last hour in ecuador

I'm in the airport in Guayaquil waiting for my flight to Miami to board so this is my last post from Ecuador. As silly as it sounds, I miss Loja already, but as always, I am really excited to be home tonight and to see my family and my cats and my friends. I've had  a great time here overall and I'm really going to miss the experience, but now it's on to bigger and hopefully better things.

I'm not excited in the least for the next 12 hours of air travel. Yesterday morning, my flight from Loja to Guayaquil was almost ridiculous. The plane was tiny, maximum capacity 30 people.... It had legit propellers and bounced all over the place in the air. Thank goodness it was only a 40 minute flight because I was dying of motion sickness. Bigger planes are less of a problem.

Yesterday after arriving in Guayaquil, I was greeted by a girl I used to work with at Canadian and her boyfriend. They went with my by taxi to my hostel and then we went out to breakfast and walked around the Malecon 2000 which is Guayaquil's boardwalk on the rio Guayas. The city of Guayaquil is gigantic and kind of dirty / intimidating, but the Malecon is beautiful and safe. There were armed guards all over it. My hostel was fine, lots of stairs, but thank goodness this is a patriarchal society and I didn't carry my luggage up or down them. After my former colleague and her boyfriend went home, I walked around the Malecon some more, went to the Iguana park and the Parque Cenentario and at some lunch. I was exhausted after sleeping only 3 hours the night before and walking around all morning and up and down 430 some stairs to get a good view of the city so I went back to my hostel around 5 and watched some tv and fell asleep. I woke up around 10, too late to go out because Guayaquil is dangerous after dark so I went back to sleep and slept on and off until 6 o'clock this morning. I definitely needed all that sleep and I feel perfectly fine now so I'm glad.

Well, just wanted to post one more time before my adventure is over. Life in general is an adventure, but Ecuador has been my greatest journey so far. :)

leaving loja in less than 2 days

Packing to go home is much easier than packing to leave home. Mainly because I had to decide what I wanted to bring with me when I left home 5 months ago and now that I'm packing again, I just have to put all of my stuff back into my suitcases and leave behind whatever I don't want, mainly a lot of my clothes.

It's hard to believe that I'm starting my journey home on Tuesday. I am still slightly nervous about being in Guayaquil all day on Tuesday because it is a huge city and supposedly pretty dangerous, though most sources say it's really only dangerous at night. I am sure I can manage to do a bunch of touristy stuff during the day. Apparently there is a park in Guayaquil where the trees and the park itself really is filled with wild iguanas. Now I know iguanas are herbivores, but I am not sure if I'll be able to force myself to see the park. Surely it would be interesting, but considering I have a severe phobia of frogs, iguanas really aren't that appealing to me. ew. But there is also a boardwalk named Malecon 2000 downtown on the River Guayas and an artsy neighborhood with tons of colorful houses called Cerro Santa Ana that I'd like to see. So there are ways to pass the time.

I am not sure why, but I am nervous about actually getting out of Ecuador and to Milwaukee just in terms of getting through customs (in a timely fashion) because I've never had to do anything like that before and I read that in Miami, where I'll be entering the country, everyone's bags get opened and searched and  then you have to recheck your luggage.

All in all, I'm ready to go home. I will miss Loja beause it is a beautiful place, but home is where your heart is.

I'll also miss this little guy. He's been a great surrogate cat.

10, almost 9

I'm going home so soon. Just today I started to get a little sad about leaving here, like so sad that I was thinking maybe I should stay, but then I think about it a little more and then I'm ready to go home again.

Things have been going well lately. My birthday was fine, definitely relaxing. I got a tattoo that I'm not in love with yet which is a total bummer.  But I am planning to get it fixed / more added to it when I go home. It'll be a good souvenir regardless.

I've been looking online for recipes for ecuadorian food I can make when I get home so I'm pretty excited to be able to prepare some ecuadorian food for my family.

Tomorrow starts the last week of classes for me. It's the last weeks of the cycle and I think it'll be the most stressful week of the whole course because of final exams, presentations, etc etc. Hopefully it isn't too awful. I would like my last week here to be enjoyable.

I'm leaving Loja on the 29th and then if my flight out of here isn't cancelled, I will be staying in Guayaquil for a day/night and flying out of Guayaquil, through Miami, Chicago, and land in Milwaukee late on the 30th. Flights to Guayaquil from Loja lately have been cancelled for some reason so I need to go to the travel agency that I purchased the ticket from tomorrow to see if they can find out why the flights are cancelled and what the likelihood of mine being cancelled is because there is only one flight to guayaquil a day and if my flight is cancelled, i'll have to take the 45 min trip back to Loja and then get on a bus ASAP to Guayaquil to make the 10 hour ride there rather than the 45 minute flight...... ugh. I hope it doesn't come to that. One way or another, I am getting home on June 30th!

