El Mitad del Mundo y La Gran Carrera

Wow, this has been a really busy weekend so far! On Friday we didn’t have class and took a field trip to Mitad del Mundo, the famous park on the equator. (It’s funny because they discovered with GPS that the monument is in the wrong spot, but all of the tourists still go there instead of the real spot.) We also went to the nearby museum that is actually on the equator and were able to stand on it and see a lot of cool tricks because of the Coralis Effect. Water always spins counterclockwise to the equator and we saw how it drained differently on both sides. In the middle it just fell straight through, and it’s crazy how much of a difference six feet on either side makes. Other tricks were drastically reduced strength and balance while standing on the equator, and overall it was really cool to stand in two hemispheres at once!

Afterward we went out to lunch, and in my quest to try everything I tried an Ecuadorian plate lunch along with elote mayonesa. This may sound super gross, but it is corn-on-the-cob smothered in mayonnaise and a cheese garnish (the corn, mayo, and cheese are all different than the kinds we have at home). It’s super popular in Mexico and Central America, and it actually wasn’t too bad. The worst part was just thinking about what I was eating. Later that night some of us decided to go to a movie and we ended up seeing El Origen (Inception). We were relieved when we found out the movie was only released in subtitles, because it was hard enough to understand in English. Movies down here are either completely dubbed or have Spanish subtitles. It’s funny that we were probably the only people in the theater who could understand the movie without reading.

Today, we had a “transportation seminar” that started at 9 am and we expected it to be a long classroom lecture. Instead, we were handed envelopes that said ‘La Gran Carrera’ (roughly, the Amazing Race) and after being paired up with our roommates we were unexpectedly thrown into Quito on a trail of clues. It was a lot of fun, and we spent over four hours racing through the city by bus, taxi, paddleboat, and on foot (sprinting is super hard at 8,000-10,000’ altitude). We dashed across streets, through parks, and through markets and a mall, and I can’t imagine how ridiculous we looked. In the end our group came in third because the first two groups found a taxi before we did.

Tonight a few of us are going to a concert downtown. I don’t know any of the artists, but it sounds like a lot of fun. One of the guys in our group has heard of Alex Campos, a really famous Christian artist in Central and South America. There are a bunch of other famous bands playing as well and it’s supposedly a five-hour concert. Hasta Luego!