South American adventure

saturday night was great! we brought irish soda bread and there were breads of all kinds at pan fest (festival of breads) there was german bread, zucchini bread, banana nut bread, olive and rosemary bread, along with dips and guacamole. we ate so much bread but it was fun. on sunday left early and took the trole to villaflora where we met the Oñas and they drove us back to their house which is farther south than where we work, about 45 minutes away from where we live although we all live in Quito. we live in a very long city. in the morning and went to Mass with them in their barrio. after Mass we went to a few stores looking for the ingredients to make colada morada which is a wonderful fruit drink. we prepared banana nut pancakes for them and they prepared a late lunch of rice, puree de potatoes, meat, and crab. we spent the whole day with them. Alejandro (Al) was playing with Kati the little girl all afternoon while i cooked with Pati. i was also playing their keyboard and there were many requests for jingle bells which i obliged. they drove us to catch a bus around dusk and we got home before it was too late. monday morning i went to CEA and sang more songs with the children and helped with english homeworks. on monday i recieved an email from Clever the father of the Oña family that said he hoped we got home safely and that if we want to come over again this weekend there is no problem. there is a church that is an hours walk up a small mountain se llama el cinto that we might go to with them on sunday. monday night we went out to La Ronda with friends for the despedida of Dana, a friend from Germany that will be leaving this week but tues was her last day at CENIT with us. on tuesday we had an especially busy day at work because of the theatre play that we performed in front of the high school. i was the clean daughter that always washes her hands and bathes but i did not want to eat the pork because i was afraid i would get the swine flu. it is a play that we wrote to dispell misconceptions and display information about our campaign of health to the students about the flu and the swine flu. it went really well! i wore this fancy blue dress and my hair in pigtails with rosy red cheeks. pictures soon to come. then we went to all the classes to give a talk about our individual topics of which mine is the transmission of the flu. we did all of this again today for the younger children as well as the other classes.

apart from this, i have been spending a few days working on my visa documents which are plentiful. hopefully we will get the 90 day extensions. also we are planning our trip for next week becasue we get a week of vacation and we are going to the amazon. i have been talking and emailing trying to get contacts for a guide so we can go a bit cheaper than with an all inclusive tour. we are leaving either sunday or monday for the week.

yesterday after work we played frisbee in parque Carolina with some very serious frisbee players but it was good to run a bit and be tired.

last night we had tango lessons and tonight as well with Daniel. tonight my friend Elissa is coming over for dinner. she is from NY and graduated from UB and happens to be working 2 years in Quito so we are meeting up tonight.

tomorrow i have a lot to organize for the next group that will have their eye checks on friday at Vista Para  Todos. and i am also giving guitar lessons to a little one in the morning and talking with 2 parents to negotiate the price of the glasses their children need.

hope you all are well.

Dios les bendiga y chao!

this week has been very rainy except for yesterday and today where it has been warm and sunny. i brought in several new songs for the children in CEA Camal and they keep asking me when i will be coming in to sing again. wednesday we had a tango lesson in casa with Daniel and thursday we watched harry potter 4 with Reuben for his english lesson which he said was a bit difficult for him to understand because of the accent and also all the new words that we could not translate to spanish. later that night we had salsa lesson in casa which was really good, we are learning new vueltas that make dancing easier. the dancing thursday was a good warmup for last night when we went out with Reuben and Rianne dancing at a place north of the mariscal with live music. it was really fun and Reuben says that Al is really improving. it is thundering right now, ay de mi we have to walk a half and hour soon! friday i arrived at CENIT at 8am and collected the 8 girls and we took a car to the north of the city to Vista para Todos (vision for everyone) a fundacion that is giving us 2 dollar eye exams for the girls in the high school. the girls were very sweet. 2 need glasses they are 21 dollars for the glasses. next week i will meet with the parents to decide how much they can pay and how much CENIT will contribute. today i learned some new songs from a little one that is the godchild of the dueña of our casa that was singing with me on the terrace. i also made irish soda bread from memory and it turned out good! i will bring it to the pan fest (bread festival) today at the casa of unos amigos. everyone is preparing a different type of bread to eat. tomorrow we are meeting the Oñas at Villaflora stop on the Trole to go to church with them in the south and then we will prepare banana nut pancakes for them for lunch after Mass and also we bought mortiños which are a fruit that you can use to prepare colada morada, a fruit drink. this week is our last before our vacation and we are seeing to it that we get all our visa paperwork done before we leave for vacation. we get a week off and we are looking in to going to the amazon el oriente. a ver.

