**And the adventure continues...**

I am sitting here at work... at 1 AM... waiting for a video project to render so I can then print it to digital tape (30 minutes) and then dub the digital tape to VHS tape (another 30 minutes). I am almost to the point where I am wondering whether, if I just stay here overnight, my students will notice I am wearing the same clothes. Probably will have to go home in the end. I am running out of M&Ms.

The posting on the trip report ended with all the yucky stuff. Now I get to talk about heading to New Mexico and romping around the Santa Fe area. And yes there are pictures...

... for almost everything.

I think some background is in order here. Best to be upfront about my obsession with New Mexico in general and the Santa Fe-Taos area (high road only), in particular.

I first started wandering to Santa Fe over 20 years ago. During the years, when my kids were very young and I was somewhat stuck at home alone with little help with their care, I was "permitted," yes, I said "permitted" one trip - totaling 36 hours - once a year somewhere without having to ... (and kids you know I love you dearly)... take the kids or my husband. My itinerary always led me to Santa Fe because it was 1) wonderful, 2) one of the few places on this planet where I feel completely at home, and 3) close enough to actually have some time there with only a 36 hour window.

I would usually take my friend Chris, another stay at home mom of two boys of similar age to my kids. It was even harder for Chris to break away, albeit for completely different reasons. It wasn't because her spouse didn't want to do full-time child care so much as he was a surgeon in residence and worked insane hours. Carrying the full load of child rearing was the sacrifice she was willing to make and it paid off for her. Within a few years, she was trying to decide which half million dollar home to buy on the shores of Lake Michigan while I was trying to make rent in a two bedroom apartment.

Anyway, our trip would start early. Really early. I insisted. Because the MOST IMPORTANT part of the trip, for me, was getting to Tia Sophia's before they closed at 2 pm. This entailed leaving Denver by 6:30 am or so and driving.... FAST... to Santa Fe. The old Volvo 240 cruised quite smoothly at 90 miles an hour down Interstate 25 thank you very much. I don't want to underestimate for my readers the importance of being at the front door of this restaurant at least 45 minutes before it closed. It is all about the blue corn enchilada plate. I had to have it. It was nothing short of an obsession. And, of course, the first thing I did upon stepping out into the streets of Santa Fe this time, was walk right down to Tia Sophia's. Sure I gazed at the storefronts along the way, commenting on the loss of the Woolworths and other shops I remember from twenty years ago. But be certain of this, not at the break of my stride.

I don't have a picture of Tia Sophia's. I guess I was just a little pre-occupied after not having been there for 14 years. It was a glorious meal. Blue corn enchilada plate smothered with green chili, all as good as I remember it. And across the table I was looking at my best friend. Did I mention that I did not make this foray alone? Tia Sophia's was perfect.

With full stomachs and a Starbucks in hand, the best thing to do in Santa Fe anymore, unless you have money you want to throw at incredibly expensive art, is to look at the architecture. The city is so pretty. I love adobe architecture. And I live in exactly the wrong part of the country for it. Some of the best modern examples include the inns and hotels in the old part of town. This is a small inn that I would love to stay at. I can only imagine the price.

We stayed at Garrett's Desert Inn. It is a motor inn. And it looks like one. But it is a block off the square and easily half the price of anything else so close, before you account for the fact that you get free parking, otherwise non existent in the old part of Santa Fe.




This next building is part of the Hilton complex I believe. There used to be a great restaurant nearby call Maria Isabel's. But it is long gone.








The most famous hotel on the square is LaFonda on the Plaza. My travel companion, told me stories about how this was the only place his mother would stay. We wandered around inside quite a bit. This is a picture of one of the dining rooms.






Between the famous LaFonda and the motor inn was the Inn at Loretto. It is nothing short of exquisite. For me this was the most beautiful hotel to photograph.






On the other side of Garrett's Desert Inn was the oldest church in North America, the San Miguel Chapel. We walked around quite a bit, and I began to realize that as old as this is, the adobe bricks, mud coating, architectural features and the like, were far more modern than what I saw in Peru the year before. After all these trips to Santa Fe, being filled with a sense that I was seeing things so very old, the ruins on the Inka Trail go back so much farther in time.































This area for me has wonderful mystical qualities. I always try to drive the high road from Santa Fe to Taos, and this trip was no different. We drove to my favorite haunt, before Chimayo: El Santuario de Chimayó – Originally a private chapel, constructed from 1814 to 1816. It was turned over to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 1929. This is a nondescript church from the outside, but it attracts A LOT of visitors. In fact in the 16 years since my visit, they have added a large parking area and little shops have sprung up around the church. But the draw of this church is inside. It is a little room in the back. Enter and in the center of the dirt floor you see... a hole. This is no ordinary hole. Many have traveled to Santuario to gather dirt from this hole and have benefitted from its miraculous healing powers of the "Tierra Bendita" (sacred earth).