:)

almost 24

Since I´ve been patiently counting down to June 29/30, time has been flying by. My countdown calander has almost two weeks crossed off on it. The other night I was unable to fall asleep worrying about whether I will make it home or not. I know everything will be fine, but I´m worried.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I have an appointment at 11AM to get a tattoo. Hopefully the artist shows up. He missed an appointment that one of my roommates had with him a few Sundays ago because of a family emergency so hopefully he doesn´t have to leave the country again this weekend. In recent years, I have never really thought much about my birthday until the actual day. I don´t love being the center of attention so I am pretty lax in planning anything. Last year I had a party, which was nice, but this year I´m in Ecuador and I´ll be going out to dinner tonight and then to a bar to see a Queen tribute band perform. I´m sure it´ll be fun, but I don´t even love Queen so we´ll see how it turns out. Surely it´ll be entertaining at least. Tomorrow I plan to get my tattoo and then probably sit around the rest of the day. As I have probably mentioned, Sundays in Loja are incredibly boring and not many businesses are open so almost every Sunday is a lazy Sunday.

I just ate the best chicken empanada ever at Tamal Lojano. Just writing that so that when I look back on this, I don´t forget.

Til next time.

faltan tres semanas

Oy vey, it´s been a while. We haven´t had an internet connection in our apartment for a few days so that is why I haven´t posted. Things are going well. I have three (THREE!) weeks left here and I´m getting pretty excited about going home. The more I think about it though, I might miss Ecuador. Not so much my apartment, the rain, or weirdly cut pieces of chicken, but the mountains, my students, and speaking in Spanish all the time.

It´s been pretty chilly here lately and I find it kind of funny when my students come to class and complain about how they are freezing and then rub their hands together for heat. I tell them frankly to put on a sweater and quit complaining because they don´t understand what being so cold that you could be freezing means. 68 degrees is definitely not freezing. It´s lovely.

School is starting to wind down, but not in the sense of winding down. My two older classes have one test next week for two days, then three days of review, and then a cummulative final. My other two classes aren´t so bad, but my junior tweens have really been getting on my nerves lately. Kids who used to be so well-behaved are turning into little demons constantly begging me to go outside to play soccer. Seriously, what´s the deal? We have class for 50 minutes a day and they can´t handle not being able to play soccer in that time. It´s pretty annoying. They also steal my water bottle and demand that I let them drink from it, steal my teacher´s book to see the answer to the work book exercises and throw paper at me occassionally. After calling someone in to discipline the class several times, I have opted to leave the door open during our lesson because my room is across from the secretary´s desk where the school inspector is usually working. Thankfully, these kids fear the inspector or I would have run out of ideas long ago. I break up at least one fight a day in that class. Ugh. My kids class is still driving me crazy on a daily basis. They are super cute, but don´t let that fool you. They eat candy before class. They are constantly in competition with each other in terms of finishing activities, they scream, run at me and erase anything I write on the whiteboard, and ask if it´s time for class to end 35 minutes before class ends.

I do really enjoy teaching English, but it´ll be nice to have a break from it and decide if it´s really what I want to do or if I do actually want to go to culinary school and open up a bakery/cafe. Great idea, no? I think so.

Well I am starving so it´s time to go home and make some pasta bolognese. Yum.... it´s a staple here (for me and Annabel)

si ves

Loja is boring. Usually anyway. But occasionally, we find something to do. This past weekend, I went to the botanical gardens on the very south side of the city, which was interesting. There were some cool plants there, but mostly it was just something to do on an otherwise boring day. Life is so boring without TV. I realize that's completely ridiculous to say, but it's true. Try to go 5 months without watching TV and tell me what you think. I suppose it depends where you live though definitely because if you lived in a booming metropolis, there would be tons of stuff to do on weekends. On the other hand, if you live in Loja, you'd feel differently.

I'm coming home in 30 days. I am really happy about that because I have had it up to *here* with the bed in my bedroom. It's probably the most uncomfortable bed ever.... It seems that most beds here, unless you're richy rich, have a frame, and boards that fit on the frame, and a foam mattress that's about three inches thick. Because the mattress is foam, it gets flat and stays that way, so honestly, the part of the mattress that I sleep on it maybe a half inch thick...so I wake up with a sore back and if I sleep on my side if feels like I have bruises in the morning. Awesome, I know. So I can't wait to get home for that reason, among others, but I'm pretty glad about leaving this horrible bed behind.

