some notes...

-My mom is coming in May for about ten days...so now I am starting to plan some possible adventures!
-Last night I understood my first Spanish joke. Pedro came into the room as I was doing my homework and he said, "there were two tomatoes in the refrigerator... and the first tomato said "Que Frio" (or how cold) and the the other tomato said "AHHH a tomato that talks!"" He was so excited that I finally understood a joke, so he proceeded to teach me a couple of knock-knock jokes as well.
-Beer is cheaper than diet coke at some restaurants.
-When the mail arrives at CIMAS (the school) everyone gets really excited and runs around handing out any letters and packages. It felt like Christmas when I received a wonderful letter from E. Jach today!
-I purchased "Little Miss Sunshine" in Spanish for $3 but it has a different name.....
-Nora and I walk daily to and from school and along the way are many little stores, all selling mostly the same things. The big news was that the tiny store close to our building sells phone cards and the lady that works/runs the store is great.
-In 2000, Ecuador adopted the US dollar, however, they have their own coins including a very useful 50 cent silver piece.
-Ecuador has a special type of mango that is palm-size and amazing.

roses

we went to Cayumbe, which is north of Quito and known for its huge rose industry. we toured one of the plantations and it was incredible to see how much work goes into exporting roses....

Perrito!

We went to the house of an indigenous leader in Cuyambe and they had this puppy. They made an incredible lunch and they served Cuy (guinea pig) along with other Ecuadorian dishes such as potatoes with salsa de mani, which is a peanut sauce.

Flower Plantation

Minga

Cayumbe

Los barcos

Sunset in San Vicente

El hielo

La Playa

San Vicente

Carnaval

The weekend before lent is Carnaval…a huge celebration and a couple extra days of vacation. Some friends and I headed to the Coast to join the majority of Ecuadorians who travel to the beaches for this holiday. We stayed in a small beach town called San Vicente and shared Hotel Vaccacion’s last room….four beds and six girls…but it was great and fun to see a new part of Ecuador. After spending about ten hours on the bus on Saturday we tried to buy tickets for the return trip on Tuesday, but the only option was a Monday night ticket. On Sunday we took a short ride to Canoa for a day at a beautiful and very crowded beach. I bought some ridiculous blue sunglasses and we tried the water from a coconut (which felt very tropical and holiday-appropriate). The water was almost bathtub warm and felt amazing with the intense sun. There were all sorts of vendors including snow-cone cups made from blocks of ice and a hand crank. On the bus back to San Vicente I made friends with a huge family from Guayaquil enjoying time together at the beach. I was standing next to the Abuelo and before I knew it they took my picture next to him and told me that it was for their vacation album. When I got off the bus the kids and I blew kisses back and forth even though I had known them for approximately 20 minutes. Nora, Grace, Becca, Nora Skelly and Allie had applied copious amounts of sunscreen, but still ended up with bright red burns….and I even got a little burned which may have been my first ever. That evening the other girls returned to Canoa for dinner, but Nora and I stayed to walk around San Vicente, eat at a local restaurant and read. Allie ended up getting really sick from something they ate, which put a damper on the trip and kept her from doing much on Monday.
The next morning we took the motorboat ferry across the bay to Bahia, which is another smallish town packed with people for Carnaval. Part of the celebration includes squirting people with water guns, so I definitely got wet a couple times. Right before we left for the 9 pm bus it started to pour, so we made our way through the muddy streets to the station. The bus was pretty rickety and our window did not shut, so the ride was cold and damp. Also, it was so full that people were standing in the aisle and one guy brought a plastic stool and plopped it right next to Nora and I, which made it kind of awkward to fall asleep. But we finally made it back to Quito around 5 am and I happily crawled into bed for a few hours of sleep.
I spent Tuesday with my host family and we went to a park to play soccer with some cousins and friends. The friends have a six-month-old baby named Nicholas and I was trusted to be his car seat while we sped over speed bumps and windy roads outside of Quito. Overall it was fantastic to get to meet my first Ecuadorian baby and we all had dinner together in celebration of the holiday.

