A day in the life.



Every day I´m hussalin

 So I haven´t updated because there hasn´t been TOO much that has been extremely noteworthy. However, I realize that none of you know how a typical school day for me goes. So let me break it down for ya real quick. . .


6:45 - Wake up to the alarm. Proceed to frown and be upset for being up so freakin early (As some of you may know, I am def not a good early riser. At all). Some choice words or groaning also might be dropped.


7:15 - Showered and ate breakfast, which is usually a bowl of frosted flakes or toast with butter and a tiny teeny cup of orange juice. Can I just take this time to drop the fact that when I get into the new apartment, I´m going to make sure there is a consistant amount of fruit in the kitchen? Not having fruit to start off the day kinda sucks. . .what I would do to cut up a banana and put it in the cereal. At this point too I´m starting to feel more and more like a real person a la Pinocchio.


7:20 - Check email, play a song to get stimulated (as of late I´ve been waking up to Far East Movement´s "Rocketeer," but today was a new jam from Timbaland called "Swat Dat Fly" that leaked yesterday), gather my things, and get going. I´m fully awake now hopefully. Also take the time to pop a Zinc vitamin along with my fred flintstone tasting vitamin C pills.


7:30 - Drive to school with the fam. If I´m riding with mom, the ride is usually quiet and tranquil. If I´m dipping with pops, then my ears will be assaulted with reggaeton and / or pop. I prefer the ride with the pops. Big shocker.


8:00 - At school, in the sala de profesores (teacher´s lounge) for the 2nd and 3rd unit aka 5th grade to 12th grade teachers. I go here because it´s close to where I get dropped off and is a generally very quiet place. I check my email, write emails, check facebook, look at youtube, read espn, read washington post, read huffington post, check cnn, look at foreignpolicy.com, peep bbc (international version of course), take a look at my school e-mail, and occasionally do a little work for notre dame. Oh yeah, I also make money.


9:45 - first break of the day for the teachers aka coffee break. This is a period of 20 minutes where the kids can go outside and play and the teachers go to chug coffee, tea, and eat a small snack they bring in. This is usually where I make my move from the 2nd and 3rd unit over to the 1st unit, where I work at with 1st graders and whatever other grade they need me for. Over by the 2nd and 3rd unit, the kids can actually play the music they want over the loudspeakers for a short period of time. It´s funny most of the time hearing Miley Cirus get pumped over the whole scene, and sometimes downright crazy. Like the time the students decided to blast Cee-Lo´s unedited version of the song "Fuck You." I literally heard the f bomb dropped over and over again while kids played, the sun shined, and teachers didn´t notice or care at all. THAT´S ST. GEORGE FOR YA.


11:30 - done with helping classes of first grade, which mainly consists of me telling kids to cut this, color that, or copy these things. First graders are at the level right now where they´re just getting vocabulary down. . .they can´t really speak out full sentences quite yet, but are getting there. This is also the time where I´m primarly just speaking spanish. Yes, I understand that the kids should hear English but it does nothing for them if I speak in english and get blank stares. What I´ve been doing is speaking Spanish and then translating it into English. I actually love this, because it gives me a good opportunity to practice my Spanish.

12:30 - Just finished up lunch for an hour. Lunch here is by far my favorite part of the day. The buffett here at school is AWESOME. All you can eat fruit and veggies, bread, and soup. The fruit is no slouch either. . .they stack it up with sliced apples, pears, bananas, oranges, kiwis, and the occasional cherry. Sometimes the bread is freshly baked, which is ballerrrrrr. They also offer a tiny appetizer and an entre, which usually consists of some sort of carbohydrate (rice, pasta) with some sort of meat. They had mongolian beef the other day, and I just wanted to sit there for hours and eat it and just talk and then eat it again. Sooo delicious. I also eat usually with my friend Garrett and other English professors from the first unit aka a bunch of extremely nice women. Conversation is a good mix of English and Spanish, unless we´re sitting with other 1st unit teachers in which case Spanish is solely dropped.
Lunch conversations usually are about what happened in the past weekend, but they end up being COMPLETELY random. I´ve talked about vacation spots, watermelons, babies, why my host family is crazy, indigenous music, the story of how one teacher met her husband and almost married another man beforehand, and more.

4:00 - From lunch to the end of the da, I usually assist with 2 classes. . .sometimes 4. . .and if I´m frantically workin on a Notre Dame paper, zilch. These classes again are a repetition of before. . .helping out with random whatevers in the classroom, looking like a genius in front of the kids, and getting kisses on the cheek as the goodbye. Usually hellos and goodbyes with females means that they kiss the air by your cheek, but first graders don´t play like that. Instead, they plant big suckers right on you haha. Gotta love it!

4:30, 5ish - I get home from my 25 minute walk, which is a nice way to end off the day. I´ve been more and more using this time to reflect, pray, and just thank God for what he´s given me and the opportunity I´ve been given to help (?) the school.

