Miscellaneous Week

I’ve gotten in the habit of only blogging about the weekends because it feels like there’s not a whole lot of stuff happening during the week. It’s usually just the same old routine, but there’s usually cool and interesting stuff happening. I’ll try to put something together for this week.

One interesting experience that happened this week was getting a haircut on Tuesday. My hair has been getting longer so I decided to go for it in the spur of the moment while we were down in Carcelén. I was expecting the worst to happen, but the haircut actually turned out well. I was proud of myself for explaining what I wanted in Spanish, and as my parents know, this is something I don’t like doing in English. And the best part: it only cost $4! The haircut included a trim with a straightedge razor, which I admit was slightly nerve-racking.

My hairstylist, Fernando, was an interesting dude though. He lived in Spain for a while and got his hair license while he was visiting England. (He said he couldn’t speak English very well, and the only English word he used was an expletive when he nicked me with the straightedge.) He was really nice and we talked a lot, but I could tell he was gay with his hair and earring (a sign in Ecuador). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with this, but I had to think about the cultural implications afterward. I asked Josué what it meant when he conversed with me in the second person, and apparently this showed that he felt really comfortable around me. I then asked what it meant when I referred back with the same pronoun, and found out this was a way of showing that I felt really close to him as well. Great. The tú/usted pronoun difference (two different ways of saying "you") in Spanish is really important in distinguishing close relationships with professional interactions and discernment can help keep space between yourself and another person. I totally knew this beforehand but wasn’t thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Fernando where I lived.

Another interesting event was a concert last night (Wednesday). It was a strings ensemble of baroque music that played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons among other pieces. Jenna (a NILI student) was offered a bunch of free tickets from the school she helps at so a large group of us decided to go. It was a really good event and I love capitalizing on whatever free opportunities come about. The music group was a travelling ensemble from Korea and we found it weird that they spoke to the crowd in English. I tried translating for Gustavo, but even us gringos had trouble understanding the non-native speech. Afterward a few of us were dying of hunger so we made a late-night food run downtown.

One activity we tend to do a lot is going to the nearby mall. It’s not too far away and we usually split a taxi since they are cheap in Quito. Today (Thursday) we decided to go shopping and I ended up buying a shirt. I love how South American sizes are more slender, and I found a t-shirt kiosk that only had size differences with the height. Score! The shirts were all $16, but some of the styles were half off. I paid with a $10 and ended up getting change back in nickels. We also stopped at Sweet & Coffee, a popular coffee shop that has good drinks and desserts. They have really good prices and their large frappachinos are only $2! I dumped off my nickels on the cashier and eagerly awaited my drink. However, it was strange today because Josué ordered a type of cappuccino and they gave my drink to him with his order. I ordered a new flavor (cacao) but it didn’t look the same and we thought it was meant to be mixed with his drink. We soon found out we were wrong and ended up sharing the drink (a dizzying concoction of cacao frappachino with a double cappuccino shot and two packets of cane sugar). Needless to say, I will probably be up late tonight.

This weekend I am really excited because the NILI guys (Josué, Thad, and me) are heading back to Mindo. It’s a touristy town in the cloud forest about 2 hours away with a lot of fun activities like hiking, biking, rafting, and zip lining. This is where we went to the butterfly exhibit and chocolate factory at the beginning of the trip and we’ve wanted to head back. We are actually staying at the hostel that is part of the chocolate factory so that will be awesome. It will be really good to get out of Quito now that the political situation is pretty much all straightened out.

Another thing that will be amazing: a few of us are going to a South American Cup game on Tuesday! The Copa Sudamerica is an annual soccer tournament for pro teams, and last year LDU Quito won it all. However, this year they lost their last game to San Felipe, the Chilean team that they are playing again on Tuesday. It was an interesting game (I reported on it for a news article in class), and while San Felipe is a younger team, they fought a lot harder. I imagine the motivation had a lot to do with the rescue of the Chilean miners on the same day. But Tuesday’s rematch will be an intense game, and Yoan warned me not to go unless I plan on jumping and screaming the whole time. Heck yes.

