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 14th 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 1st 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!
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