Quito Wins!

Today I was part of a true Latin American experience- futbol.  Quito played Barcelona from Guayaquil in Quito at the Estadio Olimpico this afternoon. I went with Ellie, her host father, host brother and Janelle.  The energy in the stadium was ridiculous! Everyone was chanting, singing and yelling. We ate delicious stadium food which included empanadas de morocho for $1 and chochoes with tostadas for $.50. (A HUGE beer was $1.) Quito won 1-0. 

 The field before the game. Our side of the stadium was packed. The side across the field (the expensive tickets- with shade!) didn't ever really fill up completely. 

 Stadium food- delicious empanadas de morocho. So greasy that my fingers left grease prints on my hat.

 Janelle and me in our sweet new Quito hats. 

The fireworks for Guayaquil. (I have a pretty sweet video of the Quito fireworks- red and blue- but I have no idea how to upload it.)

 Quito wins 1-0!

Outside of the stadium a few hours after the game was over minus my Quito hat. 

El TeleferiQo

Today I went to the TeleferiQo (a combination of teleferico and Quito) with Ellie and Maggie. The gondola lift takes you to 13,400 feet to the top of Pichincha (the volcano on the west side of Quito). It was freezing and super windy at the top of the volcano. There were amazing views of the city and I saw some of the other Ecuadorean volcanoes in the distance.

 It was so windy at the top of Pichincha, but the views were incredible. 

 The tiny city below. And by tiny I mean huge, sprawling city. From the top you can see for miles and miles, but you can't see where Quito begins or ends. 

The view to the southwest of the city- completely unsettled and green. Why yes, those are clouds behind me. 

 Another volcano (I think it's Cotopaxi) in the distance, east of Quito.

 On the gondola ride down. 

Chivas

Today was the last day of the program for all but six people.  And it just happened to be the birthday celebration for Simon Bolivar at our Spanish school (Institute de Simon Bolivar). So the school had a big party with fireworks, music, dancing, food and free drinks. After the party most of the students from the school went on the chiva (there are students from Germany, Norway and other European and African countries too- it’s not just the group of SLPs). A chiva is a type of party bus that has disco balls, music, lights, and drinks. The chiva took us around Quito for two hours while we danced. It was one of the most fun things I’ve done here.

 A traditional dance to celebrate the birthday of Simon Bolivar. 

 Terra and I waiting for our turn to dance. Our Spanish class did a special little performance for the rest of the school. 

Tons of dancing (we were dancing in a circle around one of the Spanish teachers). I'm in the blue shirt and Wendy is behind me. 

 The girls in my Spanish class dancing with Luis, our Spanish teacher. 

 Lighting the fireworks. After the fireworks were lit, a guy ran around carrying the vaca loca as fireworks exploded off of it. It was actually a little scary and we were running to get away from him. 

 The fireworks from the vaca loca.

 The chiva! 

 Mehreen, me and Terra getting excited for the chiva (thus my huge eyes). 

 On the chiva. There were ropes hanging from the ceiling so that you could hold on while the chiva was moving. And we all had plastic cups with strings attached to them to drink (we wore them like necklaces) so that you wouldn't have to set your drink down. 

 Me and Lisa toward the end of the chiva. 

Caca

Warning: this post is not for those with a weak stomach.  It’s gonna get gross, because that’s how my last couple of days have been-super gross.

Yesterday when I got to school I started having stomach problems- major stomach problems. My Spanish teacher told me to go home, but I honestly didn’t think I could make it home without having to use the bathroom. So he called me a cab and told the driver to get me home ASAP. And I made it back to my house just in time.

The worst thing was that it didn’t stop. I spent most of yesterday alternating between lying in my bed and going to the bathroom. It was miserable. Last night I had some mashed potatoes and even that was a bad decision. So Martha and Francisco started getting worried. Martha told me that they had a student before who started out with the same symptoms I had and ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Francisco kept telling Martha that they should take me to the hospital to be tested for parasites (they were convinced that I had a parasite from being in the jungle).  Mayfe, our Ecuadorean contact, told Martha to wait until this morning to make any decisions.

