Carnaval Pics! Text coming later

Capoeira

Although this was a while ago, I went to a party at my friend's Capoeira school in the Mariscal (bar/restaurant area) and took some SWEET videos. The blonde girl is my friend who invited me (Ingrid) who I know from my sociology class, Problemas Sociales en el Ecuador. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art/dance.

Volunteering in Lumbisi

Por fin, I will actually talk about the volunteer work I do twice a week... with craaazy crazy children, that makes me very happy :)

So, every Monday & Wednesday, I take the Lumbisi bus at around 2:30 (they come about 20-25 minutes apart, so I usually sit at the bus stop for a while listening to the ice cream (pop-ice in the u.s. a.k.a. bon-ice here and yogoso, the 5 cent more yogurty healthier version) people selling stuff in their awesome jumpsuits). I arrive at the school at 3:00 and stay until 5, when we usually wait some more for the bus and I get home around 5:45. Today I was super lucky because when I went to the bus stop, Lumbisi was the first one to come, and then I had to leave a bit early from volunteering at 4ish to buy our bus tickets to go on CARNAVAL VACATION!

Anyways... so pretty much every day there are a decent amount of kids who have some homework to do, but there are always some kids who don't have any. My job lately has been to distract the ones who don't have any work with some sort of activity so that they don't stop their friends/siblings from finishing their 'deberes'. What I started off doing was bringing my handy-dandy iHome (small version, easy for travel, battery powered) and my iPod, and teaching the kids Concordia dances (from Spanish summer camp, in case you're not familiar) including El Tiburon, Ritmo Vuelta, Magdalena, Alane, and the Macarena (that one's not so Concordia as much as popular culture). I was planning on doing some more activities on other days, like some cute name games, or a game we did at concordia with animals (cat, elephant, eagle.... if anyone wants to learn I can teach it to them sometime). But these kids are obsessed with my music! Besides dancing we've also listened to some Juanes, Aventura, and OMG High School Musical! (the girls loooove it a bit too much, I don't even remember how it got on my iPod, i swear)

I've also had to do a little disciplining (that doesnt seem like it's a real word...) to 3 troublesome boys. We've got Washington, the worst of the 3, who always thinks it's hilarious to do exactly what we don't want him to do, Kevin (go figure, hah) who is pretty nice but sometimes picks on really little kids who just cry as a reaction and he thinks it's funny, then there's another boy (he doesn't come every day, don't remember his name) and he just copies everything Washington does. I tried one day to implement the "naughty step" (escalera mala?) from my Nanny 911 lessons, but to no avail. I think I picked a bad location, because if I put one boy down and told them to sit on the step for a minute while I tried to make them understand why what they did was wrong, the other boys would come by and bug us, then the boy on the stair would escape. It was a bit frustrating, but eventually I came up with an idea that they should pick on me instead of picking on little kids, and that worked, i just gave them piggy-back rides and ran around the playground trying to "get away" for the rest of the time.

The compelation of this "after school program" is kids everywhere from age 1 to age 14 or so. Some kids bring their siblings, so there are some little ones running around, and a lot of the kids go to different schools, but they all live in Lumbisi. The program is run by FEVI, a foundation that my coordinator, Maria, is the founder(/president?) of, and the coordinator of this specific program's name is Andres, but it's been weird because he hasn't been showing up in the last 2 weeks that I've been working. The woman who is always there (she's amazing, and she brings her 2 kids with her) is Maria (a different one) and she lives in Lumbisi. I feel terrible that I can't be there more often, because then I think she's alone with up to 22 kids, all doing different things, and, you know, being kids. That's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I have aerobics so I can't go. Now there's also another girl from the university that comes on Wednesdays a little later than me (Jessica) and she's very sweet and has lots of fun with the kids. It's hard work, but SO worth it, they're all just adorable (even the traviesos).

Bueno, I'll update when I get back from vacay! I need to get AWAY from Quito, it's cold and rainy :( Playa here we come!!!


P.S. Zack, if you're reading this, my excessive use of parentheses, and parentheses within parentheses, came from reading your blog and then immediately writing mine... it rubbed off I guess.

