Abuelita's 91st birthday!

Yesterday was pretty busy. When I got back home from classes there was a party at my house for my grandma's birthday! There were a ton of relatives here, plus my sister and her husband who will now be living here! I really like them.
Unfortunately I missed the mariachi band that came, but it was still pretty fun. People were here until about 8:30 pm. We had coffee and cake at about 7 pm and my brother Esteban brought cuye (guinea pig) for my grandma. She really likes it!

The above is cuye, teeth and all.

Mucho que hacer!

Ahhhh... i realized today that I have way to much to do! Well, I have been procrastinating on homework, but I have a lot of planning to do for next semester as well!
I'm volunteering in the mornings on Mondays and Wednesdays at the orphanage which is great.
I have to get my Brazilian and Chilean Visas relatively soon... I also have to start figuring out what I'm doing in Peru and Chile...
Hmm..
Tonight I will have a new addition to my host family! My mother has a daughter who is married in Buenos Aires who is coming tonight and staying for about 2 months. My mother is having surgery on something and needs help around the house so she is coming. Her name is Susana Margarita and her husband is Juan Carlos.
Tomorrow is my grandmother's birthday, she will be 91 and apparently it is going to be a crazy fiesta. The tradition is pata de cerdo - pig's feet. I will be passing on that one. It is also going to be a surprise for her for Susana Margarita to be here.
This weekend are the elections for the asemblea in Ecuador.. similar to a congress. They will be creating a brand new constitution for the country---most ecuadorians who i've talked to don't think this will change anything. Anyways, 3 days surrounding the election NO ONE in Ecuador can drink any alcohol or they will be arrested. I asked my ecuadorian friend what kind of law this was and he said things have always been like this and he thought it was kind of a stupid law, but voting here is obligatory and maybe the government doesn't want the people to be drunk or hungover when they vote. It's a little strange!
Well, I'm off to work on a project!

Baños!

This weekend was so great and so awful at the same time!
My friends Erin, Anna, and I left from Quito to Baños at about 4 pm on Friday. It was about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride with some gorgeous scenery on the way! The busride was about $3.30 or something each way. Let me also explain something. The buses/driving in general in Ecuador is a little insane. You know in the U.S. when you want to pass a slow driver, you wait until you have plenty of room or a view of the road in front of you to go into the other lane and pass? That is not how it is in ecuador. As drivers are going around curves, without even looking, they will pass. Day or night. Oncoming traffic or no. I still haven't gotten used to it and I'm pretty sure I've nearly died several times. Any way...
We got settled into Baños at about 8 pm at this really lovely hotel called Casa Blanca. The woman who owns it is super cute! $9 per night with a great breakfast included! Once we got settled in we walked around Baños a little which is a very small town. We got dinner at this little italian restaraunt which was delicious! Garlic bread, fettucine alfredo, and a drink for about $4.50. It definitely hit the spot. Afterwards we went to a bar called Bassbar or something which was pretty dead. We each got a drink. It was pretty hillarious because the bartender was also a dj and played some pretty old school American music from the 80s and 90s including three will smith songs from Big Willie Style, one of my first ever cds. The strangest thing about the bar was the dead eagle hanging from the ceiling spinning in circles with one of the dance lights. At about 11:30 we decided to go to bed, we were all pretty exhausted from the bus ride.
We woke up at 7 am to eat breakfast and figure out what we should do. There ended up being a travel agency right across the street so we decided to go canyoning through them. This is the same as repelling down waterfalls... it's awesome. It was $20 for 5 waterfalls. Our guides name was Frankie. We had all the gear; wet suits, helmets, kneepads, safety harnesses, etc. For some reason I recieved a full body suit. It was the most awkward thing ever. We had a bit of a hike before the waterfalls and it was sooo hard! My suit had so much resistance in it, it was like it was pushing my legs back to being straight the whole time. But it ended up working out fine and it was sooo much fun! It wasn't scary or anything and the weather was beautiful!




