Life in Quito

So its been a while since I've updated this .... but there's been quite a lot going on. I haven't gone on any big trips lately, but life in Quito keeps me pretty busy. I came down with a pretty bad cold a couple weeks ago (in the middle of Student Affairs Internships Interviews and midterms here... fun week...), and got to experience a little of Ecuador's medical system... it was a little shady... you just walk up to the pharmacy and tell them whats wrong and they just hand you a few pills in a bag... thankfully the pills are still in their plastic packaging, but they aren't in the box that tells you what they are or what's in them... so that was a little frightening, until I found out one of them was just Sudafed. The other one - I still have no idea what it was. It also was an interesting twist on the Latin American culture of not planning ahead for anything. You only buy 2, 4, maybe 6, pills at a time... because that's all you need right then. In the US, we buy the whole box, and maybe two or three boxes, just to be prepared in case we get sick again.... I was slightly annoyed with that at the time, when I was miserably sick and had to walk back to the pharmacy two days later to get more pills (or wait for Daniela to go, which would take 5 hours Ecuadorian time)... but now its more interesting than annoying.

There's also this volcano, Tungurahua, thats erupting right now... its like 4 hours south of here, and apparently is spitting out lots of ash. Which ruined Prashant and my's plans to go to this cool little town called Banos next week... I can't say that my travel plans in the US have ever been cancelled due to erupting volcanoes....

We went to Otavalo a few weekends ago - its the most famous, biggest indigenous market in Ecuador, and therefore also the most touristy. It was pretty cool though - I got to buy lots of souvenirs and gifts, and I am getting a little better at bargaining, believe it or not. There was a lso a beautiful waterfall that we hiked up to, and took this boat ride around a lake.

There's this bike path that goes through Cumbaya, the town I live in, and I've been asking my host family about it since I got here, so we finally all went last week. It was one of the coolest things ever. Also one of the most histerical, because there were 4 of us (me, host mom Daniela, 10 year old Juan Francisco, and 12 year Ana Lu...) and 4 bikes... but one of the bikes was for, oh, a 3 year old. So we took turns on the chiquito, and it was a pretty histerical sight to see Daniela or I riding this little bitty thing around a trail. It was the most beautiful trail though, we left Cumbaya and went around this beautiful lush green canyon with a river in the bottom, and almost made it all the way to Tumbaco, the next town over. Then, on the way back, Daniela stops in the middle of the trail next to this big 5 foot tall post. And tells me to climb it, stand on it, and to steal the guanabanas (a fruit) from the tree thats hanging over the trail. So there was this big hilarious 20 minute scene of me trying to get up on this post, stand on it, and pick guanabanas out of this tree (with no one seeing). It was pretty hilarious. And I think after all that, they were green anyways, because she stuck them in the oven (thats where she stores things sometimes..?) and told me we had to wait, and I've yet to see them since.

I haven't really been homesick since the first week or so that I got here, but last week I was just a little bit... I guess being sick probably had something to do with that (you just want familiar things when you're sick, and those were pretty hard to find that week). There's also been so much going on at U of I thats required my attention lately, that I think it made me miss it a bit. I was really excited when I got the Turner Fellowship, but thats such a foreign concept to everyone here that they can't even begin to understand what it is ... so it was a little hard to share my excitement. But Prashant comes next week, so that's really exciting!

Off to write up a grammar paper before class.... Miss you all.