I would have liked to travel more while in Ecuador. I may still go to Quito before I leave, but I guess it would have been nice to see more of Ecuador and even other countries. However, traveling on a 4 dollar an hour salary is pretty much out of the question and the school I work at requires that if you want to take a vacation, you have to get someone to cover all your classes. Soooooo.... yeah. Some day I will come back to South America so I can see Macchu Pichu, Iguazu Falls, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Patagonia, and the Galapagos Islands (when I'm super rich. ha!) Plus, traveling in Ecuador requires that you sit on a bus for long periods of time and I've always hated buses so I just don't want to travel to avoid a several hour bus ride. The ride to Quito is 14 hours, and I think I might do it just because I want to see Quito for sure and stand on the equator. Plus, I've heard that if you take a night bus, it's not so bad. We'll see about that.

I have four weeks left of classes. I think I'm really going to miss some of my students. Of course, they are not even close to me age-wise, but I've become attached to some of my junior tweens, tweens, and teens. They're pretty awesome people and I wish I could stay here to see how much they change and how much more English they learn as they grow older, but alas, I won't be doing that so I'll just enjoy the last weeks classes I have with all of them.

Hope everyone reading this is well! See you in a month, USA.


PS. here are couple pictures from at the botanical gardens. gigantic leaves, fake swinging and real swinging from vines, and a bonsai garden. Click on them to enlarge.

fireworks are cool. anywhere.

Tonight after class, Annabel and I went out to dinner at El Sendero, which we go to abouuuut once a week. As in, the people who voluntarily work there recognize us when we come in and we often see people we recognize when we go. It's a restaurant owned by American missionaries so the food is pretty good, pretty home-y, and it's very well....American. They have hamburgers, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, chicken wraps, cappucinos, mochas, sandwiches etc etc. Yes, several Mexican menu items, but the food is hardly Mexican and is very delicious. And their limonada so good. Anyway, usually when we go, I get papas y carne which consists of what the restaurant call "rustic potatoes", which are little cubes of roasted potatoes, a hamburger patty, a small salad of lettuce, tomato, and vinegarette, and a sunny side up fried egg. 1) before coming here, I hated fried eggs. Now, I eat them about 4 to 5 times a week for breakfast. 2) Papas y carne, in every other restaurant is called papi carne, and in every other restaurant I've tried it, is not as good. 3) I will be making papas y carne when I get home because it, along with hamburgers (moreso burgers), as bad as that is, has become kind of a staple for us foreigners here.

After dinner, we went across the street to the plaza of San Sebastian because as we were eating I noticed people were walking past carrying cellos in cases so I was curious. There was a concert set up outside in the square. I think it was the Loja Symphony Orchestra. Pretty cool. We didn't stay for the whole concert because after a couple pieces, there were people singing with the orchestra, which I don't love sooooo we left. But the music was cool, very Latin American, which was weird for me to hear especially because I grew up playing the cello and playing and hearing primarily classical pieces...never once something you could salsa to. Regardless, it was cool.

Then after we stopped at a pharmacy and I picked up some ivy extract syrup to suppress my what seems to be neverending cough slash sickness in general, we went home. And let me tell you, it is convenient to have a 5th floor bedroom with a wall of windows because I just watched a 15 minute fireworks display while sitting on my bed. I'm assuming the fireworks started after the concert ended. It was pretty cool. I kind of felt like it was the 4th of July and then I got excited that I will be home by the 4th of July this year. Fireworks are pretty spectacular wherever you see them, don't you think? I'd post some pictures that I took, but I think we all pretty much understand what a fireworks display looks like.

By the way, thanks to the people who have either commented here or mentioned that they read my blog. I appreciate it.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday AND we don't have class on Monday because it 's the 24th of May which is a national holiday celebrating the Battle of Pinchincha. Our favorite pizza place is on the street called 24 (veinticuartro) de Mayo. I'll look up some information on the Batalla de Pinchincha on Monday when I'm bored to learn more about the holiday. I'm realizing that even though I majored in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies, I know next to nothing about Ecuadorian history. Speaking of that, two days ago my teen students asked what I studied in college and I explained that I double majored in Spanish and the aforementioned six-word major and their prompt response was, of course in Spanish, "So.... what can you do with that major?" Typical. My response was "Anything I want to do." ....I should have listened to my sister when she told me to pick a more practical major. If only we could all go back and change our lives. Oh well, I'm here now. Living in the moment and trying to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm glad to be able to speak and understand Spanish so well. I hardly remember anything now about the culture, history, or politics of hispanic countries, but whatever man. Enough with the stream-of-consciousness writing.

It'll be a slightly boring weekend surely because I am sick so I don't want to travel and now Annabel is sick too, same cold surely. eeeeeeeeeyuck!