Tena

On Thursday, Nora, Allie, Emily, Jenny and I took the six-hour bus ride to Tena in the Oriente region. It was very hot and humid, although less oppressive at night. The town is about 20,000 people and attracts tourists for its white water rafting and access to the Amazon. We were supposed to meet the social worker (my supervisor for the internship and possible host mother) at the terminal, but she was not there and did not answer her phone. After finding a place for dinner we located a hostel and were excited to find cable TV. Around 11:00 we heard a knock at the door and it was Rocio asking for what sounded like “siza” so we figured out she was looking for Souza. She was so relieved to find us and apparently she had called all the hostels in town asking for five American girls. She is super friendly and she hugged and kissed us as if we were her long lost relatives.
The next morning she took us to the Tena hospital, which is a public hospital for the entire province. She has been working there for 14 years and is an incredible person…I feel very lucky to have the chance to shadow her, both in the community and in the hospital. She gave us a tour and she knew everyone….and greeted them with the customary kiss on the cheek. The hospital is very basic and it was very full with people, especially women and babies, waiting to be seen. The maternity floor was incredible and she brought us into the rooms with the new mothers and surgical patients to meet the doctors and nurses. After our tour we took a bus to the next town over to see the hospital in Archidona where Nora and Jenny were supposed to intern. Unfortunately, nobody told them it is a private hospital, which basically meant there were more nuns and doctors than patients. I could see the disappointment on their faces, especially after spending time at the other hospital. Nora and I had looked forward to the idea of being close to one another, but at different sites, however we are going to talk to the internship coordinator about switching because Archidona is not a viable option. After rushing around and looking at the homes of possible home-stay families we boarded the bus for the long trip home to Quito.

Quito at Night

llapingachos

Last night, for our Spanish class, part of the homework was to prepare a typical Ecuadorian dish with our families to share with the class. Nora’s mom brought us to the Supermaxi, or supermarket, for the first time and it was kind of overwhelming, especially in the fruit section. My assignment was to make llapingachos, which are sort of like latkes, but instead of shredding the potatoes, we mashed them. My host mom was kind of caught off-guard and did not expect to spend the evening making something unfamiliar, but the whole family ended up joining in. We peeled potatoes to salsa music and talked about the upcoming holiday, the latest novela (soap-opera) and native foods / fruits of Ecuador. The seven-year-old, Pedro, alternatively worked on his homework and corrected my Spanish, while Maria Gracia made hand-made valentine’s day cards… This morning we got up at 6:00 to finish the dish and I was pretty frantic and ended up jogging to school with the Tupperware full of llapingachos and made it just in time. For lunch, everyone shared their dish and the recipe with the class and it was great to try such a variety of Ecuadorian dishes.

Baños

We had a three-day-weekend, so I traveled to a town called Baños with Nora, three other Grinnell girls, Rebecca, Nora Skelly and Allie, as well as another girl on our program, Grace. The bus ride was about three and a half hours and was excruciating because Nora and I had to pee for almost the entire time. Vendors kept jumping on and trying to sell food and gum and one man tried to sell love poems and advice. The ticket-taker on the bus made me nervous by hanging out the door while we drove extremely fast along curvy mountain roads…but we managed to make it to Baños. The town was extremely touristy, but also very beautiful with opportunities to hike, bike and spend time outside. We managed to get a room in a great hostel with six beds and private bathroom very close to everything in town. The first day we took a hike that overlooked the city and an amazing graveyard.


Early on Saturday we went to the volcanic hot springs and got there before the tourist rush. There were three main pools at different temperatures and we had a great conversation with an Ecuadorian couple whose daughter is studying abroad in Italy. Later that day, Nora, Allie and I took an incredible 22 KM bike ride along a road following a river through the mountains. We had to ride through a pitch-black tunnel through a mountain and we honestly felt like we were going to die….but luckily the rest of the ride was much less scary. We passed fantastic waterfalls and eventually came to a trailhead where we parked the bikes and hiked to a suspension bridge and a massive waterfall. We put the bikes in the back of a truck and climbed in with three Australian travelers to head back to town. We found this great back-packer’s café in town, which had a book exchange, funky art, a fireplace and great food for reasonable prices. Sleeping in the hostel was like a huge sleepover and it was great taking a break from the big city.

