So, I realized that I am only writing about my weekend adventures and have not really commented on the everyday life that I live. Both are important, one just happens to hold better stories.
I live in a city called Quito. Quito is a huge sprawled about city in a valley created by mountains. Although this makes the city very pretty, it also traps the pollution in the valley. Some days it is very hard to breathe because of all the pollution in the air. When buses drive by the black puff of smoke that is produced is incredibly large, and kind of scary. Also, there is not a very good trash/ recycling system or education about that so the streets are pretty much littered with trash. I do not have any pictures of the area near my school because to have a camera out is screaming ¨please rob me¨. Every bus that I take I feel like I am in a mosh pit. And, on almost every bus there are kids selling things. With all of that said, I still am loving it. It is a fairly large culture shock, but one that I am learning from. For example, wherever I go I am reminded how I do not look like anyone here, because people look at me like ´what are you doing here?´ I think this is an important experience to have, and I am getting used to it. It really has taught me a lot about having to be aware of how I act and present myself. When a lot of us (from the program) are together in public we often notice how incredibly loud we are, this is just a cultural difference but one that I had never noticed before and find interesting.
Shoot, I wish I could write a little more and explain my new day to day reality better but I am off to the park with my host family and our dogs!! I shall write more later :) Sorry this is so incomplete... adios!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
If only words could describe...
Why hello there!
The thing that I feel most strongly that I want to tell people about right now is the trip I went on this last weekend to Baños. It was absolutely incredible. Let me explain...
We arrived in Baños on Thursday night after a beautiful bus ride through the mountains. We met a traveler from Holand and went out and got some wonderful food. We then went out dancing and called it an early night so we could get up at the crack of dawn and start our adventures.
Friday we woke up and found a place to rent bikes, 5 dollars for the whole day, and began our 45 kilometer ride. We biked through green lush mountains with clouds floating just above us. It was so refreshing to have complete control over where we went and how. We could stop and look at waterfalls whenever we wanted as we biked through tiny little towns busteling with people selling fruit and grilling everything under the sun. As we continued our ride we came across 2 bridges where they had ´bridge jumping´, this is like a form of bungee jumping. As we rolled up on our bikes we all said ¨HELL NO ARE WE DOING THAT¨. Yet, for some reason we stayed there watching the men who worked there jumping off in different ways. For some reason, we could not leave...hhmm...lets just say within 20 minutes all but one of us had jumped off and LOVED IT! It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life!! Standing on the platform saying ´no no no no no´ and then jumping and plumiting towards the raging river to be saved by the cord which swings you back up towards the other bridge until you swing swing swing, slow down slow down slow down, and a guy throws a rope at you to get you down. It was awesome!
We then got back on our bikes and kept going as if nothing had happened. We came across a cable car that went over a huge canoyn, toward a waterfall. Of course, we took it and that was very beautiful as well. We then hiked down the mountian, across a bridge like in Indiana Jones, found a place to eat lunch and enjoyed bread, cheese and fresh fruit under the trees, laughing all the way. We then hiked back up to the road and continued our journey on our bikes. After about an hour or so more of biking we decided we should head back, so we waited for a bus. What ended up taking is back was a truck where we stood in the back of with our bikes. It was sooo beautiful to be riding in the back of a truck, through the mountains with the air cooling us down.
Later that night we enjoyed sitting in the thermal baths or hot springs and just relaxed. We crashed that night and went to bed. Woke up in the morning, ate some breakfast, and began a 4 hour hike. We hike straight up one of the mountains and when we were almost at the top we ran into a man named Manuel who works as a farmer in the mountains. He invited us over to his house to drink some natural tea (which he picked from a tree right outside his house) and eat some plantain chips. We talked for about an hour and a half about everything, including Obama. He even had 2 torn out pictures of him in his house. To be sitting in a two room cinderblock house in the middle of Ecuador with an extremly kind farmer and hear the hope Obama has given to the world was so touching. We then left his house and hiked back down to Baños. A few of us took the bus to go zip lining (jump off a cliff, connected to a cord, soar over a river and land on the otherside). Sadly, that zip line was a very short ride, but very fun and a friend got over her fear of heights so it was worth it! We then got some dinner and went out dancing to cap off the weekend.
Otherwise, things are still good. I started the education track this week and that is going well so far. No set internship yet. I will for sure post when I know about that.
If you are still reading after my long brain dump, thanks for reading...I hope that my story did not bore you. I have not recieved enough updates on other peoples lives snide040@umn.edu .... please use it!
<3,
Julia
ps-That picture below is of my host parents.
The thing that I feel most strongly that I want to tell people about right now is the trip I went on this last weekend to Baños. It was absolutely incredible. Let me explain...
We arrived in Baños on Thursday night after a beautiful bus ride through the mountains. We met a traveler from Holand and went out and got some wonderful food. We then went out dancing and called it an early night so we could get up at the crack of dawn and start our adventures.
Friday we woke up and found a place to rent bikes, 5 dollars for the whole day, and began our 45 kilometer ride. We biked through green lush mountains with clouds floating just above us. It was so refreshing to have complete control over where we went and how. We could stop and look at waterfalls whenever we wanted as we biked through tiny little towns busteling with people selling fruit and grilling everything under the sun. As we continued our ride we came across 2 bridges where they had ´bridge jumping´, this is like a form of bungee jumping. As we rolled up on our bikes we all said ¨HELL NO ARE WE DOING THAT¨. Yet, for some reason we stayed there watching the men who worked there jumping off in different ways. For some reason, we could not leave...hhmm...lets just say within 20 minutes all but one of us had jumped off and LOVED IT! It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life!! Standing on the platform saying ´no no no no no´ and then jumping and plumiting towards the raging river to be saved by the cord which swings you back up towards the other bridge until you swing swing swing, slow down slow down slow down, and a guy throws a rope at you to get you down. It was awesome!
