Almost home

As of tomorrow I will officially be able to:

1. Drink water out of the tap
2. Throw toilet paper in the toilet
3. Eat salads without worrying about getting a bacterial infection
4. Pay for something that costs $3 with a $20 bill
5. Not get cat calls every 5 steps down the street (well, maybe)
6. Feel safe walking around with my camera/more than $40/any other valuable items
7. Not eat ham, rice, or beets all the time
8. Sleep in my own bed

I'm pretty excited. I have to be at the airport at 5:15 tomorrow morning, but two of my friends are on the same flight as I am so I'll have some company while I wait to actually take off. I'm really sad to leave and say goodbye to the great friends I've made over the past three and a half months, but I'm also very excited to see my family and get to be in my own house!

The beginning of the end

Hi Everyone,

On Sunday morning our whole group reunited for the first time in a month and headed to La Hesperia, which is located about two and a half hours south of Quito via a very, very curvy road. A few people got carsick, but other than that we all made it to the farm safe and sound.

When we got to the reserve we settled in to our rooms, had lunch, and then started ISP presentations. I was the first to present, which wasn't nerve wracking at all because I had written and thought about the same information for about two weeks at that point. My presentation went really well, everyone had good questions for me, and a lot of people told me I did a really good job afterward. It felt nice to get it over with early so I could enjoy the other presentations, and after presenting I also felt a lot better about my project and the work/analysis that I did.

It was really interesting to hear about everyone else's projects because they were all so different. Everybody did really cool things, and the presentations were all really good too. It was also just fun to all be together again, hanging out, cracking jokes, and telling stories from ISP. While we were at La Hesperia we also had a session about re-entry and what we were excited about and worried about in terms of going back to the U.S. I think it's going to be a little weird to go back, especially because it's going to be such a drastic climate change, but I'm excited all the same.

We got back to Quito mid-day on Wednesday, and we're all staying in the hostel where we were during orientation week. We have a lot of free time now, which is nice because we have time to run errands and buy last minute presents. This morning we had Spanish interviews to see how we've improved over the semester, and we have the rest of the day free to do whatever we want. Tomorrow we have a goodbye lunch with the entire group and our Academic Directors, which will be really nice but also sad. It's hard to believe that three months here went by so quickly, and that after Saturday I won't be seeing many of these people ever again. This trip has been absolutely amazing, I've had so many great experiences and met so many great people. I'm excited to go home and see my family and friends, but I'm definitely going to miss it here.

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Dear ISP, we're over.

Today, after chopping up half a forest with my machete, hugging almost 100 trees to measure their DBHs, sticking a light meter in endless vine tangles, trying to analyze data with statistics I forgot how to use, and two straight days of writing, I am finally done with my ISP.

While it does feel like a great accomplishment to have done all I did in a month and I'm proud of myself for problem solving out in the jungle, collecting all of my data, and using it to write a solid paper without any help, I'm left feeling a little disappointed. My results really weren't all that conclusive which was frustrating because it was hard to interpret and draw conclusions from them. I also feel like I could have collected more data, and that that would've raised the caliber of my project. I'm also feeling disappointed because after planning on writing my paper in Spanish for the two and a half months before ISP started, I ended up having to write in English for two reasons, the first because I didn't have enough time to write my paper in Spanish and then get it corrected by a native speaker, and the second because I don't know how to say "standard deviation," "Bonferroni's Multiple Comparison Test" or "statistically significant" in Spanish. I think my paper turned out to be of a higher quality in English than it would have been in Spanish, but I'm still a little bummed that I didn't get to write in Spanish after having my heart set on it for so long.

But what's done is done, and I just have a few small things left to do before I officially finish up all of my ISP work. Last night I took my paper to get copied and bound, and it was pretty cool to get it back looking all official. Tomorrow the entire group leaves for La Hesperia, which is a reserve/farm to the south of Quito. We're going to be there until Wednesday morning doing ISP presentations, having group meetings, and filling out lots of forms for SIT. I'm really excited to see everyone and for us all to be together in a big group again. On Wednesday we return to Quito to stay in the hostel where we were for orientation week, and on Saturday I'll be flying home!

I posted some pictures from ISP on the photobucket website, so check those out to see what I was up to!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Twilight and Bull Fights

Two blog posts in three days? You lucky readers, you.

I wanted to do a quick update of my goings on last night and today before I head back out into the internet-barren wilderness of Ecuador (only until Tuesday or Wednesday though).

Last night I went to see the new Twilight movie, New Moon, with my host sister and one of her friends. There were two options at the ticket window, the English version with Spanish subtitles or the dubbed Spanish version. And naturally because I was with two Ecuadorians, and I wasn't the one actually purchasing the tickets, we went to see the dubbed version in Spanish. I was a little worried about how much I would actually understand, but it turned out to be easier than I expected because I read the book already, so I at least knew what was going on if not what the people were actually saying. It also helped that the movie has pretty simple dialogue, so it wasn't too too difficult to follow along.

Today my dad and I went to a bull fight, which was the main reason for my return to Quito this weekend. Earlier in the semester I was driving somewhere with my family, and someone asked me if I liked bull fights. I answered that I'd never seen one, and I was then asked if I'd want to go to one. I said yes, not knowing that there actually are bull fights here, and it was then decided that tickets were going to be bought and I was going to a bull fight. Bull fights only go on for one week out of the year here to celebrate the Fiestas de Quito, which started on Friday. Now I'm definitely not in support of killing innocent animals, but I figured that this might be my only opportunity to see a bull fight in my life, and it was something I wanted to experience. My mom (clarification: real mom) likened it to eating guinea pig, which I think is a good comparison because I don't want to kill a cute little guinea pig and eat it, but I decided that if the opportunity was offered to me I was going to try it.

So this morning my mom and sister picked out an outfit for me to wear (complete with a ridiculous hat, don't worry, there are pictures) and my dad and I headed off to the Estadio de Toros. We bought tickets from a scalper, found our seats, and proceeded to roast in the nearly midday sun (luckily clouds rolled in about half an hour after we got there). The fight started at noon with all of the matadors parading in, and then the first bull was sent into the ring. When the first fight started all I could think was "What was I thinking?! They're actually going to kill that animal!" The first three fights were the hardest for me, but after that I started seeing the art in the fight. All of the passes and the movements that the bull and matador make are beautiful, and some of the pictures that I took are some of my favorites from the entire semester. The matador that I liked best wasn't actually a matador, he was a rejoneador, which I think means that instead of being on foot he was on a horse the entire time. The horses he rode were absolutely gorgeous, and each one did a different trick (he changed horses about 3 times during each fight). The two matadors were also interesting to watch, but I didn't like them as much as the rejoneador.

So now that I have experienced a bull fight for myself, here are my opinions on them: I don't like that they actually kill the bulls, but now that I've seen one I understand why people like bull fights. Without the death and suffering of an innocent creature aspect they are an art form, and it's actually pretty beautiful to watch. So in conclusion: Do I like them? Not really. Would I go to another one? Probably not. Am I glad that I saw one? Yes.

Now I have to actually start working on my paper, because the majority of my weekend has been eaten up by the movies, bull fights, and procrastination. I'll post pictures of ISP/the bull fight when I get back to Quito on Tuesday or Wednesday!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

A Very Ecuadorian Thanksgiving

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving everyone!

I'm spending this weekend in Quito with my host family which has been really helpful in reducing the Thanksgiving-induced homesickness I was experiencing on Thursday. Here's what I've been up to since I last posted:

A few days ago (Tuesday? Wednesday? I'm not 100% sure) Daniel convinced me to skip working on my plots in the afternoon and go on a hike with him. We hike a trail called Tranquilo, which means "calm" in Spanish and is one of the biggest misnomers ever. The trail is a loop and basically goes up a mountain during the first half and then back down the mountain during the second half. The trail information sign says that it takes 4 to 5 hours to hike the entire trail, but Daniel said that that is the "tourist time" and we were going to do it in 2. I prepared myself for a very painful 2 hours.

The trail turned out to be not too bad, and we easily made it in 2 hours. The beginning was pretty tough because there were a lot of really steep parts, but once you got up a ways the views were absolutely amazing. We started hiking at 2, so when we got to the peak of the trail the clouds were just starting their afternoon descent down the mountain. Everything was so green and foggy and full of trees, it was like we were in The Lord of the Rings or something. Tranquilo is rarely hiked and it's really easy to get lost. At one point Daniel told me to go first and point whenever I saw a sign directing me to see if there were enough signs/if they were in the right places (I only got lost once!). When we got to the end instead of heading straight back to the lodge we went to the natural swimming hole in the river that runs past the reserve and jumped in. The water was really cold but it was a nice end to a fun hike.

Other than that my week was pretty much taken up by data collection. Thursday was my last day of collecting data for my project, and I didn't realize until about 9:30 in the morning that it was actually Thanksgiving and I was out in the forest in Ecuador measuring light. My "Thanksgiving dinner" consisted of chicken (it's a bird, so close to turkey), potatoes (not mashed, but still potatoes) and beets (as far as I'm concerned, not traditional Thanksgiving fare). My Thanksgiving continued with a mini breakdown (fueled by homesickness and stress) after lunch. After dinner Daniel and I watched a movie (Michael Clayton, which has nothing to do with Thanksgiving) and then he gave me a Maquipucuna shirt, which was really nice. I've decided that I'm going to consider this weekend with my host family my Thanksgiving because a) I'm spending time with family and b) I saw a turkey today when I went to the supermarket with my mom.

