cusco and the sacred valley

its been nice to set the backpack down for a while. after spending one night in the hostal with a couple friends, they no longer had space and i moved way up the hill to Home Sweet Home, an adorable little hostal/bed and breakfast in the san blas (artsy) neighborhood of cusco. it has an incredible view of the city and is a great escape from the herds of tourists roaming the center below, the ladies who everywhere you turn are offering ¨excuse me miss, massage please? maybe later...¨ and the bazillions of people trying to sell you souvenirs. the ladies that work here are wonderful and there has been a fun group of people to hang out with.

Inti Raymi was cool to experience, but in reality just overwhelming with the huge crowds. i had a good view for the part that was performed at the plaza de armas, but the main act was held at saqsaywamán, some ruins up the hill and unless you paid the $90 for a seat in the arena you really couldn´t see anything from up on the hill. i´m still glad i came because it was interesting to see the costumes and experience the event.

since then i have just been hanging out and exploring the city and area. on saturday afternoon i went out into the sacred valley to visit some of the villages and ruins. i just went with the flow and ended up exploring the ruins of pisac with some french people i got off the bus with, which i wasnt planning to do. traveling alone is so much fun because it opens doors to meeting people that are harder to find when traveling with other people. on sunday morning i wandered around the market and made friends with a little boy who was begging by giving him half of the orange i was eating. i met an older couple from australia over coffee and ended up sharing a taxi with them to the next town because we were all headed that way. i explored the ollantaytambo ruins with doug then wandered around town and hung out in the central plaza. i love to just sit in parks and people watch and be outside. i spend a lot of time doing that.

the next morning i went back to a place called heart cafe where i had eaten dinner the night before. it was founded by a british woman who has been doing development work with women in the area for many years and all the profits go to support the projects. she happened to be there, so i joined a group of young women who were chatting with her. it was inspiring to hear about some of her experiences, especially in the context of my studies in global development. the other girls were going to a theater performance, similar to inti raymi but ollantay raymi, which was performed on the terraces of the ruins. it was so much better than inti raymi because we were sitting right there, barefoot on the grass enjoying the perfect weather and the performance. it was a perfect afternoon. i made plans to go bungie jumping with a couple of the girls on friday!

the past few days i have been exploring museums around cusco that are included on the tourist ticket i had to buy to get into the ruins. although i am not much of a museum person, it has given me something to do and experiences i would not have had otherwise. the contemporary art museum i went to today was nice and had some awesome photographs.

i have also met up with a couple grinnellians who are here! random but fun! in the past 24 hours i have run into everyone i have met in cusco or knew was maybe here. its got a nice small town vibe in that you see the same people over and over.

my sis, puki and her friend remi get here tomorrow! well, they are probably on a bus heading to cusco from lima right now! i am so excited to see my sis! it has been far too long...

next up: bungie jumping and machu picchu!

the journey of death

so about a week and a half ago i decided to go cusco for Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun.

its been a looooooooong past 56ish hours. summary: depart salta, argentina at 7am on sunday morning. salta to calama=12 hours. calama=waiting 3 hours. calama to arica=10 hours. arica=waiting 2 hours bc the border doesn´t open until 8am. arica to tacna=sketchy car ride for a couple hours. tacna=i find out there are no buses from there to cusco and probably none from arequipa to cusco. the strikes in peru have made transportation difficult. tacna to arequipa=7 hours. arequipa=i almost give up because all the bus companies are saying buses are not going to cusco. then just as i was about to go get a hostel and shower i hear someone in the corner shouting CUSCO! i ran over and was like en serio? en serio? and yes, they were going an alternate route leaving at 8:30 pm...supposedly 13 or 14 hours instead of the normal 9 to 11. 19 hours later of winding through the mountains on gravel roads on a crappy bus i made it to cusco!

i hadnt slept in a bed for 2 nights. i smelled. i ate shitty sandwiches with the meat picked off. BUT i´ve made good traveling companions. i´ve laughed. i´ve listed to all the songs on my tiny ipod several hundred times. i´ve slept. i´ve watched bad movies. i´ve contemplated life.

somehow i made it to cusco alive. barely, but alive. 56 hours of travel straight is a bit much. but now im showered, have clean clothes, am full of coca tea. i got a bed in the hostal with friends. so life is good.

today is the festival! im going to enjoy!

thoughts on travel

yes, travel is about seeing things and places. it is about eating new foods. it is about adjusting to new cultures and customs and ways of doing things. it is about meeting new people--both locals and other travelers. it is about sharing experiences. BUT more than anything its about learning how to survive and thrive outside of your comfort zone. it is about meeting each new inevitable challenge with a smile and figuring out how to overcome it. its the moments you realize you are on the wrong bus or you wander into the neighborhood lonely planet said to avoid at all costs. its the little adrenaline rush of being lost or threatened or confused. but somehow it all works out. then you can breath. and what you are left with is the confidence that you can do anything and overcome any challenge. you have a little more faith in the universe and in people and that everything will work out in the end. and then you have a story to tell. because what is a travel story without some challenges and obstacles to overcome?

the other night i was in a hostel in mendoza, argentina and i overheard some girls talking that they had been on this 3 day tour in that place then were heading from there on another 5 day tour to somewhere else and from there they were joining another tour...BORING! they could never get lost. they could never be confused. to me, that just loses the adventure and the real POINT of travel.

brief summary of the past week or so:
-left Chloe and valpo (sad day :( )
-Santiago, Chile- couch surfed (CS) with a sweet girl from Ecuador, went out to a party with a bunch of CSers to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the website, went to a ¨gringo¨ themed party with a guy we had met the night before, checked out some urban agriculture projects with a guy a emailed after coming across his blog.
-Mendoza, Argentina- bike and wine tour with 3 irish guys and a danish girl i met in my hostel, hanging out and resting up to recover from a bit of a cold after many late nights, couch surfing with an incredibly creative and fun guy, enjoying the beautiful autumn like weather!
-Córdoba, Argentina- currently traveling with 2 girls i met in mendoza from germany and denmark, spent the day enjoying the history, art and culture of the city.
-Next stop: Salta, Argentina tonight then i will begin a several day journey heading up to Cusco, Peru in a hurry because i decided to get up there for Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun and Cusco´s biggest festival of the year, which is next week.

I love the freedom of traveling alone!

Abrazos!

awkwardness

witnessing chloes life in valparaiso is incredibly awkward and highly entertaining. highlights of the day:

host mom offers to wash my laundry cheaper than at jumbo (where i washed my laundry when i first got here). i decline bc i hadnt washed my laundry for like a month so i did it before leaving for buenos aires got but now its only been like a week so clearly i dont need to do laundry again...shortly after host grandma offers to sew some clothes for me. i decline saying i dont have anything for her to repair. this all occurs while chloe is at class and i am alone.

in the afternoon i busted out my mate gourd that i bought in buenos aires and while trying to make the tea host mom insists i put rum in it. then host dad arrives and insists i should put marijuana in it. there is no marijuana in the house...that i know of...

everytime host brother enters the room chloe and i make awkward turtle signs with good reason. nobody knows what is going on so we giggle.

host dad thinks it is highly entertaining to teach me the chile chant and every 10 minutes make me do it bc there is a big game today. chi chi chi le le le! Viva CHILE! i changed it to cheese cheese cheese cake cake cake! viva CHEESECAKE bc chloe and i wanted to eat the cheesecake that we made. they laughed at me.

they all laugh at me a lot and usually i have no idea what is going on po. and i thought i understood spanish...lies.

tomorrow i hit the road again. santiago for the weekend where i will couch surf and celebrate the 10th anniversary of couchsurfing with people in Santiago, celebrate the 21st birthday of a friend from grinnell who is studying there, and meet with a guy involved in urban agriculture there. on sunday i will head to mendoza for a few days, then up through northwestern argentina.