6ish - At this point, I´ve had my "once" (eleven), which is just a small snack. Usually I grub on 2 pieces of toast with jam and cream cheese. I also fill up my 48 oz water bottle, because I´ve drank one bottle and plan on drinkin at least half of it again.

730ish - I have gone to the gym or ran outside by the river near my house. Since I don´t have any grading, ND work, and in general responsibilities at home, I work out at the gym around 4 times a week and running 1 or 2 days. I can´t freakin wait to live in the apartment near a metro station so I can meet some friends to ball.

830 - Dinner is served, usually something fairly modest. For instance, last night I had pork chops with toasted bread, along with chopped tomatoes and onion in olive oil and basalmic vinegar. DELICIOUS.

1030ish to 11 - I do whatever I do at the computer. . .catch up on the latest U.S. music, check the news again, chat on gchat / skype / aim, rock my SNRG mexico shorts, lay around and watch tv with the host bros, etc.

REPEAT 5X.

I love you all. XOXO.

p.s. some of you may already know this, but I am going to be starting a sort of video blog too. It´s really for my former kids in Phoenix, Arizona that I taught. . .but in reality, it´s more of a way for me to keep track of what´s happening here through another format. Follow the youtube channel so you stay updated at MrCastillotoPhoenix. . .in the meantime, here´s the link to the first video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNUOQSxKh-M

Let me know what you think, what you may wanna see, if videotaping my daily schedule might be worthwhile / funny!

st. george kids and halloween

So it´s been about a month since I´ve been in Chile. . .man how the times flies! I´ve spent the majority of my time here observing first grade, and for the past two weeks I´ve been subbing a few times a week in the fourth grade classroom in an English club. I wanted to take some time to describe St. George. . .because this place is unlike any school I´ve ever seen.

St. George

First of all, let me start by saying the school is MASSIVE. It runs from kindergarten to 12th grade, which is quite a range of kids first of all. However, the school body consists of almost THREE THOUSAND KIDS, over a hundred teachers, and all the administration. . .the school is huge. It´s very possible to go through your time here and not see other people at all. For example, our group is split between the elementary (1st through 4th grade) and the second and third levels (5th and up). I hardly ever see the people in the second and third levels all day. This is because of two things: 1. We´re busy and even more importantly, 2. The school campus is enormous. ENORMOUS. It has the feel of a college campus, because not only is it just massive, but the campus itself is immaculate. It´s well trimmed, flowers are blooming everywhere, and trees are everywhere to be seen. Just beyond the school itself in the background are snow-capped mountains that add to the already beautiful scene. The school is equipped with two huge computer labs for the staff, multiple labs for the students, and some classrooms even have smartboards. Resources do not seem to be lacking in the school, that is except for English materials. . .but that is just a given in a place where a book to learn English is hard to find and expensive as crap.

The kids

The students. . .dear god the students. Take whatever level of independence you´ve seen, multiply it by 34873674, and you get the level of St. George kids. The general feel of the entire school is one that fosters the individuality of each child and that their opinion matters. Of course, this is a great thing right? You have little first graders switching between classes, 2nd and 3rd graders walking across the entire campus to get to certain classes. . .it´s unbelievable. The only thing I´ve heard is that the kids, when they´re older, start to question EVERYTHING. They comb through their grades for mistakes, they fight tooth and nail for every point, and they challenge every answer that a teacher may give. This sounds awesome I know. . .for everyone BUT the teacher trying to teach the class.

Speaking of class, classroom management is practically nonexistent. The first time I went to a classroom was the English department head´s class. Now this is a lady who is in charge of about 30 teachers under her, and this is the ONE class she teaches. It just so happens this class was taking a test, and that myself and two others were brought in to talk to the kids about the States and our experiences. Now in my experience, a test is serious business. . .nothing on the desk but a pen or pencil. These kids had newspapers, notebooks, magazines out. . .some of them even had in headphones listening to music during the test. While we were talking, a good deal of them were talking, listening to music, or just staring out of the window. The head teacher was talking to them to pay attention. . .funny enough, the kids were able to answer her exactly at whatever she was saying, no matter how little attention they were seemingly giving. First grade itself is crazy. . .it takes about at least ten minutes to settle the kids down, plus 5 to clean up. Keep in mind the classes themselves are about 40 minutes long, so thats almost half the class just getting the kids to sit down and stop talking.

