Another way overdue update!...(I will keep posting them poco a poco (little by litte))

Monday, on Monday we had yet another very long day on also yet again very little sleep. It has been a little bit hard to a) keep up with sleep here and b) not feel a little sick or tired due to altitude we are at but we are all trucking through it with positive attitudes and fighting our headaches and lack of sleep so we are alert to experience all that we possibly can while in Ecuador. Today is going to be a great day but a rather long one! We woke up at had breakfast and celebrated Sarah’s birthday over breakfast at 8am. After breakfast we were allowed 2 hours to go to the market or go and explore a little more of Otavalo before we were leaving. The market in Otavalo is very well commonly known for their many different objects and the vast variety of traditional Ecuadorian objects. I bought a lot of pretty things but had to stop myself because I knew it was just the first few days of the trip and what If I were to find more in Cuenca or somewhere along our way to Cuenca. (plus I don’t want a ton of more items in my luggage going home as I had a lot even coming down…however without toiletries and without the gifts for my family I guess I have a little more room.) At 11 am we loaded up the bus with all of our belongs from our hotel in Hotel Otavalo and headed for about a 3 hour bus ride back to Cuenca. Along the way we made a few stops here and there for local shops and for bathroom and lunch break, but the main stop we made was to go see the Equator! AKA I GOT TO STAND ON BOTH SIDES OF THE EQUATOR!!!! J It was really cool to see and to experience since especially we are in the country that literally means equator. We spent a great amount of time at the equator and listened to a guy speak about the different times of year, the different stars you can see and when and where as well as the differences in sun/moon rise and fall. We took several pics as well as a pic of the whole group standing on both sides ones head on one side next head on the other side and so on. (It was really hot at the equator and we got a tad sunburned…who would have thunk? lol.) After experiencing the equator we went back to the bus to continue on the road all the way back to our hotel in hotel Quito to spend on last night in Quito. We arrived in Quito around 3pm and then met up with a tour guide for a tour of Quito…the tour lasted 3 hours it was so long and I think we experienced every type of weather while on this tour! After the tour we then proceeded to Hotel Quito to get our rooms and spend a little time relaxing and to get ready for dinner. Since it was our last night with the Provost Jones and his wife, he (meaning North Park) invited us as well as all the covenant missionaries in Quito out for a very nice dinner. We listened and talked to them about their adventures and their lives and plans for living in Ecuador. We all went around the table of about 18 of us and said who we are, were we are from, how we are affiliated with NPU/Covenant and so on and so on, it was a great time and our group really bonded as we had a lot of time to talk as the “adults” at the other end were “charlaring” (prob my fav Spanglish work I made up and love to use!...its charlar=to talk and then the ing so its lit talking lol) (oh and for some reason they were talking about karaoke and then I said it and they made fun of me for it bc I know I say it wrong but that’s just how I grew up saying it lol..It lit is brought up every day as karaoke is everywhere here! J) After we ate a very delicious dinner we were surprised with a delicious dessert in celebration of ‘Sarah’s birthday. We headed back to our hotel and got there around 10:30pm (aka the longest 3 hour dinner ever! But it was good and it was paid for so that was nice!) After we returned back to the hotel we said we had 30 min  to use the internet to email and connect with loved ones from home and then at 11pm we headed to the ultima piso de el hotel, (the top level of the hotel) for even more celebration of Sarah’s birthday. While up there we didn’t want to stay too long bc we thought that tom might be a long day as we were heading to the jungle, however we ended up staying up there a little later than planned as we had met a group of people from NYC who we were in Ecuador for the climbing, and the adventurous stuff. After a while we decided that we should go to bed so we all headed back to our rooms to sleep…though us being girls we ended up staying up late talking about life, and getting to know each other even better!

