"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened..." -Dr. Seuss

Okay…so I’m pretty much done. I can’t believe it. I have my last exam tomorrow morning, and I only need to study a tiny bit more. The rest of the week will be spent packing, finish up my gift shopping at the local market, and hanging out with my friends and host family. About a month ago I was sure I’d be feeling ready and excited to go home when the 22nd rolled around, but now I’m feeling incredibly sad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited to see you, I’m just not quite ready to go.

But anyway, I did a good job of keeping on top of my work so that I haven’t been quite so stressed out as some of the other students in the program (aren’t you surprised? Me, not stressed out?) This past weekend I was actually able to enjoy myself a bit rather than stay cooped up in my room doing work. On Friday I went to see the movie Legion – I think it’s actually one of the weirdest movies I’ve even seen. The message is interesting, but the way that it’s conveyed is very odd. On Saturday I went back to the big market in Otavalo do some gift shopping and on Sunday I spent the day with my host parents. They made a nice breakfast, since it was our last one all together, and then we out for a few hours. We went to the Parque Itchimbia, which is one of the places I visited during orientation when I didn’t have my camera. I got to take some pictures and we ate lunch at a nice restaurant there with a view of the city. Then we drove around some of the valleys on the outskirts of the center of the city, since I didn’t really get to explore those very much.

In honor of what is most likely my last blog post, I think it’s about time that I share some CULTURAL FUN FACTS with you all:

1) Most public bathrooms here don’t have toilet seats. They also have one main toilet roll dispenser by the entrance. So if you forget…you’re out of luck. Oh and in places like train stations it costs 15 cents.

2) Dinner here is called “cafecito.” Some families eat normal meals, some eat leftovers, some simply eat bread and tea. The time seems to range between 6 and 9:30 depending on the family. In my family, it couldn’t be more all over the map.

3) Everyone kisses on the check all the time. When you say hello or goodbye, good morning or goodnight, or when you meet someone new. Even if you run into someone on the street and there’s all of 15 seconds between hello and goodbye, you still kiss on the check both times.

4) There are stray dogs everywhere. I heard a rumor that people have to pay taxes on dogs, so when they come around to collect the money people throw their dogs out on the street so they don’t have to pay. Not sure if that’s true…

5) I walk really fast, which I’m normally aware of. But here, if I get stuck behind some Ecuadorians it’s like hitting a brick wall.

6) There are people selling things everywhere—in the streets, on the buses—you can’t avoid them. Sometimes people do magic tricks and juggle fire in front of the cars at a red light and then go around asking for money.

7) The water in the bathroom sink that I use smells like rotten eggs.

8) There’s a cuckoo clock in our house that chimes every hour…actually it’s more like 6 minutes before the hour. It has a sensor for light and stops chiming when it’s dark, so once everyone is home and in bed safe and sound my host parents will know.

9) All public school students wear uniforms.

10) It’s normal for most middle and upper class families to have a domestic employee who comes to cook, clean, etc. Some live in the homes and some only come a couple times a week, it depends. We have one who comes every day one the week, which was a little difficult for me to get used to at first.

11) There are no parking meters here, but people who collect money.

12) It’s perfectly normal to see a guy peeing in the street.

13) Everyone litters and doesn’t think twice.

14) The concept of “cold” here is entirely different. People wear parkas and gloves when it gets down to 60 degrees and cloudy.

15) My host mom uses a fork and knife to eat bananas, corn, and chicken legs.

16) The Ecovia and Trole, two forms of public transportation, have their own lanes down the middle of the street.

17) When people are thirsty it doesn’t occur to them to drink water, only juice or tea. (I’m one to talk right?)

18) “Osea” is pretty much the Spanish version of the way American youth use “like.”

19) The people here add “f” and “ito” on the ends of words: sifff, quesito, aguita….

