10/17

Work has been exhausting me so much lately that I haven´t had the energy to blog afterwards. It seems I´ve inserted a much larger lapse between entries than I had intended; sorry. Yesterday the kids had a field trip to the presidential palace. The one day I go to school in my pajamas, we go somewhere important. Figures. Since I had no idea about the trip, I didn´t bring my ID, and because of that, couldn´t get into the tour of the place. Another volunteer, Andre from Austria, was in the same boat as me, so we sat in the Plaza de Indepencia until the kids came out. All the other children from all the other schools were quiet and lined up politely, but our kids came out of the place screaming and running. Andre and I went over to the gate the kids were behind, and they started chanting ¨Tio, tio, tio¨ which is what they call the boy volunteer. Literally it means uncle. Then they started chanting ¨Tia Krystina, tia Krystina¨. That was really cool, and when the guard opened the gate, the kids came flying out and into our arms. There were a lot of tourists around, looking really touristy (with cameras around their necks, and sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts) and the kids pointed at them and shouted ¨Gringo¨ which means ¨whitey¨ essentially. That also made me feel cool because the kids have never called me a gringo, even though I am.

Last weekend was my favorite so far. Sean and I went camping in the rainforest of Mindo. We actually did some really arduous work on a research project (http://www.lifenetnature.org/). We did a lot of hiking through mountainous rainforest in a reserve called Las Tanagaras in the town/forest of Mindo. What a beautiful town! The scenery was breathtaking. The research was pretty cool. We went along with Sean´s frind, Carlos, from school. Carlos is annoyingly rich and also annoyingly in love with birds. He set the whole thing up. We worked with this wonderful guide named Pasqual Torres. The four of us set up fifteen big mist nets in the forest. Birds would, from time to time, fly into these nets and get tangled up. We would untangle them, put them in a bag (I got to hold real, live, wild birds!) and bring them to our main station to record data about them. I now know waaaaay too much about birds. We would put a little metal ring-tag on their leg and let them go. I can now tell if a bird is an adult or juvenile, if it´s pregnant, or has had an ectoparasite. Waaaay too much... Anyway, we caught a few really cool birds. Ecuador is famous for its hummingbirds, and I saw a ton of them around the guide´s cabin. Oh man, every day we had to wake up at 5:00 am, while it was still dark out, and begin our work. Tough stuff. The guide told me that I can put this on my resume as research work, though, which I´m pretty thrilled about. We also hiked about a half hour up a mountain to see this really beautiful bird, called the Cock of the Rock, do it´s mating ritual. There weren´t as many birds there as the guide was hoping, but I still got to see a few of them and I also got an amazing view of the rainforest. On the last day, Sean swam in this amazingly beautiful waterfall. It was a little paradise away from all the other troubles of the world.

About two weeks ago, Sean was robbed of his backpack by old men in suits. While he was on the bus, or right after, someone squirted mustard onto his backpack and pants. Some old guy was trying to help him clean it off, and some other guy offered to get water. Sean took his backpack off and put it in front of him to clean it. Somehow his attention was drawn away from his pack for a second and when he turned around it was gone. The people around him gave him conflicting info about where the thieves ran to. It seems everyone was involved in the thing. Nothing too important was taken, and Sean has his sweaty groin cup from Tae Kwon Do class in his bag, so he was happy that the thieves would be confronted with it. Sean was actually really cool about the whole thing and he said that it made him wiser.

10/3

Elections for twenty assembly people were held last weekend. There were well over 200 people on the ballot, each with a tiny headshot next to their name. I saw a copy of the ballot and it´s a bit confusing. Encouragingly, there were information booths set up around town to inform people of how they can vote. Every citizen has to vote, or they´re fined, like $16, if I remember correctly. That would be a lot of money to an indigenous person. The camp of people the president was endorsing ended up winning about 60% of the votes, followed by the group of people that were just first on the huge list. These assembly positions are really important because President Correa is creating a new constitution for the people and these are the representatives that will be writing the new document.

