First days in Cuenca and the Orphanage!!

I LOVE CUENCA!!!

Not that I didn't love Quito, but the two are very, very different. Quito is so big and everything is so spread out that was very difficult for me to feel like I really knew the city. Cuenca on the other hand is smaller and quaint and I already feel like I know what I'm doing. This however, did not happen from the very beginning as you will soon find out.

I took an overnight bus from Quito to Cuenca and tried to sleep the entire way because I knew I'd have a long day ahead once I arrived. Tip for future travelers, Ecuador is VERY COLD in the middle of the night. Like around 35-40 degrees cold. So if you are on an overnight bus, take a hint from every single local person around you and bring a blanket. This would have been a perfect opportunity for me to use the alpaca blanket I bought in Otavalo, but alas, I had it packed away in my luggage under the bus and shivered my self in and out of sleep the whole trip.

I arrived in Cuenca and a friendly worker allowed me to use his phone to call my pick-up person to let her know I had arrived since I am too stubborn to rent an Ecuadorian phone. I was picked up no problem and swept away to my very incredible host family! We live just outside of the main city which means I have to take a bus into school and to the orphanage, but that's ok because it is very inexpensive (25 cents a trip) and I get to see the city and eavesdrop on the local conversation which is my favorite hobby. The Spanish here is really beautiful. It's a little quicker and more difficult to understand than the language in Quito, but I haven't had any problems. The locals have a very distinct rhythm to their speech which other people describe as "sing-song." To me, it doesn't sound like they're singing but it is definitely as notable as an Italian rhythm is.

This is the third time I've lived with a host family and the first time that I've been in a big house with big family instead of an apartment. My host mom has three daughters (age 11, 18, and 21) and one grandson who is two years old. The girls' dad comes to eat dinner with us some nights and is also so incredibly kind and welcoming. My house seriously looks like a set of a telenovela with a big winding staircase, people everywhere, and beautiful marble floors; its awesome!

After I got settled in Cuenca, I was picked up again for an orientation of the city. My coordinator Jessica showed me how to get into the city by bus and all of the notable markets, churches, and need-to-know places throughout the town. The city is surrounded by four rivers and its laid out on a grid pattern, so (now that I know it) it's fairly easy to orient myself.

After orientation, I went back to the school for a tour of the historical houses in Cuenca. Cuenca is a UNESCO World Heritage city because of a lot of the older buildings here, so it was really interesting to learn about that and also meet some people from the school. Cuenca is also the number one foreign destination for retired Americans, so many of the students at my school are older people. That's not so bad, but it does mean that I didn't make as many fast friends like I did in Quito.

Some of the old historical houses in Cuenca that are now mostly government buildings

They're all French style because the Ecuador's Panama Hat became very popular with rich French people who wanted to import it, so rich Ecuadorian artisans went to France and brought back this architecture. 

After the tour, I was so proud of myself for finding the correct bus home, that I didn't realize it was going the wrong way!! I started to realize that the bus was taking longer than it should have, so I asked the bus driver when my stop was and he told me it would be another 50 minutes or so. I had taken the correct bus in the complete opposite direction!! What should have been a 10 minute trip turned into an hour and a half. But bright side - I know now to never do that again and I got a quick tour of the city for only 25 cents. To make things even funnier, just as I started to worry that my host mom would be worried that I was late for dinner - she got on the same bus I did with dinner ingredients in hand! It was such a coincidence and she made sure that I got off at the right stop to avoid any more confusion :)

After finally getting to sleep more than 8 hours, yesterday morning I got to start my volunteer work in the orphanage! It is a little bit outside of the city and the bus ride takes about 40 minutes. Since most of my correspondence before I came was with my school in Quito and not Cuenca, it seems like there was some miscommunication about what the orphanage is really all about. I was told that it was an orphanage for  girls aged 0-18, but really its for boys and girls from 0-5. This is really no problem at all for me, I'm fine working with whatever age/gender, but I really only have donations for girls ages 8-18 maybe and a lot of school supplies. But no worries, there is another orphanage in town where I will bring the leftovers after I let Tadeo Torres (my orphanage) pick through everything that they can use!

Orphanage or La Mancha???

