Road Trip!!!!

So far this semester, I´ve spent most of my time in Quito (where I live) and Cumbaya (where the university is), but last weekend we took a good road trip.

The kids in the U of I program took a bus last Friday (August 24) to the indigenous Quichua community of Peguche, about two hours outside of Quito. I knew that the trip was going to be overnight, so I packed pretty much everything I thought I might possibly need in my large backpacking backpack (is that redundant?). I arrived at the bus station to find all the other students with all their stuff neatly packed into bookbags. Apparently the Girl Scout motto of “be prepared” has caused me to just look like a person who is incredibly talented at over-packing and carrying a bag that could probably fit three bodies in it.

Anyway, our guide was supposed to be a professor from my university here who is from Peguche, but for some reason he couldn’t come, so our guide was Ñunche, his 15-year old son. When we arrived at Peguche, we dropped our stuff off at a community house, and then Ñunche led us on a hike up to a huge waterfall. Though none of us had swimsuits, the waterfall was too tempting, so we all played in it in our clothes and got soaking wet. Haha, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the walk down the mountain was definitely a bit chilly. Okay, it was still a good idea.

When we got back down the mountain, we changed into the remaining dry clothes we had. For most people, this was their pajamas, but I had an extra pair of jeans!!!! Whoo-hoo, I knew I was a Girl Scout for some reason! Then we took our big yellow bus (driven by Patricio and his 9-year old son Esteban. Well, okay, Esteban didn’t drive, but he was a pretty cool navigator) to Otavalo, an indigenous market town for another HUGE lunch.

Then we went to Cotacatchi, where there’s a gorgeous volcanic lagoon. We took a chilly, but pretty, boat tour of the lagoon. It’s really weird because the nearby volcano causes there to be no fish in the lake. It was so cloudy and strange-looking that I thought I was in Scotland looking for the Lochness Monster. We were puttering along in the lake when all of the sudden this huge black thing moved beneath us in the water and our boat started rocking really hard. Our boat driver yelled “El Monstruo Locni!” (which roughly translates to Lochness Monster). I peed in my pants, but fortunately, as the Girl Scout I was trained to be, I had another pair.

Okay, sorry, that last paragraph was a load of BS, except for the part about the gorgeous volcanic Scotland-looking lagoon and chilly boat tour with no fish. It was a nice tour, but not very exciting so I thought that I should add something to spice it up. But it’s a good thing that there was no Monstruo Locni because I only brought two pairs of jeans and would have had to wear my pajama pants had I peed in my jeans.

But I digress. Anyway, after the boat tour we returned to the community house in Peguche where we all ate a delicious dinner of PASTA (they have TONS of rice at meals, but very seldom pasta) in a barn. It was a delicious dinner. I think it was supposed to be kind of Chinese food, but it had a strong Ecuadorian twist. Well, I don’t know what it was, but it was great.

Most of the girls stayed in the community house and the two guys stayed in a neighboring house, but four of us girls stayed in another Quichua family’s house.The four of us fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up to roosters crowing. (Ahhh, it reminded me of Tijuana!)

As we were getting ready, we heard a lot of long, loud squealing. We looked out the window to see the family tying down a HUGE hog and killing it. I walked outside to us the bathroom and brush my teeth to see the now dead hog lying on the ground. Well, I like ham as much as the next person, so I can’t really complain.

So the four of us girls headed back to the community house where we ate a large breakfast in the barn (it’s a really nice barn with a huge table). This time I knew the butter-looking stuff was cheese, so I took a good portion of that. After breakfast we walked around the village and watched some of the indigenous people work. One of the men was a musical instrument maker and made a set of pipes (that’s soooo not the correct term, but I forget the right term) out of wood in front of us and then played us a song on them. Then he, his 2-year old daughter, and his friend played a song for us out of a bunch of instruments they made. We also watched some weavers work to make hammocks and cloths which were amazing. They work so fast and their final products are gorgeous.

Then we went into Cotacatchi where there’s a huge leather market, and then Otavolo, a larger Quichua indigenous market town. Saturday is the biggest market day of the week, and there were vendors all over selling all types of stuff from good-smelling food to the products the indigenous people make. My host mom had kept telling me that I needed to get a scarf, so buying one became my mission.

Of course, there was lots of other cool stuff too, so I ended up bartering for some cloth (which is very versatile and spruces up my walls in the apartment), some jewelry, some scarves, and some headbands as well. I’m not a huge fan of bartering, but I was getting pretty good at it until I tried bartering for some bread at the local pandería and found that you can’t barter for that. So I paid 15 cents for my croissant instead of the 12 cents I was trying for. Yep, I can be quite the dumb gringa!

After a long day of bartering (ok 2 hours, but it’s tiring!) we stopped at a restaurant for another large lunch and headed back to Quito. I was so excited to show my host mom my new scarf so she would stop worrying about me catching a cold!

La Mitad del Mundo

One foot in the northern hemisphere, one foot in the southern!

On Thursday (August 23) the U of I kids and I went to La Mitad del Mundo, the Middle of the World. I had gone there with my host family on Sunday, but it was kinda fun to go with people who had never been before. Plus the atmosphere on weekends is completely different than on weekdays.

On weekends there are TONS of tourists, mostly from Ecuador, and lots of music and dance shows. On weekdays, there is way less tourists, and things are must quieter. I definitely enjoyed seeing all the shows and the energy on Sunday, but it was also nice to be able to tour the museums and take tours without really long lines. Either way, I got to stand on the north side and the south side of the equator at the same time! P.S. Fun Fact: there are actually two equatorial lines.

La Mitad Del Mundo marks the geographical line, while the magnetic line is about a 20 minute walk away, and that is where it is hard to stand up straight!

¡Sî, se puede!

