Meet Annalyssa

Here she is...a very beautiful princess. Annalyssa is my best friend's daughter. Born on July 21st, our national day. As Anouschka said "isn't is cool, she will never have to work on her birthday!". I am officially her "beschermengel" which means "protecting angel" in Dutch. Tough task...but i'll do my best. But i am sure with parents like that she won't need me very much. I am so proud of Anouschka but still can't believe she is a mom!

RTL2, Place du Capitole, Pont Neuf, Metro ligne B

Nothing changes in Toulouse...or so I thought when arriving late last night at Edu's place. I was listening to RTL2 like in the good old days when I used to drive to Airbus every morning. Edu has not changed...still as welcoming, warm and open as always. It's been 4 years since my last visit. Everything feels familiar, but yet, i am a little confused...not sure anymore what the shortest way is from the Place du Capitole to the Pont Neuf. What happened to the Bistro Romain? And to "Boulangerie Paul" in the rue St. Rome? Just when i thought that nothing changes in the old continent...I realize that some of my favorite places have dissapeared. At least i have the memories. And in honour of those, Sunny and I walked all the way back to get an almond croissant from one of their other branches...and I ordered Carpaccio for lunch at the new pizzeria that is replacing the Bistrot Romain...ce n'est pas a volonte, main on fait avec, as we would say in Belgium.

Appart from that, toulouse is still toulouse...a city with beautiful buildings, all made in this pink/red coloured brick, which gives it its name of "Ville Rose", a city small enough to walk around and (almost) not get lost, but the city is also big enough to offer you anything you need...from a new pair of shoes (or was it two?) to a colourful butterfly mobile made of paper...I had forgotten how much i liked this place.

Oh, and in case someone wonders, the metro ligne B is finally finished and the flunch still serves delicious chocolate cake!

Summer fling...

...I have decided that one day i will have a summer fling. A fling...hmmm a brief period of indulging one's impulses...some of us want flings with women (or men), some want flings with cars,...I want flings with cities (although i wouldn't refuse the occasional fling with a sexy fast car ;-). A brief encounter (maybe a summer) with a new city. At first the apprehension about what is to come. The frustration and excitement of finding my way to its streets. Discovering new little cafes to hang out, interesting musea to explore, watching the locals, each day a new place with new faces...then the feeling of wanting to go back to that particular place, craving for that particular snack that only this particular place can make, recognizing faces on the streets, slowly sliding from foreigner to local.
I just spent 4 days in NYC. It is not enough! The City is so exciting...compared to other cities i've been to in the US, this one seems real...not fake, not made, not soulless. Someday...I will be back, for a summer, i know where i'll be living, next to the Brooklyne bridge, with view of Manhattan!

Leaving

I am sitting in the Quito airport, waiting for my flight to Houston. Another adventure is over. A little sad to leave, a little happy to go home. At times i am not even sure about my state of mind. I was telling someone that, although traveling is wonderful, it is also hard at times. Whether it is for a short period or for longer (read: moving to another country for about 5 years or more), it's always exciting, new, enriching, you meet new people, get comfortable around them, learn to know them better, get attached to some of them, and then unevitably something has to change. You leave, they leave, you move, they move...and you wonder "why going through this sadness of parting, leaving and saying goodbye. Is it all really worth it?" And then at times, people leave for good, they are no more, and you don't know how to handle that. You also don't know how to react to it when it happens to someone close. I don't know how to handle someone's sadness. What to say, what to do. It seems that nothing i can say will make a difference. It hurts to know someone is hurt, but since it nearly does not hurt as much to me as to the one that is hurting, I just keep quiet and move along...I think that ultimately we deal with things alone...or so we try. I am not sure i have mastered that yet...but i am trying.

In short: I hate leaving, or saying goodbye, or for that matter "moving on"...and it seems it is what i am doing a lot lately.

Time to go :(

That's it...my days in Cuenca are over...it is with a lot of sadness that I am moving on...to better places? I doubt it...so I'll have to come back, for sure...plans are brewing. Anyway, I am tkaing the 11pm bus tonight to Banos, a hot spring town about 9 hours away by bus from here. Should get there in the morning. Probably exhausted, but who cares. The ideeeee is to explore Banos tomorrow, maybe relex and soak in a hot spring and then rent some bikes to bike down to Pujo...it's a 40 miles bike ride,but supposedly it is downhill...or at least big parst of it...should be doable. And then get the bus back to Banos and then on to Quito...how does that sound?