Adventures with Chloe

Somehow managed to meet up with Chloe Neely in Santiago, despite getting dropped off of my bus in a huge parking garage terminal that opened into the most confusing shopping mall I have ever seen. There is something to be said for cell phones, but I have really enjoyed living without one the past month or so.

We got to Valparaíso that evening and spent 2 nights there before taking off. I got a taste of Chilean Spanish which is really really hard to understand and made me feel incompetent. I did some laundry and got to catch up with Chloe which was amazing after 6 months apart from my best friend.

On Wednesday we took off by plane for Buenos Aires. This city is incredible. I still can´t put a finger on exactly what it is about it, but the vibe is just good. Its beautiful, its open, its clean, its colorful, its diverse, its liberal (for south america), its quirky, its alive. We met some great people in our hostel in San Telmo the first couple nights. Learned a bit of Tango, the dance that is widely popular in the city, and went out to a Milonga--a social gathering for young people to hang out and tango. We´ve been wandering the city and exploring the sights and tastes and sounds.

Tonight we went out with a guy from Grinnell who is studying abroad here this semester and some of his friends. The empanadas here are awesome!

Pretty sure I will be coming back to Buenos Aires someday soon, maybe to stay a while.

San Pedro de Atacama

The past 3 nights I spent in a small desert town of San Pedro de Atacama, near the Chile/Boliva/Argentina borders. The town is very touristy with about a bazillion tour companies offering the same excursions and another million restaurants with the sameish menu. But it also has a rugged feel about it and is very quite outside of the bustling main drag. We were in a cute hostal with puffy colorful comforters which was by far the cleanest hostal I have stayed in on my travels...particularly impressive considering all the roads are sand and dirt.

Day 1. we arrived after an overnight bus trip and just got ourselves oriented. There are only 2 ATMs in the town and only one that accepts visa, which of course was broken. Ash needed cash so she turned around and went back to Calama. I slept in a hammock at the hostal all afternoon then cooked dinner for us.

Day 2. the plan was to rent bikes and bike out to valle de la luna for sunset but there was a vicious wind storm stirring up sand all over town. bikes got canceled. then we booked a tour to salar de atacama which the company proceeded to cancel on us due to the wind but really because there were only 4 people on the tour because other agencies went. we ran after another group going on a tour to valle de la luna and jumped on the bus with them. worth the trip other than the fact we got utterly abused by the sand and the wind on top of a ridge by a dune where we were watching the sunset.

Day 3. much nicer day. actually went to salar de atacama and saw flamingos in salt flats with the setting sun over the mountains. pretty epic.

Now i´m on my way down to Santiago/Valparaiso. i have a 24 hour bus ride ahead of me which sounds awful, but i actually quite enjoy buses. lots of time to stare out the window, think, sleep, listen to music, read, and stare out the window some more.

And Chloe Neely will be waiting at the station for me! YAY!

Chile

Lake Titicaca was worth the trip, but the side from Puno, Peru is not the most beautiful and not open to the whole big part of the lake which is more or less divided into 3 sections. The people think the shape is like a puma, their sacred animal...I didn´t really see it, but sure. We went out to the floating islands of the Uros people which were created to escape the Spanish invading. They have continued to live on these islands built out of reads that literally float in the lake. Now they are anchored down but its pretty incredible how they continue to live. The material is really cushy and i just wanted to lay on the bed of reeds that is the island and sleep in the sun. It was a very ¨touristy¨ experience but worth it.

From Puno Ash and I got on an overnight bus to Tacna. We were in the front two seats and finally remembered to bundle up. Bus rides always start out a comfortable temperature but somehow end up freezing in the middle of the night. We brought my sleeping bag on board, layered up and snuggled through the night to keep warm. From Tacna we crossed the border into Chile where we have spent the last couple days enjoying the sunny warm weather, enormous sandwiches and huge plates of fries at a place called Roly´s and lounging on the beach.

Tonight we get on a bus to San Pedro de Atacama. There are cool natural things there like geysers and valle de la luna. We´ll see. Chloe Neely, my best friend from Grinnell, is going to be there this weekend with her dad who is visiting. Such luck! i get to see her a few days sooner than expected! Ash heads back to Lima on Sunday then to Quito to fly home. I have 2 months to the day left of traveling!

Peru

Peru is a lot more desert than I expected. Compared to Ecuador it is HUGE! In Ecuador I could get on a but and be pretty much anywhere in a maximum of 12 hours. Here it is a minimum of 12 on bus to significantly change where you are. They still have jungle and mountains and coast like Ecuador, it just take so much longer to see it all.

I met my friend Ashley last Sunday night in a hostal in Arequipa, a small city in southern Peru. At our hostal we met a cool woman named Barbara from London who joined us on an adventure into the canyons. We opted to go on our own, rather than on a guided tour so we could go at our own pace and do what we wanted. The bus ride was longer than expected. The bus company said 6 hours but the last couple hours a bunch of local people piled on to the bus then we had to stop every 10 minutes for people to get off in little villages along the rim. So 6 hours became about 7.5 hours. The next morning we hiked down into Colca Canyon, which is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. It is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. There is an oasis at the bottom of the canyon where we spent two nights in cabins with natural pools just chilling and exploring the river and surrounding area. There is no electricity down there so after dark everyone just went to bed. It was really relaxing to get away from technology and lots of people and rushing for a while.

I got kind of sick with stomach stuff down there so unfortunately had to take a mule out instead of hike. I felt really lame coming up to the top on the mule when all the groups that had left before us that morning had just gotten to the top and were celebrating that they had made it. But I had no energy to climb. I´m starting to feel better and taking a day to relax in the city of Arequipa again. Tomorrow Ash and I will go to Lake Titicaca which is supposed to be beautiful. Unfortunately, its better from the Bolivian side but we can´t go to Bolivia because the US made stupid laws charging Bolivians a lot to enter the US so they did the same and now American citizens need a visa at to pay 130 dollars to enter Bolivia. Not worth it for just a couple days. So we will head out to the islands on the lake and maybe stay there for a couple days? Its awesome not having a fixed schedule!

