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!