Packing, prepping, posting.

Alright this is it! I'm taking a quick break from my packing to leave a quick update. Tomorrow I will be heading to Guayaquil, Ecuador... a port city on the Pacific where I will be getting on a plane to leave for the GALAPAGOS early on Sunday!! The whole planning process for this cruise has gone so quickly I cannot believe that I will be there in less than two days. It is unreal.

We will be aboard the Rumba Yacht, a small 10-passenger cruise ship. I'm traveling with three other students/friends from the HECUA program: Torrey, Emily, & Chris. The cruise has a 5 day itinerary that looks like the following:

Sunday 11/1: Baltra, Playa Las Bachas
Monday 11/2: Calleta Tortuga Negra, Santa Fe Island
Tuesday 11/3: Puerta Suárez, Española Island
Wednesday 11/4: Corona del Diablo, Punta Cormorant, Floreana Island
Thursday 11/5: Los Gemelos, Charles Darwin Scientific Station

On Thursday we will return to Guayaquil and then spend the remainder of our "free week" beach hopping along the coast, mainly staying in the coastal city of Montañita. We don't have a specific plan, but that's true Latin American fashion, right? We seem to be acclimating culturally :-)

I promise, as I have promised, and will promise to take TONS of photos, or at least however many I can fit on my memory card... Keep us in your thoughts and prayers for the week. Minimal seasickness would be appreciated!

Besos,
Eliza

The following photos are from our last HECUA field-trip to Olmedo, an Afro-Ecuadorian community on the Pacific coast in the province of Esmeraldas, near Colombia. (October 22-25)

Visiting the Mangroves (the coolest part of this ecosystem is definitely the roots/bottom parts of the tree, and guess who didn't get a good picture of that? I guess you'll have to google it!)

We take a lot of boat rides on these trips. We wore these neon orange life vests to visit a neighboring community-- as if being the only non-Afro-Ecuadorians people didn't make us stand out enough.

Being on the coast, there was a TON of seafood. I'm not such a fan, so I was sent to the segregated sick/vegetarian table. Definitely an experience-- don't think I could go veg full time.

Our final night in Olmedo was the community's largest festival of the year, this included a pagent for the young girls also one for the teens to be crowned Miss Olmedo, and extremely loud music that literally could be clearly heard throughout the entire community the entire night. Needless to say, we didn't sleep very much!

Calle Vargas Confessions

Yesterday I was on my regular bus on la Calle Vargas back from Old Town working at the Tianguez. I had worked a few extra hours to help out one of the workers so I was leaving later in the afternoon/early evening. I don´t know if it was due to the hour, but my normal bus was amost empty, a pleasant surprise in comparison to the jam-packed busses I usually find. I had a seat to myself and as we drove out of old town and towards my neighborhood I realized how different I felt on this bus ride compared to my first ones almost two months ago.

Obviously I have had moments where I have wondered what the heck I am doing here, wouldn´t it have been easier simply to stay at St. Olaf for the semester? There I wouldn´t have to worry about walking alone, pick-pockets, travel logistics, etc... At first, it was very difficult for me to feel really at home here in Quito. This worried me because it was so unlike all of the stories I had heard from friends who had studied abroad. I had always heard about the "Amazing"-ness, nothing about the doubts/regrets. I have recently decided to stop comparing my experience to others I have heard because these experiences will not be the same. Quito may not (and should not) feel like my home in MN, but it does feel like my home for right now. I have had my doubts, but have yet to regret anything that has happend or I have done.

I´ve passed the halfway mark of the program, and as always I cannot believe how quickly everything is going. I hope to really soak in the aspects of this life that I cannot take with me in December, and I have 7 weeks left to do so. First on my list, Galapagos Islands.

Three days until I´m sea-bound. Yikes!

¡Vaaamos, Ecuatoriaaaanos!

El Pailon del Diablo waterfall- Baños, Ecuador

Where did I leave off...

