Jane's travels update

I thought I would write a quick update about what I have been doing since everyone has left me. Well, not everyone, but mostly everyone.

Gabriel and I had a great week-long trip and saw lots of Ecuador. We went to Latacunga, Riobamba, Alausi, Cuenca, Loja, Villcabamba, and Cotopaxi. Although there were some bumps on the road, we had a very good time. In Alausi, we went on a train ride through the mountains (that actually was kind of lame). In Cuenca we failed miserably at making it to the Incan ruins of Ingapirca because we had to make it to our bus to Loja. We literally made it as far as the entrance to the ruins and then couldn't go in. But I zoomed in on my camera for the photo so it looks like we did :) In Villcabamba (which is famous for the residents there having extremely long lives) we experienced a bit of their heaven. We got there, ate, went on a horseback riding trip, got massages, and then ate some dessert. When we got to Cotopaxi the next day, after a trip from the very south to the northern part of Ecuador, we were pretty tired. We were definitely not in the best of spirits there considering it was so cold and we got pelted with hale or snow or something sharp in our faces as we unsuccessfully tried to hike up. We met up with Amanda and her parents in Cotopaxi and from there Gabriel left and I stayed with them for a night. The next day we went to a beautiful volcanic lake called Quilotoa. I wish I had pictures on this computer to show you how incredibly beautiful it was.

That same night my grandma and my sister arrived to Quito! I spent the next 10 days with the 2 of them. We went to Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world), the Historic Center, churches, museums, to Cuenca (which my grandma loved), Mindo, and Otavalo. I was having such a good time with them, that we decided to extend my sister's ticket. Andrew ended up going back to the US, so I didn't really want to go to the farm alone, so it worked out perfectly. I am currently travelling around Ecuador with my sister. We spent one day in Quito doing laundry, getting manicures and salsa dancing. The next day we went to Mindo for 2 days. In Mindo we went ziplining and canyoning down a waterfall. We came back to Quito for a night and left for Baños. Our first afternoon in Baños we wandered around, got summer sugar cane treats which are common here and got massages. In the evening we went on a tour in an open bus up to the volcano here and to see a view of the city. We enjoyed it, but we were very very cold. The next day we woke up early to go rafting. Right after rafting, we went to go paragliding, but unfortunately, this didn't work out as planned. To paraglide, everything depends on the weather. They had me go first and when I got down, the weather had changed and Annie couldn't go. I was so sad. If I had any idea it would change I would never have gone. We even stayed an extra day in Baños to see if the weather would work today, but it didn't. After the unsuccessful paragliding, we went to the thermal baths and then to dinner and then to sleep. Today we have done almost nothing except for some laundry. Tonight though, we are leaving to the beach for a couple days. Annie leaves to go back to the states this Friday and then I will stay in Quito with my host family for a few more days before my flight to Peru. I am so glad that Annie and I have had this time together. It has been so long since just the two of us have been together for such a long time and she is the perfect person for me to spend this time travelling with.

It has been so strange being in Ecuador without any of the people that were here for the last 5 months. Amanda and my grandma left on the same flight and she was one of the only people still left here. When I first got here, I really missed home and felt that it would be impossible to become accustomed to Ecuadorian life. What I am certain of now is that Ecuador has become somewhat of a home to me. I don't want to leave and I love my life here. Even though all of my friends are gone, I still have my own life. I have met people all around and I feel comfortable with the culture of Ecuador. But I am also ready for my next adventure. Next update will be from Cuzco, Peru!

And we're done...

So as you all can tell, we did not do the best job with writing in our blog and letting you know about all of our amazing and exciting adventures, but let me tell you, there were many. And we can't wait to see all of you and share with you about them. The last couple weeks were a turmoil with finals (yes, we actually did work) and saying goodbye to the amazing people we have met. And now we are each on to our own adventures.

Amanda's family from the US flew in yesterday and she will travel around with them and Andrew for the next couple of weeks. They will leave June 4 and she will spend a few more days in Quito before flying back to the states June 8 with a pit stop in San Francisco to visit one of our friends from our program before getting back to Seattle the night of June 9 where she will be this summer. So go visit her or call her and she can tell you all about our trip!