We then got back on our bikes and kept going as if nothing had happened. We came across a cable car that went over a huge canoyn, toward a waterfall. Of course, we took it and that was very beautiful as well. We then hiked down the mountian, across a bridge like in Indiana Jones, found a place to eat lunch and enjoyed bread, cheese and fresh fruit under the trees, laughing all the way. We then hiked back up to the road and continued our journey on our bikes. After about an hour or so more of biking we decided we should head back, so we waited for a bus. What ended up taking is back was a truck where we stood in the back of with our bikes. It was sooo beautiful to be riding in the back of a truck, through the mountains with the air cooling us down.
Later that night we enjoyed sitting in the thermal baths or hot springs and just relaxed. We crashed that night and went to bed. Woke up in the morning, ate some breakfast, and began a 4 hour hike. We hike straight up one of the mountains and when we were almost at the top we ran into a man named Manuel who works as a farmer in the mountains. He invited us over to his house to drink some natural tea (which he picked from a tree right outside his house) and eat some plantain chips. We talked for about an hour and a half about everything, including Obama. He even had 2 torn out pictures of him in his house. To be sitting in a two room cinderblock house in the middle of Ecuador with an extremly kind farmer and hear the hope Obama has given to the world was so touching. We then left his house and hiked back down to Baños. A few of us took the bus to go zip lining (jump off a cliff, connected to a cord, soar over a river and land on the otherside). Sadly, that zip line was a very short ride, but very fun and a friend got over her fear of heights so it was worth it! We then got some dinner and went out dancing to cap off the weekend.
Otherwise, things are still good. I started the education track this week and that is going well so far. No set internship yet. I will for sure post when I know about that.
If you are still reading after my long brain dump, thanks for reading...I hope that my story did not bore you. I have not recieved enough updates on other peoples lives snide040@umn.edu .... please use it!
<3,
Julia
ps-That picture below is of my host parents.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I have been so bad a blogging!! Catch up time!
Hola!!!
I wrote a long blog about a week ago but because of the sketch internet connection, it failed to post. I will try to be brief with my update....
As far as day to day life goes I normally get up and go to school, where we are in school from 8:30 until 4 pm...kind of intense I must say. We are learning about the economic history of Ecuador, the cultural history of Ecuador and development theories. We then have a Spanish class. It normally is a lot of information everyday, so I often forget some of it sadly. We have an hour and a half lunch when we go and get lunch somewhere around the school. Typical Ecuadorian food is a lot of rice, chicken and soup. It is incredibly cheap too, an entire meal is normally 1,60 ish. But, we are in a big city so we have eaten gyros, Chinese food, pizza, hamburgers with eggs on top of them (that was interesting). Fritdada (friend pig) is really common too.
I still have an amazing host family. Last Friday night my friends met up at my house before we went out and my parents hung out with us. We drank wine and listened to music. The best part of the whole event was we asked them to teach us how to salsa dance and within seconds music as blaring, furniture was moved and we were dancing the night away. They were so encouraging and fun...they have only been married for two years and you can see the freshness in their relationship as they taught us how to dance by dancing together.
I just a moment ago had my 'interview' with our program director about our future internships. It turns out I most likely will be in an indigenous community just outside of Tena, Ecuador (near the rainforest). I am so so so excited! She suggested rural (and i requested rural) beause I have a larger chance to develop a theatre program (or anything along those lines) than if I was in an urban community where everything is pretty set in stone. I am so flippin excited to see if this turns out...I think I will be the first intern in this community, and so there is a lot of freedom and a lot of nerves as well!! Once it is solitified I will write!!
Thanks for reading, things are great and I hope that things are great at home too!
~Julia~
I wrote a long blog about a week ago but because of the sketch internet connection, it failed to post. I will try to be brief with my update....
As far as day to day life goes I normally get up and go to school, where we are in school from 8:30 until 4 pm...kind of intense I must say. We are learning about the economic history of Ecuador, the cultural history of Ecuador and development theories. We then have a Spanish class. It normally is a lot of information everyday, so I often forget some of it sadly. We have an hour and a half lunch when we go and get lunch somewhere around the school. Typical Ecuadorian food is a lot of rice, chicken and soup. It is incredibly cheap too, an entire meal is normally 1,60 ish. But, we are in a big city so we have eaten gyros, Chinese food, pizza, hamburgers with eggs on top of them (that was interesting). Fritdada (friend pig) is really common too.
I still have an amazing host family. Last Friday night my friends met up at my house before we went out and my parents hung out with us. We drank wine and listened to music. The best part of the whole event was we asked them to teach us how to salsa dance and within seconds music as blaring, furniture was moved and we were dancing the night away. They were so encouraging and fun...they have only been married for two years and you can see the freshness in their relationship as they taught us how to dance by dancing together.
I just a moment ago had my 'interview' with our program director about our future internships. It turns out I most likely will be in an indigenous community just outside of Tena, Ecuador (near the rainforest). I am so so so excited! She suggested rural (and i requested rural) beause I have a larger chance to develop a theatre program (or anything along those lines) than if I was in an urban community where everything is pretty set in stone. I am so flippin excited to see if this turns out...I think I will be the first intern in this community, and so there is a lot of freedom and a lot of nerves as well!! Once it is solitified I will write!!
Thanks for reading, things are great and I hope that things are great at home too!
~Julia~
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