20) It’s considered very rude to refuse food. (Maybe that’s why I’ve gained weight…)

21) I met someone during orientation who was born in Lawrence hospital and one of the guards in the IES office building lived in Yonkers for 6 years.

22) I’m pretty sure I heard someone say that the Catholic University costs $3000 per semester. That means the entire 4 years there costs the same amount as one semester at Colgate…

22 fun facts…my lucky number. Well, I’ll be in New York at about 7:30pm on Saturday. Crazy how time flies. Can’t wait to see you all!

Some pictures of our IES goodbye dinner:

Me and my host mom

Amigos!

Me and Gladys, one of the IES staff members

Sporting our new t-shirts with the IES logo

Parque Itchimbia:

The Basilica

El Panecillo

My host parents!

Final retreat into nature, followed by a streak of productivity...

This past weekend I went on a field trip with a class that I’m not actually in, but it was to a place on my list that’s kind of hard to get to, so I asked if I could go. When Saturday morning rolled around I was feeling a little stressed out and hesitant about going, since Friday I ended up seeing Iron Man 2 and getting slightly less work done than planned. However, it turns out that my final retreat into Ecuador’s natural beauty did me well. I have completed a bunch of research, a 13-page paper, a 7-page paper, and a 3-page paper all in Spanish. I’ve got one more 7 pager, a presentation, and 2 exams to go.

Anyway, the trip this weekend was really fun and pretty low key. We left at 8am on Saturday morning, stopped at an indigenous market along the way, and arrived in Quilotoa around lunchtime. Quilotoa is a caldera, which is a volcanic crater that collapsed and filled with water. Because of all the sulfur, the color of the water is an incredible greenish turquoise. We were pretty much free to do what we wanted, so we hiked down to the lake, which takes about 30 min, but I think it took us closer to an hour because we stopped to take so many pictures. It wasn’t quite as cold at the bottom because there was less wind, so we ate our lunches and laid out to enjoy the sun for a while (although we were still wearing fleeces…) After that we went down to the water and some people went kayaking. We hung out, and then started to make our way back up. Some decided to pay to ride mules, but the rest of us hiked. That evening there was nothing on the schedule, so we hung out for a bit and went to look at the stars. I knew it was going to be cold in Quilotoa, but I wasn’t concerned since I had already been to a bunch of cold mountains. However, I didn’t realize that we would be staying right by the lake. We each slept in all of our clothes (4 layers for me) and each bed had about 5 wool blankets. There was a little wood stove, which didn’t do much, but luckily I was nice and toasty underneath all of the blankets.

Sunday morning we got up and had a talk with one of the Indigenous women who works at the hostel. This was part of an assignment for the class, but I stuck around to listen anyway. She mostly talked about their community and the role of tourism, but it was really interesting. We were on the road by 10, so I was home by 1:30. And that’s when my productive streak began. Hopefully I can keep it up!

Rain, rain, go away....

This past weekend was also filled with local activities. On Friday we had a field trip with our Service Learning class to visit all of the organizations where students did their volunteer work. It was a long day, but it was cool to see all the places we’ve been hearing about all semester. For me it was interesting because one of the places we visited was a private school, so it was interesting to see the differences from the public school I’ve been volunteering in. On Friday night a few students and I went to our Ecuadorian friend’s soccer game. On Saturday morning I arrived at the school I volunteer at just before 7am to begin preparing for the presentation of the play. Considering we were working in a pretty shabby classroom, I think we transformed the space really well. We also had stage makeup, which I think make it all the more fun for the kids. Overall it went really well! Unfortunately because we had agreed to do it on a Saturday to make it easier for the parents, that meant that some students didn’t show up. We had to improvise a little, but in the end it worked out just fine. The best part is that the parents were thrilled and want Arteducarte to continue working in the school! They’re in the process of deciding right now whether they will or not—some of the teachers don’t support the program at all, supposedly because it disrupts their routine. Anyway, I officially finished my volunteering today—103 hours of service complete! On Saturday afternoon I went to the Historic Center with my friend Liz. I haven’t spent any time there since we went during orientation and there’s so much to do! Unfortunately we couldn’t do everything because we didn’t have a lot of time and it was the Ecuadorian version of Labor Day, so certain museums and stuff were closed. We took a tour of the Presidential Palace, which was pretty cool and saw the outside of the Basilica, which is really amazing. Unfortunately we couldn’t go in, but I’ve heard the outside is more impressive anyway. On Sunday I did work all day, and pretty much finished the rough draft of my first real research paper in Spanish! Still got a couple more to go…although the fact that "winter" (aka the wet season) has finally arrived and I may never wake up to a blue sky again or have an afternoon without rain might help motivate me. (Hopefully that's not true though...)