The orphanage is run by two nuns, a few full time workers, a long term intern, and a handful of short term volunteers like me. It's split up into two sections, the babies and the older kids. Since I'm really the only volunteer that speaks Spanish all that well, I get to work with the older kids. They're from around 2 years old until 5, but we do have one 9 year old girl as well. Kid language is hard for me to understand in English, let alone Spanish, because I don't have a ton of experience working with little kids and they really just sound like they're making high pitched mumbling and screeching sounds rather than words. So its definitely a challenge, but I've found myself getting a little better each day at understanding what the heck they're talking about. Also, I have to be super quick and on my toes with my own Spanish, because if I think too long about what to say they'll just continue doing whatever it is that I'm trying to stop or run away or whatever, so its definitely helping my spoken Spanish as well.

This is the courtyardyard. On the right are the kid's "houses". Each one has about 3-4 beds and a bathroom. Behind the Virgin Mary statue, there is a bird cage with about 15 birds that I forgot to take a picture of!

And on the left are the classrooms, storage rooms, and offices. 

Beyond that, they have a HUGE yard with two swing sets, two carousels, two slides, and a basketball court. 

These are the steps leading into the main building (including the baby area and the kitchen/dining room) from the courtyard. 

The kids are super nice, cuddly, crazy, rambunctious, and everything else you would expect little kids to be. Each one cries about three times a day, and its basically my job to run around and make sure that they're not actually crying from pain when they run into each other on their bikes or fall off the swings combined, with a lot of forced nose blowing. I'm trying to play with each one a little bit every day and learn their names as quick as possible. It's tough though because there are about 23 of them and many are in and out of classes, speech therapy, social work, with a psychologist, and other random activities throughout the day, so I don't always see everyone while I'm there.

Today, we took a bus to a park that's right by my house and it was so much fun! The kids loved being able to play on the park equipment that they don't have at the orphanage, like the monkey bars. There are also a ton of stray dogs around the city and the kids were fascinated by this one that was passed out sleeping right near our area. It was all fine and calm until one of them (lightly) kicked the dog and it chased us around the entire park. It was all very dramatic.

Aside from that, the kids are super well behaved, especially when we left the orphanage. They all get in straight lines and hold hands whenever we leave or walk from the yard to the dining room or wherever. This morning, however, as soon as I got there, the kids ran into the laundry room where they are not allowed to try and sneak some TV time, thinking that I didn't know they couldn't be in there. Of course no one listened to me when I said to leave and that they would regret it, until I called over one of the nuns and they all ran out like the place was on fire! Muahahaha that's right kiddos, I'm in charge!

Sebastian wanted me to take his picture so he could see what the hat looked like :)

That's really all I can think of for right now!! This afternoon, I went on a tourist bus tour of the city which was awesome, but I'm still going though all of those pictures so I'll write about that later. Thank you all so much for reading my blog! I love doing this because it forces me to sit back and reflect on my day a little bit at a time, and it's also a great souvenir for me to remember what I've been up to, so I'm very grateful to have an audience. This trip has been so incredible because I feel like I'm making a lot of progress with my Spanish because I'm using it in so many new contexts, but also because I'm able to give back to this community in a very fun and tangible way. Thank you all for your love and support, it truly means the world to me! Hasta luego! :)

Sneak peek from my super tourist bus tour. 

Otavalo and Mitad del Mundo

This weekend was awesome!! Since it is my only weekend in Quito, I decided to spend it doing two day trips that are fairly close to the city, that way I could best enjoy what Quito has to offer before I leave. My friend Anne from Norway became my travel buddy and we did almost everything together this weekend! I'm so glad to have met someone with very similar travel priorities so early in my trip :)

Our first stop on Saturday morning was to a town about 2 hours north of Quito called Otavalo. We took a cheap taxi about 20 minutes to a bus station at the very north end of Quito, and from there, a bus that cost $2 to Otavalo. The trip was very easy, but nothing is really labeled that well or very intuitive, so I was constantly asking police officers and random workers if I was in the right place. The Ecuadorian have been so nice and so helpful and they always point me in the right direction.

Otavalo is known for its huge artesian market, its actually the biggest in all of South America! Anyone who knows me knows that I hate shopping so this was obviously a bore..... NOT. I absolutely LOVED the market!! They had a lot of the same types of things that the artesian markets in Squisili and Quito had, but the prices were so much better and easier to haggle down than in the city. I ended up getting maybe a few too many items, but seriously where else can I buy myself a handmade alpaca blanket for $12??

