Otavalo

LAST weekend (21-23 January) we took a group trip to Otavalo, a small-ish town known around the world for its handcrafted goods made by all the locals. This picture is one of the biggest churches in the town, with a block-size plaza in front. One thing that I have noticed is that every city, no matter how large or small, has something exactly like this. The plazas always have fountains in the middle, and apparently it's common for the people to approach the fountain and wash their heads/hair in the water, which was a little strange to see.

This was from the first night, of a different church, lit up by lights. Don't know much more than that, but a cool church nonetheless, even though the photographer was a little "shaky" after the discotech we took over earlier that night. Speaking of the discotech, this was the fateful night I "accidentally" drank two glasses of tap water, which later led to the worst day of my life: that Sunday. I had never felt so terrible, vomited so much, nor had less control of my bowels. I'm telling you, it was TERRIBLE.

A picture of our hotel, which was surprisingly nice. This was and will be the only weekend trip that we are doing with the WHOLE group of 32 students. That made everything a little hectic, but it was fun taking over the whole hotel. The activities for the day of Saturday got absurdly boring, while they were trying to teach us how to "guard" our belongings while in the market, and how to barter like a local. (Hint: if the merchant is offering $32 for something, I refused to pay more than $20. And it always worked!) You kind of start to feel bad for the poor merchants, but if they wouldn't get your sale, they may not be able to sell it again that day. I ended up buying all kinds of ridiculous stuff, including a one-person hammock that is going to be kick ass at the frat.

A nice showing of a few of my new Otavalan purchases, including comfortable pajama-type pants ($5 from $9) and my new sweater ($10 from $17). This is in front of Cuicocaha, which is a huge emploded volcano with a lake in the middle. I'll explain it more in just a second. Anyway, more from the market. Two friends got ripped off by a merchant after purchasing two sweatshirts for $10 each. After completing the purchase, the merchant tracked us down and insisted that they both paid with counterfeit bills. (counterfitting is a HUGE problem here, sales clerks everywhere check the water mark on $5's and $10's even). They didn't pay with counterfeit bills, but we couldn't win the argument, so we took the bills back, bought the sweatshirts with new tens, and are stuck with fake money. But, I was able to offer my friends some advice as a once-checker for Safeway: nobody in the US would look at these bills twice, so just bring them back to the States and they'll be fine!

This is Lake Cuicocaha, which is in the middle of Cuicocaha Volcano. This lake (up to 300 feet deep in places) consists of ONLY rainwater, proving how long the Volcano has been imploded, and how much it rains out in the jungles and RAINforests. There are no fish, or swimming animals of any kind, naturally. We took a small boat, piled all of us in it, and took a breathtaking tour through the lake, around the islands, and through massive amounts of reeds in the middle. It was really cool.

Later that evening, we stopped through a tiny town to visit a Curadero (literally "one who cures," but we just called him a shaman). One girl in our group, Zhang, enthusiastically volunteered to be "cured," which I'm sure she later regretted. It included this: being slapped all over the body with leaves; getting vodka spit into her face, chest, and stomach; fire breathed onto her body; eggs nearly broken over her head; and chewed up flowers (mixed in his mouth with cologne and vodka) spit onto her forehead, chest, and stomach. To top it all off, she was instructed not to shower for 48 hours.

That was all for our trip to Otavalo, and it conveniently happens to be time for class.

Best,

Blair

I hate blogging!

With my computer completely useless thanks to a (i think) virus, and my inability to upload photos from my iPhone, blogging has becoming increasingly difficult. I can only do it on the computers here at school. It's getting a bit frustrating because I hate coming in early, and we all leave right after school to do things more fun than blogging. Anyway, I'm heading to Baños tonight for a long weekend, so I'll be unable to blog again until Monday afternoon. Which brings me to triage: will this post be about last weekend at Otavalo, or about family life, and pictures of my home?

In my effort to stay sane and go the easy route, I'll talk about my family life, and stay a weekend behind, like I've always been. Here we go:

My Empleada: (maid, but literally "employee") had abandoned us for two weeks now. To my complete relief, I woke up this morning to the voice of a different woman, our new empleada! This is fascinating news, seeing as how I was really running low on boxers and socks, as well as just about everything. Before today, I was getting pretty concerned as to what to do next, because I didn't move here to do laundry. As terrible as that sounds, I honestly have zero idea how to do anything in the house; I've never washed a dish, washed clothes, cleaned the bathroom, or anything other than make my bed (a whole different topic).