Last Wednesday (August 22) some of us went to a fútbol, or soccer game. Soccer is a way bigger deal here than in the U.S., and the Ecuadorian national team played the Bolivian teams. We bought general admission tickets for $5.50 apiece and bright yellow Ecuadorian soccer jerseys from street vendors for $5.00 each. I thought we would stand out walking around the streets of Quito in neon yellow shirts, but as it got closer to game time, more and more people sported the vibrant jerseys.

The big chant here is “¡Sí se puede!” (a rough translation of “Yes, they can!”), and that chant as well as the wave were used often to cheer the team on. There were police with giant shields and each end of the field. At first we wondered why they were needed, but we found out at the end of the game when a fight broke out between the Ecuadorian and Bolivian soccer players. The game ended then, whether because of the fight or because time ran out; we’re not sure. Either way, Ecuador won, 1-0!

(The first picture is the U of I kids that went as we sat in the stadium, the second picture is us with our $5.50 tickets to the game, the third picture is of the field and police, and the fourth picture is of the stadium. I hope to figure out how to make this more readable soon!)

Well, I guess I haven’t written in awhile, but I’ve been busy! I’m also trying to figure this whole Internet thing out. I can use the Internet at the university, and there are also two Internet cafes by my apartment that I can use. Sometimes it’s interesting trying to navigate my way around the Web in Spanish, but I’m learning! Plus it’s good way to learn vocabulary words (like Atrás means “Back”; I have to use that button a lot).

Here are some highlights from my past week

The White House Ecuadorian Style

Last Tuesday, (August 21) the late arriving U of I group, which includes me, went to El Centro, of the Historic District of Quito. There are lots of huge, gorgeous churches and old colonial buildings. Also- there is the President’s house, which you can go right up to and walk along its front porch! Erika, our USFQ student guide, says that the president doesn’t stay there often, but it’s still cool to see.

Building a blog from an Internet Cafe

Hola!
I think I’m going to trying a start a separate blog about my trip to Ecuador so I don’t hog all the space in the family blog. I’m not sure how interesting this blog will be, or how well I’ll keep up with it, but I’ll try and organize it so you can jump around and find the things that are interesting to you! Vamos a ver….

Packing
Well, I’m definitely not known for my packing skills, as anyone who has ever seen me pack to go to school or return home or go pretty much anywhere can attest. Packing for Ecuador was no exception. I didn’t start packing until Friday, the day before I left, using the philosophy that if you wait til the last minute, it only takes a minute to get done.

For future reference, that philosophy is usually inaccurate, but I don’t think that will stop me from procrastinating in the future. Anyway, after hours of packing and a lot of help rearranging from Mom and Dad, I finally ended up with two suitcases weighing under 50 lbs. each, and two large carry-ons. They weren’t pretty, but they worked!

Departure
After a nice run Saturday morning, I ate breakfast with Mom, Dad, and Brian (delicious blueberry muffins and some breakfast casserole/egg thing that Mom can whip up out of thin air and taste good). Then Mom, Dad, and I headed for the airport and Brian headed for U of I.
At the airport, Mom dropped Dad and me off to park the car while Dad and I went to the ticket agent. The ticket agent suggested that I fly stand-by on an earlier flight because the weather in Houston, where my connecting flight was, could get nasty. Dad and I agreed and as soon as Mom arrived, I said good-bye and power-walked to the gate. They were just about to close the ramp to the plane as I arrived, but I made it onto the flight.

Houston
The good news was that I arrived in Houston so I could make my connecting flight. The bad news was that I had a lot of time to sit around George Bush International Airport until my connecting flight to Quito at 5:50 p.m.

As soon as I exited the plane in Houston, I headed straight to gate E3, the gate the ticket agent said my flight to Quito was. There was a flight to Lima at 3:45 p.m. at the same gate, so I ended up taking with Tory, a girl form Iowa doing some volunteer work at a prison in Peru and Brandon, a guy who was traveling around Peru.

I also managed to write my part of the traveling bracelet letter that some of my girlfriends at U of I and I have. After Tory and Brandon left, I ended up talking with a guy from Wisconsin who’s studying in Quito but at a different university. He said that the TV screen said our flight was in gate E17, though he was told by an official that our flight was at E3. After awhile I tried to find a mailbox and check out gate E17. Well, I quickly found out that the nearest mailbox ws outside security which I didn’t have time to go to. So I hunted down gate E17 (which is extremely far from E3, especially with my heavy backpack containing my laptop and my ridiculously large purse in which I might as well have been carrying a small child).

Sure enough, the 5:50 p.m. flight to Quito was posted at E17. So I hiked back to gate E3 to tell my new friend (though he doesn’t know we’re friends) that our flight really was at gate E17. He wasn’t there, which didn’t surprise me because I had been wandering for about an hour. So I hiked back to E17. I really felt I was getting to know all the E gates at Bush International. I’m pretty sure the shopkeepers would recognize me, I walked past the random stores so many times.

Anyway, at get E17, I started talking with Sarah, a girl from Canada studying for three weeks in Quito. I also met up with some other girls form U of I!

So we all got on the flight (my Wisconsin friend made it and figured out the gate change) and before I knew it we were looking down into a billion lights and landing.

Walking into the Quito airport was crazy because there were so many people pressed against the glass walls looking at for passengers. We felt like animals at the zoo in a very popular exhibit. Customs didn’t take too long, and after a bit of nervous waiting, I got both of my bags. Too bad, I could barely handle all my bags. I’ve got to learn not to over-pack.

So we all sleep-walked (it was about 11:45/midnight after a long day) into a crowd of people waving hands and signs. After a bit of confusion, I met up with my host mom, Patricia, a really nice lady. We took a taxi to her apartment where I quickly fell asleep on my wonderful bed.