Inside the Basilica del Voto Nacional
My siblings and I before the big game!
February 21, 2010
Ecuador loves Fútbol
So I joined a soccer team at the Universidad Catholical. We practice every day 5:30-8:30, although I’m sure how much I will be able to go because it ends after dark and there is not a bus I can take directly home, so I take a bus halfway home and then take a taxi the rest of the way. The team is combined with the boys team, so it’s about 30 guys and 8 girls. Sometimes we practice all together and sometimes we split up. Of course my first day at practice, my first drill the coach (Coco such a sweetheart) picks me to give a demonstration of the drill in front of EVERYONE… luckily soccer drills worldwide are all pretty similar so it wasn’t too hard for me to figure out… but I was freaking out!
Speaking more of fútbol/soccer… I went to my first game today! It was so intense! I love how passionate the people here are about soccer! I went to Barcelona vs some smaller team from Quito (Barcelona is Guayaquil). My family is HUGE Barcelona fans, so my brother and sister came…I learned quite a few new Spanish words from him during the game :)
Friday, I went and explored El Centro Histrico, which is FILLED with churches, one is made completely out of gold on the inside! We climbed the bell tower of the Basilica del Voto Nacional which gives you amazing views of the city. I learned a lot about the bus system too, which I am finally starting to understand a bit...
This morning I got up super early (after a very LATE night of dancing) to go biking with Diego, my cousin’s boyfriend… we went to Parque Metropolutano. This park is up in the mountains a bit and is huge! Its filled with forest, curvy paths, beautiful views of Quito. The biking was pretty extreme, down tiny curvy dirt roads. This was my first morning of “training” because in two weeks Diego asked me to join his team for this race called Quito Aventura. I guess its some sort of 40km race ( 10km navigating through mountains and 30km mountain biking) Which after today I am quite nervous for this biking part, I guess I’m nervous for nativagating through the mountains with a Spanish map and two guys that only speak Spanish also… Vamos a ver! And if I like this there is another one that is more intense on the 20th with rock climbing and repealing and biking and navigating. So we’ll see how this first goes… March 6th…
Tomorrow I will be heading on a two day trip with my microfinance class of 5 other people to check out some cooperativas in Provincia Cotopaxi… hopefully I will get a better idea of what I want to do for my internship…
Hasta Luego!
P.S. Happy 91st birthday Nana! I’m so glad you’ve been reading this! LOVEYA!
Speaking more of fútbol/soccer… I went to my first game today! It was so intense! I love how passionate the people here are about soccer! I went to Barcelona vs some smaller team from Quito (Barcelona is Guayaquil). My family is HUGE Barcelona fans, so my brother and sister came…I learned quite a few new Spanish words from him during the game :)
Friday, I went and explored El Centro Histrico, which is FILLED with churches, one is made completely out of gold on the inside! We climbed the bell tower of the Basilica del Voto Nacional which gives you amazing views of the city. I learned a lot about the bus system too, which I am finally starting to understand a bit...
This morning I got up super early (after a very LATE night of dancing) to go biking with Diego, my cousin’s boyfriend… we went to Parque Metropolutano. This park is up in the mountains a bit and is huge! Its filled with forest, curvy paths, beautiful views of Quito. The biking was pretty extreme, down tiny curvy dirt roads. This was my first morning of “training” because in two weeks Diego asked me to join his team for this race called Quito Aventura. I guess its some sort of 40km race ( 10km navigating through mountains and 30km mountain biking) Which after today I am quite nervous for this biking part, I guess I’m nervous for nativagating through the mountains with a Spanish map and two guys that only speak Spanish also… Vamos a ver! And if I like this there is another one that is more intense on the 20th with rock climbing and repealing and biking and navigating. So we’ll see how this first goes… March 6th…
Tomorrow I will be heading on a two day trip with my microfinance class of 5 other people to check out some cooperativas in Provincia Cotopaxi… hopefully I will get a better idea of what I want to do for my internship…
Hasta Luego!
P.S. Happy 91st birthday Nana! I’m so glad you’ve been reading this! LOVEYA!
¡ Carnival !
In Spanish there is a word for my past weekend ferrar-to dance, to fiesta, to relax, meet new friends… it encompasses all. And that was this past weekend … (extended weekend). Friday (02/11)– Tuesday(02/15).