I Love my Valentine :)

Plans for Carnaval

We have vacation plans for Carnaval! :) I'm very excited. 3 other friends and I (possibly 4) are going to Puerto Lopez and Machalilla National Park. The rest of the group is going to a place called Montañita, which is only about an hour south, so we might go there for a day or so.

There's lots to do on the trip, and we have 5 days! There's Isla de la Plata, which is part of the national park, known as "the poor man's Galapagos". The place we're going to is normally popular during the whale-watching season, which is June to September, so unfortunately we won't be here :( There's also snorkeling around the island and apparently lots of cool animals there.

In the park there are a few archaeological sites and we can go camping!!! I'm mostly excited about that. Camping in the rainforest....oooohhh. There's also hiking and some cool lookout points.

The beaches in this area are also amazing! From the pictures they look really beautiful, so we'll probably spend a day or so just relaxing.

One more week of school before vacation! I feel like I should write more about volunteering so I'll do that sometime next week before I leave Thursday night.... :) Chao!

Getting lost / ADVENTURE!

Tuesday was a little bit of a long day. I had a test in the morning, a paper due in the next class, then marketing, which is always a little bit intense (but the profe is great). So it was even more awesome when I got on the WRONG BUS to go home to Quito for lunch.

All the buses that leave Cumbayá are green ones, and I thought that every one of them went to Rio Coca, the final Quito stop, a block from where I live. But apparently about 1 in 100 or something goes to SOUTH QUITO dun dun dun....

It really wasn't that bad... I got on the back door of the bus because it was leaving and i just wanted to get home fast, I didn't hear the driver say anything like they sometimes do, announcing the destination "A Quito a Quito a Rio Coca a Quito!" I sat on the bus for a little while, until we got to a place where we should have turned north, but we turned south....

I decided that we had to get to the city eventually, because we were going south but also a little west (towards Quito), so I waited and didn't ask the driver anything for a while. Eventually we got to an area with tons of building that looked like the city, and everyone got off the bus, so I asked how I could possibly get to the southernmost stop on either the Trole or the Ecovia (bus lines). The driver said to cross the road (highway) and hail a taxi to take me to the Ecovia stop.

Problem was, I only had 75 cents! There was of course no bank in sight, so I just started walking north, hoping I would be able to see El Panecillo (hill with a sculpture of the virgin mary on top in south Quito), but I couldn't. Finally I got to a small bus stop with an overlook, and there were 3 taxis lined up on a road. I asked the first taxi how far it was to the last Ecovia stop, told him that I was lost, and told him that I could only give him 50 cents (i needed 25 to get on the Ecovia).

Luckily he told me it was close by :) and I wouldnt have been able to walk there because it was down a big hill then up another big hill on the highway. So he dropped me off just a block from the bus stop, and I thanked him very very much, and proceeded to ride the whoooole Ecovia (all the way north to my house) home.

Fin. whew.

Carnaval starts early...

This past weekend (Saturday) our Illinois Program group had a barbeque at one of the guy's (Pat's) houses in Cumbayá. It was really great :) We had lots of meat (steak!) and great salads, and some piña coladas. We were just hanging around and eating/listening to music when waterballoons came sailing up onto the roof where we were!

Apparently, Carnaval is not just the few days before Ash Wednesday (same as U.S. Mardi Gras)... as I thought... but it's basically the whole month of February. In Quito and all over Ecuador, the traditional Carnaval celebration includes a hardcore water fight, and in some areas they even use eggs, flour, or paint.

So what was happening at our BBQ was that the school across the street let out (not sure why they were at school on saturday... but anyways), and so the boys there started making water balloons and throwing them up at us. Of course, Pat's host family was prepared, so a bunch of us went downstairs to fill up water balloons to throw back at them. Some of them broke in the air, but it was going pretty well.

