That's real smoke.

Pics...These are from my friend Tricia. The snow capped shots are of the volcano Chimborazo. I was not on that side of the bus, so her pics are better than mine. The men on horses were in Guaranda. One of them has a bottle of whisky I think. Most of the horsemen in this procession stopped to let the Gringas take pics. The Mountain with SMOKE coming out of it is a better view of the very active Tungurahua. I mentioned it already, but feel free to search it online. That is smoke and ash coming out of it's collumn.

Today is the first day that I've counted the stairs to my apartment. There are 80. That excludes steps outside the building. I thought, why not? It's been almost two months and I still can't remember what 'floor' I live on. I think I'm the 5th floor, but the 4th apartment. However, I am second guessing that.

My teacher from Wisconsin passed me while I was with Deanna. He said, "O, this must be a relative." I said no, she's a friend from OU. We also got that from the guy from Virginia that we met in Guaranda. Other than our need to smile constantly, we don't look alike.

I had a good seat on the Ecovia, but a lady was wobbling around while trying to help her 4 year old stand up, so I let her have my seat. I could not tell, though, if she was truly having a hard time, or if she was putting on a show to get a seat. Since the bus wasn't that crowded and there was a small boy with her, I like to think she was having a hard time. I got up, moved across the aisle, and leaned on the metal piece in front of some seats by the door. That place is actually more convinent for exiting the bus, but being balance-challenged, it's sometimes a difficult place to stand when the bus driver is a gun it and slam on it driver (today).
At the other metal piece across the door way, was a fellow who barely even moved when the bus was flying to a stop. He was suave. He had thick, shiny black hair that kind of fell in a part. I was in a trance with the guy, but did an alright job at not staring. He looked like he could have been one of Johnny Depp's friends from 21 Jump Street, just that cool look, but not dated. This guy had a tattoo on his right hand, something of a cross-like X design with a little heart under it. Was Lacy stalking this guy? Ya, from Jipijapa to Baca Ortiz I was, thank you for asking.
O the Ecovia. . .

On a completely different and sane note, I really admire the parent-child relationship here. Little Andean babies just glow at the sight of their parents. I don't know if it's because they don't have anyone else, or if their little hearts beam at them out of love, but I've never seen that look from American children. I've been playing with the idea of why. So far, I've concluded that Americans are spoiled--Surprise! Some families here could pay the same cost of living as in the US, but many families wouldn't be able too.
That really isn't a good arguement because my host family is well off, all 4 families living in my building (all related) are well off. Each kid, ranging from 26 to 12, has the same kind of affection to their parents, grandpa and grandma, and their siblings.
I love my family, but my sisters and I do not get along in even a similar matter. We fought constantly as children, and still occassionally do. (None of us live together anymore, so that's died down.) It's just different.
One of the cousins here will lay his head on his sisters shoulder and she pets him, but not in an 'okay-that's enough' way. It's loving. Again, love my sisters and family, but we were brought up differently. So, the long and the short of it, I'd be okay with raising a kid like the Andeans do.

That was a lot of rambling. =)

"Quê Bonita Es Carnival!"

OK, Disregard the pic numbers listed because they loaded backwards. Enjoy.
PART 1
The bus was scheduled to leave at 7 am. Deanna and I arrived at 6:20 am, Tricia and Kelsey arrived at 6:30 am, and Jen arrived about 5 minutes later. We bought our tickets, stood in line to pay our .20 terminal gate fee, and finally boarded the bus. We had to move after we realized we had assigned seats, but it was not a problem. We pulled out of El Terminal Terrestre at 6:49 am. EARLY! The drive was beautiful. Pic 1 shows the land divded up and it looks like a quilt. Pic 2 is not very good, but it is of Chimborazo aka volcano with snow on it. It was beautiful. (When we left Guaranda, the bus had a better view because it was clear. There is a different story to why I didn't feel the motivation to capture it in picture though (read more..). ) Picture 3 is on the other side of Chimborazo. The volcano cleared the land at some point. It's completely incredible how the landscape changes so quickly. Deanna and I had fun trying to best describe Ecuador based on what was in the United States. The Rocky Mountain comparison was my favorite. It looked like where my family goes camping, but with giant aloes. I didn't take a picture because I wanted to keep my camera all weekend.