Carnival is similar to marti gras and ends the Tuesday before ash Wednesday (today)... Except all of Latin America takes it very seriously. Depending on where you go there are water fights, parades, and people with giant foam sprayers… anything goes…
So we decided to head to the coast in the province of Esmeraladas in the town of Tansupe (pretty much a giant beach town). We took a bus out of Quito Thursday night at 11:45pm and after a very uncomfortable, sweltering hot semi-sleep we were in Esmeraladas at 5:45am.
Most of days and nights were similar so to save you from repetitive details I will recap a normal day/night with the highlights and lowlights.
Day: We spent our days pretty much in el mar. The waves were huge and the water was incredibly warm! I personally did not sunbath much as my time in the water fried me… even with applying 50 SPF every couple of hours… One day we rented boogie boards ($1/hour) and some local kids took the time to teach us to ride the waves… I was pretty pathetic without their help but once they helped me it was a blast. We even got in some intense games of ultimate Frisbee in which I’m pretty sure no one had ever seen because some people just came and sat to watch our game (that our seeing a bunch American girls in swimsuits sprinting around, personally I think it was their interest in the sport). I was super excited to get a morning beach run in here as well, as in Quito I rarely get a safe opportunity to run.
We decided to get groceries for our group in order to save some money, so myself and two others took the only type of taxi in town (a motorcycle with a cart attached on
back) to the local grocery store and bought some essentials.
Beach highlights:
-They have all those sweet raft things…. We road the giant banana boat
-They had a giant stage thing one day and we did intense dancing aerobics
-Pina Caladas (With pretty much a fruit tree on top)
-fresh fruit cups
-agua de coco
-olas enorme
Night:
So after a delicious dinner, we all got ready and headed back to beach. The beach is filled with thatched roof open bars with giant wood dance floors. There are so many people covering the beach and crammed in every bar. The nights were filled with trying to learn to salsa dance and other dances. My favorite game to play was when we would tell people Kelly was married to a man in Quito with 3 kids, we got a few believers on this one, but a few saw through this. We met some new friends who lived in Quito and hopefully can continue salsa lessons with them here!
Highlight of the beach:
Swimming in the ocean at 3am (there is one more detail to this but this is a family blog )
Lowlights:
Beach hamburgers smell amazing, yet, do not eat… clearly I did not eat one but about half the people that ate them ended up with severe food poisoning, puking the whole next day, two even went to the hospital. Also 4 girls in our group got robbed by a group of men with pipes and unfortunately lost their purses some with cameras.
Despite the few lowlights the trip was incredible, watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean on a beach full of Ecuadorians is hard to put into words.
Luckily, we bought our bus ticket home for 10pm Monday night. It rained all Monday night and there mudslides all over the road we road home on. People who waited until Tuesday morning to leave took over 15 hours to get home, due to closed roads from the mudslides.
Fortunately, we made it to our bus a few minutes before it pulled out of the station... how we made it was was a gift from God...
so the only taxis were motor-taxis... and motor taxis can't go 20 min on the highway... somehow we manged to get the attention of truck driver and all 15 of us and ALL our luggage got in the back of the truck and booked it down the highway through the pleating rain... it was kind miraculous... and extremely fun!
The way home our bus got stopped twice by police: the first time they just asked for everyone’s idea (which almost none of us had, which lead to a small lecture from angry police) but it was fine. The second time everyone had to get off the bus to be searched… I’m still not completely sure why but I think they were searching for thieves.
Carnival is similar to marti gras and ends the Tuesday before ash Wednesday (today)... Except all of Latin America takes it very seriously. Depending on where you go there are water fights, parades, and people with giant foam sprayers… anything goes…
So we decided to head to the coast in the province of Esmeraladas in the town of Tansupe (pretty much a giant beach town). We took a bus out of Quito Thursday night at 11:45pm and after a very uncomfortable, sweltering hot semi-sleep we were in Esmeraladas at 5:45am.
Most of days and nights were similar so to save you from repetitive details I will recap a normal day/night with the highlights and lowlights.
Day: We spent our days pretty much in el mar. The waves were huge and the water was incredibly warm! I personally did not sunbath much as my time in the water fried me… even with applying 50 SPF every couple of hours… One day we rented boogie boards ($1/hour) and some local kids took the time to teach us to ride the waves… I was pretty pathetic without their help but once they helped me it was a blast. We even got in some intense games of ultimate Frisbee in which I’m pretty sure no one had ever seen because some people just came and sat to watch our game (that our seeing a bunch American girls in swimsuits sprinting around, personally I think it was their interest in the sport). I was super excited to get a morning beach run in here as well, as in Quito I rarely get a safe opportunity to run.
