Week 2 in Ecuador

It's day number 14 in Ecuador and we're back in Ibarra for the moment, but headed out to Quito in a few hours. The Rotary trip starts Saturday but we're going a few days early to meet up with friends. There are a crazy amount of exchange students in Ecuador, about 170 compared to only 60 in all of Colombia. There are 40 alone in Quito and its suburbs!We've been traveling around this whole time meeting exchange students and I've only met about an eighth, I'm never going to remember the names and home countries/states! There are a ton of Americans here as well, almost half from what I've been told.

Last Monday (the 2nd) we spent the day around Ibarra, walking around in the city and going up to a lake nearby called Yahuarcocha. A lot of the towns and lakes here have Quichua names, like Yahuarcocha, Chachimburo (where we went to some hot springs yesterday- so nice!), and Atuntaqui. We went paddle boating in the lake, got some ice cream, and relaxed. It was really beautiful up there, especially the sky. The sky here still blows me away regularly.

Fiona and me in one of Ibarra´s parks

It was lovely walking around and getting to know Ibarra. Really it was nice just walking at all, Cali's so big and more dangerous so you really can´t walk, Rebecca and I are lucky to be within walking distance of each other´s houses. Ibarra's main church was beautiful, like so many churches here. They also have Jesus' burial shroud which was pretty cool to see.                                                              .

That night we rented a little bungalow in the hills near town, called la Esperanza. It was really fun spending the night there just the six of us exchange students. It was only $11 per person too, plus homemade breakfast in the morning. I love South America!

The next day we were hoping to go to Chimabiro, some hot springs nearby, but there wasn't time, so we walked to Play Land Park instead. It'd been so long since I've been to an amusement park, it was a good time even though it was small.

Fiona, me, Jessica, and Angie

Our enormous breakfast at la Hacienda, where we always eat. It was a crazy amount of food for 5 people, but delicious!

We went to Riobamba for the weekend because they're in fiestas, and I saw my first bull fight! At first I hated it because we arrived at the end of the first one when the were just killing it, but after seeing the whole thing I really like it, it's more of a dance than anything, and fascinating to watch.

Meeting all the exchange students that live in Riobamba, from France, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, and Florida.

And I still have the Rotary trip with all 150 of the exchange students!!

Ecuador Days 1-3

It was just a teeeeensy bit crowded

Right now I'm sitting in my Swiss friend Fiona's room, in the midst of the 5 other sleeping people that are staying here. We're in Ibarra, a small city of about 100,000 in the North of Ecuador, but only got here last night.
I love Ecuador! It's so much fun, and so great to meet more exchange students, we're always awesome.







Fiona and another exchange student here in Ibarra, Sarah from Brazil, were lucky enough to be able to come on out Rotary trip to the coast of Colombia. They fit in right away, and we were all very sad to see them go. During the trip I had talked to them about maybe visiting, but I never actually thought I would be able to, because of the expense. Turns out it wasn't that expensive, and here I am!! I LOVE Ecuador, I still can't quite believe I'm here. I only found out Wednesday night that I could come, and for some reason thought I would be coming Friday, so I bought the tickets before hearing back from Fiona confirming everything (we'd been talking for weeks so I already had all the permissions and a place to stay and everything) Turns out she thought I was coming more like April 5, and was visiting friends in Ambarto, a city about 2 hours South of Quito. Thursday night is when we actually got everything worked out finally, it was a disaster but everything worked out in the end, thanks to my awesome chairman and Fiona's quick figuring-stuff-out.
I flew into Quito at about 3:45, over 5 hours later than originally planned. Of course me being me (I have a history of bad luck in air travel) I missed my flight from Bogota to Quito, though that was because there wasn't enough time scheduled for the connection. Only 45 minutes to do everything for an international flight, when normally you're supposed to be there 3 hours before! Luckily there was another flight only 5 1/2 hours later, not bad at all. The only thing I was worried about was that I had no way to let the person who was supposed to meet me at the airport know that I was going to be very, very late. I called my Chairman in Colombia who was able to let him know, but he had gotten there early so had already been waiting for a while when he got the call, oops!

