classes and colds

Welcome to the first week of classes!

First, sorry for the lack of updates last week. I’ve had the stomach flu for the past couple of days. No idea what exactly I ate or drank, but I’m bedridden and I’m driving myself nuts, not fun. Oh well, the guidebook says everyone gets sick at least once, so I’m hoping I’ve gotten my turn out of the way. Plus, I’ve really expanded my vocabulary; who knew that words such as ‘vomitar’ would actually come in handy?

My madre is full of these bizarre remedies, including eating plain chicken and drinking some horrible type of tea. As soon as I get over this, I swear I’m eating some American pizza. I lasted 2 weeks without it, that’s pretty good, right?

Anyways, I switched a bunch of my classes. It’s fun because switching classes is really easy. You don’t need the permission of the registrar, you just switch. I just showed up to several classes I wanted to take, and los profesores were really great about it. I’m now taking Basic Weaving (best class ever), Mountain Climbing, and Anthropology of Religion (which includes field trips!).

Weird Ecuadorian Food of the Week: Bean purée. Literally, mi empleada put some black beans and milk in a blender and made a bean shake. We ate it with rice. Yum.

I ran! I ran! It was fabulous. There’s a fairly safe park I can run through and it is incredible. Mountains in the distance, fresh air, it’s great. It’s funny though because everyone else wears long pants, long shirts, and a jacket when running, and here I am in shorts and a t-shirt. Different concept of hot weather, I guess. Yes, it is harder to run here, I was breathing harder than I should have been.

We also went to the Centro Histórico this week (aka Old Quito). The churches there are the most beautiful churches I have ever seen in my life. I want to learn everything about every one of them. Pictures don’t do them justice. I could have stayed there all day, much to the chagrin of the boys in our group.

So, my new pastime is watching the Disney Channel in Spanish, haha. It’s great - I can usually follow what’s going on because the dialogue’s fairly simple, and I learn a bunch of vocabulary. That and The Simpsons (en espanol) are fabulous. You should hear Homer’s Spanish voice. Right now I’m watching “The Emperor’s New Groove.”

Let’s talk about prices for a second here. Clothing prices are pretty much the same. Everything else in a grocery store is ridiculous. A bag of chips is 27 cents. A 1-liter bottle of pop is 57 cents. Ice cream cones are 30 cents. We kind of just walked through the aisles of the SuperMaxi (aka Meijers) in a state of shock the first time.

I had a barbeque at my house with the K and BU students and various other people, which was a blast. I found out the hard way that we don’t actually have a dryer for my clothes. I taught the kids hopscotch and hangman this week, we made a huge hopscotch grid; they think it’s great.

That’s all for now, chao (that’s how they say goodbye here)! Lis