almost done!

Hello everyone! I’m sorry it has been so long since I’ve written. Life has been pretty busy here in Tena with the therapy program, but I’ve got a little bit of down time because the physical therapist is on vacation visiting her family in the United States, so I thought I’d write you all an update.
Before Nicole left for her vacation we had a pretty hectic time, because we were trying to get in as many patients as we could and we were also busy conducting our study. For those of you who don’t know, we are looking at the characteristics of the cerebral palsy population that comes to therapy sessions at the hospital. So, for the week and a half before Nicole left I did one-on-one questionnaires with the mother of just about every patient who walked through our door. I created the questionnaire that we used with Nicole’s guidance (and her fiancé’s help with the Spanish wordings). We asked questions about the families’ socioeconomic status, the mothers’ pregnancies and the children’s births and health in the first months and years of life. Some of the patients were really easy to interview, but some were much harder because of lacking Spanish skills – both theirs and mine! Many of the mothers speak Kichwa as their first language and so their Spanish isn’t very good. Combine that with my non-native Spanish speaking, and some of the questionnaires…well, lets just say I’m not sure how accurate some of the details are. The questionnaires were interesting for me sociologically though. I learned so much through them about life in the developing world. Lots of the patients don’t have light, running water, or indoor or outdoor toilets. Most of the women didn’t attend enough prenatal check-ups because of lack of access to the hospital or lack of education about their importance. And a few women likely have disabled children because they tried to abort their kids, usually because their husband or boyfriend (or father) didn’t want them to have a baby. Abortion is illegal here – which means more that it is expensive than that it doesn’t happen – so the poor mothers turn to taking herbs from shamans, injecting easily-accessed drugs like pitocin early in their pregnancies, or beating their stomachs. Hearing about what these women (or their partners) did to try to cause abortions, and seeing the results in their disabled children, is one of the strongest arguments for legalizing safe abortions that I could ever experience.
In the next week, I’ll be analyzing data and writing the majority of the paper that Nicole and I want to put together. Nicole comes back from the US on Saturday or Sunday, and next Monday we will resume therapy sessions. I will either have my last day be next Thursday or Friday, depending on when I head back to Quito. The roads have been bad between Tena and Quito lately – two weekends ago there were so many landslides from the rainy weather we’ve been having that there was no way to pass from one city to the other. So, if by next Wednesday the roads aren’t looking so hot, I’m going to have to buy a plane ticket for Friday’s flight from Tena to Quito just to make sure I can get to the US on Sunday! If the roads are OK though, I’ll take a bus early Saturday morning.
In the non-therapy, non-anxious-to-get-home aspects of my life, I’ve been running a lot and this past Friday afternoon I ran 3 miles for time and, shockingly, ran the distance in 25:51! I had no idea I could do that, so that was pretty cool! That night I went to the Gallera, which is Tena’s discoteca, to see an all-girl group of Vallenato singers from Colombia (Vallenato, I learned that night, is a style of music that is usually sad and romantic, though it didn’t sound all that mournful to me). As usual, since there were drunk Ecuadorian and Colombian men around, I got hit on a little bit. And by “a little bit,” I mean that one guy told me that his dream in life was to be with a North American women, two more “jokingly” called Gaby their future mothers-in-law, and a fourth guy, this fat 40-something who I used to (until Friday) wave to on the track when I ran, couldn’t take the hint to leave me alone. Thank goodness Gaby played wingman for me with him. If there is one thing I won’t miss about Ecuador, it is the machismo.
I did start feeling some premature nostalgia at the concert though, knowing that in two weeks good Latin music won’t be found at the local bar for a four dollar cover that includes a drink, but will instead be something I’ll have to seek out on special occasions. I was surprised at myself in a happy way, because these days I mostly can’t wait to hop on a plane and get back to Minnesota.
Anyway, this is getting pretty long and I’ve got a date to chat with Zach on Skype, so I’m going to get going. As always, if you want to chat with me send me an email, though I suppose you could also wait approximately 12 days and 22 hours to do it in person. Ciao!

It´s been awhile.