PART 2
We arrived in Guaranda. The bus couldn't get to the Terminal there because there is a parade already in motion. We crammed the 5 of us with our bags into a normal-sized taxi. He kindly drove us far around the city to get us as close as possible to our hostal. Since the parade went up and down many blocks, not just a straight line, we still had to walk across the parade route to get to our hostal. My group has a very blonde girl in it, a dirty blonde haired girl, a light brown haired, a medium brown hair (with bright blue eyes), and myself in it. None of us are dark skinned. We all look very American. Serveral people laughed and pointed out to each other that we were Gringas (Not derragatory here like in Mexico, just Americans). We were sprayed with Garote, (sounds like Karaokee kind of) which is like a can of silly string but it's foam. It was pretty funny.
We made our way (after several failed attempts) across the parade route. We got to our hostal. We checked in, went downstairs to the resturant and ate. I had fresh pinapple juice with fried shrimp, fries, and veggie salad (brocolli, peas, carrots). I thought I was being more adventerous, but the menu was hilariously translated (ex. hot aromatic infusion was the translation for herbal tea).
The group decided to go up to the monument of the indian the city is named after. PICTURE 4! (I'm new to this, so I'm not sure how the pics will post). We took a taxi up the steep, winding hill, and had a good time up there. It started raining when we started walking down the road. We pet a donkey that was tied to a tree. Then, we caught a taxi at the turn in the road. We were wet and cold, so we went back to the hostal, and napped. Dinner time came, and then it was time for the big parade. We managed to miss most of it, but a random guy walked up to us and started talking in Spanish. He then spoke in English and said his family just moved to Chicago. Two of the girls are from that area, so he ran and got his buddies. One was from Chicago, so he was really excited. The group is in Ecuador teaching English for WorldTeach. They invited us to hang out with them, so we agreed.
They commented on us being clean, which didn't last for long. They had flour rubbed in their hair and on their faces, along with a nice grunge appearance. It started raining again. We all ended up with very dirty clothes after that. We danced, and danced, and danced. Every other song the band played was an American song (Play that Funky Music White Boy, I Love Rock and Roll, random 70-80's Rock). There were the 5 of us, and maybe 10 other Americans, and 1 German. Dan, the guy whose famiy was moving to Chicago, is living with a host family in Guaranda. His host brother invited us to his dad's discotec. A lot of fun.

PART 3
Daytime Guaranda was just as active as night time. We picked out a nice place behind a sweet older lady and her family to watch the parade. We stood there about 15 minutes when we got sprayed. We all kind of took it, and it wasn't a big deal. The sweet little lady got sprayed too (the criminal was in her circle-guy in red shirt, about 37). She got onto him, but he sprayed her again. It's all in good fun. It did get bad enough that we ended up buying bottles of garote ourselves. PICTURE 5 is a taste of what we dealt with. That's the back of Deanna in the black and red. If you look at the background, you can see all the spray in the air from various people. A group of boys my age walked up, and since we were already covered, decided to help us out more and spray us. They also floured our faces and scalp. We were worn out, but it was fun. I rode the bus to Ambato with crusty, flour scalp.

PART 4
After having part of the group sprayed with hoses (not fun), we finally found where the buses were loading. We waited for 20 minutes, but finally got to board a bus to Amabato. It was full. I walked to the back, but two of the people from the WorldTeach group were on, so Istood by there seats in the aisle. The other 4 kept my bag and sat on a sorry platform at the front of the bus. The aisle was full. I stood for 1 hour and 45 minutes, and then I was able to sit the last 8 minutes of the ride. While moving along, the German guy, called Pedro (easier to say than his real name maybe?) wanted to take a pic of Chimborazo. It was so much clearer this time. He went across the aisle to take the pic out the window of the nice guys next to us, and someone from the back of the bus sprayed him with garote. Several times the foam was used at the back of the bus, but it was so crowded that my friends at the front of the bus didn't know that had happened until I told them later. They wanted the window shut-spray. There's a Gringa in the aisle-spray. The Gringo is taking a pic-spray. --all in good fun.