Recess is something I have to describe on its own. In the states in my Phoenix school, we had five to six people watching kids outside playing at any given time. Why? Simply to break up fights, solve disagreements, or stop kids doing something generally outrageously stupid. Here though at St. George, things go a little different. While 1st through 4th grade are outside playing, which by the way means hundreds of little kids are running everywhere, there are ZERO people watching. ZERO. And what are the kids doing? Well, they´re either

1. playing ¨soccer¨ which means they´re slide tackling each other, kicking and headbutting the air in any way possible to come in contact with the ball, and running into each other. By the way at any time there are about 8 games being played, with goals made up on the spot
2. climbing trees or crawling through bushes
3. running on the 2nd floor as fast as they possibly can
4. rolling slowly on the dirt through everyone doing all the above
5. eating and drinking each other´s food while doing at least one of the above

The first time Garrett and I saw this, we were horrified because this was a nightmare come true. In the states, if this went down, the kids would literally kill each other and the school would get shut down. Here in SG, there. . .was. . .nothing. No problems, whatsoever. ONE time I saw a kid get upset at not kicking the ball and started to cry. So what did the other 30 kids he was playing soccer with do? They freakin SET UP A PENALTY KICK so he could kick it. When he missed the kick the first time, did they give the ball up them? No, they let him kick it AGAIN at the goal. It was honestly unbelievable, and spoke volumes to me about the character these kids have at times.

Halloween

Since there was 12 of us in the program, we decided to all be months of the year. I luckily got September, so in true Chilean spirit for the 18th, I was Chilean pride. Everyone´s costumes came out to be incredible. . .and the party itself was amazing. Soooooo much fun. Here´s a sweet group pic:

from top left to top right: January (new years), February (cupid). march (march madness), april (april showers), may (may flowers), june (summer on top, winter on bottom). From bottom left to bottom right: july (uncle sam), august (uh. . .stealing of the mona lisa), september (CHILEAN PRIDE BAYBAY), october (witch), november (dia de los muertos), december (christmas tree)

asados = God's gift to man

So this past wekend was a long one due to the fact that it was Colombus Day. It was kind of interesting to see that they celebrated it here in Chile, even though they changed the name of it to "Day of the exploration of the new world," but still. A South American country, celebrating the legacy of centuries of conquest, exploitation, and brutality by the colonialists? It seems kind of roundabout to me, and I honestly never really liked the idea of "Colombus Day" because Colombus was a complete ass. Maybe if they changed it to the name they have here, or celebrated the indigenous that lived in the states beforehand, or something to take the focus off of Colombus's crew and made the meaning of the holiday something other than HE. . .but whatever. It was a three day weekend, and I was about to experience in every way what chilean asados mean.

Now for those of you who don't speak the "Spanish," asado means bbq. In Chile, men take bbqs are seriously as China is about violating human rights (Seriously, throwing the Nobel Peace Prize winner's WIFE under arrest too? What are you thinking??). Asados by NO MEANS are just times where guys put meat on the grill and fire up the gas tank. It's a time of family, friends, music, drinking. . .the food just compliments the overall merry mood of being outside and enjoying life with the people you love. But my god, do they compliment well. I should mention that a great majority of the grills aren't gas operated as well. . .you have to fire it up either with coal or wood, and since you're usually cooking for a huge group of people, this means starting the fire up takes up a special importance. Every guy it seems has their own method to start up the fire, whether that be arrange the wood pile in a certain way, or using a certain amount of newspaper and waving it a certain way around the coals before setting it down, to literally making a Molotov cocktail with a wine bottle and throwing it into the grilling abyss. . .it's awesome. Sooner than later, I'm going to have to figure out my own style and when I do, I'll let you know. . .hopefully you see it for yourself if you come and visit!!

Anyways, about my past weekend. . .it was purely with my host family for almost the entire time, which was actually pretty great because I got to hear an enormous amount of Spanish and practice. I picked up on a few key phrases here and there that apparently are said nowhere else in the Spanish speaking world. I just hope I don't walk away in over a year speaking Spanish and then have Spanish speakers go "Huh??" every time I start talking. In any case, it was on Saturday when the whole fam and myself piled into the family and drove to the beach, to a little town called Hanga Roa. Apparently no one on the staff recognizes the town, so I might be stating the wrong place. . .although I'm 99.9% sure that was it. Anyways, after about an hour and a half of driving, we pull up to this HUGE house where the parents of my mom live. It was absolutely GORGEOUS. . .it had the feel of an old house, full of antique furniture, amazing wooden floors, and fireplaces everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It was actually pretty chilly and cloudy (what a bummer) so they had 2 fireplaces going on in the hallways of the house.

I walk outside to a view of the coast in the distance (the house was set more or less on a hill, so the beach was on a down slant), along with rose gardens to my right and an actual playground on my left. Directly in front was a huge outside eating area, with two MASSIVE wok-looking bowls of seafood paella, avocado, tortilla española (scrambled egg and potato mix), crackers, smoked sausage, different types of cheeses, homemade sangria (easily the best I've ever had in my life), and bottles upon bottles of wine, red and white. Needless to say, I was blown away. It was an impressive spread, and the fam took me in like one of their own as they served me a great portion of EVERYTHING while talking about international travel, their families, and the grandparent's upcoming cruise trip. After the paella, they came out with three different types of cakes. After the cakes, they brought out their french-press for coffee and fruit bread. Incredible. After a brisk walk around the premises afterward to settle the food down, I watched Narnia and The Da Vinci Code with the kids of the family, read some "Mountains Beyond Mountains" (excellent book, I recommend it), and went to sleep happy.