Hello to everyone! It has been quite some time since I last wrote, so I’m sorry about that. The time since I have written has been really busy. I finished my classes and turned in my final 32-page paper (written in Spanish) and did my final presentation on May 10th.
When I was all done with my work, Kristin came and visited me for a week! She flew in on Sunday the 13th, then on Monday morning Kristin, my friend Nora and I flew to Guayaquil, which is near the coast and hopped on a bus to the beach town of Puerto Lopez. We got in there around 4 and decided to take a swim before the sun went down. Just as we decided to get out of the water, I got stung on my foot by a stingray! My foot started bleeding from the barb and I hobbled to a beachside drink stand in hopes of cleaning off my foot and letting it rest awhile while I had caipiriña. Unfortunately, at the drink stand we found an old Ecuadorian guy who seemed helpful at first, but then he ended up rubbing sand in my foot and slapping it! Thankfully, Nora jumped in and told him to please get his hands off my foot, thankyouverymuch. The drink stand guy was much more helpful. He brought me a bowl of water to wash my foot, caipiriñas for all, and even gave me a free shot of alcohol to clean out the wound. Thanks, drink guy!
The next day we headed from Puerto Lopez to Isla de la Plata, known as the “poor man’s Galapagos.” We hiked around the island with a guide and saw blue- and red-footed boobies (which have red feet but a blue beak) and frigates. After a few hours of that, we ate some lunch (Kristin had an unfortunate experience with a moldy cheese sandwich) and had the opportunity to go snorkeling in the ocean above a recovering white coral reef. It was the first time I’ve snorkeled since I went to Mexico during my senior year of high school, and was a much better experience! I felt very comfortable in the water and recognized a lot of the same species of fish as in the Yucatan Peninsula. I also saw a small bottom-feeding shark and a stingray, though that one didn’t sting me . Dad, after that snorkeling I think I could be convinced to get scuba certified. Especially if it means going on a dive trip with you!
That night we headed for Montañita, aka Ecuador beach cartoonland. It is a really chill little beach town, but everything there seems like it is out of comic book - especially our hotel, called the Tiki Limbo Lounge. I enjoyed it after my semester, and I think Kristin did too (especially after the cheese sandwich) because we got a very tasty dinner and the next day had one of the best vegetarian lunches of my life for about 5 bucks total between the two of us. Amazing. Nora had to leave that morning, so after she did Kristin and I went for a run and then to the beach to take a dip. We left after lunch for Guayaquil. We got in around 5, found a hotel, and headed to the Malecón, which is a renewal project along the riverbank that ended up forcing lots of people from their homes without compensation. It is gated and heavily policed, and while it was beautiful and incredible safe even at night, it felt even more Disney than Montañita. Another thing about Guayaquil – I think Kristin and I got catcalled more times in the space of the 30 minutes it took to reach the Malecón than in all of the rest of my semester put together. I feel like after that evening I would be happy to never return to Guayaquil again.
We flew back to Quito Thursday morning and spent the day going to the Basilica and one other very shiny baroque-style church, and poking around Old Town. That night we hit one of my favorite cheap restaurants, an Argentine place called Cha Cha’s that mainly serves $2 pizzas and $1.50 glasses of wine. Other than some unwelcome rain, I think we both left that day feeling pretty satisfied.
Friday Kristin and I took a bus to Otavalo and then headed to Cotacachi, a town known for its leather, to go purse shopping. What do you know, we each found a purse without a problem. Importantly, we also found a very tasty banana split.
Every Saturday in Otavalo is a huge market day in the Plaza de los Ponchos, so Kristin and I went shopping there, too. We found tapestries and all sorts of crafts. I finished my Christmas shopping, so I hope you’re all ready to get Ecuadorian Christmas gifts!
Saturday afternoon Kristin and I hopped on a bus and came back to Quito. It passed right by my house on the way back, so we got off there and headed to the Parque Carolina for a jog. Kristin did amazingly, even at more than 9,000 feet! That evening we went to Café Mosaico and enjoyed its great views of Quito at night.
Kristin left the next morning along with a lot of crafts, and I had to get packed because I left Quito the morning of Monday, May 21st to come to Tena for my summer internship. I am here continuing the research that Nicole and I started during my internship phase of the study abroad program. We are going to do a more in-depth look at the causes of cerebral palsy in her patients at the Tena hospital, and we’re planning on comparing our research to data about cerebral palsy’s causes in the US to see the differences. It should be really interesting research, because in the US cerebral palsy is mainly caused by premature birth, but here most of the really premature babies don’t survive. It appears that there are a lot more cases caused by asphyxia during delivery, infections of the mother during pregnancy, and seizures after birth. So, we’ll see how accurate those hypotheses turn out to be.
In my spare time I’ve been running, reading, and watching pirated DVDs. I’ve been more or less keeping up with Mom and Kristin’s training schedule for the ½ marathon. I ran 9 miles on Friday evening, which I think is further than I have ever ran before in one stretch! Maybe when the day of their ½ marathon comes along I’ll do the Tena version that evening on the airport landing strip.
Gaby was out of town this weekend, but tonight she is bringing my little host brother, Francisco, back from visiting his grandparents. I’m really excited to see him – he adds a lot of liveliness to the house! Gaby just had to deal with an unexpected work layoff, but she’s found a new job in Tena with an NGO so I don’t have to worry about them moving on me.
I’ll be coming home on July 15th, which is seven weeks from today (not that I’m counting). I’m enjoying my time here very much, but I also look forward to seeing all of you. I hope you’re doing well – you should shoot me an e-mail to keep my updated on your lives!

Wrapping it up...but not for long!

