Sew La Ti Embroidery:
Travel

We just returned from a somewhat frustrating two weeks in Quito. The reason for our trip was to finalize my paperwork so that I can become a legal permanent resident of Ecuador. Unfortunately we were only able to accomplish a fraction of what we set out to do. The bureaucracy here, as anywhere, is horrible and everything seems to involve long waits, complicated procedures and unhelpful employees. One amusing twist was that many of the government employees (and other official types) were openly rude to us. Lucho says it's because they want money and he refuses to pay them. But I guess it just comes with the territory. We got similar treatment at the U.S. Embassy.

The process of getting my resident visa involves many steps and none of them are quick or simple. Just for example one of the things we need to submit is an official marriage certificate. In order to get an official marriage certificate we had to legalize our marriage in Ecuador. To do this we needed a official copy of our marriage certificate (certified by the State of Indiana). The certificate had to be translated and notarized. The notary wouldn't notarize it unless the person who translated it was there to sign the translation in person. Neither Lucho nor I could sign the translation (even though we both speak English) so we had Lucho's sister, an English teacher, sign it for us. We went to three notaries before we found one who would do it for us (the first one refused to do it and the second one was so rude that Lucho wouldn't to go back). The guy who finally did it was nice enough, but we were stuck waiting in his little office for a long time while he chain-smoked his way through the process. Once we finally had all the paperwork together (which included copies of our passports and other documents) we drove down to the "Registro Civil" (which took about an hour in smoggy Quito traffic) to submit everything. After sitting through a traffic jam outside the building for about 20 minutes we were able to find a parking space. As we were walking to the building someone told us that the office was closed for the next hour or so, but we decided to check it out for ourselves. Fortunately they were still open and we were able to get inside. There were long lines of people everywhere. We thought we were lucky when we were directed to a desk with no one waiting near it. The guy understood what we wanted, took our paperwork and charged us $1. Then he told us to come back in the afternoon. So we went out to lunch at a nearby mall and came back. We went back to the guy and he rudely directed us to another desk with a crowd of people around it. They were vaguely organized in a line, but Lucho positioned himself on one side and I stayed on the other just to make sure. We waited our turn and eventually were able to talk to the guy. He made us sign a document and told us to come back the next day in the afternoon to pick up another piece of paper. The next day we came back, waited in another line, got our piece of paper and then were told that we had to go to another desk and register our marriage. We waited again and finally a woman asked us to come forward and sign our names in a book. We were being officially married in Ecuador! But before that we had to pay them $40. After that we thought we could get our official marriage certificate, but no luck. We had to wait a week and go to another office (this one an hour drive, in another direction, through smoggy Quito traffic). So a week later we drove down to the other office to pick up an official copy of the marriage certificate. Christina was sleeping so I waited in the car with her. Lucho disappeared for a while and then came back with a sad face. He told me that after waiting in one long line to request the copy and another long line to pay for it he was told to come back the next day to pick up the document. The next day, after another hour long drive through smoggy traffic, Lucho waited in another long line (I was shopping a local mall with Lucho's sisters) and finally picked up the official marriage certificate!

That was just one of the 6 or 7 documents that we need to apply for my resident visa. Not all of the documents are this difficult to obtain, but each one has its story. For example, I have to send my police record back to the U.S. be certified by the State of California before the Ecuadorian government will accept it.

Of course we could avoid most of this hassle if we paid a lawyer a lot of money. But, besides being cheap, we want to see how far we can get "on our own". We also have the help of one of Lucho's nephews and his girlfriend, who are both law students. When we went to the immigration office with them they recognized one of the guys who works there. It turns out that he is one of their friends from school. So that's a ray of hope. As I mentioned in a previous post - it's always much easier to get things done around here if you know someone on the "inside".

Some of you may remember one of my old posts from Sacramento about how we were rushing around, trying to get all of my paperwork together for a visa. Why are we doing this again, you may ask? Well, we are asking ourselves the same question. The visa I have now is a "tourist" visa, not an "immigrant" visa. It expires at the end of August. Why do I have a tourist visa? Because that's what the Ecuadorian consulate in San Francisco told me to get, even though we explained to them that I am married to an Ecuadorian and that I was planning to live in Ecuador; even though the Ecuadorian Embassy's website clearly explains that there is an immigrant visa that can be applied for from outside of Ecuador. We were told that I had to get the tourist visa first and then reapply for the immigrant visa once we were in Ecuador. Now that we are in Ecuador we are told that the fact that I have a tourist visa is a problem and that I will probably have to pay some kind of fine before I can switch to an immigrant visa. Ahhh ... "la experienca cuesta" (experience costs).

