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