Good Weekend (la mayoria)

So, for the most part, this was a very good and successful weekend which made me feel like I’m not completely in a routine of school, trabajo social, running, eating…. Because yes, sometimes it does in fact feel like that is all I’m doing here and those are all the things I could be doing in any country. But this weekend was pretty fun. I had to go to an open workshop for my art class on Friday in which there are normally models although this Friday there were none till later so I just worked on other things from class. In the afternoon I went to La Mariscal with Hilary and Cassie to check out the Converse store (disappointing actually), buy more movies, and shop around a little more at the artisans market when I got my eyebrow pierced- they have many of the same things as the Mercado in Otavalo, only slightly more expensive. I bought more scarves- I think I’m going to keep on for me this time. After, we went back to Cassie’s house to have a girls’ night. We made sure to go to the Supermaxi first to buy tuna, bread, lemonade, and ice cream. Yummy, I know. Megan came over and we vegged out and watched chick flicks. Amazingly, it was quite a good time. I haven’t had a night like that in quite a while.

The next day I got up early (8 o’clock)- I am becoming accustomed to waking up everyday at 8:00, not just the days I have class- and I went for a run. Then after breakfast I met up, again with Cassie and Hilary (they are my “activity buddies” because I haven’t once gotten tired of them yet) and we went to the Centro Historico to re-visit the Basilica, this time with cameras. Of course, my batteries were dead so it did me no good, but the other girls took plenty of pictures for me. We climbed the tower again, all 313 stairs and also discovered that there was another tower at the other end of the church that we could climb as well. Didn’t count those stairs, but all in all it was a good workout. We also went into the main part of the church which we hadn’t done the first time. We walked out on the roof about 2 or 3 flights up and I got to be a gargoyle. There will be pictures soon, and I must say, they came out pretty well. After our excursion we walked into the main part of the Centro (because the Basilica is a little north of the rest of the center) and we had a coffee and then a nice lunch of chicken, lentils, rice, and fried bananas. All of us struggled with the knives (they didn’t cut so well) and at one point we all threw food off our plates. Because we were close we walked over to visit with Marco’s parents a little bit. We chatted a little with Alicia, his mom, down in the shop for a while and then headed upstairs to say hello to Big Marco, his dad, in the house. Once we were upstairs it started pouring quite intensely so we ended up staying and chatting for about an hour. It was so pleasant. His family is just great. Also in the course of it all we were invited once again to come out to their house in the valley to swim. Hilary had to get home for a birthday party (her family is always having or going to parties), so Cassie and I went and had a “cafecita” to kill time before meeting up with Megan, Pete, and Andres, a kid from their swimming class, and his little brother, for pizza. (The nicest Pizza Hut I have ever been to in my life!) But it was fun, and of course, always nice to meet another Ecuadorian. Always convenient when they speak English too so they can help with misunderstandings of words or just whenever translation is necessary.

