Highlights:
-Photographed my little kindergardeners; pictures are up so check those out at http://picasaweb.google.com/alex.fussell
-Woke up at 4:30am on a Friday to not take a really cool train haha
-Jumped off a huge bridge
-Rappelled down 4 waterfalls
-Bought a jacket with llamas on it :)
-Cooked spaghetti :)

On Thursday, I had service learning and took my camera to recess. You would have thought that the kids had never seen their photo before, which I suppose could be true. I pretty much could take one picture at a time because they wanted to see every picture after I took it. I'm going to take some more this week of the rest of my kids and also of the classroom so you can see what those look like.

After school, Ali, Annie, Austin, Edan and I took the Ecovia to the Trolley to the south bus station, Quitumbre. We bought some tickets to head to Riobamba, a city of 125,000 and the capital of the Chimborazo Province which, it turns out, is really boring. We took a cab to our hostel and drove through most of the central district at 11 pm which consisted of zero people and closed up houses and businesses. Our room at the hostel was really cute and included a kitchen, which we couldn't use since our entire food supply consisted of a package of crackers I'd grabbed before leaving home, and since everything was closed, we couldn't buy food. We got up at 4:30am the next morning to go ride El Nariz del Diablo (The Devil's Nose), a (now) tourist train that goes up/down a really really steep hill by traversing lots of switchbacks, and passengers can ride on top of the train to enjoy the beautiful views of all the surrounding volcanoes. At least, that's what all the guidebooks say. It turns out that there is one small, 30-person, bus that has been retrofitted to go on train tracks, you can't ride on top, and tour companies buy out all the tickets so you have to buy them 8 days in advance. We arrived at the station at 5am (we wanted to make sure we got tickets) only to be told the were sold out. We waited a little to see if anyone didn't show up (they all did). The guidebooks lie.
We went back to the hostel, slept more, and then had breakfast and wandered around town for a while. The architecture is sort of similar to Quito's Old Town/Historic District, but there's less to do. Then we decided that we wanted to go to somewhere more exciting, so we chose Banos (the n should have the little squiggle over it, so it sounds like the n in the word canyon). Before heading out though, we decided to explore the countryside some, so we asked our hostel hosts how we could go about renting a car. They called a man who rented us his own personal car for 3 hours. The extent of the paperwork for this exchange was him holding onto Austin's passport copy. Welcome to Ecuador! We drove out away from Riobamba and visited several small towns which had possibly never had tourists before. Everyone we saw looked at us very strangely. Of course, I'm sure it's rare to see 5 white kids in a car anywhere in Ecuador. All the little pueblos seemed to be entirely agriculturally-based, and therefore were not so wealthy. All of the buildings were made of concrete, although sometimes there were painted really bright colors. It was a different look at the countryside than you get by riding a bus, so I enjoyed that a lot. We then went to the bus station in Riobamba and headed to Banos, which is one of the top tourist destinations in Ecuador. It's a pretty small town, but it's filled with all manner of outdoorsy tourist activities and also spa-type activities. The name comes from fact that the town has baths with incredibly hot water heated by the nearby volcano.
We found a nice comfortable hotel and enjoyed the nightlife activity, which was much more happening than Riobamba. We also went to the little carnival which had a Ferris wheel which went much faster than any American Ferris wheel I've been on.
The next morning, we had breakfast in the hostel ($10/ night, breakfast included, mostly hot water, mostly clean, pretty good deal). I'm glad I like scrambled eggs best because they understand that (huevos revueltos) but they do not understand sunny-side up, over medium, over hard, or anything like that. I've also discovered that the warm milk they give you for coffee is good and filled with protein so I'm not so hungry later. The milk here tastes sort of different and is not refrigerated until you open it and put it in the fridge yourself which seems a bit odd to me, but it's not bad.
We went to the main tourism agency street and rented buggy-things to drive (well, for Edan and Austin to drive, since they can drive a manual). We drove out to two bridges a little ways out of town where you can jump off them. It's not quite bungee jumping because you just swing, but there's definitely still an adrenaline rush. Edan, Annie and I decided this would be fun. We paid $15 dollars, put on harnesses and jumped from the railing on the side of the bridge. I was thinking: Oh, this is no problem; I'm not scared of heights! I found out that when you're standing on the guard rail above a canyon, though, you're scared of heights haha. It was SO fun, though; I really enjoyed it.
We rode back to town and because of that nice protein I had drunk that morning, I wasn't hungry. (I know, crazy!)Everyone else was and I watched slightly jealously as they ate creamy Italian pasta and Mexican burritos (from the same restaurant haha). I have to say that I miss food from home a lot.
Austin and Annie went off to give/receive a motorcycle riding lesson, respectively, and then head back to Quito, and Edan, Ali and I decided to rappel down waterfalls. We chose an office which said they had canyoning for $20. I had cash but they didn't so they went back to the hotel while I filled out a waiver. It sounds so legit! However I only knew my passport number, not theirs, and I wasn't going to sign for them, and by the time they got back, the company had forgotten about the paperwork so they never signed it haha. We got in a van with two tour guides, Angel and Javier, got wetsuits, jackets, and shoes, and drove up to a random little house up a random little road. We joined with three middle-aged American guys who had just done an intense 8-day jungle camping experience (think having guns to hunt and potentially protect yourself from unfriendly natives). One was a computer engineering professor, one was a professional adventure, and one was a firefighter. We were glad to have him along, just in case. Our tour guides told us we could put on our wetsuits inside of the little cabin. While we were changing, a GIANT rooster walked out from under the little bench in the corner and scared Ali half to death. Edan and I laughed pretty hard.
We walked up a small mountain which was a struggle, but we were less tired than the three guys which was satisfying since they had just also summited Chimborazo, which is the tallest mountain in Ecuador (a mere 20,565 feet). Then we rappelled down three waterfalls and slid down two more. I wished I had had gloves because I couldn't let the rope just slide through my hands since they would have burnt, but it was still really neat. I felt like Steve haha. I don't have any pictures of the waterfalls since we didn't have a dry bag, but there is one picture showing our very attractive outfits. The water was not warm, so as soon as we got back to town we headed over to the baths. There were several small-pool-sized hot tubs. And when I say hot, I don't mean 105 F, I mean at least 115 in the colder one. Ali and I suffered through about 15 minutes of that tub and Edan (for some reason which I cannot fathom) went to the even hotter one. Ali is a public health major and we discussed all of the diseases we were probably contracting by being in this water (which was not clear, I might add, since it just gets piped in from the ground), in the pool which became rapidly more and more crowded. It was entertaining, but I did enjoy my nice clean and hot-but-not-too-hot shower.
We got dinner and wandered around town for a while doing some shopping since we were all looking for some things. There are a ton of stores which are basically mini-Otavalos (that's the town with the HUGE indigenous market), so I bought a cool jacket with llamas on it. Ecuadorians are all small, but the jackets all seemed to be made for someone who has short arms but is very very fat. I probably visited 10 stores before I found a decently-fitting jacket, but I like it a lot (I'm wearing it right now, for example.) Ali and I also bought the super cheap (by that I mean inexpensive and pretty low quality) shoes that we had worn on the canyoning trip. I like them because the entire sole and toe is rubber, so your feet don't get wet from walking on a wet surface.
We were pooped so we called it a night and actually got a solid night's sleep.