Anyway, our classes have been going great and we just started a new block this week. We are in the classroom three hours a day, but the good thing is each class only lasts for three weeks. The first two class blocks were Advanced Grammar I & II and now we are in Advanced Conversation. It is a good class so far and we talk about a lot about cultural topics and current events. I am learning that I need to become less of a procrastinator, as the workload gets bigger because it is harder to put off work that has to be done in Spanish. I especially realized this with a 4-5 page paper that I didn’t do until the day of on Tuesday. I really need to work on procrastination and I should probably start by getting to my homework tonight. Anyway, hasta luego!

Ecuadorian Homestay

My Ecuafamilia.

Things have gotten a lot better politically since I wrote last. I don’t know everything that’s happened, but the streets are back to normal and we’ve been able to leave campus. Also last week, president Correa and the Ecuadorian parliament modified the new law so the government could give the police and armed forces a salary increase. I still don't completely understand last week’s situation though.

Anyway, this weekend for a cultural activity we moved in with an Ecuadorian family to observe what a home setting is like. Friday night I met my Ecuadorian parents and carpooled to their house with Amy and Josué (two other NILIs) who were living with families close by. Nine of us shared a small four-door sedan, and while I was lucky enough to sit in the front, my only available space was occupied by a 5-year-old who sat on my lap. After we arrived I found out that I had three siblings: Eduardo, Luis, and Christina who were 26, 22, and 18 years old. It’s interesting in Latin cultural how close families are and it’s the norm for children to continue living with their parents, even after they are finished with school and working. The house was a small concrete structure, but it was comfortably made into a two-story home. I realized that they lived in the same area as Gustavo’s church, which is a rough part of town, and I heard some terrifying stories about this from Miguel, my Ecuadorian dad.

Instead of doors in the house there were hanging rugs, but this didn’t bother me at all. Also, I was warned to watch my head every time I went up the stairs, because there was barely any clearance. Oh yeah, another thing I was warned about was the size of the shower. The ceiling was my height and the spigot was about shoulder level. But that wasn’t the worst part. There are many ways to heat water and one of them happens to be with electricity, complete with wires and electrical circuits in the shower. With my height I could smell the electric current and hear buzzing, and without thinking I touched the spigot and was shocked. This combination made me really nervous, so I squatted the whole time to stay away from the electricity.

Saturday morning we went to a downtown market, which is a weekly family tradition. This was similar to the market we went to for our field trip and there was just about every kind of natural food imaginable. I asked a lot of questions about unfamiliar foods and saw a lot of interesting stuff. The meat section was filled with organs, heads, tongues, and hooves, but it’s cool how every part of the animal gets used up. It was also interesting to see my family purchase chicken. The poultry were all completely intact for the vendor to gut after each purchase, and the head, feet, and organs are all brought home as part of the deal. The head and feet are especially popular in chicken soup here.

For lunch we went over to the seafood section and bought a bunch of cangrejo, a type of small tropical crab. Crabs down here are cooked in a soup with vegetables, peanut butter, and verdes green bananas. (There are at least six different types of banana here). There were no tools to remove the meat so we used our teeth along with a big mallet on the table for the claws. It was weird to see the crabs served floating in a bowl of the brown liquid, but they were really tasty. Similarly my family thought it was weird that we just cook crab in salt water.

On Sunday mornings Miguel and a few others from his church have a really cool routine: they climb the nearby mountain to spend some quiet time and pray. I decided to tag along and it turned out to be a really neat experience. We left the house at four in the morning and after meeting up with others, we hiked for over an hour until we reached the top. We had an amazing view of the city and could see a lot of other mountains as well. From where I sat I was able to watch the sunrise next to Cayambe, Ecuador’s third-highest peak. (I didn’t have my altimeter with me, but I guessed our elevation to be between 10-11,000’.) On the way down, Miguel showed me a bunch of medicinal plants that are used to help the stomach, lungs, kidneys, liver, and a lot of ailments.


Left: Approaching the Summit. Right: View of Quito and Cotopaxi

Overall, I learned a lot about the culture: things such as you don’t take your shoes off or dress casually in an Ecuadorian home. Another thing that stood out: I was really hungry one night and I ate my dinner fast. I then apologized and said that I’m used to eating fast at home, but Miguel’s response was profound: “I used to eat fast too, until I realized how long it took for my wife to make the food.” That comment has stuck with me, and all together this weekend was really nice. I definitely want to see their family again before I leave the country.