On Friday Daniel drove me to Nanegal, which is the biggest town close to Maquipucuna, so that I could catch a bus to Quito. It was the first Ecuadorian bus ride lasting more than 30 minutes that I'd ever taken alone, so I was a little nervous, but Daniel stayed with me until the bus came. The ride went off without a hitch and the only problem was that I was so hungry the entire time I was ready to eat my own hand. When we arrived at the bus station in Quito there were taxis conveniently placed next to where the buses come in, so I took one to my house because I was far too hungry to try and take a bus there. When I got to my house everyone was so excited to see me, and it felt so much like coming home that all the Thanksgiving homesickness I was feeling immediately went away. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening just hanging out with everyone and greeting family members as they came home one by one. It was really nice to see everyone and they were all very excited and happy to see me. Now all I have to do is motivate myself to start my ISP paper!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

No, I have not been eaten by a bear

Hello faithful blog readers,

I'm sorry for being MIA for so long! I promise that this post will get you up to speed on what I've been doing for the past 3 weeks. The week before ISP started was our finals week and was full of exams, presentations, papers, and lots and lots of stress. That was when I hit my requisite "I'm-done-with-study-abroad-and-I-just-want-to-go-home" point, and I was not excited for ISP at all. Things started to look up once I actually got here and settled in, but it was really difficult to leave my host family and everything I've known for the past two months in Quito.

I'm staying at the Maquipucuna Reserve, which is owned by the Maquipucuna Foundation (www.maqui.org if you want to check it out), an NGO devoted to conservation and the like. The reserve is located about two hours to the northwest of Quito and is absolutely enormous and gorgeous. There is one small part that has the lodge and trails, but the majority of the reserve is protected, untouched forest. The reserve is located in the cloud forest ecosystem which is home to a lot of birds, plants, insects, and mammals including the spectacled (or Andean) bear, the only bear native to South America.

Spectacled bears have a mostly vegetarian diet, and they especially like this little fruit called an "aguacatillo" which means little avocado in Spanish. The forest around the reserve is full of these trees, and the bears will climb all the way up the tall, skinny trunk to get to the tiny little fruits at the top. My project is basically to try and figure out why the bears eat more in certain stands of trees than in others. To do this I'm making four 30 m x 30 m plots in different parts of the forest and measuring the DBH (diameter at breast height) of all the trees in the plot in order to figure out the density and basal area of trees in the area. I'm also measuring how much tree cover there is in the plot as well as assessing the understory vegetation.

I originally wasn't thrilled about measuring trees for an entire month, but it's actually pretty cool to be out in the field doing research completely on my own. Even if I don't get any significant results I'm already learning a lot from this, like how to properly use a machete, how to eyeball if a tree has a DBH of less than 10 cm (I don't measure ones that are less than that), and how to tell if a tree is an aguacatillo based on the smell of its bark alone. I'm also getting to help out with the camera traps, setting them up and revising them, and it's been cool learning how to do that as well.

I haven't seen any bears yet, but I do have some other fun anecdotes from my two weeks here:

1. My advisor, Santiago, drove me here from Quito on the first day of ISP both to introduce me to people here and help me get settled in and put up another camera. That meant that on my first day here we skipped lunch and walked 5 hours in order to set up the camera. Not exactly the introduction to ISP that I was expecting.

2. On Thursday and Friday of last week Santiago, Cristian (Santiago's assistant) and I were in Yunguilla, which is another reserve that borders Maquipucuna, to revise the two cameras there and set up a new one. We "camped out" on Thursday night in someone's house (a farmer who wasn't living there at the moment) and they taught me to play Cuarenta, an Ecuadorian card game that I still don't completely understand. On Friday we walked back to Maquipucuna on a trail created 500 years ago by the Yumbos, an indigenous people who acted as guides for people who wanted to cross the Andes between the sierra and the coast. The trails they made are called coluncos, and some parts of them were used so much that the actual trail is sunken and there are walls on either side of it. It was pretty cool to get to go on that trail, but it was a very long day of walking.

3. On Saturday this American couple, Todd and Nicole, showed up without a reservation and asked if they could camp here. Daniel (the manager here) let them camp in front of the biological station (where I live) which turned out to be a really great thing. They stayed for 5 days, and it was really awesome to get to know them. They also helped me make two of my plots, which was such a huge help. They also saved me from being alone on Sunday and Monday while Daniel (the only other person who lives here) was in Quito.

4. On Wednesday Daniel and four of the guys who work here were going to try and make a trail to this 60 m waterfall that is supposedly somewhere in the forest. Todd, Nicole, and I decided to tag along just for fun, and so we all set out in the morning with box lunches and machetes (well, we three Americans didn't get the machetes). We hiked along the river for a while and then the guys started chopping away and making their own trail through the forest while Todd, Nicole, and I followed carefully behind. After bushwhacking for about 3 hours the guys decided that it would be too hard to get to the waterfall from the trail we were making, so we turned around, had lunch, and then walked back to the reserve. Even though we didn't find the waterfall it was still really fun to get to walk through the primary forest on a newly created trail.

5. On Wednesday morning after I had felt like there was something in my bed for a few nights I asked Todd to look and see if there was actually something there. I was worried that it was a spider or a cockroach or something gross like that. Well, Todd pulled back the blankets and what did we find? A hole chewed through two of them and two baby rodents. Yes, apparently I was deemed an appropriate surrogate mother/source of body heat and some mama rodent (I think it was a mouse) decided to make a nest in my bed. For lack of a better idea Nicole and I put them in a toilet paper roll stuffed with newspaper and toilet paper and put that outside of my door in the hopes that mama rodent would come by and move the babies somewhere more appropriate. When we got back from the waterfall hike the tube was gone, and no babies have appeared in my bed since.

6. While we're on the topic of me playing host to creatures, I currently have more chiggers than any human being should ever have. There are chiggers here, and because of what I'm doing (spending all day traipsing around in the forest) it's pretty much impossible for me to avoid them. Right now I have an outline of my sports bra made of chiggers, as well as a line where my left backpack strap goes across my shoulder, and a sprinkling along the waistband of my pants. Let me tell you, it's a lot of fun. I'm also currently using about 500 times the recommended amount of DEET every time I go outside.

7. None of my plots have turned out to be a perfect 30m x 30m the first time around. With every single one I (or we, I've had help with three of them) have made three 30 m sides, but the fourth always ends up being wrong. Once it was 26m, once 28m, once 18m, and the last one was 50 m. It's a pretty easy mistake to fix, I just think it's funny that it's so hard to make a square in the forest.

8. I learned to play poker! Nicole and Todd taught me and Daniel how to play Texas Hold 'Em, which was pretty exciting because in all the times that people have tried to teach me poker I've never actually learned how to play. I'm absolutely terrible though, so nobody needs to worry about a gambling addiction in my future.

9. One of the most interesting things about being here has been seeing all the tourists who come through. So far there has been a group of birdwatchers from the UK, a group of tourists from Holland, a group of forty 10-year-olds (this was the day I tried to stay in the forest for as long as possible), and a sprinkling of Ecuadorians and Americans. It's also been really cool to get to know the tourists as well as the guides and drivers who come with them. That's probably one of the things I've enjoyed the most about this place, getting to see the behind the scenes parts and how they transition from one group to another, things like that.

So yeah, that's basically what I've been up to. This week I'll be doing more data collection, and then on Friday I'm going back to Quito to spend the weekend with my host family. After that we'll be going to Yunguilla again to check the cameras there and then I'll be here for a few more days before going back to Quito to write my paper. I'm not spending the full month here because it's pretty expensive to stay here, so I'm going back to Quito a little early. We receive $500 from the program for lodging, food, equipment, anything we need for ISP, which basically boils down to $17 per day. It costs $20 plus tax for me to spend one night here (including 3 meals), so my money is getting used up a little faster than most. Luckily I don't need a full four weeks to do my project, so going back to Quito a little early will be nice because I'll have reliable internet and other commodities to help me write my paper. I'll write another blog entry when I have time (and internet)! I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Getting married, Ecuador style

Yesterday I had what I'm assuming is a pretty unique study abroad experience, I went to a wedding with my host family. The bride was my host cousin, Daniela (my dad's niece) and the groom was her fiancee, Carlos. They have been dating since their first year of medical school and just graduated on Thursday. They were getting married so soon after graduating because in Ecuador once you graduate medical school you get sent to a randomly chosen place to work for a year, but if you're married they take that into consideration so Daniela and Carlos will be sent to the same place. They had both saved up for the last year and paid for the wedding completely by themselves, so it was a pretty small wedding but really fun.

Wedding prep for me started on Thursday night when I tried on a bunch of my mom's dresses with my mom and sister to choose one to wear to the wedding. I didn't bring a dress to Ecuador because I just assumed that I'd never be in a situation when I'd need to dress up, but I got pretty lucky because my mom had a lot of old dresses for me to choose from! My mom outfitted me in a dress, shoes to match, jewelry, and a purse because the only one I had was black and my dress was brown. It was really fun trying on the dresses, and when I finally put on the one that I ended up wearing my mom and sister both exclaimed "you look so beautiful!" and ran to get my dad so he could see too.

On Friday my mom, sister, two of my sisters friends and I went to a beauty salon near our house to get manicures and pedicures. I was definitely a little apprehensive about getting a mani/pedi in a foreign country, but one of the other girls on my trip had gotten one a few weeks ago for a wedding her family was going to so I figured that if she was fine, I would be too. I ended up getting a french manicure on my fingers and some sort of dark pinkish red nail polish on my toes. Apparently nobody paints their toenails that color, because my mom and sister were both amazed at how good it looked. I only picked it because it was the closest color the salon had to one that I would normally wear, so I was glad that it turned out well!