But, despite all of this we were able to enjoy ourselves in Quito. We spent a lot of time with family. We ate a lot of good food, we went shopping, and we got to see some of the sights.

The travelling isn't over yet. On Monday I'm going on a quick trip out to the countryside with some members of a local environmental group. This might turn into a job for me. I turns out that some of the small towns in Loja Province have some funding to do some water quality monitoring. It sounds like a very interesting project and I hope that I can help them out. Then on Friday we're planning to drive to Guayaquil - Ecuador's biggest city, located on the coast - to visit family. We'll be there for about a week. This time we won't be doing any work, we'll just be enjoying ourselves and relaxing.

The Superintendent for Cultural Heritage responsible for the sites at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia said in a statement that the closure "highlights the critical situation...at Mt.
Vesuvius archaeological sites".

The 36 staff members at Herculaneum are divided between five shifts daily but that is inadequate for a site that covers an area of 4.5 hectares and requires six or seven staff per shift to supervise and protect the ancient site, officials said.

A sudden illness threw the schedule off and forced Monday's closure to the public, they added.

Herculaneum - like the more famous Pompeii - was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Both are UNESCO World Heritage sites and concerns about their protection and preservation have been increasing amid reports in recent years about cave-ins, natural disasters, and outright thefts of priceless archaeological relics.

Source: ANSA [July 06, 2015]

Şanlıurfa Museum Director Müslüm Ercan said the Şanlıurfa Museum Complex, which opened last month, was home to many precious artifacts. “One of these artifacts is this mosaic,” he added.

He noted that the mythological poet Orpheus’ mosaic was believed to have been created in 194 A.D., and that it was being displayed in a special area in the museum.

In the mythological story, Orpheus goes to Hades to ask for his wife, Eurydice, after she received a fatal bite from a viper. Skilled at the lyre, Orpheus softened the heart of Hades, who gave him permission to take back Eurydice to the world above, provided that he not look back at her until both had exited the underworld.

Orpheus, however, looked back at his wife after he had exited the land of the dead, but before she had also crossed the threshold into the world above. As punishment, Eurydice was immediately taken back into the underworld, this time forever.

“A source of inspiration for many philosophical schools, Orpheus is a figure that decorates the ground of many rock tombs since it is related to the underworld and death. In our mosaics, Orpheus calms wild animals with his lyre and all of the animals gather to listen to his music,” Ercan said.

Found at Dallas Museum of Art

Ercan said they had made attempts to repatriate the mosaic when they discovered that it was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. “The Culture and Tourism Ministry sent a letter to our museum to examine the issue. Its style was exactly the same as the Şanlıurfa region’s typical Syriac mosaics. With the detailed work of the ministry, the chief public prosecutor’s office and the museum, the mosaic was returned from the U.S. in 2012.”

After returning from the U.S., the mosaic was put on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum for nearly a year before being returned to Şanlıurfa.

The Mosaic of Orpheus, dated to A.D. 194, is known as the earliest Edessa – the Hellenistic name for Şanlıurfa – mosaic that archaeologists have yet dated. The mosaic was taken abroad by smugglers after its discovery by J.B. Segal in 1950 in Şanlıurfa.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [June 10, 2015]

Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Near East, and one of the best preserved city-states in the world.

"In the face of current tragic upheavals in Iraq and Syria, every stone, arch and carved relief plays a greater historical and cultural role than it has in the past," said Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art. "Like the relief of Haliphat, each stone can remind a people of its past, and fashion identity both individually and collectively."

Once lush, wealthy and cosmopolitan, Palmyra ("the city of palms") was an oasis in the desert at the hub of trade between the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, ancient Iran and Southeast Asia. Two millennia ago, its inhabitants constructed monumental colonnades, temples, a theater and elaborate tomb complexes, a significant amount of which survives today.

Dating from 231 AD, the limestone funerary relief sculpture depicts an elegant, bejeweled figure with both Roman and Aramaic artistic influences, reinforcing Palmyra's status between the Eastern and Western worlds.

The accompanying photographs were taken 1867-1876 by prolific photographer Fèlix Bonfils and provide the most complete visual record of Palmyra from the 19th century.

The engraving images are from Robert Woods' 1753 The Ruins of Palmyra, a publication that inspired the popular neoclassical architecture style in Britain and North America. Its image of an "Eagle Decorating an Ancient Roman Temple" was the model for the image on the seal of the United States, and its depictions of Palmyra's coffered ceilings shaped the ceiling of the north entrance of the Freer Gallery of Art.