Sorry for going so long in between blogs. This week has been somewhat uneventful following the attempted political coup. But things are starting to pick up again, which is nice. I’m excited to get back to more adventures over the weekends. Anyway, hasta luego!

Political Situation

Police riots, Military intervention (Reuters Images)

Saturday Update: Due to the political sensitivity of the situation, I removed my opinion from the description below. I want to play it safe as a blogger and I even double checked all the information with AP and Reuters news sources. (But feel free to contact me privately if you want to know more.) Overall things are starting to get better for the country, but here is a brief synopsis of what happened on Thursday.

Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, signed a new law that cut police benefits and it angered them. When he was speaking at the police barracks in Quito yesterday, he was roughed up and tear gassed and sent to the hospital. The police officers across the country then went on strike and rioted, shutting down the airports and blocking highways by burning garbage and tires in the streets. With no protection, there was looting and violence in the city and we were confined to campus for our safety. Anyway, with Correa at a hospital downtown, the police took over the building and held him captive for 12 hours. The military assembled to rescue the president later and it involved a violent street battle with the police. We all watched the dramatic rescue on live television, and the guy filming it was hiding on the streets with a handheld camera. Finally, a speeding SUV emerged from the building and brought the president to a town square full of supporters where he made a speech. Now Correa is a hero, the country is under martial law, and it is uncertain what will happen with the police. Anyway, here is a good article from the Associated Press. (Thank you Matt Drudge.)


Rescuing the president, Police barricade, Ecuadorian support (AP Images)

On the lighter side of things, I said I would blog about some more happenings, so here are a few more events that took place this last week:

Fruit Market: Our field trip this week was to a big fruit market where we studied certain fruits. Mine were the tuna (cactus pear) and the carambola (starfruit). It was really interesting to see so many different fruits and vegetables in one place, and I realized that there are so many tropical fruits that I’d never even heard of before. (Some are incredibly delicious while others have the foulest smell you can imagine.) I also found a new favorite word: la yapa, Quechua slang for a free gift of food. Serrano Spanish (spoken by people in the Andes) uses a lot of indigenous slang and the locals are surprised when they hear us gringos using it. Anyway, I found that when I made a purchase and asked for a yapa the vendors would laugh and hand me some extra fruit. Score!

I was even able to try a really spicy ají (pepper) that the vendors warned us about. They were surprised when I asked to sample it, but their reactions were worth it. I even bought a few to take back because few of us want to make some good hot sauce. Ecuadorian food tends to be bland, and apparently Peru is the country with the spicy food. It’s been interesting to learn the differences in South American food culture. For example, the Colombian students today went to a meat market and bought cow’s lungs, which are a delicacy for them back home. Earlier they were draining them on the clothing line (a funny site to see next to the wet clothes) and later they had a little gathering with fried lungs and intestines (delicious) along with plenty of salsa music.

The Basilica: Last week our field trip was to the Quito Basilica, which is the largest Gothic church in both North and South America. We were surprised when the caretaker invited our group down to the catacombs, and that was the first time our program has gone down there. Below the ground there were thousands of tombs in the walls and many of them were lavishly decorated. No creepy bones though. We were also allowed to go down to the tomb of Ecuador’s political leaders, which is extremely rare for tourists to visit. Afterward, we climbed all the way to the top of the towers with small stairways and sketchy ladders, and that was really cool. On the high parts, we had fun taking pictures of ourselves hanging off the side. Here are some pictures.




Also, here's an update on the dump: the kids have been a lot better. Coming back the second week I thought they weren’t going to like us, but they all ran up and gave us hugs. This is our volunteer service project that we are going to do every Tuesday. The last two weeks have been more structured and we have been organizing activities instead of just being thrown into chaos. It is a lot of fun, but it continues to be a teaching challenge.

Finally, a few of us decided to do a 10k race later this month. It’s part of the We Run Nike series that will take place in 16 cities around the world and have 142,000 runners. It’s in downtown Quito and it will be pretty sweet to run a 10k at almost 10k elevation. I’ve been starting to run more here (which has proved to be a challenge at high altitude), but it at least gives me something to do on campus. I hope the political situation gets better because I don’t want to be stuck here for too long. It’s one thing to not have class, but it’s another to not be able to travel. Anyway, hasta luego!

