So after a few weeks of constant travel between classes a few of us decided it was time to settle down for a couple weeks and get to know Quito, especially since we have another long week of travel coming up with Carnaval at the end of this week. Our first adventure in Quito was very American of us, we decided to bake cookies and watch a movie before we had to buckle down to write our essays. We went on an excursion to Supermaxi (I know kinda funny name, they have Megamaxis too) in search of cookie dough, cuz really that is the best part and we wanted to make them quickly. We didn't find that but were able to find a betty crocker mix (with over 300 chips in the bag it said) Score! When I talked to my mom about making the cookies she said that was fine and we should use the microwave-oven thing on the counter since it would be faster. Well the first batch came out great after about 10 minutes or so but the following ones each took about 30 minutes or more, and since we could only find a pan big enough to make 4 cookies at a time you can probably guess that we ate more cookie dough than we ended up getting cookies haha.

The rest of that weekend consisted primarily of working on our essay which with the topic we chose took a lot more research and time than expected and ended up being more than five pages over what it was supposed to be oops. Hopefully though we do as well on it as we did the previous one. I have been really fortunate in the group work here the two girls that I have been working with are great and we work really well together, the only issue is we are all major perfectionists making the editing process go a little long sometimes, but the end product is worth it. So far I have been extremely impressed with the CIMAS program. They all are so supportive and willing to help us with whatever may come up and the classes and lectures are all really good with very prestigious people being brought in to speak to us. It is really a much higher level than I expected especially after the quality of classes on my last study abroad. I also am very appreciative that all the classes are in Spanish. Although at first it was very difficult to make it through the day with so much Spanish because my brain was just so tired after a few hours, it now has become much easier and I can even multitask like I do in classes in English at times if the professor is speaking clear enough. My comprehension of the language has increased drastically and I really believe that a lot of it is due to the classes being taught in Spanish.

Since we decided to stick around Quito we ended up hitting up La Mariscal or Gringolandia (Gringo Land HAHA). We were celebrating one of the girls in our program 20th birthday and ended up at a few different places including a place that had a strawberry and chocolate crepe!- which I of course ordered and then it proceeded to make me sick, maybe the Ecuadorian crepes not such a good idea. (Though I think it was partially due to remnants of being sick the week before in Santo Domingo).

This last weekend we went out to La Mariscal again first for some Indian food which was SO delicious, I am starting to remember and miss all the wonderful variety of food back home. For the rest of the weekend we had made some grand plans to do things around Quito like hike Pichincha (the volcano that sits right above the city) go to some hotsprings that are nearby and go to Mitad del Mundo (where the equator line is) though unfortunately the weather had some other plans for us and decided to downpour, to a point of almost flashflooding in some places, for a good majority of the weekend which kept us indoors much more than we wanted to be. Instead of being an exciting outdoor weekend exploring the city, it ended up being an indoor watching movies and going out to eat type weekend. Saturday night though we did go out for awhile and a friend and I had previously seen these huge things of beer with a little tap on it, so naturally we decided we would need to order one. Unfortunately the bar we wanted to go in was very full and extremely smoky, so we settled on one down the street that had a lot more room, and for good reason, it turns out it was more of an older persons sport bar type place, not exactly our normal scene but we made it a good time. ( Oh and Dani they were playing a Bob Seger CD and Night Moves came on, I thought of you!) Later that night we met up with some Ecuadorian friends and ended up going dancing at a Salsa, Meringue, Latin Music place which was really fun, though unfortunatly I am not that coordinated to move the way that they all can.

Since many of us have been fighting being sick and it just kinda keeps rotating through the group, including myself- my stomach currently does not appreciate it when I put food in it which tends to be a problem, though no worries we are currently negotiating a deal to allow me to eat again, it was probably not too bad that some of our plans were changed and we ended up having a pretty chill time in Quito wandering around to bookstores and movie places. Although Quito is much too busy and kinda crazy for me it is starting to feel like home and I am able to figure out my way around most of the time without too many problems. I love you all and miss you and can't believe that I am already half way through my time here!