The altar of the church is beautiful as is its murals and candles.






















I liked the candles in particular. I love picking up these candles at the grocery store They burn forever and they bring back fond memories of New Mexico.

My favorite part of the church is no longer there. In the back room, next to the Tierra Bendita, was a collection of crutches, and other artifacts that were left as evidence of miracles. Most are still there, but the room has been cleaned up and my favorite image left as evidence of a miracle - a polaroid of a tortilla with the image of Christ's face on it - is no longer on display. So I have tried to do some research on this tortilla. I think I found the origin of it thanks to the Internet. From an Aug. 14, 1978 Newsweek: "Mario Rubio is rolling a burrito when she notices skillet burns on the tortilla resembling the mournful face of Jesus Christ. Shortly thereafter, 8,000 curious pilgrims trek to the Rubios' small stucco house in rural New Mexico to view the sacred icon. Mrs. Rubio leaves her house unlocked so that visitors may freely enter and examine the tortilla."

Of course there also is this more humorous retelling of the event. I wonder if having a polaroid of this tortilla in the church undermined her own tourist/pilgrim business - apparently numbering in the 100s of thousands. I have not been to her house, but I remember seeing this tortilla at Sanctuario.

How can you not love this part of the country?

Part Three coming soon.

**Trip Report: Part one of trip 1**

So for the past month or so, I have been travelling a bit. One trip was to Kansas City for a conference. No worthwhile pictures from that. I was in a hotel complex for two days venturing outside only at night to search for BBQ. It was an opportunity to network with other media advisors to take some comfort in the collective hell that can be our jobs sometimes. I roomed with an amazingly energetic newspaper advisor from an Ohio community college. I got tired just listening to all the stuff she is up to. Am I getting lazy or something? Maybe bitten by the tenured bug. Who knows. In all fairness I always have get a special place in my heart for sleep and mindless television. Why change now.

But I took two other trips in that brief time window. The first was to Colorado. It was a week long excursion packaged around a court appearance to respond to a petition from the ex as he is asking the court to relieve him of his legal responsibility to help the kids with college. I will get into that delightful experience in a later post. Outside of the court hearing and the prep time with the law firm, I managed to actually eek out some leisure time.

Right after arriving in Colorado and heading for Boulder, I took a detour into Denver and tripped down memory lane. Ironically, this memory was from a time I was married. Not happily, mind you, as I was raising two young'uns (no problem there) and caring for one 30 year old child. Doing everything in the house while waiting tables at night, caring for toddlers during the day, reading 800 pages a week of neo-marxist theory, post-structuralism, auteur theory and british cultural studies, cooking cleaning, chauferring to preschool, entertaining kids, driving an hour to class a couple times a week... made me a little cranky.

But, I have fond memories of the house I lived in. My daughter and son do too. They are the best memories of that time. It was the first house we ever owned. We made the downpayment with money my father wanted me to have when he passed away. At least, that is what my mother said at the time. It could be that she was just being nice about helping us, knowing we had very little money. I won't get into the whole common property law that divided the equity in the house (including that down payment from my father) between the two of use when we separated. But I was accustomed to the pattern of my ex benefitting from the efforts, generosity and good will of others. It is how he survives.

Ah, but the house.... We lived in this house for 6-7 years. I had to sell it after the split because the mortgage payment was only 100.00 a month less than my paycheck. And no help was forthcoming from you know who. It was a special place though.

So, I drove by the house. The fence in front is gone. The house needs paint. Ivy is growing everywhere. The rope from the old airplane swing still hangs from the maple tree. The greenhouse in back - a massive 20 x 40 foot monstrosity with an old hot tub enclosed in it - is long gone and replaced with a deck.

The top end of the block has several homes with the "tops popped." These were old ranchs that have been rebuilt into a two story homes. Sign of growth, I guess. But the neighborhood overall still has a mixed income feeling about it.


One of my favorite places to go with the kids was a little cafe by the hospital. This was the kids' restaurant training ground. My son went there when he visited Denver with his girlfriend this summer. I had to stop in and check it out. It hasn't changed a bit. The round table in the corner is still there. The kids would order pancakes. The waitress, who is STILL THERE, used to tease them and bring out cucumber shapes and place them on top of the pancakes in a smiley face, while commenting on them needing their veggies.
While waiting for the food, the kids were allowed one spoonful each of the peanut butter on the table. It was a favorite ritual, getting as much peanut butter as possible on the spoon. Annie's still has the BEST green chili in the world. It is the only green chili that is unequivocably better then mine. Apparently I am not alone in my absolute resolve about the quality of Annie's green chili. Our waitress mentioned that the owner has, on occasion shipped out orders of green chili on dry ice. It is that good.


