May 28, 2011 evening

This morning I woke up to eat the same breakfast as yesterday (except the batilla was made of bananas, not naranjillas) and Zeheivy walked with me to catch an 8:30 tour bus. First we drove to this dead volcano that has people living in it. It was pretty cool because it used to be a Jesuit hacienda and the big house is still there, but it’s in ruins and the land has been parceled out to the people. Next we went to the Museo de Sitio Intiñan “Camino del Sol,” or the real equator. It had some pretty cool stuff, like original indigenous houses, shrunken heads and how to make them (as a war trophy or as a way to honor the dead), guinea pigs that they eat you know, a preserved penis fish (google it; I dare you), and the equator, of course, with all sorts of little experiments to prove that it really is the equator. It was pretty much my favorite part of the day. Everyone fell asleep once we got back to the bus! The guides took us to a lookout point where we could see most of the city. It would have been normal, except one of the guys fell over and had what looked like a seizure. It was pretty scary, but luckily it didn’t last very long. We were well taken care of (two guides, professor, grad student Ana María, and Eugenia) so professor took him back to his house to rest; the rest of us went down into the city and we all started drinking more water. We walked along the streets; there was a lot of people, things, noise, etc. But I was pretty hungry and therefore crabby, as well as a little tired. We made it to this tourist-looking restaurant called American Corner (ha) and we ate: potato soup with avocado in it, pineapple juice to die for, “salad,” chicken with mushrooms, rice, AND this wonderful thing called tres leches cake which was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I was pretty set after that and followed willingly to listen to some stuff about the palace, the plaza, and the Jesuit Church that looked like it was practically dripping with gold, although they were so conservative that really it was just small amounts of gold paint that did the trick. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, which was probably a good thing considering how I would’ve gotten carried away. We walked down a street with a lot of bars but they had a lot of kids’ games out because it was daytime. We walked through their Independence Plaza (it’s worth mentioning that their Independence day or Día de Patria was May 24, although they celebrated it yesterday, Friday) and back to the bus. We got back to the stop early so we waited around and I found out that I am THE ONLY PERSON in my Academic Writing class. Woooooah. Still not sure if I’m nervous, excited, or both. And I thought that 5-person Arabic was tight! On the very bright side, I can pretty much dictate whenever I want to have class, not that I have many other options. My other classes are Survey of Spanish American Lit and Nature and Culture; both count toward my major and the N&C is getting me into the jungle (Tiputini) and Galápagos.Anyway, Zeheivy and Enrique picked me up in the car Enrique inherited from his son because Zeheivy doesn’t drive, and we went to the mall to get my phone. Profesora said that it should only cost about $45 with a $5 card, but the cheapest phone was $70, so we left. The mall was pretty cool and reminded me of Great Northern because it has multiple floors. Enrique has a sweet tooth so he bought all three of us ice cream, which made me pretty happy. I chose chocolate and strawberry because I wasn’t adventurous enough to try something that turned out to be blackberry. We looked for an Ethernet cord, decided to try for the Wifi password, and went to a Supermaxi (aka Ecuadorian Wal-Mart) to buy the phone, which ended up costing $60. I guess it’s worth my potential safety, right? I messed around with it at home (it has an FM radio…) and ate soup because I was still full from lunch and ice cream. I’m a little tired. I would potentially go to sleep right now, but I don’t want to wake up at quarter to six again ☹I would like to mention that I saw a BILLION JILLION runners today in the park we passed, so I’m pretty excited. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get up to running (today I got really tired from walking downhill and completely winded going uphill) but it’s nice to see runners around; I think there’s even a marathon in June. Don’t worry, Mom, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll be running that (incidentally, that’s not an Ecuadorian saying, it’s Grace’s. An Ecuadorian saying that pertains to crossing the street is “better to lose one minute of your life than to lose your life in one minute.” Drivers here don’t know that we lowly pedestrians have the right-of-way.)