Hey everyone! I am in Tena right now, wrapping up my internship. But I´m not wrapping up the work with her for long, hopefully - I got the internship that I applied for through Grinnell, so I´ve got the funds to stay here until sometime between July 14th or the 18th (depending on plant ticket costs). But what I am doing with the internship is yet to be determined.
I've kept working with the physical therapist, Nicole, and I am loving physical therapy. It is actually something that I think I might be able to do with my future. I would like to spend the summer working with her, to continue the research on physical therapy, but I have to get my grant shifted first. See, I originally applied for the grant before I started with this work, so its funds are technically for a project in Quito, researching the effects of pesticide use in flower plantations on the workers and their children. Which still sounds interesting, but I would be sitting inside doing research on computers all day. Here, I could be working in the PT office, interviewing parents, living with my amazing host family and working with Nicole, who is a great boss. And hopefully putting together a paper good enough to get published. I have to ask Monty Roper, the head of the grant program, if I can switch. We´ll see what he says.
In other news, today I learned to eat crabs. This morning I went out with Gabi and Cecilia (the empleada) (Francisco is staying with his grandparents for a couple weeks, so he isn´t home) to the open air market (the feria) to buy live crabs, green plantains, onions, and some mandarin oranges, and two fruits we don´t have in the states, one called a chirimoya and the other called a zapote. Then we went back to the house and cleaned and prepped the crabs (I took photos), and Ceci whipped up a plantain and onion soup and then at the end threw in the crabs to boil. We each got a whole crab and a bunch of plantain pieces, and encebollada, which is onions and tomatoes chopped up, a plate of rice, and a freshly made glass of passionfruit juice. It was pretty awesome. Ceci and Gabi laughed at me because I ate with a serious expression on my face, I guess. And when they were teaching me to eat the head, I accidentally started to eat the wrong part and had to spit it out because it was so disgusting. By the end, our hands were covered in crab juice and there were ants eating at the little bits that ended up on the floor. It was a good time.
Tonight, salsa dancing. I might let you know how it goes.

Oh! Grandma - I got your Valentine´s day card in mid-March, but I was a vaga, which means lazy, and forgot to tell you I got it. Thanks so much (a month and a half late)!

Still alive and dengue-free

I wrote this about 5 days ago, so it´s a little out of date. I´ll put more new things after it:
Wednesday
Hello everyone!
I had my first overnight shift in the hospital last night. I am dead tired and ready to sleep, but I thought I would update you a little bit first on how it went. Emily, Phoebe, and I chose last night’s guardia to attend because one of our favorite doctors, a resident named Dra. Violeta Muñoz, was on duty. Luckily, with Violeta came my favorite nurses, too, so it promised to be an interesting night. We got to the hospital at about 8 pm and stayed, in the end, until 8 am. At about 11 pm, the three of us got to see the first birth of the night (which was the first birth ever that I have witnessed in person). It came so quickly that there wasn’t enough time for the doctors to get there, much less for the mother (age 27, this was her 5th child) to be taken to the delivery room. The nurses had to catch the baby right then and there! Then the doctor arrived and whisked the baby away when she came in, and it was apart from its mother for another whole hour before the mama got to see her little girl. Shortly thereafter, a bus accident happened outside of Tena and about 8 patients got taken to our hospital. I was there when they started piling into the emergency room. One of the first patients to get there was a little girl who was 8 years old and had her forehead gashed open pretty deep. She required a couple of layers of stitches, but Violeta at least waited for the anesthesia to kick in before she started sewing. And, even better, she did a really neat job of it and I think the scar won’t be that noticeable blended with the girl’s eyebrow. As those patients proceeded to come in, I whipped out my blood pressure-taking skills (thanks for the lesson, Mom!) and helped out a little in the check-in process.
After that calmed down, I stuck around in Emergency, when a pregnant woman came in fully dilated, ready to give birth. Luck was on my side I guess, because I was the only student there and they only let one extra person into the delivery room other than the doctor and nurse. So I put on scrubs, face mask, surgical hat, everything (umm, is that normal? it seemed a little excessively sterile to me) and headed in. This birth was also quick, but the baby had its umbilical cord double-wrapped around its neck and it was slow to breathe. Phoebe and Emily were going to come in for the next birth, which happened pretty much right after, but they didn´t have enough scrubs, so I (luckily? I felt kinda bad.) got to stay in the delivery room and see the next birth, too. This was a 19 year old first-time mother, and its kinda sad that the thought going through my mind was "wow, this is only her first? she waited!". Her birth was slower, and was attended by a resident who hadn´t attended to a birth for 3 years. He was guessing a little bit, and wasn´t really talking to the patient much, so I tried talking her through some things, especially after when he was sewing up her episiotomy. As for that, the episiotomy didn´t seem entirely necessary - that baby was coming out pretty well - Mom, how customary is it for an episiotomy to be cut on a first baby "just in case"? Anyway, by the time all that was over, it was about 5:30 and I wanted a nap. So I took one, until 7, then pretty much wandered around until 8 because nothing was happening, and left. It was an amazing experience. I think I´ll be doing one every week. Okay, time to sleep!