Sunday started off a little rough. Woke up again at 8:00 but ate breakfast before running this time. Turns out this was a bad idea, but not for what you would expect. My family was going to a bbq at my host sister’s house, which I was going to miss to go swimming, and I never know if I should feel guilty when I don’t do things with my family, although in my defense, I did not know about the bbq beforehand and I knew that I would enjoy the swimming more than the intense family time which always seems to last longer than is necessary and evolves into and argument of some sort. Anyway, before that, my host dad was going to Parque Metropolitano with my niece and nephew and the dog to walk around. He invited me to go as well and luckily I didn’t have to say no to that as well as he realized that I wanted to run and that was basically impossible with a 6 and 3 year old. So, I started to head off to go for my run in Parque Carolina which is nearby our house- where I normally run. Here is where the running after breakfast becomes a bad idea- solely because of timing. Apparently the dog could tell that she was going to get to go for a walk today and despite my caution, as I opened the gate to leave to go run, she ran out too. No big deal, unless it’s this dog. Number one, I think because she doesn’t get out very much at all she is overly excited to go anywhere (understandable). Number two, this is my host dad’s dog and hasn’t really been trained by anyone else- and by him, really only to jump up on your front (a terrible habit to teach a dog in my opinion). Which brings me to number three, she doesn’t listen for shit. Even to her name. So as she’s running off down the street I am calling her name and telling her to come and every once in a while she turns around to look at me, and then run more away from me. I went after her until I lost sight of her right before the park. She has taken off like this once before since I’ve lived here and returned on her own. I guess sometimes my host dad takes her to this park as well and so she knows the way there and back. My host mom told me that she probably went there and hopefully when I was running I’d see her and she’d come back with me. So, I started my run very irritated at this animal and feeling bad that now she wasn’t going to go with my host dad as he had wanted. Just to add another straw to the camel’s back, my mp3 player decided it would be a good idea to shut off after every song. So, on my adrenaline high I was running pretty well, seeing all of the people and other black dogs in the park and, like I usually do, at about 20 minutes in I hit my second wind, and about 23 minutes in I saw Betty, the dog. So, cutting my run short by about half and still feeling very fat from the pizza from the night before I once again chase after the dog except this time she is quite content to follow along with me. Not wanting to risk losing her again I decided to just go home, but not trusting her to be able to cross the busy street again and not having anything in the way of a leash, I took off one of my shoelaces and tied it around her collar and walked like that back to the house. An hour later and a 20 min run later I showered and finished writing my postcards I had bought the day before. Finally, Hilary and I met up, I bought more minutes for cell phone, and we bought some deserts (that turned out to be really good) to take with us to Marco’s parents. Cassie was late meeting us because her mom wanted to make her food before she left, 20 minutes before she was going to leave, and we are all for the most part terrible at saying no to anything our host families say or offer. So when Cassie arrived she was sufficiently frustrated as well (this is all from a gradual buildup of small things over time- believe it or not, living in a different culture is difficult sometimes), so we probably spent the whole Ecovia ride to the south fuming about our mornings and our frustrations. (I was fuming. Haven’t fumed in such a way for a while…) But we got to Marco’s parent’s house on time and we all pilled into a truck to go down to their house in the valley. On the way we stopped and bought food and had a lunch of way too much chicken, rice, papas fritas, and lemonade. Of course with good conversation too. Somewhere along the way we agreed to go the weekend of Nov 8 & 9 to watch Marco run in a 12k run, where we could take the train ride around Cotapaxi as well (for cheaper), visit another city close by and stay at Alicia’s sister’s house, and then come back together with Alicia at the end of the weekend. Also, this progressed into my running the 12k as well, and then all of us running it. Haha. We’ll see how that goes. Although Big Marco doesn’t know this, Little Marco is going to be back in Ecuador from about Oct 30- Nov 10 and so he to would probably be going with us, and what he doesn’t know yet, running the race with us too. After all of this was decided and the sun decided to disappear, we all went for a swim in the pool with quite ridiculously cold water. But we managed to get quite a few laughs out. Everyone was very impressed/disgusted with the intensity of the purple color of my hands and feet accompanied by the bright orange spots. I felt special After burning half our calories from lunch trying to keep ourselves warm we ate twice as many is the deserts we had brought. We rested for a short while more and then piled back into the truck and headed back to Salem. The three of us girls all commented on how we could go from being so frustrated, and more than likely quite miserable to be around, in the morning to so happy and pleasant and good humored after our afternoon. Although, it was a good transition and we were quite content with the progress of the day. Because we were still cold once we got back, we decided to grab another coffee before heading home. Also a good time, in which we reflected on the fact that we had had a really pretty darn good last three days and we all thanked each other for the proceeding days together and asserted that we were going to have more dates together this next weekend- possibly a trip to Mindo- which if we do go, I will write about more in another blog at the end of next weekend.

So, for the most part (although I do realize I allotted a large section to my one gradual disaster of a morning) this was a quite pleasing weekend which I am convinced will thrust me into a good and lucrative coming week. If nothing else, there will be more coffee dates.

