Dancing and Futbol

Thursday night my friends and I spent a cultural night at Seseribó, the best salsateca (salsa club) in Quito!! Three of my friends came over my house after my classes ended on Thursday and at 9:30pm we took a taxi to Seseribó. We met up with some other exchange students from our program there. I was a little worried about going with all Gringos, but it turned out not to be a problem.

As luck would have it, I ran/danced into my salsa dance teacher that I had an official lesson with weeks ago. He remembered me and we danced about 3 or 4 times throughout the night. Being a professional salsa dance teacher, he was incredible. I decided I´m a moderately good salsa dancer, if the guy can lead. If they can´t...its really hard to make it work cuz they are supposed to be leading. Seseribó was a lot of fun and defintely a place we will return to.

Friday we went to the Termas de Papallacta. After a two hour bus ride and a 2km walk, we arrived at a series of pools naturally heated by the local volcanic activity. We relaxed in the jacuzzi-temperatured water for hours admiring the mountainous surroundings. It was quite relaxing and the locals also enjoying the pools were interesting to talk to. In the afternoon we took a taxi back to the main road, in attempts to beat the rain, and flagged down the bus back to Quito.


Saturday night I went out dancing again with my salsa teacher. We went to a discoteca that was almost completely filled with gringos. Not the kind of place I´m usually looking to go to in Ecuador, but it was fun. It was pretty great when the salsa music came on and I was one of the few people in the whole place that could salsa.

Sunday some friends and I went to the ECUADOR VS. BRAZIL SOCCER GAME!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! This was a HUGE game for Ecuador. 1. Its a qualifying game for the world cup 2. They are playing Brazil!!
We barely managed to get tickets. The only tickets available when we went on Thursday were in the nicer section of the stadium and they came in a package with tickets for the Brazil game and Paraguay game on Wednesday.

My friend Katie and I made a friend while waiting in line to buy tickets. He explained to us how the different sections of the stadium work and how the ticket sales work. Its really complicated and I´m glad we had some help.

I was also interviewed by some television station while waiting in line. It was incredibly embarassing mainly because I couldn´t understand the rapid questions they were firing at me. Thankfully, our friend fed me some answers so I was able to say something and they would move on to the next person in line.

On Sunday, we (Katie, Humberto, and I) got to the stadium 3.5 hours before the game and I felt like we were the last ones to arrive. Thousands of people were milling about in front of the stadium all of them (including us) decked out in yellow Ecuador soccer jerseys. We got Ecuador flags painted on our cheeks.

Here, I was interviewed THREE more times within a matter of ten minutes. One filmed my cheeks being painted, then interviewed me. Another one by a guy with a recorder that looked like it was for a radio station. And another by a television station where the guy interviewing me said he had family in Ohio....He said we might be related. Ha. I said "Posible."
They all asked me the same questions: 1. where are you from? 2. how do you think the game is going to turn out? 3. (optional) can you give a yell for Ecuador?
Again, all of these were difficult to understand and highly embarassing. I´m not sure why I attracted so many interviews....

In the stadium we had pretty good seats on the long side of the field but closer to one of the goals. Not too far from us were the Brazil fans. We witnessed some interesting yelling/name calling/conflict. There were gaurds all over the stadium, but most of them watched the game more than the people. There were no problems though, it was safe.

The game was crazzzyy. The whole time everyone was yelling, jumping to their feet, cursing, chanting, and singing. The guys behind us were very vocal. I learned some new vocabulary.


Ecuador played incredibly well, controlling the ball most of the time and had a lot of opportunities at goals. I was not that impressed with Brazil. Ronaldinho did not do anything amazing. However, in the second half Brazil got lucky and somehow scored a goal. The stadium was absolutely silent except for the explosion of excitment from the small Brazileños crowd. Thankfully, Ecuador came back and tied the game. The roar from the crowd after the goal was unbelievable.

The game ended in a tie, which is kind of that awkward not bad, but not good, position to be in.