I had convinced Sean that the Warhol exhibit is the cat´s pajamas, so we went on Saturday. He seemed to like it. We also walked around two cathedrals, one of which I pretty much got kicked out of for taking pictures. It was the Cathedral of St. Augustine and there were some really cool pieces of artwork in it. We also spent an hour at a really great national museum. We could´ve stayed all evening, but they were closing. I can´t wait to go back. The museum is sponsored by a huge bank here. They have a noteworthy collection of gold artifacts and the museum was formed to ensure the people that the bank wouldn´t destroy their culture by melting these artifacts into currency. The museum grew from there to include really great clay and stone pieces which they keep on their anthropology floor. There is also a floor of amazing religious artwork from Ecuador. They seem to be more gruesome in their representations than I am used to. It´s really fantastic stuff. I think I´m going to go back this weekend as Sean´s on his next school outing, to check out the Republican art collection and the Contemporary art.

On Sunday, Sean and I had a huge lunch at a great place in Mitad Del Mundo. Sean also bought himself a new voice recorder. He calls it his second memory and he carries it around like a safety blanket. After he lost his other voice recorder in a cab, he´s been mentioning how much he wants another one, oh maybe every 2 hours or so. Needless to say, I´m happy for him.

The kids at school finally got their class periods structured. No more ¨perma-art class¨ as Sean called it. I´m scheduled to teach English, with the other class assistant, to the second graders every Tuesday and Thursday for about 45 minutes each day. Yesterday we worked on colors. The ages of the kids ranges from 5 to 11, and none of them can read or write. So, it´s a little weird to pick what to teach this group. The ¨Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes¨song is a big hit. If anyone else has any ideas, especially of kids songs, let me know.

9/23

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

9/17

Well, as soon as I got over the stomach sickness, I acquired the head cold Sean was carrying around with him. I´ve been getting a lot of rest and hopefully it will pass soon. I stayed home from school again today. I thought it´d be better of me to stay home and rest rather than expose the kids to a cold. Last night, our housemate gave Sean and I a very insightful winetasting. He worked in a quirky little wine shop back in Oxford, so he just seemed to know everything about the stuff. After a few sips of each of the wines, my head was pounding and I had to go to sleep. I had a headache to begin with, but I didn´t want to be left out. This weekend was a relaxing one and Sean and I stayed in most of the time, made tons of food, and watched movies. We went to play pool on Friday and Sean lost his voice recorder in the cab. He was so sad! Today we are going to go to get our Censo Card, which will be my ID while I´m here. Anyone staying over 90 days in Ecuador needs to get one. We´re supposed to get it within the first 30 of staying here, which expires soon for us. I think we´ll end up going to the office today, we´ll get an appointment and a list of the things we´ll need. That what my volunteer org told me, at least.

9/13

So, I´ve been feeling a bit ill the past three days, so I went home early from school yesterday and took the day off today. Volunteering has gotten easier now that I´m an assistant to the 2nd grade teacher. The kids are so wild that they haven´t learned anything yet! My Spanish vocabulary is now composed of phrases like, ¨Sit down, be quiet, stop, and listen to the teacher¨. I watched a video the other day about the Remar Foundation. It´s an international Christian organization that will take in people who need shelter, education for their children, or drug or alcohol abuse related counceling. So, they will take in these people in return that they work for them. All the money that Remar makes gets distributed throughout the people in their projects on a need basis. It´s very communist. I think it´s cool that I´m an agnostic-atheist-hindu-soto zen buddhist volunteering for an evangelical Christian organization. I´m not sure they would think it funny if they found out, though. Just trying to be well-rounded here. I have a ton of fun with the kids and I´m always exhausted by the end of recess. I went to watch that video Tuesday morning, and I returned to the classroom about two hours later, and a third of the kids put down what they were doing to run up and hug me. They call me ¨tia¨which means ¨aunt¨. It´s how they refer to all of their teachers, and I think it´s really sweet. I try to hug the kids as often as I can because I know that some of them come from really difficult situations. The woman in charge told me that about 75% of Ecaudorians live below the poverty line, and sometimes the parents will make the children go out and beg all day for money. If they don´t come home with money they are sometimes beaten. The woman told me that kids will come to the organization to get away from their family situations and the organization will have to go through a ton of paperwork immediatly to get them in their care, and sometimes the children have to return to their families. Some of these kids are really shy and adorable, and I have to repeat to myself ¨do not adopt one, Krystina¨.