 que les vaya bien…

we have been so busy it has been difficult finding time to write. last week we had salsa lesson and the following night a friend from Germany Daniel that knows how to tango taught the large group of us tango. all of our lessons are in the kitchen which is more like the communal meeting place of everyone who lives in our casa. also on tuesday of last week i made bolas de verde with nellie which are cooked and mashed plantains shaped into a ball with cheese and onions inside and then fried. served with coffee by Hilda, a colombian woman who is a friend of the family that owns our casa, they were excellent. our dueño Pedro even came to tango with us. we just learned the basic step forwards and backwards but it was fun and i love the music.

wednesday night we made a chinese meal with jessie of noodles with soy sauce with carrots, cucumbers and onions, eggs and tomatos served with mani on top which are fried peanuts. we were so full we almost did not feel like dancing!

thursday was our last day of work last week because friday was the festival of the independence of Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. so friday morning we left at 7am and took a series of buses through Quitumbe, Latacunga, to Sigchos. It was midday and they told us the next bus would be the following day at 11am, so we decided to walk the 3 or so hours to the next town and try to find a hostal. while we were walking, a car came up and we asked if we could hitch a ride and they said they were only going about 2o more minutes but sure. while talking with them we discovered they are a wonderful family and they invited us to their house. we went and explored their large farm of chickens, cows, pigs, goats, sheep, fruit trees of all kinds, quinua, strawberries, and we hiked up the large hill nearby looking for mortiños which are like blueberries to make a drink colada morada but they were sparse so we just hiked around. the family name is Oña, the father Clever mother Pati, children Esteven, Daniel and Kati. Their grandmother lives in the country on this farm between Sigchos and Isinlivi. We had lunch  of the best chicken ive had in ecuador and dinner with them, sat around the fire talking until late and then they made our beds and we slept in a room with 7 beds and about 12 people, except for Al who got a room all to himself adjacent. We were up at daybreak with the roosters and the grandmother had breakfast served at 7 of cheese sandwiches and potatoes with a hot oatmeal drink and Clever offered to drive us to Quilotoa which was 2 hours away. this road was full of cows, sheep including the occasional black sheep and even llamas mating, engargado which means with full cargo on their backs. the only thing they asked was that we pay him gas money and we arrived at Quilotoa at 10am on saturday. we hiked down to the crater lake and had lunch then hiked back up because we did not want to hire a mule. around 1 we were weighing our options and decided to hike around the perimeter of the crater as fast as possible, the guide said 6 hours but we thought we could do it in less. we bought some snacks and departed to the right around the crater and found it to be very challenging, strenuous uphill some of the time on hands and knees like rock climbing.the views were gorgeous and we ended up making it back just in time to catch our 6pm car to Zumbahua. We checked in to a hostal, and went to the restaurant where everyone in town was watching the ecuador v. uruguay game which ecuador lost in the last minute and everyone was really upset. we had dinner and then fell asleep at 9pm. i woke up in the morning with a terrible headache and dehydration and jessie woke up the same so we went out and bought 5 liters of water that we started drinking right away and finished by early evening among the 3 of us. we went to Mass in Zumbahua which was the most profound faith i have seen yet in ecuador. there were no instruments but everyone was singing and it was standing room only for about the 50 of us that arrived last to this small chapel. we walked around town and ate fried doughs and empanadas on the street and i wanted to buy fruit but no stores had fruit because there is a big market day on Saturday that we had missed and the woman at one of the stores told me es imposible encontrar frutas hoy dia.  it is impossible to buy fruit on this day. so we took the 11.30 bus to Latacunga and bought mandarinas when we got there. we walked around Latacunga center and found a place with big bowls of crab soup with a whole crab on top for 2 dollars and it was so good but very messy. jessie told the waiter tengo verguenza! that she had shame that we made such a mess. we took a bus back to Quito and then the trole from Quitumbe which broke down and we had to hop ship to another trole until we got to Alameda but it was still light out so we could walk back to our casa. we have uploaded my photos to flikr so go to the album Quilotoa to see them. we got the address and email of the Oñas and they live in Quito not too far from us, so we are going to visit them and cook a large meal for them either this weekend or next. they were so kind to us we want to repay them a bit.