My friends and I defintely were involved in the game. We were yelling, screaming, and jumping with the best of them. My heart beat was not regular for the whole game. It was a very emotionally draining experience. I went home and slept right after the game.

Wednesday we went to the Ecuador vs. Paraguay game. Paraguay was #1 and Ecuador was #7. Ecuador dominated the whole game, having many opportunities at a goal, and scored one in the second half. The crowd was very optimistic that we were going to win after the goal. But with less than 30 seconds left in the game, Paraguay got uber lucky and tied the match. Grrrrrrr....... While still possible, this tie makes it very hard for Ecuador to qualify for the world cup.

Life in the Mountains

I feel like Ive been writing a lot about my weekend adventures and neglected my everyday life. So this blog I will talk a bit more about what I do everyday and what life is like here.

Every morning my host mom and I go running for about 30 minutes in Parque Itchimbia, the beautiful park by my house. On Tuesdays and Thursdays my mom drops me off at the Univeristy 5 minutes away on her way to work. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have afternoon classes so I just flag down the bus that passes our house on the way to the University.

CLASSES
Last week was "mid-term week" here. For my Recursos Flora mid term grade we had 4 or so "labs" and a "test." The labs involved using microscopes to observe flowers of various families and then drawing and labeling different parts of the flower. To my surprise, I received better grades than my native friend who sits next to me. The big mid term exam was about 7 questions long. One question had a "yes or no" answer. One of the questions was purposefully nearly impossible. All the questions didn´t require more than a sentence to answer. I had studied and again pulled off a grade higher than most of the other grades I saw. My native friend who sits next to me seemed pretty impressed with my overall mid-term grade (12.2/15). I explained to him how the testing/grading systems were a little different in the U.S. and he was impressed (appalled?) with that as well...


While these classes require relatively little homework, I still learn a lot. Desarollo Sustentable is really challenging because there is a lot of passionate environmental ranting. Fast talking + technical language = very hard to understand. I spend class trying to figure out what he is talking about.

Our mid term grade for Desarollo Sustentable was completely based off of our participation in a class debate. The debate topic being: The political environmental positions of northern countries versus southern countries. I defended the northern countries. The two other gringos of the class were defending the southern countries.

One thing that I had understood from previous lectures was how Ecuador viewed the U.S. from an environmental perspective. The prof was constantly talking about the U.S.´s excessive consumption of energy and other goods, the amount of CO2 the U.S. produces, and how they didn´t sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Citizens of Ecuador are very concerned about global climate change because it would affect their climate, lives, and environment. They live a lot closer to the Earth here than we do in the U.S. and some changes would be a lot more devestating to them than to U.S. They say Quito has recently seen some of the coldest, longest "winters" with more rain than ever before. The glacier on the volcano, Cotopaxi (see below for pics), has also receded a significant amount supposedly due to global climate change.

However, while they worry about global climate change, they don´t really have the power to fix it or drastically change it. They are not the ones pouring tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. All they can do is look at the U.S. and other developed countries and well...blame them.
Being United Statesians in the class, I feel awkward sometimes. I study the exact same topics at U of R, but we´re all in the same boat there, "ya. okay. okay. we pollute a lot. we should change. we know. we´ll get around to it." Having a classroom of peers thinking "wow, they should start caring more and change" is a completely different experience.

So, in this debate I had to defend Northern, developed countries against developing countries suffering the environmental effects of our development. I was terrified a. cuz I´m arguing to a bunch of people posed slightly against the U.S. and b. cuz i can rarely understand everything they are saying.

However, I was happy to defend the U.S. and let them know that we are not bad intentioned, are making efforts to change, and they reek benefits, like cell phones and technology, from our development. I thought I made some pretty solid points during the debate...if they understood what I was saying. I always tried to be one of the first ones to speak to avoid repeating someone else´s argument that I hadn´t understood. Hopefully I didn´t sound like too much of an idiot. Students in the class still talk to me so I guess I didn´t offend anyone too much. Both the prof and students were all really nice and understanding throughout the whole debate. It turned out to be really interesting. I think it was eye opening for a lot of Ecuadorians that had to defend the northern countries as well. Woohoo!

