I have been in the middle of the world, as my blog title says, for about two weeks at this point, but it feels like I know the city and people so well already! I am down here with about 20 other students with my program, all of us are great friends already. It's nice having other people in the same situation so we can figure things out together.
I moved in with my host family two Sundays ago and I already love them! My dad is Papa Poncho (Alfonso) he is an architect and my mom is Mami Eli (Elizabeth) she owns a salon. I have two identical twin sisters Sofi and Pamela who are 26, an older brother Denisse who lives in an apartment but still visits, and a younger brother Ricky who is 7. I feel like I am already a part of the family, I love them :) So meal times are interesting here, very different than the U.S. It's almost 9 and I just had dinner. Ecuadorians eat big lunches around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and then eat a really small dinner later between 8 or 9, they save me a big dinner (left overs from lunch) and then they drink coffee or hot chocolate and dip bread in it.
Last weekend we went to Otavalo- a big market about two hours from Quito where we got to buy a bunch of cool stuff and learned how to bargain! On the way there we stopped at these hidden Pyramids from pre-Incan time. They were hidden so the Incas and Mayas couldn't find them, so they are all covered in grass. It's really sad that Ecuador is the place with the most ruins and artifacts in South America, but other countries have stolen the artifacts and have them in museums. At the end of our tour we got to feed lamas, which I'm not gonna lie was AWESOME!!
We also stopped at the equator before getting to Otavalo. Obviously the equator goes through many different countries, but Ecuador really is the middle of the world because it has the highest altitude of all the countries the equator passes through. Because of the mountains Ecuador has the best reference point, therefore, is the middle of the world. The next day before heading back to Quito we had a full schedule ahead of us. We woke up bright and early and went to a man's house who makes all kinds of instruments. It took him maybe 2 minutes to make a flute out of bamboo he carved it right in front of us! Then we went and swam in a waterfall near Otavalo, it was amazing! The hike up and around the falls was pretty scary, I'm really glad we had our guide, we were really far up, and basically rock climbing. Next, we stopped at another market that has a lot of leather products, but we had all spent most of our money so we just walked around and got icecream. Next, we went to a house that a couple makes their own products of wool (lana) here. They showed us how to knead the wool and make it soft and then roll it so they could make it into long pieces of thread. They even let a couple of us try, and boy did they make it look easy! I could barely move the two pallets they gave us to make the wool softer, let alone roll it into any shape! Some people bought some of their scarves, and we all wanted to buy hammocks since we were so fond of the ones in our hostel.
The last stop on our trip was Lake Cotapoxi, which is a volcanic lake. All of us were so tired, but a few of us really wanted to hike to the top to see it all. The altitude is really hard to get adjusted to, and I still find myself breathing heavily when I walk uphill for awhile. But it was soooo worth the amazing view!! We took almost five hours to make it back to Quito, when it should really take 2, because when we were almost home we had to turn around because a semi was flipped on the highway. We made the best of it though and told funny stories. I can't wait to learn more about this amazing country, but a fun fact for some crazy things I've seen so far include: sidewalks, not ONLY for walking. I have seen motorcycles drive on them (Quito has about 2.4 million residents, traffic is crazy) people park on them, and yesterday I witnessed a small car driving on one. Well, I think that is it for now, CHOW as they say here :) Oh an additional note, saying hello and goodbye is VERY important! You always hug and give a kiss on the cheek when you see people, its very rude to leave a room without saying goodbye. I will come back to the states hugging and kissing everyone <3 :)
Last weekend was my first time going to Guayllabamba with my family. In Latin America, it is very common for people to assume that you know what your doing, and give you the least amount of information possible. Well in this case we went to a little house on the country that my parents are sort of re-modeling (my dad's an architect) and I worked in the garden all day with my mom. (which was amazing and so much fun, but would have been nice to know what I would be doing all day) long story short I wore a nice sweater, a scarf and my coach shoes, because I thought Guayllabamba was a place where family lived and we were going to visit. Well I was wrong haha. (luckily there was an extra pair of shoes for me to wear in the garden) Lesson learned, next excursion with my family I will be asking for a dress code. Ecuadorians also just expect you to know all of the people that are always visiting the house or whom you are meeting for the first time. Example, my dad had a friend come with to help him lay the tile in the extra room in the house. I had never met this man before and he sat next to me in the truck the whole ride, this wouldn't have been an issue except that he is indigenous and only speaks Quechua, which is a Spanish dialect. It is hard enough for me to speak Spanish, so the whole way we all just laughed because this man, bless his heart, was trying so hard to tell me stories and I had no clue what he was saying. Also, it took us an extra hour to get to Guayllabamba because, you guessed it, traffic. But this time the road was not blocked by an accident but by the protestors on the highway. (protesting what, I couldn't really catch, but my dad and his friend got out of the car to see what was going on) While the men laid the tile down, we went to do work in the garden. I helped her pull weeds and cut dead flowers but I also helped her pick the avacados, some lemons, chillis and more. They also have a 15 yr old Doberman there named Greico and we went on a walk with him. We went to go collect other roots from flowers to bring back so my mom could add them to her garden. It was nice to get out of the city and into some fresh air, and spend some time with the family. :)
