When we walked out of the computer place, Ivan, who has never owned a computer nor has probably ever known anyone to own a computer, said that he was not going to be able to use the computer I had given him because it only has 2 gigs of memory and new computers come with at least 40 gigs. Ivan is fast on his way to becoming a pedant, like everyone else in Ecuador with any education. A month ago, he had no computer and no hope of ever getting one. Now, unlike everyone he knows, he has a computer he says he cant work on and that only a new computer he could never afford will suffice. I knew from the very start that he didn't really need a computer for school, contrary to what he had said, but I was surprised to find just how purely ego the ownership of a computer was for him. Like I said before, the people here are "too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash."

         Back at home, I read the free Newsweeks the Peace corps supplies us with and wrote until late. At 9pm, Julio and Ivan came into my room with what was obviously business on their minds long before they opened their mouths. As Julio's Spanish is about as bad as mine, we had decided a few days earlier, while trying to name our future lending institution, to consult Ivan about our confusion concerning the exact meaning of words such as "group", "cooperative" and "association". However, "help us avoid confusing a few words" had somehow become "let's put Ivan in charge of naming our group". I'm starting to notice a trend in this country. Since subtleties and minutia are not commonly observed here, inviting someone to contribute their input to something you are working on is automatically interpreted as "we have no idea what we're doing, would you please take over." Ivan's very bad idea for what to name our lending institution was "Association of Small Producers of Animals for Human Consumption". That is not a name, that is a sentence-long description.

         Sometime after lunch, I went to Libertad, pulled out $45 at the bank and then went upstairs to the second floor of the bank to report that I had thrown my ATM card away by accident a month earlier and thus needed a replacement. From my second floor view of Libertad, I spotted a sign that said "Kung Fu classes". An idea then wriggled to life in my brain, like a half-desiccated tapeworm egg landing in a Tambo kid's stomach, and one eyebrow involuntarily slid up my forehead. When I was done reporting my lost bankcard, I headed over to the building I had seen with the Kung Fu sign. The sign was on the second floor of the building but none of the ground level doors seemed to lead to up there. As there were other more pressing things I needed to get done on this visit to town, I had to leave finding the secret entrance to Kung Fu classes for another day.

         I made a few phone calls, checked my email, then went back to Tambo to catch up with Ivan to go check in on and hopefully retrieve the 2 computers from Santa Elena. I did not find him at home, but was told he had gone to Santa Elena to the dentist or something and would check in on the computers for me. Someone somewhere must've been working on the main water conduit because running water to all of El Tambo, Prosperidad and Ancon (and for all I knew Santa Elena, Libertad and Salinas) had inexplicably been turned off. When Ivan arrived back a few hours later, he said the guy working on the computers had gone to Guayaquil, thus, no one was there to give us the low down on the computers. The water conduit was never reopened today and possibly hundreds of thousands of people living in a desert went to bed without water. I wrote for the rest of the night.

         As best as I can guess, this visit is the standard thing the brass does when passing by volunteer's sites both for PR reasons and for the purpose of deniability, meaning that in the event of any proverbial feces hitting the fan, Ruben can say that everything seemed shipshape when he was "out that way." Conversely, he looks really negligent if, say, a volunteer goes on a killing spree and he has to tell his superiors that he has no clue how that person was faring in their site or even what that site/area of the country was even like. In fact, you may recall that I refused to stay at the first house the Peace Corps tried to place me in for a number of reasons which I still stand behind. The day following that, when members of the Peace Corps brass came over to my new house (EcuaMom's) to help me "process the event" (meaning to make me swallow a version of the story that negates mine and shifts all blame over to me), they tried to tell me "everything seemed fine to me when I stopped by that house 2 days ago- they were painting your room."

         That's awesome! You say they were painting my room? Well I'm glad that settles the matter. If they were painting my room, my version of the story cant possibly be valid. In fact, just that you can tell me they were 'painting my room' is proof that you were totally on top of everything and are in fact NOT at all guilty of poorly screening the environments you place people in. [Note: you will go "further" in life if you do not dog your bosses. One's so-called superiors prefer that you kiss ass, rather than contest their flimsy smokescreens. Forget your merits, life is a popularity contest.]

        I arrived back in El Tambo at 5:30 pm. I told Julio about the impending Ruben visit an also about having seen a Shao-lin Kung Fu school in Libertad. I told him I might take classes there if I find they teach real Kung Fu and not Ecua Fu. Julio said that back when Bruce Lee movies were all the rage, everyone in the peninsula was taking various martial arts classes. Martial arts in Ecuador in the 60's? That would have been interesting to see. In the 1960's, Ecuador was still a fully undeveloped place. Tambo didn't exist, San Miguel didn't exist, most places in Ecuador didn't exist. Forget transportation and electricity. It took days to get from one city to another. But you could learn martial arts in the peninsula at a number of different schools? Interesting.

