OBAMA!!!!!

Hi everyone,

Well, the obvious first thing to mention are the elections.... I am SO excited!!!! What a wonderful night that was! Gabriel went with me to an American bar called the Bungalow, where there were TONS of American teenagers and adults sprawled in sofas and on the floor in front of the disotec's 5 or 6 huge TVs. When CNN finally projected Obama as the winner, the owner of the bar (an American) passed around free drinks for all! We watched McCain's speech, Obama's, and then finally went out and caught a taxi home. Everyone in Ecuador is thrilled about the victory, although some, particularly aunts and uncles in my host family, who have a very leftist past, feel that from their point of view, a more "liberal" American president is not going to do the trick (in terms of Latin American relations). They see Obama as much better than McCain, but still a very free-market-loving capitalist who isn't going to help economics much in Ecuador. But, we'll see.

Besides the elections, things have been going along normally. One cool thing about two weeks ago was that my creative writing class had this extravagant, elegant poetry reading. We all dressed up (white shirt, black pants), and each wore a different colored scarf, and ordered bouquets of flowers, hor d'eurevers (which i have NO idea how to spell!!!) and waiters to serve them, after the recital was over. AND a musical interlude! Lots of friends came, as well as Paty (my host mom), so that was really nice. And I had fun reading some of the stuff I've written for this class, even though I know that if we'd have the kind of workshopping experience I've had in the US, everything i've written would have turned out five times better. But, oh well. Now we're in the story section of the class, and I've been having fun writing stories in Spanish. One of them I've gotten a little carried away on and it's now like 9 pages long!!!!

Gabriel's sister has had some depression problems lately, so I've been trying to balance being there to help the family and also continuing to have my own life, and not letting my own well-being depend too much on how things are going at Gabriel's house. But this weekend was really nice - Gabriel's mom and sister went to Esmeraldas to visit his dad, and we got to hang out a lot with our friends, go to this beautiful town outside of Quito called Sangolqui, eat lots of ice cream, and just generally have fun. NEXT weekend, we're planning to go to GUARANDA, a beautiful little city about 4 hours south of Quito, where I spent a week with a host family while I was on exchange here. I don't have ANY way of getting in touch with the family, but I remember where their house is, and am hoping they'll end up being there so I can stop in for a little while and say hi. If not, it'll still be nice to show Gabriel ( and maybe his friend Ricardo, who might even take his CAR...which would be excellent) what Guaranda's like. About a 25 minute drive from the city is a tiny town called Salinas, which has become a major producer of cheeses, meats, sweets, etc, etc. It has fun tours where you get to see all the community-operated machines. I'll let you know how that goes!

Something else cool....guess who's coming to Quito on November 21??? JUANES!!!!!!!!!!!! I've basically been waiting my whole life to FINALLY get to see him live, and so now I just have to figure out who's going to go with me!!! Because the very next day there is a concert of Ska-P, an awesome Spanish band that everyone wants to go see. But I am determined to see Juanes.

I'll put in this entry the only two recent pictures I can find on Gabriel's computer, which were taken last weekend at a get-together with his dad's side of the family. We're in the woods near his grandma's house, with his cousins and aunts and uncles. Anyway, that's about it for now - I'll try to update again soon!!!!

Love,
Sara

October!!!!!!!

Wow, wow. Usually I realize after a while that I haven't written in my blog and I try to come up with interesting things to write about. But this time, finally, I have been overflowing with urges to write in here, because LOTS of AWESOME things have happened!!!!!!! And finally tonight it looks like I'll have a chance. I'm in the University computer lab; I just got out of my creative writing class and I'm waiting for Gabriel to finish his intensive English class program in order to go back to his house--I'm spending the night there tonight because NAMARA, who's visiting (!!!!!!!!) is spending the night with his host family. So! Maybe I'll start off by talking about creative writing. This has been the most intense, brutal creative writing class (or ANY class) I've ever taken--okay, maybe except for Mr. Garbarino's English class in high school, which was also sort of brutal, but in a more destructive, agonizing way. This class is actually seeming pretty fantastic right about now. I don't think the teaching method is wonderful, and I'm not convinced that our teacher is an AMAZING writer herself--but I love the other students in the class, who, as I may have mentioned, range from ages 20 to about 75, and in general I feel like it's a very pleasant atmosphere, interrupted just now and then by the teacher's occasional critiques such as (to one of the American students) "I didn't understand anything you just said, read it all again," or, "There's no soul in your poem. Where's the soul?!!!!" I find that a difficult question to answer. Hahaha. Anyway. The cool thing is that next Thursday night we're going to have a big PRESENTATION for everyone we want to invite, each of us reading three prose pieces and three poems. And, she picked me to "inaugurate" the event, I don't know what the appropriate word is, to sort of make a little speech about our work, and to in the process, according to her, link images from EVERY SINGLE THING we've written into a clever little speech lasting about 30 seconds. Wish me luck! No, but I'm really excited about this creative writing presentation...finally I can invite all my Quito friends and family to hear me read something (including GABRIEL, who's never heard me read at any kind of creative writing thing ever). Yay!!!!!!! We're going to have flowers and classical music in the background and wear matching scarves and have tasty food and a toast afterwards! You're all invited--come!!! haha.

