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.