Cuenca

So I was going to spend a couple days in Cuenca before heading to Peru but because my friend Anna came, 2 days turned into 4 days. Cuenca is a gorgeous city full of Colonial architecture, beautiful churches and plazas and parks. The people are not as bothersome as other places, which at first we thought was unfriendly but then grew to appreciate the lack of harassment because if you initiated a conversation they were incredibly helpful and warm. The indigenous dress was different than in the north--much more colorful and fun, topped off with Panama hats. Panama hats are misnamed because they really come from Ecuador but got exported through Panama. One of our best adventures was visiting some small towns surrounding Cuenca: Gualaceo, Chordeleg and Sigsig. In Sigsig we wandered down a path and ran into an old man who took us to his farm and showed us his cuyes and made us pick strawberries. He was really sweet and not creepy. We then got stalked to the a women´s hat making cooperative my a different creepy man. It was a little ways out of the city so we really didn´t want to walk the 20 minutes back to town alone with him so I distracted him while Anna told the woman there what was going on. The three women working there took care of us, hid us in a back room while watching to see if he had left, fed us apples, flagged down a pickup taxi for us, rode with us up to the bus terminal, told the bus drivers what was going on, and waited until the bus had left for Cuenca. These women were so sweet and incredible. Nothing probably would have happened, but better safe...

I left Cuenca this morning chasing down the bus in a taxi because our jerk of a bus driver from the city to the terminal was not helpful in telling us where to get off and we missed the terminal. Anna headed back up to Quito and I am on my own heading South. A random couple on the bus kind of sheparded me through customs without me asking and we shared a cab ride to Tumbes. I´m glad they were there because I ran into some girls coming across the border from Peru who asked me if there were strikes going on because someone had told them there was and they couldn´t cross. Lies. There was nothing and they had gotten ripped off. But we swapped guide books! which is really lucky for both of us because lonely planet has become a good friend.

Off to Trujillo overnight, then to an Eco Village I found through Couch Surfing that is just North of Lima. I will meet up with my friend Ashley on Sunday and be traveling Southern Peru with her for a few weeks.

Hitting the road!

Rough plans for the next few months (most dates have an “ish” behind them):

May 10—head south on an overnight to Cuenca, possibly with a friend [Anna] from the program who is sticking around Ecuador for a while
May 12—cross into Peru
May 16—meet my friend [Ashley] in Lima, Peru.
May 17-June 1—wander southern Peru with [Ashley]. Lake Titicaca. Sand dunes. Beaches.
June 2—head south to Valparaiso, Chile to meet [neelychl]!!!
June 4-8—Buenos Aires, Argentina with [neelychl]!
July 1—[sissy] arrives in Lima, Peru!
July 6—Machu Picchu with [sissy] and [neelychl]
July 9—start heading back up to Ecuador
July 10-26—Vilcabamba, Guayaquil, Canoa, Quito, Otavalo, Cotacachi, Quito with [sissy] and hopefully [neelychl]
July 27—fly home with [sissy]!

Its been an awesome semester in Ecuador. Saying goodbye to friends was hard because they are what made this such an incredible experience. Fortunately for most of them it was just a "see you later" because I already have plans to see them in the states. Here goes round 2 of South American adventures!

Wrapping up

I've been back in Quito since last Friday working on my monografia, presentation and dozens of other random documents CIMAS wants us to turn in. Also, enjoying the company of my incredible friends here, especially my neighborhood crew of Ashley and Kevin. We all have laptops so we get to hang out working in cool places while our other friends are stuck in the CIMAS building all day. Bringing my laptop to Ecuador was the best decision ever.

So yeah, final presentation on Friday and I pretty much have everything else wrapped up! The semester flew by and was a nice academic vacation. And an amazing adventure.

More on my future adventures coming up soon.

Leaving

Things I will miss about Santa Barbara/Cotacachi/Otavalo:
-Rincón del Sol—$1 best banana splits ever
-Walking to work with cows
-Walking home from Cotacachi into a stunning sunset over the mountains
-Walking to Cotacachi when the music on my ipod matches perfectly with my mood and I feel on top of the world
-Oskar’s pizza!
-The food—it’s all fresh, whole and delicious with a fresh fruit juice at every meal
-My big comfy bed
-Working with my buddy Kevin Keen
-Greeting everyone I pass on the roads in the communities


Things I will not miss about Santa Barbara/Cotacachi/Otavalo:
-Walking home in the rain
-My whiney, screaming, crying, complaining host sisters
-Moscos—not mosquitoes…far worse. They are small and black and their bites itch 10 times more than mosquitoes and leave scars for much longer
-Having to be home by 6:30 everyday because the last bus from Otavalo leaves at 6:30 and its dangerous to walk in the dark—not because of robbers but because you are likely to run into a cow or fall on a rock or be eaten by a dog
-Finding slugs in my shoes, frogs under my shoes and spiders lurking around
-Political campaign songs
-The papa truck that drives around the communities with a loud speaker announcing that it is selling papas (potatoes) at all hours of the day and night
-Getting in trouble with my mom for not greeting people that greet me—friends of hers that I met maybe once or didn’t even meet but saw in the truck when the picked her up once tell her that they saw me and greeted me and I didn’t respond. This happens on a regular basis, but unlike them, I stick out and you could spot me from three blocks away and wave and I would have no freaking clue who it was, if I saw anything because I have taken to ignoring random strangers shouting at me
-Dirty clothes
-Its always cold…not really cold but just cold enough that its not pleasant

Losing and winning

My mom's party lost the elections which means a pretty somber mood in the house. From what I can gather she is not as sad for the fact that she lost herself, but more for the mayor that has been in office in Cotacachi for 12 years is now gone. She and my host dad are pretty bummed, especially because the new mayor is from a neighboring community called Turuco. Turuco and my community, Santa Barbara are currently in a heated conflict over rights to a source of water that is located in Turuco. I don't understand all the details but my dad goes to meetings pretty regularly with lawyers and Turuco keeps doing sneaky, underhanded things like cutting the pipes that Santa Barbara has worked hard to install. So the last few days have been dramatic, sad, emotional and tense in the house.

One good thing that happened was that yesterday I finally accomplished a small project! This is a big deal because it is so freaking hard to get anything done here. I finished making signs with the Spanish, English and Scientific name of all the plants at the vivero I have been working at, as well as the classification of the plant--fruit,reforestation, etc. Small victory for me!

I leave on Friday but have a lot to do before then. Unfortunately, I am waiting for a meeting this afternoon to be able to get started on my mountain of work. Hopefully all goes well and the meeting actually happens!

Politics and Rainbows

The political campaigning is in full swing here with nationwide elections for all levels of government this Sunday. My host mom is a canditate for Consejala Urbana with Pachakutik, the indigenous party that is supposed to be all indigenous people and everyone united. Alas, as always in politics there is division...which here leads to intense rivalries between the communities. I don't quite understand all the details of the history of the split among the indigenous communities, but I do know that it is not pretty. Starting on Friday, the sale of alcohol is banned until after the elections. The most annoying part of the campaigns are the pickup trucks that drive around with loudspeakers mounted on top blasting campaign songs and messages.

Last night my host mom invited me to go to "La cierra de Campana" (Campaign closing festival) in a community. My friend Anna joined me and we rode in the back of a pickup for a couple hours through several communities in a parade of trucks, cars and motorcycles decked out in rainbow flags and posters blasting campaign songs and honking horns. Good times, except that I was about 5 feet behind the loudspeaker that had an invitation to the campaign closing in Cotacachi tonight on repeat for several hours straight. Not so fun...