Okay, enough about creative writing. I went to the GALAPAGOS ISLANDS!!!! It was very spontaneous. Gabriel's mom is from there, so he has official residency there--something that you basically can't obtain permanently unless you have some blood connection, so not something you want to lose. But his residency card had expired over the summer, and because this new somewhat socialist Constitution recently passed in Quito, they're going to be getting stricter on who can and can't live on the islands. Which from an ecological standpoint is FANTASTIC!!!! But obviously, it would also be great if Gabriel could have the option of living there some day, because apparently sociologists are somewhat in demand there, what with all the dilemmas of balancing environmental and social needs, tourist-resident relations, etc! So. He was going to go alone, for about three days, and stay with his grandma there and try to get his residency renewed. But then we realized that Thursday and Friday of last week were a nationwide vacation (don't remember why), so we decided to skip out on the whole week, and we spent from last Sunday to last Friday in Galapagos!!!! I went on my exchange year, but that was definitely a completely touristy experience, jetting from one island to another for five days. This time, we stayed with Gabriel's family in this building RIGHT in front of a beautiful boardwalk RIGHT on the beach!!! His grandma and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins live there, so it was a nice family scene, especially because his family there is incredibly generous--constantly inviting us out to eat, giving us t-shirts for free, etc! The first few days we tried to buy ice cream from their store (part of their apartment building), in order to give them our business, but then we had to start buying ice cream from the store next door, because his aunt and uncle would NEVER let us pay for our ice cream, so instead of helping them out, we felt like we were robbing them. But anyway. It was great. There were sea lions everywhere. EVERYWHERE!!! There was no swimming to be had on the beach right in front of their house, because it was completely taken over by the sea lions--I'm talking like 50 to 100 sea lions on this relatively small strip of beach. I got kicked off the pier one day by an angry sea lion who wanted his/her space. It was incredible!!!! We found some other beaches, though, that were more people-oriented, and that was fun too. We also got to see more of the island (this was the island San Cristobal, by the way), including the more mountainous part, where it just doesn't look at all like how people imagine Galapagos...it's more cloud-foresty, with somewhat jungly vegetation. People playing soccer, basketball, grilling meat...in a lot of ways it was a lot like the rest of Ecuador. So that was interesting. Oh, and Gabriel DID get his residency renewed. Hurray!

Then, there was my birthday, lovely lovely birthday. Thank you to EVERYONE who sent birthday greetings from the States, it was WONDERFUL to hear from you all!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had a fantastic birthday. I think I'll paste in here a part of an email I wrote to my parents today, because I sort of described my day: Gabriel had been being very mysterious about WHAT we were actually going to do for my birthday, and we had finally ended up saying that he'd come over to my house around 11 am that morning and then we'd see what we wanted to do. He wound up calling me at 8:30 am asking if I could open the door for him, because he was already there with breakfast food!!! That was nice! Then, he told me that the plan was to meet up with his family in the Plaza Grande (historic center)...I asked him jokingly which museum he was going to take me to, hoping very much that it wouldn't be ANY museum at all--I've decided I really can't stand museums. We got there and met up with his parents, and it turned out the surprise was that we were going to go to these really cool swimming pools and hot tubs right there in the historic center...I'd gone once before with Gabriel and they're lots of fun. BUT, (typical Ecuador), we get to the pools and it turns out the electricity's been cut off for the entire historic center!!!!! So, obviously no way to use the pools. I said jokingly that maybe we should go to the old Hospital Militar, which has been converted into a museum...it was really supposed to be a joke, but Gabriel's parents jumped on it and we wound up GOING!!!! hahaha. I enjoyed it for a little while and then got incredibly bored with such themes as the Spanish conquest (I'm sorry. I've never really gone for history), so Gabriel and I skipped out early and he took me out to lunch (which was another surprise). It turns out that APPLEBEES in Quito has this special birthday deal, where if it's your birthday and someone takes you out to eat there, you get a free meal and a brownie and ice cream for desesrt! And they sing happy birthday to you with mariachis!!!!! That was awesome! I got Lime Fiesta Chicken. Then, we just went back to the apartment and started getting ready for my PARTY, which was excellent. Lots of people came! And it was really cool for all these different types of friends to meet each other. We played hilarious card games, blew out the ice cream cake (my friend Adriana and I were both celebrating our birthdays, mine on the 11th and hers on the 12th). Namara arrived around 11 pm, and we wound up going to bed around 3 am, although I barely got any sleep that night, because I think a combination of lots of junk food and certain alcoholic beverages (all in moderation, of course) got the best of me, and both me and Gabriel wound up sick on Sunday. At least I wasn't sick on my birthday! By yesterday I was feeling a lot better, and today I feel fine. Anyway though, it was a great birthday.

