you didn't fry your empanadas?!?

This morning I spent more time reading and writing. I'm three quarters of the way through Maria, by Jorge Isaacs. I look forward to Monday when I can turn in my last summary and not read it any more.
I went on a jog in the park, which was nice, although I also look forward to being able to run in the streets again instead of circles (albeit large circles; the park is pretty darn big). I then wrote a short paper on humitas, which are the cornbread-like food that look like tamales. I had lunch and rode the Ecovia to school without getting robbed. Yay!

In my first class, we listened to a Bolivian legend. I use the word "listened" and not "understood" intentionally haha. We then had to draw the story on a large piece of butcher paper. Basically, what we ended up deciding (and what we managed to get our teacher to tell us) was that in Lake Titicaca, there is an island, which was called the Island of the Sun. A mother and father lived their and gave birth to the entire Incan race. They must have had a lots of kids.
Sometime later, two dueling tribes lived on the island, and the Incans came back and conquered them, although they were allowed to continue their rituals such as human sacrifice. The Incans built an incredible city with lots of gold. One day, the Spanish showed up. The Incans threw their gold in the bottom of the lake and fled to some other land, where they celebrated their successful escape by partying and dancing for 12 days with a huge gold snake, which was more than 200 meters long, and somehow they moved it to make it look like it was alive. Nowadays, ruins have been discovered in the lake, but they don't seem quite as splendid as they story says. The story might make more sense if we had understood more, but we did have fun trying to draw out something that did not make sense at all.
In my second class, we learned that although Columbia is incredibly dangerous and violent, the people there are some of the happiest in the world. My teacher explained that this is because they have the following mentality: Today is probably the last day in my life, so I'm going to party!

Then I came home, where I found a container of empanadas verdes (green empanadas, literally, although they're actually brown). I microwaved two and was halfway through eating my second one when my host dad came into the kitchen and was slightly appalled that I hadn't fried them on the stove. When my host mom came home later, she asked me if I had made some empanadas. I told her I had microwaved them. She was even more appalled. I thought they were quite good, but tomorrow I'll try frying them.

I've spent the evening working on my 2000 word essay, (right now it's at 1978, but it has three photos so I figure it's pretty much 5000 words, since a picture is a thousand words, right? :)), working on my grammar homework, editing my Maria summary, and reading aboug Venezuela and doing more research about Hugo Chavez, while listening to my four new favorite Ecuadorian songs. My internet has crashed three times since I've tried to stream them all at the same time via YouTube. It takes about half an hour for them to all load. At least I have internet in my house, and it's faster than some of my friends' internet connections at their houses!

Love Alex