The next morning we had breakfast, applied lots of sunblock and hiked partway up one of the mountains next to Banos, so a large statue of The Virgin and her baby. The hike was rather challenging, especially since we were all already sore from the day before, but the view was gorgeous. I was dumb and brought my camera but left the battery in the charger, but I took several pictures on Ali's camera so I'll get them and upload them soon. We caught our breaths, talked to another American who was studying in Quito, and headed back to the hotel to shower before checking out.
I got some food at the little cafe next to the hotel, which was somewhat disappointing; their humitas are not nearly as good as the ones my host mom buys, and then Ali and Edan ate at another restaurant where Ali ordered Nachos and Avocados and received a bowl of guacamole and Doritos, and Edan ordered a hamburger without fries and got one with fries. You never know if the food will be good or not here haha.
We walked over to the bus station and rode the 3.5ish hours back to Quito and another half an hour ish on the Trolley. I like the Trolley (except for the theft of my phone) because it stops a block and a half away from my house.
I was hungry but my host mom hasn't been to the store in a few days because there was NO milk and NO bread (It's probably the first time that has every happened in an Ecuadorian house; they eat bread like there's no tomorrow). So, I got to cook pasta (they had whole wheat pasta!!!) with tomatoes, onions, mozzarella cheese and a couple spices (their spice cabinet is not quite as comprehensive as yours is, Mom). That was a wonderful dinner :)

Well I've spent a solid 3.5 hours on the computer and I still haven't responding to any emails haha. I guess that's what no internet for three days does!

Love Alex

botanical garden adventure

Day one of no phone. I don't mind that much except that it's hard to meet someone at a random location. Tyler and I were going to meet at a cafe at 8 this morning, but he took a different bus and was running late, but couldn't call me since I no longer had a phone. We worked it out though. We went to the Botanical Garden in the park near my house. IT was surprisingly large; we spent about two hours walking around. They had all sorts of plants and flowers; there was a greenhouse full of Venus Fly Trap-like plants, lots of cacti, a greenhouse with a wide variety of orchids, and lots of other plants. We then explored the park for a while; most notably we walked around the real airplane that is in the middle of the park. Once upon a time it was functional, and sometime after that it was a playground (it has a ladder and slide build right next to it, and it has a face painted on the nose) but now it is fenced off and just looks kind of funny. We had lunch at my house and my host mom seemed excited to have a guest. She's a big fan of entertaining people at the house.

The rest of my day was very normal and consisted of going to school, talking in Spanish, walking home and doing homework.

Tomorrow after school I'm headed to Rio Bamba and Ambato for the weekend since we don't have school on Friday. We're going to ride on a train called The Devil's Nose (El Nariz del Diablo), which goes up and down a really steep mountain face. I probably won't have internet until I get home Saturday night or Sunday, so there won't be any more blog entries for a while. I'm sure you can find other ways to entertain yourselves though. Have a great weekend!

Love Alex

crazy day

This will be short since I have lots of homework...
Today I went to service learning, and had a good time. No one was too difficult and I felt helpful. After, I was able to go home for lunch since we didn't have normal classes; instead we went to a museum. to get there, Dan and I were going to meet the rest of the class at the Estadio Trolley stop since we live closer to the Trolley line than school. After a very complicated trip involving three fares instead of one and a varity of phone calls since our teachers decided to take the other trolley-type bus line (the Ecovia) instead of the Trolley, Dan and I got to the correct meeting location. We both reached for our phones to call the other group; he was successful, but I was not. Someone took my phone out of my front jeans pocket without me noticing at all on the third leg of the Trolley trip. That was a bummer. I'm not going to buy a new one because it's not worth the $70+ it would cost to get a cheap bar phone here, although if someone in my family happens to have an old phone, I'll see if I can use it for the next few weeks. We'll see. I'm glad it wasn't my normal US phone though; if I had lost that I'd be very disappointed. As far as phone theft goes, though, I was really lucky. Edan had her phone stolen when she was walking down the street near school after a soccer game talking on the phone; someone hit her head, grabbed her phone and ran off. Beto (Dan's Ecuadorian host brother) had his phone stolen at gunpoint when he walked out of his gate in front of his house. All of these happened during the day. Oh Ecuador...

The museum was interesting; it was a history of Quito from the early indigenous people to the 1900s ish. The tourguide spoke in Spanish, but we were able to follow pretty much everything, which was nice. After, some of us got ice cream in the Old Town, and then I met up with Tyler, my friend from cons who's spending the year in Esmeraldas but is in Quito for the week. We had a successful conversation in Spanish and then switched to English since he never uses it haha. We had greek/arabic ish food, which was delicious and a very nice way to finish off the day (other than all the homework that I have.)

Overall today, I took two buses and 6 Trolleys, for a total of $2, which is less than one adult peak fare in Seattle haha. I also still have a really weird upper chest/throat pain which is no longer heartburn; it hurts when I eat large bites, take big drinks, or breathe deeply. If it still hurts tomorrow I'm going to go to a doctor. I still think I've been the healthiest out of my whole group though!

Futbol, Food, and Family

After a not-so-sufficient 4.5 hours of sleep (during which I spoke a little bit of Spanish to my host family in a dream!), I woke up to go to the futbol game. I met four other girls from my class and we walked over to the stadium, which is nice and close to to our school, which is generally the designated meeting place for group activities, even though it's closed on weekends. Outside the stadium there were what seemed like hundreds of people selling jerseys. I bought a white Barcelona jersey for $6, and after we went in the stadium, Edan bought one for $5. It turns out the the audience at futbol games is probably 90% male. We were a group of 5 white girls, so we sort of attracted some attention. A couple guys actually came up to us, asked to take a picture with us, and then ran off to get good seats. I can't blame them though, since we take pictures of/with people here all the time.
We sat in the Barcelona section. It turns out that they're from Guayaquil, not Spain, although they have almost the same jerseys. Yellow is their main color, so we were pretty much in a sea of yellow jerseys and flags.
There are all sorts of vendors selling beverages, food, gum, cigarettes, noisemakers, hats, and random things like bubble blowers for kids that pretty much consist of a cup, straw, and sponge so you don't spill soap on yourself. These vendors walk through the aisles throughout the entire game, passing everyone many times.
First we watched Nacional versus Universidad Catolica, which is one of the local univeristy teams, whereas Nacional is a pro team (I think. My knowledge of teams here is pretty limited). U Catolica won which was exciting. The second game was the important one: Independente del Valle played Barcelona, and they tied 1-1. We didn't really care that much who won, but everyone around us was super into the game. There are a bunch of songs for Barcelona (and a vendor selling a $1 CD and page of lyrics).
Near the end of this game, fans were not so happy with the ref, so they threw tons of water bottles and probably other trash as well toward him.
Four hours of soccer was a little much for me, and sitting on a concrete bench was definitely a little much for my back, but the game was a super interesting experience.
Random side-note: they use 'super' here as an intensifier, so, for example, if food is particularly delicious (rich), they say it's superrico!

After the game I walked for a while until I got to an area where there were actually empty taxis, which took a while. I went to the Pajonal, the restaurant owned by one of my host mom's brothers. The food was fabulous as always, but I also enjoyed seeing the family again, since Richard's party was a bit of a bonding experience. My host mom's sister (I think that's who she is anyway) has two ACLAS students that are staying with her; they are a couple from England who have done a ton of traveling and are here for three weeks to take 5 hours of Spanish classes ever day. I wish them the best of luck haha. Since my Spanish level is higher than theirs, I was able to follow their conversation with the family no problem. A couple of the relatives got out their laptops and hooked one up to a projector and we started watching music videos of Italian opera and then Mariachi orchestras and then Louise Armstrong and then the Beatles, etc. My host parents asked if I wanted to stay or leave at about 5:30, and I said I was enjoying being there so I stayed with another one of my host mom's brother (I think she has 8 siblings, and 3 half-siblings) and his wife, along with the English couple and 4 or 5 other family members. We were there until 9:30 pm haha. It was enjoyable although I probably would have left at 5:30 if I'd known what staying there entailed.
We took a taxi home, and it was so nice to have real Spanish speakers to converse with the taxi driver and to explain that we live on a one-way street so you have to circle around the block. It was also interesting to be in a taxi with people who aren't so concerned about how much the taxi-ride costs. I always ask how much it will cost before I even get in, but they didn't even ask until we got home, and they didn't bargain at all.

