La Pichincha

Hey everyone! Life has been pretty busy the past few days. My memory card broke and I lost a bunch of pictures and had to buy a new one but that is the extent of my bad luck. Yesterday we went to La Pichincha, which is a volcanoe that overlooks the city of Quito. It last erupted 9 years ago (don´t worry mom it isn´t scheduled to erupt for another ninty years.) We took a cable car to the near top which took way longer than it did to get to the top of Snowmass. I had sort of wondered off to be alone and look at the beautiful view in peace. I guess I was there for a long time because my group started climbing up the the mouth without me! I thought they went back down the mountain and left me, I resorted to my scattered spanish skills and asked the cable car operater something that would translate ´Where did all the Gringos go?´ He pointed up the mountain so I took off sprinting to catch up to them. BAD IDEA!!! Try combining a lung condition where you only get 60% of the oxygen as other people my age and add +15,000 feet (that´s three times as high as Denver.) Then my chinese roomate tried to give me a Coke to hydrate me. Once I made it to the top though it was worth it. Absolutely gorgeous. Quito is about 17 miles long and 3 miles wide and rest in a huge valley at one of the highest points in the Andes. Picture cannot describe the view. The loud, crowded city looked so peaceful.

¡Mi hermano! This is David, he is my brother! He speaks three languages, is in Medical School, an amazing chef, and he teaches salsa lessons. He said he would teach me, we are taking salsa lessons on friday with a bunch of my classmates. David and Paola (mi mama) ((not my real mother who I miss very much)) took some us out to ladies night at a discoteca, it was pretty fun. I met a bunch of people from Europe, in fact I met more people from Holland than America.

This is a picture of what David was making us for dinner. I forgot to get the finished product.

Xioa and I have been having a lot of fun exploring the city, trying new fruits from street venders, and braving the Quito taxi system. No taxi ever knows our street because it is small so we usually resort to ´¡Despacio DESPACIO aquí aquí!´ Slow slow, here here!

There are a lot of foods to try here. Right after this Xiao and I are going to this street vender who is selling what looks like pork (who knows) you get a tortilla and the porkish meat is hanging from the ceiling, you are supposed to cut the meat off and then add your toppings.

This is my tiny corner in our room. I´ll try to get you pictures of the apartment soon.

CHAO

Escuela

I had my first day of class, four people in the classroom is pretty nice. I think we are teaching her as much english as she is teaching us español. Sorry If I make lots of errors typing, I am paying for the internet by the minute so I am in a hurry, it´s a Spanish keyboard and most of the letters are marked incorrectly.

I´ve been trying to upload pictures for about twenty minutes and it´s not working. Tomorrow afternoon I´m going to the top of La Pichincha a huge active volcanoe. Then at night Xiao, mi mama y mi hermano David are going to a discoteca so it might be a couple more days untill I get a chance to post again. David said it´s ´ladies night` haha. It should be really fun especially since we are going with our mama.

Yesterday I thought I ordered a fried banana cheese ball, it didn´t taste like banana at all but was very yummy.

I´m pretty bummed these pictures won´t load, oh well better luck next time.

¡Me gusta Quito!

This is the ´Company of Jesus´ church. I´m not sure what that means but he said on good friday this church starts a city wide bell ringing concert!

I arrived in Quito last night just as the sun was going down. Since it is on the equator the sun sets and rises at exactly 6pm every day of the year. Also it is one hour ahead of Kansas City time because they do not observe daylight savings time. My roomates name is XiaoTing (pronounced Sh-ow) she is awesome and doesn´t know any spanish...we are having lots of anventures. We have already noticed how we always seem to be in the back of every line, bus, airport, la academia, church tour, the street, lunch...always in the back. We think it´s because we talk alot and are always looking around and taking pictures. We are not staying at a house like we though but an apartemento with our ´mama´ (Paola) she is 32 years old and mas bonita (very beautiful.) Xiao and I share a room and the apartement is so cute, Jessica Lewis could call it precious. Para Desayno (for breakfast) we ate the latin american version of coco puffs and hot tea. She gave us an apple for the road and we all walked to shcool together. This wasn´t much of a trip seeing our mama works there and we live 20 feet from the academia!!!

Today we took a placement test then took a massive tour de Quito. We saw the oldest church in the Americas, soooo beautiful. At another church he said there was over one ton of gold in the altar alone! (They still have mass every day.) We also saw the President of Ecuador standing on his balcony, and visited his house. All the school aged children are running around everywhere in different colored uniforms. This made me miss camp. I keep tryign to wave at the children but they just stare at me and look angry. I am determined to get one to wave back! haha


Right now we are in ´Gringoland´ a place for young people, lots of bars, discotecas, restuarants, etc. Wednesday we are going to the tallest active volcano in South America. It overlooks Quito. I got pretty tired walking around because of the altitude but that´s a small price to pay for living in such a pretty place.

Oh yea...some policemen asked to take pictures with us today. It cause quite a commotion and all the citizens were coming and getting in the pictures secretly. It was hilarious.

How to drink pond water...

I got a SteriPEN http://www.steripen.com/outdoors.html to use while in India (thanks Aunt Rose). It uses filters and UV light to get all the little bugs and parasites from your water. Sara and I tried it out on our pond water.

Step One: Collecting the Water
Step Two: Filtering all the large sticks, bugs, and gunk out.


Step Three: Let the UV light kill all the bacteria and parasites for about a minute.
Step Four: DRINK! One problem though...it still looks and taste like pond. At least its clean. It's been a few hours since we drank it and no one is throwing up so that's a good sign.

7 days and counting...

I'm leaving for Ecuador in seven days!
Here are some pictures of the school...