We had told the stylists at the salon that we were going to come in at 9 on Saturday morning to get our hair done (my sister was in the wedding party and my mom was the master of ceremonies, I was just going along for the ride and a free hairdo) but Ecuadorian time kicked in and eventually at 10:15 on Saturday morning my sister and I went to the salon without my mom because she was telling a story to my brother and didn't want to go yet. And so began our 5 hour stint in the beauty salon. When we got to the salon around 10:30 there were already two people there (there are only two stylists) so we had to wait for them to finish before we could get our hair done. My sister went first, and her hair took a super long time because it's really long and thick and they had to blow it out straight first and then put a ridiculous amount of curlers in. When it was finally my turn I had my sister explain to the stylist what I wanted (I knew I would never be able to explain myself so I showed my mom and sister a picture of the hairstyle I wanted; Schuyler if you're reading this it was your hairdo from gala freshman year!), which was basically my hair curled at the bottom with the front pulled back a little bit. The hairstylist doubted my hair's ability to hold curls, but we decided to go for it and put curlers in my hair (about 1/8th the amount that she used for my sister).

Around then my mom showed up with her hot rollers, and the stylist started on her. It was probably around 1 by then, and Emilia and I were both really really hungry. Eventually my dad came to pick us up and we went home to eat lunch with the rollers still in our hair (they were working on my mom's updo at this point). After lunch we went back to the salon where they finished with my mom's hair and then did mine and Emilia's. By the time we were all finished it was 3:30, and my sister had told me earlier that the wedding ceremony started at 4, so we rushed home and my sister and I did our makeup and got dressed. However, in typical Ecuadorian fashion, what I wasn't told was that the wedding actually started at 6 (I'm not sure if my sister didn't know this either) and even then it started late because the groom didn't show up until 5 minutes before 6.

The wedding ceremony was really interesting. It was a Catholic ceremony and all in Spanish so it was a little hard for me to follow along at times, but there were a few times where I could tell what part of the service we were at and I would respond to the priest in English. My favorite part was when we got to "La Paz" (The Peace) and the priest said "Peace be with you" in Spanish and I answered back very enthusiastically "and also with you!" because I was so excited to know what was going on. Then my brother explained to me that all you do is shake people's hands and say "la paz," which was also exciting because for once I didn't have to be the ignorant American who didn't know what to do. After the ceremony was over the bride and groom were taking pictures with everyone in the wedding party and friends and family, etc. At one point my parents decided it was their turn to be in a picture, so we went up (minus my sister who was MIA) and took a picture with the bride and groom. I felt more than a little awkward and like I didn't belong, but now I can say that I'm in an Ecuadorian wedding album, so I guess that's exciting.

After the pictures we headed over to the reception. We found our table, sat down, my mom introduced the wedding party as they were coming in, we did a champagne toast, and then there were some other speeches by the parents of the novios before we got served dinner. The appetizer was little tiny shrimps in some sort of mayonnaise-y sauce and the main course was a plate with salad, scalloped potatoes, beef with a creamy mushroom sauce, and chicken cordon bleu (I thought the ham inside was undercooked chicken until I got to the end and realized it was actually ham). There was also a guy going around offering people green rice (no idea why it was green) but I declined because I wasn't very hungry and there was a lot of food already on my plate (like the terrible Ecuadorian I am I didn't finish it all, either). After that we got dessert, which was some sort of flan-ish custard-y thing that was heart shaped with red sauce around it. It was kind of weird, but also very pretty.

After dinner the dancing started. I pretty much danced with my brother the entire time and with my dad a few times, which was nice because I didn't have to worry about dancing with strange men who I didn't know. My brother and dad are also great dancers, so it was really fun. Eventually there was a break in the dancing so that the novios could cut the cake, and then they served cake to everyone. It was a little weird tasting and had walnuts in it, but I ate most of my piece which turned out to be a big mistake because right after eating it my brother and I were pulled back out on the dance floor by my uncle and the cake was just sitting in my stomach. Around 12:45 my brother and I both sat down again because our feet hurt and we were both super tired, but our parents were still dancing. My mom told us that we would leave at 1, which meant at 1:05 we started saying goodbye to everyone. Greeting and saying goodbye are super important in Ecuadorian culture, so we basically went around and said chao to EVERYBODY. That also meant kissing everybody on the cheek (the basic Ecuadorian greeting is touching right cheek to right cheek, there isn't any lip contact made), even people I had never met before, which was definitely strange for me. After that we had to go find Emilia, who had fallen asleep at a table just outside of the reception room. We finally got to our house at 1:30, and realized that nobody had the keys to the garage door, so my dad had to dig around until he found a spare set in the car. However, once we got into the carport my mom realized that we didn't have the key to the door of the house, so my brother had to go get his keys from my grandma's house.

All in all it was a really fun night, probably my favorite night that I've spent in Ecuador. It was also really cool to get to see how things are similar and different between weddings here and weddings in the U.S. Here are some of my findings:

- I'm not sure if this was because it was a Catholic wedding or because it was a small wedding, but there weren't any bridesmaids or groomsmen. The wedding party was the parents of the bride and groom, their godparents, one girl who may have been the sister of the groom, and the two flower girls.

- People only gave money as a wedding gift. Each family was given an envelope to put money in for the novios and a box was brought around during the reception for everyone to put their envelope in.

- At the beginning of the reception all the single women and men are called up to do something called "La Liga," which has to do with the garters. The groom takes the first garter off and then asks the men a question (this one was Name a city in Ecuador) and he writes down an answer. Then all the single guys go through one by one saying a city, and whoever says the same city that the groom wrote down gets the garter and chooses a single girl and puts it on her. Then they do the same thing with the single women (that time it was a number between 1 and 20), the groom takes the second garter off the bride, and then they choose a man to put it on the girl who got picked. Luckily I never got picked/said the right answer, because I had absolutely no idea what was going on the entire time.

- The bride doesn't throw her bouquet, she chooses someone to give it to (I think she gave it to her best friend).

- The first dance was the bride with her father and the groom with his mother, and then they switched so that the bride and groom were dancing together.

- Clinking your silverware together means the bride and groom have to kiss (although it appeared that a select few people, not including the bride and groom, actually knew this). I told my family how clinking your knife on your glass means the bride and groom have to kiss, so my dad started doing that and eventually it caught on a little bit.

- While we were eating dinner the DJ was playing power ballads from the 90s in English. It was pretty funny for me, and my family thought it was hilarious when I would sing along.

This is along weekend because Monday and Tuesday are El Dia de los Difuntos (the day of the dead here) and the Independence of Cuenca, which is a city. I'll update on how the rest of my weekend goes!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Galapagos pictures!

I just uploaded my Galapagos pictures (162 on the website, but don't worry, there will be plenty more for slideshows when I get home!) so you can check them out here:

http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad189/cbarr520/Galapagos/?albumview=grid

I made a separate album because there were so many, and I'll post the link on the top of my blog along with the one for my other pictures!

Enjoy!

Caroline

GALAPAGOS.

Wow. I don't even know where to begin with this post. We got back to Quito today around 6pm after spending a week in the most incredible place in the world, the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos were nothing like what I was expecting, which was an archipelago filled with lush, green vegetation. The islands are really dry, which is a result of two cold, major ocean currents that affect the climate of the islands, especially at this time of year. There are some areas that are green, but most of the time we saw cacti mixed with dry vegetation or bare lava rock. These are the conditions that caused the animals that settled on the Galapagos to become so unique, because you have to be really specialized to live in an environment like this. Another thing that I didn't really believe before I got to the islands was that the animals have absolutely no fear of humans. We would walk by sleeping sea lions and blue-footed boobies with chicks or eggs and they would just watch us pass by and then go back to what they were doing before.

On Tuesday we flew into the airport on Baltra island and immediately split up into our smaller groups to go our separate ways. My group has 22 people in it, and we split in half for the Galapagos because it would've been hard (and expensive) to do everything that we did with that many people at one time. My group started our Galapagos adventure on Santa Cruz island where we saw a volcanic crater, a farm with a ton of giant tortoises (not Lonesome George, we never actually got to see him), and walked through an underground tunnel created by a lava flow. We had lunch in Puerto Ayora, which is the only city in the Galapagos, and then got on a lancha (a motorboat) to go to Isabela island where we were having our homestays. The trip from Santa Cruz to Isabela was only supposed to take about 2 hours, but only one of the two motors on the lancha was working so it took us 3 hours, and we were late to our homestays!

Our homestays were in Puerto Villamil, which is the largest settlement on Isabela. My family included my mom Clara, my dad Daniel, and my little brother Justin, who was 8. I was one of only 3 people in our group who were alone in our homestays (everyone else was doubled up) which was a little scary at first but turned out to be a really great experience. Clara was so nice, she took me out the first night to walk around and show me the town and we had a great conversation even though we'd only met a few hours before! She was definitely my favorite mom out of the three homestays that I've had so far. Puerto Villamil is a really cute port town that's a little touristy, but not overwhelmingly so. Everyone rides their bikes around town and when you go into a store everyone seems to know everyone else.