Another American exchange student met me at the airport in Quito and helped me get a bus to Ambarto, only about 2 1/2 hours and $2.50 (Ecuador uses American dollars- it's so nice! I got a little teary-eyed the first time I saw them, it'd been a loooong time.) Fiona, Clo (Belgium), and Angelina (also Switzerland) met me at the terminal and we hung out there for a bit waiting for some Ecuadorian friends who picked us up along with Jessica (Mexico) and took us out on the town.  At one point we met up with the two other exchange students in Ambarto, Daniel (Washington) and Heinrich (Germany.) It was really fun, though my scarf got stolen by one of the Ecuadorians, grr. I stayed the night at Angelina's house, which was nice, she's a really sweet girl.

After the initial shock it's really fun, like a giant swing

The next morning we met the other girls at the terminal and took a bus to Baños, a touristy city less than an hour away ($1!) It's a really really cool city, small enough to walk everywhere but big enough to have a ton of things to do. We met up with Valdemar (Denmark) and started off the day by going bungee jumping off a bridge right in town. It was incredible, I went twice. The first time I did it the "girl" way, just falling forward, and the second time the "boy" way, jumping out as far as you can. The second time was definitely more fun, though both were awesome. That moment when you're standing at the edge of the platform and hear the guy say "tres" and making yourself throw yourself into a free fall is indescribable. I had to close my eyes just for the moment, or I don't think I would've been able to do it. The first few seconds you can't breath, only when you hit the bottom and bounce do you regain any control of your body. It was awesome.

AHHHHH

The view from the bridge where we jumped- incredible!

One of the waterfalls on the chiva tour.

Next we wandered around town a bit, looking at everything. We ate lunch ate Valdemar's family's restaurant and then went on a 3 1/2 hour chiva tour around the outskirts of town, following the river and seeing all the waterfalls. Ecuador, especially Baños, is incredibly beautiful. It's really amazing. We took a hike down the mountain a bit to go see the waterfall with the rainbow, it was beautiful!!

One of the parks in Baños

Another waterfall

The other girls had to go back to Ambarto for a Rotary dinner but since I can't come back as easily I stayed the night at Valdemar's family's house. After dropping the girls off at the bus station we walked around town again, looking for a place to buy DVDs, though didn't find any. We ate dinner again at the family's restaurant, and ran into another exchange student who was there for the weekend with her family, Geraldine (France.) We made plans to meet up with her later at the restaurant and then went to some hot springs nearby. It was delicious, though they made me wear a horrificly ugly plastic hair cap thing "So the hair doesn't fall in." It started raining at one point which was really cool, though freezing. That's the thing about Ecuador, a lot of it is actually pretty cold because it's so high. Refreshing for me after Cali's constant heat for 7 months, but sometimes a bit too chilly for my tastes. Winter in MN when I get back is going to be AWFUL.
We met up with Geraldine about 10 and went bar hopping, 5 different places in total. It was really fun, the city is just crawling with foreigners, so we met tons of people from all over. There was a girl from St. Paul and a guy from Uptown, I couldn't believe it!! He was from 24th and Sheridan I believe, crazy. Geraldine is a really fun person, if I stay/come back to Ecuador I'm definitely visiting her. She lives in Riobamba, only about 3 1/2 hours from Quito. I'm so jealous of everyone here in Ecuador, everything's so close and it's safe and cheap to travel in bus. In Colombia it's 10 hours in bus to the any of the other major cities, and you can't go alone because of the guerrilla. Geraldine is actually coming to St. Paul sometime this summer, to visit an exchange student who was in France last year. I really hope I'll be home by then!

Sunday morning Valdemar and I met up with the girls in Ambarto, then we all went to Quito. We had a few hours there before we had to take the bus to Ibarra, so we went and got sushi (I tried it- it was good!) and went ice skating on actual ice in a mall. Unfortunately while there I was stupid enough to set my camera down out of my line of vision and it got stolen, maldito sea. We got into Ibarra around 8 and had a low-key night, just hanging out at Fiona's house and watching a movie.

A Typical Day in the Life

On Wednesday my best friend here, Rebecca from Sweden, and I hung out around my house all day, and documented it. We actually had a lesson but my alarm didn't go off and then when we tried to take a shortcut to the bus stop which ended up getting us lost, so we took it as a sign from the universe that we were supposed to take the day off.