Since I went to the Amazon, where there could be malaria, I've been taking doxycycline, which you take every day for a month after. You're supposed to take it with dinner but I normally take it in the evening since I keep it by my toothbrush so I don't forget. I have had zero problems with it even though there's an extensive list of side effects. This time, however, I took it immediately before going to bed, several hours after eating and without any water since my bottle was empty and I don't drink the tap water. This was the biggest mistake I've made here; I woke up with terrible heartburn, which I've had all day, despite eating a number of Tums (here, they pronounce it like toooms haha). I am not a fan.
I've also been bizarrly sore on my upper calfs from walking on Saturday. I've never been sore here before and I don't know how to stretch that muscle haha.

This morning I ran to school for my service learning meeting with Monica, one of my teachers. I don't know why I have these meetings because I don't have any problems or need any help, but for those reasons the meetings go quickly. I went back home and socialized some with the family who was over, and then Carla, my aunt, dropped me off at the trolley stop. (The trolley is a bus in which people are literally packed like sardines.) I asked her what her opinion of Americans was since we were going to talk about it in class, and she said she really admired the promptness and the fact that if we start something, we finish it. She also commented that the incredible American influence here is sort of a bummer, but it's more the fault of Ecuadorians than of Americans. When I talked to another aunt today, she said she's been to Disneyworld 6 times, and a great-uncle said his grown daughter has been two or three times with her young kids. Disneyworld/Miami are the places to go for vacation for Ecuadorians.

10 days of class left and only 4 short weeks until I head home!

Love Alex

parks and partying

On Saturday, I had breakfast with some of the guests that were here, which was nice. It was sort of strange to have breakfast be cooked for me, since I normally eat way before Carmen,our maid, comes, but not this time. I also made my own breakfast and thus had lots of good food (humitas, yucca/eggs, and papaya/granola). I ate a large breakfast so I could go adventuring without being hungry.
On this adventure, Ali, Shaunte, Edan and I decided to go to the Parque Metropolitano, which runs parallel to the east edge of Quito on top of the hill/small mountain that creates said edge. We figured it would be easy to get in, since it's huge and there are clearly trees right there. After climbing a nice steep hill, we reached a street which bordered the park but had no entrances. We followed this street and several other streets for about 20 minutes until we found a little street with a guardhouse. We walked up an even bigger and steeper hill (apparently most people drive to the park, and I see why) and at the top of the hill there was a soccer field and a random little town called Miraflores, I think. We watched the soccer game for a while (it was 6 people versus 10, and none of them were terribly good). None of us has ever received so many whistles in our life, courtesy of the two teams that were waiting on the sidelines to play next. We left. Shaunte flipped them off, and I was pretty darn tempted, but I would hate to exacerbate the problem haha. This town is a square, that's probably an eighth of a mile on each side. We walked down the street and found a little tienda (store), based out of someone's house like they normally are in towns such as these, that had fresh-squeezed orange juice, made with an extremely nice juicer. We continued on into more park-like territory. By park I don't mean swingsets, I mean many square kilometers of trees. We followed some paths which became increasingly smaller, and then we ended up at this cool viewpoint looking out over the city that's on the other side of the hill/mountain. We followed more paths, avoided being run over by mountain bikers (how they managed some parts of that path, I have no idea), and visited several more viewpoints. We also found a field full of llamas and a water treatment center. It's sort of a strange park.
On our way out, we passed a pavillion with a photography show and a field with inflatable bouncy toys advertizing for a new Nestle product. There were also some real playground toys, including a zipline in which you (or at least us, as adult-sized people) come extremely close to being sliced by a guidewire at the end of the zipline. It was quite entertaining haha.
We went to the Stadium near our school to buy tickets for a futbol (remember that's soccer here in Ecuador and the rest of the world). For $8, we got tickets to see the Sunday game, which ended up being a ticket for two games! more on that later...
We ate lunch at Mr. Bagel (I brought a sandwich. It was not as good as a bagel, but it was free). Then we got ice cream (which was more like sorbet) at a nearby cafe, which was very enjoyable.
Then we walked over to the parque Carolina (which is the huge park in between my house and my school). I walk next to it every day and I've run through it and played Ultimate in it, and I still hadn't visited any of what we went to this time. We found the paddleboating lake (I'm excited to do that!), watch some bikers and skateboards narrowly avoid dying in a skatepark, and discovered the location of the botanical garden. It costs $3.50 (that's a lot for a museum here) so we didn't go, but I want to before I leave. We were EXHAUSTED from walking so much, so we laid in the grass for a while and then headed home.

Saturday was my host parents' son's birthday. His name is Richard, and he is the Ecuadorian Labor Minister, so he's kind of a big deal. Everyone got semi-dressed up and I enjoyed having all the females in the house on the second floor landing getting ready by the big mirror.
We drove out to what they called "quinta". I was unfamiliar with this word (the dictionary translates it to ranch, I just found out). This turns out to mean mostly outside, which nobody told me so I was wearing a knee-length skirt, but I had my north face fleece so I was mostly warm enough.
There was a large house and deck, small cabin, patio, pool, and a field. There was also a big tent covering the patio, pool, and live band. There were about 100 people there, many of which were family so my parents, aunts and uncles knew them all, but I definitely did not. I don't know if it's a Quiteno thing or a my-family-thing, but I'm never introduced to people. Sometimes I'm presented, so they all know my name and who I am, but when I go around and give everyone a kiss (that's the standard greeting/goodbye here), they just say Hola, but not "nice to meet you" or "my name is ___". Hence, I know a lot of faces and not a lot of names or family relationships.
After greeting most of the people who were at the party when we got there, I hung out with a group of relatives who I like. I would say "chatted" with this group, because that's what they did, but I really contributed nothing to the conversation because I couldn't hear anything. I probably would have had a hard time hearing in English, and since I normally just listed to their conversations even if I can understand, I certainly didn't follow what they talked about this time. They made sure I always had a drink and then every time my grandpa would cheers me (I don't know the appropriate verb there, but you know what I mean), my uncles told me to say "bueno abuelito" (OK, grandpa) and kiss my fingers like I had just eaten something delicious (also not a good description but I think you know what I mean). They got an absolute kick out of this all night. I don't know why it was so funny; that's on my list of things to ask my teachers tomorrow at school haha.
Aside from the unlimited drinks, there were some little yummy appetizers and then delicious hamburgers and wings for dinner (which, I might add, was probably at 11 pm).
All of the drinks and appetizers were served by men in catering uniforms, and all the food was prepared by empleadas. There were a lot, maybe 8. They didn't wear anything special. My family is really white; there are a couple people that actually look fully Caucasian, a few others that look vaguely Asian, actually, and the majority of the others have very light skin. This contrasted strongly with the empleadas, who all appear more indigenous (shorter, darker skin, and different facial features). I actually felt somewhat out of place at the party; it was fancier than I'm accustomed to, and many of the people got more dressed up than I would at home.
There were also a lot of kids at the party, but all of the families with young kids (3 and under ish) brought their nannies with them, so there were at least 3 or 4 empleadas who just took care of their charge(s) all evening. Families are extremely important here but it surprises me how much parents rely on their nannies for young kids. different culture...

Everyone dances here (it's South America), and since most other people were actually taking advantage of the ultimate free drinks, people were having lots of fun. Ecuadorian are knowledgeable partiers, I think. Several of my grandpas/great uncles, or something along those lines (since I was never formally introduced and don't know who they are...) also got a kick out of dancing with me. Fortunately they were all excellent leads so I didn't struggle too much. My host mom then decided that I'd had enough dancing with them and she transferred me to the care of her daughters. When the band played, they mostly did American songs, which everyone at the party knew. They also played some Spanish songs, which everyone knew and sang along to (except me, since my Spanish song repertoire is pretty limited).