On Wednesday morning we got picked up in our chiva (an open air bus kind of thing) to go snorkeling at a site called Tuneles. We walked around on the really cool lava rock structures for a little while and then got in the water to snorkel. It was the first time I had ever gone snorkeling, which was pretty nerve wracking, and my mask let water in which was really annoying. We got to see some cool fish, including a rare yellow pufferfish. The water was really calm, too, so it was a pretty good first snorkeling experience. On the way back to Puerto Villamil we saw some huge manta rays and sea turtles in the water, which was really cool. When we got back to town we had lunch, and then went to the beach for a little while before heading out in pickup trucks to see some of the sights on the island. We went to the Muro de las Lagrimas, which is a huge wall made of volcanic rock that was built by prisoners who were being punished on the islands. After that we went to a little beach where we saw some marine iguanas as well as another lava cave.

On Thursday we got picked up really early because we were going to climb one of the volcanoes on Isabela called Sierra Negra. People usually ride horses up at least part of the way, but we were walking the entire trail. We got to see the huge crater of Sierra Negra (11 km across), as well as a place called Volcan Chico with a lot of smaller volcanoes and cool volcanic rock formations. As soon as we got onto the rocky part of the path to Volcan Chico it looked like we had been transported to Mars, it was nothing like the hike we had done before. The hike back down the volcano was definitely the hardest part, and we were all very tired and hungry when we got to the bottom. Luckily we were going straight to lunch at this place called Campo Duro, which was a really beautifully landscaped farm type place. We had a delicious and filling lunch there, and got to explore the farm a little bit afterwards. Once we got back to Puerto Villamil we had free time on the beach, where we played frisbee, jumped in the waves, swam with a sea lion, and watched a gorgeous sunset before going back to our homestays for dinner.

On Friday we had to have all of our bags packed and ready to go in the morning because we were leaving for the boat after our activities. We went snorkeling at a site really close to the port called Tintoreras, where we saw a lot of fish as well as a sea turtle in the water. We also saw a bunch of baby marine iguanas and white-tipped reef sharks while we were walking around, but none in the water. After that we enjoyed our last few hours on Isabela on the beach before and after lunch. We were all really bummed to be leaving the island because our homestay families and the town were really nice, but we were all excited for the boat. The other half of the group was talking a lancha to Puerto Villamil, so we got to see them for about half an hour before we had to get on the lancha to go to Puerto Ayora to get on the boat. Our boat was called the San Jose, and it was incredible. The food was great, the crew was super nice, and the boat itself was amazing. When we got there we had a brief presentation about boat safety given to us by our guide, Daniel, and then had dinner before settling into our rooms.

On Saturday I was woken up by Xavier, our Academic Director, saying "whales, guys" through the open window of the room I shared with my friend Rachel. Sure enough there were some small whales swimming not too far away from the boat, which only reinforced the fact that we were in an absolutely amazing place. Where else can you wake up, walk outside of your bedroom, and be greeted by whales? It was super cool. After that we had breakfast and the headed out in the pangas (small motorboats) to San Cristobal, the island we were visiting that day. First we looked at some of the volcanic formations around the island and then headed to the beach to go snorkeling. There were a lot of sea lions on and around the beach, and one of the juveniles was playing with us while we snorkeled! Once we finished snorkeling we walked around on the beach, taking pictures of the sea lions and ghost crabs that were everywhere. After that we got back on the boat and circumnavigated around a huge rock called Leon Dormido where a lot of marine birds nest. After that we went to the main port of San Cristobal, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, where we visited the Centro de Interpretacion (kind of a Galapagos museum) and then had a chance to walk around in the town.

We spent Sunday on Espanola island, which is the oldest of all the islands in the archipelago and has a lot of unique species. The first thing we did was walk around on one of the beaches, where there were a ton of sea lions, and there were even some pups! They were really cute, and it was funny to watch them play. After that we headed back to the boat, got our snorkeling gear, and headed out to snorkel. At one point I looked up out of the water and saw some people back in one of the pangas, which was surprising because usually you only get back in the panga if you're cold or tired, and we hadn't been in the water for very long. It turned out that someone had spotted dolphins out in the water, so we all got in the pangas to chase them. It was a huge pod of dolphins, and they were jumping out of the water all around us, swimming under our pangas, and playing in the bow waves. We tried to snorkel with them, but the minute we got in the water they turned and swam in a different direction. I did see two of them swimming below us, and another girl and I may have seen a shark underneath us as well! That was definitely one of my favorite experiences of the trip.

After we went back to the boat and had lunch we disembarked again to hike a trail that has a lot of blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies, and albatrosses that nest near it. We also saw a bunch of marine iguanas that have a unique red and green coloration, lava lizards, and Espanola mockingbirds. One of the coolest things that happened on our hike (besides being right next to nesting boobies) was when a baby albatross wandered towards us on the path. He was really interested in us, and eventually started trying to eat my friend Teddy's shoe. It was really funny, and also pretty cool being that close to a baby albatross!

On Monday we were on Floreana island, which was the first island to be colonized of the Galapagos. Floreana is the site of the post office barrel, which is a Galapagos tradition where people will leave postcards that they want to send in the barrel and other travelers will come by, see where people want to send the postcards, and then take the ones that they can deliver. You're supposed to hand deliver the postcards that you take so it's a "postage free" form of mail. I took a postcard going to Portland, ME (there weren't any for Massachusetts!) so it'll be a fun day trip to deliver it when I get back to school. While we were at the barrel we saw some huge splashes out in the water, which were humpback whales breaching! We scrapped our plan to walk through a lava tunnel, called the pangas, and went chasing after the whales. It was a mother and calf, and even though it took us a while to reach them we ended up being pretty close and getting to watch them breach and swim for a little while. It was incredible to see that and also be so close to them, and for a lot of people in our group it was the first time that they had ever seen whales!

After chasing the whales we went back to the beach to play a soccer game against the crew from another boat. I didn't play, but it was really fun to watch other people in our group play with our crew against the other crew, and we ended up winning the game! After that a few of us went snorkeling off of the beach, where we saw two sea turtles, a sting ray, an octopus, and three penguins! It was really cool swimming with the penguins, they were so cute! After that we went back to the boat, had lunch, and then hiked around a lagoon on the island where we saw a few flamingos. After that we collected our snorkeling gear from the boat and then went to the Devil's Crown, which is one of the three best snorkeling sites in the Galapagos. The crown is a bunch of rocks sticking up out of the water that form a circle, and there are a ton of fish there because of the way the currents are. We saw sooo many fish there, a lot that we hadn't seen in other places, and also some white-tipped reef sharks! (They don't attack humans, don't worry Mom.)

This morning we got up early to go to Seymour Norte, which is a small island where a lot of marine birds nest. The highlight there was getting to see frigatebirds, especially males with their red pouches inflated trying to court females. We also got to see terrestrial iguanas and fur sea lions, which were also cool. After that we headed to Baltra to go to the airport and start our journey home. I'm really sad that the week is over, because it was an absolutely amazing experience. I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to go to the Galapagos and see all the things that I saw, because there are a lot of people (especially native Ecuadorians) who never get to visit the islands during their lifetime.

I took almost 500 pictures while we were in the Galapagos, and I'm going to post them tomorrow, so check back if they aren't up when you read this!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Rainy days, salsa dancing, and Galapagos prep!

Hola mis amigos,

My weekend was really fun, and also really relaxing, which was a nice change after the stressful week I had. On Friday after lunch I met up with 4 of my program mates (Miriam, Sam, Tim, and Elliot) to go to an artisan market near one of the parks (called El Ejido) in Quito. There were only about 8 stalls, which was a lot smaller than we were expecting, but it was fun to shop around and look at everything. The things being sold were basically the same as what we saw in Otavalo, but we did find some new things, like knitted slippers. I bought an alpaca sweater and a present for my mom, Miriam got headbands, Sam got a sweater, and Elliot bought some of the slippers. Once we were done shopping we met up with another girl, Rachel, who told us that her taxi driver had told her about a different market nearby, which she led us to. It turns out we went to the wrong market, the other one was indoors and much bigger, but by that time we were all pretty much done shopping, so it didn't really matter. After that we went and had dinner at a restaurant that we all enjoyed eating at when we were living at the hostel during orientation week, which was really fun.

On Saturday morning after breakfast I went for a walk with my mom and comadre around Parque la Carolina, in the center of Quito. It was a really nice morning and it was fun to walk with them because the entire time they were either gossiping or telling me stories. The walk around the entire perimeter of the park is 4 km (I think that's about 2.5 miles, but I'm not sure) which made it pretty good exercise too. When we got home I took a shower and then called Miriam, because we had plans to go to the Vivarium, which is like a museum with live reptiles and amphibians in it, that afternoon. It started pouring rain a little bit before we were going to go, though, so we decided to go to the movies instead. We met up at a random mall and our plan was to just pick the movie that started closest to the time when we got there. We got pretty lucky because we ended up with 3 choices, two of which were English movies with Spanish subtitles. We saw I love you, man (Te amo, brother in Spanish) which was really really funny. Miriam and I were definitely the only people who spoke English in the audience, and whenever there would be a funny joke in English that didn't translate to Spanish we would both be cracking up, while everyone else would be completely silent.

It was really fun to go see the movie, but it was very disorienting, especially when we were leaving the theater. It felt like such a normal thing to do and as we were walking out we both felt like we had been magically transported back to the U.S. It was kind of a shock to walk out and realize that everyone outside was going to speak to you in Spanish, not English. After that we both went home, ate dinner, and then later on that night went out salsa dancing with Sam and her German host sister. We went to a small Cuban salsa club, and it was really fun to get to practice the moves we'd learned during orientation week!