Oh right, loneliness, frustrations, and Spanish relapse. Well I will be happy to tell you that I had a really really great week. Two "really"s, now you know it's legit. In general, I had a pretty run-of-the-mill week, but I will give you some highlights.

-Monday I had a relaxing morning before my afternoon class; I made the deposit for my Galapagos cruise (Nov. 1-5)-- once I got over the initial "sticker shock", I got over the money thing and I am getting so excited to finally get there. It's coming up very quickly!

-My friend Nolan and I started, what will hopefully turn into, weekly lunch dates. It's really fun to explore the area of Quito around where we are working in search for "authentic" and cheap Ecuadorian cuisine. So far so good, we're 1 for 1.

-On the other side of the spectrum, we continue to attend the weekly Mulligans Pub Quiz, as Americanized and non-Ecuadorian as you can get. We also happen to be this weeks champions once again, this time with a little less help from the Jeopardy star. :-)

-My work at the Museum and Fair Trade store continues (I'll try to get some pictures up soon). I really really love some of the friends I'm making there. It's a very interesting organization to be a part of, and it's fascinating to see it all from within. I'm very much looking forward to begin my independent study in Fair Trade and see what else I can learn.

-Friday night brought a LIGA Futbol game. Liga is a club soccer team that used to be affiliated with one of the local universities. Tickets were cheap and the fans were ecstatic-- I've never seen a cheering section like this one (and think of where I went to high school?) These people never sat down, never stopped cheering, or singing for that matter. We all had "Vaaaaaaamos, Ecuatoriaaaaaaanos ringing in our ears for the entire weekend. It was a Liga victory, 3-0, an extremely fun night and exactly what I needed at the end of a very full week. It is so much fun to be a part of an energy like that, I recommend it to anyone visiting the country.

-Bright and early Saturday morning my travel buddies and I set out for Baños, an extremely touristy area about 3-4 hours from Quito. We had a very full and fast weekend with beautiful sights, a birthday celebration, and the famous thermal baths. The baths weren't exactly what I expected, it pretty much mirrored your average public pool, only nestled in the mountains. We did take a Cascada (waterfall) tour on Saturday and visited the Pailon del Diablo waterfall, a supposed "wonder of the world". I keep happening onto these places or experiences that I never thought I would encounter. This semester, and definitely this country is keeping me on my toes, ready for the next adventure.

Getting ready for a dune-buggy tour around Baños (This was a pre-biker helmets picture-sorry)

Nolan and I chose the SLOWEST buggy, so we were often passed on the uphills. :-(

The "Chiva" nicknamed the partybus for our waterfall tour. It came complete with strobe lights.

A cable basket suspended us over a gorgeous valley during our waterfall tour.

View from the cable basket.

Me in front of the Pailon del Diablo

The next month of weekends will take me to many corners of Ecuador and away from Quito. For those of you who know the home-body side of me, you might understand a little bit of my aprehension with all of the travel time. However on the flip side, I'm getting to travel, that's the point right? I am extremely excited for what the next month has in store. I promise to keep you all posted along the way.

Rainbow (a complete arc that this photo does not show) near Cotopaxi on our way home from Baños.

Seventh Inning Slump

Torrey and me at the official Equator line

So at the beginning of our semester, we HECUA-ns had hours and hours of orientation warning us for the possibility of upcoming frustrations or negative experiences. At the time, we listened, but also we were all so excited to finally be in Quito, meeting eachother, and getting used to our lives in the city, that I'm not sure if many of us really listened.

Well, I'm here, at the beginning of my seventh week experiencing what I'm deciding to call my "seventh inning slump" (baseball on the brain--Twins :-(. In the recent weeks, my frusterations have outnumbered my moments of clarity, and I often find myself questioning my motives for being here in Ecuador. Do not get me wrong, I do not regret coming AT ALL, and I do understand that this is all a part of the process-- my homesickness and/or negative feelings sometimes do not belittle my experience abroad, because they are a part of my experience abroad.

