Mar 2008

So... last weekend Rachel, her friend Juliet, and I took a bus ride to Papallacta to relax a bit in the thermal hot springs. Papallacta is a really tiny town a bit southeast of Quito on the same road we´ll have to take to the jungle. It´s absolutely gorgeous. The bus ride there and back, however, was not so nice. At the bus station before we left, we were asked by a random old man in a business suit on the street corner if we wanted to step on his scale and be weighed. Then we got on the wrong bus and realized just a minute before it left the station that we had to quickly jump off. Our actual bus was then 45 minutes late so we left a bit later than we wanted to. Once on the bus, the driver decided he wanted to drive about 10 mph the entire way to Papallacta, which was great for our safety but he took forever to get us there!

The views on the way to Papallacta were really great, though. I think that area of Ecuador is definitely my favorite so far. It´s almost in the cloud forest, so there are always clouds lying low over the green hills. The town itself is tiny and probably only has a few hundred people. The thermal baths there are supposedly some of the best in Ecuador. Anyway, we got some lunch once we arrived and were served by a completely incompetent waitress. She came to take our order the second we sat down and we said we weren´t ready and asked if she could come back in a minute. But she didn´t come back for 10 minutes even though we stared her down with pleading eyes. Juliet finally went up to her and reminded her we needed to order and she said she´d be right over. She didn´t come. Juliet went up to her again and asked if we could order and the waitress then said, ¨But I already came and asked you if you wanted to order and you said you weren´t ready!¨... as if she had completely forgotten her conversation with Juliet a few minutes earlier. We finally got to order, only to discover that they were out of the tamales I wanted. Juliet and Rachel had ordered trout a few minutes earlier, but I had to re-order and decided on chicken. The trout came right away and I watched as they ate the entire thing. My chicken still hadn´t arrived. I was starving. Rachel and Juliet were done eating. The waitress seemed to have forgotten my meal entirely. Juliet went up to ask her what happened and she made up an excuse that there were 3 chicken orders in front of my order and that´s why it was taking so long. I watched the 3 chicken orders come out to the other tables and the people finished their chicken and I still didn´t get mine! At this point it had been about 30 minutes. Juliet went up to the waitress again and asked if maybe she´d forgotten to put in the order since she didn´t write it down initially. The waitress assured her there was no problem. Finally another waitress came and asked us if we wanted the bill and we pointed out that I still hadn´t actually eaten yet. She gave a little shout in surprise and ran to the kitchen... and came back with my chicken. It had been sitting there the whole time and nobody brought it out to me. I have to say, it was definitely good chicken, but I didn´t want to pay for it... so when a different waitress came to give us our bill I asked her if I could get my chicken for free. She looked at me like I was an idiot, but once we explained what had happened she said she´d go ask. She never returned. We looked around the restaurant and realized that the entire restaurant staff was having a meeting about my chicken and whose fault it was... at that point we realized we´d never get an answer so we just left... and didn´t pay for the chicken.

Other than that, Papallacta was great. We took a hike through the town and the hills with Juliet before she had to bus back to Quito that afternoon. We passed by a soccer field, a giant pipe carrying water up the hills (to Quito area?), a lot of pigs, and a whole lot more stray dogs. And again, there were a lot of people carrying around puppies like dolls. Still don´t get it.

We stayed the night at El Viajero, a small family run hostel on the ¨main¨dirt road through town. You can walk the length of the town in about 10 minutes. Our first view of the hostel included a view of the neighbor TORCHING A PIG WITH A BLOW TORCH... I am not quite sure why he was torching it, perhaps he likes the taste of crunchy, charred pig skin. I took a picture because I couldn´t believe what I was seeing. Later on that day after we came back from our hike, we discovered a pig head hanging from a giant hook on the porch and another pig with, er, half it´s body left, hanging from another hook. A little boy was skipping down the road carrying a bloody pastic bag filled with the pig´s feet. Other than the bloody and charred pig carcasses... the old man and woman running our hostel were so, so cute. They were probably in their 60s and had been running the place for at least 30 years. The woman was about half my size! We were the only guests so we got the chance to talk to them a lot and practice our Spanish. They cooked us some really delicious trout for dinner (trout was a theme dish that weekend) and asked us what type of animals people had in California. I think they thought that we lived in a place similar to their little farm town They had a chicken coop across the street and some cows on the hill that they tended to.