I woke up on Sunday to another cloudy morning. After a shower and quick breakfast, we left the grandparents and drove back to Santiago. . .but here´s the twist. We went back to our house ONLY so the kids could shower and change, and we dipped out in 15 minutes to a friend of the dad´s house for, you guessed it, another asado. As soon as we walked in, I was greeted by the family, offered drink and chips, and then was given a choripan (chorizo sausage in toasted french bread) which was delicious. I heard more talk of international travel (I guess quite the topic nowadays) and watched as steak after steak get grilled up, that complimented this massive salad that had some type of awesome cheese, olives, and sun dried tomatoes. I ate, drank, and played with the family's six year old girl, who had made a picture book in her school of songs in Spanish and French. Which she sang to me. Which was the cutest thing I've seen, more cute than that dog picture from the jungle. Sunday night I was finally able to catch up with Greg, kicking it at our friend Sebastian's house while drinkin microbrews, eating sushi, and watching the 49ers screw up every possible thing (and by them, I mean their qb) against the Eagles. God I hate the Eagles so much.


After being comatose from eating so much, I woke up on Monday and got myself to the gym to work out. Which really didn´t help, because I got back home and my family asked me if I wanted to go out to lunch with them. I said of course, not realizing that we were going to the mall and not coming back for another 4, 5 hours. We got to a restaurant called Tip y Tap, which had maybe one of the strangest meals I've seen. "Carne Crudo" was what they called it, and lemme try to explain this: So basically imagine a piece of good quality hamburger meat was on your plate, BARELY cooked. Like it's still very much raw. Mush it with your fork and spread it out on your plate. Now absolutely douse all the meat with absurd amounts of lemon, garnish it with onion and cilantro, and mix it all up. Finally, spread the meat on pieces of toasted flat bread and eat. That's crudo in a nutshell. I didn't order it because I didn't want to get something potentially godawful at first, but I did try it. . .and it didn't kill me, and actually tasted pretty decent.

After shopping in the mall, I came home, read, and laid around until nighttime. While I didn't necessarily go camping or have crazy adventures, I saw a big piece of how Chileans socialize: with CRAZY GOOD FOOD, amazing wine with something else, and lots of time to just sit and talk. This is something I could get used to, and I know for a fact that when we get our own place, asados will be a part of my weekend routine too. By the way, sorry for the lack of pictures, but I accidently left my camera at my grandparent's house and seeing as they went on a cruise, I won't get it for a few weeks. . .so here are a few pictues to give you an idea what went down.



basically what the weekend looked like, with more people, more food, and def more smiles



This is exactly what the paella looked like, more or less. No joke. Except maybe a little bit bigger.



Santiago, Chile baybay

So it is currently the second week of being here in Santiago so far. I haven't posted because I wanted to take a decent amount of pictures first. . .but honestly, I haven't had enough time to do so. Allow me to tell you what happened. . .

So we left on Sunday last week before the crack of dawn. Now I enjoy traveling, but I HATE packing and moving all my crap from one place to another. I also don't enjoy waking up before 8. So as you can imagine, moving all my possessions and waking up at around 4:45 in the freakin morning made me about as happy as Tiny Tim before he got all the goodies on Christmas. I piled into a cab with Phil and we drove (correction, driving would be the normal word but our dude was easy goin 40 over the speed limit and speeding through red lights) to the airport. I felt kind of bad handing our driver 5 dollars in nickels, dimes, and pennies but honestly I had to get rid of as much change as I could.

So we fly first to Lima, Peru and had about an hour layover (big ups to airports with free wireless, honestly all airports should have this). I was a little bummed this was gonna be a 3 hour plane ride. . .until we got on the actual plane. It was the size of Fisher Hall in Notre Dame, with each seat equipped with its own TV and access to over 40 movies, TV shows, music playlists, weather reports. . .I'm surprised the TV didn't have the capabilities of makin me a sandwich. Which really didn't matter, because we got handed a bigass in-flight meal AND free refills on drinks. . .including wine and beer. While I got a water and inca cola, how sweet is that though? LAN airlines really knows how to pamper their customers.