Weekend in Otavalo

Left: Lake Cuicocha. Right: Horseback riding through the country.

This weekend we had a group trip to Otavalo, the largest outdoor market in Ecuador and one of the oldest and most famous in South America. Most of our weekends here are free, but we have some scheduled trips to see things that we shouldn’t miss. And I am so glad we didn’t miss out on this area.

Friday afternoon we got out of class early and made the trip north, with a few stops along the way. The drive through the country was beautiful and the bathroom we stopped at even had stalls built for viewing the scenery. First we went to Lake Cuicocha, a volcano crater lake at 10,000’ elevation. There we had a motorboat tour and the guys went swimming. It wasn’t super cold (for the gringos at least) and it was really refreshing. Afterward we explored Cotacachi, the nearby town that specializes in leather goods. We walked through the stores on the main road and saw a crazy amount of leather merchandise (no underwear though, I asked). They even had cow’s feet that were hollowed out and molded into water bottles. After leather town we went to the wood town in nearby Ibarra. Later that evening we made it to the hostel, and the guys’ room turned out to be the love nest: all pinked out with bright pink walls and bedding.

With the suggestion of the hostel manager, a few of us woke up at 5:30 on Saturday and hit the animal market on the other side of town. We were bracing ourselves for a lot of killing and slaughtering, but there wasn’t any to be seen. Instead we saw lots of animals being paraded around a large field for all the locals to see. Most were under control with the exception of the occasional pig chased around by its frustrated owners. After this market, we wandered through the food market and clothing market, and eventually made it to the main market, which dates back to Spanish colonization in the 1600s. Here the indigenous were taught to make textiles for export to Europe, and the tradition has continued ever since.

This is where we learned to bargain, which I found to be really fun. As another hostel resident put it, bargaining is a competition between the local trying to rip you off and you trying to get a good deal. My first purchase was a $25 leather hat (Indiana Jones style) that I whittled down to $11. I also bought a lot of gifts and a couple of paintings for $13 and $19 (originally $17 and $25). The local artwork was amazing and I loved scoring on the deals. One thing we realized was that anytime we commented about something in Spanish, the vendors targeted us. We switched to English and everything became so much easier. We also realized that it was bad to ask for a price if we weren’t interested in something because that gave the vendors the right to pester us about it. I frequently had to try on sweaters just to prove to the vendors that they didn’t fit me.

Afterward we had breakfast at the hostel and decided to go horseback riding. The night before we saw a sign that advertised cheap tours through the area: $25 for a 3-4 hour tour and $35 for the full day. The hostel manager told us that they needed two hours to prepare the horses so we decided to hit the streets again and shop some more. For lunch we went to a famous pie shop and had deli sandwiches that were literally the size of our heads for less than three bucks. Ironically two of the people ordered a hot dog because they weren’t too hungry, but they ended up getting several wieners sandwiched between enormous pieces of bread. The pie afterward was incredible and I had a huge piece of papaya pie for just over a dollar.


Left: My horse, Negro. Middle: Josué and Thad. Right: Our guide.

The horseback tour was an awesome experience, and it was good to get out of the city. We went up through the mountains where we visited a small park on a hill and a waterfall. My horse, Negro, was good to me for the most part and never complained. But at one point we were going down a steep hill and he ran up to another horse and testosterone started to flare. Luckily I didn’t get thrown off, but I got pulled through a nice sticker bush. I had never ridden a horse before and after a rough four-hour introduction to saddle life, I was sore for the next few days.

Sunday morning was mostly spent traveling, but we went to an indigenous church before we left the area. That was an interesting experience, because the service was mainly in Quechua, a common indigenous language of Ecuador and Peru. The other half was in Spanish, but it was still the most lost I’ve ever been in a church service. It was really cool to see their style of worship and speaking though, and it really reminded me of Native American culture back in the states. Afterward the ladies invited us next door and gave us all homemade sweaters.

Well that’s the gist of the weekend, but I’ll add another blog post in the next few days to fill up some holes. I also started a new Facebook album too. Hasta luego!