My Bed: is terrible. It's apparrently common for Ecuadorian bedsprings to have 4 springs. I'm not really sure why, but because of this, I sleep in what I call my "bowl." To solve this, I put one of my pillows at the bottom of the bowl, topped by a folded blanket. This slightly helped to counteract the bowl situation, but in order for my mom not to find out that I disapprove her bed (I already said everything was perfect), I have to make the bed everyday. Tragic, I know.

My Family: is anti-social. The only thing we do at night when we're all at home is watch TV in our own separate rooms. While this isn't terrible, I sometimes wish we'd be able to hang out together, and that I'd become good friends with my brother. My mom is divorced, but it took a little while to figure this out. I live with one brother, about 24 yrs old, who works for Customs in the airport, and is attending a University. Needless to say, he's never around. I still haven't figured out what my mom does for a living, and I haven't bothered to ask yet; what if she's a coke dealer, and she'd have to kill me after she told me? That would be truely tragic.

My double-living room, with views of the city.

My House: is really nice, I like it a lot. I have my own room complete with a TV, closet, desk, and 4 plug-ins! I've learned that compared to most my friends in the program that my house is one of the biggest! Living it up in luxury, that's for sure.

Well, I planned an hour before class to get this blog posted, and I already ran out of time. Slow computers, images failing to upload, and other things have prevented my literary genius from being transferred to my blog.

I have no other options, other than to attempt to upload more pictures of my abode on Monday, the other pictures I really wanted to include are of the views of the city from my living room and dining room.

Wishing I was more funny,

Blair

Mindo pt. 2

As promised, a post full of pictures from the weekend we spent in Mindo a bit ago. So, following along with the last post, here we go.

Just a picture of Mindo, with us hanging out, trying to figure out the next plan.

One of the 13 ziplines of the tour, and we each got to do a "trick," as they called it. This was called the Mariposa (spanish for "butterfly") and you could probably see why; that's me being held upside-down by one of the guides. This whole zipline I was upside-down, it was the most ridiculous thing ever. Amazing.

Us eating at our favorite pizza spot, where a small cheese was $1. Our guide, Randy, is on the right. We ended up eating about 6 meals at this place, so good!

My "room" in our hostel, notice the amazing spongebob sheets. For some reason, every single bed in this hostel had spongebob seats. Hanging is the mostquito net that failed to really protect me.

Our preferred method of transportation, the most fun car ride I've ever had.

The cable car we had to take to get to the other side of the jungle, on our way to the waterfall.

View while flying over the cloud forest via cable car. Remember that we're about 1000 feet above the forest floor. Scary experience, but incredibly breathtaking at the same time.

Left out of the last post, we had to cross about 4 of these wood and wire bridges to get to the waterfall. It was POURING the whole time. After becoming comfortable with the bridges, it ended up being a lot of fun to walk to the center and use as a trampoline.

The water fall we descended! Keep in mind this was the 2nd half of the descent, and I was being supported by a thin rope, and descending with my own strength, nothing like what I expected. For some reason, I don't think this would be legal in the US without a consent and liability form (we signed nothing the whole trip).

That's about it for the weekend, I'll get another post up soon about my most recent trip to Otavalo.

Best

MINDO!

Okay, so we'll just pretend this is Sunday 16 January, because I've epically failed at this whole keep-your-blog-updated situation. And, as a result, have been pestered to get something up. Here goes nothing:

Fair warning: this post is long. good luck!

LAST weekend 14-16 Jan, a smaller group of 13 of us (there are 34 total) went to a VERY small town about 2 hours NE of Quito by bus called Mindo. While I was expecting a shanty bus on sketchy dirt roads of the Ecuadorian highway system, well, I was completely right. As aforementioned about driving in Ecuador, this was quite the experience. Driving through the middle of the jungle, all the while passing (yes, the bus was doing the passing) slower trucks on hairpin corners was shocking, but everything ended up fine, eh? Also on the bus, we met a English-speaking BRO named Randy that also doubled as a guide in Mindo. He took us to all the coolest spots, adventures, and pizza joints that Mindo has to offer.

Note: my laptop is still not connecting to any wireless networks, so I've been using my iPhone to keep this bad boy updated. Just learned that I can't upload my own pictures because of some random flaw in the system, so I'll post a picture-less post for now, then do a strictly photo post tomorrow to fill in the gaps.

We arrived to Mindo around 1030 thanks to our bus driver and the $2.50 bus fare just in time to head up to a nearby zip-lining company, complete with 13 zip lines for an adventure I had to-date yet to experience. This picture is crazy, so y'all should be excited for tomorrow's post. The last, and longest, zipline, went straight through the clouds; you couldn't even see the end.

After that we went back to Mindo, and back to our amazing Hostel, complete with mosquito nets for our "protection," although I've never been bitten more in my life. My "room" in the hostel had only three walls, so it was just like sleeping in the middle of the cloud forest.