Tuesday was Sean´s birthday. He´s now 22. He says he´s catching up to me. Both of us were too sick to eat birthday cake though, he with a head cold and me with a stomach thing, so there´s a whole birthday cake still siting in our fridge. Hopefully tonight will be the night for that. Tomorrow we have an appointment to look at an apartment. It sounds great, but we´re not sure about where in Quito it is. Sean´s getting tired of his super long commute every morning, understandably so.

9/9

So this was my favorite weekend in Ecuador, but I´ll get to that in a bit. My second day of volunteering was as exhausting as the first. Since everything was so disorganized on Thursday, I thought Friday would be similar and I could just do whatever I wanted. Wrong. After the kids did their morning stretches and song together, the principal led me into the fourth grade room and told me to teach them for 40 minutes. I had no lesson plan, or anything. He just took me to the front of the class and said this is your new English teacher, and the teacher & her assistant gave me the go-ahead to teach. I was dumbfounded. Completely unprepared. So I taught them ¨Good morning teacher¨and I attempted to teach them ¨My name is¨ and I had brought crayons and paper for them to draw ¨My name is...¨ name tag signs. I tried the Alphabet Song, which went well until about ¨Q¨. Then the principal came in, as it must have been 40 minutes later, and brought me into the next room - Second Grade. The teacher told me that they were busy with something and I should come back after the break. So, then the principal guides me to a high schooler that needed help with his English homework. He was creating a little English-Spanish dictionary, so that was fun. I thought I could use this time to page through the English material I had and create some kind of lesson plan for the second graders, but I spent the entire time helping that boy and fending off toddlers that were taking everything out of my backpack and throwing it around the room, and drawing in all of my books with my crayons. So one half of my brain was busy trying to understand what the high schooler was asking me, while the other half of my brain was trying to keep scissors and crayons out of the toddlers mouths. One of the little ones ran off with all of my crayons and I never saw him again. Then, before I knew it the break was finished and I was led into the Second Grade Room again. So, I´m still unprepared and now the principal is watching me. So I make all the kids stretch up with me and then stretch down. Then I had the stand up and then sit down. They were totally reacting to the up/down thing, and I thought that would be a good way to get ¨Sit down¨ into their vocabulary. They could say ¨Good morning teacher¨but then everything good went bad when I got them all in a line to introduce themselves while I gave them stickers. It was the stickers that did it. They were pushing and punching. I didn´t know what to do and the teacher was out the room at that time. So the teacher came back and helped me out. She made them all do their first homework assignment which consisted of them copying a zigzag line over and over again in their notebooks. It got them to settle down, for the most part. So, at the end of the class I told the teacher that it is really difficult for me to teach English when I can´t communicate in Spanish and I asked if I could just be her assistant until I understood the language more. She really seemed to like the idea, since it seems to me that she´s the only teacher without a volunteer assistant. It works out great for both of us because she that I could learn Spanish from her while she learns English from me. I asked if it was necessary for me to speak with the principal, and she made it seem like she was the one in charge and it wasn´t necessary. I guess we´ll wait to see what happens on Monday.

Saturday, Sean and I decided to go to Otavalo. It is a town about two hours away from Quito, with a big market on the weekends. The bus ride there was great; the scenery phenomenal. I spent way too much money. I found a big tapestry that I really fell in love with. The background is hot pink, and the colors really burst out of it. Anyway, the women wanted $65 for it, because it was probably the biggest tapestry they had. I really didn´t want to pay more than $35 for it, but I haggled them down to $40. I think it´s still a deal, as the thing will be hanging on one of my walls someday as a great reminder of this trip. I also bought a few other things, and I could´ve bought more if I hadn´t spent all my money first. I tried a bite of cuy at lunch, which is fried guinea pig. It was so incredible sad and I´ll never do it again. I was fine until I saw that I was holding onto a little claw foot. Oh man, that was a terrible feeling. I also had a giant tilapia fish staring at me from my plate, which I was entirely okay with. It´s weird what we become desensitized to, with food.

