crazzzzzy

I have had a pretty crazy day! The country of Ecuador is in a state of emergency right now and I am locked in my house for an indefinite amount of time. This morning the police and part of the military went on strike against the government because yesterday the government passed a bill that got rid of their bonuses and made it harder to get promoted. So the entire country broke out in riots. Currently the president (Correa) is trapped in a hospital 20 min away from my house. He went there earlier today because he got gassed at a riot. The police force surrounded the hospital so he couldn't leave. Then the military that is on the presidents side showed up and began open fire with the police force. Since there is no police, the country is in chaos. There are riots everywhere and robbers have taken to the cities. There were so many bank robberies in Quito that they closed all of the banks. They also closed the airports, the schools, and the malls. Earlier today, robbers were going into the universities and stealing from the students. Peru and Colombia closed the boarders and rioters have set the entrances to the highways on fire so no one can enter or leave the capital.

I was at the school that I volunteer at when all of this began. They wanted to close the school early but they were afraid that the kids parents wouldn't be home and they didn't want to send the kids home to empty houses. So they made us wait until 2 even though almost 90% of the kids had been picked up by their parents earlier. Then they made all the teachers take the school buses home because public transportation was way too dangerous because of the riots and robbers. I live 5 minutes away the school but it took 45 min to get to my house because traffic was crazy because no one was following the rules because there were no police to enforce them. When i got home, the head of IES (my abroad program) was sitting in my living room with my host mom. They have emergency procedures where they call everyones cell phone but since I got my phone stolen a few days ago, I have a new number that I forgot to tell them. So they were very worried because they couldn't reach me.

My host mom bought a ton of groceries (we don't usually keep much food in our house) and she bought candles because she said they might cut our power. Since she didn't have work this afternoon, she baked really good cakes!

When I was skyping with my parents tonight, the head IES office in the U.S. called to tell them that even though the airports are closed, there are ways for emergency political evacuation. I really hope they don't have to do that because I don't want to leave!! Then I will never get to go to the Galapagos!

I really hope all this ends soon because I am very bored in my house and it hasn't even been 1 day yet!

Here's a NYtimes article about everything that is happening:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/world/americas/01ecuador.html?ref=americas

Papallacta

I have had an exhausting week!! I had my first two exams and I started my job. Out of my 5 classes, only 1 of them is actually hard. It is about Ecuadorian society and there are about 40 ecuadorians, and 5 americans (or gringos as they call us here). We had to read a 200 page philosophy book (all in spanish) and then we had an exam on the book. We (us americans) got together to study and we all assumed it would just be a general essay exam over the book. We were very wrong. We got to class and the professor just started talking. Apparently he was saying the four essay questions. Luckily, right after that he left the room so i could copy the essay questions from the ecuadorian guy sitting next to me. Then for the next 2 hours I had to write 4 essays about spanish philosophy (in spanish). I really hope my professor understands at least a little of what I was trying to say! My other exam was for my spanish grammar class and it was very easy.

One of my classes is called Service Learning. We have 20 hours of classroom time and then we have to either get an internship or volunteer somewhere for 90 hours throughout the semester. I am teaching english at a school here. I work from 9am till 2pm every tuesday and thursday. I also have class from 5-7pm those days so it's pretty tiring to leave home at 8am and return at 8pm. The school is only a 10 minute bus ride from my house which is really nice and it's an alternative school so the students have to pay a little bit of money which means they are all middle and upper class. I thought that would make them a little more behaved and polite but I was very wrong. They are crazy! None of them have any desire to learn and the teachers can't control them. I work with 6, 7, and 8 year olds, attempting to help their teachers teach them english. The teachers that i work with are all really nice and very young. My favorite one is only 24 and this is her first year teaching. She invited me to play on a soccer team with her and her friends.  Besides the crazy kids, the school is really interesting. There are 3 llamas that hang out in the playground and ducks that just walk around. The school is mostly outside because its perfect weather all year round. They have snack time at 10 and for a half hour everyday the kids just get to run around and eat and then they have fruit time at 12 and for another half hour, they get to run around and eat fruit. Whenever the kids don't like the food for snack, they just feed it to the llamas.

Even though my weeks have begun to be very tiring, I still have 3 day weekends every week which is awesome! We decided to take a weekend off of traveling and just hang out and relax. It was also my friend Zach's 21st birthday on Saturday. So friday afternoon my friend carrie and liz and i went to zach's house and we baked blackberry pies and made shish-kabobs to grill. A few hour later the rest of our friends came and we had a big party on his terrace (that overlooks the entire city of Quito). It was tons of fun! Then, around 10pm we decided to go out. My friend Agnes has tons of ecuadorian friends and one of them was having a party at his house. He lives in a very nice part of the city in a gated community so we figured it was safe. Some of our friends decided to go to a bar but agnes, addie, erin, zach, and I went to the ecuadorian party to see what ecuadorian house parties were like. It was very different from American parties but it was very fun! The entire family was there (siblings, parents, and grandparents) and all his friends. There was a DJ and it was someone's birthday and they had a lot of interesting ecuadorian birthday traditions. 

