So, I Rode a Horse Up the Side of a Volcano

So, not my catchiest blog post title, but I think that sentence is hilarious, so I keep taking the opportunity to say/write it.

Last weekend it was finally a slightly less cloudy day here in Quito, so I took advantage of this and went to the Teleferiqo. Teleferiqo is basically a cable car that takes you thousands of feet into the air and leaves you near the top of the Pichincha volcano. It looks like this:

Once you reach the top of the mountain/volcano/clouds, it is recommended that you drink tea and eat chocolate. Of course I did this. Recommended to eat chocolate? Thank you, ideal prescription!

After you have been sufficiently sugared up, you can either hike the rest of the way to the summit, or you can ride a horse. Chocolate and sitting down? I'll take the horse!

Look! It's me on a white horse! Almost like a knight in shining armor, right?

Since it was my second time on a horse, I was clearly a pro. Never mind that horses apparently use different commands when they live in Spanish-speaking countries, I was squealing, grunting, and yelping like a champion jockey.  I even survived long enough to take this classy photo with my friend Priscilla. You can see that we appear to be prize-winning, horseback-riding, fabulous young ladies.

After conquering the mountain on our valiant steeds, we descended the volcano in the cable car once again. Although it was a clearer day than most, it was still really cloudy way up in the mountains, so this is the best picture I was able to take from inside the car. Although foggy, the view is still pretty breathtaking and you can see how high up we were!

Yay mountains!

Little Goodbyes

Today was my last day teaching in seventh grade. Although the girls were talkative, obnoxious at times, and generally a little crazy, I'm really going to miss them. I had a great time teaching seventh grade and I definitely appreciate this age.

To say thank you to my girls, I spent about four hours baking cookies last night. It was a little difficult to find the ingredients I needed, so I ended up making a lot of substitutions and deletions. Here I am completely struggling to mix two ingredients together. I may or may not have broken the whisk.

Despite many difficulties, the cookies turned out quite delicious and looked pretty, even if they weren't exactly what I had initially planned. Look how yummy! Peanut butter blossoms and oatmeal raisin cookies.

When I got to my last classes, I was surprised with two different parties. In both classes, my girls decorated the room, bought or made me gifts, and brought in food. It was so sweet of them and I was really surprised. Because I can't post pictures of students, here are pictures of the rooms decorated and some of the food they brought in.

In 7th B, the girls decorated the whiteboard with messages for me.

So cute! They also all chipped in to buy me this stuffed dog, which they named Septimo B. Here's Gaby and I posing with him.

In 7th A, the girls also decorated, brought in a ton of food, and all made me cards. Each girl wrote her own message and designed an individual card. Incredibly sweet. Here's the delicious food they brought in.

As you can see, typically healthy 7th grade fare: cheese balls, chips, candy, soda, and cake. P.S. Did you notice that the cake has my name on it?  One of my favorite students baked that and brought it in. It was delicious!

Here's a sign that one of the girls made for me to decorate the classroom. She's another one of my favorites (even though I know teachers aren't supposed to have those) and she's really great at drawing.

While it was hard to say goodbye to the girls, I had a really fun last day with them. I got a ton of hugs, ate way too many sweets, and even participated in a Justin Bieber dance party. (I know, I know, but it was my last day. Oh well.)

I start teaching 8th and 9th grade on Monday, which is high school here. I hope the girls are as sweet as these girls are!

A Short Series of Previous Events

So in between teaching everyday, lesson planning nonstop, and being violently sick with a horrible virus, I haven't had much spare time for posting lately. In spite of being so busy, I have managed to fit in several really fun things that I wanted to share with all of you. Therefore, I present to you a brief pictorial of the things that have occupied my time as of late.

1. Cooking and Baking Ecuadorian-style.

Here I am using my mad-kitchen skills to make lemonade....out of limes. I also chopped a boatload of fruit and mixed cookie dough by hand this day. Seriously, mad skills.

2. Seeing the Spanish version of Justin Guarini in concert.

Okay, so really his name is David Bisbal and his concert was amazing, but the resemblance to Justin Guarini is a little ridiculous. They have the same face, hair, basic history....weird. If you want to look up some of his music, I highly recommend "Ave Maria" or "Wavin' Flag". The latter was the 2010 World Cup theme song and is extremely catchy.

3. Visiting the Middle of the World...again.

So when the scientists measured the Equator, they measured incorrectly the first time. So when I visited the Equator before, it wasn't the true Equator. I visited the actual military-calculated line this weekend with some friends. The new site is also an interactive museum that has several science experiments. It was super fun and definitely worth going to the "true" site.

4. Sitting in Hot Springs

Last weekend my family woke me up at 5:30 in the morning for a "field trip". I was super groggy but it was worth it when we arrived in Papallacta to enjoy the hot springs. The water temperature here was something like 140 degrees. People say that sitting in the hot water can cure illness, fix joints, and make you super healthy. I just felt hot.

5. Pretending I'm a Spider Monkey

Yes, that's me ziplining upside down through the mountains. Here they call it "canopying". We went to Mindo yesterday with a big group and had a blast. There were ten different lines that we did and in between we had to climb parts of the mountain to get to the higher elevation and the next zipline. It might look scary, but it's actually super relaxing. The views were gorgeous and you really don't go very fast. I loved it.


6. Teaching

Besides my fun adventures, I spend all my time teaching, planning what to teach, or assessing what I just taught. I'm having a great time but it is a lot of work. I'm lucky that I have such a great school, great students, and great teachers to work with. This is my cooperating teacher and me before my big observation last week. Can you tell that I have a 102 degree fever in this picture? Teaching while super sick is possibly my least favorite experience thus far.

Chao!

PayMore Shoesource

Last night I forayed for the very first time into shopping in Ecuador. Sadly, my favorite (albeit, extremely well-worn and slightly disgusting) pair of dress shoes had broken in half the day before and I was in desperate need of school-appropriate cute flat shoes.

Quito has like seven or so shopping malls, so I figured that shoe shopping would be a relatively easy and enjoyable experience. What I forgot to factor in was how darn expensive clothing is here. After looking into several stores and finding nothing to strike either my fancy or my budget, I headed in the direction of Payless Shoesource. One of my personal goals while in Ecuador is to go out of my way to avoid things that are overly American (such as Payless), but I was struggling to find shoes and I figured it was starting to tick my host sister off the way I was waffling back and forth.

Payless is a moniker that seems relatively straightforward in the States. You go in, buy some not-great quality shoes, and leave having not spent large quantities of money. This is not quite the case in Quito. Here, you go into the store, find a pair of plain though suitable flats that would cost less than twenty dollars in the States, and realize the price tag says $59.99. After you recover from the sticker shock, you realize that you really have no other options and buy the damn shoes. If you are truly lucky, when you arrive at the register, the shoes are magically on sale and you don't end up spending quite as much.

I also bought a backpack to carry my weekend stuff in, but that experience was slightly less traumatizing as I had already been in the mall for awhile.

I never thought I would say this, but I look forward to shopping as little as possible in the next three months. Yay, frugality!