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