TUESDAY:            Tuesday Jan 17^th 2012, today was a day that was not very exciting or adventurous as we spent most of our day on the bus. We packed up all of our belongings and loaded them onto the bus with our new bus driver JR who would be with us for the rest of the week. We loaded the bus and knew that we had about an 8 hour drive ahead of us. (Man oh man were we on the bus a lot this week…thank goodness for motion sickness drugs, as we most of us got sick bc the roads here are very bumpy and windy as we are going up and down hills. We must have climbed very high while on the bus because as we passed one place we saw sunny, warm part of Ecuador and then we went a little further and watched it snow and saw snow on the ground. (um I thought we left the snow in Chicago.) We drove for a while and then stopped for lunch, where we experienced our first time being discriminated against because we were white. They would not give us the meal of the day at the discount rate as they said they only had a few of it left and that we would have to get something else (AKA they thought we had money and didn’t need to get the food of the day because we could afford to pay a little more…aka our guides were not happy and went to talk to them,) We ended up being able to get the lunch of the day and it was soup, rice, beef, vegetables and juice for $2.50…QUE CHEVRE! (WOW) we got so much food for such a little price! I love the prices here! I am even really rich here where as in the US I am a poor college student who has about 2/3 jobs at a time! After lunch we went back to the bus and drove the rest of the way to the SELVA!! (The jungle) it was about another 4 hour drive so we passed our time, napping after already a busy and long week, playing games, talking, and practicing our instruments that we bought in Otavalo while Oscar played the guitar! Upon arriving to the jungle (THE SELVA!! I LOVE THAT WORD) named COTOCOCHA we got off the bus and we walked through a path in the woods to get the lodge. It was not a terrible hard walk…not like we were about to exp tom…but all we kept thinking is how were we going to get our LARGE and HEAVY suitcases down here as we could not roll them bc it was gravel, with sticks, and trees everywhere. We got the lodge where we were greeted by Javier who spoke to us in Spanish about our activities for the next few days, info about the lodge and the cechua people. As we were sitting there listening to him we saw guys carrying our bags on their backs and we felt bad bc we knew they were HEAVE AND LARGE lol…after the info session we got our lodge key numbers and headed to our cabanas were we had about an hour and half break to relax and explore the lodge. (THE REST IS HARD TO EXPLAIN BUT PICS WILL BE TO COME AS SOON AS THIS WEBSITE WILL LET ME PUT THEM UP FASTER!) Lauren, Marta y yo were the farthest cabana but in the end it ended up being not such a bad thing as we had the best view…the view of the rio (river) right outside our cabana. After a little while we went to go find our other friends and when we found them we found the lodge’s cat, which was very cute and would not leave us alone so we played with it till dinner in 30 min. We had an amazing dinner with soup, rice and meat with vegetables and then for dessert as a welcome we got lemon tea with sugar. After dinner we played a large game of banana grams, TODO EN ESPANOL! …(and for some reason I did way better at this in Spanish than I do in English but maybe that’s bc all we do all day is study a bunch of vocab and words were as in English we use mostly the same words every day!) it was great I was coming up with some great big words. We finished playing the game around 10:30 pm and decided that it would be best to go to bed as we had a lot more full days ahead of us! We grabbed our lanterns (THE LODGE IS ECO FRIENDLY AND HAS NO ELECTRICITY EXCEPT AT THE MAIN PART…SO PEOPLE CAN CHARGE CMAERS AND SO THEY CAN COOK!) one our way back to our cabana we looked up to the sky and saw tons of stars! It was AMAIZNG! You can’t see that in Chicago! (such a good trip so far esp. since we are doing a lot of diff things than we would have done in Chicago…like star gazing, not being in class yet, hanging out with the best people in the best adventures.) We got into bed and feel asleep right away in great anticipation for tom!

UN BUEN DIA!

PICS TO COME! I HOPE SOON…AS IT IS GREATLY SLOW TO UPLOAD THEM HERE RIGHT NOW! 

Videos and Pics to go with my last post!