La Hacienda

The family i am staying with have a 'hacienda' (farm) about an hour away from Cuenca. They have fruit trees, animals, coffee plantations,...on that farm. Today, one of my 'guest mom' brothers took us there in his 35 year old mercedes. We relaxed in the hammocks on the patio, had gin-tonic for aperitif, cevice de camaron for lunch, and freshly brewed coffee for desert...aaaah that's what i call holidays!

Four days in the jungle!

So, I just got back from my tour to the jungle. We left on monday morning with a little van, one of those little tin cans that hold 12 people on those tiny little foldable seats. Needless to say that the roads are horrible, so at the snail pace of 25km/hr (hip, hip, hoera for the ecuadorians who work in meters, km/h, kilos and many other useful units!) we reached the town of Guayaquazil after 5 hours or so. We stopped on the way for many cows, rivers, trucks that blocked the road because they missed their turns, heavy rains, mudslides, etc...a real adventure! We had lunch (man, those people eat a lot of meat...even for a carnivorian like me, it is a little hard to handle...I dream about vegetables in all their forms and colours...red tomatoes, orange carrots, green brocoli, sounds wonderful!))...So after lunch the team headed out to the village of Chumpaias. The team consists of 2 ecuadorian surgeons, 1 anesthesiologist, a general doctor (all 4 ecuadorian doctors), Dr. Laub, a stanford plastic surgeon, apparently once the best plastic surgeon around, but now a sweet, but oh-my-god-sometimes-so-embarrassing grandfather, 3 Ecuadorian medical students, Khai(the other stanford student) and me...a pretty cool combination of people.
Often during the first 5 hours of the trip i was thinking to myself 'my god, what am i doing here and how am i going to survive', but then little by little, i warmed up to these people, and i have to admit that they were a pretty fun and entertaining group to be around...i would even go to the extent of saying that i'll miss them in the coming days...

So, we got to that village, and first thing they did was putting us in plastic chairs around the basket ball field of the town. We on one side, they (the people form the village) on the three other sides. Then came all the important people for a speech...the head of the village, Miss Chumpaias herself!, and some others i don't remember...at the end of all the ceremonies, Miss Chumpaias, came around with a big bowl with some yellow fluid in it, and according to the tradition we were to drink from this bowl one by one...the yellow thing is fermented yucca juice...BERK! more horrible than beer...and even worse, I found out later that this juice is produced by the women of the village by chewing yucca and spitting the chewed yucca parts in a bowl...berk and double berk! Anyway, i survived!
Once the ceremony was over each of the doctors picked a student to go to the different consultation rooms to see the patients and decided which cases would get surgery and which wouldn't...so i got my first lesson in patient consultation...man, man, you see weird cases in those villages (a lady was there because her boyfriend had cut her (accidentally ?) with a chain saw!). This went on for all the afternoon. By the time we got back to the hotel we were pretty exhausted and headed to bed...

Next morning, wake up at 6 o clock (ouch, i thought i was on holiday), back to the village, where surgeries would start at 7:30am...I was allowed to watch the first surgery (and all the ones that followed) and before even starting, i felt a little light headed...at some point i had to sit down, the truck (i forgot to mention that the surgeries take place in aa bog truck that has an OR in it) was spinning a little...i felt a little dissapointed, i thought that i would at least make it to the bloody part of the surgery...but the lady anesthesiologist explained that everybody goes through the same thing, something about being in a tight space with funny smells...i guess she was right, because the cutting and burned smell of flesh did nothing to me afterwards, on the contrary, i must admit it is pretty exciting and cool stuff!

Annnnyway, as the day went by i saw them perform 6 surgeries, and for the last one, the surgeon asked me if i wanted to scrub in...euh...scrub what? Sure! So i got to do the cool things they do in the movies...scrub my hands and arms up to my elbows, enter the operating room by pushing the door with my butt, having someone put a sterile gown around me, put gloves on, and then hand over the tools as the surgeon asked : 'retractor', 'knife', clamps,...and even hold the retractor...pretty cool!

That was probably the coolest part of my trip so far...of course the cuba libre happy hour (or happy hours), the salsa dancing (after the cuba libre ;) on tge main square of Quayalaquiz were pretty fun too...

I rediscovered my love for latin america, the language, the people, their sense of family, their warmness...it's amazing over here...I will have to come back soon!