On Sunday the madness here will all be over. I hope the rainbow flags don't all disappear. They make things prettier around here :)

Rants and thoughts

I am content with life here but I’m actually getting kind of tired living in the middle of nowhere. Last weekend I went back to Quito to meet with my tutor for my monografía and realized that I actually kind of missed it. I’ve never been much of a city person but I’m not sure I could do this much longer either. I like a good small town…this is literally a house on a hill with some other houses nearby. I like the fresh air, the fresh food, and the mountains. I like greeting everyone I pass on the road. But it’s not much fun when it’s raining and you have to walk half an hour in to Cotacachi to have any sort of access to internet, phone cabinas, food or friends. I keep getting asked if I like the life and culture here, and the truth is that I do. At first I liked it a lot better than Quito and would tell whoever asked me that I loved how safe and calm it is here. Now I’m not so sure…they are so different that it is impossible to compare. It’s incredible that within 2 hours you can be living totally distinct lives that really have nothing in common.

There are ups and downs. Yesterday when I was walking home from Cotacachi into a gorgeous sunset over the mountains, I felt totally content with life. It’s a feeling I get in my chest where my heart just feels like it is about to burst with love and peace and ease. Everything just feels right in the world and I feel like I am riding on top of that wave of love. Like I own the world and nothing can stop me. Sometimes it lasts a few minutes or hours, sometimes it comes and goes for days and other times it completely disappears. Over the past few months the feeling has come a lot more frequently than it usually does at Grinnell. I’m in the right place right now even though my experience has been a lot different than I imagined.

One of the downs is the men here. At the vivero where I work three days a week there are several guys in their 20s that work on a bee farming project. In the beginning I was friendly to them but after I got asked by several if I wanted an Ecuadorian boyfriend I just started ignoring them. After a while I felt kind of bad and figured I should give them a chance as friends. Yesterday I wandered over and was chatting about what they were working on. One guy asked if I liked the life in Cotacachi. “Yea, I really like it here,” I responded. Which naturally lead to him telling me I needed to find a boyfriend here so I could move back to stay. To everyone at the vivero I have an imaginary boyfriend, which always brings up the famous Ecuadorian saying that translates roughly to “a long distance relationship makes 4 people happy.” So much for my imaginary boyfriend stopping the incessant flirting on their part. Then yesterday I found out 2 of the most persistent guys are both married, have children and have pregnant wives. I was so disgusted and pissed off to discover that. Please guys, just show a little bit of respect to the women here, especially to your wives.

I have 2 more weeks here which are going to fly by because I have a huge amount of work to get done. Then back to Quito for a week. Then off on round 2 of South American adventures.

Project and life

There is not a lot of exciting news in my life. I’ve settled into a routine here. Get up. Eat breakfast with the family (usually a Colada—fruit or grain soupy thing—of some kind, some sort of bread and eggs). Go to work at either the vivero or Runa Tupari. Come home. Meet up with friends in Otavalo or Cotacachi to use the internet and eat delicious banana splits at Rincon del Sol. Journal. Read. Help with dinner. Eat dinner. Edit some photos. Read some more. Go to bed. Repeat.

I have a project to work on for my monografía. I’m going to do some research on communal agriculture in a community where they are working on developing an agrotourism project. It will be a lot of work to get all the details they need but it will actually be useful and should be pretty interesting. I will be working with a young woman named Marta from another community who is an agronomist which will make it more fun.

Life is good. The last few days I’ve been missing Grinnell people. Trying to figure out classes does not make me all that eager to go back though.

Love to all.

brief update

things i like about life here:
walking to work with cows.
greeting everyone i pass on the road.
the food is always fresh and whole, usually from our garden or a nearby farm.
the most valuable things that get stolen are pigs.

things i don't like about life here:
mosquitos.
my host sisters.
lack of punctuality.
pigs get stolen.

More of life in the campo

I am sore. Life in Quito was lazy…I rode buses, sat in class, ate a lot of bread, hung out, read…here is a completely different world. In the campo (country/rural area) people work, people do everything for themselves, people walk to get places, there are mountains to climb and things to see that you don’t have to be afraid of leaving the house to do. I love it here. Life is calm. Everybody greets each other when they pass walking down the road. Trucks stop to pick up people walking along the road. Today I spent a lot of time walking down the roads totally lost and unable to find my house. It was the first time I didn’t get picked up or dropped off by Runa Tupari people and took the bus from Otavalo. I literally got dropped off on the side of the road and pointed in a direction. I wandered the roads for over an hour not recognizing anything and asking directions. Like I mentioned before, people like to pick a direction and point…eventually I made it home, then promptly left with my host family to go pick choclo (like corn)…more walking to the field. On the way home we stopped at the house of the abuelita (mother of Alfonso) where my family has cuyes (guinea pigs to eat) and chickens where we fed the cuyes leaves from the choclo. My mom accidentally knocked off a cement block from the retaining wall of the cuyes and killed it. They were all very sad, especially my little sister, because they hadn’t planned to kill it today….I don’t quite understand because they would eat it in a few months anyway…

It’s a community—everybody works for themselves and is self-sufficient but at the same time is thinking about the good of their neighbors and how they can help out. Every weekend there are “mingas” which are group projects in which at least one member of each family in the community has to go work or else the water to their house will be cut off. Currently my community of Santa Barbara is working on constructing their own water system because right now they have to buy from a neighboring community. On Saturday I am going to work on the minga with Alfonso, my host-dad here.

A bit more about my family here:
Soledad—another young mom, 30 years old, but at first I would have guessed older. She is currently campaigning to be elected Concejala for the canton in the upcoming elections in April. I don’t completely understand the local political structure yet, but I think her position is similar to a city council member. She is very busy visiting the communities to meet everyone and working for her party in hopes that they win on April 26th. I will be living here through May 1st so I will get to see the whole process. Even though I don’t know much about the other parties and candidates, I am a fan of her party because their logo/flag is a rainbow flag which is by far better looking than the other candidates. I hope they win because the house could get pretty depressing if not.

Alfonso—my host-dad who works the night shift of security at a hotel in Cotacachi, the town about a 20 minute walk from my community. Cotacachi is known for its leather production. I might have to splurge on a leather jacket because I have always wanted one and even though they are expensive here, in comparison to the States they are really cheap and why not buy straight from the artisans that make them? Alfonso cooks when Soledad isn’t around and last night he made a delicious meal…I was impressed. Overall he is pretty quiet and doesn’t talk much unless I ask him questions.

Emily and Sawani—Two little sisters, ages 6 and 8 respectively. These two girls are incredibly dramatic. There is a constant stream of shrieks, giggles, crying, laughing, whining and more shrieking coming from them. It’s going to take while to get used to that after my incredibly well behaved little brothers and sister in Quito. Today I helped my mom with dinner and made Guacamole. Sawani was in the kitchen and criticizing the way I cut onions to Soledad, then complaining that there wasn’t enough salt or lemon even though for me it was super salty and lemony…oh well, I thought it was delicious. The two girls also whisper a lot in front of me and giggle and look at me. It makes me kind of uncomfortable because I can rarely understand what they are saying unless they are speaking directly to me because their voices are so shrieky and whiney. But they are cute and it’s good for me to have the experience of living with younger children.