We (everyone living in my house), had come in two cars. I was in the first car to go back home, and we left at 2 am. The second car (with both my 60+ year old host parents) left at 3 or 3:30 haha). I went to bed at 3, and got up at 7:30 to go to the soccer game. Thus, I'm exhausted and going to bed, so I'll write about my Sunday adventures tomorrow!

Love Alex

a full house

This week has been pretty uneventful; I've had some service learning, which was normal, although I hadn't been in a while so the kids were very excited to see me. We also most notably did another project which involved cutting out preprinted rectangles in a photo and then reassembling them and gluing them down. Using scissors is extremely hard for a lot of the kids, and several of the kids who normally are good at doing their work without any help would ask me every thirty seconds if they were doing it correctly, which of course they were. Then others wouldn't ask but they would do something totally wrong, such as cutting out the people's heads instead of cutting on the nice printed lines.

In school we've continued reading Maria by Jorge Isaacs. It's very classic latinoamerican literature but it's very old and has far too much arbitrary description that has nothing to do with the plot. My host mom said she read it in 6th grade, but it still takes me forever to read it and then write a summary.
For the same class we also watched a movie, Amar Te Duele, which is basically Romeo and Juliet where she is part of Mexican upper class and he is part of, you guessed it, Mexican lower class. It was, of course, not a happy ending, but I liked this movie infintely more than the last one we watched. It was challenging to understand the conversation (no subtitles this time...) but the general plot would have been clear even if you didn't know Spanish, and the movie showed the emotions of all the characters nicely.

In my other class, we've been talking about a variety of topics every day, but the most interesting has been Cuba and the cold war. It's sort of a random class, but I've never studied the cold war since the only good history class I've ever had stopped after about World War 1. I'm enjoying reading Wikipedia and then sharing with the class what I read haha. Our teacher also told us to forget our homework and go out and experience Ecuador/Quito. Two weeks ago when we said we didn't have any weekend plans she was genuinely concerned and chastised us for not doing more things.


Today for lunch, there was bean soup, rice and shrimp with carrots. I not a fan of beans, shrimp, or carrots, but I ate everything and it was still much better than Galapagos food. It's nice to be home.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the birthday of my host parent's son Richard, who is the Ecuadorian Labor Minister. This is sort of a big deal, so my host mom's brother, his wife, their two daughers, their husbands, and four kids flew in from Cuenca (another Ecuadorian city) last night. That is 10 people, plus me and my host parents, and today their empleada (maid) arrived. She mainly takes care of the kids, I think. I assume that she got here a day later because she took the bus instead of flying, but I don't know for sure. Since they're leaving on Sunday she'll have been here less than 2 days, but I guess it's nice to have a babysitter even for that length of time. It's fun to have so many people around the house. Miraculously all of them fit here and have beds since there are three normally empty bedrooms, a couple extra mattresses lying around and a borrowed inflatable mattress. There are only two showers but it doesn't seem to have been a problem. We also had a variety of family members drop in this evening to visit. I enjoyed listening to their conversations, although I never contribute because it always takes me a while to catch on to the new subject, since it changes so quickly. They talked about going to the Liga vs Barcelona soccer game on Sunday and I told my friends so I really hope that works out, since Barcelona is one of the two best teams in the world and Liga is the best in Ecuador and I think in South America.


Love Alex

returning to my lovely quito home

We packed up all our stuff, had runny scrambled eggs for breakfast (no fruit today) and walked into town to buy souvenier t-shirts.We said goodbye to our families. Linda's family has a house in Salinas, a beach near Guayaquil so when Ali and I do our coast tour we're going to stay with them. Jofrey offered to show us all the cool things in Guayaquil so that will be great. We boarded to the bus to head to the airport, which was actually very full of people, surprisingly. We had a (overpriced) lunch, saw the celebrity dancer/model couple and one of the singers from the night before and went through security. This was the most lax security I have every seen in my life. The guy unzipped the top of my backpack, glanced down for three seconds, and zipped it again. They didn't even run it through the x-ray machine. I can't blame him for not unpacking it, since it was absolutely stuffed and it would impossible to see what was in the bottom without taking everything out, but I was still surprised.

On the plane I was one row ahead of the exit row, but there was nobody behind me so I moved and had leg room and an extra seat :) We had a pretty good lunch of a turkey chicken sandwitch with a couple vegetables and the yummy mousse-ish desert that I had at my host-uncle's restaurant last week. Ali didn't like hers so I had that one and when Natalee woke up she didn't want hers either so I have on in the fridge downstairs for dessert later!
In Quito we said goodbye to the nice couple from Ambato, and they told us to call them when we come visit, so that will be fun. I took a bus home (yay for spending 25 cents!) and enjoyed my nice hot, clean shower.
A bunch of my host family was over last night so we all relaxed in my host parents bedroom (that's the normal place to relax here) and enjoyed watching the three little kids (ages 6, 2.5 and 1.5)run around. Their aunt said they looked like the three stooges. I remember the first few time the family was all together; I didn't understand anything. Now I don't understand everything, but I definitely catch a lot more :) I was also actually part of the conversation since I told them about my weekend, which was nice. We watched half of the movie The Majestic (dubbed in Spanish, of course) and I understood most of that too, except when my aunt or mom would talk on the phone (which happened alot haha).

I'm pretty sure that was everything exciting from my long weekend!
Love Alex

carnival festivities

Day Four

-We saw cave/tunnel like things and big turtles in the wild
-We went to a gorgeous beach along with every other person in the Galapagos for Carnival, which is a holiday
-We played in the ocean and sprayed each other with foam for Carnival
-We spent the evening with our adopted Guayaquil families in the town for Carnival, taking lots and lots of pictures and generally enjoying the atmosphere


Breakfast today was fruit, two small rolls, and a ball of green banana. I liked the banana since my host family eats them all the time. Thus, I had the majority of four green bananas haha.
We took the bus to see Los Tuneles (The Tunnels). According to my guide book, "these underground tunnels were formed by the solidifying of the outside layer of a molten-lava flow. When the lava flow ceased, the molten lava inside the flow kept going, emptying out of the solidified skin and thus leaving tunnels" (thank you Lonely Planet). I'm sort of done seeing caves and tunnels, but they were mildly interesting. We then continued on a path and saw four huge turtles in the wild. Tony, our guide, said that they eat the vegetation and cactus (apparently they have hard mouths) because cacti have lots of water in them. At one point I stopped in the grass to photograph the turtles and my left ankle got attacked my tiny ants. Apparently bug spray isn't effective for them. They kept biting me but didn't leave any lasting bites. I only got three bug bits over all, on the back of my right ankle, so I guess I missed that spot one day. Not bad overall, though I would have preferred a few more bites over all the beetles that inhabited our hotel. They didn't hurt you at all, but they were gross. Natalee killed ten the last night we were there haha.
Anyway, we ended our trek at the ranch of this guy who sounded like an American, but he said he was born on the Islands after his parents came there from the US and had never been to the states. He gave us free coffee but charged us a dollar for a package of crackers. You may have noticed we bought a lot of crackers here. Ritz > hotel food.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and then walked to the entrance to Tortuga Bay beach. They actually searched our bags and they we walked probably 45 minutes down a brick path to get to a gorgeous beach. There was actually some blue sky, which was wonderful. The beach was packed since Monday and Tuesday were Carnival (the spanish equivalent to Mardi Gras, more or less). Basically the whole world goes to the beach and sprays each other with foam or silly string.
The beach had two sides; the side on the open ocean, with pretty big waves, and the side in a bay with zero waves. We all went to the calm side and played in the water for a while. A little 5 year old girl kept swimming around us because she didn't seem to have any other kids to play with. Linda said that she was the daughter of a famous actress, who was sitting on the beach right next to our stuff. I guess we did pick a rather exotic location to spend the holiday. Later, we went to the other side of the beach with the kids and we saw some man who they said was the ex-boyfriend of the actress. We had a ton of fun playing in the ocean and covering each other with foam. After a while we walked over to the huge crowd of people in front of a stage, where the "Mr. Tortuga Bay" contest was happening. There were three finalists, one of which was from our hotel, so we cheered for him, but he got second. The first place winner got $100 dollars. They they had the "Miss Tortuga Bay" contest. Shaunte and I are both tall and white. They called us up. We did not go. Natalee eventually got pushed up on stage by our adopted brother Tito, and she won which was super exciting. Our adopted parents had been fetched by one of the kids, so they came and helped us cheer and brought the cameras. Every person on the beach wanted a photograph with her, which was entertaining. Overall this was definitely one of the best days I've had so far in Ecuador.