We went to the thermal baths that night and had to take a camioneta (small truck) up the hill to the nice hotel where they were located. He charged us $5 for the mile drive and we thought he was ripping us off since it was supposed tobe $2. We told him to come back to pick us up at 10:15pm but later realized we didn´t want to pay $10 to get to and from the baths so when we went home later we ended up getting a free ride from the hotel workers (¨as long as you say thank you, it is free!¨they said). Three of them piled into the truck with us, bombarding us with questions about ourselves and why we were in Ecuador on the way home. Somehow they misunderstood us or we misunderstood them because suddenly they were yelling out their windows at a bus bound for Quito, thinking that we needed to catch the bus and go home that night. We got home, watched some of the Miss Ecuador pageant (even cheesier than our pagents in the US), and fell asleep to the sound of large trucks, tractors, and buses with bad breaks passing through town all night on their way to the jungle.

We finally got a nice breakfast the next morning that didn´t consist solely of dry bread and jam. Yes! The woman told us that she and her husband had to leave to ¨tend to their cows¨for the morning but that they´d be back by 1pm. Rachel and I decided we´d go on a hike again to explore more of the hills. We started to walk down the main road, only to discover a mean looking bull around one of the bends staring us down. He didn´t seem happy to see us, and we didn´t know if he´d charge us once we got closer, so we changed our hiking route because of the darn cow. We started down the same path we´d taken with Juliet the day before. We suddenly heard some barking and saw a cow pasture in the distance in front of us and realized that the dogs who were guarding the cows had spied us on the trail. The path went right by the pasture, and we weren´t sure if it was a good idea to walk past the dogs... but we hiked on towards them anyway. Bad idea. As soon as we got to their hill, one of the dogs spied us, Rachel screamed, and then 5 large dogs FLEW across the pasture, through the fence, and were suddenly right in front of us, barking like they wanted to kill us. Rachel threw her stick away (that she was going to use to protect us), I yelled ¨NO!¨at the top of my lungs, and the dogs kind of stopped for a second at the sound of my yell. Then they decided they still wanted to eat us and started running towards us again. I screamed at them again, they finally decided I was a big, bad dangerous human not to be messed with, and they trotted back toward their cows. Meanwhile, Rachel and I tried to slowly walk away back up the path we´d come down on, which was a bit hard to do because my legs felt like jelly. So, um, lesson learned... don´t mess with dogs in Ecuador, at least the ones who have cows to guard. They will eat you.

On the way home from Papallacta Rachel and I hailed down a bus in the middle of the road, jumped on, and realized there were no seats available. We had to stand in the ailes for an hour as the bus driver drove like a maniac back to Quito. Just like the bus driver to Otavalo, this guy thought he was driving a race car. We were swerving around corners, I was convinced the bus was going to tip over and we´d all die, we were passing cars going the normal speed, and to us in our magic race car bus it seemed like the cars were driving at a snail´s pace. Rachel and I were bouncing all around the aile of the bus along with another woman who was carrying a newborn baby. I still don´t know why nobody got up for her and offered her their seat. We finally got to sit down after an hour for the rest of the ride back to Quito. Buses here are hit or miss. Too bad we have to take about 20 more bus rides during our trip here.

Ooookay... so back in Quito, we had a ¨ladie´s night¨at our Irish friend´s bar on Monday night... then we spent an hour the next morning trying to find a fax machine for Rachel so she could fax her job contract to her new employer. However, apparently there is only one fax machine in all of Quito. We went into about 20 internet-telephone places that had signs advertising fax machines, only to discover that they actually didn´t have a fax machine or their machine was ¨broken¨. When we finally found one, it cost Rachel $16 to fax her papers! Ridiculous. After she faxed her stuff, we finally had the chance to go up the TeleferiQo on Volcan Pinchincha to get a view of the entire Quito county. The TeleferiQo is a cable car system that takes you up the slopes of Pinchincha to the top. It has a really cheesy themepark at the base called VulQuano Park. Hehehaha. It was a ghost town, but with really terrible rap music filtering through the park. It took about 8 minutes to get to the top, where again it was kind of a ghost town and none of the 10 or so restaurants were open. But the views were amazing! It was really cool to be able to see where we were living in Quito in relation to the rest of the city and all the nearby towns. We could even see Cumbaya, the town in the neighboring valley to Quito. However, we didn´t have much time to spend there since we had to get back to class at 2pm