My computer is about to die...but here is part of quito! I will add more later! :)

Busy Busy Busy...about 2 weeks overdue! lo siento

NOTE: this sections will be fairly long as it will be for the past 2 weeks, and I will try and add pictures and videos if applicable…but I may not go into a whole lot of detail for this one, and it will only be in English as I have to write a journal in Spanish for my class so that is where I will be mostly pract my Spanish, but I am sure that some of my blog posts (That will happen every Friday during coffee hour hopefully) will be in a little bit of Spanglish as that is what I speak best!

Oh boy oh boy what a very busy last few weeks it has been and I have had little to no time to do anything but the things I need to do here for school and for life (I have to do a journal for my class all in Spanish on a daily basis so for me to then go rewrite it here in English it takes a lot of time so hence my clearly failed blog thus far! But after this week I plan to update it every Friday with pictures or video if possible or I can fig it out all while I am on this two hour break before heading home for lunch!) Ha-ha so I apologize for not updating this since leaving the states! However today is Friday and my second class does not meet on Fridays so we are at a local coffee shop drinking our VERY YUMMY and CHEAP coffee (yesterday we went out 4 times for snacks, coffee and juice and I didn’t spend over $5 for all of that which amazes me because in the US I spend that on just a coffee at starbucks…and we all know I love that place as I am gold member haha) while updating my blog. Now the question is where to begin as I will have been in Ecuador for 2 weeks starting tom!

So let’s start briefly from the beginning we left on Saturday January 14^th 2012 in the mid afternoon at 12:30 though we were supposed to arrive at the airport three hours in advance…also known as way too early for me bright and early at 8:30 in the morning. When I got to the airport I was worried my bad would weight over 50 lbs. but me being pretty lucky it was right close to 50 lbs.! QUE BUENO! J I then was able to go through security and me not every flying internationally I was confused as to where I go as my prof told me I had to go through customs at the Chicago airport. I got through security in a breeze and then headed to my gate and eventually met with the four of us that were going together. Our plane was overbooked and everyone showed up so some people had to stay behind I guess but luckily it was no one from our groups especially since we had to go catch a connecting flight. We arrived in Miami to experience a 2 hour layover in which out Spanish abilities began to take place as we were waiting hardly anyone spoke English and a lot of people were returning to their homes in Quito so we had fun talking to some of them about their culture and other things. It was a great start to our new adventure. We got to Ecuador about 2 hours behind schedule as we had like a 30 min delay in the Miami airport and then we had to wait on the plane for about an hour to get the bathroom working properly. Trust us it was a long wait especially since we just wanted to get there and we knew that we would be getting there the next day at this rate, and we were not sure if anybody would be there to pick us up at the airport bc we would be late.

We got into the Ecuador airport around 12:30AM and had to get in a long line to go through customs. The people asked us a bunch of questions all in Spanish about how long we were staying whether we were there for fun or travel, or work or school and then they stamped our passports and away we went. We all got through customs fairly quickly, and went to find our luggage! Praise the Lord all of our luggage was there and after going through a luggage scanner thing, our prof and our first guide from our school CEDEI was there waiting for us. We met our very lively overexcited as per usual professor (we love her excitement for everything but the jungle and outdoorsy things as she does not like that), her husband, and Mark from our school and loaded up a bus to head to our hotel for the night. On our way to Hotel Quito we got to experience a little bit of Quito at night seeing all different types of buildings and people out for the night! While on the bus we had our first orientation from mark but he kept it pretty short as it was late and our brains were not thinking straight let alone all in Spanish already. We arrived to our hotel, and got our roommates. My room had 3 people, Lauren, Marta y yo! We got to our room around 1am and spent the next hour, only speaking in English bc we used the excuse that it was late and we still had to get our stuff ready for an overnight in Otavlao the next night and then be up at 8:00am for our 1^st full day in Ecuador.

(Ok so today is Sunday and I clearly did not get a lot of this done last Friday at the coffee shop, but give 4 girls coffee time instead of classes on Fridays its bound that us being girls we are going to talk instead of actually doing any homework or anything productive!...plus it was our time to “break” and speak in English…aka we jumped at that opportunity and hence me finishing it now…I will get to why I am only finishing it now and why I have mucho time now!)

