This is a random kind of update with 2 little rants/stories. I’ll be updating soon with details about Christmas Day and New Years Eve!

I’m just going to say now, this is my opinion (and definitely not the opinion of Peace Corps or the U.S. government – I have a general disclaimer on my blog too) and hope I’m not offending any of my readers, especially since I don’t have enough readers to lose any  One of the weirdest things I’ve experienced here is the attitude here toward the attack on the twin towers in 2003. It’s like a movie opportunity and people just bring it up like it’s no big deal. And I know 9/11 holds different sentiments for everyone based on their experiences, but for me it is a very tragic event that should be regarded with reverence. Here people bring it up out of the blue in casual conversation just to see my reaction, or at least that is how I have perceived it every time. It’s like they throw the hook out on the line to see what kinda fish theyre gonna catch in their query, but have nothing to say themselves. They are just curious, adding to the “I’m an animal in the zoo that everyone likes to poke” analogy of being a Peace Corps volunteer. Also, I've had several people ask me if I've seen the movie (don’t even remember which movie) because it has really cool special effects and is so interesting. To them it is no different from watching 2012 or another disaster movie because it’s just a movie. And they don’t understand that to me it really happened, I watched it happen on tv while I was sitting in math class and that it involves a lot of complicated emotions. Personally I’m disgusted that movies were made about 9/11 because someone in Hollywood got rich off glamorizing a tragic event where many innocent people lost their lives. As such, I have never and will never watch them. The other more recent event that made me think and therefore write about the attitude here is the celebration at new years (which I’ll write another blog about) where people make viejos (which are basically dolls in the form of people, cartoon characters, etc) and burn them before midnight to celebrate the ending year. I received a text from someone I work with saying I needed to go to the city to see the huge twin towers that were constructed and on display to be burned. I was taken aback and asked my host brother if “torres gemelos” really meant twin towers because I figured I was somehow mistaken in my Spanish. It seems so awful to me to build a replica of the twin towers just to burn intentionally at a party. And the hardest part for me is not knowing why. Why are they building and burning the twin towers? For shock value? Or because the event holds no emotional connection for them as it does for many Americans? Why don’t they just build a skyscraper, why are they making them specifically in the image of the World Trade Center? I tell myself it is out of respect and in honor of the tragedy and I hope that’s the truth. Regardless, I don’t think I’ll get used to how they talk about it, but I guess there’s a lot of stuff I tolerate but will never get used to here so I’ll just add it to my list 

On a lighter note, I had the first dream in Spanish that I’ve remembered, which occurred the first night of 2010. Everyone says this means you just ‘understand’ another language but I woke up feeling about the same about my language skills as when I went to bed last night, and incidentally, last year. I may have dreamed in Spanish before but the problem is that I don’t remember my dreams from the nighttime here. I guess I'm just so tired I pass out. But this dream I remember because I slept in late today after all the celebrations last night and would have had this dream sometime between 9am and 11am, when I was woken by a text message. It was a pretty bizarre dream really. Even though I don’t read into dreams much maybe one of you will have some insight for me! So I was in my site here in Ecuador, and I hopped on a Coactur bus (one of the interprovincial bus companies that runs through my town) with a coworker (don’t remember who, just that it was someone I work with). I had been at the development office I’ve been working with aside from my primary project. And for some reason I hopped the bus to just get to the other side of town when I’d normally walk or take a mototaxi (though I've always wondered if you can get on the bus at one end of town and off at the other…). But the bus driver who was a blond woman (not very Ecuadorian apparently) locked the door and wouldn’t let anyone off and left the town. Everyone was arguing with her and complaining that they needed to get off, but she just said tough luck you can get off in the next town (which is pretty far from my town and therefore a huge inconvenience) and kept the door locked. So I talk to her, and this blond Ecuadorian driver was speaking to me in pretty poor English. Then we switched to Spanish because she didn’t understand my response in English. And after this point all dialogue was is Spanish. So anyway, I was basically telling her she sucked for not opening the doors and letting us out, and then she took a different turn so we weren’t even going to the next town. I few minutes later we arrived at this beautiful valley and she unlocked the door and let us out. It was really arid without any greenery, but there was a rock mountain and the largest full moon I had ever seen surrounded by sparkling stars on a blue-black sky. It was a cool and crystal clear night. The rock mountain had a gold quarry and it sparkled like diamonds. There were workers dressed in tunics walking up and down the path with baskets on their heads. Though it’s hard to describe, it was the most picturesque image I have ever “seen”. It looked like something out of a Disney movie (the scenery was most closely related to Aladdin) but real life not a cartoon. So I'm staring up at the sky and the rock mountain when there’s a commotion and I turn around to find our driver lying on the ground obviously sick or something. We figured out that we thought she had a heart attack and we had to get her to the hospital in the nearby city, but none of us knew how she had driven us here… then I got a text message that woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep after that. So fellow lovers of psychology – what does it mean?? :-P