We decided to get groceries for our group in order to save some money, so myself and two others took the only type of taxi in town (a motorcycle with a cart attached on
back) to the local grocery store and bought some essentials.
Beach highlights:
-They have all those sweet raft things…. We road the giant banana boat
-They had a giant stage thing one day and we did intense dancing aerobics
-Pina Caladas (With pretty much a fruit tree on top)
-fresh fruit cups
-agua de coco
-olas enorme
Night:
So after a delicious dinner, we all got ready and headed back to beach. The beach is filled with thatched roof open bars with giant wood dance floors. There are so many people covering the beach and crammed in every bar. The nights were filled with trying to learn to salsa dance and other dances. My favorite game to play was when we would tell people Kelly was married to a man in Quito with 3 kids, we got a few believers on this one, but a few saw through this. We met some new friends who lived in Quito and hopefully can continue salsa lessons with them here!
Highlight of the beach:
Swimming in the ocean at 3am (there is one more detail to this but this is a family blog )
Lowlights:
Beach hamburgers smell amazing, yet, do not eat… clearly I did not eat one but about half the people that ate them ended up with severe food poisoning, puking the whole next day, two even went to the hospital. Also 4 girls in our group got robbed by a group of men with pipes and unfortunately lost their purses some with cameras.
Despite the few lowlights the trip was incredible, watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean on a beach full of Ecuadorians is hard to put into words.
Luckily, we bought our bus ticket home for 10pm Monday night. It rained all Monday night and there mudslides all over the road we road home on. People who waited until Tuesday morning to leave took over 15 hours to get home, due to closed roads from the mudslides.
Fortunately, we made it to our bus a few minutes before it pulled out of the station... how we made it was was a gift from God...
so the only taxis were motor-taxis... and motor taxis can't go 20 min on the highway... somehow we manged to get the attention of truck driver and all 15 of us and ALL our luggage got in the back of the truck and booked it down the highway through the pleating rain... it was kind miraculous... and extremely fun!
The way home our bus got stopped twice by police: the first time they just asked for everyone’s idea (which almost none of us had, which lead to a small lecture from angry police) but it was fine. The second time everyone had to get off the bus to be searched… I’m still not completely sure why but I think they were searching for thieves.
February 9, 2010
Baños: ¡Vale la Pena!
My adrenaline is on steroids right now.
Friday morning we got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the bus station. We found out an “express” bus was leaving for Baños at 7:35am and we got there at 7:30, so we were quite the sight of grigas sprinting through the station with our bags. But we made it! And let me tell you it was definitely not an express bus… we stopped any time there was a person on the side of the road to see if they wanted to go to Baños… but for $3.50 you can’t complain.
We checked into a Hostel ($6.50/ night) and headed “downtown” (Baños is super small) to find activities for the first day.
Most of the group (11 chicas) decided on horseback riding through the Andes, while myself and three others went for cannoning. Cannoning is when you propel down waterfalls in a wet suit and a harness. After a few smaller ones we got to the grandisomo… I’ll put some pictures up because words cannot do it justice. We made friends with a cute Ecudoarian couple who encouraged us along the way (SI se puedes! You can do it!)
When we got back to our hostel we changed into suits and headed over to the hot baths, this is where Baños gets its name. The springs are naturally heated by thermal springs coming from the base of Volcan Tungurahua which Banos sits at the base of.
That night we ate a Casa Hood, an amazing little restaurant, started by Ron Hood , a guy from Michigan who fell in love with an Ecuadorian (he started Café Hood with her), when they got divorced he married another Ecuadorian and started this restaurant, interesting guy, super nice and AMAZING food! We even got authentic, delicious mojitos, 2 for 1!
Day 2:
We got up around 7; hit the market for an amazing HUGE breakfast with REAL coffee (a rarity here) all for $2. We planned our day out the day before so when were done with breakfast our 11 bikes were awaiting us. We were quite the parade in Baños; 11 gringas riding through town in a line at 8am.