That's all I've got time for today!!!! But I'm glad I got this chance to catch you up and WRITE and I'll try to write again soon. I LOVE YOU EACH AND EVERY ONE!!!!!!! Take care and stay in touch,

Love,

Sara

update... por fin

Hi everybody,

I guess I´m not as good a blogger as I promised I would be...I´ve gotten lots of feedback that I don´t update frequently enough. SORRY! I think it´s a difference in the fact that I´ve been here before, and it´s sort of like now that i´m settled in here, I don´t feel like anything I could tell would necessarily be earth-shaking...I mean, obviously it shouldn´t have to be earth-shaking in order to warrant getting written down in an Internet blog. But at this point I guess I just sort of feel like I´m living here, going along, waking up every morning, going to work, hanging out, going to classes...and then now and then there are cool new things to tell, but I don´t even remember them when I sit down to write a blog entry!!! So yeah it´s lame I know! But okay. Things are good. The FAO is good. It´s actually pretty funny. I reread my last entry, which was my first entry about my new job at the FAO and how wonderful everything looked. And things are still really good, and I have fun and enjoy the work I do. But the kind of things I´ve done during the last month have been almost laughably varied, from attending gourmet hotel receptions after international conferences on water management, social project design, food security, etc!!!, to helping my boss´s girlfriend fill out her US visa application in English, to going in a bus with lots of cool environmental people to this tiny community an hour and a half outside of Quito, where they´ve recently implemented an entirely sustainable agriculture system, owned and controlled by the entire community, and helped funded by lots of international and national organizations. SO!!!! Every day is definitely unpredictable, and another good thing is that I´m definitely getting more comfortable talking to businessmen and women about official issues in formal situations, something I would never have even wanted to try a month ago. Ricardo (my boss) will call and say, "Sara, do me a favor, call up Laura so-and-so and ask her if the Dutch expert on such-and-such as been confirmed for the meeting tomorrow at 10 am, and then if she says yes, call these five other people who should attend the meeting to remind them what time it´s at." You get the idea! I still don´t particularly enjoy it, but at least I can handle it. Compared to waiting tables at the Naranjilla Mecanica, it still seems blissfully simple!!!!!

Classes are excellent. Yoga is fun, and relaxing, and the people are all really great (it´s about 7 girls and one American guy, which makes for a very "sisterly" atmosphere, with the added element of the American guy, who is HILARIOUS). We´ve been doing different kinds of yoga, including things like talking about nutrition and hygiene, which is apparently also yoga--according to the professor, basically everything that improves your lifestyle is yoga. So, that´s interesting, haha. We did one kind of yoga last class which was basically just interpretative dance--fun!! At one point, she put on this classical march and said, in this very dramatic voice, "Approximately 1500 years ago, some geniuses decided that people should celebrate the spring. So, let´s celebrate!!!!" and she just started dancing around, and pretty soon we caught on and also started dancing, swinging by the elbows, etc. Haha.

Creative writing is also really great! The teacher continues to be frighteningly blunt at times, but she´s also really efficient and dedicated in general, and I think recently she´s seemed more respectful towards almost everyone, like she´s realized that none of us are TERRIBLE writers, and that we´re all getting better. We´ve already started setting aside especially good pieces of work to read at our poetry reading in October!!!! THAT will be a scary/hopefully exhilarating experience!!!!

This weekend was QuitoFest, a huge music festival in a huge sunny park that overlooks historic Quito. This Chilean reggae band I love played there on Sunday, so Gabriel and I went early and rented bikes and biked around the park, and then got up close to the stage in time to hear that group--Gondwana, in case anyone wants to check them out. We met up with Anna Grant there (Lisa´s friend from Chapel Hill, now my friend in Quito!). That was fun.

Gosh, I actually can´t really think of anything else interesting that´s coming up soon. But I´m sure things will continue to be lots of fun. It´s so cool--I HAVEN´T gotten robbed and HAVEN´T gotten sick (except for fainting this one time a little while ago, but that was apparently not indicative of any bigger health problem)!!!! It is so nice to feel like I can live here and be healthy! I had started to doubt whether it was actually possible.