Part 5
Ambato was so much more tame. We got to our hostal, and did nothing. I got to wash the flour out of my hair..with a frigid trickle of water. I put on clean clothes, and managed to take a nap. When I woke up, we decided we weren't going out, so I put on my jams and resumed laying in bed. Jen ordered pizza. The desk clerk said he would bring up our change when the pizza was delivered. She is so nice. She went downstairs to get it, so the guy didn't have to come upstairs. When she went downstairs though, he wasn't there. She came back upstairs. About 5 minutes later, the was a knock on the door, and the clerk brought us our pizza and change. We ate pizza (Jen ordered a large cheese, and a medium vegetarian...we got a large meat lovers, and a medium ham and balogne..ya), drank pinapple pop, and watched the Oscars (dubbed in Spanish). I fell asleep after best supporting actor, so I didn't make it far.
The next day, we went to a 'park' to see the view of Ambato and Tungurahua (another volcano). You can see 4 volcanoes from that point, but it was too cloudy, so we could only see part of one. We walked through the little town to get to the bus stop. A friendly dog followed us, and he got on the bus with us.
We had sanduches from a great place. The desserts reminded me of La Baguette in Norman (but not exactly the same). We went to the market that Ambato is famous for, and we got the same giggly Gringa remarks and stares. Then it was time for the parade.
We paid $2 to sit, and it was well worth it. We had cotton candy and peach box wine, high class. The little old lady behind me deliberately sprayed my back. She was not very nice the entire time. She kept sticking her hands behind my back on my chair, and kicking my chair, etc. I would have shrugged it off as accidentS, but since she sprayed me and only me before the other smaller things (big glob on my back), it was hard to ignore.
This parade/area is known for it's Fruit and Flower festival.
The spraying started after the parade was over. We managed to get back to our hotel. We got pizza again, but ordered in person. We had pinapple pizza and cheese pizza with a giant faux-cola. Then it was good night with the Bourne Identity in English with Spanish subtitles.
The trip back to Quito was uneventful and the whole weekend was great.

Rainy Days and Mondays...

Today has been a lazy day. I woke up unfortunately early and was unable to fall back asleep. Past that, I have done nothing. I packed my bag for the new trip. I was unsure if we were departing today or tomorrow, but was eventually told tomorrow.

It thundered some earlier. I enjoyed it. When it rains here, it's calm. It doesn't thunder often, but when it does, it is also calm. The wind doesn't blow during a shower either. I didn't realize how much I appreciate Oklahoma weather until this semester.

www.NBC.com , www.ABC.com , www.fox.com , and www.pandora.com do not work in Ecuador. I wanted to watch 30 Rock, The Office, Scrubs, and House online and they all told me they are to be used for USA customer viewing only. Pandora was nicer about it saying they were working on be able to operate out of the USA. That made my plan to keep up with my shows go down the drain. ER is over FOREVER in April and I'm going to miss it.

Ephraim is picking up so many new words. I've talked to him twice on Skype and once on the phone. He's such a squirt.

I'll be getting a taxi at 6:10 am, getting to the bus station at 6:30, and leaving for Guaranda at 7. I'll stay Saturday night there. We will go to Amabato (I think) for Sunday and Monday night. We'll be back in Quito in the afternoon on Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll have pictures from there. Happy Carnival!

Thank You Miss OSU

My Dear Friend Brooke sent me the link to do this, so here I am. Blogging. hehe.

For those already up-to-date, my weekend trips have not gone according to plan some reason. The one that did go according to plan was with an..interesting...group of people. With that being said, my Carnival Holiday trip to the Orient has been canceled. I'm a lot less crushed than I should be, but since nothing bad happened, it's fine. We're hoping to create a new trip.

I'm sore from yesterday. I ate something that didn't agree for whatever reason. Lunch is the big meal here, so that was where all the suffering came from. Jemina, the maid, is great. She made me manzanilla tea with anis seeds in it, chammomile and anise. As much as I hate chammomile, it really did make me feel better. She also cleaned up my mess that happened to occur in the shower. I felt terrible, but was too dizzy to do much about it.

Yesterday on the Ecovia (my life line to the world right now), a guy stumbled and we both laughed. After that, he kept trying to make eye contact with me, which I had a problem with since I'm 22 and he was no younger than 35. When the seat next to his standing area became available, he grabbed my elbow and showed me to that seat. He then stood with his belt touching my shoulder and every now and then touched my leg with his. I was crammed as close to the wall as possible and did nothing but look out the window. This is only once reason why I miss my personal space.

Camila's friend Daniel is here. He lives up the street, and is here about once a week. That boy knows more about American pop music from 1960-1990 than most Americans do. Daniel is 12. the first time I met him, he grilled me about what groups I liked and enjoyed all the music that I like. Fun kid.