Sunday was a pretty low-key day for me, I spent most of it doing work and watching Grey's Anatomy. I also went to the local supermarket (called Supermaxi) with my sister to get some snacks for the Galapagos trip. We leave tomorrow at 6am, and I'm super excited! Our group is going to be split in half the entire week, and half of the time we'll spend in homestays on Isabela island, and the other half will be on a ship going between different islands. We are the only study abroad group that does homestays in the Galapagos, so I'm really excited to get to have that unique experience. My bag is almost packed with all the essentials I'll need for the week: sunscreen, flippers, mask, snorkel, and lots and lots of snacks. I'll be sure to take LOTS of pictures and post them as soon as I get home!

Hasta luego!
Caroline

Guayasamin, Twenty dollar bills, and Scary phone calls

Hi Everyone,

Even though I just updated yesterday I wanted to write a quick post to tell you about my day today. We had an excursion with our spanish classes this afternoon, and my class and another class went to a museum called La Capilla del Hombre, which showcases the work of Oswaldo Guayasamin. Guayasamin is considered to be the best Ecuadorian painter, and is probably the most famous. He came from indigenous roots, and many of his paintings explored race and race relations. His style is kind of Picasso-ish, and all of the paintings we saw were really, really cool. I highly recommend looking up his paintings on Google Images, because they're awesome. His most famous work is called "Ternura" and depicts a mother embracing her child. Most of his paintings are about the suffering and misery of the human existence, so this one really stands out because of the bright colors he used and the loving scene he depicted. Hearing the stories behind the paintings were also really cool, he has one work called "Mutilados" that he made in remembrance of all those who were tortured and mutilated during the Spanish Civil War. The painting is actually six different canvases which can be rearranged into almost 3 million different placements, but the meaning of the painting remains the same no matter what arrangement the canvases are in.

The museum was really cool, and we were all really glad that we went there instead of somewhere else. We all hit up the "gift shop" before leaving, where they had everything from 40 cent postcards to original paintings priced at over $2,000. I bought a small poster sized reprint of one of his paintings called "Quito Negro" and a postcard of another painting that I really liked called "Lagrimas de Sangre" that was a little too dark for me to buy in a full poster size.

This brings me to another topic which has recently become an annoyance for most of the group: money. The official currency of Ecuador is the U.S. dollar, which makes things easy for us because we don't have to learn a new currency, but also hard because money has a much different value here. At this point in the trip almost everyone has taken money out of the ATM, which, just like American ATMs, gives you mostly $20 bills. In the U.S. it's perfectly fine if you pay for something that costs $1.50 with a twenty, because there are very few stores that won't have change for that. Here, almost nobody can make that kind of change, only big stores or supermarkets, and even they will ask if you have something smaller. So we've all had to learn how to pay with twenties strategically, which is really really annoying. I used the last of my small bills buying my poster at the Guayasamin museum, and all I was left with in my wallet was a $20 bill and 45 cents (and four more twenties at my house). In order to have bus fare for tomorrow I had to go to a papeleria (paper store) near my house and buy notebooks (that I don't really need, although I'll probably use them for ISP) and pencils. Thankfully they were able to break my twenty, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the other four that I have...

When I got home I had to call my ISP advisor to set up a meeting before we leave for the Galapagos (Tuesday, I can't wait!) which was definitely the scariest phone call I've ever had to make. Talking to people in Spanish in person is one thing, but on the phone is a whole different story. Since you can't see the person you can't pick up on facial clues or body language, which makes it a lot harder to understand them (the whole talking fast in Spanish thing doesn't really help either). But I made the call and set up the meeting (thankfully my advisor speaks very clearly) and now I'm getting even more excited for my ISP!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Otavalo, Quito Sightseeing, and Roses

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I was a little sick last week (a side effect of my malaria pills) and I've been really busy this week with work. I finally have time to kill now, so I'll let you know what I've been up to!

On Saturday I went to Otavalo, a city 2 hours north of Quito, with two of my friends, Rachel and Miriam. Otavalo is famous for its weaving as well as its huge Saturday artisan market. We took a bus from Quito (it only cost $2!) and got to Otavalo around noon and started shopping! The market was completely overwhelming at first, during the week it's confined to one area called La Plaza de los Ponchos, but on Saturday there are stalls set up on all the streets around the Plaza. We all had a few things in mind that we wanted to get, and decided to do a sweep of the market to see what there was before we actually started shopping. One thing that my family warned me about before we went is the prices because a lot of the vendors will jack up the prices for certain items when they see that someone is a gringo (white person). We all bargained for almost everything that we bought (usually you don't bargain for something that costs $5 or less) but it got very tiring by the end of the day.

For sale in the market are a lot of woven goods (sweaters, wall hangings, tablecloths, blankets, hats, scarves, bags), jewelry, traditional indigenous outfits, animals and other things carved from wood, paintings made by indigenous artists, and even modern clothing and shoes from American stores. I bought an alpaca wool sweater, earrings, a hat, and even an Ecuadorian national soccer team jersey! It was a really fun day, and we all felt a little shocked by how much money we had spent at the end of the day (not much by American standards, but a lot for here) but we were definitely happy with our purchases.

On Sunday my family took me around Quito to see some of the places that I hadn't been to yet. First we went to the first church in Quito, which was cool but we couldn't go inside because they were having Mass. After that we went to a park across the street that has a fake little lagoon area and my dad rowed us all around in a rowboat. He wasn't a very good rower, but we made it all the way around eventually. My mom kept saying that now I could tell everyone at home about the yacht ride I went on in Ecuador, which was pretty funny. After we got out of our "yacht" my brother and sister and I played this 'game" where you basically shoot a dart out of a gun at a wall covered in candy wrappers, and if you hit a wrapper you get that candy. We all ended up getting something, which was good because I was not very confident in my shooting abilities!

After that we went to La Virgen de El Panecillo, which is a huge statue of the Virgin of Quito that was built on top of a hill. The Virgin statue was a little underwhelming, but there were some really great views of Quito from the hill and also the terrace on the statue (there's a stairway you can climb inside of the statue). Next we drove to El Centro Historico to walk around and visit a church and a museum there. The church we went to was la Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, which was really big and really cool. We almost didn't get in though, because our tickets were $3 all together, we only had a $20 bill, and the woman at the ticket desk couldn't make change. My brother ended up going to a store and buying a notebook so we would have change to get in! The church was really beautiful inside, and almost every inch of the ceiling and walls was covered in gold.

After that we went to a museum called El Museo Alberto Mena Caamano. I'm pretty sure it was about the history of the independence of Ecuador, but our guide spoke very fast Spanish so it was a little hard for me to keep up. The museum was basically a bunch of wax sculptures of different people who were parts of important historical events, so it was a little funny to be staring at a person and not really be sure of who they were and what they did. Once the tour of the museum was over we were going to have lunch (it was 3, I was starving) at a restaurant in El Centro, but it closed at 2:30, so we ended up going to one of the malls in Quito called Quicentro Shopping to have lunch. We didn't get there until 4, and at that point I was ready to eat anything that was put in front of me! We ate in the food court and I had a pretty lackluster plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, but I was so hungry that I was just happy to have food. After lunch we walked around the mall for a little while, got ice cream, and then got in the car, which I assumed meant we were going home. We actually ended up going to El Parque Metropolitano, one of the parks in Quito, and went for a walk. It was pretty cold at that point and I was really tired but it was nice to walk around with my family, and after our walk we played on the playground for a little while, which was pretty fun. After that we finally headed home, where I started to tackle the massive amounts of work I had to start for this week.

Yesterday we went on a field trip to a flower farm and a rose plantation. The flower/rose industry is huge in Ecuador, and Ecuador is one of the biggest producers of roses in the world. The farms were both really interesting, the flower farm was much smaller and mostly produces baby's breath and delphinia. The rose plantation was a much bigger, industrialized place that's part of a huge corporation called RosaPrima. We got to see one of their greenhouses, and also how they sort, pack, and ship the roses. They even let us make our own bouquets of roses to take home with us! It was really interesting to see both of the farms, because I had never given much thought to where flowers like baby's breath and roses actually come from. It was also a little confusing for all of us because we had learned before about how bad the rose industry is (there is a lot of pesticide use, pollution, and exploitation of workers, especially women) but at the farms they kept telling us that we should buy more flowers because each flower is tied to one of the workers and their family. We had a discussion with our ADs today about what we had seen yesterday and they told us that the best thing to do is to buy local flowers, because importing flowers is so destructive for the environment.

Today was a pretty exciting day for me because I chose my ISP! I will be spending four weeks in the mountains (near where we were for our cloud forest excursion) using camera traps to study spectacled bears! Spectacled bears (also called Andean bears) are the only bears native to South America, and very little is known about them. I'll be setting up camera traps, mapping where I put them, and using the developed photos to identify individuals, among other things. I'm really excited to finally have a project so that I can start planning and getting ready for ISP!

I put some new pictures up from my weekend, so click the link at the top right hand corner of the blog page to get to them!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

How a coati saved my life

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday we got back from our excursion to the Oriente, and it was absolutely amazing! We were at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, which is run by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. TBS is in a very remote part of the Oriente, there were no people around us except for a few indigenous villages across the river. To get to TBS we had to take a half hour flight from Quito to a city called Coca, then a 5 minute bus ride to a hotel, then a 1.5 hour boat ride, then a 1.5 hour bus ride, and finally another 2.5 hour boat ride before we actually got to the station. Most of the Oriente is parceled up into blocks, each of which is controlled by a separate oil company. To to TBS we had to go through Block 16, which is controlled by Repsol, a Spanish oil company. We had to pass through their checkpoint to get on the bus to take us to our second boat, and they put our bags through an x-ray machine and made us walk through a metal detector. It was very official and a little nerve wracking, but we all made it through okay.