Oh yeah, one more thing that I guess I never wrote about in here--two weekends ago Gabriel and I went to the beach! HIs dad lives in Esmeraldas, this city on the coast, and so we went one weekend when his mom was already going to go there to visit him. It´s a 7 hour bus ride from Quito, which at times can feel intolerable, but it´s beautiful scenery the entire way and we had a great time going to the beach, drinking coconut shakes, eating delicious seafood, and watching the Ecuador-Bolivia soccer game at his parents' friends house. Now Gabriel´s trying to get me to go to the Galapagos Islands with him when he goes sometime this semester to try to renew his residency there, but it´s extreeemely expensive, so I´m doubting it. We´ll see.

So there you have it, the update!!!!! Hope you all are doing EXCELLENT and that you comment or ask questions if there are large portions of my life that I´m forgetting to mention, haha. Will try to write again (relatively) soon!!!!!!

Job!! Life!

Well, last time I wrote I was still trying to figure out what life was going to be like this semester...and I still don´t totally have it worked out, but a lot of it´s been decided. So!! My big dream for this semester had been to work in a cafe and for once not teach language classes or something like that. I thought I´d found the perfect bar/restaurant to do that at--it´s called the Naranjilla Mecánica, (the Clockwork Orange) and was looking for someone who could speak English, because they get a lot of tourists there. So I went right in and had an interview and agreed to do what´s called a "práctica" the next day, where I work for a day or two and see what I think (no pay) and then if I decide I like it, I start actually working there. The pay was going to be $200 a month, which is all right, I guess fairly good by Ecuadorian standards, and it would have been from 11 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. It was a chill schedule and everything, but the one thing that kept bothering me was the fact that Gabriel´s classes are all in the morning, and my plan had definitely been to try to find work in the morning, in order to spend some afternoons with him, since I´m taking classes at night. Barely any café would go for a 7 am to 1 pm schedule, which is what I wanted, though, so I decided to give the Naranjilla Mecánica a try. A "try" was definitely all I ended up giving it, since after one day I decided that it was waaaaaaay too much work!!! I didn´t realize that the place gets so busy for lunch, and the cooks get super stressed out, and the other waitresses do too, and there also just hadn´t really been any time for anyone to explain to me what I was supposed to do, so all of a sudden a new family would walk in the door and I would get shoved out of the kitchen told to "attend to them"...whatever exactly that meant I was never sure. Obvoiusly that element of chaos and stress would have calmed down after a few days working there, but I guess I just felt like I should take advantage of my neutral-to-negative feelings to find a job with better work times.

So the next day, I went with my friend Adriana to the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, which is part of the United Nations. It´s got a great location, relatively close to my apartment (a 5 minute bus ride, a 30 minute walk), and the best part is that they are doing GREAT WORK. The organization is all about environmental conservation WHILE promoting human production, above all trying to eliminate hunger and food resource problems in Ecuador. The best part (I know I already said "the best part," but this really is the best part...) is that the boss, who is clearly a genius and just a great person, has set me up to start working this next week on a project dealing with Colombian refugees in the northern part of Ecuador, trying to set up a way for them to use agriculture efficiently to guarantee food all year round. Apparently, I will be consulted for anthropological opinions regarding the projects proposed???!!!!! I know it seems crazy, and I definitely don´t feel capable, at this point, to say ANYTHING (what do I know about Colombian refugees?) but I think it´s SO cool that I´m going to have exposure to this kind of thing. The work hours are perfect--9 am to 2 pm 5 days a week. Oh yeah, and then there´s the worst part, which is that it´s a volunteer position...BUT, I realized two things. First, I can easily print off some posters saying that I´m a native English speaker and can give private lessons, in order to make some extra money on the side. And second, I realized that, as much as I´ve been feeling terrible about spending all my money reserves these last few months and not making any more money, now that I´m working on a project that I feel like is TOTALLY worthwhile, I suddenly feel SO much better about spending my money from last semester, or money my parents send me, or whatever. I guess once I feel like I´m being productive, I feel like I also have the right to consume. So, things are looking great.

I started my college classes last week too. Yoga is fun and chill, lots of American exchange students in it, which is fun. They´ve all just recently arrived and seem to still be figuring out the systems here (bus, classes, social interactions). It´s fun to talk to them about their first impressions. And then there´s creative writing, which is great because I´ve met more American students there, who are really cool, and also some other cool people. It´s not necessarily the best because my teacher is sort of weird--I really liked her the first day, just because she was completely animated and super lively. The second day was weird because I felt like she was sort of being mean to us on purpose, criticizing our work excessively, and then sort of rubbing in the fact that we hadn´t done the assignment correctly. I also thought she was inconsiderate of the American students who are still learning Spanish, saying things like "Well, I erased that line of your poem because it didn´t make any sense." !!!! But anyway. We´ll see how it goes.

