Guaranda Ho!

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June 2nd 2008

Published: June 2nd 2008

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gwennfar

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I{m sorry it´s been awhile but we´ve been busy and the hostel only has one computer so it´s often taken when I want to go write something.
Today we leave for Guaranda. I´m happy to be moving on, Quito is fun but a little draining (both of energy and money) and we´re all very excited to get started on the work we came here to do. We´ve been spending the evening translating our workshop materials into spanish and deciding what we want to cover. So far it looks like my areas of "expertise" will be contraceptives, santitation, and water purification.
Now, to describe the last few days. We moved to a new hostel called Huauki, which means brothers in Kichwa (the other official language of Ecuador). Despite the fact that I was cold runny eggs our first morning here that ended up making me vomit, I really like this place. It´s mostly run by this 15 year old boy named Giovanne who is really funny and chill. We´ve also met a guy named Francisco who is from Quito but lived in Switzerland for the last 20 years and he´s been coming for meals with us and helping us practice our Spanish.

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Two funny stories that have happened in the last few days:
Funny story #1
We were walking back from lunch and we got a busy corner and were waiting for the light. There was a woman in front of us so we all were just waiting for her to cross, not really paying attention to the light cycles. After awhile she started glaring at us and I realised that the walk light had come and gone, and she was actually a prostitute and getting pretty annoyed that all these women were crowding her corner. There is also some debate over whether she was a woman or not, because she had some mannish features and was as tall as Vashti. At the time it was really awkward but I find it pretty funny looking back.

Funny story #2
On Saturday Fancisco bought some rum on the way back from dinner and we had a few drinks at the hostel and then went out to kareokee. When we returned Giovanne had falled asleep (he works almost 24 hours the poor guy) and so we were knocking loudy at the door. Vashti started shouting "Giovanne mi corazon, mi amor!" (my heart, my

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love) and has been calling him that ever since. He gets really embarassed and it{s really funny.

Also, on the touristy side of things, we went up in the teleferico which is a gondola type thing that takes you up to a peak outside of Quito that is 4100 m above sea level. The veiw was amazing and i was hard to breathe because the air was so thin. I took lots of pictures which I will hopefully upload soon. Sunday we visited a woman named Angie Clark in the prison. Strange thing to do, but it was in the book of suggestions at Secret Garden and came highly recommended from some Dutch girls we met while we were there. She´s from South Africa and she´s in for drug smuggling. It was very sad but also very interesting. The prison is like a tiny city, with restaurants and shops owned by inmates and lots of children running around (if they don´t have someone on the outside to care for them they can start with thier mother until they´re 3.

Anyways, I should get going. I{ll try to attach some pictures to this entry but I´m not sure if