Un adventura sin zapotoes

This weekend ( Friday-Saturday) we took our first and I think only group trip. Our detestation, San Miguel de los Bancos. We boarded the bus and drove for three hours, up and up and up, with breath-taking views of the Andes mountains. We left early so we arrived at El encanto, the place we stayed, just in time for breakfast! Hopefully I can put pictures up soon because this place was hermoso (beautiful!). After breakfast we headed out on group hike with a guide who pointed out many of the unique jungle plants, and we got the opportunity to not only swim in but partially climb a waterfall.
After lunch we had free time and there was a guy who said he didn’t live far and could take some of us water skiing and wakeboarding. Without a second thought myself and about 12 others jumped in the back of his pick-up… who knew there was waking boarding in the mountains of Ecuador! (don’t worry if this sounds sketch, one of our professors decided to come with us). Right before we left I realized I was the only one wearing sandals and I asked the guy if this was ok and he said yes (this is important later). Anyways, I thought we would ride maybe five minutes max in the back of this pick-up but no it was a good 15-20 minutes flying down gravel roads at high speeds with about 12 of us gringas flying around in the back… scary? Yes… super fun? Yes!
When the truck stopped there was no lake so we were a little confused but there was a giant dump truck-ish vehicle, that we were suppose to climb in. In this truck you could not sit so we all grabbed onto the side as we proceeded down a steep “road.” Finalmente, the truck stopped and we hopped out, we followed Carlos our guide to this so called “lake.” The pouring rain made most of the ground mud which was not ideal for hiking in, along with the “poisonous” plants that lined the ground… (most us of got cut by them and they just stung for a couple minutes and left a rash). We got to a beautiful river with a giant waterfall and Carlos went ahead and climbed up a 50 foot cliff and jumped in.. so of course… so did we! Then we continued on our hike to the lake…
By now the mud was very thick and of course my sandals kept getting stuck… finally they got so stuck that when I tried to walk they broke.. awesome… now I’m walking through mud that’s full of poisonous plants without shoes… but it gets better … we enter the jungle/rain forest… and proceed to hike for 2 hours through the jungle… streams, mud, swampish pools of mud… you name it … and yes I had NO SHOES on… 2 hours hiking through the jungle without shoes is an experience that’s for sure… when we stopped to swing on a vine across a little swamp (yes I felt like Tarzan) I tried to yell at Carlos in Spanish for telling me it was fine to wear sandals… he said he saw no problem with my bare feet.. he was wearing knee high boots… Finally, after a LONG time the trees began to clear and sure enough there was a lake! ( I’ll admit at times I thought that maybe we were being taken to a Colombian kidnap camp… ) But the lake was real! Hopefully I can put up some photos soon…
So finally, I got to wake board on a lake in the Andes mountains! Que Chevel!
The next day my legs were (and still are) covered in bug bites… I never felt it some I’m not sure how it happened but my bug bites almost equal the freckles on my legs… and they itch SO bad… (I’m so glad you packed me that anti-itch spray mom! Gracias!)
The next day… we had some lectures in Spanish … and found out we were actually on the equator … not the tourist spot but it’s still the middle of the world! (You can balance an egg at the center of the world!)
On the way home our bus got a flat tire so we stopped at an ice cream store… a pretty ideal place to be stuck.. and the owner … Cleary happy that 30 some people were stuck at his store.. gave us un demonstration on how he made ice cream.. Quite interesting…
When we got home from our group trip, I hung with my sister, Estefina, for a bit, her semester ends in two weeks so she has been studying all the time and decided to stay home and study for the night.. what a good student… my mom and dad were at a Quincienta..which is probably fancier than a wedding (they were out until super late and I found at breakfast the next day that my mom is quite the party animal)… and I’m not really sure where my brother was… but my madre (mom you will be so happy) is very protective of me… taxies and buses are NOT safe, according to her and so she drives me all over… some of the kids in my program were going to meet up in gringolandia but I know my mom would not want me taking a taxi out by myself so I decided to go with my aunt, uncle, and cousins who live below to check out old town. It was beautiful! Then they took us to check out gringolandia (new town) and of course we ran into everyone in our group… but I was so tired and my stomach hurt so bad I’m glad we didn’t stay long…