That´s my life! I´m doing well. I guess all the Mac kids are getting ready for classes! Crazy! I had a dream last night about Minnesota, it was October and it was starting to get really cold (actually I remember exactly, it was October 1), and then it started snowing!!! Gabriel was there too and he didn´t believe that it could actually be snowing in October, he kept trying to tell me it was hail. ANYWAY!!!! Keep in touch. Love you guys

P.S. I´m gonna put pictures down here that other people took and I got off facebook, mostly so Mom and Daddy can see some new pictures!!!! Yay!

Hi everyone! I know I haven't updated my blog in like a month or something, but here I am now, two days after Lisa and Julia went home. Gabriel and I had a day together yesterday, the first time just the two of us had hung out in a while. So I feel like today is sort of my first day of this semester—my first day essentially by myself, figuring out what I want to do and when I want to do it. Tomorrow I start classes, but that's a pretty small part of my day, just about two hours a night, Monday through Thursday. So, figuring out a job for the morning is pretty much my priority for the next little while. I've had a couple of leads, and I have been offered more than one job, but nothing has really looked good yet: most of that has to do with scheduling, because I really want to work in the morning, and the two places I've been offered work have been at bars/restaurants that would probably most need my services at night. I might still go for it, at least for a little while, if I can't find anything better this week. But, I'm hoping I can find something.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure where I should start, since so much has happened since I last wrote. But, basically a little over two weeks ago, on August 1, Lisa and Julia arrived! Lily had just moved over to stay at my apartment, because her host family left for the beach around the last day of July, so she, Gabriel and I went to the airport to pick up the girls. Very exciting!!! My room here at the apartment, which I had thought of as fairly big, definitely didn't seem so large with three mattresses stuffed in there. But definitely manageable!! Bright and early the next morning we headed out to catch the bus to Esmeraldas, for a few days at the beach to start of L and J's vacation and to end Lily's. Gabriel and his best friend, Esteban, came too. I LOVE the bus ride to Esmeraldas (except for the inevitable stress about potentially crashing and things like that). The scenery is amazing; for me the coolest part is right in the middle of the trip, once we're out of the mountains but are still a few hours from the coast, and there are these rolling hills with banana trees and jungly plants all over them, little houses nestled down here and there, an occasional town, and lots of wood smoke coming through the bus windows. I just sat there with my head out the window for the last few hours of the trip. Finally, after six and a half hours, or more, we arrived in Esmeraldas, and hung around outside Gabriel's house for a while while he and Esteban tried to open the complicatedly locked door. Finally we got in, put our bags away, and were able to rest.

That night Gabriel and Esteban and I went to a concert at a high school in the city, where the main band was los Enanitos Verdes, a pretty cool group from Argentina. After the concert, every taxi in the city seemed to already be taken, so we walked around a lot, waited a half an hour or forty-five minutes, and finally were able to take a taxi back to the house at 3 AM, to find Lisa awake due to bedbugs and Julia awake too, although right now I don't remember why—a mosquito in her room, that was it. But I think we all fell asleep pretty fast after that. The next two days were lovely, eating yummy seafood and spending the whole day on the beach. We were able to spend the second night sleeping on the floor in Gabriel's family's friend's apartment, which is right on the beach, so we didn't have to go back and forth between the city that night. Which was nice because we could go out dancing at one of those bar huts on the beach—merengue, reggaeton and salsa. Lisa and Julia drew the attention of a creepy man and his son, who seemed to be jointly seeking feminine company for the night—they got rejected.

After two days at the beach, we came back to Quito on a night bus, and stumbled back to the apartment to sleep for four more hours, until midday of that next day. That was Lily's last day in Quito, so we went to the mercado artesanal for the last time (Julia and Lisa's first time—they loved it and had fun talking to the venders). That's all I remember from that day, and I guess the next little while, after Lily left, is also sort of a blur. We did cool stuff every day though! We went to the historic center, looked at churches, and went to the BBB—Bueno, Bonito, & Barato, where you can get any kind of clothing for really cheap. Lisa and Julia made some purchases that I won't specify here. Another day, we went to Parque Itchimbia, which yields beautiful views of the entire center and part of the north and south of the city. We walked from there to the Basilica, where we climbed up the towers and discovered more amazing views. What else did we do…oh, one day we also hiked with Esteban to the Parque Metropolitano, which is really near to my apartment, and has miles of wooded trails. OH, and I almost forgot our weekend trip to the farm with my family!!! It was great—a huge family reunion, with all the uncles, even the ones from Loja, Guayaquil, and Esmeraldas had made the trip. So there were tons of cousins, lots that I remembered and others that I think I'd never even met. And tons of babies! I wasn't sure how much fun it would be, depending on how much Lisa and Julia could interact with my family, but actually a few of the guy cousins in their 20's made an effort to get to know them and were really sweet. We made friends with this guy Johnny, a friend of my cousin Andrei's, who's actually living in Quito very close to my apartment, and who took Lisa and me out to eat a few days ago.