While in Otavalo, Sean and I saw the President of Ecuador! I don´t know what he was doing there, but we were only, maybe, two car lengths away from him. That was a big surprise and there was a mixed reaction from the crowd. Elections are being held later this month to choose the people that will be in charge of changing the constitution. There´s propaganda everywhere for the candidates. Every candidate gets to choose a number and so you see ¨vote 25¨or whatever stickers everywhere.

Today, the owner of our hostel took Sean, myself, our British friend and her friend (one of our neighbors) out to lunch for Sean´s birthday. We didn´t even tell her that his birthday is coming up (Sept, 11th), she just remembered from when she took down our passport info the first day we arrived! I wasn´t expecting her to take us out to such a nice place! There was a band there playing Ecuadorian music, and there was a huge buffet with great food. Sean, myself and Chris stuffed ourselves until we felt like we were going to explode. It was like we hadn´t eaten anything for weeks! What a sight. We were so grateful and we had to greatest time.

9/6

So I finally talked with the woman in charge of the Young Mothers´Project and she suggested that I teach English at an elementary school that her organization also runs. I told her that I don´t know Spanish and I´m not sure how to teach English and she didn´t seem to mind, because I would be working with kids and it would be basic stuff. I´ve always wanted to be an elementary school teacher, but today was daunting. I arrived at the school, which is only a five minute walk or so from my hostel, at 8 am. I met that woman in charge, who could speak English and she introduced me to the principal as their new English teacher. Then she left and I didn´t see her again. The principal, who can also speak a little English, led me to a small class of 11 to 15 year olds. They already knew some English, so I couldn´t do ¨A is for apple¨or anything. They kids weren´t really responsive to me, so I didn´t know what they knew and I wasn´t sure where to go with the whole thing. Then the principal came in and gave me an English workbook he had and told me to do anything I wished. If I wanted it to be recess, it was recess. So, shortly after that I gave the kids stickers and let them go play. There was a cute little girl named Camilla that told me the teacher is beautiful and drew me a picture that said ¨The teacher¨and it had a heart with little heart eyes and a little heart nose. Camilla was at my side most of the day. She´s awesome.

So, during the recess, I talked to another volunteer from the States, and she said that they may have said something to her about being a teacher, but she´s been there for weeks and has just been fixing up the school (classes just began three days ago) and has been playing with the kids. She made it sound like the people in charge didn´t really care what you did as long as you were nice to the children. So I just played with the kids for the next hour or so. They´re really affectionate. The other volunteer and I had kids constantly coming up to us to sit on our laps or play with our hair. Children were constantly hugging me, and a little girl named Maria was really fond of pinching my cheeks. She´s maybe four years old and she grabbed me by the hand and paraded me around. The principal put me in Maria´s class, actually, after a little while. There was another volunteer there and we were just looking after the kids as they did an assignment (which was not as easy as it sounded). The principal told me that the children were orphans or had parents in one the organization´s (it´s the Remer Foundation, by the way. It´s a Christian organization that does a lot of social service projects) other projects. He said most of the children had parents with drug abuse problems or were physically abused. So, I think I´m going to like just hanging out with the kids as I learn Spanish, but I hope I don´t have to teach again! The kids would ask me questions in Spanish, and since I couldn´t understand it was frustrating for both of us. So I guess I´ll show up at 8 am again tomorrow and see what happens! The place is in complete disorder, but I think the main idea is to just have a safe environment for the kids to grow in.