My work: For the internship I am going to spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday working at a “vivero” or plant nursery which is a project of UNORCAC, the indigenous organization of Cotacachi. Runa Tupari is also a project of UNORCAC which is why the two projects are connected. I will start there this Monday and will write more about that when I know more about what I will be doing. Thursday and Friday I will be in the Runa Tupari offices translating some promotional documents to English, talking to tourists about tours we offer, and going on tours especially to translate when the tourists don’t speak Spanish. As well as working in both these places, the idea is to learn about the fields—local agriculture practices and native plant species and community-based tourism—and hopefully come up with a theme to write my 25 page monografía on relating the two concepts. We’ll see how that goes…

Life is good. Food here is all locally produced, if not produced by the family themselves. Everything is fresh and delicious. I’m going to come back with some new recipes. I made friends with the guide on our hike today, Hektor, who also produces organic agriculture to sell and generally is working to be totally independent and sustainable. I’m going to go work with him when I have time to learn the practices here and see his inventions. He told me about a washing machine he made powered by a bicycle, among several other creations. I can’t wait to go check it out. I have lots to learn from life here.

Life in the Campo!

I live in a very rural area. Like a 20 minute walk from Cotacachi then a 30 minute bus ride to Otavalo where the offices I work in are located.

Today I went on a hike for work. Kevin and I were supposed to go with a French tourist but he never showed up so we ended up just the two of us going with the guide. Hector, our guide is a super cool guy that I had really interesting conversations with about organic agriculture and sustainability with during the drive up. The hike up was difficult, especially since I haven´t really excersised since leaving and because of the altitude. But we made it to the top just after the clouds rolled in so we couldn´t see any of the view. Oh well, good times. The way down was a big game of trying not to slide too much. It resulted in lots of laughter and mud all over my pants...good thing I have to wash all my clothes by hand here.

More about my family and internship later. This is going to be an adventure!

Off to the campo

Today is chaotic, as are many days in CIMAS, but this is the last one for a while. tomorrow we are meeting here at 7 am to go drop everybody off at their internship sites.

i know i will be working with an ecoturism organization.
i know the names of my family, but nothing about them.
i don't know what i will be doing everyday.
i don't know where my community is exactly except that it is near Cotacachi.

i'm nervous. i'm excited. i can't wait to go. i don't want to leave.
i love my friends here. i love my family here. i love that i know the city now. i feel comfortable. i know that this will be good for me. it will very different than anything i've ever experienced for sure.

i'll keep ya'll posted when i get the chance and know more...

Spring Break 2009: Pick a Direction

Spring break on the coast was a blast. We (Erin, Ashley and I) named the trip “Spring break 2009: Pick a direction” because whenever you ask people directions here they don’t want to look they don’t know so they pick a random direction, wave their arms pointing and very convincingly assure you that your destination is 2 blocks straight, then turn left for another block and you will find it. Lies. You follow their directions only to be directed back exactly where you came from. The same thing happens with time until arrival at a destination. It’s always 2 hours more until you get there, whether you have been on the bus for 3 hours or 7...We had a general idea of where we were going and when-ish we were going there but our trip was pretty much just go with the flow.

Quick summary:
Friday night we took an overnight bus to Canoa, a small, relatively quiet beach town where my friend from grade school and middle school is currently living. We crashed with her for a couple nights, hung out on the beach, met her friends and relaxed. Monday morning we left for Puerto Lopez and spend most of the day traveling. We arrived in Puerto Lopez sunburned, sweaty, hair going crazy from the wind whipping through the buses and starving. Our Couchsurfing friend randomly found us in the restaurant we were eating in and we headed to his house. While it wasn’t a bad situation with him by any means, it was slightly awkward and uncomfortable so we only stayed with him one night then found a hostel the next morning. Puerto Lopez is very dirty and slightly bigger than Canoa, but it is really a service town for a National Park, tours to islands and paragliding! We spent one day out on a boat snorkeling, fishing and checking out the birds on the islands which was a really good time. The next morning Erin and I went paragliding—INCREDIBLE! I was up in the air for about 20 minutes riding the wind back and forth along the cliffs lining the coast. So beautiful! That afternoon (Wednesday, I think) we headed down to Montañita, an incredibly touristy party town with a beautiful beach. We met up with a couple other groups from CIMAS that were traveling the coast and spent the whole day laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean. I freaking love the ocean. I could spend all day just swimming and body surfing. Montañita was fun for a day, but the music was blasting all night until 8 in the morning and it was a little too crazy for me. Canoa was definitely my favorite beach town, but we only saw about a third of the coast and only 3 beach towns. On Friday morning I got up at 4:30 to head down Guayaquil, the other big city of Ecuador. There is a Maharishi School there, similar to the one I attended for 10 years and I wanted to check it out. Fátima, the mother of an Ecuadorian woman that I met in Fairfield before I left, spent the whole day with me showing me around the city and took me to the Liceo (School) Maharishi. They are on vacation now so I didn’t meet the students but it was really fun to see the school and I could feel the consciousness and peace there similar to the feeling in Fairfield. That afternoon I met up with Erin and Ashley who had slept in and we crashed at the house of her “host-nephew” who is actually 30. The next day we strolled the Malecón, a beautiful walk along the riverfront of Guayaquil, then Fátima and her mother and aunt took us to the Parque Historico, an interesting museum/park/art exhibit/zoo. Last night we got on a bus back to Quito and arrived home this morning around 6. It was an amazing week of adventures, friendship, relaxing and enjoying!

Today is a laundry and errand day. Tomorrow is orientation at CIMAS to go to our internships then on Tuesday we all head out of Quito. Time is flying!

Spring Break!!!

Today I finished classes at CIMAS in Quito! Woo!

At 8 tonight I am hopping on a bus with 2 of my good friends, Erin and Ashley, to spend our spring break on the coast. After a 9 hour bus ride through the night we will arrive in Canoa at 5 or 6 tomorrow morning. We are going to stay and hang with my friend Katie who is living and teaching English there for a few days then head south to Puerto Lopez, Montanita and Guayaquil. It should be a relaxing and exciting week o vacations!

Then off to my internship when I get back! Time is really flying here.

Still alive...

I kinda fell off the face of the earth with blog updates but just wanted to say I'm still alive and lovin' life in Quito. This is my last weekend in Quito, then one more week of classes here, then a week of spring break on the coast with 2 of my best friends here, then heading to Cotacachi area for my internship! I'm finally finding a lot to do in Quito and I'm not quite ready to leave. But I am ready to be done with classes and onto my internship.

This weekend I am staying in Quito again to spend time with my family and friends before we all disperse. I am probably heading to a farm tomorrow that we visited yesterday on an observation trip with microfinanzas to do work outside and learn more about the awesome closed-loop system they have going on there. If it wasn't too late I would probably try to change my internship to this farm, but at least I can get my hands dirty and be outside for the day!