My room was a bit messy so Rebecca quizzed me on German vocab while I cleaned up.

I was tired so I laid down on the floor when Rebecca piled pillows on me and declared that I was a sandwich. Then we decided I couldn't be a sandwich because there wasn't another piece of bread, so I was toast. Then she laid down on top of the pillows and we became a giant laughing sandwich, good times.

While I was cleaning I found some delicious chocolate covered coffee beans, which we promptly ate (all 20 of them)

I found all my RYE cards and organized them by country, the most from Brazil!

One of my favorite things about being with Rebecca is I don't have to worry that she'll judge me, in fact we embrace our inner child together often. This day we were planning on building a pillow fort but we just ran out of time, so we'll do it another day. A few days before I found instructions on how to make a basket out of newspaper, so we worked on that while while listening to songs from old Disney movies and the soundtrack from Amelie.

Lunch with my host dad was typical Colombian, rice, potatoes, and meat.

Rebecca accidentally made the last corner wrong... oops!

Later we watched Singing in the Rain, I've been showing Rebecca old movies, like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and this one, and she's liked them so far. Audrey Hepburn is up next!

Ta da!

There's a bakery right by my house, in between our houses, where Rebecca and I always meet called la Sebastiana. We go there at least two or three times a week, and always get pandebonos. They have games there, we play Uno a lot or I bring a deck or cards and we play a really fun Swedish game Rebec taught me.  Here we're drinking Milo frio, basically chocolate milk, and eating pan de yuca in the first picture, and pandebono in the second (my favorite!) Pan de yuca is made of a potato-like tuber and is hard and crunchy. Pandebono has cheese mixed into the dough and is sold in delicious sticks or rings. I'm planning on learning how to make them before I come back!

After we got back we were planning on making Swedish gingerbread cookies but we forgot to buy sugar, so we'll do it another day

I'm taking German at a university, and Rebecca recently started going with me. It's really fun, we have a great teacher, Klaus from Germany, and we love the class! It's especially convenient since she started going because we can study, practice, and do homework together. This is our completed homework on clothing vocabulary and nominative vs. accusative articles. Was kostet ein Rock (How much is a skirt) vs. Ich habe einen Rock (I have a skirt) very confusing!

For snacks at my house we always make grilled tortillas with ham and cheese but my host dad accidentally got peta bread this time instead, still very delicious.

We had some fun with my computer's camera before Rebecca's mom came and picked her up (she lives really close but we can't walk after dark.)

A perfect day!! I can't believe my Swedish sister is leaving me in 9 short weeks, I don't know what I'll do without her!

Christmas in January

The video was too big to attach to an e-mail, so here it is family, thank you, I love you!

Rio Pance

Two exchange friends are visiting from other cities in Colombia so yesterday we spent the day at Rio Pance. The last time she came to Cali one of my friends was very unimpressed, it was right after New Year's Eve so everyone was gone on vacation and Cali was empty, very strange to see. She came back for a few days so us Caleños had to prove how awesome Cali actually is.

We started the day with Pandebono, typical Cali bread, in a cafe that reminded me of coffee shops in Minneapolis, except of course that in Minneapolis it would be all indoor and the poster board would be in English. There were even board games, we played Uno.

This is one of the poor neighborhoods in Cali, that make up for 60-80% of the population but less than half of the area. Even for the people that have lived here their whole lives it's still hard to see.

The river is really popular and was especially crowded yesterday because it was a holiday, but the place that we go is usually deserted. There were two other groups there, but it was still much better than everywhere else. It takes about 30 minutes of sometimes-terrifying hiking through beautiful scenery to get to the falls, but it's worth every heart stopping moment where you almost fall to your death, that's how incredible it is.

Astrid, Miguel, and I climbed about a third of the way up the waterfall, but it got too slippery and vertical to continue. It was incredible, you had to be there and do it to know exactly how awesome it was. Astrid loves Cali now.

I only almost fell once climbing, walking I fell about 5 times. Good job Gracie.

The water is freezing but it doesn't matter, we swam all day. One of my favorite days of vacation!

I love Colombia! I'll never get used to views like these, and will miss them dearly next year when I'm in flat old MN