Hiking in the Andes

Left: On the rim of Pasochoa's crater. Right: The descent.

We’ve been in the city a lot and Thad (another NILI) and I have yearned to see more of the outdoors. This was our first free weekend so yesterday we decided to start by hiking Volcán Pasochoa (13,778 ft). We didn’t realize how long it would actually take to get to get there, and we left later in the morning after his roommate, Victor decided to come. Even though the mountain is only 20 miles south of Quito, it still took us three buses and a 4x4, about three hours each way. This is because we live in the north part of the oblong city. The park entrance fee was $2 for locals and $10 for foreigners, and this seemed ridiculous! Thad and I pulled out our censos (Ecuadorian ID Cards) and told the lady that we were living in Quito, and luckily she only charged us the local price. Score!

Summit Post (the mountaineering website) lists Pasochoa as a five-hour hike with 2,700’ elevation gain, but the bus dropped us off near the lower park entrance and we ended up on the eight-hour trail that was 4,800’ to the top. We didn’t have time to summit before dark, but we still had an awesome five-hour hike and made it to 12,400’ (about 3,500' up), and we hiked along the crater rim and final stretch of the mountain. The Andes are really beautiful and there is a lot of vegetation on the volcanoes. We want to do a lot more hiking here, but now know that we have to leave a lot earlier in the day. It would be a lot easier to have a car, but we both agreed that it would be too scary to drive here. The trip home was interesting though. We had hired a pickup truck to drive us four miles down a dirt/stone road to the park entrance but there were no vehicles waiting for us when we got back. We hiked about two miles (partly uphill) before we saw a passing truck and hitchhiked. We were so glad to get a ride because it got dark as soon as we made it back to the main road.

The first bus from Amaguaña to La Marín (South Quito terminal) was very strange. I was joined by a drunk guy who repeatedly introduced himself (five or six times) and asked me my name and a lot of other questions. Whenever there was a break in the conversation he held out his hand asking if we were friends and I would say yes just to humor him. In a drunken moment he thought Thad was my girlfriend and tried to climb across me (awkwardly grabbing my leg) to kiss him on the cheek, a traditional Ecuadorian greeting. After being rejected, he asked if Thad was Chinese and introduced himself again. A woman with a baby got on the bus and he got up to give her his seat, but that wasn’t much better. With the baby partly on my lap she began to breastfeed and I had no choice but to stare ahead at my drunk friend who was dancing to the salsa music.

When she left, he reclaimed his seat and began the whole process again. I decided to become more of a clueless gringo and “couldn’t” understand a lot of what he said. He got frustrated a few times and rattled on about how he wished he could speak to me in English. The only word he could say was “goodbye,” which was sweet to hear after we arrived in his neighborhood. Afterward a few kids sat next to me and started asking each other how to say things to me in English, and they quizzed each other on what the US was like. When I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer I told them they could just ask me, and I was flooded with questions. We finally arrived at the transfer station and boarded a trolley bus that was a lot more normal. The third bus, however, included a pissed off old man who started yelling at the driver after he stalled the bus on a hill. Soon he was yelling again and the driver stopped the bus to storm back and get in his face. Other passengers were yelling at the old guy but I couldn’t understand what they were all saying. Reluctantly, he sat down and we continued on as if nothing happened. Finally, a fourth bus home was our lucky number seven for the day. It was so good to finally get back to the campus!

Here are a couple other things that happened this week:

On Wednesday we had a field trip to the Ballet Jacchigua, a cultural interpretive dance. Before entering we had to have a Latino buy all of our tickets so we wouldn’t be charged a lot as foreigners. (They can really make money off us…) It was a big production, with live Andean folk music, 90 dancers, and over 6,000 lbs of costumes and props, but it was a small atmosphere of less than a hundred people. Beforehand I thought it would be boring, but it was really an interesting expression of their society. It’s funny because a lot of them were foreigners and after spending a month with only Latinos, I get culture shock from seeing other white people. When I told my teacher this she mentioned that I haven't visited Gringolandia, the local name for La Mariscal, Quito's tourist-filled district.

