South American adventure

so much has happened since i update the blog last week i will try to recount it for you.  we just finished our first week of street outreach in the south of Quito. for the most part the children are very loving and love playing with us. we made pom pom balls, butterflies, paper airplanes, and on friday we had a day of sports where we just played in the park for the morning. the poverty we see is not easy but when the children smile it is good. the other volunteers are great. i work in the market chyriachu and with 3 german girls and one american girl. they are a very good group of girls to work with and we work well together. we will be inviting a few over for dinner this week. i cut my hair to just passed my shoulders on tuesday. on wednesday we went to the basilica to try to climb to the top of the belfry and the steeples, but it was closed and we saw some dancers practicing a dance for a festival so we joined in and danced with them for a while outside of the basilica! it was fun. then on thursday we went earlier and climbed the steeples first and then the belfry second. there was a group of ecuadorian women there with us and we climbed the whole way with them. at the end they asked if they could take a photo with us which was nice. it was a bit scary climbing so high in the basilica on the ladders and at the very top you could see so much of the city. good thing we´re not afriad of heights. on friday after work we had a meeting with all the volunteers to discuss what happened good and bad this week, and plan for next week. our market theme will be countries of the world and we have activities each day. the school year starts tomorrow here in ecuador so many of the older children will not be there in the markets so we will have only 3-5 year olds. there is a girl 11 years old named gati that has been coming with her little sister everyday. she has so many questions about the United States and is very proud when she can tell me what a word means in english. it has been nice talking with her and her sister and getting to know them, though starting wednesday she will be in school so i wont be seeing her. thursday night we went to a pub quiz which is a trivia night sponsored by our organization in which the money collected from the participation fee goes to CENIT. there were a lot of other volunteers there. we formed a team with another couple from California and we won! our prizes are a one day bike tour of cotopaxi which is a mountain and national park 2 hours south of quito and a 10 dollar gift cert to the bar/restaurant. the other guy on our team was an international relations major at berkley there was a category about historical figures in which they showed photos of world leaders and he knew every single one. our team was called yo no se which means i don´t know (because we couldn´t think of a name) on friday after work we went to the bank for another successful ATM withdrawl! then we came back and rested because later we went to a fiesta at another hostal (the one we are moving to next week.) it was so much fun. we brought cookies and nutella and it was a hit because everyone ate it right away. they had all kinds of grilled meat, corn, and platanos. this meat is the best i´ve had in ecuador so far. the marinade was oil, garlic and blood from the chicken or beef. how strange but it was so good. there were a lot of ecuadorians there dancing salsa and we watched for a while, tried to dance ourselves a bit but were very jealous of how good they are at dancing. i asked one of the ecuadorians to teach us and so he taught me first for a while then i taught al a few steps. he lives in the hostal we are moving to next week so we are going to try to give him engligh lessons in exchange for salsa lessons. un intercambio. we left and got a little sleep before getting up early to catch the ecovia (above ground subway) and then a shuttle to the north bus station then a bus to otavalo which is the most famous and largest artisan market in south america and about 2 hrs north of quito. we arrived and followed the crowds to the market where we walked around all afternoon. we bartered and i bought a black poncho (cloth not for rain) and al bought a chompa which is a sweatshirt/jacket because the nights here are quite cold. we shared a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup, then went to the church in otavalo. a Mass was just starting so we stayed and i was shocked with the gloria and the other Mass parts were sung to the tune of the Beatles´song Hey Jude. after Mass we found a TV and watched a bit of the ecuador v. colombia futbol game. we caught the 5pm bus back and they also had the game on in the bus until the reception went out and then we listened on the radio. ecuador lost, but it was great to see everyone so interested in it and all the ecuador jerseys all over the market! this morning we went to the church Compania de Jesus for Mass. there is something like 7 tons of gold and i believe it after seeing how ornate it was. the Mass parts here were sung to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel´s song Sound of Silence. i wonder if they know the actual songs or not. i liked this church a lot becasue the people were very energetic and the priest easier to understand (some of them mumble or their microphones are echoey) and they had a guittarist that i want to talk with when we go next week. after Mass we had to get back because we were meeting a friend to go running on the ciclopaseo on avenida amazonas which is a main street through Quito that is blocked off on sundays for runners and bicyclists. we ran for a while but is is so much harder to run at 10,000 ft. than in NY. my chest felt tight so i had to stop sooner than i would have liked. it was also hot and sunny today so i did not want to overdo it. while in parque La Carolina we ran into a friend of ours from NY that we know from the Mt. Irenaeus retreats that i knew was also here in Quito working at a preschool. it was very random to just see her running through the park but good to make contact with her again. today we have to go shopping for food and we might go out tonight to see the centro historico (colonial old town) lit up at night and have a special drink whose name i am now forgetting at a cafe with some friends from CENIT.

chao!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Quito. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.