I am currently sitting in a small town called Alausi in Ecuador with my friend Gabriel waiting to go on a train trip. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do this summer (go back, stay here, volunteer, work?) but I have a plan. I am traveling around Ecuador for this next week until Saturday with Gabriel (started in Latacunga yesterday, today Alausi, hopefully to Cuenca tonight, the beach, Loja, and ending the week with meeting Amanda and her family in Cotopaxi). We do not have any specific plans and this trip has been pretty spontaneous, but it's working out wonderfully and Gabriel is great to travel with. When I get back Saturday my grandma and my sister fly in to Quito. We will spend a week in Quito and 3 days in Cuenca together and then they will go back to the US. When they leave, I will got with Andrew down to Loja to an organic farm for 2 weeks which looks like so beautiful and so fun. I can't wait. Andrew will go back to the US June 23, and the same day I fly from Guayaquil to Lima, Peru. From Lima, I am taking a 21 hours bus down to Cuzco where I will be volunteering for a month. I will be spending my mornings with 4 and 5 year olds at an ecological/garden school and living in an apartment with other volunteers at this project. I am super excited and a little bit nervous as I am going alone. But I am certain it will be wonderful. I return to the states July 27 and will be back in Portland by August 15. So that's what's in store. I will keep updates on this blog, although nothing is quite the same for me without Amanda...

Both of us have truly had a life-changing experience (which is what happens when you go abroad) and we have been so fortunate. We have met amazing people, seen beautiful places, laughed every day, eaten too much food, salsa danced until we couldn't move, barely did any homework, and really made the most out of every moment here. We cannot wait to come back and share our stories and adventures with all of you. We miss you. Hasta pronto!

-Jane

La Amazonìa, Reserva Geobotanìca, Salsa dancing, Cuenca

We have been awful at writing in our blog, but it's because we are having such a wonderful time!!!! We have been traveling a ton, refining our salsa dancing skills, and realizing that we have less than a month left of our program.

Since the last post, we have gone to the Amazon, gone to a few different paramo parks, gone to Cuenca, and made it to the beach another time, and lots of other stuff. But these are the only things we'll write about in thist post.

We'll start from the Amazon (at least what we can remember). We left super early in the morning and we took a bus that traveled through various ecosystems (the paramo, cloud rainforest, and the rainforest!). Jane slept most of the way, but Amanda was a trooper and watched the ecosystems change. Jane finally woke up all sweaty and hot because we were in the tropical rainforest! When we first got there we went to a zoological refuge where we saw lots of tropical animals like toucans, monkeys, tigrillos, parrots, etc. Then we got on a canoe and were on it for over an hour until we got out to this lodge in the middle of nowhere called Yakuma Eco-Lodge. This is a beautiful lodge where there were lots of cockroaches, which was a problem because Jane left her backpack open and we found lots of cockroaches in there and Jane was a pansy about it, so thank goodness for Amanda! The next day we went on a beautiful hike through the jungle and saw so many cool plants.

On this hike, we went into a bat cave! There was lots of bat excrement and one bat even peed in our friend's eye. Gross! After the hike we went in tubes down the river. We floated down the Napo River at sunset holding hands, salsa dancing in our tubes. It was really a wonderful experience.

The next day we went and tasted the fruit of cacao and zapote and Amanda ate a fried worm. We met an indigenous shaman who gave us chicha which is this drink that is chewed before eating, but ours drink wasn't chewed. It tasted kind of gross. In the afternoon, we used this blow gun thing. Then we went to an island of birds and watched birds and ate fruit. Amanda got stuck in some mud a few times, so Jane laughed at her. That was definitely a bad idea to laugh, because right after, Jane slipped off of a log bridge into a marsh that went way above her waist. Luckily she put her arms up and saved her camera, but it was a wet and stinky trip back to the lodge. That night we had a campfire where we obnoxiously sang songs, like the gringas we are. The next day on our way out, we went on another hike to a beautiful waterfall that was beautiful, but kind of rough because it was so slippery. All in all, it was a great trip, minus the fact that there was NO chocolate in the Amazon for us to eat. So, when we got back, we went with our friend Emily, in a taxi, through the McDonald's drive-thru (the Auto-mac) to get Snickers McFlurry's and since the taxi driver was so helpful, we got him some McDonald's too. It was embarrassing, but those McFlurry's were great!