Last night, Juliet´s African dance instructor invited us to his house because he for some reason wanted to cook dinner for all of us. He is half Benin, half French, and so is fluent in French as well as Spanish. He cooked us a traditional meal from Benin, which was delicious, and then told us that he wanted us to help him become the first singing president of Benin in the 2011 elections. He wanted the help of me and Rachel specifically becuase we majored in political science and he figured we could help him learn political theory. He kissed our hands because he was so excited that we could help. He said in return for our help, he´d cook for us every night. After dinner we watched about 100 music videos from African-French artists, some from Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Algeria, and Benin. These videos are ones that we probably would have never seen in our lives if he hadn´t shown us! Definitely interesting. But also very confusing since they were all in French... too many languages at once! My brain was hurting. Then Revelejo (that´s really his name) forced me to dance some sort of dance called Zuklove to the music of a Colombian singer and suddenly we were all dancing in his room. I felt very silly because I don´t dance. But it was a fun night overall

Anyway, I doubt anyone has even read this far... this is all for me to remember my trip, too, so I don´t mind if you only skipped down to this last line

Tschuessi!
Kerri

I am stuck in the middle of a giant, day-long easter parade in old town Quito!
All the streets are packed with people, like sardines in a can, and then there are thousands of citizens dressed in purple, ku klux klan-type robes walking up and down the streets while marching bands play upbeat music. Then there are hundreds of men who have willingly beaten themselves with a poisonous plant on their backs (you can actually see hives on their skin from it), and who are wearing chains on their feet and have barbed wire around their heads and chests with blood all over, and they are carrying GIANT wooden crosses as they try to walk up and down the streets. Some of the crosses are literally as big as trees and there are a good 5 other men who have to help the designated Christ carry it up and down all the hills. It´s all a bit weird, kind of creepy, but definitely very interesting.

Among all the purple robed people, crosses, and marching bands, there are also a lot of people carrying dogs around like purses. Don´t quite understand that. Also, don´t forget the women and men shouting at us to buy umbrellas, hats, water, gum, sugared corn treats, and chips. It´s all so Easter-like.

After we´d seen enough of the parade and a good thousand purple robed people and 50 Christ´s, we decided it was time for lunch. Somehow we stumbled into a Hari Krishna temple while they were having their own religious celebration and started talking to a nice Hari Krishna guy from Colombia who told Rachel she had a good aura about her personality (I guess I don´t). He told us that if we so desired, we could sleep at their temple for free and medidate each morning at 3am. We ate vegetarian hamburgers with him while all the little Hari Krishna kids who lived at the temple giggled at our attempts at speaking Spanish. He asked me why I wasn´t talking as much, if maybe I didn´t know as much Spanish as Rachel. I started to respond, but one of the little girls who was listening to our conversation chimed in and said, ¨Because you can´t!¨ (speak Spanish). When kids start to make fun of my Spanish, it´s time to run. But he then tried to convince us to go to the jungle with him and other Hari Krishnas instead of going on the other tour we were hoping to book today through Sacha Ursay. I think it involves a lot of meditating and converting us into Hari Krishnas

Now we´re in an internet cafe while the men running this place are standing at the door watching the parade pass by. It´s been a good 3 hours already and this parade has no end in sight. They are probably wondering why we are not as excited to watch and would rather be on the computer.

This evening we´re going to go to another salsa lesson. Hopefully this time my instructor won´t be mute and unhelpful, like the one I had a couple days ago. I don´t know how to dance or count beats, but despite telling him I had two left feet he continued to twirl me around in circles without explaining anything at all. At one point he laughed at me but wouldn´t explain why. I´m beginning to notice a trend of people laughing at me here in Quito.

Last night we went to Vista Hermosa to eat dinner, a restaurant in Old Town that has an amazing view of the entire city. It was very fancy schmancy, and even had an elevator boy to take us up to our table on the roof top. However, as nice as the restaurant looked, the food was absolutely disgusting. Rachel and I got ¨chicken lasagna¨, but when it arrived we discovered that they´d decided to add layers of sandwich style ham meat in it in addition to the ground up chicken. Apparently ¨chicken lasagna¨means chicken AND ham. How stupid we were to not know. It was the worst tasting lasagna I´ve ever eaten in my life. However, the view of the city at night with all the churches lit up was absolutely beautiful, and our waiter wasn´t too bright and left 3 things off our check so we didn´t end up spending too much on our terrible meal after all. Plus, the warm wine was a nice drink in the cool weather.