Sunday morning we woke up after only having a few hours of sleep, as we woke up we could not get out of bed too fast so the three of us laid there and talked, come to realize that none of us slept very well, and that we could hear airplanes flying in all night and it sounded like it was going to hit our room. (oh and then we realized that my pillow was my problem as I was on a cot type bed just placed into the room with a less than an airplane pillow while my other 2 roommates had 2 large pillows each. It was funny to realize after the fact but I was very tired) we finally got out of bed and got ourselves and our things ready that we would need for the night as went to the top floor of the hotel for a very nice buffet breakfast. We ate breakfast and headed back to our room to grab our stuff for the day as well as grab our big bags to load the bus with so they were not in the hotel all day and night. We all loaded up the bus and took it not too far to the art museum. At the art museum is the first time that we had all Spanish all the time as everything was explained to us in Spanish. Also at the museum we were able to get a great view of Quito and we took many photos. Despues del el museo (where we exp for the first time the effects of the altitude at well as we walked up about 20 steps and we were winded! Ha-ha) we left for a long bus ride to Otavlao Ecuador. The bus ride was only supposed to be like 3 hours but due to a lot of traffic it took longer than expected Como 5 horas. On our way to Otavlao we were supposed to stop at the equator and stand on both sides, but due to the traffic we deiced that we should save that for tom when we have more time to explore and listen to the guides. We arrived in Otavlao around 2:00pm and we were on our own to go find our own lunches and so we went around the city to find one. After lunch and ice cream we had to head back to the hotel to load the bus to head out to a place where they make the traditional Ecuadorian flutes and instruments. We got a great demonstration and even got to play some of them and formed a band. After that most of us bought some of them and after that we went to another place where they made handmade ponchos and scarfs. It was cool to see and hear how they actually do it. An old style hand loom takes 5 hours to make 1 scarf where the Mexican eclectic loom makes about 50 in 1 hour. They mostly do theirs by hand if when possible. It was very interesting to see. After the lecture we got to look around and buy things that this family had made. We were about to leave when we decided to play our instruments for him since he played his for us! He laughed at our clearly failed attempt to play it very well and told us once we practiced a lot we should come back and put on a concert! It was a great time! After all of these adventures we went back to the hotel to drop off all of our stuff and had the night to ourselves to go find dinner and hang out in the city before a day in the market tomorrow. We found a cute little restaurant where we got sandwiches and talked with the Provost Jones of our school and his wife as we ended up that the same place. After dinner we were going to go to “she’s just not that into you” in the local theater as it was in Spanish but our food took too long and we did not have time! So we returned to our amazing hotel (hotel Otavlao) and decided to play phase 10 as a group instead! It was a lot of fun and we had a great day, but it was a long day on very little sleep!)

I will post what I have now and finish the rest as this is posted as my friends and family are nagging on me to finish it already ha-ha so here is only the first 2 days! The first week is a lot of detail as we did a lot of things but then the second week we started school so that one will not take as long! Ha-ha hope you enjoy!

The night before...

Well, it's the night before we are about to embark on this new journey!

Just thought I would add a few last min thoughts as I have realized I had failed to do before...

With that being said...over winter break I got my host family!!...ready...it's a mom Lucila who is a housewife and a dad Mario who is an engineer!  I also will have 3 host siblings (woah I can barely handle the one sis I have...hahah only kidding just said that one for her!) I am actually looking forward to having a "big family". It is 2 host sisters Maria who is 35 and is designer Clara who is 34 and is a psychologist and then a host brother Mario who is 22 and is a college student. Only Mario lives at the house all the time as he is a student but the girls come home everyday they say for meals and family time. (No little kids :( but I am hoping that my older sisters have children!...but also we will be working with an orphanage and at a school there so I will get to know many kids!)...but the most exciting news for me to hear about my host family (other than my host family itself)...is they have a Dog!! I have never had a pet other than a fish my entire life so I am excited to have a dog!! (My friend Becky and I are already talking about how will walk the dog around the city to explore it and how since we both have host brothers around that same age they will become best friends by the end of our stay because we will always be together!)

