The ¨winter¨ season is here

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According to Bogar, Quito is in it´s winter season. Now coming from the northern Midwest, I imagine winters as below freezing, snowy, and little sun. In Quito, the winters are very different with slightly colder temperatures with the highs in the 60s, no snow, and more cloudy than sunny days. So really the weather here is more like my midwest´s early fall or late spring. When it is cloudy here, it can feel a little bit chilly, but when the equator sun is out (remember, I am right on the Equator), it can be HOT.

The weather here has been changing from the summer season to the winter season. The first few days I was here it was sunny and warm, while the rest of the week was a bit colder and cloudier.  Today is actually nice and sunny, but the past couple days have been quite dreary:(

The dreariness of the weather has matched the dreariness of my health. I started to not feel good early on Friday and by late on Friday I felt really bad like I had a fever. Sure enough I had a fever and found out as a result of a few factors that I had a ¨bacterial infection.¨  My worst symptoms were really my fever and weakness...which was probably good because it is not the same for all travelers... I will keep it at that and will spare you from the rest of the details.

Bogar took care of me yesterday which was nice. He went to the pharmacy and bought me pills to get rid of the bacteria and pills for a high fever. I can tell you that the fever pills are very strong and you don´t need a doctor to get them. I first used my U.S. over the counter fever reducer pills and it didn´t really help. But when I had the Ecuadorian kind...WOW did it help!! Thankfully this morning, I feel a lot better so hopefully that means the infection is improving.

I haven´t written in my journal in about a week so I will have to give a review of my week. Monday was a holiday of Quito, so many did not have to work including Bogar. So Bogar and I spent the day together with the highlight of the day being the Parque Carolina. It is a very big park that we took a couple hours walking through. It was amazing how many people were in the park just talking with people or playing sports. One of the things we saw there were the botantical gardens which were very nice. There were lots of exotic plants there, many which Ecuador are known for. We also went to a reptile museum which had live reptiles like snakes, turtles, iguanas, ect. that you can find in many South American areas. The funniest thing we did by far was riding on the catepillar vehicle that travels along the outskirts of the park. The vehicle did resemble a catepillar and during part of the ride it moved in a  back and forth motion like a catepillar would do.

     Tuesday was the beginning of my Spanish classes at the Cristobal Colon Spanish School. I wasn´t so scared about the actual classes but I was frightened about the journey there. Bogar had decided that I should take the trolley to my school every day because it was a straight shot to the street my spanish classes were on.  The trolley stop that I went to first was about a five minute walk from Bogar´s house. I barely got on the first trolley that went by my stop because the trolley was so packed. It was so crazy! The doors on the trolley could barely shut because there were so many people crammed in there. I had been warned that pickpockets are very common on this form of transportation, so I hid my ¨valuables¨ deep with my inside pockets. After a couple of stops everyone piled out of the trolley. I was so confused because I thought the trolley would take me straight to my classes. I still don´t understand why that happened because all of the other times I took the trolley that never happened. Anyways, I waited for another trolley to come from that stop. Two trolleys went by but I couldn´t get on them because they were so packed. Finally, a trolley came that I could squeeze my way into barely.

Despite all the problems I had with the trolley, I arrived to my school twenty minutes early. The reasoning behind that is because I had left my apartment an hour before I had to be to class. When I arrived there, no one was in sight. I just walked around for awhile and eventually saw a student who I talked to for awhile until everyone else came. I talked to Jose, the head of the school, who explained all of the policies to me. I then was introduced to my teacher Doris who took me upstairs to practice Spanish. We sat in a porch area outside which was so relaxing because the weather was so warm and sunny at that point. What I learned quickly was that it is very difficult to talk to my Spanish teacher for four hours in Spanish. I did take one semester of Spanish in the spring, but that did not prepare me to talk one on one with a teacher in Spanish for such a long period of time. Half way through the class, the students and teachers have a 15 minute break to have coffee, tea, and baguettes (free), and to speak with the students and teachers in Spanish, English, ect. I met three interesting students. Two of them were from New Zealand and one was from England. 

 After my Spanish classes that day, I went with these three students out to lunch at a local restaurant. It was pretty good food. I had rice, vegetables, and potatoes, and freshly squeezed juice. Afterwards, we went to their apartment, and then went to an internet cafe for a half an hour. The internet cafes are pretty inexpensive here, costing less than a dollar an hour to use the internet. We then went back to the Spanish school so that we could meet our teachers there to go with them to the Ecuador Nacional vs. Mexican soccer game in the Quito soccer stadium. It was a very cool experience! Despite the fact the Ecuadorian team lost the game, the atmosphere was very intense. It was quite obvious that the Ecuadorians take soccer very seriously. Jose couldn´t give us a ride back to the school, so after a bus and trolley ride, I got back safely to my apartment.

Nothing particulary exciting happened on Wednesday and Thursday. The classes went well. I picked up on the Spanish fast, and it was becoming easier to speak with my teacher in Spanish for along period of time. I was even forced to speak Spanish during my break on Friday because I met two Koreans who spoke very little English. 

Wednesday night I went out to dinner with Bogar at a Papaya net, a very nice restaurant. It is a somewhat Americanized restaurant, but it was a relief after eating in so many traditional Ecuadorian restaurants. I ended up getting cheese ravioli which was very good. The restaurant was on the ¨expensive side¨ which meant an entree was typically $3-4.

After dinner, we walked around the historic center, and we ran into this parade of people who were yelling and playing music, promoting their presidential candidate. The reason they were doing this is because the presidential election is today. They had stopped advertising the candidates on television, but the people were still allowed to advertise on the streets. 

There a couple interesting ways that the presidential elections are different here than they are in states. First off, Ecuadorians are not allowed to drink alcohol during the weekend of the presidential elections. If they are caught drinking they are sentenced to so many days in prison. Secondly, all Ecuadorian citizens are required to vote. If you don´t vote than you are not allowed to have certain privileges like leaving the country and setting up a bank account.  I am looking forward to tonight, to watch the results of the presidential elections on TV.

 The only other interesting thing that happened this week was my salsa class. I get to take a free class of salsa once a week through my Spanish school. I was suppose to take the salsa class on Thursday but when I got to the class that day they said that the teacher was not there. I would have to come back on Friday to take the class at 4pm. I wasted a lot of time on Thursday in the ¨Gringoland¨ area where the salsa class was because I got pretty lost. I had not focused well on the directions.

Friday I got to the class very easily, because I wrote out the directions on a piece of paper. The salsa class went well on Friday. At first there was only a female teacher, a male student, and I. The male student was from Belgium and spoke French, Spanish, and limited English. He translated some of the words the teacher was saying because the teacher didn´t speak any English. The teacher first taught us a couple basic steps of salsa. We practiced the steps facing the mirror. Then, I had to do a couple salsa dance with the other student. Following that, a male teacher came in and he worked with me individually for awhile. He taught me how to combine those two basic steps with some turns in a couple dance. It was pretty cool that I was picking up those steps so fast. At the end of the class, I danced with the other student incoporating some turns I learned into it. I´m hoping that my health will be well enough later this week so that I can go to this week´s salsa class!