Things I’m most looking forward to at home:
1) SINGING
2) Driving myself places
3) Brushing my teeth with sink water (I’m a little overly-cautious…)
4) Letting my safety guard down (not completely, of course)
5) Less-polluted air
6) Regaining my own eating schedule/habits
7) Getting away from constant cat calls (it’s pretty inevitable if you’re white…)

Things I’m most sad to be leaving:
1) Speaking Spanish (mom, wanna help me out with that this summer?)
2) Being able to hop on a short, cheap bus and be somewhere totally different and amazing
3) Mountains

The play:

The Historic Center:

Inside the Presidential Palace!

He's real...

The Basilica

Only 22 days left!

Last weekend was pretty low key – I finally crossed some Quito activities off my list! On Friday morning I woke up and the sky was perfectly clear, so I went to the Teleferiqo with my friend Liz. It’s basically a tram that takes you up the mountain where you have a great view of practically the whole city. You can hike to the peak of Volcan Pichincha, but it’s really best if you go with someone who knows the route, so we decided just to make a quick visit. On our way back home we walked around a bit and found an area with a bunch of cool artesan shops. Later that day I went bowling and saw Clash of the Titans, which I really liked! On Saturday the student that I tutor in English invited me over for lunch as a thank you, and we went to Mitad del Mundo. It’s a pretty touristy spot, but you can’t come to Quito and not get a photo with the equatorial line! On Sunday I did homework all day, as it’s getting near the end of the semester and I have lots of research projects and essays to complete! This past week I finally took some very belated pictures of my house here and my service learning, so I’ll put those up to!

Teleferiqo:

Mitad del Mundo:

The school I volunteer at:

My house:

(we're on the very top floor that you can barely see...)

The life of a study abroad student: 18 hours of travel for a 36 hour visit to Cuenca!

This past weekend I went to Cuenca with my friend Liz. Cuenca is Ecuador’s third most important city and it’s the city I drove through with my host family on our way back from Loja. It’s very different from Quito and I really wanted to spend a little more time there. Despite the fact that it’s 9 hours away, we decided to take a short weekend trip. Overnight buses are awesome for trips like this because you don’t lose any time traveling! Although it’s unfortunate if you don’t get much sleep. On the way there, however, I slept surprisingly well. We arrived at around 8:30 am, checked into our hostel, and found a great little organic breakfast place. We packed our bags for the day, including PB&Js for lunch with the stuff we had bought at the grocery store in Quito, and set out with the intention of hitting all the main spots in the city in one day. We first went to the Museum of Pumapungo. Although we knew it was the most important museum in Cuenca, we didn’t realize just how huge it would be. It encompasses everything from religious art, to archaeological artifacts, to ancient ruins, to informational posters about the history of Ecuador, informational posters about every indigenous group in Ecuador, life-size figures displaying various aspects of indigenous life…you get the idea. Although it was interesting, it was never-ending. Despite the fact that we were afraid we wouldn’t have time to do everything we wanted to do, we couldn’t pull ourselves away prematurely. We finally got through everything (I think….there were a few more floors, but we’re pretty sure they were just archives) and went outside to eat our lunch.