Stop one on our bike tour: A ridiculously high bridge over a roaring river wedged between two mountains. What do we do here…? Jump. Clearly, what else would you do on a bridge like that…
The day before when we decided on bridge jumping we thought that it would not be as high and you could go with a partner… nope… solo, solo. So with a harness on… I attached my life to one single rope and jumped hundreds of feet… “Vale la Pena” (it’s worth it) soon became our motto… It truly was an indescribable feeling of just free falling, tumbling through the air, until the rope yanks you back to reality with a bit of whip lash and then you swing for a while, observing a roaring river with waterfalls cascading down the cliffs with the back drop of the Andes… Vale la pena.
So after the experience of a life time (it was only 9:30am) we got back on our bikes for a curvy 20 some km bike ride through the Andes on a busy mountain road, occasionally stopping at waterfalls. I was riding next to my friend Becky commenting on the surrealism of this trip when all of sudden our bike handles locked and our bikes flipped over each other… THANK goodness no bus or truck was behind us because we were tangled in a mess of bikes in the middle of this mountain highway… also THANK goodness for my helmet (yet mom I was wearing my helmet) because that hit the ground first. I only ended up with some scratched up hands and a big nasty scrap across my shoulder, but I’m so thankful that it was just this, because it could have been much worse!
After stopping at some more BEAUTIFUL waterfalls, taking a cable car across a cannon, hiking a bit, we stopped at a small restaurant for a very authentic lunch. Then the people we rented our bikes from came and picked up the bikes and took us to our next destination: White water rafting.
White water rafting:
I can’t remember the name of the river, but I know that it flows into the Amazon. We suited up into wet suits in the pouring rain, got some quick instructions and hit the river. There were 3 boats; 2 for all of us and 1 full of some Germans, each boat had to create a team motto and when our guide said grita we had to scream as loud as we could and slap our paddles on the water, of course my boat chose “vale la pena!” Not long after getting through the first patch of rapids, we were cruising next to the other boat and the guide grabbed me out of my boat and threw me into their boat... he was a little crazy… he eventually ended up pushing everyone into the river at some point…
Again words cannot capture how amazing rafting was and unfortunately I have no pictures of it but just picture one of those moving pictures they sell in the malls with cascading waterfalls down the side of a cliff, with mountains surrounding it… and this is where we were... at times I felt like a was on set of Jurassic park or Lord of the rings…
We ended the day with going and soaking in the hot baths again… the perfect end to a perfect day.
February 2, 2010
Some More Pictures
Ok here we go: 1- Sunset in the Andes 2- Our quito friends we met on our hike 3-Hiking in the Andes 4- View from my bedroom 5-View from my roof (Some big deportista thing)
February 1, 2010
men.
31-01-2010
Machismo society: no matter the time of day, no matter if I haven’t showered in days, no matter what I’m wearing, when I walk down the street, any vehicle ( not excluding police) feel the need to honk. The sole fact that I’m white and a women somehow compels every man in this city to find some sort of gratification in honking, yelling, some even hissing like a rabid animal (the hissing one really confuses me). Sometimes I want to get in their mind and figure out what their thinking …maybe if I hiss at this girl she will like the noise so much that she will give me her number!... anyways not all men are like this, my dad and my brother here are SO kind and really anyone I’ve met.. minus this one guy today..
so on my way home from church today (I had to walk about 12 blocks to this bus stop where I met a friend and her host sister to ride the bus to church with them) anyways I still don’t have my own keys so I was using my mom’s (of which there’s about 6 million) so I begin to look through the keys for the right one to get through the first (of many) gates into my house, and when I turned around there was a 40 ish year old man standing right next to me, he said something really fast in Spanish and I tried to explain to him that my Spanish wasn’t that great, he asked me something about fixing computers and I pretended like I didn’t understand anything he said, meanwhile of course I’m stumbling through keys trying to find the right one… Random man: “amigos?” me: “perdon no intedio” then in very broken English… “do you want to my friend?” at this point there’s only about 2 keys out of the 6 million that I’ve tried left… “I think I need to learn Spanish before I can have friends (said in Spanish ha) he started saying how he could teach me and at that moment FINALLY I found the key that opens the gate! Safety at last! Anyways had I not been a white woman I doubt he would have wanted to be my friend…
Machismo society: no matter the time of day, no matter if I haven’t showered in days, no matter what I’m wearing, when I walk down the street, any vehicle ( not excluding police) feel the need to honk. The sole fact that I’m white and a women somehow compels every man in this city to find some sort of gratification in honking, yelling, some even hissing like a rabid animal (the hissing one really confuses me). Sometimes I want to get in their mind and figure out what their thinking …maybe if I hiss at this girl she will like the noise so much that she will give me her number!... anyways not all men are like this, my dad and my brother here are SO kind and really anyone I’ve met.. minus this one guy today..