We also undertook a HUGE, INTENSE hike up an enormous mountain the next day—after camping out there the night before. It was really difficult terrain and the uncle who led the hike, Lenin, was pretty intense about it, too—he set an alarm on his watch at the exact second we headed out, with the goal of reaching the top within an hour! This didn’t mesh so well with some of our ideas of what the hike was going to be like (a casual stroll focused on enjoying nature, not conquering it), and so we ended up splitting into two groups along the way, with one group waiting while the other group went to the top. Me and Andrés made it!!!

The last big adventure we had before L & J left was going to Mindo, a tiny town in a huge cloud forest, which should be about 2 and a half hours north of Quito, but with Gabriel's cousin Jonathan driving, turned out to be about an hour and a half. We hiked around, saw waterfalls, and Lisa and Julia did Canopying—crazy ziplining above jungly landscape. Julia had been on and off sick before that, and Thursday morning, when we woke up in Mindo, she was pretty sick for the whole day, which was too bad. But we made it back to Quito that night, and the next day they both left—Julia at 7 in the morning, and Lisa that night.

While so many friends were here visiting, there were moments when I thought that some time alone could be nice. But now, I do feel like I have to get used to that idea, of being alone and having enough things to do, enjoying myself. Luckily, I can get used to it in stages—tomorrow I'm already planning to meet Gabriel and his friends for lunch after their first day of classes, and then tomorrow night I have my first yoga class (with Gabriel's mom), and the next night my first creative writing class! So I'll definitely be meeting people and doing things too. Once I get this job idea firmed up, I think things will be *excellent*.

Write! Let me know how you are! I guess Macalester classes start soon too, although I'm not too clear on when exactly that is—maybe it's better not to know, so I don't spend that whole first day feeling strange and out of place not being there with everyone else. No, but really, I am pretty confident that this is going to be a great semester, and, I guess because I never really looked at Macalester classes for this semester, I don't feel like I'm missing on specific cool classes, or special opportunities—besides being there around so many friends, which I AM going to miss!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I love you all!

Looking for a job

Hi everyone,
Yay, finally back with another post! I didn´t realize it had been so long since I last wrote...but I´ve been back in Quito for over a week! The rest of our Loja trip was great; we had fun exploring the little town of Catacocha, which is much more beautiful than Paty had ever made it sound. Nearly all of its buildings are historical and it has beautiful views into the valleys all around the town. The only bad part was the bus ride--two and a half hours each way, with scary roads and extremely loud Japanese action films blasting inside the bus. But it was worth it! Seeing Nick and Phoebe´s NGO office was also really cool, although the morning we went in there, this woman who works there got her laptop stolen out of the office...and apparently Gabriel saw the culprit as he walked in the door, but, of course not realizing that he was a bad guy who was about to steal a laptop, didn´t give him a second thought until this woman discovered her laptop was gone. So Gabriel got to go on a little tour of the rest of the building and the street outside, in the hopes that he would spot the thief, but no such luck. Besides that, though, it was a rewarding day...we finished compiling this entire booklet, with photos and instructions, on how to construct a wood-burning stove. Nick and Phoebe think it´ll be a big help to pass out once they can get it published, so that was a satisfying way to thank them for their week of taking us around and showing us what they do.

We flew back to Quito the next morning, bright and early, and got back to Gabriel´s house by 10. I stayed on at Gabriel´s house until last Saturday morning, because his birthday was on Friday. We all went out to lunch--his whole family, me, and Lily. That was fun. Then the next morning was his MOM´S birthday, so I gave her my present (a little plastic man from CVS, who grows grass out of his head that looks like green hair...it might sound weird but I was sure she would like it and she did!!!) And then they took me and all my stuff over to the apartment.

It took a few days to totally get the routine over there. It´s unpredictable; some days the house will be full of people until past midnight, and other nights I´ll get home and nobody´ll be there, or if they´re there, they´re already asleep. But I really like everyone there. It´s two Ecuadorian guys, Daniel and Francisco (nickname Lobo), and one Czech girl, Pavla. They´re a little more laidback than what I´m used to, but that´s fine; it´s also relaxing in some ways to go home at night without feeling obligated to start up excited conversations with everyone who´s there. My room is really nice, with huge windows looking out over the city and a private bathroom and shower (which now and then, like this morning, decides not to provide hot water... but in general it´s fine). The neighborhood is really nice and quiet, and there´s also a patio up on top of the apartment where we can go any time to read or write or whatever.

Most of all, it is great starting my own life here and not feeling dependent on Gabriel to figure out how my day´s going to go. I love leaving the house in the morning and making up my own mind about everything I want to do (maybe this seems obvious, but after spending a lot of time staying at Gabriel´s house over the last year, I had sort of forgotten that I could in fact negotiate Quito on my own). Either way I´ve been seeing Gabriel a lot, but I´ve also had time to do other stuff. The night before last I went out to dinner with Nicole (Macalester), who´s in Quito until mid-August, and that was great!

