I would like to report a very successful hoedown.  Due to timing (the hoedown was planned right before I left on a trip to a far away land so I could get out of cleaning up) and geography (the far away land hinders a speedy, abridged compilation of the available digital evidence i.e. the photos and video), there may be some lag in the creation of the "What is a Hoedown?" documentary.  Nonetheless, at some point in the future you should be contacted regarding this matter.

Also, a humungous THANKS to Mom, Dad and all of our wonderful family, neighbors, friends, friends of friends and completely unfamiliar faces who made it a hoedown! of a time.

I have made a short list to help you understand how I measure my progress in spoken language acquisition.  The list is ordered from easy to difficult.

• The American tourist mistaken for an Ecuadorian
• That local who realizes youre from the States and starts talking to you in horrible broken English.
• A one on one conversation (mostly silly questions with textbook answers)
• Talking to a group of two (in a triangle formation, nothing bus-like)
• A phone conversation with a friend from a non-echoey room
• The ability to sing along with (rehearsed) popular songs
• Talking to a group of four (with only moderate jokes being told)
• A phone conversation with an unexpected telemarketer
• Lunch with a group of four at a busy restaurant with a horribly loud television in the background
• Talking to a group of six (none of them using "hip" lingo)
• A multi-person teleconference from a payphone in a busy street
• Talking to a group of greater than 10 (maybe in a place with padded walls)
• The ability to sing along with unrehearsed (but catchy) communist tunes
• Talking to a group of six who have been drinking Scotch Whiskey for the last 6 hours
• The speeding cabbie who is driving in two lanes with all four windows down, the dashboard rattling like gunfire and three springs poking you from the seat.
• An introduction that includes my name (which is pronounced something like "baiyn" in Spanish).

I guess I'm somewhere in between the unexpected telemarketer and the catchy communist tunes.  I will be a true Spanish speaker if I can ever get that last one right!

Ecuador doesnt allow part time work.  And then there are a bunch of people that try to have a sensible discussion about why there are low-income countries that aren't developing. 

In 2000, Ecuador dollarized their economy.  This means that all the people turned in the old currency to the central bank and received US dollars instead. The value of the last currency, the sucre, was reminiscent of a kangaroo fleeing unpredictable.  This has had a very helpful stabilizing effect in the economy.

The central bank was not in favor of dollarization.  Most institutions don't like it when you tell them they are useless.  They even released a study that claimed the US dollar wasnѕt suitable for the Ecuadorian climate.  This reason wasn't good enough, so-

The biggest function of the central bank now is its Cultural Center.  I don't know how to explain this one.  One would think the majority of necessary functions of a central bank might decrease in the absence of a local currency.  This is not the case.

The US dollars used here look much more worn than those in the US.  This may be due to the fact that the central bank is the only body that is allowed to collect them and trade them for new ones at the US federal reserve.  And perhaps they are busy with their Cultural Center activities.

Tango is not supposed to be danced in a straight line.  Nor in a perfect, uni-directional circle.  To do so would be considered funny.

The 3am speedsters, the motorcycles, the bottle guy (botellas, not albondigas), the neighbors doorbell, the incessant honks at the neighboring intersection...; they're all right in my living room.  I can't even be sure they are outside until I get up and check to see the front door isnt wide open.

I have received several semi-tours of the city.  Guayaquil is a port city with several salt-water estuaries that meander their way through the city and it's outskirts.  The main waterfront is known as the Malecon 2000 and stretches from the Hot Wok restaurant franchises of my co-worker until Las Penas, a wonderfully attractive hill with four hundred and some steps (yeah, intelligently, theyre numbered but of course I forgot to pay attention in the final moments of the ascent) which culminate in leading you to a petite church and a pirate ship.

On the outskirts of the city there are a series of private housing projects, very American in nature if you ask me (large tracks of land and similar houses, great for bringing down costs with economies of scale I suppose), and all walled in with their own social sundries.  The houses here, unsurprisingly (due to the heat), yet surprising to me (due to my shallow ethnocentric architectural expectations), have no insulation.  They are built with brickՑbut not red brick, those grey double-holed bricksand this brick is covered with something that looks more aesthetic, such as inners and outers of walls.

Of course, the house where I live also has this fascinatingly empty structure.  You cannot knock on the wall and determine anything about studs; the entire wall is simply hard.  The most cultural sounds that make their way to my living room must be the intersection honking.  That is, here in Guayaquil, as you near an intersection, you honk.  If you are going faster, you honk more times.  Itѕs probably proportional but I havent done any calculations.  It is a form of communication.  The honk supposedly says, "Watch out!  Coming through."  Though, falling under the similar phenomenon of the grandfather clock in the living room, after enough honks, they somehow gain the special power of invisibility and near uselessness, save for their perpetual barrage of the unsuspecting traveler.

My keychain now reads "Christo Vive!," a careless pastel sunset and the silhouette of a couple of sailboats and seabirds seasoning the cutout of the letters.  It was more by a matter of chance that these keys come upon me, the visiting professor who inhabited this flat before me being called home, and the convenient month window of my stay slipping nicely in before the visiting professor of the year to come arrives.

Along with the artistries of a prehistoric skateboard and a multiple broad-ended canoes, I enjoy a spacious two-bedroom, two-bath, two-balcony house with a study and spacious, interconnected kitchen, dining room and living room.

All within a five-minute drive from the University, a five-minute walk from a very nice bakery, and a five-minute strut from what is called the 'zona viva' which is conveniently placed just out of ears distance from my ajar windows.

I was even provided a mobile phone and four large vases of colorful flowers upon arrival and I probably began to take this all for granted as when I returned home this past evening to find I had been something akin to robbed.  The flowers I had signed off the day before, though the living room table, a chocolate bar and my laundry basket have now also vanished.