So anyway, that was a week ago. Things have actually changed quite a bit for me in the hospital since then. Us gringas were "found" by a fellow gringa who runs a free physical therapy clinic on the fourth floor. I am really interested in her work and she wanted to do a research project on the link between how births go and the occurence of cerebral palsy and other physical and mental disabilities. She said that she sees forms of CP and haven´t been seen in the US in the last 10 years, and that is really interesting to me. So, I spent Thursday and today with her in her PT office. She is teaching me to work with the kids and we are working together on this project, which right now is becoming a big patient database with information on type of birth (vaginal or cesearian), birth weight, disability, birth complications, etc... with the hopes of running statistics on it later and presenting it to the health minister in Ecuador to change birth policies. I hope it works!! That actually makes staying in Ecuador for the summer even more enticing, because I could keep working with her in my free time, presenting our information.
That is another thing I don´t think I have really mentioned on my blog yet - I think I may be staying in Ecuador until mid-July, depending on if I get a grant from Grinnell or not. There is work that I´ve been offered in Quito to research the health effects of pesticide use in flower plantation workers. But, it is a volunteer research position, so me taking the work hinges on me getting a grant from Grinnell to do it. We´ll see what happens!
A change of subject: This last weekend, clearly, was Easter weekend. All of Gabi´s (my 27 year old host mom´s) family came into town on Thursday and Friday for the baptism of Gabi´s 3 year old son, Francisco. It was really neat having everyone there, though it was a little overwhelming too.
On Friday night, I went out with Emily and Phoebe to go to a bar and we ran into the physical therapist, and then we ran into a candlelight vigil procession. It stopped for each of the stations of the cross and was a pretty amazing sight. I definitely haven´t seen anything like it before. It was tons of people and candles and rosary saying. Wow.
On Saturday the family and I went to Archidona, the city next door, to see its zoo and then we went to a spot on a nearby river that looks like a jungle paradise to swim. Seriously - sandy beach, palm trees, clear water, a little cave, some rapids down below - it was amazing. Then we went to the baptism. The mass seriously went for 2 hours before the baptism happened! There were seven readings, each with a response, before the gospel, then a crazy long homily. Mom, was that how 3 hour long Easter services happened when you were little? Luckily, Gabi and family aren´t that religious so we snuck out after the baptism to go out to eat. The food was great and we had homemade coconut-vanilla cake. Yum!
The next day (yesterday...) all of the family left except Gabi´s sister Maria (24 years old) and Gabi, Maria and I spent most of the day watching movies. For a such a Catholic country, Easter was pretty chill. I´d say that the only major thing the Ecuadorians are missing out on is the trend to eat a lot of chocolate on Easter. Because really, what is Easter without a chocolate bunny?
So that´s my life until now. I am really hungry, so I´m going to go eat some lunch. ¡Adios!

I´m in Tena, safe and sound

Oops... sorry for not writing for so long. As you can see, I´m in my internship phase right now, in Tena. It is in the tropics, so it´s about 80 degrees outside, though luckily it isn´t raining right now. For those of you who don´t know, my internship is at the Hospital José Maria Velasco Ibarra, a public hospital. I originally though I´d spend most of my time in obstetrics/gynecology, but as it turns out there isn´t a whole lot of action there during the day. So instead, two other students (Emily and Phoebe) and I wander around the hospital looking for interesting things to do. We go on rounds in pediatrics in the morning and generally end up in emergency for most of the day after that. The hospital is pretty different from anything I´ve seen before, and so are the illnesses. There´s a guy in the internal medicine unit in an isolated room who got a parasite that eats away at the cartilage in his face and causes severe enlargement of his nose and lips. His face is huge, and the skin from his now-mostly-flat nose takes up about half of his face. I don´t think this is anything I´ll ever see again in my life. Hope I don´t catch it :) Parasites are also incredibly common here. The water isn´t potable and the rivers all have parasites in them, so every day I see at least five parents come into the emergency room with kids suffering from parasites (or the parents have them themselves).
One of the most startling things to me is how young women start having babies. One 23-year-old woman in the emergency room today was on her sixth pregnancy. I´m not sure if it is lucky or not, but two of them have ended in miscarriage. It seems like every 20-year-old woman that walks through the emergency room door is pregnant with at least her second child. I cannot imagine how that would be.
I´ve decided that there are a lot of doctors in the hospital who I would not want to be seen by here. Some are really great - they care about their patients, they listen well, they treat them like they are excited to see them and are just fantastic. But, there is a group of about four young doctors from the coast, on residencies here for about 4 or 5 months, that I would never want to be my doctor. Especially if I was indigenous. They treat their patients (especially the indigenous) like they are stupid, like they don´t want to spend the time of day on them, and they don´t care if they cause their patients pain or invade their privacy. There was a woman in the ER today with a prolapsed uterus (or something like that) - the same one who is on her sixth pregnancy - and the doctor was asking her questions but not taking the time to listen to her answers, then told the woman (8 months pregnant, walked an hour to get to the hospital, has 3 kids at home) that her emergency really wasn´t and told her to come back tomorrow to see a gynecologist. Ridiculous. With a different pregnant and very embarassed patient, legs up in stirrups, the doctors in the room didn´t object at all to nurses walking in and out during the exam. And on Friday there was a little girl, 3 years old, whose brother had almost cut off her finger with a knife while chopping pieces of sugarcane. She was also indigenous. They had to sew back up the finger, and the same doctor as the one treating the pregnant woman washed the wound very brusquely, making the girl scream, and then without any warning gave her shots of anesthetic. But then, she didn´t wait for the anesthetic to kick in before she started sewing, so with every stitch the girl would writhe so badly, I could barely hold down her legs. Her mom was crying too, because she knew her poor little girl was in so much pain. I wanted to vomit from the sight.
Anyway, as if all of this wasn´t interesting enough, tomorrow I am coming in at 8 to watch some surgeries - I think a skin graft on a burn victim and maybe a C-section - and then I´m going home to sleep some because I´m coming back at 8 pm to stay for the night in the hospital so I can see some emergency surgery, some births, things like that. I´m pretty psyched about it. And, I will be following one of the doctors who I actually like very much, so I know that I won´t be bothered by the way she practices medicine. I´ll try to keep you guys updated as to how this internship turns out and everything.
¡Ciao!