We quickly passed by some other ruins that were right nearby, and decided to forgo another museum we had considered since the first one we went to was so comprehensive. We started walking toward the main part of the city. The size of Cuenca seemed perfect to me – not too small, but small enough to walk to most of the important places. We arrived at the Parque Calderon, which is where I got out to take pictures when I stopped through with my family. We went into the New Cathedral, which was gorgeous. It has blue ceramic domes that can be seen from all over the city. After that we were tempted by some delicious ice cream, which we ate in the park. We walked around a little more and tried to find a ceramics store that I had seen in my guidebook, which unfortunately was either closed or nonexistent. We made our way a few blocks down to the Plaza San Francisco, where there is a little street market. We also passed a flower market on the way there. We briefly walked though and continued on to the Plaza San Sebastian. This one was very quiet and peaceful since it’s a little bit out of the center of the city. Unfortunately it seemed as though there was no way to get in to see the church. Although there were certainly a ton more churches to see in Cuenca, we decided we would rather do some of the other things on our list. We stopped by the shop of the most important Panama hat maker, and then we wandered into a market that had about 120 vendors of all different types of handmade crafts. I did some of my gift shopping! At that point we met up with another girl, Charlotte, who my friend Liz met through her volunteering in Quito. Charlotte’s from England and she’s taking a gap year before college. She volunteered in Quito for a while, and now she’s using the money that she saved up over the past few years to travel around Ecuador. She happened to be in Cuenca at the same time, so we met up! She was so incredibly sweet and I’m thrilled that I got to meet her. The three of us took a cab out to the lookout of the city, which was beautiful. We stopped into this workshop/ceramics store that was really beautiful. Unfortunately it’s a little more high-end and expensive—not the kinds of things I would want to pack in my suitcase and risk breaking on the way home! We headed back to our hostel and got cleaned up for dinner. We decided to go back to the place we got ice cream, as we had noticed that the food looked good. It was, although not exactly typical Cuenca food. By the time we were done it was getting late and we were pretty exhausted. We headed back to our hostel and got to bed with plans to get up early and head out to Cajas National Park.

In the morning we packed some more PB&Js, grabbed a quick breakfast, and got a bus that would get us to Cajas in about 45 minutes. At the entrance we got a map and the ranger recommended a route for us. Within the first 5 minutes we were absolutely captivated and knew we didn’t want to leave. It ended up working out perfectly that we took a slightly different route than intended and ended up hiking for about 6 hours instead of the anticipated 3. We were never lost from the trail…there were just a few times where we thought we were somewhere different on the map. The scenery was incredible though so we really didn’t mind, and the weather was perfect! We were over 4,000 meters, and it was pretty chilly at the beginning, but the sun made it really nice a little later on. We were surrounded by hills, mountains, and lakes. At one point we walked through a polylepis forest (they call it the paper tree because it’s used to make paper), and it was so incredibly cool. It’s hard to describe, but the color, texture, and shape of the trees just gave it a really cool feel. Basically the whole day I felt like I was in a magical fairytale land. On our way back we met a really nice Irish couple that had already paid a cab to take them round trip to and from Cuenca, so they gave us a free ride back! We had plans to leave on the bus that night, and luckily our hostel owners were incredibly nice and let us store our stuff there all day even though we had already checked out. We went back to change our clothes and found a good burger place for dinner (somehow when we go out to eat here we always want non-Ecuadorian food…) After dinner we walked around the plaza a bit to kill time. Around 10pm we headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and got a cab to the bus station. Unfortunately it was wasn’t as easy to sleep this time, but still much better than taking a bus during the day. I thought I would have passed out after our long day, but after a brief nap I was wide awake. It didn’t help that they kept the radio on all night (I think most buses do that and we just got lucky on the way there). We picked up some more people at around 4:30am, but I think I managed to get a few hours of sleep somewhere on either end. I came home and went to bed for a few more hours, which was lovely. Overall it was a short trip, but I had a great time and I’m really glad we decided to go!