:) Ami

SUPER VIAJE 2009

I have been on the go the past week. There are far to many great stories and adventures to describe in detail so I will summarize briefly in a list some of the highlights.

Viaje de Observacion for my track of microfinances:
-Visited 5 different cooperatives in rural areas north of Quito and learned all about how they function and the impacts they have on the communities
-Sat in on a planning meeting with the indigenous women that manage one of the cooperatives which was unexpected and lucky timing.
-Met up with the education students in an ecoturism site in San Clemente where we all stayed and ate with indigenous families.
-Saw a quinoa plant and learned how to pick and process it!
-Cooked bread over an open fire with our host mom for breakfast.
-Found a different place I may do my internship mostly because there are going to be a bunch of students around Otavalo and I don't want to be by so many people...I have to get this figured out soon...ahhh!
-Lots of good conversations and laughter with the 5 students in my track who are all awesome!

We got home late from our trip, grabbed backpacks we had left at CIMAS and met up with another friend at the bus terminal. I finally got to travel with my closest friends here: Ashley, Erin and Julia. We missed the bus we wanted so had to wait for the next one to Tena...

Tena
-Arrived at 2am and rode in the back of a pickup taxi to our hostel.
-Explored a park with monkeys and other animals on an island between two rivers.
-Ziplined for free in the park!

From Tena we took a bus then a canoe to Liona Lodge...

Liona Lodge
-Swimming in the river, sinking up our knees in mud and mud fight!
-Delicious food and coffee!
-Loooootttss of laughter.
-5 hour hike through the rain forest in rain boots.
-Eating ants off a tree and smelling delicious leaves and seeing random jungle things.
-Swinging Tarzan style on vines...and falling.
-Wading through a crystal clear river.
-Eating potato salad off leaves.
-Seeing some pretty sweet animals in a reserve that recuperates injured or captured animals.
-Rafting back down the river to our lodge.
-Loooootttsss more laughter!
-Making friends with our guide and getting him to take us out on the river on a tiny canoe in the middle of the night then swimming and having water splash fights aka "CARNAVAL!"

to be continued because I have to go to class now...oh and i figured out how to post pictures on here so sometime in the next week i will get some up but i have a bunch of papers to write so it might not happen right away.

Congreso!

Last week we divided into our separate tracks for development related classes. I am in the Microfinanzas group which I am enjoying a lot more than I expected, especially considering how I felt about economics when I left Grinnell in December. For the first week we were supposed to have a Professor named Fabián Calispa but he was only able to be there the first day because he is strongly involved with a movement of various organizations that are currently fighting in Congress for a law to promote and support food sovereignty in the country through various measures. He wasn’t in class for a few days because he was in the debates in Congress but we all really liked him. He came back for his final class today and I asked him more about what he had been doing with the food sovereignty law and he mentioned that the second debate in Congress was this afternoon and there was going to be a demonstration in support of it at 3 in the afternoon. I got really excited and invited myself/our class to attend which he was totally in support of. As soon as class was over my friend Erin and I ran upstairs to find Emilia, our academic coordinator, and ask permission for the five us in the microfinanzas track to ditch Spanish class to go to watch and listen to the debate in Congress. She said that would be fine so around 2:15 we left CIMAS with vague directions on how to get to the Congressional Building. Somehow we made it there with the help of hand gestures from friendly people on the street and some wandering around.

When we arrived Fabián happened to be standing right there and made us feel welcome amongst the dozens of campesinos and activistas. After waiting around outside the building for a while, we formed lines of men and women separate to go through a very lax security process to enter the building. The men got patted down while the women just had our bags glanced into. We entered a room overlooking the Congressional hall separated by glass to observe the debate about the law for food sovereignty. I admit that none of us understood totally what was going on because everybody spoke very passionately and rapidly, but it was incredibly interesting to observe the process. As far as we could tell there were a few Asambleístas totally in favor of the law, several that spoke generally in favor but criticized certain aspects and called for changes or additions, and one really angry lady that seemed totally opposed to it. We left before the debate was over to make it home before dark and for dinner and we couldn’t find Fabián to get a summary of what exactly had happened.

Tonight over dinner we were watching the news because several major roads from Quito to the Coast have been wiped out due to heavy rains which is a huge deal, especially with Carnaval (a holiday which many people travel to the coast for) coming up this weekend. My mom is pretty bummed that they probably won’t be able to travel this weekend. There was a short segment on the news about the debate and it was pretty sweet to be able to say I was there and heard those people speaking, and then see it on TV! It was also awesome to experience a part of real life in Ecuador related to the policies and themes we have been sitting in our sheltered classroom discussion. I was proud of myself for making that happen for my class!

Baños and Food!

Baños was a great weekend of outdoor adventures, wandering, cooking, eating, exploring and hanging. We (me and 4 friends from CIMAS) left after class on Thursday and after some random delays navigating through the city we arrived just as the last bus of the day was departing for Baños. Que buena suerte! We stayed at a cute hostal that some other friends recommended with an awesome dog named Gringa. Gringa knows English and likes to hike with tourists in the mountains. On Friday we went out and bought food for breakfast and lunch. One of my favorite parts about Ecuador is that you can buy a pineapple for 50 cents and a mango for about 20 cents! I scrambled some eggs to make egg sandwiches with tomato and cheese and we ate piña and pan for breakfast! After breakfast and carrying our sandwiches we headed to one of the bazillion places to rent bikes in town. We paid five bucks each and got a crappy mountain bike to ride for the day and coasted out of town. We spent all day riding down hill (mostly) passing through small towns, by various waterfalls and rivers and stopping to do a few things. The best activity of the day was a short hike to a huge waterfall called Pailón del Diablo where we crawled through this short cave-like tunnel to a balcony where we stood behind the massive waterfall roaring overhead. We all got soaking wet but it was worth it. One of my favorite feelings in the world is flying downhill on a bike and even though I had to hold back to wait for the group and because the bike was kind of crappy, I had a blast just coasting and taking in the gorgeous scenery of the mountains. It was so nice to be outside, away from the city and contamination and noise.

Friday night we got directions to a fantastic restaurant called Casa Hood where I splurged on Hindu Curry that had vegetables, brown rice, banana and coconut, as well as a mocha shake! Definitely the best food I’ve eaten in Ecuador!

Saturday morning we got up at 4:30 to go to the hot spring pools that Baños is famous for. We almost went Friday night but the hostal owner told us that it gets super crowded and greasy in the evening and we made a great decision. At 4:30 in the morning there were quite a few people there, but all ecuatorianos and we were the only tourists. It was beautiful to be in the pools in the dark then experience it getting light and be able to see the large waterfall running down the mountain right behind us. There were three pools: super hot, warm, and super cold that we moved between—hot to cold was definitely a shocker but felt really good!

After the pools we went back to sleep for a little while, then got up and repeated our food buying, cooking and eating before heading out on a hike in the surrounding mountains with Gringa, the dog. It was so nice to spend the weekend outside and moving around and Gringa was great company!