The Magic Roundabout

This weekend, Nora Skelly, Becka, Grace, and three other girls from our trip (Emily, Carla and Christina) and I went to a little hostal called The Magic Roundabout in a cloud forest in Las Palmas, about 3 and a half hours from Quito.
The couple who runs the hostal, Meg and Ali, are British expatriates. Ali decided that he was sick of England, so he and a friend packed up and moved to Ecuador because the living is cheap (though a month after moving Ecuador dollarized, so that isn´t as true now). They bought a parcel of land in the cloud forest and let it be, and built the hostal. A few years later, Meg wrote to Ali and asked if she could come and work for awhile. She and Ali fell in love, got married, and now Meg is 7 months pregnant with their first kid. Oh, and they are huge hippies - Meg is having a water birth, both have dreadlocks and Meg has an organic garden where she grows tomatoes, 7 kinds of lettuce (Which made the best salad I´ve eaten since my summer working with the CSA), sweet corn, peas, some other fruits, herbs, etc. They started growing tobacco plants for the purpose of making botique tobacco products (and because tobacco plants are good organic pesticides), but then Meg got pregnant so they ditched the tobacco products idea.
The food was organic and amazing (for the first time since arriving in Ecuador I felt like eating was a healthful activity) and there were hammocs (hamacas en español) where we sat and read that overlooked the forest and road, and I took a couple of hikes to see waterfalls on the property. We didn´t realize it before starting our first hike, but we may have risked life and limb to see these waterfalls. There were some pretty steep dropoffs on one side, and a couple of the hills we scrambled up required ropes for holding onto. And we had to wade up a river (they had us wear Wellies). Oh, and did I mention that it was raining? Still, the first hike was really nice.
Sunday, I went for one more to see the "big waterfall". Grace wanted to come but she slipped and bruised her hip the night before, and Becka tried to come but her asthma got to her, so it was just me, Ali, his two sweet dogs (Guinness and Winston) and a machete hiking up this really steep, muddy, jungle mountain. I fell a few times (and got a bruise on my knee from a boulder in the river), but came out alive. I´m not as sure if that waterfall was worth it, but I know that I would have regretted it if I didn´t go to see it. And when there isn´t much else to do that´s as good a reason as any, right?
We were sad to go that afternoon, but it was enough time to relax, rejuvenate a little, and adventure enough to feel like we had taken a worthwhile trip.
Oh! Mom and Dad - they had a poster up for the Secret Garden hostal in Quito Antiguo and said it was a pretty nice place.