My other classes are also pretty chill.

NEARLY ROBBED in QUITO
Two of my classes are at the IES Abroad center in a building about 15 minutes away from the University. One night at 6:30pm I was waiting on a street corner close to the IES center for my bus to take me home. Two of my friends, Benjamin and Liz, passed me on their short walk home. About a minute later Benjamin came running back, gave his backpack to me and said "I was just assaulted at knife point and Liz took off running." Then he left to go find her.
About a block after they had passed me, two youngish guys had approached them from the other direction, grabbed the front of his shirt, held a knife to his chest, and demanded his phone and threatened to cut him. The girl, terrified, sprinted across the street and soon realized that thieves had gotten the phone they wanted and were now following her. A random lady driving by saw her running away from these guys, stopped, and told her to get into the car. She did and the car pulled up to the street corner where I was holding Benjamin´s backpack. Benjamin saw her, quickly returned, took his backpack and returned to the IES center to report the theft (calling the police is useless). Liz told me to get into the car and wanting to get out of there, I did. At the time, I didn´t realize it was a random car off the street. Its probably a lot more risky getting into some random car than it is walking down the street. But we we´re really lucky and the wonderful young lady drove us to Liz´ house and refused payment. She not only had saved Liz from theft but left us her card and told us to call if we needed anything. She was a saint.
At Liz´ house, we were both shaken up and cried. However, we decided that that was part of living in Quito and should accept it as part of our experience. We hear about stuff like this all the time and they were not the first IES students to be assaulted.

MOUNTAINS

Two weekends ago some friends and I rode this gondola called, TeleferiQo, part way up a mountain and then hiked for 6 more hours to conquer Roca Pichincha. Like on any mountain here, the altitude knocked the breath out of us and generally humbled our athletic abilities. It was great.

Beautiful, beautiful Páramo with incredible views...when the clouds parted.



The snow on the mountain was crazy. The plants were covered in snow and still a vibrant, bright green. They are incredibly well adapted to survive in the cold.



We almost lost hope of reaching the top. However, we made it and made a celebratory snowman!! Please note the...amazing... view behind us (clouds)



On our way back, a random gust of wind cleared the clouds to show us the peak we had hiked to! No more than 5 minutes after this picture was taken, we were engulfed in clouds again.




Last weekend some friends and I hired a guide and climbed up to the first glacier of Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. It takes 6 more hours of hiking in the glacier to reach the top of this volcano.

Hiking through volcanic ash to the refuge.



Beautiful views and the start of the snow. Our friend Paul from England didn´t bring proper hiking boots and literally could not walk on the icy slope.



At the first glacier. We all played with pick axe and helped global warming chip away at the ice. That´s our guide on the left there.



The heavens cleared up for a second to show us the peak of Cotopaxi.



Then it started to thunderstorm and hail. We were kinda bummed cuz we were suppsed to mountain bike down the mountain. Eventually we decided the percipitation wasn´t too bad and thunder sounded far away, so we biked in the rain.

AMAZON!

Last weekend we ventured into the tropical Amazon rainforest.

After a 25 minutes plane ride, a 30 minute bus ride, a 1.5 hour oversized-canoe ride, a 1 hour "chiva" ride, and another 2 hour canoe ride, we arrived at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station of the University of San Francisco (in Quito) . The research station is in a secluded part of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest right on the edge of Yasuni national park. The Station is dedicated to researching and educating others on the amazing biodiversity of the area.

Here is the Station´s website for more information:
http://192.188.53.69/tiputini/

We stayed in small cabins that only had electricity for a couple hours a day. All of the water we used was filtered from the Tiputini River and eventually returned to the River. We were only allowed to use one kind of biodegradble soap so as not to pollute the River. Most of the food we ate we brought with us on the canoe and took the garbage back on our return trip.