The second day of my trip was spent working with my attorney preparing for trial. It was a Sunday. Fortunately the 300/hour rate was not compounded to time and a half. Not surprisingly, I took no pictures. I was too keenly aware of the billable hours racking up to think about marking the moment.

Monday I accept the gracious offer of my alma mater in Boulder and established a guest account so I could work on-line, on campus, all day. Dangerous having an office in the engineering building with the coffee cart one floor below. That means easy access to lattes and with a web cam mounted on the cart, one has the luxury of waiting until there is no line before running downstairs. I had three lattes that day.

Tuesday was trial day. It sucked. It was expensive. That is all I have to say about that for now. I will return to the topic. Believe me.

The rest of the trip report is coming. Stay tuned for roadtrip to New Mexico and the search for green chilis.

**Birthday Astrology**

Your Birthdate: December 15

You take life as it is, and you find happiness in a variety of things. You tend to be close to family and friends. But it's hard to get into your inner circle. Making the little things wonderful is important to you, and you probably have an inviting home. You seek harmony with others, but occasionally you have a very stubborn streak. Your strength: Your intense optimism Your weakness: You shy away from exploring your talents Your power color: Jade Your power symbol: Flower Your power month: June

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

**Up for Air**

Just caught the end of The Apprentice as I turned on the TV for ER. I notice the "fired" people were getting in the taxi and there was a brightly lit "Yahoo jobs" ad on top of the taxi. Nice little, yet ironic, product placement.

But that is not why I am blogging. I am blogging to whine.

Man, this is a brutal semester. Constant piles of news copy to grade. Video projects keeping ending up on my desk. My video job is nearing a deadline. LSATs are just a couple weeks away. I have traveled the past three weekends. I can't seem to clear off my desk, make any progress or even clear my head.

Generally when things pile up this bad, I have to add structure and organization to my life. And get more exercise. And not get behind on this darn blog.

OK done whining. Time for a trip report. Coming up.

**Update from Ecuador**

My daughter finally emailed another summary of recent adventures in Ecuador. This email was more of a nail-biter than usual and my head is still full of images of her traveling out of the city on a bus and disembarking IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.

Doesn't she realize that parents have nightmares about their kids.

She has now replaced my earlier parent nightmare - the one where I become a new mom and simply forgot that I had a baby and thus neglected to feed her for a week - to this new nightmare - innocent, trusting and intensely free spirited daughter believes coniving, fare collector-wannabe-boyfriend's directions and gets off a bus in a rural deserted area, never to be seen again.

I won't get into my own history of hitchhiking around Kenya because I am trying to avoid those "like mother, like daughter" comments.

For those who don't receive her emails, here it is, cut and pasted...

Another update from Quito...

I received a ´letter´ yesterday and was really excited until I realized the address on the front was in my handwriting. It turns out it was a letter from K about stress with some questionnaire I filled out last spring about how I deal with stressful situations. While I realize the study abroad office is trying to be helpful by this gesture, if I was having a hard time here the excitement of thinking I received a letter followed by the disappointment of realizing what the letter really was would depress me far more than not receiving a letter at all. Interestingly, I recently spent a lot of time doing the stress-relieving activities I described in the questionaire

One of the things (not including people) that I miss most here is the freedom/independence to do things on my own, especially after dark. It gets dark between 6 and 6.30 in Quito and once it is dark it is really not safe to be outside by yourself. It just so happens however that I love to go for long walks at night that are many times accompanied by long periods of swinging at random playgrounds that I encounter.

A few weeks ago we took a trip with K to the Paramo and during our stay at the hotel Aruba I discovered a playground. So that evening, feeling a bit swing-deprived, I spent two hours swinging before dinner and another two hours swinging after dinner. Then, I took a two hour walk around the hotel which basically translates into me doing way too many loops around the property.

The next day, I had blisters on the palms of my hands from the swings and my stomach muscles were so sore that it was hard to walk. Oops.

Besides the swinging and walking, one of my favorite parts of our trip to the paramo a few weeks ago (see the pictures on webshots) was inventing biological musings with A., A., and V.. We were constantly asking each other questions about things we saw and in turn coming up with possible explanations (some albeit more probable than others). They ranged from a discussion on determining the sex of a song bird based on its coloration, to the morphological difference between a duck and a goose to A.'s prediction that there was a limit on the height of Frailejones because if they got too high they would easily tip over in the wind to (my favorite) V.'s pig-chicken: a chicken lacking feathers on its back that she then tried to convince everyone was the origin of the mysterious but delicious jamon de pollo lunch meat that exists around Quito.