At the end of the waterfalls we slid down this rock slide and off a jump into the water. It was a little confusing at first because another guide who met us at the end was like, just put your feet up and go! in spanish ofcourse, but it seemed really awkward. anyways, we all did it and ended up all wiping out into the water after the jump, but it was pretty hillarious.
After canyoning we headed back to town and Frankie showed us to a restaurant called cafe good. And like the name said, it was good. I got a stirfry thing that was delicious.
Erin had to leave on saturday so we walked her to the bus station at about 2pm. Afterwards, Anna and I walked around town for a while and I bought a scarf for $2. We went to dinner at a delicious restaraunt called Casa Hood. They had a lot of vegetarian food. Afterwards we went on a Chiva, party bus, to the Volcano Tungurhua above Baños. We went with one of the other tour guides named Javier. Once we got to the top of the mountain it was like a reunion of Chivas! About 10 of them! We recieved a brief history of the volcano and then were given hot wine and watched a fire thrower show. It was a good time. We returned to Quito and went dancing with Javier and his friend Angel. It was super hot inside and it was full of smoke. My clothes smell disgusting! But it was fun... minus Javier trying to hit on me... and Angel for Anna. But, we managed to have fun. The day in general was amazing!
We left at about 2 am to wake up at 7 the next day.
For some reason when Anna and I woke up we were already feeling lazy. We had breakfast and it was delicious, and we decided to go bike riding. We rented bikes $5 to got along a trail where you get to see a bunch of waterfalls. We only brought two dollars extra with us for the bus back. We began our bike ride which we heard was all the way down hill. We turned where there were signs and to our surprise it was a giant neverending hill! Anna fell off her bike and we couldn't stop laughing plus we were exhausted so we decided to walk the hill. We probably went up about 1 1/2 miles and passed a waterfall but the hill was not ending and we were so tired and discouraged. We decided to go back down only to realized we had turned the wrong way. We continued along the REAL trail still a little irritated and unable to fully appreciate the beauty that surround us. Our bikes were pretty old and crappy and we kept having problems with them. After a couple waterfalls we both decided we didn't need to continue the next 20 miles or whatever it was. We had read and had been told it was pretty easy to catch a bus or truck back to Baños. We tried for 15 minutes and nobody would pick us up... so we rode to the next waterfall... buses and trucks would go by, no one would pick us up.
This is anna... we were upset...
We rode some more... on and on until we got to a pretty busy waterfall area where you had to walk to the falls. We decided, why not, let's go walk to the falls. We walked a while and realized it costed money to see the falls! But we only had enough to get home! Things kept going wrong. A woman told us we could catch a truck for 1.50 but if we rode 10 more minutes we could get a bus/truck for 1 dollar at the next waterfall. We decided to be cheap. When we got there, there were no trucks nor buses and no one would pick us up! It started raining... we were miserable, but it was sort of hillarious at the same time... finally, a merciful bus driver stopped and let us onto the bus 20 minutes later. It was a gift from God. Once we got back and on to the bus back to Quito we were so tired but happy that we were on our way back to the city!
Baños is a great place and I loved it. So many things didn't go our way on the bike ride though, so it was too bad it ended on a sour note! But i had a great weekend and when i got home some extended family came over and we had cake and coffee and I really felt good about my spanish!
I have some homework to do this week and I'm going to volunteer tomorrow!

Oh, one other hillarious thing we saw in Baños was a garbage truck with ice cream truck cirus music playing to let people know to take out the trash. And it worked!

orfanato

Today was my first real day working at the orphanage. It´s run by an American couple, but I haven´t really met them yet. It is completely staffed with Ecuadorians. The kids ages range from 0-3 years old with a few teenagers. Most of the kids have disabilities; i.e. parapalegic, down sydrome, cerebral palsy, ect.
Today I worked with the babies. By the way, the orphanage is really nice... I was put into a room with 5 babies ranging from 1 month to 1 1-2 years old. They were very cute. One girl, amelia would not stop crying unless you held her. It was a bit difficult at first because the newborn julia alicia was crying and i was trying to juggle in between the two without upsetting either too much.
The kids definitely range in temperament, some are super happy and quiet while others like Amelia are not so happy. I think I want to volunteer 2 times a week. The orphanage is not in the best neighborhood and I have to take a really random bus to get there, so I think 2 days a week will be enough. plus the kids can be a handful.
I´m excited to start this volunteering though, it will be good to have a mix of school, fun traveling, and helping out in the community.
I had two quizzes in class this week which were pretty easy because i did the readings...
Ciao!

