Holy Cow, people adventures!

---

WOW. It seems to me when you stay in a place long enough to absorb some of its rhythm, the people then become the adventure.

As many of you know, I will graduate from college this upcoming May (GULP) and in order to delay finally becoming a big kid a little bit longer, I am looking for ways to get paid to have further adventures in South America, focusing on women's health and medical anthropology. One of the ways I could do this is through a Fulbright scholarship and so I have spent the past week tracking down some folks to get some more information. Holy cow. This process has taken me to:
-a conference on Ecuadorian maternal health care at a very swank hotel (which, I might add, I was invited to at the last minute when I happened to be doing laundry and just returned from a run, meaning I was wearing dirty clothes AND smelled)
-the largest public park in South America, speed walking and later sharing a piece of chocolate cake and carrot juice with a current Fulbright scholar
and will take me to:
-a week long volunteer gig as a translator (DOUBLE GULP) in free clinics in the poorest neighborhoods in Quito

While by day I was busy running/bussing/chasing trolleys around Quito and its surrounding provinces this past week, by night I was enjoying the sudden influx of travelers into the hostal I'm staying in. This enjoyment included learning bits of Irish and Hebrew, defending American foreign policy as best I could, enjoying the guitar and linguistic talents of a Nicaraguan man (with more fingers than teeth...), and making arepas (the Colombian dish I will miss the most) for everyone in the hostal with a cook in a nearby cafe. I was also able to find buddies to explore the Old Town of Quito with me (local women forbade me from doing this solo) and not just any buddies but two large Israeli men (AND in Israel, 3 years of military service is mandatory, so they were combat-certified buddies, SCORE!).

During the night time multicultural adventures of this past week I reflected that in now 6 weeks of travel I have yet to encounter another American which I found quite weird...
THEN, last night, sitting outside eating dinner and practicing my Kichwa (indigenous language, soooo cool but flippin' hard!) and making friends with one of the waiters at the restaurant, up runs a chica and her friend who were from none other than Boulder, Colorado. WHAT?!?!

All in all, this past week has left me feeling like I am the luckiest women in the world to have so many incredible people in my life and consequently so many incredible opportunities to have fun, grow, get into trouble, and have some more fun. Thank you to all of you for being friends and tolerating my rambling stories, general tardiness, chewing gum and coffee addictions. I love you all,

Beso
p.s. sorry for the sudden rush of blog entries, I have been writing one each week as I promised but wasn't publishing them correctly, woops.

---

Photos

Presidents
So we were calmly walking down a deserted street when all of the sudden we were surrounded by armed guards and thousands of Ecuadorians holding banners. Unbeknownst to us, the President of Ecuador and the President of Nicaragua had just arrived in a car 15 feet in front of us.