This morning nothing had changed, except that I had been up all night in the bathroom. So I texted a friend and told her that I wasn’t going to be coming to Spanish class. The next thing I know, Mayfe called me and told me that Martha is going to take me to the emergency clinic at the hospital and that she will meet us there. This is when I started to get a little panicky. So Francisco drove Martha and I to the hospital (all the while telling Martha that we should have done this yesterday).  I didn’t have to wait at all for the doctor and she was very attentive. She told me they were going to do some tests to rule out parasites or other bacteria. Right before the nurse came in to draw my blood, I had a mini-meltdown and Martha gave me a big hug and kept telling me that it was going to be ok because I wasn’t alone – she was there with me. (My host family is the best) Then I had a major language  barrier moment: the doctor gave me a cup and told me that when I needed to use the bathroom, to take the cup and leave a sample. So I did. I left a nice urine sample. Turns out that’s not the type of sample they wanted. But when the nurse came in to my room to tell me that they needed another, different sample, I didn’t understand her.  I told her “lo siento. No entiendo.” And she said, “Caca”. And I said “ohhhh, ok”. Sparing you all the poopy details- they got their sample later. Before we left the hospital I had to pay for my visit. I started to sweat a bit when I pulled out my credit card, but it only cost $62.68 without insurance! Pretty amazing.

Around 6:30 this evening we still hadn’t heard about the results of my tests and I was on a strict liquid only (tea, water, pedialyte) diet. I was feeling a little nauseated because I hadn’t eaten anything and had taken some pills the doctor gave me for stomach cramps.  So Martha called the doctor and she said that I was parasite free! Hooray.  So finally around 7, I had the best meal of my life (well, my only meal in the last 48 hours): chicken broth and rice. Yum.

I’m feeling a lot better now, but the last two days have not been fun. I’m planning on going to school tomorrow morning. Hopefully my stomach is done having its fun. 

Shiripuno

We left for Shiripuno early on Friday morning. I took Dramamine and sat in the front seat by a window, just in case. Luckily, Julio, our driver, was not in the same rush that seemed to possess the last bus driver. It took us over four hours to arrive in Misahualli, where we met our guide, Teo. In a park in Misahualli, we saw monkeys and huge snakes. I saw one monkey steal a kid’s hat right off of his head! We took canoes to Shiripuno and had a traditional lunch of tilapia, yucca and rice. Some people were a little grossed out by the fish eye staring back at them, but I loved it. I couldn’t bring myself to actually eat the eyeball though. In the afternoon we met some of the ladies from the community who run the cabins where we stayed. The showed us a ceremonial dance and taught us to make chocolate. (See the picture below of our group making chocolate- Teo told us that if we didn’t have a coco bean mark on our forehead, that we wouldn’t get to eat the chocolate.) The chocolate we made was used for our dessert that night. And it was delicious! We didn’t have electricity, so we used candles after about 6:30 pm when the sun went down.  Apparently one of the fun activities in the evening is to look for tarantulas… and you don’t have to look far.

Saturday we got up super early because the sun was shinning down on our beds. We ate breakfast and went tubing. We floated down the Napo River, one of the rivers that feed into the Amazon River. The river was fast (we floated 10 miles in about an hour) and we all had to wear lifejackets. The river had tons of rapids and it was one of the best things I’ve done in Ecuador. We floated down to an animal rescue center and saw more monkeys, parrots, toucans, turtles and a type of crocodile. We left the rescue center and went for an hour-long hike in what is the beginning of the Amazon jungle. During our hike, we had to wear rubber boots that came up to our knees- so that if we stepped on a snake it would bite the boot, not our leg. I’m pretty sure that anyone who has ever met me is aware of my phobia of snakes. So this little jaunt through the jungle was not an easy task- physically or psychologically. We only saw one snake though- he was about 3 feet long, hanging out in a branch above our heads. I had a little comfort in the fact that our guide, Teo, was a biologist with a specialty in snakes. (He also had two deformed pointer fingers as a result of his work with snakes.) Then we took canoes to a museum about traditional traps the indigenous people used to catch animals and we ate lunch there (rice, vegetables and chunks of hotdogs mixed together—it was actually really good!).  Then we took a 2 hour canoe ride upstream to get to back to our cabins.

Sunday we left our cabins and walked to the community school where we performed otoscopy and hearing screenings for anyone in the community who wanted to have their ears checked. We saw a lot of excessive earwax, a ruptured eardrum (the guy ruptured it when he was using a Q-tip- see Q-tips are bad for you!), and infections. It was a really rewarding experience. After lunch we got on the road pretty quick because it had been raining for two days and our bus driver was concerned about landslides on the road back. Sure enough a couple of the roads were closed because of the rain and we saw some evidence of landslides, but we got home safe. 

 Our canoes that took us from Misahualli to Shiripuno

 Un mono

 Mehreen, Crystal, Me, Christina the student, Christina the professor

 Our lunch on Friday

 Making delicious chocolate. Teo, our guide, is in the back in the red shirt.

 Floating in the Napo River

 Turtles at the animal rescue center

 During our hike in the Amazon. 

 When we stopped for lunch, Teo picked a flower type thing off of a tree, cracked it open and used the natural berries inside to paint tribal symbols on our faces. 

