1/12/09

            Running in Quito makes me feel like I have the lungs of a two-year-old.  I’ve ran in Colorado before, at elevations very similar to the elevation here (around 9000 ft), yet Rocky Mountain running feels easy in comparison to Andes running.  Maybe it’s because I’m not as in shape as I was during the Colorado vacations, since those occurred in the middle of track seasons.  This morning I tried running to Parque Carolina (apparently many Ecuadorians run through this park in the mornings…I’ve seen a total of two Ecuadorians running since I’ve been here), but I couldn’t even make it that far since I live so far away.  The multiple stoplights at every street corner didn’t help.  Quito is situated in a valley, and my house is on the sloped edge of the city, so the beginning of my run felt fine since it was all downhill…but on the way back I considered stopping by a nearby department store to ask if I could purchase an oxygen tank.  My legs felt fine, but my lungs felt super constricted, as if they were about to implode.  Running was also a mental workout, since I had to remain focused on the ground and my surroundings the entire time- there is no such thing as a flat sidewalk here, and you can’t always trust cars to obey traffic signals.

            I tried talking to a volunteer coordinator at USFQ today, but she was at a meeting so I think I may just stay in the new Spanish class.  Our professor arrived over half an hour late since she didn’t know where to go, but she seems pretty cool so far…although she talks a bit too fast for my liking.

*EMERGENCIA!- We have no more purified water in the house.  I hope my host parents realize the direness of this situation.  If there is no clean water in the jug by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, my run will be ten times worse than it was today.

 

1/13/09

            When I stumbled down to the kitchen this morning, there was a huge jug of water waiting for me on the kitchen table, and I almost collapsed with relief.  My run went a little better today, but by the end I felt as if I only had half of one lung left, with air pollution saturating every last alveolus.  Is that a word?  The recovery feeling after the runs makes it worth it, though.  Although I won’t be able to run in the rainforest, I heard that there are good running roads in the Galápagos, so I’m excited to run in pollution-free, low-altitude conditions…in two months.

            Spanish class update: I decided to drop my Spanish class in order to volunteer at a daycare center with two other students, Melissa and Caleigh, about a 20 minute walk from USFQ.  Today we went to talk with the director (after asking dozens of people along the way how to get there), and when we finally arrived we were asked to sit on the miniature chairs that were made for 3-year-olds, so that my knees were almost above my head.  I had forgotten how tiny 3-and 4-year-olds are!  I’m not sure if the director will have specific activities for us to help out with, or if we’ll plan our own activities, but I’m really excited…mostly because I’ll probably be able to understand and communicate with the children easier than with faster-speaking adults.

 

1/14/09

            The picture of my banana/nutella crepe is now the background on my laptop, but that was probably a bad idea because I’m starving right now…and I just brushed my teeth.  Speaking of food, my taste buds are experiencing sensations they have never experienced before.  Aside from the heavenly juice that I am fed each morning (I had mango today- I’m going to try to find some mango seeds to take home with me to harvest in the garden of my backyard), I’ve also been presented with spinach soup (it looked cooler than it tasted—dark emerald green—but it was still good and it reminded me of the split pea soup that the ants eat in The Rescuers Down Under), artichoke (when I entered the kitchen for dinner last night, there was what seemed to be a medium-sized plant [bromeliad!] growing on my plate, but it was actually an entire artichoke.  Vegetables are so much more fun to eat when they’re in their original form- I had to pull off each leaf, and I could only bite off the bottom of it after dipping it in some sauce), and guanabano yogurt (after classes today, I went to a yogurt/ice cream store, where I was tempted to get the banana yogurt since bananas complement EVERY type of food, but Ecuador is the place to try new things…so I tried the fruit that kind of sounds like “banana”).

            My favorite part of the bus ride to/from school is when the bus rounds a hairpin curve that overlooks a cliff, with the walls steeply dropping into a rapidly-flowing river that cuts through Cumbayá.  For some reason, the driver always thinks it’s necessary to accelerate at asteroid-paced speeds, so that the bus is almost on two wheels, and the lack of any shock absorption makes me feel like I’m in the air more than I am in contact with the surface (either the chair or the window) of the bus.  My second favorite part is hopping off when it’s still moving.

            Today was the first day of volunteering at the daycare center, and although we were only there for two hours, I was exhausted by the time we walked back to USFQ.  If I understood the director correctly, the children do more educational activities in the mornings, and more recreational activities in the afternoons, so we got to play with them the entire time.  I tried to teach them how to draw certain animals using sticks in the dirt outside the building, but some were more interested in seeing how much dirt they could spray in others’ faces.  Earlier I had mentioned that I was excited to work with children because I’d be able to understand them better…but I was wrong.  Many of them mumbled and spoke really softly, and when I could hear them, they used many words I had never heard of.  However, their curiosity, playfulness, and lack of any inhibition make me want to take them home with me.  A child and a mango seed.

 

1/15/09

            Today at the daycare center, we helped the kids paint a picture of a Hummer (I think they’re learning modes of transportation) with finger paint.  After each one made his/her contribution to the painting, I helped him/her wash his/her hands in the sink…but there was one girl who became psychotic when she got her hands on the soap, even more than Clancy becomes when he sees a tennis ball.  Her eyes would become wide open and with a huge, devious smile she would begin to furiously rub her hands together with the soap against the bottom of the sink.  When I took the soap away, she found another bar on a nearby ledge and repeated the process.  I had to literally push her out of the bathroom.  But about five kids later, she magically appeared again on the stool near the sink and grabbed the soap.  I never knew how exciting soap could be.

Money problems of the day:

-I paid almost five dollars for a tiny meal which consisted of minuscule empanadas, which were more like frozen bite-sized hot pockets, while my friends paid about $3 for a valid, filling lunch including a mango ice cream cone.