Well-Needed Break

Well, I just returned from our trip to the beach and I feel refreshed and much more pleasant in general. We left Friday morning at 6:30 and about 6 ½ or 7 hours later we arrived at the beach in Atacames. Luckily it was our own private bus so it we could sleep without worrying about who might bother our stuff. We stayed at a four start hotel that had a pool even though we were immediately on the beach. We ate lunch, at the hotel and then went out to test the water. Pacific Ocean water on the equator is much warmer than Pacific Ocean water on either California or Australia’s coast. Who knew?! After, we walked into town which is basically just one street with little booths like in Otavalo and bars on the side of the street with the beach (the bars met right up with the beach) and some shops on the other side of the street. There was some short side streets as well with shops but the only one worth noting was a stand that sold “batidos”, basically smoothies or milkshakes, in very large cups. But they were fantastic. The coconut and watermelon and mora were the best in my opinion, although I loved all of them I tried (We bought a few batidos over the course of the weekend.) I also bought the first of my three dresses that night and wore it when we went out after dinner. After a dinner of more fish (we ate fish for lunch and dinner every day- but you couldn’t help feeling a little guilty if you didn’t considering we were on the beach), we went back into town to check out the bars and discotecas. I and a few others called it a light drinking night and sat at one bar and watched a show of breakdancers. They were of all ages, but did include two boys who looked about ten. Some of them were pretty impressive. MY favorite was a little guy with a semi-fro and probably the best washboard-abs I’ve ever seen in real life. Haha. It was a good night.

            We went back early enough that we had no problem waking up in the morning to go for a run on the beach. It was the first time I’d ever done it and it was quite fun. We ran on the wet part of the sand which made it easier and at the much lower altitude running for 30 minutes was a piece of cake. Although the humidity did make us sweat quite ridiculously. After breakfast we took a dip in the pool and then the ocean again and proceeded to go shopping more. I bought another dress and some earrings. That night we all wanted to go out and wear out new dresses but Kayla didn’t particularly like the one she had bought so we had a dress party which consisted of everyone trying on the dress, including Jonnie, and me deciding I’d buy it from her. Hence the purchasing of 3 dresses. But 3 for $30 isn’t too bad of a deal in my opinion. Luckily she was able to go into town before the shops closed again to get another dress. That night we went into town but ended up being party-poopers and coming back early. Hilary and I just watched a movie and called it a night.

            The next morning we didn’t run, but took another walk along the beach and a last swim in the ocean and pool before having lunch and heading back to Quito. Finally at about 9:00 we arrived back in Quito and being so exhausted from my relaxing trip I went to sleep about 9:30 and slept till 8:00 in the morning. Impressive.

            Hilary and I finally bought a basketball and went to play for a bit at Parque Carolina. Turns out 2 ½+ months of not really playing does have an effect on you :p but we had our moments. It is unfortunate to be back at this altitude again though. Hilary left to go home earlier than I wanted to so I stuck around and ended up playing a game to 20 points with a random kid who wanted to play. I beat him. But in the process I twisted my ankle, following suit with every other time I play, but now it’s a little sore. In any case, it was a good little workout. We’ll see how actual running works out tomorrow. That’s the unfortunate thing- that it takes so long to get into good shape but it is one of the easiest and fastest things in the world to get out of it. Here’s hoping my 2 days of not running don’t kill me too much. I haven’t run for 40 min in a while so maybe we’ll see how close we can get to that. I also have to drop my volleyball class tomorrow. I wasn’t able to do it online before we left and now that the deadline has passed I have to pay a $25 fine to drop it. Bullshit in my opinion. But if I don’t do it by the 19^th it goes up to $50 so I think I’ll get on that. I would keep it, but I’ve already missed enough classes that the grade has gone down. I still think it’s ridiculous you have to pay to drop a class, but I’ll just mark that down as one more thing to leave as feedback to the school when I leave. Still need to find a way to find the gym in Cumbaya… It is difficult because they don’t really make street maps of Cumbaya so I think I will have to ask someone, or just get on the bus someday when I don’t have class and see if I can find anything that looks like the right street. What an adventure!! In any case, first I need to get back in the mindset of school (my school of conversation and art, but still) :p But overall, the weekend was well needed and surprisingly I came back not feeling like I’d lost a bunch of Spanish ability- so that’s a good way to go into the next week.

Little Bit of National Spirit

So, the rest of the week finished up fairly decently with a little outing for dinner with some friends to a restaurant called Pim’s in the Palacio de Crystal. It is up on a little hill that overlooks the city and all the restaurants up on the hill are known for having a great view when the sun is just setting and all the city lights begin to come on. It really is quite cool. After dinner, because we could not get ahold of a taxi company, the five us us walked down the hill (strength in numbers) and when we got to the bottom split up into two groups. Hilary and I went to meet up with some other friends and then headed to the Mariscal (Grindolandia- as I’ve mentioned before). It was a very low-key night and everyone seemed tired, but I decided it was worth it in the end because with us were a couple Ecuadorian students from our school that are better friends with some other members of our group- but all the same, we got to practice a bit speaking in Spanish with them. They were very patient which helped a lot.