The next trip we went on was a day trip with a couple of our friends to la Reserva Geobotanica Pululahou that is near the middle of the world (Mitad del Mundo). It's a volcanic crater that we hiked down into where an indigenous farming community lives. It was beautiful, except for the dog that followed us the ENTIRE way up that had diarrhea the whole time. Other than that, it was wonderful.

We are also refining our salsa dancing skills. Now that our group lessons are over, we went for a semi-private lesson that was wonderful! Almost every Wednesday we go salsa dancing to practice. We were learning so much more from the semi-private lesson, that we're going to sign up for private lessons. We plan to come back professionals.

About a month ago, six of us went to the beach, to a place called Tonsupa. It was relaxing and wonderful except for when Amanda decided to climb a rock and made her foot bleed like crazy, so we had to go to the Red Cross of Ecuador to get it cleaned by a man without a shirt. She's doing better now, especially after her ride on a quad with a couple of military men. We ate lots of yummy food, which was great.

We can't really remember what we've done, but first weekend of April, we took a flight to the colonial city Cuenca. It's the third biggest city in Ecuador and it is beautiful. We had a great time and we stayed at a very nice cutesy hostel called El Cafecito. Besides the fact that our bed was very hard, we liked it. We went on one of those double decker bus tours, which was so much fun! We felt like tourists, but it was a great way to get to know Cuenca. We went to a beautiful mirador (lookout) that looked over all of Cuenca.

We also went to the National Park Cajas about an hour away from Cuenca, which turned out to be quite an adventure. Three of us were taking a later airplane home on Sunday night (because the other flight was full), so we decided to go to this park. We had just taken an exam in our diversity class and we had just learned about this ecosystem, the paramo, into which we were going. Somehow though, things did not click and we all went in thin sweaters and regular shoes. We started hiking and it was drizzling just a little. After living in the Pacific NW though, this did not bother us much. On the way back though, things got rough. It started pouring rain, the trail got very muddy, Amanda fell flat on her face, and we got completely soaked through. We got back to the visitor's center and went to go wait for a bus (which we later found out, was not a place where buses even stop). We got so incredibly lucky though because there was an old man, his son, and his grandpa coming back from a fishing trip at this park who luckily took us back to Cuenca in their car. These were such nice people and we were so happy to be in their warm car. Although it was a rough trip, Cajas was beautiful.

In the next post we will update on the month of April: THE GALAPAGOS!, Andrew's visit, Montañita, Baños, Papallacta, parilladas (bbq´s) and more!

P.S. We are so sorry for being so bad at writing in our blog. We wrote most of this post a few weeks ago, and we just had the opportunity to finish it. Things got busy with the end of the semester fast approaching. We are having a great time though and we miss you and we can't wait to share all of our adventures with you in person.

a week of farreando + atacames + food babies

We started this entry a while ago, but we never finished it, so it might be kind of a long one...

It all started on Wednesday, February 2nd at 9:40 pm. We arrived at Bungalow for free drinks before 10 (gotta love ladies night) to celebrate Jansey´s 21st!!! We had four drinks each before 10, so I´m sure you can deduct how the night went... Everyone was dressed to the nines and we danced the night away to some good ol`spice girls and an assortment of random songs from the US and Ecuador.

Let me preface this next statement by saying we had not actually been drunk or hungover in Ecuador up to this point. All we can say is the next day, Jane didn't feel so hot and the girls who usually keep it together were right there with her. But like the true champs, we returned to Bungalow the following night. It was a more mellow night where we just sat in the lounge and talked. The next night we went to a cutsie part of town in the Historic Center called La Rhonda. Unfortunately, there were not enough tables to house all 9 of us, so we went back to Gringolandia (Foreignerland). We didn´t last there very long because we were all super tired. The next night we went out to celebrate our friend Ariel´s 21st birthday. This night was cleaner and classier than the last celebration. We went to a Cuban salsa club with live music! (One of our friends even struck up a romance with the bongo player!) We had a lot of fun there, except for the creepers we met who literally pulled us apart when we were dancing. ¡Que grosero! (How rude!)