For lunch, Anne and I went to a restaurant called Buena Vista, very appropriately named for the beautiful view it has from its second floor dining room of the entire market. From there we could see that it is really so much bigger than we thought it was! It was very easy to get lost wandering amongst all of the colorful stalls, but the town itself was fairly small and easy to get around. Once we were done in the market, we stopped at a pastelería for some delicious croissants and took the bus home to Quito. I had just enough time to shower, nap, eat dinner, and then meet my friends out for some drinks and pool at a bar just down the street. It was a very tiring but very awesome day!

Sunday morning, my host mom invited her friend over whose daughters took some of the clothes that I brought to donate. One of her odd jobs is as a nail artist, so she gave me a full manicure and pedicure to thank me for giving her daughters the clothes! It was so nice to feel appreciated and pampered, especially because I picked my nails to death on the plane and I really needed it haha.

Once we were done with our mini-spa morning, Anne and I met at a pastelería for some pan de chocolate and coffee. It was soooo delicious and the perfect way to start out our day. Then, we taxi'd to the bus station again, and then took a 25 cent bus to the equator line, also known as the Mitad Del Mundo! It was super touristy, but honestly really interesting and fun, and I definitely recommend it.

There are actually two equator lines in the city, one is correct and one is incorrect. The wrong one is the one that most people visit, with the huge monument devoted to the equator. Years after it was built, they noticed it was about 7 seconds (240 meters) away from the actual equator line. Therefore, they drew a second line and built a second museum there, called Museo Intiñan. Both parts of Mitad del Mundo are really cool and have different things to do and see, so I recommend them both. Especially if you can go on a Sunday because they have local dances and folk music/costumes all day!

The first equator line (the incorrect one) is awesome because it has a HUGE monument surrounded by tons of flags. It costs about $7 to get in, and that includes access to all of the little museums and science demonstrations inside too. You also get to go up inside the monument for an incredible view of the whole complex and on the walk down the stairs of the monument, they have information about all of the different indigenous peoples within Ecuador, because there are quite a few really distinct tribes. Also while inside the complex, we decided to eat lunch at one of the restaurants there, I had traditional empanadas and chicken with rice. Delicious!

I obviously really understand proportions and have great depth perception. 

wow...

After we ate lunch and grabbed some souvenirs (I get a magnet from every city I go to), we decided to go to Museo Intiñan which is outside of the complex, but still walking distance. This museum was super cool!! Because its on the actual equator, they can do awesome experiments. I attempted to balance an egg on a nail which is way easier there, I tried to walk in a straight line drunk driving test style which was SO hard because the North/South poles pull you one way or another. They also demonstrated how water falling through a drain will either turn clockwise or counterclockwise on either side of the equator and it doesn't spin at all on the equator (which also explains why Ecuador can't experience hurricanes). They had some really cool sun dials that are perfectly exact even though its a few minutes off from our phone's time because the sun dial accounts for leap years and our clocks don't until it actually happens.

The first sunny day in Quito!

After all of that, we got our passports stamped with a special Equator stamp and we stopped really quickly at a chocolate lesson in the museum. It turns out that Swiss and Belgian chocolate are made with mostly Ecuadorian cocoa beans and that Ecuador has won the prize for the best chocolate in the world for the past three years! Because the cocoa tree absorbs so much from its environment and Ecuador's volcanic land is very nutrient rich, the chocolate from here tends to be amazing, I can attest to that.

Having done just about every thing that both museums had to offer, Anne and I ran to catch a bus home. I had to pack up everything, eat dinner, and say goodbye to my friends and host family before my scheduled pick-up at 8:30. I had the best time in Quito but I am so glad to be able to explore and really get to know another part of Ecuador. Quito is really big and it was almost overwhelming to try and explore it during the day when I knew I had so little time there. But that's OK because I still think I made the best of what time I had there! My overnight bus left for Cuenca at 10 pm and arrived in Cuenca around 7am. Although its not technically very far south, because of all the mountains and the stops that the busses make, plus traffic, it takes quite some time. I thankfully got some sleep and arrived in Cuenca this morning pretty much ready to go!

I'm so tired from a very long and adventurous first day here which I will write all about later this week, so I'm going to get some rest! Tomorrow, I start my first day at the orphanage and I am so excited to meet everyone who I will be spending the next two weeks with! Hasta luego :)

Saquisili and Cotopaxi

Hola a todos!!