so on my way home from church today (I had to walk about 12 blocks to this bus stop where I met a friend and her host sister to ride the bus to church with them) anyways I still don’t have my own keys so I was using my mom’s (of which there’s about 6 million) so I begin to look through the keys for the right one to get through the first (of many) gates into my house, and when I turned around there was a 40 ish year old man standing right next to me, he said something really fast in Spanish and I tried to explain to him that my Spanish wasn’t that great, he asked me something about fixing computers and I pretended like I didn’t understand anything he said, meanwhile of course I’m stumbling through keys trying to find the right one… Random man: “amigos?” me: “perdon no intedio” then in very broken English… “do you want to my friend?” at this point there’s only about 2 keys out of the 6 million that I’ve tried left… “I think I need to learn Spanish before I can have friends (said in Spanish ha) he started saying how he could teach me and at that moment FINALLY I found the key that opens the gate! Safety at last! Anyways had I not been a white woman I doubt he would have wanted to be my friend…
Una dia fantastic: moutains, mansions and masks!
If my family says “ya vamos” we go, I go. No questions. It’s kind of like I’m dog. They put food out. I eat. They talk. I sit and stare. Sometimes I even stick my head out the window and stare at the buildings while we drive… But they still love me. So Anyways, ya vamos. I get in the car. We drop off my sister at the “U” (she calls her school the U just like us) I stay with mom and pop… and where do we go but home depot ish store.. lovely… dad you know how much I love home improvement stores... I had decided to stay in Quito this weekend cause I was gone last weekend and I just kind of wanted to get to know the city, I was very much starting to regret it… anyway after finally stopping at a little store I was able to buy some minutes for my phone so I could call people in my program…
After a HUGE lunch, I decided to meet up with Kelly and Erin ( there’s three Erins on this trip, no I am not talking about myself in third person) we met at intersection about 2 miles from my house and by the time I got there I was dripping in sweat, Quito is quite hot in the middle of day, ( but whenever I feel at all uncomfortably warm I simply think of Minnesota!) We hailed a taxi and headed to the TeleferiQo. The TeleferiQo is a sky tram that takes passengers on a 2.5km ride up the flanks of Volcan Pichincha to the top Cruz Loma (4100m, I don’t even know what that is in feet but is HIGH).
We began to hike once we got to the top… you can hike for hours to the top of Cruz Loma… with amazing views of Quito, the Andes and Volcanoes! BEAUTIFUL! We met all sorts of people on our hike… some guy from the cities, a guy from Illinois that just finished teaching English for a year on the coast ( my new post graduation plan) and my favorite was a group of three Ecuadorians; Fernando, Juan and Maria. All three from Quito, they knew a little bit of English (probably equivalent to what we sounded like in Spanish) and we hiked for a while, they trying to speak English, us trying to speak Spanish… it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about Ecuador as well.
As the sun set, we headed down and took a taxi home, I was a little nervous because my house is the furthest north so I had to be dropped off last and be in the taxi by myself, which we’ve all heard horror stories of the what happens to the last one dropped off. It was fine though, I had a nice convo with the cab driver in Spanish, by the end of the ride he even corrected me when I told him to turn at the “luz” which is not used for traffic lights.
By the time I got home it was already getting close to 8 and I was getting picked up at 9 for a costume fiesta! I quickly showered and ate dinner with my fam and then got ready… my mom was so cute and helpful because I didn’t really have anything for a party… she leant me some beautiful pointy gold high heels and a bright pink and gold mask…
Tanya and her brother picked Taylor and I up around 9… the fiesta we were going to was of Tanya’s host cousins 28th birthday… I really had no idea what to expect as Tanya only called a few hours before to invite me…
The FIESTA:
Ok let me begin with this house was a MANSION… it had tennis courts, a small soccer field and mini golf course… talk about a large gap between the rich and the poor..
Everyone there was all out in costumes… a lot of super heroes.. I am so bummed I didn’t bring my camera.. I don’t bring it out a lot for fear of getting it stolen or lost but this would have been a great opportunity… o well…
Anyways… we were the only three non-Ecuadorians at the party and I think people were kind of confused why we were there but everyone was so nice and greeted us with kisses on the cheeks..
