Location: Quito, Ecuador
Inadvertent Racism
I met the ragtag group of travelers today of 18-35 year olds. As I scanned the room quickly, I was relieved that the trip won’t be about trying to hook up and maybe I can enjoy nature for a while.
We played a game on the bus called BFF where you have to sit next to someone and talk to them for 10 minutes and then get up on the mic and tell everyone what you learned about your friend.
Just my luck, I was seated next to the black Canadian I went to dinner with the night before. I had already learned the night before how uninteresting he was, and now I was to learn that on top of all his great qualities he had terrible body odor. For ten minutes we ignored each other since it’s very hard to talk while you are holding your breath. He was the only black person in the group, so I am sure in his mind he assumed I don’t like black people, which is good because I would rather be thought of as racist then have to explain to him that he he smells like hes decomposing.
Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
Most times when you learn stuff you become smarter, but not after I found out that it was called Equador because it was at the equator—that’s one of those facts that are so blatantly obvious that it made me feel dumber.
We went around the area and were shown many science experiments that were based on the equator line. The polar forces are opposite each other, so there was a red line that separates the entire planet in two. When you stand on one side, the water drains clockwise, and one foot north and the water drains straight.
Other interesting experiments involved closing your fingers in a loop and the strongest man can either maintain the loop or hold your hands together and prevent you from pushing up, yet if you move two feet to the right, you can easily break his grip because the magnetic force of the equator. Another experiment we did involved trying to walk a straight line at the center of the earth, but because of the opposite magnetic fields pulling you in opposite directions, you end up staggering to the right and left like a drunk.
Shrinking Heads
We were shown many interesting things about the culture and the ancient people. They used to shrink heads of their enemies and we saw actual human skeleton heads the size of my fist. I guess those people were on their deathbed and as their last will and testament, most likely the man looked at his wife and begged for “a little head”. Wives haven’t changed in thousands of years.
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