Ecuador's Market

Well this past weekend had lots of potential of being fun, until all my plans were canceled. So I was ready for another weekend of sitting at home and taking walks around the block. Friday night I did work on some homework and watched one of my new movies, they have Spanish subtitles so I would count that as my Spanish practice for the day. Late Friday night I decided to head out to Otavalo with some of the SNC girls.

Otavalo is a huge market in Ecuador about two hours north of Quito. I woke up at 7am Saturday morning and headed out the door at about 7:45am to meet the girls at the bus station at 8am. Before I left Ani had woke up and asked me in surprise why I was up so early, she's gotten used to me sleeping in until 10am on the weekends. What can I say? I like my sleep.

Once we were all gathered we headed off to some buses not really knowing how to get there. After asking a few small questions and 2 hours later, we made it! All of us were extremely proud that we mad it without much direction and NO Ecuadorean guides to help us. After getting a snack and finding/walking to the street market the shopping began. I've missed shopping so much.

Before we came to the market I had some things in my head that I needed to buy before I left Ecuador and the first thing on my list was an Ecuadorean jersey. Of course the first booth we saw was for the exact jersey I wanted, we tried some on and then the bartering began. The shirts started off at $18 each! We were not about to get gringo-d and pay that price. After the man continued not to lower his price to $10, which is what we would pay, we started to walk away. Quickly the man knew he was loosing a good deal and lowered his price to $10, after all we were going to buy five of the jerseys. So the first battle had been won.

The rest of the day continued like this, asking the price, lowering it, and back and forth. The things we got good deals on we bought and other things we had to walk away from. A few times the booth owners would come find us down the street a bit and try to re-haggle the price. Most of the times we said we'd be back, but really wouldn't be, today anyways. After about two hours of walking and shopping we found the cutest little lunch place and had some amazing quesadillas. After lunch, most of the booths had the same things and we had seen enough.

We walked back to the bus station and headed home. On the bus ride I mentally made a list of all the things I still wanted for myself and of something gifts I still needed to get. The day was great and I got some awesome deals on the things I bought. All day I spent about $40, including the stuff from the market, lunch, and the bus rides. Not bad at all.  

Pollo, carne, jugo, sopa.

Well the last few days have been nothing excited, tomorrow the college has no classes and I will be spending my afternoon writing a 3 page accounting paper, in Spanish. What a joy.

From my past blogs I have realized that I've left out all my experiences with food! How could I forget?

So I think it's safe to say that I've already found the things I love, and unfortunately the things I also hate. My favorite meal so far was some fish I had at home. I'm not sure if I've told you about this already but it's worth re-telling. This fish tasted like it swam in butter and came from heaven. It did not taste like fish at all and the best part was that it had crunchy bacon on top. Every day I hope to see this dish waiting for me on my plate when I get home.

Of course with every meal there is rice, with a side of rice, and rice for desert. Or it sure seems that way to me. Usually I get a big size plate, not one of those medium ones to make it seem like you're eating more because your plate is smaller, a huge plate, more like a platter. Half consists of some sort of meat and the other a mountain of white rice. In the beginning I tried so hard to eat all the rice but slowly I threw more and more away. Since I am not there when my plate gets plated up I can not ask for less and it's just too awkward to say something after the fact. Slowly but surely I am warming up to rice again and more and more is allowed into my belly. About 76% of the time I eat 60% of my rice, more than half, I call it good enough.

Along with rice for every meal, we also get soup. This hasn't been so bad, I never was a big fan of soup because I just never understood why you needed so much broth and so little of the other stuff. The soup is always different and usually good, I have not ran into one that I could not eat... yet.

The meat here is... interesting to say the least. My rule of thumb is, if you're not sure what it is, it's probably chicken. I've gotten a few slabs of meat that I'm still not sure what they were but I ate as much as possible and called it good. As my family, boyfriend, and friends know, I must surgically dissect my food before I eat it, especially meat. Also, I do not like eating meat off the bone; but here it seems that chicken only exists ON the bone. So there I am sitting in the restaurant with a fork and knife eating my chicken. Many times I think I get it pretty clean only to look at the others and notice that I've barely eaten half, by this time I usually give up and eat my rice. Traveling to the Amazons we stopped at a chicken place and much to my horror there was not a fork, knife, spoon, or spatula in sight. This chicken was on the bone and I would have to eat it with my hands... After getting over the fact of what was happening I just closed my eyes and ate it, it was very delicious but would have been better with utensils.

One of my favorite things here is the juice, I get it every day and it's usually freshly made. My favorite is pineapple juice but I have had a few juices that I have to hold my breath for, close my eyes, and gulp it down.