For the first four mornings that we were at TBS we were split into four groups, and each group did one of four activities. The morning activities were going up into a canopy tower, going on a suspended bridge, taking a boat down the river, and doing a hike. For each activity we had an indigenous guide (most of them were Quichua) which was awesome because they all knew so much about the plants and animals in the rainforest. The activities were all really fun, and we saw some really cool stuff. The only downside was that we had to start at 5:30 am, because starting later would mean a ton of bugs at the tower and bridge, and more heat and humidity. Once we got back from whatever we were doing we would have breakfast, and then the rest of our day would be filled with lectures, field exercises, and other activities. We had lunch at noon, and then usually a break until 2 or 2:30 where we could play cards in the air-conditioned lab, go swimming in the river, or anything else we felt like doing. After the break we would have more activities until 5, lectures from 5:30 to 7, dinner at 7, and then more lectures or activities until 9. It was a very grueling schedule, but we packed a lot of really cool stuff into 6 days.

Here are some highlights from the week:

On Tuesday we had a "drop off" where we spent about two and a half hours by ourselves in a designated spot along one of the trails. A guide dropped us off and picked us up, and it was a time for us to make our own observations about the forest and stuff like that. While my group was walking along the trail behind our guide, Don Meyer, we came to a bridge that was basically just two wooden planks. Don Meyer stopped to point something out to us, and seven of us were standing on the bridge when he stopped. All of a sudden we heard a crack, and then the bridge broke! We all slid down into the little creek below us, and thankfully the worst injuries sustained were scrapes. It was pretty funny though, and afterward someone decided that we were all on "The Ultimate Drop Off."

On Friday after our morning activities we split up into "interest groups" and hiked to different places to see/learn about different things. One group went to a bird lek (a communal mating ground), another group went to see tent-making bats, another group learned about ethnobotany, and my group went to a saladero (salt lick). My group consisted of me, three of my friends, and our guide Ramiro. As we were walking along the path Ramiro stopped all of a sudden and pointed into the forest, where we could all see a small reddish animal that looked kind of like a fox. It was really close to us, but didn't notice us until it got to the path so we all got to see it really well. After it ran away Ramiro told us that it was a coati, which are pretty rare to see. About 15 seconds later we heard a huge crash ahead of us and saw the top of a tree falling down on the path. Ramiro gave us all high fives and told us that if we hadn't stopped to watch the coati, we would've been directly underneath the tree when it fell. So basically the coati saved all of our lives, and we all decided that it was Ramiro's spirit animal keeping us safe in the forest.

After dinner on Friday we went for a night hike (with guides and flashlights) and got to see a lot of cool things that aren't out during the day. We saw a lot of walking sticks, lizards, insects, and even a group of nocturnal monkeys! I think my group was the only one to see the nocturnal monkeys, which was pretty cool.

Saturday was our designated insect day, so we spent the morning running around and catching different insects. I definitely was not excited at first, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. My group caught some really cool bugs, and we saw a lot of interesting things that we normally wouldn't have noticed.

On Sunday we had a "free day" where we got to sign up to go on all day hikes or follow one of the two monkey researchers around for the day. I ended up following Dan, one of the researchers, around for the day with four other students. Dan studies dusky titi monkeys, and is working on a project about monogamy. In the morning we followed a group of half habituated titis around, which meant we were basically clambering around in the forest trying to find the monkeys. In the afternoon we went to a habituated group that had a new baby that wasn't even a week old! It was so incredible to see the difference between the two groups, the habituated group didn't care at all that we were there and let us get pretty close to them. It was a really really fun day, and it was really cool to get to see what kind of research they do at the station.

Even though the heat and humidity were at times unbearable, the trip was absolutely incredible, and it was definitely one of the best weeks of my life. It was amazing to be in a forest that was so completely undisturbed by humans, and we got to see a lot of things that most people don't. It was also really cool to be in a place with so many types of monkeys (there are 8 species at TBS, I saw all but one) that live practically in your backyard. It was really sad to leave yesterday, but I'm really glad that I got to see everything and experience everything that I did there.

I put some new pictures up on my photobucket account, so check them out if you get a chance!

http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad189/cbarr520/Ecuador/?albumview=grid

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Today, I ate guinea pig.

This is going to be a short entry because I leave for the Oriente at 7:30 tomorrow morning and I've barely packed anything! This weekend was really fun, Malte, the German host student that my family had before me, came back for the weekend, and it was really nice to have him around.

On Saturday morning we went to a soccer game that Carmita was playing in with some of the women she works with at the airport. The game was in a military base next to the airport, and the fields were right next to two of the runways, so planes were taking off and landing while we were watching soccer, which was pretty cool. There was also a plane graveyard next to the fields, so Emilia, Belen, Valeria, and I all went to take pictures with the airplanes. There was one that you could actually climb into, so naturally we all did that, even if we weren't supposed to. After the game we picked Rodrigo up from work and then went home to have a quick lunch before Carmita, Rodrigo, Malte, Emilia and I left to go to Molinuco, a reserve in the mountains where they have all sorts of cool waterfalls and stuff. We hiked around for about an hour before getting to the biggest waterfall, called Pita. It was sooo beautiful, and really really amazing. We all took pictures around it, and then decided that we had to go in the water, which was absolutely freezing! And even though we were far away from the actual waterfall, the spray was so powerful that we all ended up soaking wet, which made the hike back pretty uncomfortable. All in all, it was a very fun day.

Today we were having Rodrigo's family over for a special lunch because his cousin who lives in the U.S. was visiting. Because it was such a special occasion we were serving cuy, which is the Ecuadorian name for guinea pigs. We all helped with the preparations, Malte was the barbeque master who cooked the cuy and the chicken, and I helped wash some of the furniture with my sisters. The family started arriving around 1, and we all sat outside and chatted while lunch was being finished. I was sitting next to one of Rodrigo's sisters who was very nice, but also talked very quietly so it was really hard to understand her sometimes, especially when other people were being noisy. Lunch started with soup (naturally) and then the main course was served, which included potatoes, rice, lettuce, avocado, chicken, and cuy. The cuy had been cut up into various sections, and at first I had a chest portion, which Rodrigo said I couldn't eat because it wasn't good. Next I got a front leg, which is better but still not the best, so eventually I ended up with a hind leg. They told me to eat the muscle part, which was really hard for several reasons. First, the foot (complete with toes and toenails) was still attached, which made it a little grosser to eat. Second, the leg is so small it's hard to actually get the meat into your mouth, and third, the bones are so fragile that they break really easily, and if you bite in the wrong place (like I did one time) you get a mouthful of bone.

Even though cuy is a huge delicacy here (in a restaurant it costs $15, while filet mignon costs $10) most of my family members admitted to not liking it, which I found interesting. I didn't like it very much either, it tasted kind of like fish, but I'm glad that I tried it. After everyone ate we put on music and started dancing, which was very fun. Malte and I both told everyone that we knew how to salsa, so naturally they made us demonstrate our skills. We were also taught how to do the merengue, cumbia, and a traditional Ecuadorian dance that I forget the name of. It was really fun, and also very tiring because whenever a new song came on Rodrigo's father, brother, or cousin would ask me to dance and try to teach me some new steps.

After that everybody left, and we drove Malte to the bus station because he had to go back to the coast to teach his classes tomorrow. After that we went to pick up Camilo at a friend's house, and then stopped at KFC to get dinner. I almost never eat KFC at home, so it was really funny that I was going to eat it here. A little while after dinner my parents and I were having tea in the kitchen, and my mom had peanut butter, grape jelly, and bread on the table. She told me that she had never tried peanut butter with bread before, and that she really liked it. Then I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and explained to them that this was a really traditional lunch in the U.S. and everybody eats it. My mom tried it and liked it, and then I made Emilia try it too and she liked it as well. It was really fun to show my family something about my life at home, and my mom was really excited because now she has something to make for Emilia's lunch that isn't ham and cheese!

Now I have to go pack my backpack for tomorrow, but while I'm gone (I'll get back Monday October 5th) I'll leave you with some new pictures from my adventures on Saturday! (Sunday and Oriente pictures will be put up as soon as possible when I get back.) Here's the link for the pictures:

http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad189/cbarr520/Ecuador/?albumview=grid

Enjoy, and I'll update when I return from the Oriente!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Paramo and Food!

Hey all,

Yesterday we went on a one day excursion to the Paramo, which is a mountain ecosystem characterized by cold temperatures, strong winds, and strong UV rays. We prepared ourselves for any type of weather, because our Academic Directors told us that in the past they've had everything from snow to hot sun on this excursion. When we got off the bus at our first stop to walk around and learn about some of the plants we were met with really strong wind, horizontal rain (the wind was so strong that it was blowing the rain sideways), and cold. We were all bundled up in jackets, rain coats, hats, and gloves, and it felt very reminiscent of New England! We walked around for about 20 minutes before getting back on the bus and driving to another stop where we walked through a forest that looked like it came straight out of Lord of the Rings. Everything in the forest, from the trees to the ground, was covered with a thick layer of epiphytes, lichens, and mosses. We all got really dirty from scrambling up and down the muddy path, but it was so cool to walk around in a forest that was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

When we finished our walk in the forest we got back on the bus and drove to a lake to do FIP work. FIP stands for Field Investigation Project, which is a project that we do to learn different methods of conducting field work. We're split up into 4 groups, Birds, Insects, Botany, and Environmental methods. We do field work to study something in every ecosystem that we visit, and use different methods each time. I'm in the bird group which is pretty fun because we basically get to walk around looking at birds while other groups have to climb around on rocks to count plants or catch insects or test water. After we had our FIP time we ate lunch, and then headed off to Papallacta, which is a semi-touristy place with a bunch of hot springs. Because it was a weekday there weren't a lot of people there, and it was really nice to just sit back and relax in the hot springs after a rainy and cold morning. We stayed there for about an hour and a half and then headed back to Quito.