And now on to Santiago. . .honestly, this place reminds me a lot of like the best parts of LA. The weather is dry, it gets hot but never too hot, and it's incredibly more modern than Quito. Not even close. I honestly I feel like I'm in the states except for the fact that people are incredibly hard to understand. It's one thing to not know Spanish. It's another thing ENTIRELY to not know Chilean Spanish. Oh my SWEET DEAR GOD it is different. First of all, people cut off their s's from words. Now I was used to this on the Ecuadorian coast, because people do it at the end of words. But no, Chileans do it at the end, the middle, and the beginning sometimes. Also, there's a lot of slang I need to get used to. . .in general, I've heard a lot of people say "pues" at the end of their sentences. This has been cut before into just "pue" and in Chile, it's said like "po." Why? I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that it makes it extremely hard to understand people for the most part. . .but just like anything else, it will come in time.

OK, here is a lil tidbit about the family I stay with. First of all, I almost didn't have a family at ALL. I was going to live with the director of English at St. George, and the current CHACERS did everything in their power to NOT allow that to happen. They obviously know the director and thought it would be everything I wouldn't want. . .so they were able to find a family that took me in at the last minute.

Flash forward to the moment when all of us are waiting in the CHACE apartment for our families to pick us up and talk to us a moment. Nerves were running a little high. . .the experience was getting more real, and going home to actual St. George families (that's the school I'm teaching at) was really knocking the point home. The CHACERs told families to get there at 6:30, expecting people to show up at 7:00. . .typical Chilean arrival time. However, lo and behold at 6:20 the doorbell rings. Then again at 6:40. Yet again at 6:45. Families start pouring in, and I was told that the families must have been outrageously excited and eager to come so early. Before you know it, 7 hits and all my buddies from St. George have families. . .

. . .except Eamon, Greg, and I. As we sip on Chilean wine and shuffle our feet, a mom and dad come powering through the door at 7:15. MY FAMILY! I eagerly say hello, and listen to a small conversation they have with the professor taking care of us new CHACERS in the group. We leave fairly soon, and we're just doing rapid fire conversation. . .and I'm following everything. Once we put my stuff in the car, we start driving and things are good. Then this happens. . .

Dad: So do you like sports?
Me: Yes, I really like playing basketball actually.
Dad: YOU DO? I WAS ON THE NATIONAL CHILEAN BASKETBALL TEAM!!!!
Me: Wow, really??
Dad: Yes, many years ago. . .but our family is like a team you know. We do two things: play sports, and eat well.
Me: niiice.

So right off the bat, I know that my dad might be a little intense but is going to be someone I like. Tomorrow, I'll take some pics of the school and post some more stories soon. Until next time!

Medellin, Colombia. . .yea it happened

So because I'm absurdly behind on my blog posts, I COULD tell you about Medellin, Colombia. But that mess happened about 3 weeks ago. In order to catch up on the current times, I'm going to link ya'll to various other blog entries from my friends about what happened that weekend. . .

http://aislinninsouthamerica.blogspot.com/2010/09/medellin-colombia.html
http://chilegreg.blogspot.com/2010/09/best-part-of-waking-up.html
http://philinchile.blogspot.com/2010/09/iviva-colombia.html?spref=fb
http://garrettsvoyage.blogspot.com/2010/09/medellin-columbia-paradise-in-south.html

Lazy? GET OFF MY BACK. Now that that's taken care of, I can move on to bigger and better things. . .like chileeeeeeee. Look for that next!

day 4 and 5. . .finally

OK so I have done (admittedly) a godawful job of keeping up with this blog. Especially because I'm currently writing this from Santiago, Chile and have finished with  Ecuador. Because of this, I need to finish the freakin jungle. Day 4 and 5 were pretty incredible, but can be summed up in 3 words: "bat cave" and "tubing."

Day 4. . .

We woke up to another 4 and some hours of class, which at this point has become more of an exercise than anything. Gustavo was trying really hard to keep us engaged, but when you have a sweeping view of the jungle, butterflies floating around, hammocks inches away from you, weird insect noises from every direction. . .it's a little difficult to keep up the attention per say.

Anyways, we hear about our adventure for the day. . .and we hear we're gonna go to a bat cave, and I'm not talkin Batman. We waded through small creeks, climbed slippery rocks, and scaled fallen tree limbs when all of a sudden, we reach a ravine that is just a massive black hole. Our guide tells us that we're gonna be climbing through it. . .and this is basically how he tells us to go through.

Guide: Ok, we're walking through this thing! Don't put your feet low, or else you'll get stuck and might break a leg in which case you're screwed. Don't put your feet high, because then you might get your feet stuck in the above crevice or you again might slip up. By the way, there's no light in here so you can't see where your feet are. Finally, there are bats flying above you, so if one hits you in the face (looks at Greg), don't freak out because you now know what it was at least.

bat cave, with gothem city just beyond

. . .Damnit. So we go climbing through this thing. . .my feet ended up being just fine, and I saw bats flying RIGHT above my head. Thankfully none blasted me in the face, that would have been the opposite of fun.

Day 5. . .