yesterday i did the first music with the children in CEA. i brought the guitar and sang En la selva la gran selva el leon duerme esta noche In the Jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight and also Mi Gallo and the children loved it, they kept saying otra vez! which means again again! i also taught one little boy the D chord on the guitar because he has a lot of interest, and he is behaviorally a bit challenging so i will use it as a reward for good behavior. the children were so cute asking me why i cant come in everyday and only monday and wednesday and i did my best to explain that i work in the clinic the other days. we handed out oritos which are small bananas and i helped a little one with his math addition homework. he had trouble deciding which number to carry to the next row and we worked on that a bit. yesterday afternoon i made copies of the signed letter for the eyecheckups that took me so long to complete and we handed it out to 10 girls in the 8th grade that hopefully will bring them back signed with 2 dollars so i can take them for their eyecheckup on friday morning.

yesterday after work i walked in the rain to the famed coffee shop Pepa de Oro which is behind the presidential palace cerca de Plaza Grande and bought a libra of cafe especial which was not expensive and it tastes so much better than cafe instantaneo. it is a strange cultural tradition that most ecuadorians do not drink real coffee but instant even though some coffee is grown here and much more in colombia which is not far away.

this morning i took 2 children to terapia de lenguaje, speech therapy and am working on my poster for the transmission of swine flu

chao!

tuesday night we went to our friend Lisa´s apartment for canelazos de naranjilla and then we came back to casa oriente for the birthday party of another friend, Nan. there was chocolate cake and wine and it was wonderful. Nan shared her cake with me and another friend whose birthdays are all within one week. on wednesday we had a meeting with all in the clinic with the directora to reorganize some of the programs. after CENIT on wednesday Jessie, Jennifer and Lisa came over and we made quinoa salad and bruschetta with homemade whisky sours. it was so good. then we all shared a taxi to the mariscal where we went salsa dancing. it was good because we got to practice our pasos and vueltas that we have been learning wtih Reuben in class. thursday i finally received the package from my parents which had all kinds of sweets and another pair of jeans and beef jerkey for Al. thursday night we had another salsa lesson. our lessons have grown to 7 people in the house dancing with us which is a lot of fun. we had 3 pairs dancing and one girl rotating out every so often, and within the three pairs we danced and then the girl of each pair switched partners and we kept dancing. once we got it all coordinated it was really fun. Al was really enjoying himself. friday i went to Camal with Al and Barbara because they didn´t have enough volunteers and we played with the children in the park for the morning. after CENIT we did not eat lunch there but went to the fruteria monserrat to meet Lisa for her despedida (good bye lunch.) i was sad to see her go back to Cologne, Germany and hope to visit her someday (next year?)

saturday morning we got up very early and took the bus to the trole to the bus station Quitumbe in the far south of Quito to catch a bus to Papallacta. this bus terminal is so modern, it looks more like an airport. we took the 11am bus to Papallacta and once we got off we had to walk 4km uphill until we reached las termas de Papallacta. we entered, changed our clothes, met up with some friends, and spent all afternoon and evening soaking in the pools of different temperatures. how relaxing! we also went into the very very cold river several times, i went in 3 times and Al 4. it is supposed to be healthy to go from very cold to hot, vamos a ver.

on the bus ride back i nearly got sick but evaded it by pulling out my cold wet towel from my bag and putting it on my face which made me feel better. then last night we talked for a long time with a friend that left today as well.

today we went to Mass with another friend from Germany and then continued our tradition of helados (ice creams) after Mass at an heladeria in the centro historico. i tried coco y mora which is coconut and raspberry today and Al tried oreo. I have been sewing my pants to make them fit better because after hand washing and air drying, they tend to stretch out and are too big. i miss the washer and drier.