There was a whole dance room with DJ, bar you name it… so we begin to dance and compared to the Ecuadorians we must have looked ridiculous but everyone told us we were catching on fast, then after about 20 minutes these crazy people one on stilts spring things came in (hired party starters: my future job) and gave us whistles, sprayed us with silly string, lead the Macarena! (one I knew) It was SO fun! Then, the uncle, who’s house it was came home, he’s the head of Ecuadorian air force! He greeted us with a kiss and made sure we had everything we wanted, every so often he would come find us three, and ask if we were enjoying ourselves… so kind! Ha and quite the dancer too!
Most of time we just danced kind of crazy to American and latin beats but when the salsa came on some guys found us and begin to dance, I protested and said I was terrible but the thing with salsa is you can be terrible and be a girl cause if the guy is good, he leads and it makes you look like you know what you’re doing… So we danced (I got batman for a while) and it was so fun!
Finally, sometime after two we decided to head home, I can honestly say that was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in Ecuador and it costs nothing too! We kissed everyone good bye hit the hay! Of course I still don’t have keys and my family forgot so my poor farther had to get up at 2:30 to let me in…
Cheverismo!
We’ll I’m about to go meet my grandparents! I’m super excited I’ve never had a grandpa before!
Chao
Erin
After a HUGE lunch, I decided to meet up with Kelly and Erin ( there’s three Erins on this trip, no I am not talking about myself in third person) we met at intersection about 2 miles from my house and by the time I got there I was dripping in sweat, Quito is quite hot in the middle of day, ( but whenever I feel at all uncomfortably warm I simply think of Minnesota!) We hailed a taxi and headed to the TeleferiQo. The TeleferiQo is a sky tram that takes passengers on a 2.5km ride up the flanks of Volcan Pichincha to the top Cruz Loma (4100m, I don’t even know what that is in feet but is HIGH).
We began to hike once we got to the top… you can hike for hours to the top of Cruz Loma… with amazing views of Quito, the Andes and Volcanoes! BEAUTIFUL! We met all sorts of people on our hike… some guy from the cities, a guy from Illinois that just finished teaching English for a year on the coast ( my new post graduation plan) and my favorite was a group of three Ecuadorians; Fernando, Juan and Maria. All three from Quito, they knew a little bit of English (probably equivalent to what we sounded like in Spanish) and we hiked for a while, they trying to speak English, us trying to speak Spanish… it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about Ecuador as well.
As the sun set, we headed down and took a taxi home, I was a little nervous because my house is the furthest north so I had to be dropped off last and be in the taxi by myself, which we’ve all heard horror stories of the what happens to the last one dropped off. It was fine though, I had a nice convo with the cab driver in Spanish, by the end of the ride he even corrected me when I told him to turn at the “luz” which is not used for traffic lights.
By the time I got home it was already getting close to 8 and I was getting picked up at 9 for a costume fiesta! I quickly showered and ate dinner with my fam and then got ready… my mom was so cute and helpful because I didn’t really have anything for a party… she leant me some beautiful pointy gold high heels and a bright pink and gold mask…
Tanya and her brother picked Taylor and I up around 9… the fiesta we were going to was of Tanya’s host cousins 28th birthday… I really had no idea what to expect as Tanya only called a few hours before to invite me…
The FIESTA:
Ok let me begin with this house was a MANSION… it had tennis courts, a small soccer field and mini golf course… talk about a large gap between the rich and the poor..
Everyone there was all out in costumes… a lot of super heroes.. I am so bummed I didn’t bring my camera.. I don’t bring it out a lot for fear of getting it stolen or lost but this would have been a great opportunity… o well…
Anyways… we were the only three non-Ecuadorians at the party and I think people were kind of confused why we were there but everyone was so nice and greeted us with kisses on the cheeks..
There was a whole dance room with DJ, bar you name it… so we begin to dance and compared to the Ecuadorians we must have looked ridiculous but everyone told us we were catching on fast, then after about 20 minutes these crazy people one on stilts spring things came in (hired party starters: my future job) and gave us whistles, sprayed us with silly string, lead the Macarena! (one I knew) It was SO fun! Then, the uncle, who’s house it was came home, he’s the head of Ecuadorian air force! He greeted us with a kiss and made sure we had everything we wanted, every so often he would come find us three, and ask if we were enjoying ourselves… so kind! Ha and quite the dancer too!