On Sunday we bought / sampled some of the famous hand-pulled taffy before getting on a very crowded bus back to Quito. Nora and I got ripped off on the taxi from the terminal to our apartment building and paid more for a ten-minute ride than the ticket all the way to Baños. Anyway, it was wonderful to see my family in Quito again and I spend part of the evening helping Pedro sort international soccer cards while watching the Ecuadorian equivalent of Dancing with the Stars…

el mercado

Our class took a trip to visit an indigenous market in Saquisili, which is a couple hours by bus outside of Quito. We went first to the animal market and I felt like such an intruder / tourist because our huge group stuck out. We then had a chance to divide into smaller groups, walk around and observe the negotiations about the animals. We talked to one man about his llamas and found out that they cost between $70 and $100. The highlight was when an elderly, tiny indigenous woman approached me and asked me where I was from, and was super excited that we were interested in the market. Afterwards we went to the town central and there were large market areas for food, clothing and random stuff (including old plastic baby dolls. We had some time to wander around and I walked with one of the program directors of CIMAS, named Emilia, who pointed out all sorts of imteresting fruits, spices and foods. She bought and had us try a fruit called Chirimoya which was green on the outside and white on the inside with black seed pods...it was incredible. I bartered for a woven bag and got the price down a couple of dollars, but it was overwhelming because there were so many vendors and styles and colors. It was incredibly hot and I loved being there...so much to see and people to watch and talk to.... We had lunch at a finca (farm) where they made all of their own dairy products and amazing juice. I sadly discovered that I lost one of my favorite earrings...one of the pearl ones from mom...so it is somewhere in the market or maybe cought on some llama on a finca somewhere in Ecuador....

events...

-Nora and I ran for the first time since coming to Ecuador and with the altitude, less than 15 minutes felt like 30.
-During the run there was a man walking four goats....
-For my host mom's birthday I bought the most incredible bouquet of roses for $6....flowers are a major export here and are much, much cheaper than they are in the U.S.
-Tomorrow we are leaving Quito for the day at 6:15 am to visit an indigenous market, which I am incredibly excited about...
-The internship worked out, so it looks like I will be in the Oriente in a town called Tena working with a social worker in and around a hospital....I am still waiting on more details...

amor y abrazos

Vista

Mitad del Mundo!

Friday night, around eleven, Nora’s family had some friends over and invited me to come up and join them for tacos and dancing….but on the way up I set off the alarm, woke up the yapper dog and abuelita and managed to lock myself in our apartment until Nora rescued me. Our host moms tired to teach us to salsa and kept offering Tequila shots…they are amazing dancers and were surprised when we wanted to go to bed around 2:30…..

Saturday morning, Nora’s mom stayed home because she was suffering from chuchaqui (the Quichua word for hung-over)…so, her host dad, siblings, my family and a neighbor, Diego, went on an adventure to el Mitad del Mundo…or the middle of the world, equatorial line and namesake of Ecuador. The place was super touristy, but it was fun to go with real Quitorianos and we took some fun pictures…they also had afro-Ecuadorian dancing from the coastal region. We then drove to a protected area with an incredible valley and breath-taking view. On the way home, we stopped at a restaurant serving Ecuadorian food, which is always interesting…Nora and I ordered a dish which ended up being corn on the cob with a salty cheese on the side and we tried a type of juice made from corn. The evening included reading the lonely planet guide and thinking about possible trips within the country, teaching the host siblings to play “Go Fish” and watching part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Spanish…

Niños

This group of preschoolers were visiting the Basilica at the same time…on the steps outside they sang a song for us and we reciprocated with a Spanish song about little birds and they knew the song too, so they sang it back to us. It made my day to have this brief interaction…

Basilica

Native Ecuadorian birds instead of gargoyles….

Tour de Quito

The tour of Quito was incredible...we went to the Basilica del Voto Nacional and it has the tallest towers in Latin America, so we climbed to the top via hundreds of stairs and ladders...it was the wrong day to wear a skirt. The gift shop had packets of postcards from maybe the late ´70s, which are hilarious. We ended up back at the Museo de la Ciudad where I had been with my family on Sunday, only this time I could actually understand the tour guide. pictures to come....

Ciao

Friday...the end of the second week. Today we have a field trip with the class to check out some places around Quito. I think we are headed to a museum, some historic churches and to a market. Buen fin de semana! xoxoxoxoxoxo