 Outside of our cabins

My bed with a mosquito net (not pictured: the holes in the mosquito net)

Guayasamin and Papallacta

So my weekdays are pretty boring: I go to Spanish class from 8-12:30, eat lunch at CafeLibro from 12:30-2:30, then either observe speech therapy or go to a class on bilingual language acquisition. So sorry about not posting anything this past week- but I didn't have much to post. Wednesday afternoon we had a free afternoon so I went to la fundacion de Guayasamin (one of the most famous Ecuadorean painters) and the capilla del hombre, which is a museum that Guayasamin worked to build before he died. His paintings are beautiful and almost all of them have some type of political message. There's one picture in the fundacion titled "El Presidente" and looks remarkably like a spoof portrait of President Nixon. 

This weekend a few of the girls and I went to Termas Papallactas, which is about 1.5-2 hours northeast of Quito. The hot springs were relaxing and unlike anything I have ever seen before in my life. Papallacta is located in a valley, so there were huge, green, tree-covered mountains all around. Cows, sheep and pigs were roaming around on the mountain side and one of the girls on the trip swears she saw a bear. See the pictures below for more gorgeous images of Papallacta.

To get to and from Papallacta we took a public bus. It was probably one of the worst experiences of my life thus far. The bus was old and smelled like a combination of feet and throw up (after riding on the bus for about 10 minutes, I understood the origin of the throw up scent). There were crumbs all over the floor and the driver was blaring his favorite tunes. Getting onto the bus was an experience in itself. The bus slows down, you jump on, and then try your best to balance through the aisle as the driver accelerates from 0-60 in about 5 seconds. But I think the best part of this story is the tiny, crappy road we drove on to Papallacta. The road is curvy, small (I mean, it's a miracle that two cars can pass each other without touching), located on the side of a mountain, and has potholes spaced about 5 cm apart. But neither the size of the road nor the potholes kept the bus driver from driving under, what felt like, 80 miles an hour. I was literally having to swallow my vomit so that I wouldn't be sick on the bus and get thrown off in the middle of nowhere. Like I said, it was a nightmare. I got home about 2 hours ago and my stomach is just now starting to settle. And the best part of this is that next weekend we are going to a small village located in the jungle and have to take the same Death Highway again. The hot springs were worth the trip- at least I keep telling myself that. 

 Outside of La Fundacion de Guayasamin

 La Capilla del Hombre 

The road to our cabin.

Our cabin in Papallacta.

  From top to bottom: Lisa, Terra, Janelle and Ellie in a hot spring about 5 feet from our cabin.

 More pictures of the cabin + hot springs. 

 Some crazy looking plant that grew all over Papallacta. 

  

 The river we crossed to get to our cabin. 

 Lis and me in the hot springs. 

A hot spring outside of our room. 

Otavalo

This weekend our group went to Otavalo, a small city north of Quito. On our way we stopped at the Equator (see pictures below). Otavalo is a market town. Literally. On Saturday, most of the streets downtown are closed off and tents are set up for miles. Most of the venders are indigenous people who come into town for the weekend to sell their animals, crops, textiles or crafts. Some of the most shocking goods were the animals. You want a chicken? Which one? Oh, that one? Ok. Let me kill it for you right here real quick so you can carry it around while you shop for shoes for your kids. (See picture below of the stack of de-feathered chickens piled up for purchase… in the hot sun). The textiles and crafts were beautiful. The name of the game in Otavalo is bargaining, which, unfortunately, I’m not so great at in Spanish. Although I was proud to find out that I paid $11 for a duffle bag when another girl in my program (with better Spanish skills) paid $15 for a similar bag.

After Otavalo, we went to Cotachachi, or the leather town. The stores sold leather purses, wallets, shoes, jackets, panchos and pretty much anything else you can think of that you might need in leather. Outside of Cotachachi there is a beautiful lake that has two small islands in the middle. I took a boat ride around the lake with a couple of the other girls. Close to the islands you can see volcanic gases bubbling up in the water. It was really interesting. Our tour guide told us that no birds or fish live in that area. 

 The whole group on the Equator. 

 Lisa and me on our way to Otavalo. 

 Hiking to the waterfalls in Otavalo

 Huge waterfall (for scale: note the two guys standing on the right side)

 Otavalo in the morning. Ecuador has a ton of different types of bananas. 

Yep, those are chickens...yum.

One of the store tenders that I bought crafts from. I bought a hand painted bowl very similar to the one she is holding. 

 These pictures are made of corn. Lisa bought some from this lady. 

 Lake outside of Cotachachi

 Getting on the boat with Wendy and Lisa.

The lake from the boat.