my throat is hurting and i was told to drink jugo de tomato de arbol which is tomato tree juice that i can make very cheap so tomorrow i will buy that. for tonight chicken broth will have to do.

we have an english lesson tonight with Reuben in which we are watching harry potter 3 in english and explaining any and all phrases or words he does not understand. al will cook the popcorn, he does it in a pan with oil and popcorn kernels. no bagged popcorn here.

tomorrow morning we have our weekly meeting of volunteers at 9am and starting tuesday i will be taking a little girl to speech therapy in the mornings every tues and thurs. (thought you´d be happy dad) so i will have to arrive earlier on these days. lots of dancing to come this week, we have salsa monday, tango tuesday and salsa at the salsatec wednesday.

esto es todo.

que es? esto es bueno.

Llore que no tenia zapatos hasta que vi un niño que no tenia pies.

this last week has been quite difficult. after receiving a message from my brother on wednesday indicating that my grandma was very ill, we went to the cabinas after CENIT to call home. my mom told me that my grandma had passed away that afternoon a few hours prior. we were very sad but it did not feel like it was really happening and that day i was able to continue with our plans of grocery shopping, cooking and our salsa lesson that night. on thursday it was the same, i had the knowledge of what was happening back in the states but i am removed from it so it didnt seem real. then on friday i tried to call home twice but nobody answered. later that night a lot of friends came over and cooked a huge meal for me for my birthday on saturday. we had chicken, platanos, grilled zucchini, salad, un monton de fruit and canelazos de mora which is a drink of blackberries served hot. during the fiesta i started to feel strange and after a cetain point i went to the bathroom and started crying and i could not stop. i was so sad, i missed my family and wanted to connect with them but i could not reach them. al saw out all of our guests and i went to sleep. on saturday we had planned to go to papallacta which are hot springs about 2 hours out from quito but i woke up sad and grieving so i decided we would go another day. i went to the cabinas again 2 times to call home but nobody answered. it was the day of the funeral and nobody was home and nobody was answering their cell phones. i could not celebrate my birthday properly because i felt so sad and i could not enjoy the day. i have decided that we will celebrate this coming saturday by going to papallacta. on sunday we met with Lisa and walked to church but the times were different so we went to the cathedral which had Mass at 11am. after Mass we found a cabina in the Centro Historico and i called home and they answered! though the connection was bad it was really good to talk to my family. then we walked back and relaxed on the hammacks in the sun because all weekend there was so much beautiful sun. we had a snack then took the ecovia to eloy alfaro and walked up the steep hills through the neighborhood of bellavista until we reached the casamuseo of Guayasamin whom is one of the most famous painters of Ecuador. his museum is beautiful and is a hommage to all the poor of Latin America. the museum was really modern, i felt like i was in NY or Europe for a little while. we returned to our casa and had the leftover locro de papas which is a soup of creamy potato with cheese and avocado. al really liked it and cannot wait to prepare such foods for his family when we return to the states next year. on sunday night we had an english/salsa lesson, which is going very well. ruebens english is decent and we talk with him in english for a while then we dance. al has learned 7 new vueltas or turns now and we are working on doing the basic paso more quickly now with turning. we have improved a lot since we started a few weeks ago. on monday i went to a clinic in the north with Jessie our medical director to get more materials for educating our community about health issues. after work yesterday i met with Nellie the dueña of our casa to prepare humitas which are a typical ecuadorian dish of ground maiz with butter, cheese, eggs and onions wrapped in the husk of the corn and steamed for an hour. the process was quite long but i learned a lot of new cooking words and copied a lot of recipies from the book called cocinamos con kristie which is their cookbook and translates to Cooking with Kristie. Nobody knows who Kristie is but everyone refers to her. we had tea with the humitas with their family including their grandma Estelle whom is so cute. she is just tickled that al and i speak spanish and could not stop smiling at us whenever we talked. there are also 2 little girls that are always playing on the terrace, one is their daughter and the other is her amigita or little friend. Estelle is always tending to the plants all over the house which i find adorable because she shuffles her feet going from one plant to another looking and watering if necessary. last night we had another salsa lesson which was more difficult because the pasos jirando are difficult for us but we will practice. i got the paper saying there is a package! so i will go to the post today after work to pick it up. then i will try to call home, then we are going to Lisas apartment to make more canelazos and i will prepare buñuelos de avena which are sweets made with oatmeal and honey. i got the recipe from Kristie and will try it out today. then later tonight a friend Nan from Long Island in our casa is celebrating her birthday with a cake and we will get back to celebrate with her, she told me that i should blow out some candles too because my birthday is so close to hers and we were born in the same year too. tomorrow night we are going out salsa dancing! wednesday is the night to dance salsa in Quito.