A. and I both skipped out medicinal plants trip to the markets to collect plants (A. to go on an amazing andianismo trip to an erupting volcano and I to collect stories for my oral literature class). We were going to make up the trip but Vlasti insisted on going with us to make sure we were safe. We felt kind of bad for making him lose an entire morning just for us so we decided one day on our way to school to buy him a cookie and coke as a way to show our thanks. Unfortunately, we decided on a cookie that was half covered in chocolate and as we bought it around mid-day before we had even made it out of the store it had become a very unappetizing mess inside its bag. By the time we made it to Cumbaya, the cookie was in so many pieces and looked so gross that we decided it had passed even the "it's just the thought that counts" part of gift giving.

Even more amusingly, at that point we had ditched the coke as well. As the owner of the store started to open Vlasti's coke we asked if we could take the coke to go which we thought insinuated that we did not want him to open it. He opened it anyway and then proceeded to pour it into a plastic shopping bag, which he nonchalantly handed over to us as he told us our bill. I tried unsuccessfully not to laugh but it was too much. We walked for about 20 minutes with our shopping bag full of coke but since neither A. nor I drink soda and at this point the coke was already warm and we still had another half an hour before we would arrive in Cumbaya we finally decided to dump it out.

A. and I always seem to have something go wrong when we travel together: this weekend we tried to take a bus to Otavalo to hike around lake Cuicocha but about an hour out from Otavalo the two left rear tires exploded for an unknown reason and it took the driver so long to fix them that we couldn't do the hike before it got dark.

I cooked lunch for my family this weekend, which was certainly an amusing experience. A couple of weeks ago I baked bread for a potluck at A. house so I was prepared for things like translating farenheight into celcius to use the oven and the fact that my host family does not own a measuring cup. But my meal of dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), a spinach salad, and apple crisp turned out to be quite an undertaking. I first got the idea when A. and I were on a quest for dried fruit that took us to many stores that sell imported goods (there is a great business opportunity in Ecuador for someone who wants to start dehydrating the amazing fruits that exist here because as of now there is not a single place to buy non-imported dehydrated fruits) when I saw jarred grape leaves. I got really excited because dolmades is one of my favorite dishes and I never expected to be able to find grape leaves in Ecuador. First, it didn't really occur to me that other ingredients crucial to the dish (aka dill) would be impossible to find. Second, the ingredients that did exist were super expensive (I cringed as I succumbed to paying 5 dollars for 6 ounces of feta cheese). Once I (sort of) pulled together all the ingredients or tried to invent substitutions, even my bread making experience had not prepared me for the difficulties one can encounter cooking in another country. For some reason I have not quite figured out things cook a lot more slowly on my family's stove. The imported grape leaves were a little old, torn, and of completely random sizes with a strange neon green tinge. I couldn't find dried cranberries for the salad and the almonds I was going to use were 5 dollars for a tiny bag so I settled on raisins and sunflower seeds instead. The whole ordeal took a lot longer than I had planned and my family was very paitent as we sat down to lunch over an hour and a half late.

Fortunately in the end everything turned out really well and the best part was that my family really enjoyed the food. My papi normally doesn't eat salad but wolfed down two helpings along with 9 dolmades, even though they are green too :). So a million thanks to you, mom for the recipies :) The meal really reminded me of home and made me realize how different the flavors of the food I normally eat in the states are. Just like I am constantly amazed at the delicious flavor combinations my family comes up with every day I think they were surprised at the combinations I used.

A few weeks ago I asked my histology professor if she knew of any veterinarians with whom I could do an internship. It turns out her husband is an avian veterinarian who works in a huge chicken farm outside of Quito. Over the next couple of weeks I wrote him a letter and translated my resume into Spanish and my professor gave me his business card (anything takes a long time to do here).

Finally, on Thursday my professor told me he accepted my letter and that I could meet him at the farm on Friday at the time I had mentioned. Well, I had no idea how to get to the farm and my professor didn't either so I spent that evening with my mami calling her friends trying to figure out how to get there.

The next day, I was so nervous I couldn't pay attention in any of my classes. I took a bus to Quito after oral literature and ran to the ecovia where I sat impatiently for it to arrive at the station at the other end of Quito, La Marin. Once the bus finally made it, I must have asked 10 policemen where the busses to Conocoto/Amaguaña left from since the ecovia didn't even make it all the way to La Marin because of road construction. I finally found a bus that said Conocoto but it didn't quite fit the description my mami had meticulously written for me on the back of a business card so I asked the driver and he assured me that his bus would pass by Incubadura Anhalzer.