Then a bunch of the guys from our group decided to go into the kitchen and fill up buckets, and then ambush the school from outside, sneaking out the back of the house and around the wall of the school. That went pretty well, and it was hilarious to watch from on top of the roof on the other side of the street. So we proceeded to do a few more trips to attack the school with buckets of water, and I went with and got soaked! I accidentally threw some water on Pat, and when my friend Kelsey went back through the "halls" (all outdoors) of the school to get some guys, they surrounded her and soaked her with water. I also got extremely soaked, but it was definitely worth it.

That day I also met a really cool girl who graduated from Illinois, had gone to Ecuador at the same time as my friend's Liz and Murph, and now she's working in Ecuador teaching English! I had a great conversation later with her and Pat's host mom (who used to be her host mom when she was in Ecuador). We also had a great Penn State vs. U of I debate, and a 'living in Quito' vs. 'living in Cumbayá' debate. :)

I had lots of homework over the weekend so I went home at night. I had a test monday and a paper due and another test on tuesday! That all went well though. Alrighty, more later!

Esmeraldas - Tonsupa & Muisne

I had so much fun this weekend! We left on Friday morning (1/30) and got back on Feb. 1st (not in time for the super bowl, ah well)

On friday we stopped at a woman's finca (kinda like a plantation) where they grow all sorts of goofy/interesting plants, but it was raining so we couldnt go out and see the whole thing, we just ate there. We also made chocolate while we were there and ate it with bananas!
Then we drove to where we were staying, passing the cloud forest on the way, which was beautiful, and we played mafia on the way in the bus. When we got to Tonsupa (beach town) our place was right on the beach in these really fancy apartments that our coordinator owns (and she also owns a house nearby which we didn't go to). We went out to dinner at a place on the beach, then played a big game of ultimate frisbee. Afterwards we swam in the pool for about 45 minutes (after it was closed, whoops) until someone kicked us out. After the pool we played some card games: spoons and BS.

Then Saturday morning we went to a small barrio (neighborhood) outside of Tonsupa. Maria showed us all this amazing volunteer work that they did there, and the people's houses and gardens. We gave the families some powdered milk for the kids (does a body good), then we helped this family put dirt under their house so it doesn't flood.
There were so many cute kids there too! It made all of us pretty sad though, they live in some tough conditions, and before we were moving the dirt under the house, a bunch of kids were working to do it. I'm glad that Maria knows about these places in Ecuador so that we can come to help out even if it is just for a little while.

After going to the little village, we went back to a craft market and had ceviche (good fish/shrimp soup) for lunch. Then we spent the whole afternoon on the beach and went tubing! which was AWESOME! We think the guys in the speedboat gave us the "gringo price" of $3 per person on a 5 person tube ($15 all together is waay more than it should cost), but still that wasnt too expensive individually, and it was totally worth it. I also did some boogie boarding and got pretty good at catching waves, then we went in the pool and I learned how to do a back dive. We also taught 2 other people in our group how to dive. Then we went to another beach town close by (about 15 min away) to go get dinner, and I got fried shrimp and a huge banana milkshake,

then we went back and got amazing piña coladas (with about 10 different pieces of fruit on top!),

and we played some more frisbee on the beach.

So Sunday, we woke up early (which sucked, but there was an hour long bus ride so I napped a little) and went to a place called Muisne, where we took a boat ride through the mangroves, and saw a bunch of birds and an iguana in the water. We also had the best pineapple EVER. Then we went across a little channel to the Isla de Muisne and rode rickshaw-esque taxis to the other side of the island where we ate at a restaurant on the beach (more fish, but the best soup we've all ever had in Ecuador so far) then went swimming and just hung out. When we were swimming we found some starfish which was very exciting :)

On the way home on the bus ride I got very very sick. I won't gross anyone out with the details, but it was not fun at all. Plus the bus ride was longer than it should have been, because we had to take a different route home because of a landslide on the way we came. The rains were so bad over the weekend that a big part of the road washed out, and apparently it's taking them a month or two to fix. Anyways, I feel allll better now, it was only a one day type thing, I think a stomach virus or something because there was also another girl who was sick the day before me. I had to miss class on monday though :( Oh well.

I have to get to volunteering now! Hasta luego!