Why did my stomach hurt so bad you ask…. Ok well there’s two possible reasons…

1. When I jumped off the cliff I was screaming and swallowed a ton of the water but I think water in the Andes is pretty clean so its probably the second…

2. At lunch, they asked if I wanted the vegetarian option… si claro… the vegetarian option was chicken…I don’t think they quite understand vegetarianism but here it goes, yes, I, Erin Bennett, ate some chicken for the first time in over three years… and it tasted like… chicken? I don’t know I really haven’t missed it …sorry kind of anti-climatic but anyways I think this is where my digestive pain came from.
Speaking of digestive pain… I find it interesting and inconvenient that the window in my bathroom opens up to the kitchen of my aunt and uncle who live below me… very weird…

Lost in Translation

The other morning at breakfast I was trying to make small talk with my mom… so I decided to tell her I thought it was funny that there was a rooster in the middle of a city… I thought I said this perfectly clear.. but apparently not as she responded with.. “Oh, you flew out of Kennedy airport?”

sleepless in quito

I have never had a problem with sleeping… but for some reason since I’ve been here I have not been able to sleep through a night…
I usually wake up early due to the rooster next door…
The other night there was a group of men in the street outside my house, talking loudly and playing some music… it was nice background noise to fall asleep to and I was almost asleep when I heard sirens, I got up to look and all the men were running in different directions… not really sure why.. anyways I think that may be why… but I woke up in the middle of night sweating and scared out of my mind that someone was in our house… I was having this horrible nightmare and it was so real! I have never been that scared and it took me about an hour to calm down and fall back asleep…
This weekend on our trip there were ants in my bed… not a big deal… I went to bed .. but after about an hour I woke up to an ant biting my back… Paranoid I could not sleep and kept felling ants bite me that probably didn’t exist but eventually I just got up and found an open bed in the house ..

i think its cool that this is a key: Ñ and this ¿

So the post below, I wrote last night but I don´t have internet on my computer so I just am writing my posts in word documents and then posting in chuncks, hence why you get two right off the bat! This one won´t be as long because I have a lot of reading to do! First day of class and already behind.. aye, anyways, A few updates from yesterday (if you read that one first), I thought I was going to have to take the bus to school everyday but it looks like my host mom may be driving me to school, I am not sure if its just for this week or not, but we went and picked up 3 other girls this morning. This will be really nice if its the case because a lot people have to take the bus and then you can´t bring a computer... we´ll see. Seliva or mi madre, prepared a breakfast for me when i got up this morning which was pretty identical to what I would eat at home which I was very suprised about (cereal with bananas and a scrabbled egg with cheese).

In class today we took spanish placement tests which i am pretty postive i did poorly on but we´ll see... durining one of my breaks I went with some other students to walk around the barrio that my school is in... it was very interesting and we are definitly the only gringos around... we stopped in a bakery that smelled so good and got doughnut like desserts for 30 cents!

In the first 48 hours here are some differnece between Quito and Minneapolis.

1. My neighbors are garbage collectors, literally, their yard is full of garbage they have collected from the street.. I am not even sure if they have a house...

(When looking at it from our roof last night I spoted a fire)

Me: ¨fuega? (fire?)
madre: ¨si cocina (yes, the kitchen)

2. I woke up at 5 am because there was a rooster outside my window (note I live in the middle of a HUGE city!)

3. I would be dead if I were driving a car here, the driving is just nuts!

4. Buses rarely stop, at least for men, they have to jump off

5 Dinner is not until 7 and im straving!!!

Chao!

erin

¡Estoy aqui!

Estoy Aqui! ( I am here!) The flight here went by so fast… I had vast ambitions to finish all my pre-departure readings on the 5 hour flight from Atlanta but who knew they had TVs on the back of every seat … you could even watch new releases! But by far my favorite was the option to watch where the plane was on the map… to see a strip of land and know it was Panama was amazing! Unfortuantly both my flight into and out of Quito are at 11:30… so I can only see small patches of light surrounded by the darknesss of the mountains. Anyways lets get to the good stuff, ECUADOR! There is so much to say and unforunatly I will proably will only update this in chunks because I only have wireless at school but taking a computer on a bus is very bad idea… vamos a ver.