I had plans to go to the ballet with my family last night, so when I got back to my house I showered, ate dinner, and then my dad drove my mom and I to the bus station (my sister was supposed to come too, but she fell asleep in the afternoon and didn't get any of her homework done!). We took the bus to the Teatro Central, where we met up with one of Carmita's friends and her daughter. We found seats, and then sat there talking until the show started. It turned out to be a celebration of the works of Pablo Neruda, which was pretty cool. They started off with a symphony orchestra, and then different musical acts. We kept waiting for the ballet to start, but whenever the curtains opened for the next act it would always be musicians. Eventually they announced the final act, and still no ballet! I'm not really sure what happened, whether it was a mix-up on my mom's part or the teatro's, but it was still really fun to hear all the different types of Ecuadorian and indigenous music that they played.

A lot of people have asked me how the food is here, and I keep meaning to include it in a post but haven't yet. Well, today is the day.

The food is pretty standard "latin american," which means lots of rice (with pretty much every meal, even if you're having pasta), beans, lentils, and platanos fritos. Ecuadorians also eat a lot of soup, almost every lunch includes a bowl of soup. The soups are all really good, and a lot of the ones that my comadre makes are vegetable based, which is a good because they don't eat a lot of vegetables here. Meatwise they eat chicken, beef, tuna, and ham. Ecuador is also one of the infamous places where they eat guinea pigs (called "cuy" here), and I think my family may be planning on making it for lunch on Sunday, which should be interesting. They don't eat a lot of sweets here (which is always hard when I have a sugar craving after dinner), and usually have juice as the "sweet" part of their meals.

A typical breakfast varies from family to family, with some only eating bread, and others eating eggs, cheese, bread, yogurt, or cereal. Lunch is usually soup and rice with something else, like lentils, beans, chicken, potatoes, meat, or noodles. In my family dinner is a smaller portion of what we ate for lunch, but in other families dinner is just bread and coffee. Lunch is the big family meal here, and traditionally people would get 3 hours off of work in the middle of the day to go home, eat lunch, and rest before going back to work. Now a lot of people follow a more "American" work schedule, and don't make it home for lunch (both of my parents eat lunch at work). One of the weirdest things that I've had to adjust to here is the fact that dinner is not a family meal. For us in the U.S. dinner is the time when everyone connects about their day and spends some time together before going about evening activities. Here, dinner is just another meal that you may or may not eat. Very rarely does everyone in my family eat dinner together, usually Emilia or Camilo will skip dinner or only eat something really small. There also isn't a set dinnertime in my family, so it's always hard for me when I'm sitting very hungrily in my room waiting for dinnertime and not knowing when it's going to be.

Overall I'm really enjoying the food here, and I've only had one meal where I didn't really like what was put in front of me (it was fried white fish, I wasn't a fan). I've been eating a lot of new things like tropical fruits, and even liver! (I had it when I went out for lunch one day, and it wasn't that bad.) I'm already dreading when I have to go back to school, and there won't be someone preparing delicious food that I love every day. Commons is great, but it has nothing on Ecuadorian mamas.

Hasta luego,
Caroline

First weekend with my family!

Hi all,

I wanted to do a quick update about my weekend before I get swamped with homework and preparations for our excursion to the Oriente (we leave a week from today).

On Saturday after eating lunch I went with Rodrigo, Emilia, and a random woman who spent the weekend at our house (I'm going to call her Dona M., because I was never introduced to her and only heard her name spoken very quickly and in a Spanish accent, so I'm not sure exactly what it was) to Rodrigo's mother's house to visit with his family. There were a ton of people there, so it was a little overwhelming at first. I ended up sitting next to Rodrigo's mother and Dona M., who were talking up a storm in Spanish. Rodrigo's mother would occasionally ask me questions (which usually had to be repeated a few times before I understood them), but for the most part I was watching either Law and Order or Charmed, both dubbed in Spanish, on the TV.

We left around 5:15, and then Rodrigo drove me to my friend Estelle's house because a bunch of us were going to a soccer game and we were going to take a taxi there together. The game was between La Liga (the Quito team that my family supports) and Deportivo Quito, another team from Quito. We were there with almost everyone from the program, and it was a lot of fun watching the game and seeing how energetic the fans were. We even got to see a fight break out, but we weren't close to it and there were a lot of policemen there (so don't worry, Mom). After the game I took a taxi home with two of my friends, ate dinner, and then watched Up (the Russian version dubbed in Spanish) with my mom and sister.

On Sunday morning we had a big family breakfast, and then Rodrigo, Emilia, Dona M., and I went to Parque La Carolina, a big park in Quito. Emilia was rollerskating, Dona M. was walking, Rodrigo was running, and I was riding a bike (which I only agreed to because I thought everyone was going to be biking). The bike was a terrible decision, because the seat was sooo uncomfortable. I also had to maintain an awkwardly slow speed to not pass Rodrigo, and it was hard to navigate between all the people walking/running/biking on the path. It was a lot of fun though, and it felt nice to get at least a little exercise. When we were done with that we picked Carmita up from work (every 2 weeks she works at the airport as the person who directs the planes on the runways, I think) and then dropped her and Dona M. off and went to get flowers and a birthday cake for Carmita (it was her birthday).

When we got home we set the dining room table with the good china for Carmita's birthday lunch. Bertha had made all of her favorite foods, and it was cool to be included in the small family celebration (although it made me miss my home and my mom). After lunch I helped Emilia with her English homework, and then did some reading in preparation for the paper I have to write tonight. We had "dinner" around 7:30, which consisted of popcorn, Jell-o, hot chocolate, and Carmita's birthday cake. Because the whole family was together in one place, I decided that this would be a good time to give them my homestay gifts (which also tied in nicely with Carmita's birthday). The things I had brought for them were a calendar of pictures of Maine, a book of Boston postcards, chocolate covered cranberries, a frisbee, and two squishy Red Sox balls for the little girls, and they loved them! It turns out Carmita collects postcards, so those were definitely a great gift, and they all liked looking at the pictures of Maine. It was really fun, and definitely a relief because I've had the gifts under my desk for a week waiting for a good time to give them!

It was definitely a good first weekend with my family, but for now I have to get back into homework mode and start my paper!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

My Week in Review and Pictures!

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I only posted once this week, internet time was hard to come by because Camilo got a laptop on Tuesday and spent a lot of time using the internet connection to set it up. This week was also pretty uneventful, but I'll give you a recap of what I did.

Tuesday was a normal day of Spanish classes in the morning, a lecture until 1, and then eating lunch at home. Tuesday night after dinner we went to El Jardin, one of the malls in Quito, to buy Camilo's computer. We went to the department store called Su Kasa, which sells pretty much anything you would ever need. After we bought the computer we had ice cream in the food court, which was really good.

On Wednesday instead of having classes we went to a town called Yaruqui to do another minga where we we planted trees to help reforest an old pasture. The holes had already been dug for us, but they were way bigger than they needed to be, so most of the work we did was just filling in the holes enough so that we could actually put the trees in. It was really hard work, but it was fun because it was the first time we had been together in one big group since going to our homestays, so we were all laughing and joking and telling stories about our families. We had lunch around 12:15, and it was really interesting to see what everyone's families had packed for them. So far the first week with the homestay families has felt kind of like a regression into elementary/middle/high school because we were getting dropped off and picked up from school, and we were bringing lunches from home and comparing/trading what we had. After lunch everyone else went back to work, but I was a little sick (I'm all better now, no need to worry) so I rested inside of the house that was there and read an issue of The New Yorker from February.

On Thursday instead of going home for lunch I went out with 5 other girls because we had to have a discussion group as one of our assignments. After that I went back to the Experimento to use the internet there to upload pictures and also to read through summaries of ISPs that past students had done to get an idea of what I would like to do for mine. For those of you who don't know, ISP stands for Independent Study Project, which is the cornerstone of all SIT study abroad programs. An entire month during the program (in our case, November) is devoted to the ISP, and each student does their own project with the help of an advisor. Projects range from everything from studying water contamination in a gold mining camp to studying monkey troupes in the Oriente, and everything in between.

On Friday we had Spanish in the morning and then a lecture on ecoanthropology from 10:3o to 1. After that we ate lunch at the Experimento (again packed by our families) and then went with our Spanish classes to visit museums around the city. My class went to El Museo de la Ciudad which is in El Centro, or the old part of Quito. The museum was pretty cool, and went through the history of Quito century by century. Once we finished our tour of the museum we walked around El Centro for a while before taking taxis back to the Experimento. I took the bus home by myself for the first time, which was pretty exciting. When I got home I hung out for a little while, and then at 7:30 Carmita, Rodrigo, Camilo, my abuelita, and I left to go out to dinner to celebrate Carmita's birthday (which is actually tomorrow, but she had to work today). The restaurant we went to was really cool, it was a rooftop terrace with amazing views of the city around it. It was in El Centro, and it was really cool to see what I'd seen earlier that day from a different view and during night instead of day. When we were done with dinner we walked around, and they told me about all the churches and historic parts of the city. It was really cool walking around at night and seeing everything lit up.