Class with the 'Stash, which again at this point was pointless. The adventure today was TUBING. Now my memories of tubing has been from Phoenix memorial day and labor day parties, which have been a 4 to 5 hour floating-down-the-river adventure with 20+ friends and a cooler of brewskis. This was obviously nothing like that, but even so. . .I never have had all the tubes tied together like they were, so it was kind of odd to be floating down the river connected to 7 other people. However, it was super relaxing even with the occasional dip in the river.

After about 20 minutes of floatin down, we land on an embarkment and take a small walk into an indigenous community. We got the opportunity to hear about how they make food, create some household items, and got to try chicha (fermented yucca plant). It was, in one word, disgusting. It's funny because I've had chicha before, but this kind was godawful. I was told later that it was because it hadn't been totally fermented yet, and that the way they got it to be in a mushy pulp was that they had to CHEW IT BEFORE IT GOT THAT WAY. GEWW. Oh well, I'm still alive so no big deal.

After some more gentle floating, we finally got back to camp, packed our bags, and slept for one more night. The next morning was another long bus trip back to Quito. . .but the jungle trip was an experience I won't soon forget.

day 3 - a big change

So we wake up to a brand new day, and to another 4 hours of classes with the one and only Gustavo. We eat another wonderful lunch and are told that today's the day we get to swim in a lagoon. YYESSSSSSSSS. It is sticky hot, the sun is out with a vengeance, and this would be perfect. Our guide, Fernando, takes us on a 30 minute walk on the way to the lagoon. On the way, we learn that the water that flows into it comes from Mt. Cotopaxi, the tallest mountain in all of Ecuador aka the water is going to be cooler than ice cold. Perfect.

So we arrive at the lagoon, and here is what I see. . .

The upper part. . .

. . .and here is the lower section. Beautiful!

That first part actually is a slide that you can go down into the second section. At first it looked like it was going to be something that was going to be a ridiculous amount of fun, but thats ONLY if you kept your butt up in the air while you were going down. If not, you get a huge section of rocks right in your rear as you go down. Luckily, I was the last to go down, so I got a fair warning beforehand. Swimming in the ice cold water was wonderful. . .such a fresh feeling. Not to mention the view of the water that flowed from the lagoon onward. . .

Jealous much?!

So we leave the lagoon, go back to the original camp, and pack up all our gear because we were leaving to go to another camp. Now this new place was described as a paradise for 3 reasons:

1. the view from the cabins
2. The hot water
3. electricity

If it was me, I would have added the bar that was in the middle of it, but I'll get into that later. We all pile into two different trucks and drive 45 minutes in the darkness to our new campground. Thankfully, the trucks didn't go a million miles an hour haha so it was much more accommodating. We got out of the trucks, grabbed our packages, and walked through a small path in the jungle to the campground.

The first thing I see was a massive table all set, with lamps set on a high set ceiling. On the left of the kitchen, there are two large sections of a few tables and hanging hammocks everywhere overlooking the forest and the river. You see, the whole campground is set right on the top and edge of a cliff overlooking the Amazon rainforest. INSANE. On the right are steps, leading to quaint, small cabins and bathrooms. We sit down to a delicious dinner and put our stuff in our respective cabins. Here is the view from when I open my cabin door. . .

Amazon rainforest? YES PLEASE.

So we decide after dinner to head to the bar in the middle of the campground, just to have a beer and take in everything. Little do we know that things are about to GET REAL. At the same time we are there, it just so happened to be the last night for another group of traveling europeans, ranging from all ages. . .friends from australia in their 20s, a family of 3 sisters and their mother, a few grown men from Germany. . .and they wanted to get bottles poppin. As we're all drinking our beers, these dudes plug their ipod in, take a few handles, and start chugging. People are taking swigs, dancing out of control, and playing music that I would have heard in a 6th grade mixer. While we were watching all this go down in front of us, we got a small introduction to the insect kingdom in the jungle. A spider showed up that was the size of my hand, which scared the crap out of everyone in the whole bar except for the bartender. He managed to trap the guy and let him walk on his arm. . .apparently this spider is harmless, but to be it looked like the spider that bit Peter Parker.

WHOA NELLY

So eventually the bartender places the spider on a branch, and it slinks away. The party music gets put back on blast, and people start dancing on the bartop. Everyone is vibin to the beat, and then we get another guest. . .this one came down from the ceiling crawling down. It was the biggest grasshopper I've ever seen. Now, I never thought I'd be intimidated by them. . .after all, the only ones I've seen are green and relatively tiny. This one, however, was MASSIVE, with a deep maroon color body. We pointed it out to the bartender, who shut the music off and walked up to it. . .he said he wouldn't dare touch it, because this was the kind that bites down deep.

Yep, thats an axe head that is smaller than the grasshopper. Sweet Jesus.

I mean, this thing looked like it should have been in a Godzilla movie and not in a rainforest bar. But there it was. It eventually sauntered away and the huge crew resumed their partying until the bar closed aka it ran out of booze. It was pretty entertaining to watch the whole group get down, esp to hits like "welcome to the jungle" and the closing song, the fresh prince of bel-air theme song.

