Blogs from North, Ecuador, South America - page 227

Hola! First blog, and I seem to have tons to write, so much that I´m gonna purposely leave out stuff about the school and the town until next time, so watch this space. In brief, for the next month or so I´m in Ecuador. I arrived last Friday in Quito and on Sunday traveled about two hours north to Otavalo, via the ´Mitad del Mundo¨ (Equator) from which I have a cheesy pic of my astride two hemispheres! I haven´t figured out how to upload pics here yet. (Internet cafes are such a faff, please someone send me my laptop!) Sorry, I didn´t do the swirly water down the plughole experiment, our guide said it wouldn´t work as the true equator was about 20min North of there. I´m sure if I could be bothered to Google ... read more

It´s been a really full week, so I´ll try to stick to the highlights. First off, I have a new housemate, Julia, who is 18 and from Boston (like Alli). And I´ve started guitar lessons with a musician friend of Marianna´s. My second lesson is in three hours and I haven´t practiced at all, so I´m off to a bad start. I´ve also found a new home away from home: the South American Explorers clubhouse. It´s in between work and school and has a great resource center, weekly presentations, and a lending library. On Thursday, Alli, Julia and I went to a presentation on hiking and climbing in Ecuador before we went dancing. The slides made me want to spend the summer backpacking, but we´ll see. Have to see how I do climbing Cotopaxi first. Saturday ... read more

While the trip to Otovalo was postponed for another weekend, I spent Saturday in beautiful Mindo. We had stayed out until almost five a.m. the night before, but the trip was to beautiful to sleep in the car, as I had intended. At one point, we had to wait at the side of the road while they cleared a landslide. When we arrived it was raining (as it does every day in Mindo) so we went to a somewhat sad little aquarium (one room with tanks mostly filled with goldfish), the highlight of which was a lone piranha. The aquarium was attached to a restaurant where we ate lunch (the first meal I´ve eaten outside of the house). I´ve had so much chicken since I´ve arrived that a plate of shrimp was a welcome change. After ... read more

Well I´ve been here for two weeks and thought it was about time I put down a few memories in this blog. I am now learning spanish and helping at a project with street kids in quito. I have been in two houses with families so far, not at all what I expected. The first guy´s house who I was in was the ex-finance minister of Ecuador, knew Bill Clinton before he was in office and is mates with Donald Trump. The school for the street kids is real fun they´re surprisingly tactile with visitors and volunteers, but are very violent with each other. One of the most disturbing things to see was a 3 year old actually put up his dukes like a real fighter against an older kid, and when he punched he didn´t ... read more

Holá.... Nous quittons Quito avec bonheur et deception... puisque c;Est une ville qui posséde un charme fou lorsque vous avez la chance de rencontrer les bonnes personnes. Nous quittons pour un petit village situe dans la jungle et situe en altitude et qui se nomme zuniac. Nous effectuerons notre premiere semaine de voluntaria. LE but de ce'projet est d;aller recolter des informations sur les legendes et cutures de ce petit pueblo (et d;en faire un livre: projet des filles) en plus de ramasser de l;information sur le patrimoine naturel. Nous aurons donc la chance de parcoutrir une partie de la jungle en compagnie d;un guide d experience qui saura nous montrer les richesses de ce coin perdu qui se trouve dans un parc National classifie patrimoine mondiale par l;unesco...Nom du parc zangai- Donc sur ce nous ... read more