El Lavabo/My most embarassing 30 minutes ever

Story time!
Setting: My bathroom, Thursday, 1:30 am
Once upon a time, there was a club called Bundalow 6. On Wednesday night, this club has no cover and free drinks for women between 7 and 10 pm. Wednesday night is universally, among CIMAS girls, the night to go out to this club, have a few drinks, and dance. Generally, we dance until about 12:30 or 1 am and then go home. This last Wednesday night we went to Bungalow 6, left at 12:45, and got home around 1 am. I proceeded to get ready for bed and noticed that my feet were a little dirty from wearing sandals. And I couldn´t wash them in my shower because it only functions as a shower, not as a bath. So, I decided to wash them in the sink. Because I didn´t want to get my sheets dirty, of course. As I was washing off my feet (and not pressing very hard on the sink) all of a sudden the sink fell off of the wall. You read that right. Just for emphasis, I´ll repeat myself. The sink fell OFF THE WALL. But it was still attached to the sink pipes, so I just stood there and turned off the water and held the sink while propping it up with my knee. Of course, the water was still on and so started spraying into the floor. At which point I came out of shock just enough to call for my host brother - "!Fabian, ven aquí, por favor!" - and he came. His response was somewhere along the lines of "what did you do?!" and he got his mom, Cecilia. So, Cecilia came in, looked at the pipes spraying water, and said essentially "I don´t know what to do, I´m going to go get Oswaldo." So in comes my 60 year old host dad, wearing pajama pants and slippers and bearing an enormous wrench. He takes a look at the wet floor and says "just a minute, I´m going to go change and turn off the water." He went to do that, and came back in bare feet and boxers. And I held up the sink so it wouldn´t crash onto his head and kill him while he proceeded to disassemble the piping and detach the sink from the wall. Then I gently put it in the bathtub, where it spent the night. Somewhere along the way, I said something like "Ridiculous things always happen to me!" and my dad starting laughing - at me, at the situation, I´m not sure. Probably a little of both. - and said "nope, this has certainly never happened before!" Meanwhile, Cecilia swept the water into the drain on my bathroom floor and got a little mad, asking me if I had put a lot of pressure on the sink. I guess I might be a little mad too, being woken up at 1:30 in the morning by my son because my host daughter broke my sink. Overall, both of my host parents took it all very well. It made me appreciate my host dad a lot, both because he knows how to fix things like sinks that have fallen off of walls and because he kept laughing and doesn´t get mad when things go wrong. And I appreciated Cecilia because she didn´t give me a hard time about it the next day.
In the end, I think that the moral of this story is that one should not attemt to wash their feet in a sink that is attached to the wall.

Whew! Finally I can take a breath of (polluted) air.

Yep, I'm back in Quito. We went for the last two days to a pueblo called Tabacundo, within which was Hacienda Guachala, built in 1583, where we stayed the night. It was a trip that really made me think. The first thing we did yesterday was visit a flower plantation, where we were brought on a tour by one of the owners (I think) who painted a very rosy (it's a pun...) picture of the floricola industry for us. The next thing we did, though, was walk through one of the last remaining agricultural areas with a farmer, who told us about how the industry ruined the community that once existed in Tabacundo. See, the people in the village used to be much poorer but they had community that was there when things were bad, so everyone pretty much came out poor but surviving. Now, there are the flower plantations and the community is broken down because of the nature of work in a factory and because there is now a lot of immigration from Colombia and the coast and emigration to Spain and the US. Plus, health conditions are much poorer because of all of the pesticides being put on the roses that affect workers and their babies. And there is a lot more divorce and girls having babies. So from a monetary perspective, people are richer, but from a community perspective, the people are much poorer. Now just try to get that out of our head the next time you're buying roses for that someone special. Sorry.
After all of that, we spent the night in this ancient hacienda. Let me tell you, it's pretty freezing up in the mountains at night. We all had fireplaces in our room though, and I pulled out my good old outdoor winter survival skills and built one. Unfortunately, the flames only lasted about 20 minutes but the effort put into building the fire warmed me up and was enough to get to be comfortably. My question, though: who decided that central heating (or space heaters, for that matter) do not belong in Ecuador? It may be on the equator, but there are lots of chilly spots. And they make me curse Quito every time I go to bed and it is 62 degrees in my room.
Okay, that's all for now. Quito, I apologize, I really do love you, I was just kidding.

Viajes, viajes, viajes...

Hola to all! Sorry I haven´t updated in so long. The last two weeks have been filled with trips to every geographical region of Ecuador. The first was to the sierra (the mountainous region), to a town called Baños, which is my new favorite city in Ecuador. To say that there is a lot to do in Baños is an understatement, and to say that said things to do are inexpensive is also an understatement. In Baños, we stayed in a great little hostal called Hostal Plantas y Blanco with the best showers I´ve taken in Ecuador so far as well as the cleanest rooms I´ve found in a hotel for $6 per night. We went for two nights, and in that time we took a three-hour hike in the mountains, went to the hot springs after which Baños was named, and took at 13-mile bike ride past seven or so waterfalls (and under one waterfall) to a huge cascade called el Pailon del Diablo. The bike seat was pretty uncomfortable but that was one of the most breathtaking bike rides I´ve ever taken. Though the bike ride was a little scary because we had to ride through a dark tunnel intended for cars and screamed the whole way through, praying that 1) we would not hit something in the dark, fall, and die and 2)something would not hit us in the dark and kill us. That and we biked on roads with approximately 200-meter drop-offs with little but a 1 foot guard rail to keep us from falling to our deaths. That said, the bike ride was so incredibly worth it, I would do it again in a heartbeat. And we bought freshly pulled taffy in flavors such as Guanabana (a fruit you can´t find in the states), blackberry, and avocado-mint, and ate at a bunch of really great restaurants.
Then on Thursday the 15th, I went to my summer internship site with the other girls who will be there. The location is Tena, in the oriente, which is hot, sticky, and jungle-y. The town is about 40,000 people and seems really friendly. Everyone walks around at night, which I took to be a good sign because that doesn´t happen in Quito. I will be working in a hospital there, likely three weeks in pediatrics and three in obstetrics/gynecology. I also met a woman who can potentially be my host mother, and her husband owns a jungle tour company. Turns out, Tena is world famous for its rafting, and she says her husband should definitely take us out while we are there. We came back on Friday (6 hours each way) and I packed to go to San Vicente.
San Vicente was the last location, and we went there for Carnaval between Saturday and Tuesday. I did not very much enjoy San Vicente (thanks, Kristin). It was the beach location, and on Sunday I ate some bad mariscos and spend Sunday night ill and Monday in bed, weak. I never want to see or smell seafood again.
And now we are off to another viaje, up in the mountains, so I´ve got to go! Adios!