Needless to say, sleeping that night was a tad bit difficult after seeing insects that big. . .but this was the rainforest, and I wasn't about to complain about a thing. Until next time. . .

cont. day 1 & day 2. . .

So I went back to look at my photos, and I forgot to put up some plants that were pretty neat. To finish off day 1. . .

These are bananas just hangin out. . .with a very weird devil-looking tail underneath

Eating limes straight from the tree!

From left to right: Garrett, Aislinn, KO, and Eamon. From right to left: two normal people, queen of the forest, desert wanderer very far from home

YUCA BABY

Cutest dog I've ever seen in my entire life.

So after our lil jungle tour, we put our heads down to sleep. Or we tried to anyways. Garrett and I entered our cabin only to find the bed I was going to sleep in already had a guest in the bed within the mosquito net. . .that being a massive spider and a beetle that would make the dog above cry. So I changed beds (upper bed on the bunk) and tried to sleep through the massive heat and fear of getting munched by bugs.

2nd day. . .

I woke up, checked my bod, and found that I wasn't some insect's 4th meal (shouts to taco bell). After some breakfast, I walked back to my cabin and found my classroom:

"Hi! My name is Gustavo, I have a 'stash that would make Stalin jealous, and I'm here to tend to your Spanish Language needs"

So after 4 hours of trying to pay attention to Gustavo while looking out at the gorgeous river and plants right in front of me, we ate a delicious lunch. We gathered in the main dining hall and were told that we were going to climb a few waterfalls. I didn't really know what to expect as we started on the trail. . .but we soon enough reach a spot where our guide sits us down to explain a certain plant. He slits open the plant, takes out the blood-red large seeds inside, and explains how they use this seed to formulate paint for special occasions. Garrett proceeded to take a few seeds, smeared it all over my face, and I looked like a Latino version of Betty Boop. . .

I have no clue.

 

 

Anyways, we continue on this gorgeous hike through insanely beautiful waterfalls, while seeing a lot of the plants we saw beforehand. Check it out. . .

Steps through a waterfall

TLC said to not chase waterfalls, but I totally disagree

Sorry I haven't been updating as much as I should have, my keyboard has been acting out of control. But I promise more will come so soon!

 

JUNGLE FEVER - day 1

So as some of you might know, I just spent the past week of my life in the Ecuadorian jungle. Since there is no possible way I could describe this to you fully, I'm going to split this up and give you the whole play-by-play on a daily scale, with as many pictures as I can get down. Hopefully this will transmit at least to a small extent the experience I had here to you sitting down wherever you call home!

Ok, so day 1, last Friday. I wake up earlier than usual at 6:30 because I have to not only get to the school where I'm meeting everyone else to launch off, but I have to get ALL my luggage and whatnot from my one host family house to my new one, where Phil and Aislinn live. I lug all of my suitcases downstairs (forgetting, of all things, my alarm clock that was right on my desk by itself), throw 'em into the nearest cab, and head off to the new home. After putting all my stuff down, we all meet up at the school and head toward northern Quito to get on the bus on the way to Tena, the town where we will be heading from to enter the jungle.

Now if you're read anything I've written so far, you know buses / taxis / anything with multiple wheels and axles drive out of control. This bus looked fair enough. . .comfortable seats, not overly packed with people, no blasting John Cena or obnoxious music. But of course, nothing could be perfect. . .our driving route took us through winding mountain paths carved right along the sides. This is an appropriate time to say that roads, streets, paths in general in Ecuador never go in a straight line. . .they ALWAYS take what almost seems like incredibly unnecessary dips. This was the same with the bus, where we started flying through curves like Keanu Reeves in "Speed" and luggage from upper compartments hit both babies and Aislinn (while she was sleeping, no less) right in their faces. Thank GOD I don't have motion sickness unlike some of my friends, who were struggling mind, body, and spirit throughout the entire trip.

After a few hours of Quito drifting, we arrived in Tena. . .which was extremelyy humid and hot. It reminded me a lott of a mild VA summer day, and we sat down to a tasty lunch. We then proceeded to each get these large rubber boots which we used to walk through the jungle. Now these boots. . .imagine Rambo and Chuck Norris got together to make a shoe product. That would be these bad boys. Want to walk through mud that could qualify as quicksand? No problem. Want to trudge through icy cold water and rocks as slippery as ice? Ain't no thang. What about jungle floors filled with insects the size of your face and plants covering every possible hole available? NO BIG DEAL. I might buy a pair to bring back to the states. . .wear them for yardwork, hiking, shoot maybe even teaching.

Anyways, from Tena we get in the back of a truck and whip through streets on a 40 minute trip to the entrance of the jungle. No rails on the truck, goin around 40 / 50 mph, just a day in the life. After a short walk through the jungle, we entered our campgrounds. . .nice cabins, no electricity, just pure nature in all its glory.