On Tuesday we began our weekly service project, working with children at the local dump. Many families lived there before the government deemed it unsafe, and now there is a daycare for children of employees that is run by volunteers. The kids (aged 4-10) were definitely a challenge, and you can tell they have harder lives at home. The boys didn’t talk at all, even when we asked them questions like their names. For the most part I played Lincoln Logs with a group of them, and a kid fully dressed as Spiderman kept jacking my house segments and adding them onto his. Another kid whacked me on the head with a giant log and I did my best to scold him, but that was difficult in Spanish. We played with them for a couple hours and learned that it will be an interesting work experience. It will definitely be good to put on my teaching resume though.

Well, that's all for this week. Hasta Luego!

Santo Domingo

This weekend we got back from an awesome weeklong missions trip to Santo Domingo and I’ll try to cover some of the highlights. Santo Domingo is a small city about 50 miles from Quito (as the crow flies), but travel time is deceiving. The highway we took wound us through the Andes and then dropped 8000’ elevation, which was scary with construction, no passing lanes, and Ecuadorian drivers. But the high-altitude landscape is incredible, with small villages, waterfalls, and vibrant green vegetation that is straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. Even going through a 10,400’ pass all we could see was green.

The main focus of the trip was service work, which I found really humbling. The first worksite was in Cóngoma, a remote village of Tsáchila Indians (characterized by red hair paint). We had to take a dirt road through the jungle and cross a river, which we later collected water from. Here we painted the inside of a church and also had a fun program for school kids. The other two sites were in dirt-poor neighborhoods in Santo Domingo, where we painted two more churches and built a concrete cistern. These areas were really powerful to see.

We also interacted with the kids a lot, which was awesome. These are the kids you see on those commercials that need sponsors, but it is so impacting to actually get to know them and see their way of life. I was really attached to a boy named Yandry, who would always find me when I was in the neighborhood. He is ten years old and lives in a small concrete house with his grandma and five brothers. On the day I left he told me he had a gift for me and I was surprised with a jar of gel balls. I was really confused but eventually found out they’re plant fresheners that the kids like to play with. I think it might have been one of the only possessions he had, so that gift strangely meant a lot.

Here are a few other trip details:

-The place we stayed was really nice for the area, and it was a huge relief to have indoor rooms and clean toilets that actually flushed. The other bathrooms were toilet bowls in shacks that you flushed with a bucket of well water.

-Overall the weather was extreme with heat, humidity, and torrential downpours. I tried to wash my clothes but couldn’t dry them with the humidity. It was a little hot for me so I’m glad to be back in the cooler highlands.

-The mosquitoes and bugs were vicious and I learned that they feast on anyone wearing shorts. On the third day I counted over 100 bites below my knees. Since bugs love me so much, an anti malarial was the best idea ever. There was a good selection of critters in our room too.

-We had good food, which included mall, restaurant, street vendor, and homemade. The first night we ate at a meat restaurant that served every part of cow, chicken, and pig that you could imagine, and I was able to try heart, lung, udder, and intestine (in order from delicious to disgusting). I think the weirdest thing we ate though was a Peruvian prune gelatin that was a chunky purple liquid and reminded me more of a laxative. We had to finish a huge bowl of it to be polite so some people had a chugging contest.

My favorite part was our jungle tour on the last day. We drove a good distance to our teacher’s hacienda on a fruit plantation and rode in the back of a farm truck through the jungle, constantly ducking to dodge the banana leaves. We hiked down to a waterfall in the river, the perfect swimming hole with a boulder to climb and jump off. The water temperature was perfect too, and there were even vines to swing on. We also went to a small concrete bridge over a 30-foot waterfall, and were randomly able to ride a horse and try many fruits along the way.

On the return day we drove through Mindo and visited a butterfly sanctuary and a chocolate factory. It’s absolutely mind blowing to see where chocolate comes from, because we really take it for granted. We saw a lot of bananas, pineapples and other exotic fruits, but chocolate just blew me away. Originally, cacao is a tropical fruit that tastes sour and there are lots of pods that get dried and fermented. Afterward the pods taste like bitter chocolate rum until they get processed and sugared over. We saw the whole progression at the factory and then tasted some of the best chocolate we’ve ever had. Similarly coffee grows as seeds in tree berries, but they taste really bitter before roasting.