¡Futbol!

I went to my first pro-futbol game last night, Ecuador vs. Paraguay, and it was amazing. We bought the more expensive seats for the game ($8.50) because we´d heard that the cheap seats ($5.50) could be dangerous. It was a little sad, because when we got in there we wished we had saved the three dollars. In the cheap seats, it was constant fight songs and people threw toilet paper onto the field at every goal, and someone had a smoke machine... It looked incredibly fun. I want to know all of the fight songs now. We kind of learned one, but it´s hard to make out lyrics when they are being shouted by a crowd of thousands. There was one really amazing goal, where one of the players did a back flip more or less and kicked the ball into the goal while upside down. Wow. I am now a futbol fan. Even better, Ecuador (called Liga) won, 3-0.

Oops, it´s been awhile.

I am in an internet place called Papayanet right now, typing for a dollar an hour. Here is what has been happening:
Yesterday, Grace (a friend who is a nursing student at the UMN), Nora (a Grinnellian from Virginia) and I went to the Teleferico, which is this gondola that goes to the top of the highest mountain in Quito and that overlooks the whole city. Mom and Dad, when you are in Quito I am sending you there because it is one of the most beautiful views I have ever soon. That said, It was COLD up there and poor Grace didn´t realize how cold it would be so she just was wearing a T shirt and skirt and pretty much everyone else was wearing winter jackets, more or less. After she was sick of freezing her ass off, we went into a cafe and got a coffee with cream and amaretto for $2. It was so worth it. Then, we went to Gringolandia and ate some dinner at a place where I got an amazing falafel sandwich for $1.50. Also worth it. That night in the Mariscal (=Gringolandia)we found a bar called Shooters which had a five liter thing of beer for $10 which was shared amongst 5 people. Except I´m not that big of a beer person, so, again Mom and Dad, I definitely didn´t drink my two dollars´worth. The company was nice, and I got to chatwith people I hadn´t bonded with before. After that, we pretty much went home.
Today Cecilia took me to the Mitad del Mundo, and it was alright because it had a pretty cool museum about the indigenous in Ecuador, but was mostly memorable for its delicious ice cream that rivaled Sebastian Joe´s, or at least I´ll tell myself that to make it taste better to me. Then I got home and my mom fed me Chinese food that really tasted like American Chinese food. Which was so surprisingly pleasant because it reminded me of Chuong Garden.
Which brings me to now, in the Papayanet, with the Superbowl pregame show playing on the tv. Wahoo! I´m not going to watch it though. I have a lot to read tonight and I have to write a paper in Spanish about one Ecuadorian custom that has changed over the years. I think it will be both boring and hard to write because things change slowly here. And because I really I am still learning about Ecuadorian culture in the first place. So I´d better go write.
I miss you all, and hope to hear from you soon!

¿Internships?

Hey everyone! Clearly I´m making up for not updating for a week (yeah, Kristin, I´m talking to you) by updating twice in the span of two days. For a quick read, I´m bulleting. Since Saturday evening I have:
-Gone to a bar with live music called Bogarin. The music was really great, and so was the margarita I drank. I wan´t such a fan of the $4 cover, but that´s mostly just because I´ve become a cheap Gringa in this town where my amazing ham sandwich (not an oxymoron, I promise) that I ate for lunch today cost me $1.50. Anyway, the bar. We went as a total of 8 or 9 students, and sat and listened to a couple of Ecuadorian singers. There were two guys who sang together, and a bunch of Latinos/Latinas got up and started dancing and made we wish that I could dance, but of course I can´t because I´m a gringa. But that´s ok, I still want to take dance lessons. At only $4/hour for private lessons, why not?
-Got a fever and so had to go home at midnight. Mom and Dad, don´t worry, it was only 99.4 F and I think it was because I was dehydrated because the next morning I felt great.
-Went to Quito Antiguo, the "Old Town" for you English speakers (¿how are the Spanish lessons so far, Dad?). We went to one huge and awesome cathedral and two churches. And when my family asked me what they were called I had to go by description because I had no clue. It went a little like this:
Cecilia: ¿A que catedrales fuiste?
Me: Uhh... Uno era cubierto en oro. Y uno era enorme, y caminamos al parte mas alta del catedral. Y uno era muy antiguo y tenia un olor de cosas viejas.
Cecilia: Oh, to fuiste a (insert names of cathedrals here), pero todos los catedrales son muy viejos.
We never really figured out the name of the third church. But by "un olor de cosas viejas" I meant that it smelled like Grandma Werner´s basement. But older. But apparently that doesn´t translate well into Spanish.
-Went to an amazing panaderia with Becca and Nora called HONEY & Honey (but everyone here just calls it "honey honey" and drank some badly needed black tea and pretended to do reading. The waiter flirted with Becca like crazy and gave her a long stemmed rose when we left. We´ve got to go back there, if for no other reason than because it´s highly entertaining.
-Helped make a collage for my oldest brother´s two year old (my oldest brother is in his 30s and married and so doesn´t live at the house) and played with said adorable two year old. He´s SO CUTE and when he left with his parents, he cheek kissed me but wouldn´t cheek kiss his aunt. I´ve got a new best friend. That´s right, a two year old.
-This morning, a really awesome historian/journalist talked to us about "Ecuador Hoy". He is my new favorite professor.
-Looked at some internship possibilities. I REALLY want one in Tena, a town in the oriente, which isn´t what I expected, but it allows you to explore OB/GYN, Peds, Internal Medicine, and Surgery, all of which I am considering doing, without actually risking my life. Awesome.
¡Hasta luego!