Today I got up, ate breakfast, and then went to a papeleria (paper store) near my house to buy envelopes and a small daily planner type thing. It was the first time that I'd gone out by myself, and it was nice to just walk around and take everything in. My house is in a really great location, because almost everything I would ever need is one or two blocks away. There is an ATM just around the corner for my house, so getting money won't be a problem because I can always ask someone in my family to run over there with me. There's also a lab really close, so if I ever need to drop off a "sample" to get tested for a bacterial/parasitic infection that will also be really easy. There are also a bunch of papelerias, convenience stores, a drugstore, bakeries, and lots of other things close by, so pretty much anything I need I can get without walking more than 2 minutes.

When I got home I finally got my picture situation sorted out which means that, yes, you can now see pictures from my first 3 weeks in Ecuador! I still can't figure out how to put them on my blog, so I'm just going to post the link to my photobucket album whenever I add new pictures. The link is:

http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad189/cbarr520/Ecuador/?albumview=grid

I'll add more pictures as I take them, and if you have any questions/comments about the pictures I think there is a place where you can comment at the bottom (although I'm not 100% sure). Enjoy!

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Homestay update

Hi Everyone,

Today is my second day with my host family, and so far things are going pretty well. Everybody in my family is really nice and helpful, so the hardest things so far have been getting used to a new routine and family dynamic. Ecuador has a very "machismo" culture, so women typically do all of the cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the house while men work and are taken care of by the women. My family is unique because we have a "comadre" who does all of the cooking instead of my mama (she works at the airport). The living situation is also unique, because instead of one big house where everybody lives there are 3 smaller houses within the same area. My mama (Carmita), papa (Rodrigo), 12-year-old sister (Emilia) and I all live in the main house (I'm living in Camilo, the 18-year-old boy's room). Bertha, the comadre, and her two daughters live in a separate little house where we eat lunch and dinner (we eat breakfast in the main house), and my abuela lives in another separate little house.

Carmita and Rodrigo came to pick me up from the hostel yesterday, and as only the fourth student to get picked up I was definitely more than a little nervous about meeting them for the first time. They were really nice right off the bat, and I definitely felt immediately welcomed into the family. They have their own car, so we drove through the city until we got to their house. On the way Carmita explained to me that they had a German student staying with them, and that they promised they would take him to the Equator (called el mitad del mundo here) that day. That threw me for a loop, and was definitely not what I had been expecting for my first day with the family. When we got to the house I was introduced to everyone, and then unpacked for an hour before Carmita, Rodrigo, Emilia, Malte (the german student) and I set off for some sightseeing. We went to a volcanic crater, some pre-Incan ruins, and then el mitad del mundo. It was really fun, and very cool to see everything.

When we got back to the house we had lunch, and then I unpacked a little bit more before hanging out with Malte and Emilia for a bit. After that we had cake to celebrate Malte's birthday (his birthday is actually today, but he left yesterday so we celebrated then), which was really good. After that we drove Malte to the bus station, and then went back to school shopping for Emilia. All the schools in Quito started classes today, and it was really fun to go shopping for school supplies, even though they weren't for me. When we got home we ate dinner, although Rodrigo, the two little girls, and I were the only ones who ate anything because dinner is a very very small meal here.

This morning I got up at 6:30, showered, and ate breakfast, which was basically a grilled cheese sandwich. The cheese was pretty mild though, so I actually really liked it. After that Carmita and I set off to catch a bus to take me to the Experimento. The bus system here is really crazy, and when we finally found a bus that was going the right way it was so full that we had to stand on the steps with the doors open for 2 or 3 stops until enough people got off so that we could actually get into the bus. Once we made our way in I saw Teddy, one of the kids from my group, and found out that he lives pretty close to me, so we decided that we'll try and meet up in the mornings and take the bus to school together. We had spanish classes all morning, then a half hour break, and then a lecture about the history of Ecuador. We have 2 more history lectures this week, and I'm excited to learn more about the country that I'm spending 3 more months in!

We got out of class at 1, and Bertha's oldest daughter (she's somewhere in her early 30s and has her own family) came to pick me up and bring me back to the house. When we got home we had lunch, and then I did some spanish homework and hung out with Emilia. The school schedules are very different here, with classes beginning at 7 or 8 in the morning and ending around 1 or 2 so that students can go home to eat lunch. That schedule is just one more thing on the list of Ecuadorian-customs-that-Caroline-has-to-get-used to, which so far includes:

1. Throwing toilet paper into a trash can, not the toilet (the pipes here are too small to handle toilet paper)

2. Military time (I refuse to change my watch though, so whenever I see a clock that says 16:42 I have to do some nifty subtraction in my head to figure out what time it really is)

3. Eating very little for breakfast at 7 am, a lot for lunch at 2:30 pm, and very little for dinner at 8 pm, without a lot to eat in between meals.

And probably more things that I can't think of just yet.

I'm excited to finally be getting into a routine, and I'm ecstatic that I no longer have to live out of a suitcase, like I have been for the past two weeks. I'll keep everyone updated on how my week is going, and I'm going to do my best to get pictures on here this week.

Hasta luego,
Caroline

Cloud Forest and Homestays!

Hey Everyone!

We returned to Quito at about 4 this afternoon, and we're spending the night in a hostel tonight before going off with our homestay families tomorrow morning. The cloud forest was absolutely amazing, and definitely one of, if not the, most beautiful places that I've ever been. We stayed at the La Florida Cloud Forest Reserve, which is run by a man named Carlos Zorrilla and his wife Sandy. The reserve has a completely sustainable farm where they grow everything from coffee to lemongrass to pineapples. They also have chickens for eggs and a cow for milk, but they don't consume any meat at the reserve.

We got to La Florida around 3 on Saturday afternoon, and Carlos took us on a tour of the farm after we got settled in. We were staying in pretty rustic cabins with absolutely breathtaking views. After our tour of the farm we had dinner, which (like all of the meals we had at La Florida) was delicious, with the majority of the ingredients either grown on the farm or nearby.

On Sunday a few of us woke up early to go birdwatching in the forest around the reserve. We got to see the cock-of-the-rock, which is a really big, red, funny looking bird that uses communal mating grounds called leks. There's a lek not too far from the reserve, so we hiked up there and got to see and hear all of the cocks-of-the-rock displaying and calling, which was really cool. After that we had breakfast, two lectures, and a guided walk through the forest so that we could learn the names of some of the native plants. After our walk we had lunch, and then some of the women from the artisania group came to sell us their goods. They make all sorts of bags, hats, rugs, toys, and even water bottle holders! After everyone had bought their share half of the group (including me) were introduced to their homestay mothers, and then we set off for our homestays.

My homestay mother was named Elizabeth, was 19, and had a 23 year-old husband named Rodolfo and a 1 year, 4 month old baby girl named Jennifer. It was a little weird at first because she was younger than me, but once I actually got settled in I totally forgot about our age difference. It took us an hour of almost all uphill climbing to reach Plaza Gutierrez, the town where Elizabeth lived. There were about 7 other students from the group living with families in Plaza Gutierrez, so we all walked together until we reached the town and split up to go to our new houses. It was definitely a big adjustment getting used to living in a place so different from what I'm used to, but it was a really great experience at the same time. On the first day we had breakfast at 7 am and then walked to Rodolfo's mother's house to milk the cow. My friend Samantha's homestay mother was Elizabeth's twin sister, so they came with us to milk the cow. Once we were done with that we went to collect leaves for the guinea pigs to eat (they eat guinea pigs in the Intag and my family had a rabbit hutch out back with 16 in it, thank goodness they decided not to eat one while I was there) and also harvested a few beans. It was really cool to see all of the crops that they grow, but it was a really long walk getting to and from the fields.

When we got back from doing all of that Elizabeth taught me how to do the stitches to make things out of cabuya, which is the natural plant fiber that the women make all of their crafts from. The first one she taught me was really hard, but the second one was a lot easier and I was able to do it a lot faster. She made part of a water bottle holder for my nalgene for me, and I made the entire strap myself!

We did a lot of other things while I was there like going to a farm to pick out a chicken to have for lunch the next day, selling the cow's milk, going to the store, and playing soccer. At around 5:30 every night a bunch of the townspeople (and any students being hosted) would gather at a soccer field to play until 7. We were definitely a motley crew, but it was a ton of fun playing with everyone.

On Wednesday morning we headed back to La Florida where we spent the next two days learning about botany and ornithology. We walked in the woods and played a game to learn plant families, and also did mist netting. The mist netting was pretty unsuccessful though, we did it on three separate occasions and only caught one bird each time. On Friday the other half of the group came back from their homestays and we all walked to another reserve called Flor de Mayo to do a minga. A minga is basically when a bunch of people get together and work together to do something, like a barn raising. In our case we were moving rocks to make a bridge, which was very hard and very tiring work. It was really fun to work with people from the community, though, and to know that we were all helping and working towards a common goal. When we got back to La Florida we all showered and then talked in a group about our homestay experiences and about possible ISP projects in the cloud forest. We also got letters from our Quito homestay families, which got everyone excited and nervous at the same time. My family is really big, with a dad, mom, their 18 year old son and 12 year old daughter, a grandmother, and a "comadre" with her 7 and 9 year old daughters. The comadre is the godmother of the children in my family, and she lives in the house. They also have 3 dogs and a cat, so it's going to be a little crazy! I'm really exited to meet them tomorrow though, they seem like really nice people.

I PROMISE that I'll add pictures once I get a faster internet connection, even with nobody else on the internet here it takes forever to upload pictures. I hope everybody is doing well and I'll let you know how it is meeting my homestay family for the first time!

Hasta luego,
Caroline