9/3

Because we weren´t sure of how to get to Otavalo, and because we slept in, Sean and I decided to go to the Teleferico yesterday. The Teleferico is a cable car that rises about 12,000 feet up into the mountains. It gives an amazing view of Quito, and as it turns out, you can hop out at the top and go for a hike. I´m not sure how far the path went, but we walked for quite a distance. Walking up the mountain was exhausting and I had to stop for breath at every new plateau. The view was breathtaking. At some points we were looking down at clouds. This whole venture is an absolute must for anyone who plans on visiting. Running down the mountain was a ton of fun, too. I employed the ¨duck stance¨I learned in martial arts to not get ahead of myself. Sean also employed a martial arts move of a different kind: the dive roll, which is something like a somersault, but one would roll from shoulder to opposite hip as opposed rolling on the spine. Sean biffed while running down a steep hill, he dive rolled and stood up cover in dirt. Well done, SeaniePants.

8/31

So, as I noticed there was no milk in the dairy section of the grocery store yesterday, I embarked upon an entire aisle of non-refrigerated boxes of ¨milk¨. I wasn´t sure what to make of it, and as I was alone I just pretended to read the boxes. I know that ¨leche¨is milk, so I was confident that I was on the right track. I also understood that they all contained no preservatives and needed no refrigeration. Easy. So I decided upon the most attractive box with a swiss maid, or something, on the front. I took it home, drank it with my cereal, and was surprised with the most creamy delicious milk I´ve had since Japan (there´s just something about Japanese milk). Anyway, I noticed a little saying on the front of the box, ¨La mujer sabor¨or something, so I look up sabor and only find saber in my measly index of a dictionary and it translated as ¨to know¨. So I´m thinking ¨the woman that knows¨which probably referred to that swiss milk maid. Then Sean told me later that sabor means ¨taste¨, and I was convinced that I just had breast milk on my Cap´n Crunch, you know - translating that ominous phrase as ¨the taste of woman¨. Luckily I have Sean around to get me through these situations, because the real phrase on the box of milk is, ¨La mejor sabor¨I guess meaning, ¨the best taste¨. Mujer/mejor, sabor/saber. These are the trials I go through daily. And by the way, I got Cap´n Crunch with Berries, which is what I consider to be the real Cap´n Crunch, while Sean has believed his whole life that Peanut Butter Cap´n Crunch is the original kind. And I thought I knew him, I thought to myself. The whole experience of eating cereal really is a comfort thing.

Today I visited Sean´s school. It´s beautiful. There´s a pagoda there and a little pond. There are little garden areas between buildings. A bit of Kyoto in Quito, really. Since it´s the expensive school in Ecuador, there are tons of people walking around like models. Popped collars, big sunglasses. Terrible, really. As promised, we did go to that Chinese place around the corner and I had some of those famed spring rolls. There as awesome as expected. Sean actually brought some home from school for me yesterday. I was so excited. ¨I blogged about these already,¨I told him! They have a strong peanut butter taste that made me miss Alex´s Oma´s Dutch-Indonesian cooking. I´m guilty of eating peanut butter by the spoonful, and when I spent that semester in Japan, one of the only things I requested from home was peanut butter. My parents sent me the huge economy sized jar of peanut butter. It was like gold in that kitchen. Geez, I could ramble on about food forever...

Tomorrow, Sean and I are planning on visiting a nearby town called Otovalo, which has a huge, famous market. There´s a slight chance that we won´t make it there, though, since we have no idea on how to get there yet. We´ll see. Today I bought this beautiful amazing orange/black dyed shawl made out of alpaca wool. It´s the most perfect article of clothing I´ve ever owned. It´s the perfect length to wrap myself in, but still look civilized. It´s warm, but still light. Quito is really sunny, but since the elevation is so high, it´s also pretty cold. When I say ¨cold¨I mean like a cool Spring night in Wisconsin. During the nights when the sun is gone, though, I´m chilled to the bone. Just a note, to pack warm clothes if you´re planning on visiting.

8/30

My volunteer coordinator was having trouble getting a hold of the woman in charge at the project I´ll be working at, so we rescheduled visiting the place to next week. I was relieved, I must admit, because I can really use the time to study. Not much new has happened in the past few days. I´ve been getting a good amount of reading done. Right now, I´m reading ¨Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell¨by Suzanne Clark. It´s a really fun British novel about magicians, but it´s over 1000 pages long, so it´s something I´ve been chipping away at over the past year.