We eventually made it back to the hotel, because it seemed like every person on the beach decided to leave at the same time we did, so we all had to squeeze on the narrow path. We were hot from the long walk so we went swimming in the pool with our family. It was fun to get to be with a family, since on all the other trips we've taken in Ecuador, it's been a bunch of college students. That, of course, is also lots of fun.
After dinner everyone in the hotel came out to the patio, had free baby cocktails, and danced. I danced with my 11 year old brother until his dad brought over a stool and told he pretty much had to stand on it to spin me around haha. Then we decided to go out and get ice cream, so we all walked down the street, got delicious ice cream, and continued down to the town center/wharf, which was absolutely packed with people since it was Carnival. Linda's husband has an incredibly nice camera and he uses it all the time, which is awesome because I got most of his pictures, and they're all excellent. We probably took about 200 pictures (it felt like prom, but twenty times worse haha). Our family, by this time, included us four, our two Guayaquil families, a really sweet couple from Ambato, and the runner-up Mr. Tortuga Bay and his wife, and other random people that would join us and leave. We attracted a lot of attention, but it was lots of fun. We saw the two people that were hosting the Tortuga Bay contest again; apparently she's a model and he's a dancer. We saw someone else famous too. That was fun. We also saw more seals, which I personally found more exciting. We eventually went over to the stage and watched some singers perform. They started at about 11 pm. This was not an early night. Natalee had to sit in from wearing her sash with a variety of other people wearing sashes, but Shaunte Ali and I were bored so we wandered around some and were generally successfully at avoided drunk creepers and sprays of water (that's another thing people do for carnival; they dump/spay water on you randomly all the time).
Basically we had a great day with our families, wildlife and Carnival :)

making friends with families and fish

i write this blog for family and anyone else interested. if you're like tara and don't want to read something really long, you're in luck; i'm going to post short highlights at the beginning so you don't have to read the whole thing!

Day Three
-The main breakfast course was half a hot dog
-We saw two hugeee sinkholes, called "The Twins"
-We went boating to an island to see seals and blue-footed boobies
-We made friends with two really cool Ecuadorian families in our group
-We went snorkeling and saw lots of cool fish, and I swam in the middle of a school of fish


after an impressively terrible breakfast, which consisted of too-sweet juice, a small slice of watermelon, two small rolls and half a hot dog (I have NO idea what they were thinking...), we drove to see "Los Gemelos" (The Twins), which are two huge sinkholes, one on either side of the road. We then continued to the north end of the island, where we boarded our boat and went to an island about an hour away. It was more like a giant rock with limited vegetation, but it had lots of birds, two American scientists living under a tarp studying the birds, lots of seals, crabs and a few blue-footed boobies. Still no sun, but it was pretty. We had lunch on the boat (surprisingly decent, all things considered; it even included salad!) and then we went swimming and snorkeling on a new beach. We apparently were supposed to bring our own snorkel gear but on of the families had extra goggles so they shared. I haven't swum with goggles in years, and it was SO COOL! In the water there was 20 feet ish of sand, and then there were rocks and lots of fish. There was a really cool flat fish that was either covered in sand or had the exact coloring of the sand, and it blended in perfectly with the bottom unless it was swimming, and even then it was hard to make out. We saw lots of black fish that were about 2.5 inches long, and one fish that was more like 4 inches swimming in the shallow part, so it was easy to follow. I also swam in a school of probably 100 little fish that seemed to have telepathic powers and would all turn at the exact same time. They were literally surrounding me so I could see them in every direction. We saw two worm-like bottom-dwellers, which were maybe 10 inches long, fat, and didn't really move but were cool. My favorite fish, which I glimpsed once, had a pink tail, blue head, and yellow strip.
On the beach there was also a tree with four or five huge birds and a nest with a baby. I didn't get too close because I didn't want to be attacked and have my eyes gouged out by their huge beaks, but I enjoyed watching from a distance.

Our group consisted of two Ecuadorian families from Guayaquil, one family from Virginia, and us four girls. The two Ecuadorian families were friends, and they pretty much adopted us for trip. In total there were 5 boys between the ages of 11 and 17, and they were all lots and lots of fun. One mom, Linda, reprimanded us for speaking English at lunch. She told us that we had to speak Spanish and her kids would speak English, so we could all practice. All the kids in Ecuador learn English in school if they go to a private school, and they might learn some or a lot in a public school. The oldest two kids were 15 and 17 and knew a lot more English than we know Spanish, although we do know a lot. It was really satisfying to be able to hang out and be friends with these Spanish-speaking families.
On our way home, the other three girls went with one of the families to watch a bull fight, but I didn't feel the need to watch animal cruelty so I headed back to the hotel, had the shower all to myself, and read some of the only English book in the hotel, which was a terrible romancey novel. I gave up on it after 100 pages.
The tap water on the island is not drinkable; I filled up my bottle as soon as we got there, steri-penned it, drank one sip and poured out the rest; it's essentially filtered salt water. They import all their drinking water and showers are an improvement over swimming in ocean water, but it's nice to be back in Quito with clean-feeling (if not completely drinkable) water.

The wi-fi at the hotel stopped working, but the hotel across the street had a really strong signal, so I popped into their lobby, asked for the password (a super sneaky 9876543210) and successfully obtained internet.