Then a week passed and we decided to go to the closest beach town for the weekend, Atacames. We decided this Wednesday afternoon and were on our way Thursday night. We got there Friday morning at 6 am and after a quick nap at the hostel and some breakfast we settled on the beach. We did much better here than in Canoa with putting enough sunscreen on and we limited our ice intake which had given us bad stomachaches in Canoa. Although we still came back with a slight stomachache. We had a wonderful time resting on the beach, exfoliating ourselves with sand, and eating lots and lots of food.

We are also becoming salsa dancing professionals (one of our goals before coming here). We go to class every Tuesday and then we go out dancing on Wednesdays to practice. We´ve discovered that we are the best partners for each other because we can do all the fancy moves we learned in class at the club that other men are just not capable of.

Amanda will be switching her internship placement because researching fish for 8 hours a week (in english) is nuts. She came here to improve her spanish skills, and staring at a computer is not helping. The organization was really interesting but she decided that she would rather do something social justice oriented and will likely be working with children who work as vendors in the streets or with children whose parents work in the garbage dump.

This last weekend all we really did was eat a lot of food. On Friday morning we went out for bagels and then we went out for pizza for dinner and then we just stayed in at one of our friend´s houses to watch a movie. The next night though was super duper fun. Seven other girls besides us came to Amanda´s apartment for a piamada (pajama party/cooking night). We made SO much food we thought we were going to burst. Our friend Mia made beef dumplings and curried rice noodles with vegetables and sangria with fresh fruit. Jane made crepes that we ate with nutella, ice cream, whipped cream, mango, babaco, strawberries, bananas, dulce de leche, and some expensive peanut butter. We also made even more dumplings with cream cheese, bananas, cinnamon sugar, and dulce de leche. HEAVEN. All our friends stayed over at Amanda´s for the night. It was cozy and cuddly. The next morning, we prepared our specialty for all our friends: egg in a raft aka one-eyed Jack, egg in toast, egg in a basket, egg in an inner tube, etc. along with some more crepes and banana milkshakes. As you can imagine, we were ready to burst. Unfortunately, it´s been raining, so we have yet to find a good time to go running to work off our food babies (especially after we got caught in a downpour a couple weeks ago), so we´re using that time to write here (and we bought chocolate croissants too!)

In case you were wondering, we do go to school...sometimes. We even have a test tomorrow and we went on two field trips this weekend for our Environmental Diversity class. We went to the botanical garden, the vivarium (where there were crazy snakes!), and the zoo. It was pretty fun, but kind of boring too. BUT, we´re going to the AMAZON in a week and a half where we´ll get to see some of these animals in their natural habitat. We can´t wait.

Missing and thinking of you all.

¿Got crabs?

We're finally settled into our class schedule now, however, neither of us are very motivated to do the work for our classes as we discovered this weekend while we were at the beach and then had to do our homework at 6 am yesterday after a night on a bus. Luckily, we did finish our homework, and we even participated in class although we were half asleep. It´s silly of us to complain, given that we only have 4 classes, minimal homework, and Friday´s off.

We both are getting settled into our internships here. Amanda started today with an organization called SIMBIOE: It´s an organization focused on conservation and biodiversity. She spent 4 hours today researching fish of the Andes. And that's what she'll be doing every Tuesday and Wednesday for the next 4 months in an effort to find information for the director of the organization to write a book about the conservation of those species (and her name will be cited in the book too!). Jane is working with an organization called Arte Educarte. This organization goes to public schools in the poorer regions of Quito and teaches art classes. On Tuesdays she helps in the office to prepare for class on Wednesday. On Wednesdays she goes with other volunteers and art teachers to the schools and help with the classes. She has a lot of fun with the kids, and it´s interesting seeing how education and discipline differs here.

Last weekend we took a trip to the Ecuadorian coast to a small beach town called Canoa. We left Thursday evening and spent ALL night in a bus and arrived in Canoa at around 8 am Friday morning. This was definitely a prime location to just relax for a few days. All we did was lay on the beach, lay in hammocks, drink piña coladas, dance on the beach, swim in the water, sunset walking on the beach, and lots of napping. Oh and ate a lot too. It was quite relaxing. The only downside was that there were cockroaches in the hostel. They fumigated the room the first night, and we slept in there, but that could not have been good for us. The second night, Jane slept in a hammock because she was too scared of cockroaches. Baby. The first night we were there we saw a beautiful sunset! We walked all the way down the beach, and as it got dark, there were a TON of crabs just running (or crawling?) along the beach. Kind of gross, but really cool too. We made good friends with the bartender who made us piña coladas (who was also the husband of our hostel owner) and with his nieces. We spent both our nights there dancing in his bar hut on the beach with his nieces who were about 11, 7, and 3 to the same three songs over and over.