This weekend was of course another adventure. Some of us in the BCA group decided to go camping and rough it a bit. This was my first real experience with camping and being in tents. In the states I have gone camping in an RV or trailer, and at a park with full electrical and plumbing hook up. So it was really fun to actually go camping in tents and be out in the wilderness. The first part of our adventure of course is the trip there. We went camping at Pasachoa which
is a national park with a
dormant volcano. We took the bus from
Rio Coca to the end of the Ecovia line, but we were unsure of where our next
bus was. We asked two police men for directions, and they decided it would be
easier to escort us to the next bus. Before they led us there, one of the
police officers said over his walkey talkey “Permission to escort gringos.” We
all died laughing. Then when we got to our bus he asked my friend Sarah and I
if he could get his picture with us. And then of course we had to get one with
him as well. After our hour bus ride we still had further to travel on our
journey. To get to the national park we had to pay someone with a truck to take
us there, and we all rode in the back which was so awesome. And of course we had to all stand up to feel
the fresh air in our faces!! (what a difference from all of the pollution and
smog in our lungs in Quito) When we finally got to Pasachoa we went straight to
set up camp and eat our peanut butter jelly sandwich lunches. Sarah, Lydia and
I were in charge of buying food for everyone.
Which was a bit difficult because we had to buy things that would keep
without refrigeration, but we came up with a great menu: pb&j for lunch,
some bean and veggie sort of burritos for dinner, a home-made trail mix and
granola bars for snacks, and the left over bread, pb&j and bananas for
breakfast on Sunday.
After we all ate and the tents were set up we journeyed out
to hike up the volcano. We thought this would be a group effort, but apparently
some of the people in the group are hard core hikers and wanted to half sprint
up all of the steep stairs and hills. Those
of us normal people had to stop to breathe because our lungs were dying. (I think
the summit of the volcano was 1400 ft, so needless to say we stopped for a lot
of breathing breaks) We were pretty hard core for awhile, (Emily, Sarah,
Jessica and I- the others were going a lot faster and left us in the dust) but
then our breathing breaks turned into talking breaks, and after about 3 hours
of hiking we decided we were about ready to turn back. We wanted to know how close we were to the
summit, and when we asked people coming down the trail they said about two
hours, and we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. Then we heard lightning and we really decided
to turn around. The path was already
really muddy and slippery, and with the added rain this is a recipe for clumsy
people like me falling, a lot!! It was kind of fun though sliding down the
volcano a little, but my shorts were a disaster. On the way back I washed them off in the
spring going down back to camp. It was so nice out when we got back that we
decided to sun bathe a little, which lasted for a whole ten minutes until it
started pouring down rain. The rest of
the group had just gotten back and we all squeezed into one of the three tents
to hangout and talk about our stories from the hike. We played some card games and all hung out
until we were all so tired from the hike and the long day that we all went to
our separate tents to sleep. With the
minor interruption of Jordan’s joke telling that we could hear from the other
tent, which was very entertaining. 
It poured most of the night, so good thing we had our rain
covers on our tents. Bad news was that the
clothes that were muddy/wet from the hike that we hung out the night before
were completely soaked the next morning along with our dirty/muddy/disgusting
shoes. It was so nice out in the morning
though so we all just walked around barefoot in the grass until we were brave
enough to put our disastrous shoes back on.
We all ate a leisurely breakfast and packed up camp pretty slowly. Then we had to call the guy in the truck so
he could come to the park to take us back to town. I’ll never get sick of the way the bus system
works here. Basically it doesn’t matter
if your half way on/off the bus, the bus will keep moving and it’s your
responsibility to make sure you don’t fall off or face plant on to the bus
floor. The bus we took back to Quito was
pretty lengthy, and most of us got in the front of it, and boy did this bus
driver take off fast. The only open seats were way in the back and we all were
stumbling back and forth (mind you holding all of our camping gear) until we
finally found our seats. I almost forgot
the best part- while we waited for the bus we all got icecream, so we were
holding icecream during the whole bus charade, and I am proud to say that mine survived,
although it was really close to landing in some ladies lap. Overall, it was a
great camping trip!! 