Volcanes y lodo

Ahhh, Sunday felt like 3 days! I woke up at 2:30 am to get ready for my trek to the volcano Pinchincha. My class met near the mexican embassy at 3:30 and from there we took about 8 different SUVs to Pinchincha. I was in a car with 3 other people. It was absolutely impossible to sleep on the way up, the road was absolutely terrible! A truck in front of us got stuck 4 times and had to be pushed!
We finally got to Pinchincha at about 5 am. We had to park a little further down than the rest of the people because our car got stuck. We had to hike about 3/4 of a mile up and it was sooooo hard, for everyone! We all had to take about 6 breaks becuase of the altitude, plus it was absolutely freezing and you couldn´t see anything because it was so dark and foggy. We made it to the top and rested for about ten minutes and then hiked a bit more to an area overlooking the crater. I love our Professor Theo.. on the way up to the 2nd point he was making us spell Pinchincha...for example. ¨Give me a P! Give me an I! and so on¨ it wasn´t as hard the second time. Then we sat and Theo gave a little talk about Pinchincha and how to prevent disasters in Quito ect. Pinchincha is actually 5 volcanoes, but 4 of them are extinct.
Unfortunately, there were too many clouds/fog to see anything, when there was supposed to be a spectacular view of Colombia and the entirity of Ecuador... oh well. All we could see was about 10 feet in front of us as we sat there freezing. It was an experience though..

We left Pinchincha at about 7 and then headed back to Quito. From Quito at about 9:30 am we took a bus to Papallacta. I took the best nap ever on the bus. We made a stop near the volcano where it was raining a bit to take some rock samples. Afterwards we hopped back on the bus to go to a different site. We got to this forest area and started hiking through the woods. It was amazing. Our professor theo pretty much just created his own path. We climbed up walls of mud using only tree branches to hold on too, and down and into the river and on trees, it was insane. It was so fun... i don´t really know how to describe it. We did this for about 2 hours I´d say? there weren´t too many bugs, just a few painful prickly plants and a lot of mud. By the end of it we were all covered in mud. Thank God I bought those hiking boots! they saved my life and my feet! Here are some pictures that show some of papallacta


After the forest we hopped on the bus again to go to a waterfall. Theo decided it was too dangerous to hike to it because the current of the river was too strong and instead we took some rock samples. I was secretly glad we didn´t go because by that point I was freezing!!
At that point, we had a choice to go to the hot thermal springs or back to Quito. Of course I chose the baños termales! They were absolutely amazing! It cost $6 to get in and there were all sorts of different temperatures of pools. It was extremely relaxing. We left at 6:30 and arrived in quito at about 8:30.
By that time I was completely exhausted, so I ate a bowl of soup and went to bed.
It was an absolutely amazing day. Unfortunately I don´t have photos of Papallacta, my camera would not have survived the mudslides that occured there.
Now I actually have to do some homework. I don´t have even close to the amount of homework I had in madison but i have a couple papers due next week that I should get a start on.

Buenas Noches y Buenos Dias

Ahhh.. last night was pretty fun.. My friends Alex (ecuatorian), Anna, and I went to La Mariscal and just chatted. We went to three different bars including one called strawberry fields forever where everything is the beatles theme. It was very nice. Thismorning Anna and I headed to downtown Quito... on the trolli there we met two girls from England who were really nice and they joined us around the city. We met up with two of their friends in Plaza Grande/Plaza de Independencia and we headed towards the basillica. It was absolutely beautiful.. some interesting images, like llamas and aardvarks instead of gargoyles, and the white preists baptising the indigenous people on the walls... but all in all it was really great. A lot of beautiful stained glass. It was quite the hike to get up to the top, but the view was definitely worth it. We went up two different towers including a clock tower. I didn't like the clock tower that much because it was really new compared to the rest of the church which was gothic. I think it said the clocks were built in 1993? After the Basillica we went to lunch at a nice little place in el centro and then we walked down the oldest street in Quito! It was a great day full of surprises! Now I somehow have to get up at 3 am and be energized for a day of hiking up volcanoes!

Chiva

This week hasn´t been too eventful. I´ve had class, I obtained my censo card that is pretty much just another form of identification for me in Ecuador.. my picture for the censo card is the absolute worst picture ever! I wasn´t really ready for the photo, and before I knew it, the man had already taken it which resulted in me looking seriously ill in my photo. Oh well.
I went to a movie earlier in the week called Perfume.. it was a strange movie.. it´s based on a book and it has a generally good story, but it´s very interesting...not what I expected.
Yesterday was pretty hillarious.. I had class until 5:30 and then I met up with a few friends to go to this club called Gia. It has a really shady entrance in a side of a concrete wall. It was an american girl´s birthday so she rented a Chiva, which is a double decker party bus. When we arrived, the Chiva looked more like a dump truck with decorations on it. We all decided to go on top and the Chiva drivers provided us with ecuadorian flags, whistles, and shot glass necklaces. We drove around town for about half an hour with music blasting and a bus full of gringos and then ended back at Gia. It was pretty hillarious. I tried to capture it as best as I could with my camera, but i really didn´t do it justice.