chao amigos!

we now have an unlimited photo account so all of our photos are now on flickr, you can view them by going to the right and clicking on the link to flickr.

chao!

on friday i went to a spanish class with my friend Lisa but the prof was late so we joined a salsa class for a while until he arrived. after the class we went to la ronda for canelazos (a hot drink of naranjilla which is a fruit.) friday night we had our first english conversation class with rueben, our prof de salsa. our intercambio is going well. we talked with him for a while in english and he struggles the most with phrases and idioms but his english is pretty good. he is the son of our dueños, Pedro y Nelly. on saturday we met Lisa and Miriam at 8am near parque Alameda to catch the ecovia to rio coca, the shuttle to carcelen and then the bus to puerto quito. we arrived in puerto quito, which is northwest of Quito around 1pm after a bus ride through the mountains that reminded me of the one i took the last time i was here en route to puerto lopez. we had lunch and  then walked in search of a guide. friends of ours told us the name of the hostal and there was a sign on a road pointing to the left so we took it. it was a wonderful walk through the banana, platano, coconut and cacao trees with butterflies aplenty and fields of maracuya and naranjas (passion fruit and oranges.) que linda. we finally arrived at hostal cocoa and found the owner, Gabriel. he showed us how to get to the river where his 6 children were playing on the swings in the water. we swam and played with them for the afternoon. then we returned to the casa and made chocolate with Gabriel. it is a very long process involving cutting open the cacao which is green and red on the outside and white inside, then letting the cacao ferment in the sun for several days until browned, then putting them in a frying pan and cooking for several minutes until they are almost black, then removing the cascaras (shells) then putting the beans in a grinder and that produces 100% cacao. bitter but very smooth and so good. then you put a small amount about the size of a quarter into a pan of milk and pure sugarcane and cook it down a few minutes. we each had a small plate of the warm fresh chocolate and ate it with bananas and piña. que rico. no puedo describir que bueno es.

we had empanadas and batidos (smoothies) for dinner at this little place whose name is lo mejor empanadas del mundo (the best empanadas in the world) and then tried to sleep but it was very noisy in the town. the next time we go we will stay outside of town where it is much quieter. the next morning we met with Gabriel our guide and he took us to his friend´s finca de frutas-fruit farm. we walked around as Gabriel used a long bambu stick to catch oranges, mandarinas, pineapple, passionfruit, starfruit, bananas, platanos, lemons, papaya, cacao and we sampled each one. we left so full of the fresh fruits! there were cows grazing just beyong the farm and one cow came up to us near a lemon tree and ate a lemon right off the branch. who knew cows liked lemons? only in ecuador. we returned again and swam in the river because it was hot and the sun came out later too. we had a late lunch and returned on the bus that went uphill this time and took longer, so we didn´t get back to Quito until 9.30 at night. al has posted photos on the flickr site so please look. yesterday i had an appointment with the wife of a doctor of a clinic in the north of the city to see if they can send some doctors to us to do eye checks for the children.there is much to do before we figure this out because they want to charge too much and have specific rules that are difficult to work with, so i need to make more calls and more visits before it is worked out. slowly i am making progress on this. there are many children and even a few adults in the markets that want to have their eyes checked because they know they have a problem and i keep telling them soon we will get a doctor to see them.

today i did the clinica de la calle again with jessy our medical coordinator. again one patient gave us aguacates (avocados) which were unnecessary but very kind. we also did more physical checkups for the children in 2nd grade today. many of them have problems with their teeth, skin, some have lice, and it is very sad when we ask them what they have eaten in the last day and some of them say just rice or that they ate lunch at CENIT but then their father did not return until midnight and they had a small snack then and no breakfast this morning. it breaks my heart.