The first night we stayed in a “hotel” I would call it more of a hostel but somehow I was one of the only ones that had a room to myself which was problay good because the plane food made my stomach hurt so bad that I could not sleep and finally decided to just watch the news (in Spanish!) from 5:30-9:ooam when we headed off to CIMAS my esculea. The day was long and full of Spanish but the building I have class in is BEAUTIFUL with an incredible view of Quito, which is in the valley of the Andes mountains. We had to decide on our tracks today and please everyone be proud I made a descion and stuck with it! I was debating the public health track or the micro finance and after LITTLE delibriation I decdied on the microfinance track.

Mike from the emabassy came and scared us all out of minds for about 2 hours about the rising crime in Ecuador. (Mom, don´t read the next sentence) Ecuador is currently at a critical level for crime (the highest on the scales the U.S. embassies use.) But he gave us some insightful tips to make us let targets than our light skin, hair and eyes already gives away. Basically what I learned is never take more than your willing to part with. Chances are, a good amount of the 36 (31 of which are woman) will be victims of crimes in the coming months. So I guesss that means not that many picutres... it would be hard to part with my camera.

After an amazing lunch and some more talks of which I really understood only parts of it was time to meet or families! I was so nevous as the flood of Ecuadorians poured into our classroom I felt like I was at some sort adoption auction but then mi mamita found me! And she had four roses for me! She is so cute!

I live in a duplex with my madre Sylvia y mi pardre Ferenado, mi hermana Estefania(18), mi hermano Esteban (23). Not only is my family incredible, I lucked out because their aunt and uncle live below and another girl from my program is staying there! I think we are the only two that live so close! My family speakes NO English. And my Spanish is just as bad (possibly worse) than I thought. It is a stuggle just to have a normal converstation and I feel so bad when I make them repeat over and over again. But like the sermon on Sunday said, I have been laughing a lot at myself. When I can’t think of what to say I just start laughing.

When I got to my house they had the picture of my family I sent framed and with their family pictures, it was really cute. I don’t even remember wriring it but my host mom knew I was a vegtarain and said that it was not a problem, even though I told her I would try anything. We had a nice family dinner with two dessets! My type of family! Right now I am eating banichos (dried green banana potatoe chips and watching tennis with with Esteben, Estfenia is completleing here excel project on the only computer in the house which is in Esteben’s room.

chao!

erin

My Next Post will be in Ecuador!

So... its almost 2 in the morning. We're planing on leaving for the airport around 9:30am tomorrow... at this point my mom has convinced me that I will be robbed several times but its ok because I have a fake wallet with a fake credit card to give... speaking of credit cards and passports and other important documents, my mom just informed me that I had left all the originals in the printer when I made copies of them... I am sure I would of had a lot of success at the airport with only a photo copy of my passport and the atm would love my photo copy credit card... where would I be without my mother... I have two bags, my backpacking bag and a suitcase, both busting at the seams but in all fairness one is filled with pictures of Wisconsin, Packer Shirts and Jelly Bellies (all in hopes of making friends!) Well once I have internet I will begin my real blog, the Ecuador part, none of this pre-departure shenanigans.. I just can't sleep thats all. HASTA pronto!

-erin

I'm not freaking out... yet

So, this is the blog that I plan to write about my experiences while abroad so that first of all, I don't forget, and secondly you (assuming someone besides myself is reading this) can all stay somewhat up to date on my life while I'm gone. I am not sure yet if I will have internet in my house or how often I will have access to it so I don't know how frequently I will update but we'll see. At this time next week I will be on a plane on my way to Quito! Kind of crazy and surreal... considering I still have no information of the family I'm living with, I check the mail every day the moment it arrives but have to yet to receive my passport/visa and I still have a few 100 pages of my pre-departure readings I "must" complete. Did I mention that I am not a procrastinator at all. So what am I most nervous for at this moment? I would say my inability to fluently communicate in Spanish. Yes, my programs require 4 semesters of college Spanish, but somehow I tested into 3rd semester which means I've only taken two Spanish college classes and the second was over a year ago.. but I heard its like riding a bike... which I remember to be a pretty painful, knee scraped full days... so we'll see! Es la tiempo to commence the packing!