Most of time we just danced kind of crazy to American and latin beats but when the salsa came on some guys found us and begin to dance, I protested and said I was terrible but the thing with salsa is you can be terrible and be a girl cause if the guy is good, he leads and it makes you look like you know what you’re doing… So we danced (I got batman for a while) and it was so fun!
Finally, sometime after two we decided to head home, I can honestly say that was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in Ecuador and it costs nothing too! We kissed everyone good bye hit the hay! Of course I still don’t have keys and my family forgot so my poor farther had to get up at 2:30 to let me in…
Cheverismo!
We’ll I’m about to go meet my grandparents! I’m super excited I’ve never had a grandpa before!
Chao
Erin
The Horn
The horn:
The horn of a car has its own language here in Quito. From what I’ve gathered thus far, follow these simple rules and you’ll be fine (and when in doubt just honk):
1 honk= I’m passing you don’t change lanes, don’t back up I’m behind you, or MOVE!
2 honks= Saying hello or good bye to a friend, you better not run into me I’m warning you I’m here
3 honks = MOVE, if you don’t I WILL hit you
6 honks = street vendor please return so I can buy some cherries for my family
Another interesting observation from the car:
The street is its own marketplace here… from sunglass and newspaper vendors, you can buy any type of snack you like and you are also provided with live entertainment. At night people juggle with lighted balls or blow fire out of their mouths, or during the day a child may stand in front of your car throw two balls and catch them and then come to the window of your car and you have to give him some change. The scariest I find is when clowns hop on the bus or come up to your window…
Last night I went to the movie Avatar with my sibs… it was all in Spanish no subtitles (we’ll except when they speak in the forest language but then the subtitles are in Spanish…) it was in TRECE-D! I understood more than I thought I would so that was exciting!
The horn of a car has its own language here in Quito. From what I’ve gathered thus far, follow these simple rules and you’ll be fine (and when in doubt just honk):
1 honk= I’m passing you don’t change lanes, don’t back up I’m behind you, or MOVE!
2 honks= Saying hello or good bye to a friend, you better not run into me I’m warning you I’m here
3 honks = MOVE, if you don’t I WILL hit you
6 honks = street vendor please return so I can buy some cherries for my family
Another interesting observation from the car:
The street is its own marketplace here… from sunglass and newspaper vendors, you can buy any type of snack you like and you are also provided with live entertainment. At night people juggle with lighted balls or blow fire out of their mouths, or during the day a child may stand in front of your car throw two balls and catch them and then come to the window of your car and you have to give him some change. The scariest I find is when clowns hop on the bus or come up to your window…
Last night I went to the movie Avatar with my sibs… it was all in Spanish no subtitles (we’ll except when they speak in the forest language but then the subtitles are in Spanish…) it was in TRECE-D! I understood more than I thought I would so that was exciting!
La virgen de quito (Jan. 25)
25-01-2010
Today after school I went with my family to check out the La Virgen de Quito. The Virgen stands on a giant hill that overlooks all of Quito, it’s a beautiful view. Unfortunately by the time we got there it was getting pretty dark and raining but still seeing all the city lights and cars illuminate the roads from a distance was beautiful. On the way home my uncle asked how much my school costs and if I had to paid for it or my parents. After finally figuring out the word “loan” in Spanish, he responded that as soon as I got a job I would be able to pay off the loans and then I tried to explain that I am not going to make a lot of money because I am going into non-profits. He asked why I wanted to work in non-profits and his first question after I gave my response was “Eres un cristiano?” You are a Christian? Which I was somewhat surprised by, “Catholical?” I tried to explain that I was non-dominational, which they just called evangelical. I’m not really sure if my family is Christians or not, they have a bible open on a stand in the la sala.. which is a room no one uses and I don’t think it changed pages since we’ve been here… who knows maybe when I can speak Spanish better I will find out. Then we stopped at a little panderia and he bought us some papas fritas con salsa de tomato (potato chips with ketchup!)
Finally Some Photos!
The first picture is in old town, Taylor (my cousin) and I listening and dancing to some indigenous music2- Holding hands from two different hemispheres 3- jumping off a cliff in the jungle 4- the begining of our dia sin zapatoes 4- view from my school of Quito!
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