last night we had our first salsa class with Rueben and it went well! we learned the two basic steps and practiced them with different music. al and i have to practice together to get our rhythm to match one another with the basic step before our next class on wednesday night. we will do 45 min of salsa and then 45 min of english conversation and rueben said in a month or so he will take us to a salsatec, when we are ready. he is a good teacher, very clearly explains how we can improve our dancing. and with the intercambio we don´t have to pay which makes it even better.

i have the first of 2 spanish classes this afternoon, i am trying 2 classes to see if i like them. my spanish is proficient and useful but it could be so much better and i feel like i use the same words all the time and could use some more vocabulary as well as a grammar check. tonight Lisa and Jessy are coming over to make canelazos in our casa and i am also making guacamole, thank you jochiema for the aguacates.

hasta luego!

on saturday we went on the biking tour of cotopaxi national park. we left from the mariscal at 7am and drove to cotopaxi which is about 2 hours south of quito. we entered the park and drove up these winding dirt roads until we reached near the refugio which is the overnight resting place for the climbers of the mountain. we got out and it was so cold! you might notice the warm winter coat i borrowed from the biking company to wear because of the cold and windy conditions. we tested out the bikes but it was difficult because of the wind. but the views were amazing. cotopaxi is the highest of the mountains here. it takes 3 to 4 days to climb to the top with ice gear so we probably won´t but i loved being there. we started off going downhill on bikes which was actually quite hard because of the dirt and having to brake the whole time hurt our hands a bit. but once we got down a ways it was wonderful. much warmer and less windy and the trail was very much mountainous with large rocks, small streams and dirt that occasionally made you spin out because you´d get stuck in it. i liked passing the small streams by bike. there were also wild horses in the park! large groups of them. we stopped for lunch near a stream and then kept going until mid afternoon. we returned to quito later in the afternoon exhausted but very thankful that we had such a wonderful day. on sunday we got up and went to la compania de jesus again for mass at 9 and then returned to our hostal to check out. we moved all of our stuff a few blocks away to casa oriente where we live now. it is more like a casa than a hostal and we like this. pedro, the owner sat and talked with us for a while about what to expect living there and he and his wife and children and their grandmother live in the apartment in front of the house. we wanted to go to quitofest to hear the live music in parque ichimbia which is very near our casa and we arrived but it had already ended. so we walked around the park, tried some food from the vendors and enjoyed the peace of the park up on the hill away from the noise of the city. on monday i started work in the clinica. i went up to the north of the city to talk with a fundacion called vista para todos (vision for everyone) to ask if they can send doctors to do eye checkups for the children at CENIT, and if we can negotiate a lower price because the parents have to pay for their children and many are very poor. they told me $2.50 per child for the initial checkups and the nurse thinks that is too much because last year a doctor came to do the checkups for 1 dollar per child. on tuesday i went to the clinica vision 20/20 to talk with them about negotiating a lower price and this time it went a bit better but i am still waiting to hear when i can have an appointment with the doctor´s wife to negotiate the terms of the checkups. on tuesday afternoon we walked to a neighborhood north of ours called La Floresta in which all the streets are named after cities or islands in Spain (por ejemplo Madrid, Toledo, Mallorca) and we found a panaderia (bread shop) called Pan del horno (bread from the oven) that was so good. it is now my favorite panaderia in Quito. we hope to go back tomorrow. it is near the Universidad Catolica y 12 de octubre. on wednesday we tried to figure out our extension on our visa but that did not go as planned. the embassy changed locations so we had to go way up to the north near carcelen, which is nearly out of the city it is so far north. we got off the bus and it was pouring rain. we walked up and found the embassy but they told us to go to another building called migracion, and when we arrived there soaked about a half an hour later they told us to go to another one too. it was already 5pm so we called it a day and took the long cold and wet bus ride home. we cooked pasta with meat sauce and rewarded ourselves with submarinos (a type of hot chocolate.) this morning i got up at 7am to wash clothes because now that it is rainy season, it rains in the afternoons and i needed my clothes to dry in the morning sun. today at work i went with the coordinadora jessy into the clinica de la calle, the street medical clinic doing blood pressure and general health checkups for the adults in the mercado camal, a market nearby. they were very grateful that we came and gave us avocados and mandarinas (a type of oranges.) i am making guacamole tonight from the avocado. after CENIT i went with Lisa to her spanish lesson but it was canceled so i will go tomorrow, to check out how her profesor is and if i want to take some lessons. my spanish is improving but it has a long way to go before i consider myself fluent. lisa and i went for ice cream and vino caliente (hot wine) at a cafe in the centro historico. she is from Cologne, Germany and studies Latin American studies and Spanish and is passionate about speaking spanish like me so we always talk in spanish which i love. we are going to puerto quito with her and her housemate this weekend which is a town about 3 hours west of quito where there are chocolate farms and different fruits as well as waterfalls and a river we want to swim in. al went to the migracion to talk about the visa extensions and we have to go to the ministerio de extranjeros next week for more information as well. it is a long process we are told because we make is so hard for the ecuadorians to enter and stay in the US they do the same to us. we are trying to get at 45 day extension so we can stay until the beginning of january before leaving for peru. tonight we went to santa maria a big supermarket that has discounted meat on thursdays. i made a really good chili con carne earlier this week so we bought more ground beef for that. tonight i will make patacones which are fried plantains.