I wont miss the living room table, as the kitchen table along with its behemoth of a bench has been my social home, although the chocolate bar (macadamia nut) and the laundry basket will be missed.

All of the information that can be derived from my forensic apartment-dweller wisdom is that the phantom of the apartment is smart (there were three other chocolate flavors to choose from and they chose macadamia) and kind hearted (having removed my dirty clothes from the laundry basket before making off with it) aside from their kleptomania.

Possible Moral: there are costs to complementary rent; stationary furnishings and chocolate are commensurate with the proper monthly dues.

Are there any flowers that we can tie to trees in California?  At the university where I spend my time here in Guatemala, there are orchids tied to half of the trees.  Unfortunately, it is not the season to see them in bloom but the potential of their quantity and the way they are tied to the trees with twine is very attractive in itself.

Good day and happy New Year!  I hope for you, at least; I missed it this year.

In fact, my whole trip went well besides that little glitch, of which I have now become quite proud.  Upon leaving California the Tuesday after Christmas, the rain stopped.  I had arranged Jack (my car, in the spirit of Kerouac) into the ultimate travel machine.  I laid the back seats flat dividing the hatchback into two parts: 1) a row of boxes, topped with the essentials and 2) two pieces of egg-crate style foam bedding decorated just as you would a bed, in a little less space. Conveniently, my passenger seat also folds flat, so I could comfortably pull into any rest-area type space and snuggle under the warmest of comforters for a good night (or mid-day) sleep.

I enjoyed the sunrises of Flagstaff, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico and the grasslands of western Oklahoma.  On the flipside I enjoyed the sunsets of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee.  Georgia OKeeffe's New Mexico is the autumn of landscapes.  While perhaps I like the grasslands for the same reason that Andy Warhol likes mechanized art: its very repetitive, but there are so many imperfections.  In Nashville, I caught the Grand Ol' Opry, the staple of live radio shows for your bluegrass and country diet. And, having had such a pleasant evening, I decided to wrap up my New Years celebration right there at 9:00pm.  I hit the road.  As I had been stopping at internet cafes and surfing Craigslist, scheduling house visits for potential places to rent upon my arrival in Virginia on New Years day, I still had a long road ahead of me.

Around 11:45pm is when it hit me.  I believe its called teleportation.  I was trying to decide on the best way to start violently honking my horn and flashing my headlights at the nearest car on the desolate highway without provoking that person into a road-rage-like response (to share the celebration of the New Year, of course).  But then I saw a sign.  Not just any sign, but a street sign.  It read: Crossing into the Eastern Standard Time Zone.  Poof. 12:45am.

By any means I arrived safely in Virginia.  Within a half-hour I had a room and after a few trips to IKEA (I finally understand), I am happily situated in Arlington.  Take a look. I live right near that little red arrow.  I work down at the green one.

And that gets you close to up to date.  I haven't told you about how much I enjoy the details of work, or why.  Nor have I told you much about the place I live and my mysterious and pleasant roommates.  Those will be stories for another time.

Throw this one in the blueprints.  I am definitely folding my shirts this way from this day forward.  (Slow-mo recommended.)

Mix together the following ingredients and stir until well-blended.

1.5 cups Seedless Raisins 4 medium-sized Tart Apples (Cut into small pieces and squeeze in lemon juice so they do not turn brown) 10-15 dried Apricots (Cut into Small peices) Grated rind of 1 large Orange Juice of one Orange .5 cup of Sparkling Apple Cider (or other fruit juice) Handful of broken Walnuts (optional) .75 - 1 cup Brown Sugar (a mix of brown and white sugar is also good)

In a large frying pan, cover these ingredients and simmer until the apples are very soft (add more cider to keep them from scorching). (You can also add in 2-3 tablespoons of Brandy while these wonderful flavors are simmering together.)

I mixed these in with the above ingredients (minus the crackers and tapioca, which I did not include).  Mom might have suggested these ingredients get mixed in after the simmering (I couldn’t tell from the handwriting).

.5 tsp Cinnamon .5 tsp Cloves 1+ tsp fresh grated Nutmeg 2-3 tlbs finely crushed soda cracker (or cracker meal and 2-3 tlbs tapiocca)

Preheat oven to 450 Make a nice Pie Crust

Bake for 30 minutes or so.

Mmmmmm!

Deep in the heart of Virginia, six friends find themselves in a land unfamiliar and rare... Their task: 1) Shoot a bunch of video, 2) Share that video amongst everyone, and 3) Let each person tell the story as it was. Here's my take on the fiction-enhanced memories.

UPDATE: Another fine entry: Dinos Alive!

If you’re looking for an activity to soften a long drive, I recommend an extravagant Mix CD Challenge!  Our trip was from Arlington, Virginia to Durham, North Carolina.  The challenge was simple: invent two album names and assign them to other people on the trip.  Each person takes the album names they are given, contemplates for a while, stirs up a vision, and creates the perfect mix for such an album name.  The results can be stunning and add a whole new dimension to the music you once thought you knew.  While I can’t share our concoctions so easily, the album names should reflect how we made four hours speed by in a flash:

• Euclid’s Last Stand
• Genghis Kahn and the Band Wagon
• Goodnight Spoon
• Gorehorn, the Adventure Pony
• How To Dismantle a ‘71 Ford Pinto’
• Jeanne Kirkpatrick Overdrive
• Kind of Periwinkle
• The Longings of Seedless Watermelons

Food is meant to be shared and, relentlessly, it is compared. What started out as a shared Google Doc between some friends and family has now become a competitive cooking blog worth flippin' out about. Epicurious George reporting from Food for Ninjas.