you still get sunburned when it's not sunny here

This morning I enjoyed a nice bit of adrenaline and hyperventilation to wake me up when I put my foot in my sock when getting dressed and discovered a large beetle had decided to sleep there. Fortunately life goes on and after our only decent breakfast at this hotel (a piece of papaya, two very small rolls, and probably three over medium eggs), we embarked on our first adventure. We walked down to the marina and got on a tiny little inflatable boat which took us out to a small yacht. We saw an iguana and lots of crabs and several types of birds in between the hotel and the yacht. We then went about minutes away to a tiny island where we saw sea lions (lobos marinos). They seemed to have mountain-goat-like abilities to climb up rocks, but noticeably less capable-looking bodies for climbing. Then we went to another island where we saw a pond (presumably with a connection to the ocean, although I didn't stand there looking for it because that particular viewpoint was mosquito central) where a shark lives. We didn't see it though; we think it was sleeping. We then walked across the island (through mud which was somewhat reminiscent of Puyo/the Amazon, but without the nice rubber boots) to a beach with lots of iguanas. They're such goofy looking animals, but they're really cool. You can also get quite close to them without them minding at all, so I got some nice up-close pictures. We also had a tiny bit of sun peek out which makes the water especially gorgeous.
Aside on the climate: SO HUMID. Also cloudy almost the whole time we were there, although it didn't rain too much. Not that it made a difference when it did rain, since we were already rather damp just from the air. The temperature was nice though; I like temperatures in the 70s and 80s, and at night it didn't get cold so we could still walk around in tank tops and shorts. People there also wore flip flops, which was so refreshing! We would have looked like tourists regardless of what we had worn, but in Quito people don't wear shorts or flip flops (they should; it's hot here), but on the coast and in the Galapagos they do :)
Anyway, the vegetation on this island was more like the vegetation on the island with the airport (Baltra): dry, lots of cacti, and weird brown grassy-stick things as ground cover. There were more bushes though, so it was greener in general.
We went back to the boat and took the sketchy little inflatable boat to a nearby shore. From there we walked to a small natural pool which was esentially dark blue water in between two cliffs. Swimming was cold but fun. All the rocks underwater were covered in moss, more or less, so they were pretty comfortable to sit on. There were entertaining little fish that thought that too, so we had a good chance to observe some (small) wildlife.
We then walked back to the hotel where were had a less-than-enjoyable lunch with something covered in peanut sauce. I ate lots of rice.
After lunch we had about 45 minutes to kill before heading to a beach, so we laid out by the pool. It turns out you can still get sunburned when it is completely cloudy, you're outside for about 20 minutes, and you're wearing some sunblock. As I've been told countless times here, the sun is very strong (El sol es muy fuerte, to be exact). Needless to say we put on lots and lots of sunblock and boarded the bus. After a nice 40 minute nap, we got to said beach which was gorgeous. We briefly looked at two pink flamingos (I guess they have shrimp here) and then we swam in the water, which was surprisingly warm. I hate cold water and I was comfortable the whole time. I haven't swum in the ocean in a long time, and I enjoyed the big waves the came occasionally.
In the evening, we walked around the town. It's not big and we got a good grasp of the location of everything very quickly, which is refreshing after living in Quito. It also felt much safer, although I was surprised at how few tourists there were; we still stood out and attracted a lot of attention. I would have thought that the locals were used to gringos, but I guess we're still novel.
There was a soccer (futbol) game happening while we were meandering and every store with a TV (there were a surprising number of flat screens) had a crowd of locals that were watching the game from their plastic chairs on the sidewalk (unless we walked by, in which case they watched us). I enjoyed this aspect of the town; it feels like a small community.
Aside: the TVs I'm sure are funded by the incredibly riduculous markup on prices, which, to be fair, are due to two things. First is the fact that everything has to come to the islands by boat or airplane; they're kind of remote and I'm sure it costs more to get stuff there. Second, they can charge whatever they want and tourists will pay because they don't know any better (or, in our case, they have no other options, since prices are much too high everywhere on the islands). A bottle of water costs 30 cents if you get it at a little tienda (store) in Quito, and here it cost anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar, and a package of crackers that should cost 45 cents cost a dollar always :( Oh well.
We bought yuca bread since we figured dinner probably wouldn't be too great, and I want to know how it's made. It's not incredibly flavorable (nothing here is except aji sauce) but I loved it.

bed time! I don't have service learning tomorrow though so I plan to write the rest then :)

galapagos day 1

This morning I got up at 6:30 so I could leave for the airport at 7:30, which apparently meant 7:15 to Gonzalo, who was giving me a ride, but fortunately I was ready. At the airport I had to buy a $10 card (like a credit card) which allowed me to go to the Galapagos. The guy at the ticket counter told us it was too early to check in and we should come back at 8:30. Our flight was for 9:45 and they clearly stated on the AeroGal website to get there 2 hours early for a flight to the Galapagos. We had a nice 45 minutes in the cafe and then got our tickets (no line!) and went through security. I had a razor in my backpack, Ali had aerosol bugspray, and nobody had to take off their coats or shoes. Needless to say it was the fastest security line I've got through. We then waited in the extremely large nation departures terminal (all of 4 gates haha). We took of on Ecuadorian time (aka late) and had a 35 minute flight to Guayaquil, and then an hour and a half flight to the Galapagos. There were very few clouds until we got to the Islands, and then there were lots of clouds. We landed on a totally barren island which had cactus trees, brown/red dirt and rocks, one runway, and a couple hangars, but no airport building. We boarded buses, went about 10 minutes down the road, and boarded little water-taxi boats to cross a channel in between the little island and the big island. We then boarded other buses and went 45 minutes, mostly down a perfectly straight road. We transitioned from desert to jungle, although the cacti remained, on our way to Puerto Apoyo. The town is actually quite large; there are lots of restaurants and little tourist kitchy shops. Lots of people ride bikes here, which is neat, and I have yet to see a yellow taxi.
Our hotel has a pool, and pool table and incredibly slow, but free, wi-fi. (I used my magic trick to fix Natalee's internet, which was satisfying.) We went to the Charles Darwin Research Center and saw little turtles and HUGE turtles. We could get right up next to them and take pictures with them :) I'm not going to put up any pictures until I get home, though, because my computer would probably explode from the effort. We saw Lonesome George, who is the only remaining turtle from Pinta Island, so he's the last of his particular species.

More tomorrow!
Love Alex

done with midterms (again)

Today I turned in my two papers and gave my two presentations. Since each class is an hour and a half and my class has 8 students and everyone gave a presentation in each class, I listened to a full 3 hours of boring presentations, mine included definitely. The second class is supposed to end at 4:45 but at 4:45 we still had two presentation to go! Some people talk fast/don't say much (think 5 minute presentations) and some people talk a lot (think 20 minutes, which is really long when they're supposed to be 8-10 minutes, I think.)
However, we made it out of class alive and only 20 minutes late. I don't have class for 5 days and I'm headed to the Galapagos tomorrow morning! (and headed to pack in about two minutes haha).
I went to the park after class to play ultimate. We played Hotbox which brought back fond memories of senior year lunch time, and then we played 3s, which is a lot of running but a lot of good disc time too. We finished about 5 minutes before it got dark and before it started to rain. This morning, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Weather here is weird.

I'm skipping our typical end-of-the-week and/or after-midterms going out in favor of relaxing at home and getting to bed early. I watched TV (aka the news) with Gonzalo for a while; my comprehension has definitely increased; I can understand a lot more of what they say now, which is super exciting :)

I''m bringing my laptop with me this weekend so hopefully I'll have internet and can share pictures of the Galapagos!

Love Alex

chavez y comida

I'm trying to be more diligent about updating this blog, even on relatively boring days. Feel free to not read if my non-weekend-adventures are less than exciting.

Today I woke up early after having a weird dream that a Professor Snape-like character had trapped me and some of my travel companions on the top story and roof of our house. Ecuador has had a bizarre effect on my dreams. It has also had a relatively positive effect on my sleep schedule; I got to bed at 9:30 normally, 10 at the latest, unless something strange happens (or a weekend happens). I'm then able to get at least 8 hours of sleep, which I love.

I spent all morning working on my Hugo Chavez paper. I'm now almost an expert on every Wikipedia article pertaining to the current Venezuelan government. Despite this, it took me about 4 hours to read and write 2.5 pages in Spanish and I still have half a page to go. On the plus side, my paper didn't have very many errors... plurality and gender concordance, I will win!

For lunch I actually had something with spices in it. Not that I'm complaining, I don't have a problem with the relative blandness of the food here, but still it was nice to walk into the kitchen and smell something strong and yummy. Our empleada (maid) comes Monday-Saturday and cleans, washes dishes, does laundry and cooks lunch. She's a good cook and I spend all morning looking forward to lunch, partially because it tastes really good and partially because something has happened to me lately and I always want to eat. Food is just so delicious. Hence I also try to go running in the park every day that I don't have service learning...

In school today we talked more about indicator phrases for the subjunctive and then we discussed a movie we watched last week, called Ratas, Ratones y Rateros. I hated it and would have walked out if I hadn't had to watch it for my grade. Apparently, it turns out that most Latin American movies are like this (no happy ending, bad guy doesn't get punished, everyone has lots of problems). On the plus side movies here cost between $3 and $6 in theatres, depending on the day and time, and you can buy good quality pirated movies (real movies almost don't exist here) for $1 to $3, so I'll probably stick with American movies dubbed in Spanish.