Random encounters:
1. While walking down the mountain from our hike Nora Colter (Grinnellian) and I were out in front with Gringa. I was looking down watching my steps when Nora starts freaking out. I look up and walking up the trail is Frances Leslie (another Grinnellian) who is studying in Quito on a different program. Small world that we both happen to be in the same town on the same hiking path at the same time…

2. When I couchsurfed in Otavalo last weekend there were 2 other people couchsurfing with the same guy that night. I ran into them on the streets of Baños...

Today I hung out with my family, who finally returned this morning from Porto Viejo. I helped my little bros and sis with their English homework on the computer. They are super cute trying to pronounce English words. Sometimes I feel bad that 8-11 year olds can speak Spanish fluently and I can’t but then I hear them try to speak English and I don’t feel so lame.

My mom here asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch…Carne de soya with bread? Rice? Pasta? She had asked me before if I liked quinoa, which is a traditional indigenous food here and I had said I loved it but she had never made it. I saw some in the kitchen and asked if we could have that and she admitted that she didn’t know how to cook it except in a soup. So I taught my mom how to cook quinoa like rice and she made my little siblings eat some in order to eat the ice cream she had bought earlier. My oldest little brother really liked it but the younger too grumbled and made faces the whole time. It was highly amusing. My mom also never makes desserts because she said they always turn out horribly. I am not the best baker but make a fantastic key lime cheesecake. I tried explaining how to make this but found I do not have the vocabulary in Spanish to describe the ingredients…graham crackers? Pie pan? Crust? Another entertaining moment…The abuela (mother of Jesús, my dad here) is coming to visit in a couple weeks so my mom said I have to teach her how to make it when she is here.

Overall, a really good weekend with friends and family, food and frolicking!

Baños!

I´m heading to Baños along with most of the students on two different programs at CIMAS after school today! Excited for adventures!

Last night friends came over to cook dinner and keep me company! We made pasta and veggies and watched a movie. Being alone last night wasn´t as scary but my family will be back before I get home.

:)

Home Alone

So yesterday after walking home from CIMAS with some friends and taking them to the fruit stand next to my house to buy snack and lunch material I enter to find my mom here waiting for me. Bad news: the grandmother of my host dad died yesterday and the whole family was leaving that night. All fine and dandy, nobody was that sad but they still had to go to Porto Viejo until Saturday for her funeral. One of the weirdest parts for me being here has been having someone cook for me and wash my dishes and clean my bathroom and doing everything for me...I insist on washing my own clothes and keep my room clean but its still weird. I convinced my mom here that I would be fine, I could cook for myself and she showed me all the bazillion locks and alarm systems on the house. So for the next few days I´m home alone in a house in Quito. Movie marathon with friends this afternoon! Hopefully one of my friends that lives close by will stay over with me tonight. I´m fine being alone, but as soon as it gets dark and I am alone I start hearing everything. After my fam left last night I layed in bed for a couple hours hearing every movement the neighbors made convinced that someone had broken into my house. I´m probably going to head on an adventure somewhere on Friday because we don´t have class. Not sure where yet...

For Spanish class this afternoon everyone cooked with their family and brought a typical Ecuadorian dish to share! So pumped for lunch today!

Otavalo, Couchsurfing, Sleep

Otavalo--the city with the largest market in south america. packed with vendors tourists, fruit, ponchos, animals, colors, smells, tastes! well, that was saturday morning...

we (kevin, lauren and i) arrived friday morning to otavalo to do an interview with Runa Tupari. the interview was more for us, to see if we really wanted to do our 6 week internship with them. they are more than happy to have us there working and learning from them. we all met at my house at 7 am and took a taxi to the edge of town where we grabbed a bus to otavalo. no tickets, no schedule, just standing on the corner in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bus that says otavalo to go by. eventually one did and we climbed aboard. everyone had told us it took 2.5 hours to get there but within an hour and a half we had arrived. 2 hours before our interview. the bus dropped us on the side of the road and pointed up the road. we assumed that was the direction of plaza de ponchos where Runa Tupari's offices are located so we began hiking up the hill. several blocks later we arrived at plaza de ponchos, the main market area in otavalo, to find people just beginning to set out their goods. there were no other tourists yet. it was calm and a nice change from the noise and chaos of quito. we wandered around for a while and lauren got suckered into buying several things. we didn't want to arrive to early to our interview so we found a place to grab breakfast. while we were sitting eating our grilled cheese sandwiches (seems to be common for breakfast here, i eat it at least twice a week at home) and eggs the floor behind us opened and a man popped out carrying a large sack. we all jumped with surprise then started laughing another man appeared in the door, took the sack, then the first guy climbed back into the whole in the floor...i don't want to know...

at runa tupari we each just talked about our interests and the two guys that work there, Cristian and Faust, told us about the organization and showed us around the building. later in the afternoon Faust drove us around to some of the indigenous communities to show us different projects of Runa Tupari and UNORCAC (the indigenous cooperative organization they are affiliated with). we visited a family, or woman, that is one of the tourist hosts. one of us will probably be living with her. she was suuuuper sweet and i hope i get to live with her! then we went to a nursery where they start native plants and it give them to families on the condition that at some point, when they are able, they family pays back the nursery with other plants. its a way of diversifying the plants in the area, improving nutrition in the family and protecting native species. i will probably work there a few days a week. there is also a cooperative that makes honey at the same location. next we visited a cooperative that dries a couple different fruits and seeds, is certified organic and is expanding markets into europe and other places. lots of good projects to work on and learn from and we get to go on tours to translate and help out when there are tourists! i'm excited!

on friday night we couchsurfed with a guy named julio! we met him on a random street corner, walked back to his place...a large room full of all the sweaters, ponchos, clothes etc. that are sold in the market. his parents were there counting inventory. we dropped our stuff in an empty room with a mattress on the floor. he told us we were going to pick up some other people and followed him to his truck. i had no clue where we were going or who we were picking up. we pulled up to another random corner where there were two people sitting with big backpacks...more couchsurfers! we grabbed some food and hung out with the couchsurfers, julio and his friends for a while but we were pretty tired and wanted to get up early to see the animal market. that was an experience i don't even know where to begin describing. after the animal market we went to the fruit area and bought a bunch of fruit to make into a salad back at julio's place. delicious!

good first couchsurfing experience! and so much more fun that just staying in a hotel or hostel because you immediately have a friend that knows whats up in the city.

this weekend we have a take home exam so i spent a lot of the weekend working on that, or trying to then falling asleep. i slept all afternoon yesterday when i got home then fell asleep again at 9:30 last night. i've had a cold for over a week so i figured i needed it but i'm still not feeling great. hopefully tomorrow will be all better...

Ecotourism

on friday i'm going to otavalo to interview with and check out Runa Tupari, an ecotourism organization that i hope to do my internship with! here is the website:
http://www.runatupari.com/ingles/quienes.htm

my friend kevin is going to be working with the same organization but we will be in different communities. on friday we will have our interview during the day, visit some rural communities with projects and couch surf with a young man named Julius! so pumped! this will be an adventure.

Pictures

Check out my picasa web album to see a few pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/afreeberg/AmiSAwesomeAdventures?authkey=RVzYbKpAWjo#

Uploading them there is pretty slow but there are more on facebook if you want to check them out.