Gia was a strange club... it was supposed to be ladies night where we drank and got in for free, but we missed it i guess. Then the guys were seperated, literally caged off from the girls until midnight... the club´s layout was pretty chic, but its not my favorite, and it was really expensive. I think the guys had to pay $12 just to get in?
Tomorrow I may be going to mindo, where there is a cloudforest, otherwise i´ll walk around the centro (downtown) all day. Then on Sunday, I´m going to two volcanoes! We leave at 3 am for Pinchinca, where you can see pretty much all of ecuador from the top... and then at 9 am we go to Papallacta, where very nearby are some thermal springs that we will enjoy after our investigations.. It should be really fun and my professor for volcanologia is absolutely hillarious.
I also bought a soccer ball today on the street so I can start practicing! yay!
Well, I miss you all and I´ll try to take more pictures and keep up with this blog!

Domingo, Aerobicos...

Today was pretty laid back.. I did aerobics in the park for an hour in the morning and then just hung out around here... did some reading. Later in the day I went with my family and Marcelo to drive around downtown Quito. I need to go back to walk around... we could only drive because abuelita (my grandmother) was with us and she can't really walk.. she's 90. We were able to take a few pictures though... Here is my host mother Susi, and my brother Esteban

I also saw the president's house... although he doesn't actually live there... and also the Plaza grande that is right in front of it... there are a lot of street artists there... it's in the colonial part of quito. I will go back soon and get more pictures


I was able to call a few of my friends at home which was really nice too.. I really miss Madison! well, tomorrow I have school again.. :( And I have to do some reading... ciao!

My amazing day

Ahhhh... What a great day!
Well first... last night we went to la Mariscal again with some friends and this time the discotech we went to was 10X more fun than the last... first we went to a bar called coffee tree and sat outside and then moved on to a discotech called Bungalow. It was very fun and the music was a lot better. We danced for about 6 hours... haha.
Thismorning, my two friends and i went to Otavalo, a small town famous for it's saturday morning market. It's about 2 1/2 hours away by bus, for $2 each way! On the way there we met a grandfather and his grandaughter and he told us he'd show us to the market and introduce us to his daughter who was 19 and a student at a different university in Quito. So when we got to the town, he introduced us to his whole family, like 7 people, and the custom in ecuador is to kiss people on the cheek when you say hello or goodbye to them, so it was a lot of that.. haha. Anyways, we said goodbye, but Tatiana, his daughter accompanied us all day! It was great! The market was huge and absolutely beautiful and it was great practice for our spanish! I bought a really cute sweater, a bracelet, and a necklace all for $15... it definitely helped to have Tatiana there to barter. I definitely want to go back to Otavalo, because they had a lot of amazing things i still want to buy.
THIS IS THE BEST PART! We were walking through the market and suddenly there was all this commotion and we were running through tents to a big crowd... what for?? The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa was at the market standing 5 feet in front of us! He said, "hola chicas" to us!!! hahaha, it was pretty amazing! My friend anna has a picture of him, which I will obtain later to put up.

Later, our group, without the president, unfortunately... had lunch. It was really fun and we are definitely going to hang out with our new friend Tatiana again someday.
The bus ride home was quite interesting...it took a lot longer than we thought it was going too... and we really had no idea what we were doing... but we survived.. and literally the cutest baby ever was on the bus, so that was fun!
Any way, today was a great day... I'll keep you all updated!
Miss you all!

pictures...

After too much time, I have put some images up... don't worry more will come. The first two are pictures of my very nice school, similar to laguna beach. And the last picture is a view from the park by my house, parque de la carolina. Everywhere you go you can see mountains.
I'm not sure if I already wrote this, but I ended up not liking my communications class, so I switched to Volcanology. It's the best class ever!
The professor is hillarious and we get to take at least 5 field trips, with a lot more optional ones to different volcanoes around Ecuador!
This weekend I might be going to Otavalo, a market town about two hours away.. it's about $2 for a two hour bus ride... I also still need to see the downtown of Quito!

By the way... tourist guides say that quito is divided in between the new town and colonial town... that's not really reality.. it just makes it easier for tourists to grasp the giant city. "old town" and "new town" are only a small part of Quito.