Yesterday, my school took a day trip to Saquisili and Cotopaxi, about two hours away from Quito by bus. The drive was pretty fun because all of the students from the school were there as well as the teachers, so we got a chance to talk and really get to know everyone. Also, throughout the drive, we stopped at a lookout point where you could see all of the southern part of Quito! Quito is a very, very long city, about 25 miles long, so from where we were you could only see the southern half.

The teacher who picked me up from the airport, Cristobal. 

My roommate, Franzi from Germany. 

My teacher, Germán. 

From the road, we could also see some pretty beautiful views of the billboards, volcanoes, and mountains around Quito:

Saquisili is an indigenous town that generally makes their living by way of their Thursday market, so almost everyone in the town as well as people from all over Ecuador come out for their animals, fruit, vegetables, and artesian goods. The town and market are fairly small, but it was very crowded. Our first stop was the large animal market where we saw cows, pigs, sheep, and llamas for sale. I asked how much it would cost for the cutest llama there (he had a cool hairstyle) and it was only $50!!! If only my cat at home wasn't so territorial I totally would have bought it. 

Afterwards, we went to the small animal market where they sell rabbit and guinea pig that are to eat, not for pets. In Ecuador and Perú, cuy (guinea pig) is a delicacy and they are bred specifically for this purpose. We didn't get to try any, however, and I'm not sure I'm totally on board with it but I'll probably end up eating it at some point.

 We did get to eat some tortillas made with cheese inside that they were cooking everywhere on the streets. It smelled so good!! For 4/$1, it was a great deal and a great snack.

Then we went to the fruit market which was really interesting because there are so many fruits here that we don't have in the US. And the fruits that we do have, like banana, taste SO MUCH BETTER here. They are so creamy and delicious, I'm definitely going to miss that when I go home.

Lastly, we went to the artisan market. I tried not to buy much because tomorrow (Saturday) I'm going to the biggest indigenous markets in South America, but it was so pretty and colorful it was hard to resist! There were hand woven scarves, table clothes, ponchos, sweaters, purses, backpacks, hand-painted boxes, trays, plates, paintings, and so much more. It was really pretty!!

Our next stop was the National Park called Cotopaxi, named after the volcano that is there. The volcano is well over 5,500 meters high and is the highest active volcano in the entire world!! The national park was very cold and very windy because we were so high up, but it was so pretty and enjoyable. There was a huge cloud looming over Cotopaxi so we didn't get the best view, but we could see the other mountains that were in the park just fine!

The only time I've ever been photographed wearing gym shoes. 

With Anne!

We had a guide who joined us on our bus ride up the volcano who told us so much about the park and all the animals and plants, as well as the history of the volcano. It has erupted a couple times, and there is currently a threat for it's eruption. Our guide says that volcano is like a human, however, and he lives with her and he knows her better than anyone and that he and the scientists know that she won't erupt soon. Apparently she's just bubbling a little bit and the media are being very dramatic. I sure hope not because that would be very destructive to all of the people who live on the mountainside! After our trip, my roommate and I decided to stay in and take advantage of having a free night to be able to upload pictures, skype and call family and friends, and just relax a little since we were up so early!

View from the bus on the drive home

This morning when I woke up, my host mom had invited a friend of hers over (with my permission) to look through my suitcase full of things to donate to the orphanage. She is a single mom of two who is working odd jobs to make things work. She brought her two very sweet daughters who loved so many of the things that I brought and ended up taking some things home with them. Even though my intention was to bring everything that was donated to the orphanage, I'm sure these sweet girls will enjoy and use the clothes just as much.

Afterwards, I went to the artisan market in Quito to see what all the buzz was about. (I obviously really love markets and souvenirs haha) The part of town that the market is in is very pretty and I loved walking around and enjoying the beautiful weather today! It was pretty sunny for once, so I loved getting my vitamin D and shopping fix all in one. They had a lot of the same type of things that the market had in Siquisili, and I ended up buying some things for some lucky people at home.

In the afternoon, I had my last class with Germán and I feel like I learned so much in just one week. This weekend, I have plans to visit Otavalo as well as the Mitad del Mundo, also known as the Equator line, so I don't have much time left in Quito, but I am so happy to have been here and experienced so much already!