Cloud Rainforest Heaven

We went on our first trip this last weekend to a small town about two and a half hours away to a little town called Mindo. This was one adventurous trip. It's a good thing we're so stubborn, because people didn't want to go away for the weekend on short notice (aka the day before), but we got 11 out of 20 people from our group on a bus to Mindo Saturday morning.

The very beginning of our trip started with a little adventure on the bus. Right as we were heading out of Quito, a woman on the bus started shouting ¡Hay un ladrón en el bús! ¡Necesitamos llamar la policia! (There's a thief on the bus, we have to call the police!) Turns out this thief was right across the aisle from me (Jane). He didn't get off the bus right away, but he got off soon after (along with his partner in crime) and didn't manage to steal anything because the woman had the strap of her purse around her leg. I was glad that I was holding my backpack right in front of me, but sleeping on the bus was no longer an option after that.

Once we got to Mindo, we checked into a hostel called Casa de Cecilia. Mindo is a very cutesy small town with lots to do and lots of stray dogs. As soon as we checked in, we left to go tubing down a crazy river! So much fun!

Our next adventure was to go ziplining through the rainforest canopy. We ended up getting left behind by the group along with two other girls, so just four of us went, which turned out to be better because it went faster and we could do more fun stuff on the zipline. There were 13 cables and it was so beautiful! This is what superman pose looks like:

And we also did mariposa (literally upside down with your arms out) and train (3 people together). (I have pictures of Amanda doing it, but I forgot the correct cord for my camera to put it on my computer.)

The next day we went on a hike to a waterfall sanctuary. So so so beautiful, but the water was cold. Except who knew that taking a taxi (aka a truck with most of the people standing in the bed of it) would cost us $20 there and back? p.s. that's a lot for a taxi in Ecuador. But we were able to do all of these things for just $50!

It was a great trip, but I think we were all happy to come home after all the crazy adventures.

-Jane

Who know only half the elevators went to the first floor?

Classes are officially in session. And let me tell you, it is difficult to be a foreign exchange student in a school of 10,000.

Here's how day one went: We arrived at 8:30 and met our friend Gabriel. They don't post classes until the first day of classes here, so we were directed to piso 9 of one of the main buildings. And guess what? Our class wasn't listed... so we went to the international studies building (10th floor) to get help. To our dismay, our class was canceled due to a personal problem with our profe. So we decided to just sit in on a random class and had to climb back up 9 flights of stairs in the other building (climbing stairs at 9,300 feet is far more difficult that one would imagine). We were hoping to sit in on a sustainable development class but no one showed up to that classroom. We ended up walking into a random room, asking the professor what the class was and siting in. It was a history/philosophy of the mind class... not my cup of tea.

Our second class looks promising -- it's a class about social issues in Ecuador for example children workers, afroecuatonrianos and the environment. Plus it's only 6 weeks!

Here's how our second day went: Again, we got there at 8:30 for a 9:00 class that we wanted to sit in on. We went to the 9th floor, the class wasn't listed, we went to the 10th floor floor to the international department and again, the class was canceled. This time for good. So we went back to the 9th floor of the other building and decided to sit in on a fauna class which was supposedly in Aula 101 (room 101). One would assume this means aula 101 in the same building, since that's how it is for ALL the rest of the classes listed. Back in the elevator we went but there was no floor one! Here planta baja is the main floor so I thought maybe floor 2 was really floor 1. Not the case. We discovered that half of the elevators don't stop at floor 1.... Anyway, we finally found floor one but aula 101 was the secretary's office. Back to floor 9 we went to talk to someone in the offices on floor 9 and she informed us that aula 101 was the correct room, but it was in in engineering building across campus. The class started at 9. Nobody here actually gets to class until 9:10. But at this point it was already 9:20ish. EPIC FAIL. We didn't go to class. Instead we went and got our ID cards and became official PUCE students. And we had to get fingerprinted! I found out later from a friend that they didn't... Guess this means that we have to behave ourselves : )

-- Amanda