         After lunch, I went to Libertad to pick up my new ATM card, grocery shop, make a few phone calls, and then to Internet, where I ran into Jennifer Sterling's EcuaBoyfriend. Jennifer Sterling had gone back to the States in October and had taken said EcuaBoyfriend with her. She had told me back then that EcuaBoyfriend would only be staying in the States for a month and return then to Ecuador. I asked EcuaBoyfriend how his visit to the States had been. He said NYC is crazy and then described a place he had gone that had 4 giant faces carved in a mountain. I told him I knew the place and then asked if they had taken an airplane there from New York or had they driven. He said they had driven, to which I remarked that he had seen a lot of the country. I then plopped myself down at a computer and tapped away at the keyboard until he left. It wouldn't occur to me till later that I had just missed an opportunity to ask the only person I had ever known in Ecuador to have internet in their home where exactly he had picked up the equipment. Worse yet, we had been sitting in the same town where he had bought the equipment (EcuaBoyfriend lives in Manglaralto 1.5 hours away) and he could have easily walked me to the store and pointed out the right stuff. It didn't even occur to me that EcuaBoyfriend had been sitting in an internet place, thus he was probably no longer even using his internet box and could have sold me it for cheap. Blast!

         I called Julio from Libertad and told him I was on my way to Santa Elena, where he should meet me to help me get the 2 hard drives there back to Tambo. Julio and I arrived in Libertad at the same time and walked together to the computer store, which we found closed. We walked to a place that makes photocopies and copied my passport because my Peace Corps year long passport was about to expire, but the 3 month tourist visa I entered the country with at Christmas was still good. I photocopied the tourist visa so I could return my passport to the Peace Corps office for a Peace Corps visa renewal and not be left without legal identification.

         Then we sat in the central park to wait to see if the store with my computers was going to reopen. Julio was stoked to have an excuse to get out of Tambo, even though all we did with it was sit on a park bench and stare off into space. A giant iguana strolled out into in the grass in front of me and then climbed up a tree. I sat up straight on my bench. I had never seen iguanas in the park before, but Julio told me they predate my arrival to the area. He pointed to the tree branches above my head, where another giant iguana was chomping at a cluster of tree leaves. What a cool idea. If you've got a green park surrounded by broad active streets, just let a bunch of iguanas loose and they'll stay put at the park and get really big and cool. And they look really funny climbing stuff and eating leaves. AAAAAHAHAHAHAHA! Iguanas.

         The computer shop eventually reopened but the computers weren't ready. We returned to Tambo. I couldn't really get into anything because I had ants in my pants, due to the fact that I was catching a night bus to Quito at 8:30pm to return my passport and then go on to Baeza. I got a flower pot I had recently purchased ready to go to Ela's house by plopping a shopping bag inside of it and filling it with goat poop and sawdust. I was going to put a few of the plants I had brought from the US on Ela's porch because they are too delicate to go in Julio's yard due to the lack of shade and excess of canine stupidity. I took a shower and then returned to my room to fidget and be unproductive. Finally, I put myself in front of the television and made myself watch really bad EcuaProgramming 'til it was time to leave. At 8:30 I left Tambo for TransEsmereldas and at 9:30pm my TransEsmereldas embarked for the 12 hour ride to the Colon district of Quito.

         After eating, Ela and I caught a cab to the Peace Corps office. After some internetting, I turned in my passport to the office chick that deals with that stuff. She stopped me as I was rushing out her door and asked me if I wanted to talk to Ruben (top dog in Ecuador) about his upcoming visit to my site. I didn't have a clue why I should want to do that, but as I never know what's going on in the convoluted adult world, and more importantly, that she had just asked me if I wanted to talk to Ruben loud enough for Ruben to hear in his office, I shrugged after a long moment of vacillation and marched into Ruben's office trying to look like I hadn't missed a beat. Ruben, on the other hand, was engrossed in a sheet of paper and seemed very caught off guard that I had pointlessly marched into his office to insinuate that I had questions about his visit which I never actually put into words. I did, however, find out that now not just Ruben, but also 2nd highest in Ecuador Michael Kettering and another chick from the brass Marilyn Murphy would be coming along on the big visit. This was terrible news. After an awkward period of conversation that I would not like to repeat anytime soon, I marched back out of Ruben's office as it was all just in a day's work.

         Ela and I then walked to the mall so she could grocery shop. After doing the majority of her shopping, Ela decided she needed to hit a second grocery store where she could get cat food cheaper. I discovered that I had left my digital camera hooked up to the computer I was working on at the office, so I cabbed back to get it while Ela continued her shopping. From the office, I continued back to the Arupo. I made a call to Alex in Tambo and told him to root my pin number out of the trash. Then I took my pin number down to the bank and snatched out $140. I returned to the Arupo and attempted to find CNN on cable. Melissa Fleischman arrived just after me with 30 minute old EcuaBraces which she had had installed at a mere fraction of the cost of American braces. A few minutes later Ela rolled up in a cab and told me to get in. We cabbed to the bus station and grabbed a bus to Baeza.