            The next day I went up to Parque Metropoliano with Fernando and our dog, Betty. Pete and I had run here once and even though we were just walking, it was still a workout. There are SO MANY hills!!! But the view of the valleys were pretty cool. I found USFQ. We returned and I took a quick shower, ate a quick lunch, and then met up with a coupe friends before walking a few blocks to the stadium to watch Ecuador play Bolivia in a qualifying match for the World Cup in 2010… for $15. Yup!!! MY first ever professional sports game and it was a soccer game in Latin America for 15 bucks! Not too bad if you ask me. The seats really weren’t too bad either. It was pretty awesome! We bought jerseys for $5 the day before with the tickets and got to be a part of the sea of the rest of the yellow jerseys. We also got to chant along a little bit with the crowd- “Si se puede”, “Hi-jo de puta”, “Vamos”… you know, the works :p Aside from the woman sitting next to me and the people in front of us smoking, it wasn’t really too bad an experience. It even decided not to rain for us. Hilary and I decided already to go to the next game in about a month, Chile versus someone… probably should find that out first. :p Needless to say, Saturday night was uneventful and I called it an early night. Sports festivities can be quite exhausting.

            Sunday was a family day as I spent most of it with my host family (including my host sister, her husband, and three kids) at the pool in the military “circulo” that Fernando has access to because he is an ex-military member. It is pretty sweet- fully equipped with tennis, volleyball, soccer, maybe basketball courts- not certain though, as well as a pool, gym, and restaurant or two. For me, the day was a tad long, but nonetheless it was a nice change. Surprisingly I wasn’t sore after the change from running to swimming, but that too is a good thing. That night I utilized the beauty of Skype once again and got to talk a little bit with a couple friends I hadn’t talked to in a while- one of which is my future roomie when I get back. (Yup, I have a place to live next semester… and a whole basement to share- with a dude, but whatever)

            Monday started early with a run at 9 am (yes, that’s early) and then a trip to the art store again to buy a technical drawing notebook so I could finish my art homework- only homework because I didn’t finish in class. It consisted of drawing many crossing squiggly lines and then using a cross-hatch method to shade in different spaces with different degrees of darkness using different pencils and graphite or carbon. I thought it was finny that I used to do that exact same exercise when I was little but with colors, for fun. We practiced shading from black to white using only pressure… My teacher said I did it very well After a long lunch with my family (all of them again) in which they discussed witch school and why the granddaughter/daughter should go to, I met us with a couple more friends. Because by this time is was about 3:30 in the afternoon we just decided to be lazy and bought either ice cream or bread and coffee and sat and chatted for a while. Mostly it was a catharsis session in which we sympathized with each other over the machismo attitude of the country and our struggles with the Spanish language. I think the ice cream helped.   Or at least, I will continue to tell myself that. Also looked for a gym near by USFQ because I think I will drop my volleyball class and try to go to a gym Tuesdays and Thursdays instead. This is only because the first day of volleyball was a little bit of a joke. There were a total of four of us who could even remotely control the ball and we passed and set back and forth to each other the whole time. I just feel like I could better spend my time, and I miss lifting weights anyway. We’ll see what I can find.

            So thus starts another week. This weekend we take our trip with ACLAS to the beach- it will be nice to get out again. Two weekends in Quito is just too much