On saturday we all woke up bright and early to take a bus to Papallacta. Papallacta is a very small town with natural hot springs in the mountains. It is beautiful. It is an hour and a half bus ride from Quito. There are 25 different natural hot springs, all different temperatures. We had to pay $7 to get in and then we got to go in all of the hot springs all day. It was so much fun! By the time we got home, we were too tired to go out so erin, carrie, and zach came over and we cooked pasta and watched a movie at my house. Today, we are all spending the day doing homework, and relaxing then were all meeting up later this afternoon to go see a movie.

This is Nora, Liz, and I on the terrace on Friday night.

Papallacta! The entrance to the hot springs. 

Hot springs. It was a bit cool and rainy (because we were pretty high in the mountains) but it felt amazing in the warm water. 

Me, Zach, Ali, and Carrie in one of the pools

Zach's dog - Darko!

Canoa

Hola. I have had a very busy week! Wednesday was my friend Val's birthday so we went to Zach's house to celebrate. His house is on the side of one of the mountains and is 3 floors. On the 3rd floor there is a giant outdoor terrace that has a grill, space heaters, a soccer field, and overlooks the entire city of Quito! So we brought a bunch of food over to grill and got to eat and hang out with a view of the entire city lit up at night. 

Here is all the food we grilled! We made sausages, vegetables, squash, bruschetta and a cake. It was delicious.

Thursday night we left for the beach! The beach we went to was called Canao and its the safest beach for tourists. Its also the widest beach on the coast. It is an 8 hour bus ride so we took a bus that left at 11pm thursday night and arrived at 7 am on friday. When we arrived, we brought our stuff to our hostel, went out for breakfast and then hit up the beach! It wasn't very sunny but it was very warm! We went swimming for a while in the ocean. The water was very warm and there were huge waves that were really fun. Some of my friends slept on the beach instead of swimming in the ocean and they all got pretty bad sunburns on their back. We then had ceviche for lunch. It is incredibly popular in Ecuador - especially on the coast. It is raw fish cooked in lime juice. It is served in a soup with chifles (fried banana chips). It is really good. After lunch we walked to the end of the beach where there were supposedly caves. We climbed a bunch of rocks and saw tons of giant crabs but the tide was too high for the caves. It was still fun. After that we went back to our hostel to relax in the hammocks. Then we went into the very small town (the entire place was about 2 streets and everything is sand) and found ingredients to cook dinner. Apparently most hostels in Ecuador have kitchens that you can use. We made chicken, rice and stir-fried vegetables. It was very good. Then we went to a birthday party for one of our ecuadorian surfer friends that we had met earlier on the beach. The party consisted of us 10 americans, 4 girls from switzerland who only spoke german and about 15 ecuadorian surfers. It was a lot of fun! The next morning we slept late and had a leisurely breakfast at our hostel. We then went and spent the day at the beach. After that, we had more ceviche for dinner and spent the night dancing at a tiki hut on the beach with tons of people. Our bus left at 6 am on sunday so we figured it would be easier if we just stayed up all night and then slept the whole bus ride home. So we danced for hours then got shiskabobs at about 3 am then went swimming and relaxed in our hostel's hammocks for about an hour before the bus left. 

This is beach

My friends and I hanging out at the beach on Saturday! 

Our awesome hostel. The hostel had a pet kitten that was adorable and always jumped on our lap when we were laying in the hammocks. The hostel only cost $6 per night and it was right on the beach! On friday night I feel asleep to the sound of the waves.

Nora and I "frolicking" on the beach

The beach was lined with cool huts like this. Some sold food, some sold drinks, some sold jewelry. I think this one was a stage for concerts. 

La Ronda

Hola!

Even thought we didn’t travel anywhere – I had a great weekend in Quito! On Wednesday night La Liga (the Ecuadorian Soccer team) won the South American championship which was very exciting. There were lots of celebrations for that. My friends and I went out to the mariscal on Thursday night for a fun night of dancing. Then a few of my friends (who go to a different university) left to go on a service trip with their university. The rest of us woke up very early on Friday to get our CENSO which is some kind of official ID that proves that we live here and that we can carry instead of our passport. Apparently American passports are sold for $20,000 on the black market in Ecuador.