After dinner, we walked around old town with Juliet and her friends and visited all the cathedrals. I´m guessing because of Semana Santa, they were all open to the public and lit up all night long. They were packed to the brim with people, but still very beautiful to see at night. One of the churches had bird noises blasting throughout the main hall... I guess they wanted to make us feel like we were in the jungle.

The night before, Rachel wasn´t feeling too well after her salsa instructor had spun her around and dipped her down one too many times, but we had made plans to go out and dance that night. I was still hoping to go out dancing so I called up Hannah, the girl from Berkeley who is here working for the English language newspaper that we were originally supposed to work with on our trip, The Ecuador Reporter. I went to a fun club with her and her international girlfriends (from Germany, Norway, and Austria) and we had a really fun night playing pool (very badly, however our opponents were equally terrible) and dancing a bit. It wasn´t so fun when punk music suddenly started to play and we found ourselves in the middle of a mosh pit, but let´s forget that part. Speaking of the Ecuador Reporter, we´ve met most of the people who either work for it or provide the financial backing for it. One of them is an Irish guy who runs a Vietnamese restaurant (Uncle Ho´s, delicious!) in Quito. That makes a lot of sense now, doesn´t it? He´s nice, though. Everyone here we meet is oddly connected to that paper. Is it a sign that we should work for them? Hm.... I think we will have had enough of Quito by the end of next week.

Anyway, time to push past the crowds, find the Ecovia (trolley), and make our way back to New Town in time for our salsa lessons. A visit to Papallacta, a nearby town with hot springs, is next on our list for the weekend. Looking forward to that

Last night, we ate rice, shredded carrots, and a mixture of broccoli and tuna from a can. I hate tuna. It doesn´t get any better than this. What kind of dinner is that?

On a happier note, Rachel and I are taking salsa dancing lessons 6 times this week and the next... private lessons for $5 an hour at one of the best places in La Mariscal. Hopefully we´ll master the dance by the time we get home

Today is no good. I already managed to lose my sunglasses after wearing them for just about a half hour, I am sunburned from Otavalo, and my stupid credit card company put a block on my card even though I already put a travel alert on it weeks ago. I cant pay for anything today, so I called the credit card company and I have been on hold for 35 minutes already just waiting to tell someone to please unblock my card. Even though it is their mistake. Grrrr!!!!

On another note, our Otavalo trip was really amazing. Minus our first bus ride to Otavalo. The bus driver thoguht he was a race car driver. He took hair pin curves at top speed and I swear at times we were only driving on two wheels. At the same time, this scary clown music was on top volume in the bus, like a sick soundtrack to our imminent death. Even though I was convinced we were going to die, I still found the confidence to make a video of our ride.

We got off the bus after 2 hours and went to Lago San Pablo, a beautiful lake at the base of Volcan Imbabura. We took a boat ride around and the weather was finally nice for once. Rich Ecuadorians often go to the lake for weekend trips. There were a few alpacas lounging around the lake, as well, soaking up the sun.

After the lake, we crowded into a bus to go to the Otavalo market. We had a 3 course lunch for $1.25 and then had 3 hours to browse the stalls at the market. I bought a few things, my most favorite purchase being an empanada filled with apples It started pouring rain, then stopped, then started again, then stopped. Everyone kept running for cover and the vendors were constantly covering and uncovering their goods with plastic tarps.

We crammed into another bus after our time at the market to go to a nearby waterfall, I think it is called Peguche. It was really beautiful. Our guide, Vincicio, then decided it would be a great idea to scale the almost vertical hillside next to the waterfall in the mud and pouring rain. I am not sure how we made it, but we got to the top. And then we kept going. There was a giant gorge with another waterfall, and at one point we crossed a 3 foot wide mud bridge that was the only thing between us and one waterfall on our right side and the other waterfall on our left. Vincicio was quite the gentleman, though, and helped all 5 of us girls every step of the way to make sure we didnt fall to our deaths. We continued our hike through the hills and I felt like what we were doing was actually bushwacking instead of hiking. We were soaking wet and covered in mud and sweat and at times it seemed like we were forging our own trail! The hike was really fun though, despite being one of the hardest and probably most dangerous I hike I have ever been on.