So that´s about it. Mom´s been asking me to take pictures of my apartment and my roommates, so I´ll do that soon and get them up here! In the meantime email me and let me know how you are! Take care

PS--Haha, okay, well I just realized I hadn´t even mentioned the title of this post. I´ve been looking for a job!!!! Looking really really hard!!! And I´m sure that something will eventually pan out, but it´s been a little hard in the last few days--I´ve left my resume in maybe 10 places--travel agencies, restaurants, cafes, bars--and am just waiting to get some calls back. Hopefully it´ll happen before too long.. Okay, more later.

Hey everybody!!! I´m finally back with an update after a really enlightening, fun, rewarding week. The only problem is that this keyboard is ridiculously sticky, I feel like I´m mutilating each key in an attempt to get the letters to register on the screen. But, unimportant!!!! Okay, so. This last week was truly amazing. Early Monday morning Gabriel and I left our hotel here in Loja, and went with Nick and Phoebe (our friends and the NGO people) in the Jeep their organization had loaned them, out into the most isolated part of Loja province, and one of the most isolated areas in all of Ecuador. That entire week, we stayed in a hotel in the tiny, beautiful town of Amaluza, and every day we went out from this town to tiny communities high in the mountains, where we gave talks and workshops with people called ¨promotores de salud¨--really any community member who has taken an interest in the health of their community and decides to come to the talks. Nick and Phoebe gave Gabriel and me a specific project for the week, which was to develop the idea of installing wood-burning stoves in people´s homes. Many to most peoples in these small communities (when I say small, I mean like 50 to 100 people) cook over open fires in their homes, and some people have gas stoves. Neither of these, as it turns out, are as convenient and efficient as wood-burning stoves. Open fires fill the house with smoke, use up lots of firewood (and there´s already deforestation problems in some of these communities), the pots can overturn and food is wasted and people can even get severe burns, AND, there is more possibility for food to be contaminated when it is cooked on the ground. This can contribute to people getting certain parasites which can lead to epilepsy. Epilepsy is actually a huge problem in these communities, with about 1% of Loja province´s population having seizures. The construction of wood-burning stoves is hopefully a way to ease the increases of epilepsy among these populations, because once a person gets epilepsy, a rigorous treatment is required and it´s really hard to administer the medicines and make sure that people are controlling their seizures. Nick and Phoebe told us about numerous cases of children having one or two seizures at an early age, never getting the pills they needed, or failing to take them regularly, and as a result being mentally retarded by the time they´re young adults, due to so many seizures, each of which is devastating to the brain. SO. These stoves are a place to start.

So, on Tuesday, Gabriel and I worked all day in Amaluza with a family there who had heard about the possibility of building a stove, and wanted to try it. The amazing thing was that we were able to build the stove entirely out of recycled materials that they had lying around their house--mud, old bricks, pieces of plywood, some cardboard, and some old iron strips that they took off some other aparatus to use for this. Oh, and a chimney out of tin roofing material. We worked from about 8:30 to 4 (I mean, this wasn´t just me and Gabriel slaving away, it was mostly one construction worker they´d hired, and the father of the family), and by the end of the day, we´d built a stove!!! They haven´t used it yet because it needs about 8 days to dry out, but we´re hopeful it´ll turn out to work!

Anyway, having had that experience on Tuesday, Gabriel and I were able to help Nick and Phoebe in their workshops from then on, doing a special presentation each day on the values of wood-burning stoves, showing the promotores de salud pictures of the construction process, and assuring them that they really COULD construct something like this if they put their minds to it. People were really, really interested, which felt rewarding. It was especially cool that the men seemed just as taken with the idea as the women, because we were told by this woman (an amazing woman named Doña Carmen, whose been using her own home-built stove for 15 years, started a women´s association in Amaluza, and is currently working on helping campesinos legalize their land) that wood-burning stoves can really contribute to a boost in women´s self esteem, because it becomes a family project, and a recognition of the fact that the kitchen is important, women´s work is important.

Seeing all these tiny communities was fascinating. You would never know they were there, you have to drive up these absolutely terrifying dirt roads to get there, but then once you´re there, and you see all the houses and farms, you realize that there really are people who make their lives there, and for whom Amaluza, a town of maybe 2,000 people, is the ¨big city.¨ Once I get to Quito I´m looking forward to trying to put some pictures up of the roads we ascended to get to these communities; I was telling Gabriel, at least half of them time we wound our way up these roads, all I could think about was the look on Mom´s face if she could see where I was, haha. But Nick was a very responsible driver and we had absolutely no mishaps.