Anyways...with that being said I just finished packing, and oh boy was that hard! This will be my first time flying outside of the USA so I was lost as to what to pack! (I have only been to Mexico and Canada but to me that doesn't really count!)

And one last thing we have all just discovered is that the travel agent messed up all of the tickets and what was supposed to be all of us flying from our destinations (Chicago, Seattle, and Boston) to Miami and then all 8 of us going from Miami to Quito and meeting our professor in Quito will now not be happening! It is all messed up and we will not all be arriving at the same time to Quito :( as we all do not all have the same connecting flight from Miami to Quito like originally planned! But it will all work out and I will be heading down with 3 others girls that are for sure on my flight from Chicago to Miami and then to Miami to Quito! We will be the last 4 to arrive in Quito and it will be at 11:15pm!

Our first week there I doubt I will have internet access as we will be in the jungle, on the bus to Cuenca, and then finally meeting our host families on friday! (which means I still have a whole extra week of winter break! since my school in Chicago starts on tues and I wont start til Mon the 23rd!) hahaha

I hope you all enjoy my updates and you all have a great week!

 PS  It is still unknown if I will have internet in my house but I will at school so feel free to send me emails, or comment on my blog as I will try to update and check those as much as possible! (my plan is to do it at least once a week and when I get there it will be both in Spanish and English!)

before leaving the USA...prep work!

My adventures in studying abroad, have started way before even leaving the country. It all started a year ago when I decided that I wanted to study abroad and  knew that doing it in Ecuador was something I wanted to do, so I applied for this specific program through my school. I applied last January, had my meeting/interview in late February and found out I got it in in April. Studying abroad this year meant that I had to turn down some other opportunities of things to do this year at NPU but I knew that nothing could compare to doing this new adventure, plus I still have one more year at North Park to do every and any other opportunity. There is about 7 other students and also my Professor heading down to Ecuador with me and a lot of prep work went into us getting ready. We all took a pre study abroad class, read articles, learned more about Ecuador (as we are only the 2nd group to do this study abroad to Ecuador as NPU usually goes to Mexico, but with the issues in Mexico they made this switch!), got our international cards, made sure we had insurance abroad, booked our tickets through a travel agent, and had to get plenty of specific items for our trip. Over this winter break I have been doing even more prepping for Ecuador. I have been getting the rare items most people don't get in Jan in MN, (though this year it has been a very warm winter, like 40's and 50's) such as suntan lotion, bug spray, rain jackets, rain boots, capris, and so much more. Along with traveling abroad also means extra precaution of safety and health, I received 4 shots (2 in each arm) and a Malaria prescription from a travel clinic the day before Christmas eve, (Typhoid, Yellow Fever, the Flu, and Hep A shots. OUCH! that was painful! but with all that prep work I am not ready to head out of the country!

so in about 1 week, 7 days I will be saying goodbye to the United States and Hola to Ecuador until the middle of March.

Ta ta for now! More to come when I actually get there and experience it a bit!
Nos Vemos!
Allison Gilbert 

(these will be in English for now) 

Hola!

Hola amigos! I sit here and start my blog as I am about 7 days away from being in Ecuador! I will be spending this week prepping for my new and upcoming adventures abroad. Which in short means packing packing packing, practicing Spanish, shopping, heading down to Chicago, continuing to pack pack pack, and saying goodbye to loved ones here as I go embark on a new adventure in life. I clearly have lots to do this week, and will have lots to do, explore, and experience until this exciting studying abroad time is over, but I want to include all of you in my adventure as much as possible while I am there so anyone who wishes can be updated on my time abroad. With that being said I have created this blog to keep you all up to date on my study abroad moments in Ecuador. My plan is to update it as much as possible, and  in order to practice my Spanish, (even though that is all we can speak while in Ecuador) I will write my blog posts both in Spanish and English! (or try my best depending on how much time I have and or internet access I have at the time)
So....With that being said...here is the first part of my adventures...

(continue reading next post!)