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...