The display will be on view indefinitely.

Source: Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery [June 09, 2015]

In a cultural event held by Alexandrina Bibliotheca on Monday, Ibrahim said the project will be a culturally entertaining one that will completely change tourism in Egypt.

“After the Mediterranean Sea submerged ancient Alexandria as result of an earthquake, excavation works have helped to recover thousands of relics that date back to different historic eras like the pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Romanian and Islamic.”

“Doubles of these relics are still underwater, which led us to think about the first underwater museum in Egypt. According to our designs, it will be a glass one,” he added.

Among the obstacles that face the project, Ibrahim included “the wide areas of submerged antiquities underwater, the necessity of having a large number of archaeological divers to carry out periodic maintenance. Also, ships and sailing boats will be banned from navigating above the museum area.”

Mona Mokhtar, a tour guide who holds a master's degree on maritime museums said, “My master's thesis came down to the fact that 65 percent of tourists in the world look for entertainment, while 10 percent search for culture and 25 percent for other reasons, including treatment.”

“Constructing the first underwater museum in Egypt will be a mix between entertainment and cultural tourism, as it will offer diving and historic information on the story of Egypt's submerged antiquities and the eras they belong to,” Ibrahim said.

Source: Egypt Independent [May 26, 2015]

The pyramids at Meroe, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Sudan's capital, Khartoum, are rarely visited despite being a UNESCO World Heritage site like those in Egypt. Sanctions against the government of longtime President Omar al-Bashir over Sudan's long-running internal conflicts limit its access to foreign aid and donations, while also hampering tourism.

The site, known as the Island of Meroe because an ancient, long-dried river ran around it, once served as the principle residence of the rulers of the Kush kingdom, known as the Black Pharaohs. Their pyramids, ranging from 6 meters (20 feet) to 30 meters (100 feet) tall, were built between 720 and 300 B.C. The entrances usually face east to greet the rising sun.

The pyramids bear decorative elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece and Rome, according to UNESCO, making them priceless relics. However, overeager archaeologists in the 19th century tore off the golden tips of some pyramids and reduced some to rubble, said Abdel-Rahman Omar, the head of the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum.

On a recent day, a few tourists and white camels roamed the site, watched by a handful of security guards. Sudan's tourism industry has been devastated by economic sanctions imposed over the conflicts in Darfur and other regions. Al-Bashir's government, which came to power following a bloodless Islamist coup in 1989, has struggled to care for its antiquities.

Qatar has pledged $135 million to renovate and support Sudan's antiquities in the last few years. But Omar said Sudan still receives just 15,000 tourists per year.

Author: Maggie Michael | Source: The Associated Press [April 26, 2015]

The grotto at Vallon-Pont d'Arc in the Ardeche region of southern France, is a reproduction of the closely guarded Grotte Chauvet, which was granted World Heritage status last year.

The French president had already officially inaugurated the museum earlier this month and it officially opened to the public on Saturday.

The replica cave, which took a team of scientists two and a half years to create, will enable tourists from around the world to continue to see the frescos of painted animals without damaging the original cave.

Unique in the world for being such an identical and precise reproduction, the grotto has been built in the shape of a bear's paw, and stands just one kilometre away from the original site.

Inside the new grotto, which came a cost of €55 million visitors will be able to see more than a thousand drawings, including 425 animal figures of 14 different species, which have been meticulously reproduced.

The smell, humidity and even stalactites of the Grotte Chauvet have also been recreated to make the new site as authentic as can be.

The visitor walks down a long ramp to get into the building housing the replica, entering a darkened, cool and humid place that mirrors conditions in the grotto.

Then just like in the real cave, people stick to a walkway that takes them past replica bones and the skull of an Alpine ibex, a species of wild goat.

The drawings reveal themselves as the visitors walk further into the fake cave, a total of 1,000 paintings including 425 animals -- including bears, rhinos, big cats, owls.

These have been reproduced using charcoal, just like our Aurignacian ancestors did some 36,000 years ago.

Using ultra-modern techniques such as 3D imaging, engineers, sculptors, painters and visual artists faithfully reproduced the paintings.

A team of 10 people in Paris also worked for four years to reproduce stalactites, stalagmites and other formations present in the Grotte Chauvet itself.

Authorities hope that the giant replica will attract some 350,000 visitors a year.

The original Chauvet grotto was preserved for more than 20,000 years thanks to the fallen rocks, which blocked its entrance.

The grotto was discovered on the 18th December 1994 by amateur potholers: Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel et Christian Hillaire.