A Latina girl moved into the room next to mine and she is incredible loud. With everything she does. Super, super loud. And her boyfriend stayed the night last night. I hope that never happens again. I had to cover up my ears to try to fall asleep. I´ll just let you imagine the details.

Right now, although it may seem like an insignificant thing, I´m going to get some cereal. I rarely eat cereal, but ever since I got here, I´ve been craving really sugary, bad-for-me cereal. It must be a comfort thing. Anyway, Sean had originally scoffed at me for the craving, but then this morning when I told him I was really going to get some, he´s like, ¨Well, get Cap´n Crunch¨. Who´s scoffing now? This morning I had two squares of chocolate and a bread roll that I stuffed with cheese. Somebody really needs to be looking after me in the mornings.

Sean´s at his second day of school. He´s taking so many classes! Human ecology, Galapagos ecology, lizards, birds, useful plants, anthropology of religion and some anatomy class. He´s planning on dropping at least one. He´s even planning on joining the Tae Kwon Do & Fencing clubs. Unbelievable. I´m not sure I´ll ever get to see him this trip! He says his campus is beautiful, though. I´ll be checking it out on Monday, since he has a short day & I won´t be doing anything. I´m kinda excited. Apparently, there´s a Chinese place right around the corner that sells awesome spring rolls. I´d be lying to say that that´s not the real reason I´m going.

8/28

Recipe: Elvis Waffles
Ingredients:
2 waffles
1 banana
peanut butter
honey

Directions:
Make two waffles, smear peanut butter on them. Drizzle honey over that. Cut up a banana, place it between the two waffles, and fry them together with peanut butter sides facing inward. Viola, Elvis Waffles. (This recipe was brought to you by Krystina and Jessie, but mostly Jessie)


For the past two days I´ve finally began my hardcore studying of Spanish. I think I´ll be okay after a month of studying like this. I had Sean tutoring me last night, and in return he wanted to learn some Japanese. I had been mixing Japanese & Spanish earlier, so I´ve been forcing Japanese out of my head. I´m just trying not to think about it, since when I´m in translation-mode, I often reach for Japanese words first. Anyway, Sean asks me for Japanese and I couldn´t think of anything. I taught him the basic word for ¨me¨ and ¨mine¨, but I couldn´t remember the word for ¨you¨ until I was about to fall asleep hours later. It was really weird.

Two Brits have moved into our hostel. They´re really nice, so it´s nice having them around. They are traveling through South America and have been in Brazil and Columbia so far. They´re stopping here to do volunteer work and Spanish study for a few weeks, then continuing through the continent in an ´S´shaped path. Very cool. Our landlady just keeps getting sweeter, and she keeps giving us discounts. It makes me think she just wants company. I told her we would stay for another 2 weeks, at least, and she said that she would give us a 10% discount. If we stay for a month, it´s a 15% discount, and if our stay is over 2 months, we get a 20% discount. She also told me last night that she gives a 5% discount to students of a particular Spanish school, if I was interested in taking classes there. She gave Sean a hug last night, and she drove the Brits to the grocery store because they didn´t know where it was. I want to adopt her.

As a side note, Jessie and I were questioning which fats are the ¨good¨fats, and she decided that we should update the nutrition facts box to change mono- and poly-unsaturated fats to say ¨mono/polyunsaturated phats¨ so we know that they´re the good ones. Get it? Phat? Those fats are only ¨bad¨if ¨bad¨ means ¨good¨.

8/27

Yesterday, our landlady drove Sean and I to the Mitud del Mundo (I think that´s what it´s called), which is the big monument on the equator. She actually said, ¨I will drive you to the equator.¨ Which is a really interesting statement to hear. There was a big touristy park all around the monument, but we got to see some cool dances right after noon. Sean and I went on a tour of a volcanic crater nearby. I was actually on the edge of a cliff 2900 meters high. Check out the picture if you don´t believe me. The view was incredible. The crater is inhabited and lush, and the people there get their water from the fog that engulfs it everyday.