Friday evening my friends and I went to La Ronda. It is in the old part of Quito. There are a bunch of beautiful churches and big squares with fountains and lots of people selling things. The streets are cobblestone and there’s a few very long streets that cars can’t go down and they are lined with bars and restaurants and art galleries and shops. At night, everything is lit up and there are tons of people. We spent hours just walking around and eating. All of the restaurants sold this drink for 50 cents that was kind of like hot apple cider but it was made out of fruit juice. It was very interesting. I also bought all 6 Harry Potter movies in spanish for $1. I am excited to learn magical terms in Spanish.

Saturday I spent the day working on a project with one of my friends for class. Then we met up with our other friends at a Mexican restaurant for dinner and we ate and talked for almost 4 hours.

Sunday I woke up early and we went back to the old part of town for an art and music festival. It was very hot and there were tons of people but it was really fun. We saw the Ecuadorian ballet, a random guy singing, skateboarders, graffiti artists, and an Otovalan (an indigenous tribe in Ecuador) rap group. It was really fun!

Dinner at a restaurant at La Ronda

My friends imitating a statue outside a craft market at La Ronda (until the policemen got mad)

Graffiti Artists at the art festival

Skateboarders showing off their tricks

The old part of Quito with narrow cobblestone roads and old buildings - very beautiful

Otovalan Rap Group!

Mindo!

Hey Everyone!

I had an amazing weekend in Mindo this past weekend. My friends and I left friday morning. Mindo is a small town about 2 hours away from Quito. It is in the mountains in a could forest that is very similar to a jungle. The weather is warm and humid all year round and there are tons of butterflies everywhere. When we got to Mindo we went to our hostel which was a treehouse. The rooms were all open air rooms with huge mosquito nets covering the beds and there were a bunch of hammocks to relax in. The first thing we did was go tubing down the river. We all expected it to be a lazy river type activity where we could relax in tubes while the current carried us down the river.  we were very wrong. We got there and they gave us life jackets and orange helmets to wear. It turned out to be giant rafts made out of tubes and each raft had 2 guides that took us down the river, over the rapids, and around the giant rocks. It was crazy but very fun! Our guides were our age and were very friendly so we made friends with them and they invited us to go out with them that night. So after some relaxing in the hammocks and a delicious dinner, we met up with our new ecuadorian friends. They took us to one of their friends bars where we danced and hung out for a while. Then some of our friends left to go find a karaoke bar while the rest of us (5 of us girls, 2 of our american guy friends, and about 6 Ecuadorian guys) decided we wanted to go to a waterfall. 2 of the Ecuadorians were guides so they said they would take us. We told the Ecuadorians that our friend Richard was in the army (because hes huge and very strong) so they were a bit scared of him which made us feel very safe. So we found a truck and all hopped in the back and drove up the mountain for about 30 min to the waterfall. Our friends said it was a short hike to the waterfall down the other side of the mountain. They kept saying "cinco minutos mas". So after about 45 min of hiking down an incredibly steep and muddy mountainside wearing flipflops and using cellphones for lights, we made it to the base of the waterfall. It was too dark to see anything because it was about 1 in the morning but we could hear the water. And our friends told us the base was very shallow and safe to go swimming. So we built a bonfire and went swimming in the waterfall. It was so much fun! After an hour or two we decided to make our way back up the mountain and find a car to take us home. After another 45 min hike up the mountain, we all laid down in hammocks at the top while our ecuadorian friends called a taxi. However, since it was about 2 in the morning, no one would come pick us up. So we had to walk 2 hours home down the mountain on a very rocky road in the pitch black dark. It was definitely an adventure! 

The next morning we woke up bright and early with the sun (since our treehouse didnt really have walls) and went ziplining through the cloud forest. It was awesome! It lasted for 2 hours and we got to go on 12 different lines. The guides taught us cool tricks like going upsidown and "butterfly" where a guide goes with you and holds ur legs behind u while u let ur arms hang free. After zip-lining and lunch at the juice bar (a hut with rope swings and 75 cent bowls of fruit and ice cream) - we all took 3 hour naps. Then we cooked dinner. Our hostel had a big outdoor kitchen right on the river that we used to cook. It was delicious! 

Sunday we went to a butterfly place where butterflies landed on your head. Then we laid on rocks in the middle of a river. And then took the bus home. The best part of the weekend was that our entire weekend, including bus fare, hostel, tubing, zip-lining, food, drinks...only cost $50! Our next adventure will hopefully be to the coast to go to the beach!

This is our treehouse hostel

Relaxing on the hammocks in the hostel

Upsidown zip-lining!

The dinner that we cooked. We made beef, rice, fried plantains, and choclo (which is like corn on the cob but the corn kernels are huge)

  

Relaxing by the river