We came back to Loja on Friday, spent Friday night here, and then Saturday morning spontaneously decided to set off for Zamora, an hour and a half long bus ride up into the mountains and down the other side (also not the most relaxing ride in the world). Zamora is a fairly small city in the cloud forest/jungle. It´s not the most amazing city, but it´s right at the entrance to the Parque Nacional Podocarpus, where we went yesterday morning. We hiked around to all these waterfalls, tested one of those bridges, what are they called? Swinging bridges? You know what I mean. There were beautiful butterflies and stuff too. So yeah we spent the morning there and then took a bus back to Loja, and once again stressed out due to our bus traumas, but then got smart and played 20 Questions for an hour, until we were once again safe in Loja. Last night we hung out with Gabriel´s college friend Andrea, whose hotel we´re staying at here, and that was really fun. Today I think we might go to the zoo with her and then watch a movie tonight. Then tomorrow Gabriel and I are taking a day trip to Catacocha, Paty´s hometown. Wednesday we´re going to go to the NGO´s office here in Loja with Nick and Phoebe and see what that´s all about, and then Thursday morning bright and early we fly ¨home¨, to Quito that is. in a way I´m excited to be back in Quito, but wow, this has been an amazing trip.

Sorry if you´re tired of reading now!! But I hope now you have a clearer idea of the kind of stuff we´ve been doing. I´m great and I miss you all!!!!! Write!!!!! Love, sara

first little while

Hey everybody! Actually, I´m not sure who ¨everybody¨ is... it might be just you, Mom and Daddy. Haha, but anyway, I´m finally starting this blog, so... post comments, questions, keep me motivated to keep writing!

I got to Quito about a week ago, and things have been going really well ever since I flew out of Raleigh; it was the best flight down to Ecuador I´ve ever had (really smooth, not stressful), and seeing Gabriel, his parents, and my exchange host mother Paty in the airport was GREAT. Then the next day, Lily arrived, not even 24 hours later, and that was wonderful; I still think it hasn´t quite sunk in that she´s here in Ecuador with me! Of course, not really ¨with me¨...after the first 48 hours or so we dropped her off with her new host family, who she´ll live with for the next three weeks while she works with an organization in Quito. But either way we´ve already gotten to hang out a few times, and it´s so cool to be able to call her up without paying anything!!!!

Gabriel and I spent a few days last week just hanging out, walking around, catching up. We also went over to my new APARTMENT several times to meet my roommates and drop off a bag of clothes. The apartment is really, really nice. It´s spacious and disorderly (a good sign), and even though there´s not a lot of furniture (they all seem to be on pretty tight budgets) they´ve definitely improvised, with slabs of wood draped with cloths to make tables and a few beach chairs scattered around the living room. Oh, and my room is great, so much bigger than I expected! It´s also got a beautiful view of the mountains and part of the northern part of the city. It has a private bathroom!!!! The only bad part is that they say it´s the coldest room in the house, because it´s up against a wall where apparently the wind blows all night. Get ready Lisa and Julia!!! haha. But, I mean, we´re talking ¨cold¨ like maybe 45 degrees...we´ll bundle up and be fine. Anyway, the best part of all is that my rooommates (housemates, I guess I should say) seem like really great people. They´re not that talkative at first, which was a little disconcerting--I was running up eagerly to hug them hello and they were sort of standing there stiffly. But after talking with them for a little while they loosened up, and the good news is that the girls who live there (one is Pavla, who´s from the Czech Republic and is wonderful, and the other is Camila, one of my housemates girlfriends, who doesn´t really live there, but practically) are both great, really talkative and sweet. One of my biggest complaints about my exchange year in Ecuador was that it was really hard to make friends with girls, so I think I´m off to a good start this time!

So then, yesterday, Gabriel and I got on a plane and flew to Loja, the southernmost province in Ecuador. Gabriel has these adult friends he made in Idaho who are now working for an NGO in Loja, going around to small communities and addressing health issues, specifically epilepsy. We´re going to be working with them in a tiny town for this whole week, and then next week we´ll have more time to explore around the area, which has a ton of cool places to go, like Zamora, a jungle province with huge animal reserves and cool towns to explore, and Saraguro, a predominantly indigenous area north of here with an apparently very distinct culture (sorry, I don´t actually know anything about it yet, just that it´s supposed to be interesting, haha). Anyway, the best part of this whole trip is that one of Gabriel´s good university friend´s parents own a hotel here, and she talked with them and they agreed to put us up for FREE for these two weeks. It´s not quite the luxury hotel that we were for some reason expecting (it´s actually amusingly non-luxurious, I´ll try to take some pictures and put them up here), but it´s free! So that´s all good.

Anyway that´s about it for now, I´m glad I finally started this blog and I´ll try to make some good updates in the next few weeks! Thanks for reading, yay!!!