Sean is at the first day of orientation at his school, so I´m on my own for the first time this trip. I will go to visit the place I´m volunteering at on Wednesday, and probably start working there on Thursday. I really have to cram hard with Spanish today and tomorrow. ...And every other day I´m here. There is no one at the place I´m working at that speaks English, so I´ll be totally immersed and frightened. What better way to learn...

8/25

On my flight to Atlanta, I sat next to a man named Fred that was born in a small Texas town, but now resides in Florida, where he owns his own jewelry business. I knew far too much about him when we landed. He did show me pictures of his dogs. White German Shepards. I never knew they existed, so that was kinda cool. When we landed, the wheels on the planes weren´t turning right, so we had to walk down the emergency stairs, then walk back up to our airport gate. I thought I was going to need ton of time to get to my next flight, but it was only a five minute walk. It seemed too easy. I met Sean right away, and I took an empty seat next to him on the plane. The flight to Ecuador was nice, except the landing was frightening. There was a lot of turbulance, and it seemed that the pilot was accelorating toward the mountains. We circled around and around where we needed to land, and I thought for sure the plane was going down. Apparently, this is how planes land in the mountains, though. So, if you´re traveling to Quito and you think your plane is crashing, it´s probably just landing.

There was a man holding up a sign with my name on it, when we landed. He drove Sean and I to our first hostel in the ¨Gringoland¨, or more politely ¨Mariscal de Sucre¨district of Quito. Our hostel was really cool and I loved our room. We had an awesome breakfast for only $2 each, which I lovingly took pictures of. It´s just what I do. Sean has actually since requested that I not take pictures of our food before we eat it. Whatever. I had reservations at another hostel, so after our first two nights in ¨Hostel La Galleria¨, we went to ¨Casapaxi¨. I´m really happy that we´re at this new hostel because we are the only renters there right now, and we have an entire house to ourselves for less than $12 a night. The owner is Italian. She worked in Africa for a few years, doing something for the Italian government, and has since lived in Quito for the past 15 years. She´s awesome. There´s a lot of African artwork around the house. The only bad things about this hostel are that its oven doesn´t work (but the burners do), the shower is often cold, and there´s no internet access. To use the internet, I just have to walk down the block, though and use a computer at an internet shop. Easy. There´s also awesome bread at a shop just around the corner from our hostel.

8/22

Sitting at my gate, waiting for my flight to Atlanta, I´m listening to a speech by Pres. Bush. He´s talking about Asia. He´s talking far too much about Asia. He spoke about Shinto in Japan, which he called ¨Shintu¨at one point. He´s now thrown in Laos, but pronounced it ¨La-oos¨, which I´ve never heard anyone do before. And now he´s saying pulling out of Vietnam was the wrong decision by us and somehow connected it to Sept. 11th. How does he do that? Pres. Clinton had a plaque on his desk that said, ¨It´s the economy, stupid.¨I think this latter Bush whited-out ¨economy¨and replaced it with ¨Sept 1th¨. Stupid.

I deeply believe we, as U.S. Americans are soon to find ourselves in serious conflict with China. There´s been this slow and steady onflux of negative news regarding China. People are starting to not buy things made in China because of pictures they see in Newsweek. These may be valid isues and effects, but the negative buzz that´s being pumped into the public worries me. And now as the Olympic Games get closer, there´s increasing outcry regarding China´s human rights abuses. I think that´s necessary, but I wonder how China´s going to react. It´s always been called a ´backwards´nation, but it has an army in training and a lot of quiet foreign investment. It´s just something I´ve been worrying about.

Watching the planes take off and arc towards their destination, I wonder if I am more afraid of airports or airplanes. I feel like once I get on the plane, everything is out of my hands. It´s a little bit liberating, a little frightening. In the airports, though, there´s a lot going on, and as a traveler I´m faced with a good deal of responsibility. That almost scares me more. I would hate to lose my luggage, or miss my flight - I´m not sure exactly what would happen. My bags today were 40 and 32 lbs. I ws so relieved to be under the 50 lb limit. I gave one of those jackpot arm gestures when I put the bags on the scale. Score.