Anyone who speaks/has learned a second language knows that there are good days and bad ones (at least I hope that's the norm). Some days, the Spanish is clicking, I don't really have to think about it, but others, like many of my days recently, it is an extreme challenge to simply communicate. What a headache. I think that this week, coming back from the Amazon, a cool but extremely wearing experience, my body was physically tired, and my brain mentally so. I was much relieved to return on Monday and remember that we had a short week. The entire country had Friday off to "celebrate" Guayaquil's independence (it felt a little Columbus Day-ish to me... no work/school being the biggest celebration). After a kind of downer week, Friday was a welcome opportunity to sleep-in, watch a movie, catch up on some homework, and watch the Twins game with some fellow Minnesotans and a Yankees fan, fun I know.

Saturday I spent the day with Torrey, and I remembered why I am so thankful to have such a close friend in the same city, needless to say the same continent. We visited the las Mitades del Mundo-- the Equators. North of Quito there is the official Equator line, complete with monument and museums, and then there is the actual Equator line, which has been proven through GPS monitoring as well as other "experiments"-- A giant stone monument would be too hard to transport, so I guess there will forever be two Equators in Ecuador. We watched the Ecuador/Uruguay World Cup qualifier game at this great hole-in-the-wall restaurant that we stumbled upon. It was a really fun, excitement-filled environment... until we lost. I'm starting to feel like a bad luck charm.

One of my struggles is not feeling exactly a part of my host family. I mean, no one said it would be easy being dropped suddenly into someone else's life. I just didn't expect to feel this much on the outskirts all of the time. I've decided that a good way to appease this situation, because realistically it is simply figuring out a way for me to stop feeling left out, is to simply fill up my schedule. If I stay busy with my own things and create my own life here in Quito, I will feel less sorry for myself when others are living theirs, right? This morning at the English Fellowship Church I filled out a card to learn about some of their ministries during the week for college students, and also if I can fit it in I'm thinking about going to the local photo club with a student that I met at our conversation exchange at the local university. Well here's hoping!

Ready to get back on track,

Eliza

Torrey and me at the actual Equator- Museo Inti Ñan

Balancing an egg on a nail, possible at the Equator line due to the difference in gravity.

My dream come true...

(Well at least a dream for my life in Quito)

We won the Mulligan's Pub Quiz tonight!! A group of HECUA students have become regulars at this event every Thursday... and the competitive side of me has been itching to win since week one.

A few weeks ago we lost two a team with a guy who we began to affectionately call "Amherst Ben" (Can you guess where he went to school?) It became a type of rivalry until this week we joined up to form The Combined Forces. We were rocking it. By we I obviously mean Ben and the other side of the table. Ben happens to be a four-time Jeopardy champ, using his winnings to do some traveling before starting the work force. Yeppers. It's the truth.

So maybes it wasn't really us, but we were on the winning team, and oh let me tell you. Victory was sweet. And the buffalo wings will be tasty--once we are allowed to redeem our coupon :-)

Project Amazonía

As most of you know... I'm a bit wordy. Hence the reason I blog. I got back this afternoon from an incredible first trip to the Amazon rain forest- Parque Nacional Yasuní. We stayed at a scientific station owned by la Universidad Catolica. It was an awesome four days and I'm going to try and let the photos speak for themselves (with minimal EJ commentary!)

Day 1: Plane, taxi, boat, bus= 6.5 hours of travel from Quito to Yasuní

We definitely were a sight in our outdoor wear and rubber boots. Nolan's were yellow.

Some people looked like Tarzan and Jane.

We took a boat tour and saw some turtles, a sea otter, and "stinky turkeys"

Yasuní at dusk.

Amazon vegetation: This tree was known as the monkey's playground. It is also helpful if a wild warthog is chasing you and you need a place to run for protection. (Our guides were very helpful :-)

On Sunday we climbed this tower at...

...6:00 am and saw these guys...

...and we went up again at 6:00 pm to see this.

Lo quiero la Amazonía.

Great weekend.