Ice cream is also very popular, being that it is hot year round, and boy do I love my ice cream. Too many flavors to choose from and too many stores and small vendors to try out.

Overall I've been fairly satisfied with the food, although this country still surprises me.        

My Valentine's Day Gifts

Amazon Woman

Well for starters my Ecuabuddy has many trips planned, the first one being the Amazons, here is the story.

Packing for a 5 day weekend getaway is incredible hard, especially when you notice 5 of your freshly cleaned whites are no longer white and have been changed to pink. Great, sounds like I'm going to have to give up wearing those items. Before you guys get too worried that I skipped class, we had a holiday Monday and Tuesday because of Carnival so the trip Friday to Tuesday. Five of the SNC girls and I went on this trip, we met at my house to get picked up around 7. The trip to Tena (the city we would be staying at) was supposed to take about 3.5 hours but ended up taking about 6 hours due to a dinner break and a landslide that took over an hour to clean up. Did I mention we had 4 girls in the back seat? making a very crowed ride. We eventually got to out free lodging around 2am and checked out the place, 6 beds, a bathroom, and a not so useful kitchen not bad for free I guess.

Saturday morning we went out to breakfast for a traditional "amazonian" breakfast. We all ate what we could due to the extreme heat and also extreme humidity. Waiting for the check this little girl tried to sell us gum and we all ignored her and she went away, people are always trying to sell you things. A few minutes later she came back with a black bag and asked each of us if she could have out left-over food. This has never happened to me before, I felt extremely sad and also kind of embarrassed because I could not finish my food and she was willing to eat it. We all quietly scraped our food into her bag and sat in silence as she left and it sunk in what just happened. I knew there were poor people her but I would never had thought that a little girl, around the age of 8, would have so much hunger to ask people for their scraps.

During the day we headed out to the Zoo, one like I had never seen before. It had a very natural feeling and all the animals there were rescued. Of course to begin we got sprayed with foam, a Carnival tradition. This happened during the entire trip and wasn't so bad because it usually smelled good and we usually didn't. After the zoo we headed to some caves, we had heard that we would be getting wet but we clearly didn't know what we were getting in to. We each picked partners, got head lights and boots, and headed in. We hiked, climbed, and swam to an in-cave pond/waterfall at the end. This was an amazing experience that only cost $3 a person. I was a little scared at first because it was pitch black and I'm not too fond of small spaces, but I survived and I would do it again in a heart beat.

Sunday we took a motorized canoe ride to a museum and indigenous village in the Amazon rain-forest. Here we saw more animals, learned facts, and saw a traditional dance. Later we went to a river and enjoyed the cold water on our toes after a long day in the heat.

Monday we were told would be the day to go swimming and we would first take a small walk to a waterfall. This walk ending up being a 1 hour hike through the rain-forest in flip flops. There were small streams, lots of mud that we often lost our shoes in, and many grunts as no one really knew what we were getting into. After hiking down what didn't even look like a path we made it to the river, yes a river, no waterfall, just a river. I was a little disappointed but after walking back half the way barefoot, because I was sick of digging my flip flops out of the mud, I was so proud of myself for doing it. At the time, all I wanted to do was turn back but now I can tell everyone that I've hiked through the Amazon rain-forest barefooted, pretty cool fact eh? All I could really think about was all the camping trips I took as a kid and how easy those hikes seemed now. After the long hike we washed off some of the mud, ate a picnic lunch, and went swimming in the freezing cold water of the river. Sunday night we got all dressed up and went to a bar and then a discoteca for some dancing.

Tuesday we slept in and then left around 5 and got home around 9. Ani later told me that there was a 7.2 earthquake in Colombia and they felt it here in Quito for 90 seconds, this happened on Friday when we were traveling and we did not feel it. During the trip we got to try some Oriental food including shrimp and fish. I at half a shrimp and couldn't eat the rest because I couldn't stop thinking about what it was but the fish was incredibly good.

Class was normal Wednesday and today. For lunch we went to a pizza place and every girl in the restaurant got a rose because of Valentine's Day and to treat myself I bought a $5 watch at the bus station.

 

It's Raining Men

Well my Sunday was absolutely boring, I did not step one foot outside the house and worked on homework all day. The only thing that made Sunday exciting was that my upstairs neighbor Martin came over for a bit. He's about 2 years old, brown curly hair, dark brown eyes, and speaks Spanish which makes him the cutest thing ever.