That night ended with a group trip to a really small bar, us being the only gringos, of course. Upon returning to the hostel for the night, we also decided to test out the hostel's "swimming hole," which turned out to be no more than a rushing river less than 2 feet deep. Result: bruise-riddled legs and a sore body in the morning.

Saturday: River-rafting and repelling a 100+ foot cliff. So, we took our preferred method of tranportation to get to places: everyone stand in the back of the truck, holding on for dear life, while speeding through the TRUELY sketchy roads through the forest. I've never been so happy to be alive after arriving to each destination throughout Mindo. After rafting down the river, lunch, then the main event: repelling down a cliff/waterfall.

Again, we took the truck about 6 miles into the cloud forest, where we pulled up to the Cable Car that we had to take to get to the waterfall. Most stunning thing I've ever seen in my life, hands down! After a 45 minute TREK through the forest, we came to a cliff. When another guide (the expert) told us that we had reached our destination, I truely thought he was kidding. Long story short, he wasn't. I volunteered to go first- greatest decision by far. After repelling the cliff via one rope and my complete responsibly for my life (also only anchored to a 1.5 ft diameter tree) I was able to swim in the waterfall, explore te streams, and jump off some rocks into the waterfall. Simply amazing.

Thats just about it for last weekend, no other news-worthy events that I can think of. So, I'll be posting the pictures from Mindo tomorrow, which will be exponentially more exciting than this LOOOONNNGGG post.

GO DAWGS,

Blair

Literally in the CENTER of the world

On Tuesday, we bacame ultimate tourists, exploring all the "hot spots" that Quito, and the surrounding area have to offer, including visiting the Equator, as shown above. At that location, "calculada con GPS," I ended up standing in both hemispheres at once, my right foot in the winter, and left foot in the summer.
In an effort to satisfy my mother´s pleas, I will attempt to post a dry list of everything we did that day, with pictures. I hope this is a one-of-a-kind type post, because I don´t think this will be very funny.

After the Equator, we took out tour bus up an extremely windy road to get to La Virgen de El Panecillo, which you can see in the blog´s main photo at the very top. Also, from half-way up, it´s absolutely huge, as seen in this photo:

 Then, as I said, you can walk through the Virgen to get half way up, at which point you have a 360 degree view of the entire city, which is by far the biggest, most expansive city I have EVER seen or been to. It´s nothing like American cities, where there's a clearly indicated downtown because of the 50+ story buildings. Quito has buildings anywhere from 8-12 floors high, but spread out for miles, and miles, and miles. Absolutely stunning. Here, I decided to test gravity, and of course I won:

Next stop: La Plaza Independencìa, which is bordered by an ancient church on one side, and the President's house on another. We were able to see just a bit of the President's house, but not too much. Here´s a picture from the church side showing the plaza with the fountain in the middle.

Then we decided to go to the most impressive structure I think I have EVER seen. It's called La Iglesia de Compañìa de Jesùs. The Outside of it, which does it no justice, is here:

Then we found ourselves inside the Church, inside which we were NOT allowed to take pictures, but my daring friend Justine was able to capture two, luckily. The first one, of the "entry way" is here:

This church took many decades to build, and as you can clearly see, is accented with gold, covering every inch of the walls. The next picture is a little blurry, but it´s all we have of the most impressive part, the wall behind where the Priest speaks from. There are many pictures on the internet to see it in more detail, but here's nothing:

Well, there's the post that you all have been waiting for, complete with pictures of all my tourist-y adventures. Sometime in the middle of this week I'll do a post about life in my house, but I still feel a little sketchy taking pictures of the inside of my house while my mom is there.
My next post will be all about my weekend adventure to Mindo, Ecuador. It was the most intense experience of my life, and all the details will be posted either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Best,
Blair

Top 10 things that remind me I'm still White.

10. While walking down the street, I never get a response after saying "buenas tardes" (good afternoon)
9. I'd rather pay the extra money to ride a cab than take the city busses (they don't stop; you have to jump on and off - not my forte)
8. I get frustrated when it takes more than 30 seconds to load a YouTube video (at times up to 10 minutes!)
7. We were too nervous to explore for a bar by foot, so we settled for the T.G.I. Fridays we were in front of
6. I can't buy anything without speaking at least one word of English
5. I constantly look over my shoulders while carrying any more than $10, even with $5 in each front pocket for best protection
4. I ate Pizza Hut for lunch today (personal pepperoni pizza, cheese fries, and a drink for $3.25!) instead of going home for an authentic meal
3. I'll start sweating in jeans and a t shirt when it's sunny, while the locals are bundled up in pants, jacket, and a hat
2. I'm still not used to throwing used toilet paper in the TRASH, not the toilet (don't know if I'll ever get used to that)
1. I get sun burned the first day I spend around town (good thing I brought my Aloe Vera- like every good Whitey)

¿sí?