On Saturday we started off the day with a walk through the rainforest with our guide. He pointed out and told stories about many different species of flora and fauna we passed. I kept a list of species we saw if anyone is interested. I didnt post it cuz its really long. We trekked through muddy trails to a lagoon where we saw caimans (rainforest small-alligator-type things)!! We bailed a lot of rainwater out of a very sketchy looking, tiny, unstable, canoe. Then we hopped in to get a closer look at the wildlife of the lagoon. Our guide paddled us around the lake and we got as close as 6 feet from the Caiman.

Would you get into this canoe?

Caiman!

After we safely made it back to land, we hiked a little further to a tower. We climbed approximately a million stairs to reach the top of the rainforest and witness incredible views of the tree tops. Here our guide gave us this fruit to press against our hands for ten minutes. It was one of the fruits indigenous tribes use to dye designs onto their skin and after about twenty mintues we all had a blueish black spot on our hands. (We called our group the "Manos Pintadas") We walked through and learned more about the rainforest for two hours or so more to make it back to the Station for lunch.

We ate ants. They were lemoned flavored and delicous.

After lunch some (we had real food too) friends and I jumped into the Tiputini River to swim with the Pirhanas, Anacondas, and assortment of parasites. The guides told us it was safe and we trusted them. The only thing we were worried about was this parasite that can detect pee, climb up your urethra, live there, and grow spikes. Apparently its incredibly painful and requires surgery to remove. Supposedly its pretty rare, but we were all careful not to pee in the River.

In the afternoon we took to the trees again, this time donning harnesses with caribeaners and crossing reaallllyyy high, sketchy looking bridges. The safety regulations were not rigorous. When one girl realized she was missing her second safetly carribeaner, the guide told her she could go ahead, just be careful when she wasn´t attached to anything. We were there just before sunset and the views were unbelievable.

That night we watched a presentation of the Station´s Photo Project that is sponsered by National Geographic. They have various cameras set up in the rainforest with motion/heat detectors to take pictures of animals that humans rarely get to see. We saw incredible pictures of jaguars, tapiers, monkeys, and animals I have never heard of. National Geographic chose to sponser this Research Station out of nine locations they visited world-wide because it has such incredible biodiversity.

That night we fell asleep to the beautiful sounds of the rainforest. I cant describe it in words nor post the sounds in pictures, but the nights there sound like they should be a "sleep" option on an alarm clock.

The next day we ventured up a different tower and leanred more about the rainforest. After lunch we napped in the library, the one air conditioned building there with controled humidity. In the afternoon we went for a "flotada," where we put on life jackets and float down the river. Again careful not to pee, we relaxed and let the current push us along for about 1 or 2 hours. The Tiputini drains into the Napo River which drains into the Amazon River. Apparently it would have taken 3 to 4 days for us to float to the Amazon.

Unfortunately we didnt see any snakes hanging down from the vines we were passing :( But we saw plenty of beautiful birds and had plenty of terrified moments when a branch or leaf brushed up on our leg underwater.

The sun was setting as we headed back to the Station on our canoe. Standing on the front of the boat, with the wind against my body, only water below me, and rainforest and a sunset in front of me was one of the most beautiful things Ive experienced.

That night we ventured back into the rainforest with flashlights for a nighthike! We saw the biggest spiders I´ve seen in my life (I´ve seen some big spiders) and cute, tiny, poisionous frogs.

The next day we did the whole journey to the Station backwards. During our Chiva ride we were stopped by an angry indigenous man from a local tribe. We were passing through his land and he demanded that we pay a toll to be able to pass through his land. We were held up for like 35 minutes before our main guide finally drove up and settled things. I don´t know exactly how the politics or land-use rights of the issue works, but I heard that someone was threatened with a machete. That could have just been a rumor though.

We made it home safely. I didn´t get too many bug bites and I didnt get sick this time. One dude was covered in what we think were ant bites. We counted 56 on one of his arms and didnt bother with the rest of his limbs.

All in all it was an incredible trip. People keep asking if I liked the Galapagos or the Amazon better, but you cant really compare them. The Galapagos have such an open, clear, in-your-face beauty. The rainforest is a lot more mysterious, secretive, and hides a lot of its most amazing features. I loved them both.