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Published: December 1st 2008
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All right well it has been a while since I have written a travel blog and climbing Puntudo and biking up around Bellavista occurred a couple of weeks back. School has been going the same not to much is happening during the school day now I am a teacher assistant because the other teacher returned. This is soooo nice! I feel I am actually helping more… I basically work more one on one with the teacher help with pronounciation of words and explain things in English that she may not understand… then she can refer this information to the students. The two months that I was teaching alone was a good experience and I did enjoy it! I just didn’t enjoy always having to discipline the kids and always having them misbehave! I bleive thanksgiving is in about a week and wellhonestly it doesn’t ][poiu7ytrewq even feel like November! Christmas is coming soon too and it’s only getting hotter! It is a weird feeling searching for Christmas songs that my English classes are going to have to sing and I’m sitting at my computer with board shorts and a shirt still SWEATING! Lol. The nice thing about being a teacher assistant
is I get a little more time to relax… read books, practice the guitar and well about an hour a day I’ve been trying to study for the MCAT for entrance into Med. School. I am reading one book in Spanish called Manos Consagradas which means Devoted Hands… I read very slow and read pages over again and again to get the full in depth meaning of the words. Basically the book is about Ben Carson a Neurosurgeon who works a John Hopkins hospital. So far it has about a surgery he was involved in by separating two twins who where connected by the head. I am just getting into parts about his childhood. Even though I read slow in Spanish this book I really like it is just very interesting for me! Speaking of medical stuff I’m thinking of trying to volunteer in the hospital on Friday nights or something like that! I will be excited if I can do it! I talked to a teacher here who knows somebody that works there and she said she would ask for me so I’m pretty excited to here if I can do it or not! That would be a great
View
Looking down toward the city experience! Although I hear the hospital here is one of the worst in the country… I’m not exactly sure why but somebody told me that the doctors are lazy who work there.
Another book I have been reading well is my mountaineering book! It’s almost a textbook… but I figure I have time and I enjoy climbing… why not read it end to end. I think it will be good in expanding my mountaineering knowledge. I’m looking for places to by a rope that is similarly to a climbing rope to practice knots and rope climbing techniques… plus doing this is great preparation for climbing Cotopaxi! I am so excited in trying to climb Cotopaxi 19,300ft or around that! Finding a guide company has been tough though, It’s hard to get a hold of people here. There is another teacher here that has friends who live in Quito and have climbed Cotopaxi a couple so I might try and get a hold of them to try and climb the mountain with them. I have talked to another person about climbing Cotopaxi and they say it is a pretty straight forward route and you don’t really need a guide. But
Graveyard
This kind of made me think I was walking in one. I think I feel more comfortable with a guide or going with somebody that has done it before since I don’t know the mountain well. I’m also thinking of climbing Chimborazo which is the tallest mountain in Ecuador… I figure if I do well with the altitude on Cotopaxi then I would like to give Chimborazo a try! Another thing that has me excited about Cotopaxi is that I have read it is one of the most beautiful summits in the world and views are spectacular!! So besides reading and prepping for this I have also been riding my bike 😊.
I actually bought my bike almost a month ago maybe even more! But I have been doing a far amount of riding on it! Spent $250 on it and it is pretty descent bike! The mechanic I bought it from is a pretty nice guy too! In the mornings before classes I have been going out riding… I found this one nice hill that is pretty good to do hill repeats up! Also now in the mornings I have been going on fast walks with bottles of water in my pack for weight… just to prepare for
Mud
This trail was loaded with MUD!! You couldn't avoid it! doing a little mountaineering. Doing this stuff in the morning means I have to get up early… around 5:20 and then I have to be at the by 7:00am. Sometimes I get tired in my night classes because of getting up early but it is soooo worth it!! Today I went on a forty mile bike ride… it’s the longest I’ve been on in a while! We started in Puerto went up past Bellavista to Los Gemelos and then to the Canal that I had to cross three months ago when I first arrive! I didn’t get to eat breakfast because we left early and I didn’t bring food with me… luckily at the canal there was a food stand where I bought a pretty big sized meal for three bucks. We then hung out at the canal for about an hour and after took a taxi to the Los Gemelos again and went downhill all the way to Puerto… one thing is for sure I need to get back in shape for those types of endurance rides… When I was younger those rides I could do in a little over two hours, but school has gotten the best of
me! I did go in another ride a couple weeks before this one with a group of people up around Bellavista. It was a lot smaller ride though but it was a good one! So I’m still having a great time and things are going well!
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kdavitt
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Was it muggy or cold
Erik, I noticed that you were wearing shorts but there was someone who was wearing a jacket. We had snow flurries here, wish I could send you some