Im my other class we spent the full hour and a half talking about Latin American drug trade. Yesterday we talked about the Incan society and the arrival of the Spanish. I'm fairly sure we changed topics because someone asked a short question about cocaine in Latin America and my teacher decided we should discuss that instead of Indigenous cultures.

After school I went to Dan's host brother's school (his name is Beto) to talk about Ecuadorian schools. The most interesting thing I learned is that the person who gets the best grades from 8th to 11th grade gets to raise the flag every week their senior year of high school, and they might get a 50% discount for their university tuition, depending on where they enroll. Unfortunately that's the most I've written so far about the education here, so it's essay time!

Love Alex

life as of late

Most importantly, I fixed my internet all by myself. I'm not used to having to be my own tech support; that's what my wonderful friends and family are for :) However since you all aren't here, I've had to make do. I discovered that the power cord was the only problem with the internet, so I successfully found a Radioshack and bought an appropriate cable. Life is much much better now.
Last weekend I went to a recommended internet cafe called Mr. Bagel, which was amazing because apparently Ecuadorians don't eat bagels; I have yet to see any here other than this cafe, which is owned by an American. Needless to say, I enjoyed the bagels that I ate very much. I mention this because I (of course) had more internet problems: my laptop absolutely refused to connect to the internet. Because my tech-support experience is still in its infancy, I probably spent an hour exploring every single possible option under Network Connections, and finally discovered that my computer wasn't using the default IP or DNS server addresses, which fixed the problem.
Ive also had incredible difficulty uploading pictures on Facebook (my success rate is probably at 25 or 30%) but that's a less important aspect of getting technology to work...

On Sunday, I went running in the park and ran into Annie, which was a nice surprise given that Quito has almost 2 million people and I only know 14 of them well. I then joined my host mom for a breakfast of humitas and mango (two of my favorite foods here!) and then we went to mass, which I enjoyed a lot although I understood little because the acoustics were terrible. It was very short, only 30 minutes, so I had time to go superbowl-hamburger-veggie shopping before lunch. Sunday lunches are absolutely fabulous; my host mom's brother owns a restaurant (El Pajonal) and all sorts of extended family and friends come together and eat vast quantities of excellent food. Well, at least I eat vast quantities. I've pretty much established myself as the biiggest and fastest eater in the group of students I with. If someone doesn't want to finish their meal, they always ask me if I do haha
After this excellent meal of potato soup and bola soup, rice, lasagna, steak, bananas, salad, and mousse, I went to Dan and Beto's house for our Superbowl party. I could not have cared less about the Superbowl, but it was fun to hang out and eat lots more food. We had 15 people there, I think, and probably had enough food for 35 or 40. I've only been that full in my life once before, and I definitely did not eat much the following day.

As far as school goes, we have our new classes: Spanish 301, which is mainly grammar, and Spanish 322, which is Latin American Culture. They're both pretty interesting and I like them, except for the fact that they're an hour and a half instead of an hour. We have our midterms this Thursday (they're more like third-terms but we wanted them to be before our Carnival Break, which is 5 days long, this weekend). So, I have to write two 3-page papers and give two presentations, on the Ecuadorian Education System and Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Since I haven't done much writing yet, I'm off to do that!

Love Alex

more amazon

The next day we headed to the nearby Quechua (indigenous) community. When we arrived the whole community was out on the big field with machetes, mowing the grass by hand. We talked with the Shaman, some artisan women, saw a traditional dance, watched an impressive volleyball game (in Ecuador the nets are a good two feet higher, and all the people are shorter, so it's pretty impressive to watch them play. We also played with their pet monkey and then had a lunch of an entire trout each, served on huge banana leaves. Jaime told us that if we didn't want the heads, he did because they are apparently the best part because the eyes are quite a delicacy. I ate mine; they were salty and squishy and I'm glad I tried them but I don't plan on eating a lot more of them. We canoed back to our cabins which was mildly terrifying since the canoes felt incredibly unstable, but our canoe-guide was very capable and we didn't tip over or encounter any dangerous animals.
Austin and I decided to do some more exploring on the far side of the river, so we got a machete (by we, I mean he) and we wandered around on some paths that led to what seemed like a farm and then more cabins. The farm was clearly not producing anything at the time we were there, so we looked at the variety of plants there. Banana leaves and stems, we discovered, are quite strong but they're really light because the stem is made of tiny compartments, presumably to hold water, instead of being solid. We swam/waded (it was only three feet deep max) back to our side of the river, and I was surprised at how strong the current was for looking so calm.
After it was dark, some of us went back to the indigenous community to either experience ayawaska, the hallucinogenic indigenous drink, or to watch the ceremony of administering the drink. I was most definitely in the later group. The experience was weird. Those that took the drink didn't really feel anything, and the ceremony was marred (in my opinion) by the excessive number of cigarettes the shaman smoked (think about 13 or 14 in an hour and a half). He incorporated the smoke in almost all parts of the ceremony but he also made interesting noises that were sort of like water and sort of like an airplane and used a plant that rattled.
The next morning I woke up at 6:30 from an unfortunate mixture of asphyxiation, claustrophobia and a bizarre but very strong pain in my shoulder due to the awkward mosquito net and the lack of a real mattress. I relaxed and read my book on a hammock for a while and they we packed up and headed to the monkey park, where Jaime normally works with his wife. Basically 40 or 50 monkeys have the run of a large space outdoors and some of the house that's on the property as well. Some of them were calm, some were rather aggressive (one ate Taylor's earring, for example, and another one almost escaped with my headband, but I won). Being able to hold them was SO COOL though; they're so cute and extremely capable; they can climb with any of their limbs or their tail, and they're fast. There were also use guinea pigs, i think, which were almost a foot long, parrots, and these weird sort of badger-type animals with long noses that turned up at the end.
We were then dropped off at the bus station in Puyo and headed back to Quito. I read (and finished) my only book, The Cider House Rules, which I'm still decided if I liked or not, but it was definitely interesting.
When I got home the power was out so I had to wait two hours to take a shower which felt like forever because the only thing I wanted was to become clean in hot water!
I did not get sick from this experience but I'm one of the few that was that lucky. Austin contracted some terrible fever and stomach problems on the last morning; Ali got something similar a few days later, and almost everyone got covered in bug bites (I only got 20 haha). All in all it was a fun couple of days that were beautiful and fascinating and make me glad to be back in Quito :)

Adventuring in the Amazon

The internet is still kaput at my house, so I ran to school this morning to work on my service learning journal and attend a service learning meeting at 10am. It turns out my meeting is at 10:45, so I have blog-writing time! Hopefully I will have a lot of this sort of time this week since we're just starting a new class this afternoon and we don’t have any midterms for a whole 8 class days!