I’ll end this post on one of the more interesting experiences, the tobogón (waterslide). Waterslide parks are popular in humid areas, and this slide had a unique design: straight down for over 100 feet into a 540 corkscrew ending. We got in line, but had to wait a while because the Latinos were just taking their sweet time. They would go slow and almost stop before the spiral, so I decided to show them what was up and go for speed. Horrible idea. By the time I hit the spiral I got thrashed around and don’t remember much, but it felt like it took forever to get out of the water. Several people flagged me to the side of the pool and I realized my nose was bleeding pretty hard. This is when I realized parks aren’t regulated the same as they are in the US. There was no lifeguard and no rules, which resulted in people getting thrown in the pool and crawling back up the slide. Afterward we played Marco Polo, but I drew a lot of attention again when I couldn’t tag anyone and I accidentally grabbed a Latina who wasn’t even playing. After opening my eyes I realized everyone was watching and laughing.

I was also able to post some pictures on Facebook. Anyway, hasta luego.

Colonial Quito & Last Weekend

Things have gotten a lot busier here. We have a midterm exam and presentation tomorrow, and Friday morning we leave for a weeklong missions trip to Santo Domingo, about a three-hour trip west. I’m really excited for this because we get to do a lot of volunteer work (as opposed to class and homework) and activities with the kids. I doubt we’ll have internet there so I’ll make this post a little longer and add some more details about the weekend.

Today we had another weekly academic outing, which is awesome because we get to learn outside of the classroom. It was our introduction to colonial Quito, which is an awesome and beautiful part of the city. After arriving at the plaza and grabbing a delicious pastry, we had a tour of The Society of Jesus Church, a popular cathedral that took 160 years to build and is almost completely covered in gold leaf. Next we went to the City Museum where we learned a lot about Quito’s colonial history. Finally we went to lunch and I had shawarma wrap and some guanábana ice cream. Later we had some salchipapas at a small street corner restaurant that was about as hot as a sauna from all the frying grease. I absolutely how cheap food here can be. (Large Size = $1.40!)

Here are a couple pictures I took today, including a panorama of South Quito.

On Sunday I decided to hang out with Gustavo and I went with him up to the mountains to the church he works at. We had to take a bus up there, which I’ve found is one of the scariest systems of public transport. The bus drivers aren’t any better than the others and they hardly stop to let you on and off. It is really important to hold on too because they drive all over the place. Even though I’m used to riding on a ferry, I realized my balance isn’t as good as I thought. They will cram a ton of people on, like the subways in Tokyo. The only difference is South Americans value personal space a lot differently, and if you sit down you might end up with someone’s armpit in your face. At the top, the roads were dirt and cobblestone, littered with garbage, and there were close concrete buildings and stray dogs everywhere. I love places where I can be the only foreigner!

The church service was small, but really good, and afterward we walked over to the pastor’s house to eat lunch. On the way, we stopped at a small street corner grocery and bought some chorizo (sausage). Those tiny stores have everything, including chicken feet and other cuts of meat I don’t recognize. While Gustavo and the pastor cooked the sausage and rice, they showed me how to make juice from tomatillos, which taste like the combination of a tomato and a peach. Juice is really popular here and they make it with blended fruit, water, and (lots of) sugar. There are a lot of good drinks here, with tropical fruits and sweet teas.

Oh yeah, the concert on Saturday turned out to be awesome! There were probably about 10,000 people there and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the only gringos. I love learning about new music and there were four different bands playing (I really liked Pescao Vivo, a Columbian alternative band). The concert was supposed to start at 5, but instead the first band didn’t open until 6. This is because of La Hora Ecuatoriana, Ecuadorian Time where everything begins casually late, anywhere from ten minutes to over an hour. From what I’ve heard this is pretty common in South America. Our first week welcoming party started about thirty minutes late (us Americans were all standing around waiting), and I’ve gone to play basketball but had to wait a while for someone to bring a ball. During orientation we were told that whenever we see a time, just to add an “ish” on the end of it. Coming from a punctual society I’m not used to it. Well I’m used to procrastination… I still have to study a lot for my exam tomorrow. Hasta Luego!

Left: Jenna, Josué, and the girl with the flashlight. Right: Pescao Vivo