Need to buy more postcards as well…

Highlight of Two Weeks- 45 min Doing Exercise :P

Well, I didn’t realize I hadn’t written in such a while. I will try to fill in the gaps while keeping this short (which means the same length as all the others and not longer). Entonces… after my quite awful first day of school, I had a very low-key weekend. The sickness only lasted about a day, even if it was a quite miserable day. Some of my friends went to the beach- which I heard later was a very poorly planned trip and I didn’t miss much of anything and made the right decision to stay behind. So I spent the 4 day weekend (because all my weekends are basically 4 days now, bummer I know), with mi familia. I visited the Centro Historico at night with my host dad which was much different from visiting in the daytime. There are, for one, much fewer people. I took pictures as well. It looks different at night as well. We walked down El Ronda which is apparently the oldest road in Quito. This is the same road that if you remember, I wrote about going to with my old host brother and his girlfriend. Ironically enough, my host dad took me to the same place to buy a carnelazo. I just couldn’t help but laugh a little inside at the irony. I was half-expecting to see my old host brother walk in, haha. (Thanks to something, he didn’t.) But we also watched some cultural dance and indigenous-ish music. I say “ish” because there was an electric guitar and bass as part of the group :p but the dancing was authentic, with costumes and all. It was fun. My host dad, who I guess I can start referring to by name- mi Papa Fernando- was very excited to explain to me all about the city and the centro and the churches. He is actually a very cute man and enjoys sharing lots with me about everything. He was also eager to take pictures of me for me.. but I only got two. We went for an ice cream after- also a favorite pastime for him- but the place was closed. They did give me an ice cream though, which turned out to be free because they did not have change for a $20 bill for a $1 ice cream. :] This culture is ridiculous, but great. The next day we went and ate at my host sister’s house with her and the three children- who are also in their own way very cute. My favorite was when the little boy, Andrés told his grandmother “cállate por favor”. I, my host mom, Ximena- his grandmother, and I think the maid all had to laugh. It was the funniest thing. I think I’m going to start using that one.          

My second first day of classes was yesterday and it went infinitely better than the real first one. My Spanish Conversation class still is without classroom, and we decided that we didn’t want to move the class to the afternoon so the class is going to remain in the office where we had it yesterday. Very cozy. There are about 10 students, and after one day I’ve decided that Pete and I know more Spanish than pretty much everyone else, save maybe a couple, in the class. I guess there are different levels of “intermediate”. In any case, I think it will be good. The teacher seems cool and my friend who was here last year said he knew some people who took the class and really liked her. Still didn’t have volleyball. The coach was there at least, but just said we wouldn’t have class till Thursday… We’ll see… He is a big black man who mumbles a lot so we’ll see how much I understand Anyway, I went running instead. There is a nice reservoir to run around… but you have to go down a bit of a hill to get there, which of course you have to come back up again… And it’s kinda steep. So that was killer. Don’t know if I’ll frequent that path again much. Art went well. We lost our classroom in that class as well. There was just another class there which was apparently supposed to be there too. But we found another room easily and spent the day testing out our materials and drawing lines (vertical, horizontal, and diagonal), circles, and squares. I never had any idea how difficult it was to draw a straight line… but surprisingly I did get better at it. So overall, the second first day went much better. We’ll see how tomorrow pans out. With this school I do feel like it is a day-by-day thing.

Started my trabajo social today as well at the old-folks’ home… place. Still not entirely sure how to describe it best. It was interesting. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I feel like this was something different. Many, the majority, of the patients there don’t/can’t speak, and those that do, you always feel like they’re only halfway there with you. But I think it could still be interesting to talk to them a bit, wonder what they’re thinking… I also spent about 20 min feeding half a banana to a woman, and then about another 40 min feeding her lunch. Definitely different work than I’ve ever done. The other people who work/volunteer are all nice though, and it’s interesting to watch them interact with the patients too. They also still give us an opportunity to practice Spanish. Like I said, it will be interesting. We are going to be going about 4 hours a week, 10am-2pm. Surprisingly the time went by fairly quickly today. Again, we’ll see.

The very thrilling part of my day though was that I somehow managed to run for 45 ½ minutes with minimal effort today at 9200 ft, about 15 min of which was in the rain. It was incredible! I’ve never run for that long in my life, and all of a sudden I’m doing it at 9000+ feet and feeling like I could still go more at the end of it. Next time I need to write an essay about “my greatest accomplishment” I am really considering writing about this. I really can’t express how excited and slightly confused I am right now, but you’ll have to try your best to understand the best you can. The only reason I even tried for that time is because a friend told me I couldn’t call him till I had run 40 min straight, so of course I had to try just because it was a challenge. Ha! Shows him!

Oh. One last bit of info, I now have cell phone. Not by choice though, I was still all about going 5 months without one, but my family wanted me to have one because it truly is much easier for communication. They had a phone they activated so I saved about $50 there not having to buy one- and… it’s got a camera! How exciting, haha. You need to buy minutes so I guess I will have to do that because with the activation I only got $3 worth. In any case, I’m still not planning on spending much money on my cell phone… Just emergencies… and a few other things

Classes start again tomorrow like I mentioned, and then the weekend again. Still no plans, but maybe I can find someplace close by to go and explore… I’ll do a little bit more research than was done with the beach trip and see who wants to tag along.

 

p.s. this blog was actually shorter than some of the previous ones