zoei
zoe Isaacson Joined: August 25th 2009
Logged in: December 25th 2011
Logged in: December 25th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Im back in the hospital today,..trying to find the right moment to get them to sign me off..without putting the date... doing mtas...but anyway, the weekend was for more interesting.. Friday night I went to a school event with some of the volunteers at the navy school. They thought it was going to be a fashion show, After waiting for an hour and a half from the published start hour, the show finally started. The volunteer had undesrtood it was a school election but actually it was a beauty pageant for electing a king and queen of the sea...but really the guy was just there to have the girl on their arm. the surreal evening started with the three competing girls who were 15 16 and 17 doing a provocative belly dance in little crop tops ... read more
So I am at the end of my first working week here. It got better after the first day,,, dont get me wrong, it is still incredibly boring, but there have been a steady trickle of patients, so while i still have yet to do anything useful at least its something to look at! The doctors are friendly but as bored as me,, its the unlucky rotation to get from guayaquil mainland. But i actually really dont mind, strolling down the hill to sit in a hospital for three or four hours trying to teach people a little english actually isnt too bad, it because i know its only for a little longer and its reasonably sociable and itss good to havve some focus to the day i suppose! so thats work..the hospital is tiny but ... read more
So Im here!! On the last part of my journey... galapagos. Getting here was a pain...lots of waitingg around at quito airport when the plane was delayed. I met a nice dutch girl who speaks english so perfectly I thought she was american! Anyway she was less than pleased when she got on the plane and her seat which was 1 A didnt exist because numbering started at 1 D...very strange..but she did get a seat. It was nice to fly over quito and appreciate its aamazing location and how hilly the actual city is..in fact even now im getting a little twinge of nostalgia for it! We had a stop over at guayaquil 35 mins later so it seemed hardly worth taking off...by this time i was feeling a bit apprehensive, I was all settled ... read more
Leaving has ben long drawn out and strange... Thursday was the last full work day because friday was a public holiday for the freedom of guayaquil.. So thursday was my last day to say goodbye and also the day all the interns were leaving to other jobs,, which was good as it took the focus off me!! So after the obligatory examination of the con diarrhoea y fiebre kiddies, it was time to have a min goodbye party...what better food to sa goodbye with than encebollado..an ecuadorean delicacy. Someone trotted off to the takeaway and then we all got a tub of soup..huge, some popcorn and a lime. The lime and the popcorn go into the soup and the soup itself is extremely strange.I ate half of it, and it alternated between being absoulutely disgusting, just ... read more
So what to say about the week after cotopaxi..well with 5 weeks left, my homesickness evaporated..not to say i dont get the odd pang, but half way through made the other half feel more manageable and it also made me awar that there was still so muchto see and how many amazing things i have already seen and therefore how glad i was after all that I came t o Ecuador. Also being on my own , although strange after having mum there meant I settled into my routine which always makes time start to go by fast. Whilst im not going to lie and say I was or am glad to go into hospitals everymrning at 6 30..my favourite bit is still the bus ride.. 45 mins of doing nothing, the dread isnt there anymore, ... read more
So climbing halfway up amountain probably isnt the best idea if youre vomitting..but I was determined! It was a very squashed bus journey, full of people to talk to..mostly I ended up chatting to a british airways pilot, but I also met an economic advisor to the uk government...good time to take a career break. Mostly a young traveller vibe. With a break to stop off at the hosteria, the journey to the park takes about three hours..its towards the same mountains we visited for the hot springs, so again the scenery is beautiul. That psart of the pan america passes through what they call the avenue of volvcanoes, so everywhere one looks there is a mountain covered in snow, The entrance to cotopaxi park is a village, again with pigs on leads and all the ... read more
So The week that mum left was emotional for me..I felt like I was going to be left and so the homesickness and the hating of the hospital grew! There wasn’t much remarkable about Monday but Tuesday was our trip to the hot Springs... I was apprehensive because I thought it was going to involve a hard hike at altitude a bit like Chimborazo. I was worried mum wouldn’t make it but actually it turned out to be lovely. It was about 2 and a half hours from Quito. Lovely drive in yet another landscape. Green but not forest. Mountains everywhere you looked, When we reached the mountain where the Spring was it made us both happy..it was a kind of moorland, which felt very familiar, with soft air. Then there was flowers for mum to ... read more
The Sunday we left mindo at 6 30 in the morning and arrived at mitad del mundo at about 8 am. After the lush cloud forest to be on an arid dusty plain in the hot hot sun wasn’t particularly pleasant! After some faffing with the guide book we decided to get a taxi to two lots of inca ruins and not go into the complex built around the fake mitad del mundo {where the French thought it was} So we first went to a pre incan platform built by the ancient peoples who had correctly calculated where the equator is. It lines up there with the top a volcano in the distance. We met some archaeologists who were measuring things in preparation for the equinox. It was an awe ispiring feeling to be stood on ... read more
So I havent found time to update in ages…I haven’t found time to do any of my work either. Nowe I have an elective project hanging over my head and an MTAS application to write {if you can call it writing} I am finding any excuse not to do it… The following weekend The week after that This past weekend And the little bit of this week that has been Well I have a gym class to do so I will prob only get as far as the week after Otovalo. Mum was still here, On the Monday we went to the old town. Given how tired I was we didn’t really see much. And certainly not much that was is still memorable now…Churches, nice colonial buildings that kind of thing,. Tuesday was much more entertaining….why? ... read more
So I left off when we went to sleep in Mindo. Wehen I woke up I was covered in bites and mum had hardly slept at all Luckily the very nice lady who actually owned the land {broche turned out to be the housekeeper) turned up and gave me some natural ccream for them and then we walked round her garden being shown tropical plants etc,, rather nice really. We made it down to the river and mum was excited about the bamboo. After that it was time to go to the zip lines. This incvolved an overpriced ride from Broches friend in the Tuk tuk on a stony road NOT comfy! When we got there it was an absolutely beautiful day. Mum was nervous but went first with the guide. Then followed about 2 hours ... read more