I have yet to meet a single person who can speak English. This is both great, and a little intimidating at the same time. With school starting tomorrow, this weekend has been spent relaxing, getting accustomed to the altitude (9000+ ft), and meeting my WHOLE extended family. Communicating has been coming easier than I had expected, but I was still hoping that maybe one member of the family spoke some English, just to make sure I still know how to speak my own language. Even our dog, Lorenzo, doesn't understand me in English. While you may be saying, "of course not, no dog can communicate in English," it's still weird to get used to the fact that he doesn't know what "good dog" or "come here, Lorenzo" or "hey buddy, did you miss me?" means. 
The good side of not understanding every word spoken to me is that I always say "sí," which has brought me on some interesting adventures so far. Among other places, my mom ad brother took me to and OLD neighborhood called Guápulo, home to an ancient Catholic church built in the 17th Century (pictured above) The only way to get to it was to take a steep, winding, cobblestone road, the kind of road you could only imagine in ridiculously unbelievable car chase seen from a movie. The kind of road you could only imagine would exist in South America. 

Finally Here!

¡Hola de Quito!

Now that i'm finally settled into my new home in North Quito, I feel as though it's necessary to share some interesting things I learned from yesterday, most of which you probably already know.

1. There is no McDonalds in Portland Int'l. The only good thing about waking up before 9am is the fact that you should always have McDonalds breakfast to look forward to, seeming as how I'm NEVER awake for it! When my mother assured me that there was a McDonalds, I became a little less irritable for the 3:45am drive to the airport. To complete my dismay, McDonalds failed me, and my much anticipated "Last Breakfast" in America turned into a chocolate chip muffin from Starbucks. How anticlimactic.

2. You gotta fight for your right to... rest your damn arms! Get into your row first, whether you have to beat people up to do it or not. If you're not the first one with your arms relaxed on the armrests, you have no hope for a comfortable plane ride. If you're the one with the terrible luck without the armrests, it just turns into an awkward elbow dance the whole flight, and this is not a fun, enjoyable dance. This is a dance where you'll fall flat on your face and look like an idiot for trying to, ever-so-slowly, budge your neighbor's arm off of the armrest. Even more awkward is when they tell you to get off their armrest because "finders keepers." Are we still in 4th grade?

3. Never attempt to drive in Ecuador. But if you suddenly find yourself driving down here, here are some tips: If it's a red light, you run it. Multiple lanes? Drive in the middle. Speed limit 50 km/h? Drive anywhere from 30 - 70. And, of course, never use your turn signals. Also, the stoplights are about one eighth the size of ours; I kept wondering why my Ecuadorian mom kept slowing down in the middle of the roads, only to realize that she was slowing down for the lights that she just passed through without noticing until too late. And Finally, honking your horn means everything: "I'm over here." "Watch out!" "What are you doing?!" "I'm at the front gate." "Go faster." "I'm slowing down." And "I'm making a U-Turn." The best part is, I learned all this from our 15 minute commute from the airport to my house.

4. Oh, almost forgot the best one:
Do whatever it takes to argue your way into the President's Club of your airline during a layover. It's definitely worth the comfortable chairs, abundance of crackers and cheese, and the true feeling that you don't belong, because you don't. Then sit back, relax, and pat yourself on the back for talking your way into an open bar. (Mom, I'll explain later).

Just a few tips from the (un)experienced,

Blair

Are We There Yet?

Packing for a 10 week trip is something I've never had to do. Do I pack 8 pairs of socks? 15? or bring every pair I have, just in case? There definitely needs to be a self-help book for this problem that I am quickly discovering I have; since when does it take a normal human being TWELVE hours to pack a few t-shirts, four pairs of shoes, and a sweatshirt?
Amongst all of this craziness, though, I'm pretty sure I'm the most nervous about this whole blogging situation. I've been asking more people for blog advice than for travel advice, and this has me a bit concerned. My fraternity's chef, Darlene, has the most hilarious, concise, and successful blog (fraternitykitchen.net) I've ever heard of, and that makes me as nervous as a pledge that has to approach her for the first time. I'm trying to keep this blog funny, up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly entertaining. So, please bear with me as I (hopefully) improve my blogging skills throughout my quarter in Ecuador.
I have one more day of packing, hopefully I'll succeed this first little task, then on to the next one: Arrive in Quito, Ecuador. This just begs me to ask: Are We There Yet?