La Playa y las Fincas

I finally got to the beach last weekend which was a nice change from the mountains and city. Although Quito is great it was so nice to be able to breathe easily again when walking somewhere, unlike here which just walking up the hill to my house makes me extremely winded still due to the high altitude. We set off for the beach on a night bus thursday after class and all was going great until about 2 hours in to the 6 hour ride when we stop suddenly in what appears to be the middle of no where at about 2 in the morning. While dozing in and out of consciousness due to my good luck of getting the only seat on the bus whose recliner function does not work so I am forced to attempt to sleep sitting straight up with my large backpack at my feet, I hear that there has been a landslide about 5 km on up the road and so we are waiting. Nobody, including the driver seems to know how long we may wait for since a crew was coming in from Quito in an attempt to clear the road. The bus finally began moving again around 6:30 ironically enough the time we were supposed to be arriving in Atacames. Although we had been told it can be difficult to find a hotel on the weekend in the beach towns without a reservation especially for 7 people we didn't seem to have any problem with attracting all sorts of people who "work" for different hotels and wanted to show us their top choices. We finally decided on one that was run by a lady, we had had enough of skeezy men at this point, and after quickly looking the room over went to the beach. Upon our return we realized that the shower had a very large window that looked out basically to the entire town without a blind, or even glass over it for that matter making showering, or more like a hose spicket is a better way to describe it, a very interesting experience. The beach in Atacames was pretty nice and the ocean was really warm but the people on the beach were of an interesting sort. As a group of 7 gringas we attracted far more attention than we actually wanted for most of our time at the beach. There were numerous occasions that parents came up to me with their small child of about 3 or 4 and asked if they could take a picture of me with the kid...this was one of the oddest expereinces I have had so far. I am used to men making comments and even asking for pictures at times (this also happened here a few times) but parents with kids was a new one. A couple other humerous but slightly awkward experiences that weekend include the time when a friend asked if I wanted to go for a swim with her and this guy we had been hanging out with that morning and one of his friends came along as well. As we get out to the water they tell us to get on this boat, ok this sounds creepier than it was but they were "tour guides" who did banana boat and tubing on the ocean so not quite as sketch as it seems, so we got on to go for a ride while they hooked up a tube. We rode around for awhile and then they got rid of the tube and we continued to go around for a bit and ended up out at the far buoy. Here they told us that we were all going to go for a swim, ok all well and good except for the fact that the boat then leaves and we are left to swim back to shore, at least the tide was with us. From here the story even gets better, the whole swim as I was feeling like I was going to be in the ocean forever, this guy, Javier, the one I had met all of 15 minutes ago goes on to profess his love for me for the ENTIRE swim. And to make it even more awkward I had a horrible time understanding him at the beginning due to his accent- on the coast they speak much more rapidly and slur the words together. Finally when I understood what he was saying I was like whoa, no i don't think so and after about 5 minutes of telling him I definitely was not interested he eventually kind of got the message and left me alone for a little while only to make an advance toward one of my friends later. Haha yeah guys here move a little fast and come on a little strong. After this I proceeded to fall asleep on the beach and get horribly sunburned due to my forgetting to reapply sunscreen- rookie mistake I know. My final awkward moment of the weekend was on the bus ride back when a random guy first just started staring in my direction and then finally he began talking to me and Andrea though it was extremely difficult to hear due to the noise of the bus and the loud fighting scene that was going on in Pearl Harbor. He started out with just the basics, where you from, what are you doing in Ecuador etc, and then he kept going to a point where he told me that my next trip back to Ecuador should be for Fernando (him) haha nice try buddy.
After our beach adventures it was time to meet up with our group for another one of the school sponsored field trips, this time we were studying malaria and other tropical diseases like Dengue and Chagas, something I was pretty excited to learn about in the context of Ecuador. Unlike the last school field trip there were far fewer hospital visits and many more visits to plantations that produced palmas (for palm oil), palmitas, and pinas aka pineapples. Yum! Although it was interesting to see these plantations and how the destruction of the primary forests that used to exist in those locales had greatly affected the climate of the area and therefore allowing for a better environment for mosquitoes to grow in, learning how to plant and farm these various products was a little more than we were expecting. After about 5 hours of touring these various plantations, not without a little excitement of course like a large poisonous snake (fortunately it had been killed by one of the farmers before we got there) being pulled out of the forest that they then wanted us to walk into to see how they pull down the racimos and make palm oil, no thank you I am good staying on the bus. We also were told at the end of the pina tour (after receiving 2 or more pinas apiece for free which later turned into some amazing pina coladas) that there was a great waterfall close by we should check out. Although it was close the path wasn't exactly easy with a wire bridge that had no bottom to it so it was like tightrope walking and another made of rotting bamboo that seemed a little to close to having that final bit of weight on it for comfort before falling into the stream below and the large tree trunk and jump to land at the end. After George of the Jungling our way through we all made it to the beautiful waterfall at the end and got some good photos ops. On the way back though I was not quite as fortunate. While waiting my turn to jump to the tree log bridge and standing at the edge of the mini cliff the ground suddenly fell out from underneath me causing me to land about 5 feet below in the midst of the swampy stream area which I was later told also had poisounous snakes excellent. Fortunately I was wearing my botas (large rubber boots) and so I was not covered in swamp muck but just dirt from where the side of the cliff fell down on me. This proceeded to give everyone a good laugh once I was finally lifted out to safety.
Much of the rest of our trip was much more related to malaria and the control efforts that Ecuador's public health ministry has implemented and have been very successful with. In the last 8 years or so they have gone from nearly 14,000 cases a year to around 10 or so a year. We learned a lot about the different methods of control used and even went mosquito larva hunting which consisted of dipping a very large ladel into a pond and hoping to pick up an anopheles (the kind of mosquito that carries malaria) larva. Overall it was a pretty good trip minus the fact that 11 out of 15 of us got sick at somepoint throughout the week, myself included, but all is well now and I am gearing up for the next couple of weeks in and around Quito before heading off to the coast again for Carnaval in a couple weeks.
I have posted some photos online via my facebook account and for those of you that don't have a facebook you can check them out here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053505&l=d6e41&id=32402831 I will try and get some more up from more recently soon though this week is pretty packed so far.