chao!

here are some CENIT and Cotopaxi photos. no time to write now so i will later. here is it he link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/angelita251/QuitoSemana3?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrlhviFhb75SA#

chao!

I’ve been sick for the past couple days, so I haven’t written many posts lately.  Some kind of muscle soreness with chills and a fever.  A day of bedrest and fluids seems to have done the trick.

 The theme for the Chiryacu Market was countries of the world.  Annie led a game where they pretended to fly to different cities all over the world on Tuesday.  They made paper mache globes on Wednesday.  Very messy, but loads of fun.  Today they painted them, and had time for frisbee after.  Tomorrow they plan to have a day of sports outside near the park.

The theme for the Camal Market this week is the 5 senses.  We did eyes on Monday, blindfolding the kids and playing a game of “Hot and Cold” with sticks, tupperware, and bananas.  That was lots of fun.  Tuesday we did ears, making animal sounds and some other things.  The kids were a little rowdy that day.  Yesterday we did taste, feeding the kids (with blindfolds again) different fruits and other foods and having them identify the flavor and food.  That went really well, both kids and volunteers loved that activity.  Today I didn’t go because of the sickness, but we were supposed to do hand prints and finger painting for touch.  I’ll hear how well or not well that went tomorrow.

 – AL

on monday we went to the supermercado santa maria where they have cheaper groceries and we bought a lot. i went running in the parque ichimbia which is very near our hostal and has some beautiful views of the city. i hope to run there again tomorrow. that is where quitofest is this weekend where they have live music of reggaeton, salsa and rock each of the three days coming up. on wednesday after CENIT i stayed and watched the futbol game with the group there. ecuador v. bolivia and it was quite a game. they had so many snacks they were passing around of chips, cookies, and ecaudor won which was a really big deal because now we advance in the playoffs. after the game the ladies from the kitchen had for us hot chocolate with empanadas de queso and i was stuffed but i had to try some of each because it looked so good. we have been making submarinos which is hot milk with melted chocolate bar. later wednesday night we had friends over for dinner, a german couple Lisa and Tomas. i work with Lisa in Chiriyachu at CENIT. i made sopa de verduras (vegetable soup) maduros con queso (platano with cheese) and arroz con leche which is sort of like rice pudding. they brought a fruit salad and wine. it was interesting talking with them although we had to talk in english because tomas does not speak spanish very well. today we went to the biking dutchman to talk to them about booking a tour of cotopaxi which is a volcano about 2 hrs south of quito and they have room for the day trip on saturday so we are going. we also went to the bank because soon we will move out of our current hostal into another one nearby and we have to pay our bill. the tour on saturday is the one we won at pub quiz last week, but it is only for one person so we are paying for the other. it leaves saturday morning at 7am so tomorrow night will be an early one.

i have uploaded more photos onto picasa and here is the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/angelita251/QuitoSemana2#

buenas noches!