After our hike we crammed into yet another bus and again there were no seats left so we had to stand until we got to the base of the hill that Vinicio{s aunt lives on. Then we all climbed into the back of a pickup truck for the bounciest ride of our lives to the house we would be spending the night in. We stayed in an indigenous village in a house made of mud. Vinicios family lived there and I believe they farmed corn and raised chickens. We made dinner together in their kitchen and washed everything in the water that they had collected in buckets that were sitting out in the courtyard amongst the cow patties and, well, the cows themselves. We were worried we would get sick from the water and the dirty knives, etc... but we popped a pepto bismol and it was okay! Our dinner, which we ate on a mat on the floor (there is no table) consisted of potatoes, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and.... guinea pig! The entire guinea pig was cooked, feet, head, and all. The head is the best part, I hear. Its a special meal for weddings and other celebrations, I guess our visit is included in such important fiestas. The sad thing was that as Iris (a girl in our group) was helping to cut up the guinea pig to cook it, all of its little guinea pig friends were under the kitchen table squealing, like they knew what was happening to their friend. I guess they just roam free in the house, as do the other animals there including their 2 dogs, cat, chickens, turkey, and 2 GIANT cows that hang out in the house. We slept on beds that were basically wooden tables and I my hips were bruised in the morning! I was scared to go to the bathroom at night because you had to walk through the mud past the two giant cows in order to get to the outhouse... which, weirdly enough, was at their front gate and had holes in it so you could say hello to whoever was paying you a visit that day! Haha. All in all, though, staying at Vinicios aunts house was really amazing. The funny thing is, in our rugged, rural house... there was a TV and a CD player.

Vinicios aunt lives with her husband and their grandson, Luis, who is 9 years old. Luis really liked all of us girls and tagged along everywhere we went and was extremely interested in our digital cameras. He was so excited when I asked him if he wanted to take a picture with me. Whenever he was with his other little friends, though, they were all constantly whispering and conspiring in Quichua to sneak up on us and we had no idea what they were saying or laughing about. All the boys in this community wear their hair down their backs in very long braids, and in general they are a very, very short population! Even Vinicio himself commented on how short he was, and thought it was hilarious that Jonna and Iris, the two Dutch girls, were about twice his height. He was constantly making jokes about how that was so wrong. Hehe. In the morning when I was getting ready for the day, Vinicio and his uncle were mesmerized by the idea of contacts and watched me very intently as I put them in my eyes. His uncle just kept laughing and shaking his head as he watched me intently.

We took a hike around the community in the morning up towards Volcan Imbabura, again sloshing through the mud from the rain and dodging thousands of cow patties. Luis tagged along as Vinicio explained to us about the community and how there are actually never any tourists there besides us, the people he brings from Yanapuma. Along the way we passed some houses and entire families would pour out of these small houses and stare at us. The men always were the ones who were excited to come up to us and shake our hands and ask where we were from, and the women and girls stayed back and whispered and laughed to each other while pointing at us. Everyone was really friendly though and genuinely excited to hear about our lives. They asked us what crops we grew in our towns When we explained a bit more about what our modern lives were like, they told us that our lives must be so hard compared to theirs. The views as we walked around were incredible because we were on the slopes of Volcan Imbabura and so looking around us we could see Volcan Imbabura in front of us, Volcan Cotacachi behind us, and the beautiful green farming valley in between the two.

Later we said goodbye to our host family for the night and caught another truck down the hill. We hung out in the main town square for a bit while Vinicio tried to convince another guy with a truck to drive 5 white girls with giant backpacks to our next destination. We browsed around some stalls in the main square to see what food they were selling, and discovered that everyone was selling pig heads and fruit. Delicious. Then we hopped in the back of the random guys truck and made our way to Laguna Cotacachi, a deep, clear volcanic crater lake that is part of Cotacachi. The highest peak of Cotacachi, covered in snow, provided a nice background to the lake. We took a boat ride around the lake and saw its 2 islands up close. When we stopped the boat, we could see bubbles coming up from the bottom of the lake... the volcano is still active!