Last Wednesday 12 out of our group of 15 packed up and headed to Puyo, Ecuador to visit the jungle. We took taxis to the south side of the city, which gets rapidly more sketchy after you pass the panecillo. The air quality also deteriorates significantly, which is saying something because air here is absolutely horrible. Buses spew out clouds of black smoke every time they accelerate, which is frequently, because they stop on the side of the road for anyone who wants to ride, you just have to flag it down like a taxi. Anyway, we managed to pay $8 for a 35 minute taxi-ride (bad traffic, for Quito at least). One guy wanted to charge us $15 for the same ride. We said thanks but no.
The bus station is crazy, it's a really large, nice building, rather like an airport, but there are rows of little booths where you can buy tickets for pretty much any location in Quito. The people working in the booths yell out to you enthusiastically with the list of destinations their bus goes; even though I feel like all travelers probably have a destination in mind already.
We bought our tickets and visited their version of a food court; upstairs, there are lots of little stores which are literally overflowing with all manner of packaged foods and breads, and downstairs, there are several slightly larger booth/restaurants where the salespeople all serve the same thing and all also yell at you to buy their plate of chicken and rice instead of someone else’s.
After a fair amount of confusing as to what time the bus left, where the bus left, who had the bus ticket, and other problems associated with having 12 opinionated people all trying to lead the group, we successfully boarded a bus to Puyo.
Salespeople come on the bus before it leaves and try to sell trinkets or food. One guy made a great choice coming onto our bus and selling cheap little LED key chains because many of us bought one since we didn't have flashlights and we were going to the jungle. Mine broke after two days but I popped it open and fixed the circuit (physics 122, I didn't even need you! ha!) and now it works again :)

After 4.5 hours we got to Puyo and checked in to our hotel, which supposedly had a large snake and a pool, but I was only worried about my bed since we had to be packed and ready to go at 8:30 the next morning. We were actually ready at more like 9, but it all worked out. The Madre Selva tour company picked us up and we went to their nearby headquarters where Austin turned over the second half of our payments ($120 for 3 days and 3 nights, per person) and did not have to sign a single document regarding liability or release.

Then we headed to activity #1, rafting on the Rio Pastaza (Pataza River). Several very entertaining tour guides explained to us what to do in case of piranhas, falling out, capsizing, etc. We all got very attractive helmets and life jackets and embarked. I think it was a class 3 river, so it wasn't as flat as a pool (normally) but there were no waterfalls either. We got soaking wet, but I avoided fall in and getting pushed in. Not everyone was so lucky. I think next time I might choose a slightly more difficult river, but I had lots of fun, and no one was injured or eaten, which is always a plus.

We all loaded the van and headed into town for lunch at a restaurant where they served very yummy food, except for the soup which was normal Ecuadorian soup plus a hunk of monkey (they claimed, but I don't believe them) on a large bone. weird.

We were passed on to another tour guide, Frankie, for our cavern expedition. We drove into the forest and up a mountain for about 40 minutes and got dropped off at this random little concrete structure. It surprised me how much trash and construction materials we saw in the jungle over all the place. We found tons of pop bottles and plastic bags and there were also a lot of dump trucks, back hoes, etc near the river doing some sort of excavation. We weren’t far from Puyo, but the concept of environmental preservation seems pretty limited here.

We followed our tour guide and a trail through the forest, stopping when he told us about certain plants. One tree, for example seemed to bleed when you cut it; they called it “sangre de drago” (dragon's blood), and if you took a small amount of the liquid and rubbed it in your palm, it turned into a lotion which he said was good for our skin and for mosquito bites. We saw a giant worm, literally three feet long, swimming through the puddles in the pathway, but that was about it as far as the animals went. I wasn't surprised though; we were really noisy and not that far into the jungle. The trail quality got progressively worse as we went on (road to gravel path to dirt path to mud) but we had our amazing rubber boots. There was also a tarzan swing (large vine hanging from a tree) which was lots of fun.

The caverns themselves were not particularly enjoyable for me. I've seen caves before that have higher ceilings, fewer spiders and less bat poop, so I didn't stay in very long. I didn't mind, though; I liked the forest a lot. We hiked back and got picked up by another bus which delivered us to our tour guide's house again to pick up our stuff and a new tour guide, Jaime, and then we got on another bus (by bus I mean 12 or 15 seat van) and drove a rather uncomfortable hour to the cabanas (=cabins, I think), our home for the next three days. The road itself didn't quite reach them, so we had to walk about 200 m (lucky for us, we had our $1 flashlights!). I must have explained that 200 m is twice the straight side of a high school track at least 4 times; it's a little strange to be with non-mathematically-inclined people haha.

Living in the cabanas was definitely not like living in a 4 star, or even 2 star hotel, but I really enjoyed it. The living cabins were elevated one story, on stilts, in case the river rose significantly. They had bunk beds, no electricity, mattresses that were definitely less than 2 inches thick, sheets and a blanket, and mosquito nets (the effectiveness of these particular nets is debatable depending on who you talk to in our group; I sustained few bites, but not everyone was so lucky). The net was oddly positioned on my bed: it hung from the center, rather than over on end, so that regardless of the direction I slept, the net wouldn't be suspended over my face; it merely covered it, making breathing somewhat uncomfortable. I used my backpack the second and third nights to prop up the net some.

The cabins had hammocks underneath them. There was also a fire pit with a cabin roof but no walls (and no ventilation) and a kitchen (that had electricity so luckily we could charge our cameras!) with tables under an extended roof. There were also two flush toilets, two cold showers, and one sink. The water disposal from said sink consisted of a 4-foot-long pipe which opened onto the ground behind the sink.. That's it. I assume that the showers had similar plumbing and I hope the toilets had a slightly more sophisticated system but I did not investigate.

We had a late dinner (9:30, probably) and I went to bed.

The next morning we got up pretty early and did more jungle-walking. On our way to the trail head, we wove sweet headbands out of a stem from a plant which perfectly separated into long thin weaveable fibers.

We followed the actual trail for about 5 minutes before fording a small river and turning sharply uphill on a rather less-traveled pathway. Jaime seemed to know what he was doing so we went along with him. After a long long time (1.5 hours, maybe?) we reached a small river where we changed into our swimsuits, but kept our boots on. We walked up the river (up to our thighs) about 30 m, and then we put our stuff on the rocks next to the river. Jaime handed us hunks of light brown, damp, clay and we covered ourselves in it (apparently it is also good for the skin, which I actually believed this time; it felt like a great exfoliant). We then looked considerably more tan, although still like gringos, and swan 15 m around a bend to a really cool little waterfall and pool. There was a vertical log which you could jump off of, and you could sit behind the waterfall. The pictures from this aren't that great, since it was rainy so the flash showed the raindrops and no flash was blurry, but they're decent enough to give you an idea. We played for a long time and then returned to our stuff, reapplied lots of bug spray, and continued on (through similar and then impossible pathways) to a second, much larger, waterfall. I'd had enough swimming so I just climbed on the rocks some and then headed back to the trail head, since we had a nice easy trail to follow again. We lunched at the cabanas and went to see the “mirador” (a viewpoint), which was a few kilometers down the road (we got a ride in the back of a pickup, which seems to be the standard method for transporting people here) and then up a pretty steep staircase.

The view was absolutely incredible. The Rio Pastaza was the central feature, with jungle on either side and mountains in the distance. We enjoyed the hammocks placed as to perfectly take in the view for quite a while. There was also another (much better) Tarzan swing, which went out over a steep drop-off, with the entire view in the background. Jaime was indulgent enough to let us do this again and again, much to our delight. He also showed us a cerbatana (blow gun) that some indigenous people here use for hunting. It's about 3 m long and hunters can shoot darts up to 30 m, I believe, to kill animals such as monkeys (who are not stationary, like our wood monkey target was). Also, when we were in the forest, he showed us the tree that has the bark which can be prepared in a certain way to produce the muscle relaxant that they use for the darts. I enjoyed learning about this because for part of my final exam, I wrote a paper and did a presentation on the Waurani, an indigenous group that uses cerbatanas for hunting.

We eventually stopped alternating between being lazy and being adrenaline junkies and headed to a local indigenous town center, for lack of a better word. There was a bar/artisan store, a soccer field, and swimming pool (large square hole dug in the ground) and pretty much nothing else. There weren't any houses or other businesses, but there were a bunch of people who started playing soccer, so a few of the kids in our group joined in for a while.

Jaime told us that it was a nice 20 minute walk back to the cabanas, and he was right about the nice part, but we learned that his judge of distances and times pretty much need to be doubled, at least. We did eventually make it back to the cabanas though, and the walk was particularly enjoyable because the moon was almost full and incredibly bright (all three nights we were there). At 10 or 11 at night, if there were no clouds, you could literally read by the moonlight.

more to follow!