No Pasa Nada...

While I havent practiced my Spanish nearly as much as I was expecting to (people at school see Im a gringa and automatically talk to me in English since theyre practically all bilingual... its a little dissapointing), I have coined a few new phrases. My favorite of which is "No pasa nada." Its a great phrase that can be used in practically any situation. Although it directly translates in to "Nothing happens" it really means more of "dont worry about it" and is kind of a general way of life around here. If you miss the bus... "No pasa nada" When youre 10 Ecuadorian minutes late to class (which is really more like 30 American minutes) well... you just shrug because "No pasa nada." When the cab driver, or cell phone vendor, or waiter charges you an extra $10 because hes a jerk and can tell youre not Ecuadorian... well still "No pasa nada."
This is the same phrase that I heard all over the streets today after I witnessed my FIRST ECUADORIAN STREET PROTEST!! It lasted all of about 20 minutes but was very exciting!
But I have to rewind and start with the begining. This afternoon I took my first trip to la bahía, which is the black market in downtown Guayaquil. Its called the black market because there are no taxes applied to any purchases (not to mention a lot of the goods are fake or stolen). On top of a lot of the goods being of questionable origin,it is also prety common to get robbed while youre shopping. Since I knew this before going I didnt bring my camera with me so I dont have any actual real pictures to show you guys... but I did find this one on google images, and its pretty accurate.

This is pretty much what it looks like but times it by at least 100. They sell everything from clothes, to pirated movies, to cell phones, bikes, soccer cletes, you name it and its there. They even fit and make lenses for your glasses if you come at the right time of the day.

Today I was a big fan of the movies! They have movies in every language!! I bought 4 movies in spanish and english, all for $1 each!  The one in the picture above is a collection of Disney Princess movies in Spanish and I also got another collection that included Madagascar and another movie called Penguins that I have never seen but looked perfect for me!!! And then ofcourse I had to get the last Harry Potter!

 I also got a brand new "Adidas" book bag to carry my school books and my gym stuff to class in the morning. All the rich Ecuadorians in my class kept laughing at me because I was carrying all my gym stuff in a plastic bag... jerks...
But anyway, the black market was cool and I escaped without getting robbed, although one of the guys with us found it highly enjoyable to walk around behind me and grab my bag every five minutes to make me think someone was stealing it... I was not amused.
So back to my story about the protest... Another one of the main goals of the Correa government is to stop corruption. One of the main places where Ecuadorian corruption can be seen is in markets such as this. Like I said before, all exchanges are made in cash... cash is more common in Ecuador in general, but its also a way for businesses to get around paying taxes. When they use cash they dont give receipts, which leaves them with no record of any transaction being made... Well ofcourse the government doesnt appreciate the blackmarket robbing them and they have recently started a new wave of attempts to shut down any store that is not paying taxes. While we were in the black market today police men began to randomly walk up to stores and demand that the owners present them with receipts, if they couldnt then all goods were to be confiscated. Well, the stands close to each other form what they refer to as a "circle" each circle is kind of its own little neighborhood inside of the black market and they are very loyal to the other stands inside their circle. So as stands began to be raided by officials the stands around them begin to protest (and miraculously half of them closed down within five minutes, hiding all of their merchandise so that they couldnt be questioned or confiscated). It ended with half of the stand owners in the streets standing on cars and yelling and knocking over trashcans followed by tons of police sirens and huge crowds. The whole things only lasted about 20 minutes before people lost interest or the police brought them under control but it was rather interesting.
I learned how fast things move here today.. by the time we were walking back to our car a half hour later, amid the naueseating aroma of tipped over trash cans, the only thing people were saying on the streets when questioned about the police or the protest was "No pasa nada..."