-The cashier at a department store had to call my credit card company because my card wasn’t working, so I was almost unable to buy rubber boots that I’ll need tomorrow when we go to El Pahuma Orchid Reserve.

-Photo Express would only accept cash for the photos I needed for my censo, and I was $1.50 short since I spent all my cash on unsatisfying empanadas at that lunch restaurant.  Luckily I was with Melissa who had a few coins to spare.

-I had to spend my shiny new Montana state quarter for the bus ride home from the university.

            I experienced my first blackout in Quito this evening- my brother said it was because of the rain, but my dad said it was because of President Correa’s two-year anniversary since his inauguration…which is longer than many past presidents have been able to hold office here.  That seems like a dumb idea to shut off all of the city’s electricity, though.  I wonder how many car or plane crashes it caused.

 

1/18/09

            It’s only about 9pm, but I’m exhausted since we just arrived back to Quito (from El Pahuma) a couple of hours ago.  El Pahuma is an orchid reserve situated in a montane forest ecosystem, and I didn’t know that a forest in the mountains could be so jungle-like- I seriously can’t imagine what an actual rain forest will be like now (except that it probably has less or no steep inclines, and is overflowing with tarantulas), since El Pahuma (I just fell asleep for about 10 seconds) is covered with deep green moss- and epiphyte-covered trees, and since it rained for the entire first 24 hours we were there.  The large, fully sprawled out bromeliads, drooping mosses, and knobby tree branches made the site look prehistoric, like a scene from Jurassic Park.  Too bad I didn’t see any pterodactyls.  During the trip, I realized how much more I’m able to learn when I’m actually outside in the field looking at and handling different plant species.  Last week in the USFQ biology classroom, we were learning a few of the different plant families, and after the lectures I had no idea how to identify plants.  But after one day at El Pahuma I can almost easily identify the plants in all of the families we learned (which isn’t that many…we know 8 or 9 of the 365 families so far…but it still makes me feel like a botanist.  We also learned some bird names, too.  And I saw a toucan!).  However, one of the MOST important things I learned this weekend was that Maria cookies exist in Ecuador.  The first time I had Maria cookies was in Spain a year and a half ago (they’re like Graham Crackers, only in cookie form- they almost replaced Honey Bunches of Oats as my favorite food.  In fact, one of my first Facebook profile pictures shows me eating one), and the last day in Madrid, I tried to find a store that sold them so that I could bring home a box.  But it was Sunday and most stores were closed!  So I came home empty-handed, fearing that I would never savor their taste again.  On the way to El Pahuma, we stopped at a gas station, and when we got back on the bus I noticed something familiar sitting on a fellow student’s (Rita’s) lap—Maria cookies!  I restrained myself from pouncing onto her lap and instead asked politely for a couple, and later I learned from Mark that the cookies are sold in almost every supermarket (and smaller tiendas) in Quito.  How could I have been so blind?  Since my plane ticket back to Madison is scheduled for a Sunday, I will make sure to not make the same mistake I did 1.5 years ago, and I’ll buy a few boxes before my departure date.

            Another important achievement made on this weekend’s trip was the first steps of my acclimatization to spiders.  No matter the size, spiders would always make my life difficult by…being present.  Last year, as I was going over advantages and disadvantages between possible study abroad locations, spiders were definitely high on the list of disadvantages for this program.  However, after spending hours hiking through narrow, cluttered trails in the depths of the montane forest, I began to realize that I was putting too much energy into being afraid—energy that I could use for more important things, like fearing a type of fungus that grows in your brain and eventually kills you (but I think that can only happen in certain types of insects).  I got so used to seeing spiders and walking through their webs during our hikes that I was even able to take a few pictures.  I’d still probably have a heart attack if one was on me, but their proximate presence no longer causes me to sprint in the opposite direction…unless it’s a tarantula.

            El Pahuma is beautiful, and if there were some way that I could study primates there, I would definitely consider the reserve for my month-long internship.  The family who lives there and maintains the trails (and act as guides for local and foreign tourists) are incredibly nice, and the food they made for us was particularly delicious.  I tried tea for my first time and discovered that it’s best with 3.5 heaping spoonfuls of sugar.  So far, for these first 2 weeks I’ve been in Quito, I have loved all the food I’ve been served.  However, one food shouldn’t exist: fried bananas.  Normal, ripe, fresh bananas are already so good, so why do they need to be modified, and therefore lose their sweetness and some of their nutrients?  The only times bananas should be heated is when they are mashed up and made into banana bread, cake, or muffins.  Mentioning the toucan earlier in this post is making me crave Fruit Loops right now.  Speaking of food, I will segue to beverages and praise the drink I had for dinner tonight- vino hervido.  Apparently, red wine mixed with orange juice and sugar can be heated, and it tastes like an intense version of warm apple cider.  I hate wine, but I could easily drink this forever.  Nonstop.

            Hasta mañana.

 

1/19/09

            Today was a good day.  Not only did I buy some María cookies at Megamaxi (which is “about the size of UW,” as a student put it.  However, they did not sell books of crossword puzzles, one of the things I miss most—other than Clancy and The Office—about life in Madison), but I also returned to Crepes y Waffles for lunch and ordered a banana/strawberry/chocolate fondue crepe and a banana/Nutella waffle.  Each was served with a scoop of ice cream and large dollops of whipped cream.  In the waffle, each square had been smothered with Nutella, and the fruit was perfectly ripe in both plates.  I had time to go there today because class was cancelled (so that we could pick up our passports from the Extranjería and go get our Censos from the Policía de Migración).  Short post (and about half of it was in parentheses)!