No Spanish class this afternoon again because my professor is in the Galapagos with the other school she works for. What to do? We shall see...

independence and friends

the last few days have been full of excursions and adventures! definitely getting a grasp of the city and feeling more comfortable with my spanish, understanding at least. i'm also finding a group of friends that i really like and am getting much closer to.

yesterday we went up in the teleferiQo which is a large enclosed ski-lift like thing that takes you up a mountain that borders quito. the views were stunning and it was beautiful to see the whole city and how big it really is. we hiked for a few hours, but most of that time was spent resting, taking in the views, contemplating life, and laughing because it was pretty hard to breath up there.

last night i felt like i was getting a cold so i stayed home and drank tea. i am not feeling much better today, but hopefully things will clear up. as for school, we are in the process of selecting our internship and i am deciding between ecotourism and agricultural cooperatives. either way i want to live in a rural community and integrate into the daily life there. i will keep you posted on what i decide.

Exploring the City

up until last night i hadn´t seen much of the city except for my neighborhood, the bus ride between my house and CIMAS, plaza de las americas (near CIMAS) and a supermercado. yesterday my host dad showed up and surprised the family because he hadn´t been able to come home last weekend. he is really nice but talks really low and fast so i had a lot of trouble understanding him. my mom doesn´t drive even though they have a car bc the streets here are very narrow and the drivers and buses are crazy. but after dinner my dad offered to take the family for a drive to show me around the city. we drove through the centro historico where there are tons of old churches that are amazing, passed many parks, drove through mariscal aka. gringolandia where all the nightlife is...it feels good to have more of an idea of where things are.

today my spanish group didnt have class bc our teacher works at another school and had conferences so we decided to all explore mariscal together this afternoon. we walked through the touristy art market and i saw more tourists than i have my whole time here. now i am in an internet cafe waiting for some friends that had class this afternoon to meet me in mariscal to explore a little more. im feeling more independent and confident in my ability to get around on buses. the first week my mom went with me to school and picked me up every afternoon but this week i have been going on my own on the buses. sometimes they get super crowded and are a little intimidating but so far so good.

hasta luego!
:) ami

Phones and Salvation

I don’t get on the internet very often and when I do it is only for a few minutes during break at school. We don’t have internet in my house so I have been leaving my computer at school to use during breaks because it is easier than using the very slow computers in CIMAS (the place where we go to classes) but today I brought my computer home to type a longer post that I can post when I get on the internet.

A lot has happened in the past several days. I will try to keep it kind of short but it is hard when everything feels an adventure because there are always challenges and new experiences.

Most entertaining moment: On Thursday a bunch of students who take the same bus were leaving CIMAS with our host moms. Some of my friends had been talking about going to by cell phones but didn’t know exactly where to go or how to meet up. Suddenly all the moms started making plans loudly and rapidly shouting across the bus, figuring out who lived where, who would meet who, where we would go, meanwhile all of us students had no idea what they were talking about or what the plan was. We were all just looking at each other with confused faces saying “No Se?!” “Que paso?” and laughing a lot. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time and soon the whole bus was laughing at us (or with us?). The areas we are in are not at all touristy and I have probably only seen 5 gringos (outside of people on our program) since I’ve been here, the sight of 7 gringo students with Ecuadorian mothers was very bizarre. My mom thinks all of the other moms are crazy and she just sat and listened and made confused and funny faces at me while they all yelled rapidly about our plans. We ended up somehow figuring out how to all 7 of us meet up but ended up failing miserably in our excursion to buy phones. Finally this afternoon my mom went with my friend, Ashley, and me to buy phones at a sketchy but much cheaper place near our house. We were very proud of ourselves for finding a cheaper place and getting better phones than a lot of our friends!

Most uncomfortable moment: My family is very religious and even though my mom is very open and doesn’t care that I don’t have a religion, her friends that come to study the bible every Saturday night do care. I had just returned from our bonding trip to San Miguel de los Bancos and was tired and just finishing eating when she told me that her friends were coming. She invited me to join and I politely declined but they arrived before we finished eating and it would have been awkward for me to leave. So I joined the family bible study. The man, Adolfo that was leading the study started talking to me and before I knew what was going on he made me repeat after him something along the lines of “I believe in the power of Jesus Christ and have accepted him into my life as my Savior…” I don’t know exactly what I said but I couldn’t refuse to repeat what he told me in front of the whole family. Then on Sunday I went to Church with my family which was another experience. They are Protestant and go to a smallish church that is very modern with a full band, backup singers, dancers wearing aqua colored sequined dresses with various flags and pompoms. The first half hour was just music, followed by 10 minutes of hugging all the people around you. Then the service lasted another hour and a half. I think it meant a lot to my family that I went and I am glad I did but I hope I can avoid it some weekends.

The trip to San Miguel was beautiful and fun. We stayed in a gorgeous resort, ate delicious food, hiked in the rainforest, swam under a waterfall, heard a few talks about the energy on the equator (we were on it!), and played games to bond with the people on our program. I got a bit sick from adjusting to the water and food here but it wasn’t that bad. I will post pictures at some point. I took a lot of pictures on this excursion but Quito is somewhat dangerous and carrying anything of value makes you a target, so I probably will not have many pictures from life in Quito.

So far I am safe, happy and treating every little thing here as an adventure! Much love to all J

Family! School!

I am living with a very sweet family. My mom, Mercedes, is young, 32, so is as much like a friend as a mom. Her husband works outside the city and only comes home on the weekends so I haven't met him yet. I have three little siblings--Jesus (11), Fernanda (10) and Andres (8). They like to hug me a lot but I feel kind of awkward with them because they speak really quickly and its hard to understand them sometimes. Mercedes likes to talk to me a lot because she doesn't have many people around to talk to other than the little kids. The kids like to play Nintendo Wii and they do a lot of homework. Yesterday I went running with my mom in a park and did pushups and situps with Ferni, my little sister. Nobody speaks any English in the house so I am speaking a lot of spanish all the time.

The students on the program are all really nice and excited to be here. The directors and support people in Cimas, the school where we have classes, are all super friendly. We have class from 9 to 4 with a break for lunch and a few breaks during the morning.

I ride the bus to school which is crazy. This morning I got a seat which was fantastic. There were 3 other students from Cimas on the bus too so we will find ways to ride together for safety and comfort.

Gotta run back to class, but life is good! We go on a trip outside of the city tomorrow to bond and explore a little more of Ecuador!

I made it! Life is good! More later...

Departure!

So today I finally get to leave for Ecuador. But the last 48 hours have thrown me some curveballs...

I lost my wallet while staying with friends in Chicago. I do not have the faintest idea how this happened, what happened and much less, why this happened. After exhausting every possible option of searching for it and making all the calls to cancel cards and such, I have finally just let it go. Everything happens for a reason, right? It doesn't help that today is Martin Luther King Day so all the banks and AAA are closed so plans A and B are out. As soon as it is a normal hour (not 6:30 in the morning because I can't sleep) I will call my program to figure out which of plans C, D or E is the best option. Everything will work out, it always does...

At least I have my passport and will get on the plane at 12:55pm today! Super excited!