I´m here, alive, and well!

Hola de Ecuador!
Finally I´ve gotten a chance to update. It´s been really hard to get on computers, because the computers at CIMAS are ridiculously busy all the time and it´s nearly impossible to get a turn. Anyway, I´m here and my family seems nice. So far it seems like my mom is talkative, smart, and very nice and my dad is a little quiet. He is a retired military man, and now he has a cow farm (finca de vacas) in the mountains where he spends about three days a week. My mom stays at home and cooks and cleans, and unlike many families we don´t have a maid. I feel a little awkward around my family around mealtime, because the families here don´t seem to eat together, which is a big change from home. And whenever I want food, my mom tells me to sit down and gives me SO MUCH FOOD. Either they eat a lot here, or they think Americans eat a lot and they give us a lot to eat. Pretty much every lunch and dinner there is soup, rice, some type of meat, sometimes salad, bread, juice of some type (this morning it was naranjilla, an orange-like fruit that we don´t have in the states), jelly, sometimes coffee (yes mom and dad, I am starting to drink coffee). Breakfasts are equally huge, with eggs, fruit, juice, coffee, and bread. The coffee they have here is very different, because here they heat up milk and add coffee crystals, so it is much less bitter and much weaker than in the US. Think a weak Cafe au Lait, and that´s what you get here. OK, more about my family: I also have a 26 year old sister, who is writing her thesis for her architecture masters or doctorate, I´m not sure which. And I have a nearly 22-year-old brother who is in college studying music, though I think he studies fiestas more than musica. So far my sister is my favorite; she always seems happy to see me and chats a lot, though she doesn´t go out or do very much other than work, study, and do things with their church (My family is evangelical, though they don´t try to convert me :) and I don´t think they drink at all because there hasn´t been any alcohol in the house).
The last two days we spent at an Ecoresort called Sapos y Ranas in the town of Bancos, which is bonitisimo. We hiked through the jungle and swam in a river, as well as in a swimming pool, and made bread and juice from sugar cane and lime and milked a cow. One thing I really liked about Bancos is there there are chickens wandering all over the place, though they are very colorful with brown and red feathers or black and white spots. I took a few photos of them. When we were milking the cows, a few of the brave chickens would come up to the cows and start trying to eat their food, and then the cows would moo at them and kind of shoo them away with their heads and the chickens would all scatter. It was pretty funny.
Today, we went to the mall to look around and so I could buy shampoo and a razor, which I forgot to pack, and now Becca and Nora Skelly and I are in an internet cafe. So everything is pretty cool. Tonight we´re going out somewhere to dance or something. Tomorrow we´re going to go to Quito Antiguo around the churches. They close off the roads on Sundays so people can ride bikes around the markets. I think I´ll try to attend some of the Catholic masses around here at the old churches so I can see them and see what mass is like here, and see if I can follow it en español!
I´ve got to go, I would love to get replies to my posts so I can keep up with what you guys are doing! Adios!

6 days and counting!

Wow! Ecuador is really sneaking up on me. It's starting to get overwhelming everything that needs to be finished before I leave (summer research applications, about 100 pages of pre-departure reading, finishing compiling clothes and things, all of my packing, paperwork, throwing my dad a birthday party, wedding dress shopping with my to-be sister-in-law, finding out who my host family is, buying a gift for my host family...). I'm sure it will all get done in time. It's just become this countdown, and it seems like it will be very relieving when I finally arrive and can say to myself "Okay, its time to have a new adventure."
I just got an e-mail from my good friend Maggie, who just arrived in India, and everything sounds so exciting! Her family, judging by photos, looks so nice and like she will fit in well. And Zach also seems to have the greatest Denmark family ever. I am really hoping that everyone in our program has a good family experience. Now if only we knew who our families will be...