After another ride in the back of a truck, lunch at a hole in the wall place, two more bus rides, some unexplainable traffic on the curvy mountain road back to Quito, and a taxi ride back to La Floresta, we finally arrived back home. We were covered in mud and sweat, had been wearing the same clothes for two days, our bodies hurt, and all we wanted to do was take a shower, eat dinner, and pass out. Fun adventure we had, though

(I am happy to say that after 35 minutes on the phone someone finally answered at WaMu and told me that I can only put travel alerts on my card for 30 days. Yay. Means I have to put a new one on my card every month. So inefficient. I love banks.)

Anyhoo, back to Quito happenings. We are a bit annoyed with the food we get at Cecilias house because we are paying the same as another girl is for her host family, but she gets more food than us plus laundry. She gets soup, a main dish, and dessert for dinner each night whereas we only get enough food to fill half our plate and there are never any leftovers if we are still hungry. Cecilia only makes the bare minimum for everyone. Granted, dinner is not the main meal here in Ecuador, lunch is. But still, it is frustrating for us because we are always so hungry after dinner and we know other host families are different. Then to top it off, in the morning for breakfast all we get is a piece of dry, tasteless bread and the same guyaba marmalade every day. Plus fruit juice (which is great) and tea. But I cant survive on dry bread every morning. Rachel and I have complained to our Spanish teacher at Yanapuma, but we feel really awkward making any real complaint because it would be very obvious to Cecilia that it was us two who complained since everyone else has been at her house for a longer period of time and they havent complained yet. Plus our Spanish teacher just thinks we eat a lot and thinks it is kind of funny that we are like men. So instead of telling Yanapuma or Cecilia, we instead just went to the supermarket (which is called Supermaxi... hahahaheeheehee) and stocked up on fruits and snacks to supplement our breakfast bread. We snuck some instant oatmeal to breakfast today and ate it secretly from our tea cups. We are also going to go out to dinner more often to get bigger, second dinners... but unfortunately Cecilia still gets paid the same $13.50 per day regardless of if we eat her food or not. At least it is just another two weeks. We will be leaving Quito on the 28th to go on a 3 or 4 day trip to Tena in the jungle, and then well be going to the Galapagos as soon as we get back and then make our way south to Peru.

On another note, the music of Quito is also a bit annoying... especially when it wakes us up at 6am each morning. The neighborhood dogs bark constantly for about 3 hours straight starting at 6am, the indigenous people who live in Quito drive up and down the streets in our neighborhood in trucks filled with fruit and fish with a megaphone that blasts the same unintelligible phrase over and over again in a monotonous voice urging everyone to come out and buy their food, aaaand everyone else in our house gets up at like 7am and talks loudly and uses the bathroom which is right next to our room. Weeeee.

Oh yes, and guess what? The sun DOES exist in Quito. Yesterday it was hot and sunny and wonderful. Kind of intense, though. I am on the equator, apparently. Good to know. I was actually sweating as I walked around town all day... granted, I was also practically running from place to place trying to get everything done before class at 2pm. And everything was going wrong and I was a bit stressed out. But eh... then the rains came on cue at 3pm and washed all my worries away. Thunder, lightening, all the regulars came out to play. Today its sunny again but Ive finally learned my lesson and have my umbrella with me in my purse.

Ive been sneezing up a storm the past few mornings. I think I am allergic to Quito.

Toodle loo!

I´ve been sick during the past few days with a 102 degree fever so I haven´t done as much lately before and after Spanish classes. I was pretty upset the other day because I´d been sick, but since our house is ice cold at night, I wasn´t getting any better. Plus my host mom just told me to go to bed and I´d get better and didn´t really give me anything to help my temperature or body aches. Then I developed a crazy dry cough, which I still have, and Cecilia finally gave me something to help... a mysterious, sour green herbal drink. I´m not coughing now, so I guess it worked?

Our Spanish classes are going well. We´re learning a lot, but 4 hours a day is a really long time! I can tell even our teacher gets a bit tired at times. She´s our age, about 25, and is really sweet and intelligent. She works 8 hours a day here AND somehow goes to university. We were talking about life in Ecuador and she told us that basically she only makes $2 and hour for her work. She doesn´t have any extra money left over to travel or buy nice things, so Rachel and I feel especially bad when she asks us about our upcoming travels to make conversation... here we are, these two ¨rich¨American girls who get to go gallavanting around Ecuador and even go to the Galapagos. And Betty, our teacher, hasn´t even been to some of the nearby cities we´re hoping to go to. It´s really frustrating to know that everyone here works just as hard and as long as we do in the United States but they make so much less money. Betty told us that 60% of Ecuadorians make less than $2 per day and do not even have enough money to cover their basic needs for one month. On average, a ¨well off¨person makes $400 or more per month.... and here´s a shocker, the president himself only makes $4,000 a month. That´s considered ridiculously rich.

