while flowers and perfume help attract all things good.