Monday started out normal, cloudy out, chilly, and too lazy to bring a jacket. I went to my two classes for the, ate lunch, and headed home... in the rain. All was fine until I got off my second bus and had to walk 20 min home, uphill. For those of you who knew me in high school you might be familiar with the fact that I refused to walk home in anything that wasn't 68.5 degrees, sunny but slightly cloudy to prevent burning, and a breeze at about 7MPH. So we'll just say I rarely walked home and I live two blocks from school.

As it was raining, not misting or sprinkling, full on raining I had no jacket like I said but I did have my trusty Wal-Mart Zebra umbrella that I flipped inside out last week with a small gust of wind. So to start the trip it was already kinda broken but still usable. First the idea was, walk on the curb, puddles don't sit on curbs. Bad bad bad. Speeding cars drove past me and I had to dodge many sprays of water. Then the idea was, walk on the sidewalk like a normal person. Bad bad bad. Puddles everywhere, and no not your childhood dog named "Puddles", actual standing bodies of water EVERYWHERE. Of course I almost worse my semi-waterproof boots today but opted for the fabric, easily soak-able  tennis shoes. By this time my feet are goners.

So now I had to cross the roads, could I run? No, too risky. Too many puddles to watch out for and the increased wind speed might flip my umbrella. So I stood on the sidewalk for what felt like a year just waiting for a space in traffic to cross. Standing there, like a sad, wet dog still wearing my backpack on the front to try and keep it dry...picture it and just try not to laugh.

Walking up the huge hill by my house I discovered a new waterfall! Right in the middle of the sidewalk, how cool. Wonder how much that was to put in, so I walked right through it, after all my socks and shoes were already soaked. By this point I'm 3 min from home and about 99.9% soaked but hey, I wasn't sweating for once so might as well call it a plus for the day.


  

Kitchen Shower

Well last night I was informed of a "Kitchen Shower". I had no clue what this was, being that I was listening for Spanish words and couldn't find any word in my noggin' that sounded like "kitchen", I had no clue what I was getting myself in to. I knew some relative was getting married so I figured it would be like a wedding shower, until I heard someone say that tomorrow was "the big day". O no, I am not going to a bachlorette party for someone I do not know. Can you say awkward? But when the time came I got in the truck and off we went, I mean how bad could this be?

We arrived and before I saw anything I heard what seemed to be about 87 women talking, in Spanish. We were greeted by the little girl who lives upstairs, she continued to put plastic spoons attached to strings around our necks and my sister explained that it was a game and you could not cross your legs, arms, or anything else or your spoon would  be taken away. I ended up going back to the house right away to get cups but on return I sat down, crossed my legs, and got my spoon taken away. Dang it. I forgot already.

As the night progressed we ate some small snack foods, some drinks that were way too strong, and lots of talking and me standing awkwardly looking at everyone. As I observed this party I noticed ever girl was extremely dressed up. I estimate that everyone under 30 had 4 inch heels on and was wearing something fashion forward, the older the woman, the shorter the heel. Also most of the older women were wearing skirt or pant suites. So this was a classy event. And there I was, wearing the same sweaty clothes I had on all day, my ripped jeans (yes I paid extra for the holes), and worst of all...tennis shoes (similar to Keds). How embarrassing. No one at home told me to change but when I saw Ani and Meli 2 seconds before we were leaving I knew I should have turned back right then and there.

Besides sticking out like a sore thumb, everything else was great. Everyone said hello and good-bye to me at their respected times and I even had a little chat with an older woman. She asked the usual questions and even told me to be safe on my next trip. The food was great and everything I had was something new and weird looking. We played a few games which resembled the ones from the States like a cross word puzzle, make a wedding dress out of TP, acting out words, and a memory game.

As the night died down Ani, Meli, and I had to go drop off someone in the deep South of Quito. I was up for the ride mostly because I didn't want to sit home. I took about 2 hours to drop this woman off and we got home around 10 and I went to bed, and slept for 10 hours.

Today Ani asked me if I wanted to go get my nails done for $3. Umm... YES?! So we went and picked up Shanna and went to the spa. Shanna and I both got our nails and toenails done for $9.50, each person. What a deal, I think I'll be back. During out little spa day I see Shanna sitting next to me looking like something was wrong, but when I asked her she said nothing. A little later she asked me to ask for some water and her lips and face were very pale. I tried to get her to lay down but the small glass of water cleared everything right up. I can't believe this girl almost fainted on me! We're not really sure what caused it but she said she was just hot.

Later in the day I walked to Shanna's house for the first time and played with her dog Nacho then walked home. Tonight it's looking like I'll be doing lots of homework and writing my first Spanish paper in Ecuador and also waiting up until Ben gets off of work to talk to him.