I climbed on and as soon as we pulled out of La Marin the helper who collects fares sat down next to me to tell me that he would personally advise me when we reached my stop. That's nice, I thought, thinking he would then get up and continue collecting fares. But instead, he kept talking to me, asking me increasingly personal questions until arriving at the inevitable, "do you have a boyfriend?" And that's when I lied. "Yes," I calmly responded thinking that the moral sacrifice would leave me in peace as the bus rambled around the bends of the road. I was very wrong. He continued questioning me, asking me detailed questions about my boyfriend (how long we've been dating, what he studies, if he really loves me, etc) until he tried another tactic: "do you have a boyfriend here, in Ecuador?" "No!" I almost shouted in response. I wasn't expecting that one.

Despite his best intentions to convince me that it would be okay to have and Ecuadorian boyfriend (aka him) while my (imaginary) boyfriend continued to pine away for me amidst his architecture studies in New York, I kept insisting that it was not okay to have two boyfriends.

Finally he got up to collect fares again and a woman with a small child sat down next to me. I thought I was saved, but to my astonishment the bus assistant actually asked the woman to stand (there were no seats left) so he could sit next to me. Finally he told me my stop was coming up but when I looked out the window things didn't look right (as in there was nothing but a field on the side of the road).

Apparantly he was thinking of a different place when he told me his bus went to Incubadora Anhalzer and the bus I was on really doesn't pass anywhere near where I needed to go. So I convinced him to drop me off at an intersection where I could catch the right bus and to make a very long story slightly shorter I finally arrived at the yellow adobe walls that mark the entrance to Incubadora Anhalzer.

However, when I knocked on the iron gates and asked the guard for Dr. M. he told me that he wasn't there. "What?!" I almost shouted at him in disbelief, You have got to be kidding me. So after standing there dumbfounded for a few seconds I got the brilliant idea to call his cell phone since I had his business card. No one answered. A few seconds later I got a call on my cell phone that turned out to be from him asking me what I was doing calling him. After I hastily explained who I was he said he was in Guayaquil and wouldn't arrive for another half hour. It didn't exactly occur to me at the time that it is impossible to travel from Guayaquil to Quito in half an hour regardless of the form of transport.

I told him that I would see him soon and sat down to start writing this letter outside the gate of Incubadora Anhalzer (the guard still wouldn't let me in). There had been some thunder in the background for a while, but after about half an hour it started to rain. About two seconds after the first drops, it started to pour. About two seconds after the pouring began I was treated to the added entertainment of silica-bead-sized hail. I managed to convince the guard to let me in so I didn't have to sit in the hail but it wasn't for another two and a half hours until Dr. M. arrived.

While I was waiting, I asked some women who worked there if they wanted any help because I didn´t have anything to do. Although they said yes, I really didn´t know enough about what they were doing to be of any help but we ended up talking for a while and when in response to some question I explained that I was an exchange student, they were all really surprised and didn´t believe me for a little bit because they said they couldn´t tell I had a foreign accent and that I spoke Spanish perfectly. It was a really nice complement to receive.

In the end it was a good thing I waited: he is really sweet and the internship is going to be awesome, I think. I am going to be working with the reproduction side of the company, learning about raising chickens from birth to slaughter, vaccinating and examining them, performing necropsies, etc. And as an added benefit there is a woman who works in the accounting department who lives somewhat close to me in Quito so she can take me home at night so I don't have to ride the bus for two hours in the dark.

I had a presentation in my oral literature class about décimas, a type of oral poetry used by residents (mostly of African origin) in Esmereldas. I wrote my own décima to see how hard it was and it is really difficult. There is a pretty complex structure that you have to follow and add to that I was presenting on religious décimas so I had to write one on something from the Bible (not exactly my strongpoint) so the process was pretty hysterical. In the end it was
quite rewarding because when I sat down Andrea, my partner for our field work, wrote me the following note: "Me encantó! Realmente felicitaciones. Cada palabra que decías se
sentía que lo disfrutabas. Que hermoso que hayas escrito esta décima, porque puedo ver que te gusta mi país, que ahora también es tu Ecuador".

Otherwise, classes continue to go fine although they can be tedious at times. What I really want to do is spend time with my host family or at my internship not struggle through dry anthropological readings on whether corn was first domesticated by the Mayans in Mexico or by the indigenous Amazonian people in Ecuador. But the semester is more than half over so I think I can make it through :)

I hope you are all doing well and I send you good thoughts from the middle of the earth.