Jonna (the Dutch girl who lives with us) and I wanted to go shopping the other day to buy some warmer clothes since we both wear every article of clothing we own to bed as well as to class... we ended up walking around for hours in La Mariscal area going into various stores and local markets but didn´t find any warm clothes! We found a ridiculously expensive bookstore (the books cost more than the US price!) and then walked a bit around El Parque Elijido where a bunch of sketchy men of all ages stared at us, and then found ourselves in a very odd mall called Espiral. It´s named Espiral because it´s actually a spiral about 10 stories high... you walk around and around in circles until you get dizzy, or at least that´s what happened to us. The mall was filled with tiny gaming centers where boys in their bright blue school uniform sweats were playing video games with their friends, and there were also a ton of phone stores. But still, no warm clothes to be found! We finally gave up looking because we´d become dizzy and were falling asleep. We then looked around for a good place to eat lunch and almost fell asleep in our bowl of vegetables (I guess we stumbled upon a vegetarian restaurant). I´ve never seen beans that big in my life!

The other night a Norweigan guy arrived at our house. He´s very tall, has dreadlocks down to his waist, wears beachy clothes since he just arrived from the coast, and his name is Knut. I don´t really want to write much about him because during his first dinner with us, he put me on the spot and then made fun of the way I spoke Spanish. Nobody could believe he did that because 1) I had just told him I had only been learning Spanish for a few days and 2) he´s not even a native Spanish speaker anyway. He also called our host mom ¨tu¨instead of ¨usted¨when he first met her, so all in all he´s just an inconsiderate and rude guy. Really arrogant. Glad he´s only at our house for a week! Speaking of which, now that he´s at our house, we have a grand total of 8 people to one bathroom. Knut takes long showers and I noticed he placed a book in the bathroom to read on the toilet. Haha. This really is not a good sign, because there are 7 other people who need to use that bathroom, too! Oh, Knut... I don´t really like you. I hope other Norweigans are nicer than you.

Last night was really fun... Rachel and I met up with her friend Juliet after class and took two buses to a nearby town called Cumbaya (Cumbayaaaa my lord, Cumbaya... yes, like that). It took us forever to get there, going down a ton of windy roads, but we finally arrived and discovered that the town was MUCH warmer than Quito. If only we could live there right now, we wouldn´t be human icicles. Juliet´s other Fulbright friend Sarah lives there in a huge, nice, beautiful apartment complex that´s (get this) right next door to the amassador of Bolivia´s house (which, by the way, is an enormous 4 or 5 story mansion surrounded by a high electric fence. Too bad, because we wanted to knock on his door and bring him some of Juliet´s homemade chocolate cake and become friends with him. Well, at least that´s what Juliet and her friends are planning on doing so they can get invited to his parties). There were a bunch of other Fulbrighters there and we all had a delicious potluck for dinner and listened to cumbias music (the Ecuadorian equivalent of bad country music). The Fulbright people are all going to make up a silly ¨boy band¨dance to a cumbias song, inspired after a night in Cuenca when they saw an Ecuadorian boy band group perform in the streets... they seem like a fun, silly group of people They´re also friends with some Ecuadorians so I got to speak with them about life here... it´s good to meet actual locals instead of just travelers all the time!

Tomorrow we´re off to Otavalo, a town north of Quito, with a few other people from our Spanish school. It´s only $40 and we have all our transport covered, most of our meals, and a homestay with a local indigenous family in Otavalo (Otavalans are one of the largest idigenous groups in Ecuador). Apparently (attention Dad! just for you), we get to try cuy, aka guinea pig. I will be sad, but ´tis only a small bite. We´ll visit the nearby lakes and go canoeing, go on a short hike in the mountains, and visit the Saturday market in Otavalo, which is one of the largest in Ecuador.

I´ll write more about Otavalo once we get back next week. Until then!

Oh no.... damn it, it just started to POUR rain after a day full of sun. Bah!!! No umbrella today