Hmmm... what else. I've made some Ecuatorian guy friends.. one of them, Alex, gave me and some other girls a ride home from school today which was really nice because i had class until 5:30 and it gets dark by 630 because of the mountains. I'm going to hang out with them tonight, so that'll be fun...
Well, I'll take more pictures and write more tomorrow!
Ciao!

Buenas noches

Today was pretty busy. I ended up not being able to understand the professor for my com class so i dropped it and switched to volcanology... best decision ever. We take a lot of field trips with optional ones too.. to diff volcanoes around the country. The professor is very nice and very funny. The class even gets done early because we get so much work done on weekends!
When I got home I was starving because I didn't have time to eat lunch, I had classes for 6 hours straight! So my host mother had soup ready for me, and then rice, salad, potatoes, juice, tea... I love my family!
Well, i need to do homework. I promise I'll put up pictures soon!

Second week of School

This weekend was pretty exciting...
On Saturday night, two other Americans and I ran/walked in the Correo de las Iglesias, a marathon through the city of Quito. It was very fun, although my lungs were burning like crazy when I was running. I´m still not adjusted to the altitude here. There were 5,000 people participating in the marathon and A LOT of crowd support. It was pretty cool.
Afterwards, we went with my family to the movie theater and saw rush hour 3... I didn´t like it very much, but my host mother and her boyfriend did.
Sunday morning my host mom and I walked around the park and did the aerobics in the park! It was a lot of fun! There is a little hill with the instructors and music and about 200 people of all ages around the hill doing the aerobics. I definitely want to do it every weekend. Sunday afternoon we had an invitation to my host mother´s other son´s apartment. We had coffee, tea, and dessert. It was really fun, although there was a lot of talk about politics. It was my mom, her enomorado, my brother Esteban, Miguel (other brother), Miguel´s wife Maria del Lourdes, her sister, mom, and Romina, the 2 year old daughter of Miguel and Maria de Lourdes. There is a vote for a government assembly coming up which will then compile a new constitution. Most people don´t really like the idea and aren´t going to vote... there has been a lot of instability in Ecuador with the government... 11 presidents in 15 years or something like that. The president right now, Correa, actually used to be a teacher at my school Universidad San Francisco de Quito. He is a Leftist and is buddies with Chavez and the Bolivian president, which the US probably doesn´t like too much since Hugo Chavez insults president bush all the time, calling him things like The devil or a donkey... So far people seem to like Correa though, so that´s good.
My rash is pretty much gone, so that´s good news..
The food is very good... lots of it too. Soup, salad, sandwiches, rice, beans, eggs, lots of juice, bananas, we had chinese food yesterday... there is a lot of variety.
Well, I´ve got to go! Miss you all!

My Semester so far!

Ahhh... I love Ecuador so far! My family is awesome... My brother Esteban, 24 is a really nice guy. My mother, Susi, is very funny and helpful and likes to dance a lot. And my grandma is 90 years old! But she is super cute and very active!
My house is pretty amazing. All the floors are wood and on the first floor there is a dining room, living room, kitchen, 2 bathrooms and Esteban´s room and a balcony. On the second floor are 3 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms, including mine. They have a lot of cool paintings in their house, hot water (thank God!) and internet! Yay!
My university is definitely not what I expected... it´s very much like Laguna beach... Marble floors, spiral staircases, fountains, a pagoda for yoga, and a lot of very wealthy snobby ecuatorian kids. But it´s the best university in Ecuador and there are plenty of friendly people!
I like my classes so far too! I´m taking:
1. Ecology and Conservation in the Galapagos (we take a ten day trip to the galapagos at the end of the semester)
2. Rural Sociology
3. Social problems in Ecuador
4. The boom in Latinoamerica (literature class)
5. Contemporary Art and Communications (looks really cool, we get to watch a bunch of great films, i.e. high fidelity)
All of my classses are in spanish and I haven´t had a hard time comprehending anything.. so it´s great!
I did break out in an allergic reaction to something yesterday morning, so I have bumps all over my body, but I went to the doctor and I´m taking benadryl for it, so hopefully it will go away soon.
Last night I went out to La Mariscal... it´s where all the bars are. The locals call it ¨Gringolandia¨which is like foreign-white people land. All the foreigners go to the bars there. It is a really cool area. I went with 3 Ecuatorian guys and 2 other american girls to a discotech called Movida. It was fun. They listen to a lot of American music, but there is also a large range of Spanish music... pop, reggaton, etc.
So, I love it here.. i will put up pictures soon! I miss all of you at home though!!