Barrio Ballin

the cabin with Garrett in the crucial hammocks

So after putting our luggage down, we went on a nature walk. Instead of telling you about it, I'm going to let pictures speak for themselves. .

Bamboo tree. . .each section can be cut open for a fresh source of water. Indigenous people used it for water on long journeys, along with building houses, etc.

The leaves you see here are used to make tea that indigenous people drink before a day of work. . .think of it as a natural, warm, not NEARLY as-bad-for-you Red Bell :)

 

 

The sap on this plant can be boiled into a tea that heals colds, fevers in just two to three days. It has spines on the trunk, but there is really good fruit at the top of the plant. . .so they grow another tree next to it typically to climb and gather the goodies!

Take the leaves on this one, boil 'em, let the water settle.  . .and you have natural soapy water to fit your everyday Bounty needs

Too lazy to wait for fish to bite, but you know a whole family is there? Cut this guy down, boil the sap, and dump in into the water. . .the fish get poisoned and float to you easy as 1, 2, 3. The process of cooking the fish kills the toxin inside, making them edible

As gorgeous as this vine is with its flowers, in reality it is killing the tree you see. Once the flowers bloom, the tree is beyond any sort of help. Talk about beautiful but deadly. . .

This tree, called "Sangre de Dragon" (blood of the dragon), is nuts. Chop into a bit of it and it looks like the tree is actually bleeding. . .bright red sap seeps out of the cut. But take the sap in your hand, rub it around, and VOILA! It turns white and you have your all-natural sun block. You can also take the sap and use it to make a tea, which serves to help colds and fevers as well.

Last but not least, edible mushrooms. . .yuuuuuuum

Which one of the plants was your favorite? I loved Sangre de Dragon, and the energy tea plant was really neat as well. After our tour of seeing jungle plants, we ate a delicious dinner and called it a night. I'll be writing about the other days soon, so keep checking the blog for more info!

A standard weekend. . .

. . .NOT.

I´ll start off painting the picture for ya´ll on Saturday. So two posts ago, I wrote about visiting the Teleferico with my buddies Eamon and Greg. Well, we decided to go up it again but not stop where we did. . .we thought it might be a good idea to climb the whole 16,000 ft mountain called Mt. Pichincha (or some number very close to that height). However, we didn´t really think this out too much. . .for instance, my friend Kaitlyn was wearing sort of workout capris, ankle socks and tennis shoes. Others were wearing tees with jackets without hats or gloves. My friend Greg was the only dude who brought along food, which were an 8 pack of cookies (probably not the best energy type food you want on a hike). Anyways. . .

On the way to Mordor. . .

It was more or less right before we hit this point where I realize we are NOT prepared for what we are about to do. I myself was more or less good to go, wearin multiple layers and with my earflap hat. . .however, I had no gloves and thus reached a point where I couldn´t feel my hands. It was pretty strange to go higher and higher and actually see MORE biodiversity, such as budding flowers and beautiful moss. It had to be because of the increased moisture due to the fact that we were in THE CLOUDS for the last hour of the hike, as you can see us headin into it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPVNHMjedfk

And here we are crossing a rock ledge, peering into the abyss below. Yea that´s Phil up above on the trail, and you can hardly see him because of how cloudy it was. Thank GOD it didn´t rain, or else we would have had to either 1. go back or 2. power forward rocky style.

Anyways, we finally reach the top of this mountain. . .but we couldn´t really tell because we literally couldn´t see 20 ft around us. The top of the mountain, as Greg prefectly described it, felt like being on an asteroid. It was completely rocky, cloudy with zero visibility, with an incredible chill and wind blowing around like it was REALLY ticked off that we were there. Needless to say, I won´t be climbing Cotopaxi more than likely due to the fact that it´s basically 2 Pichinchas stacked on each other haha. Coming back down the mountain was much easier, but also led to a nagging headache due to the change in altitude which didn´t go away for a while.

But that was made much easier, when I got home and ate multiple servings of rice, chicken, vegetables, soup, natural juice, fried plantains. . .I was a happy camper. I left the house to go with Phil and Kaitlyn to see a bull fight thereafter. . however, we got to the plaza and the cops had closed the whole thing down for some reason I didn´t really understand. Since we were out already, we didn´t just want to call it quits so we went to get coffee and ice cream at a shop near the Mariscal. I ordered a hot chocolate and a crepe, and when it finally came I was like this: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness

 

So I destroyed the whole crepe, drank my hot chocolate, and it was good. The 6th day.

However, I didn´t rest on Sunday. We decided to go to the Mitad del Mundo (or the middle of the world for those who for whatever reason can´t figure that out) to check out the museum, take extremely touristy photos, etc. Just getting there was a production. . .we took one bus to this massive station, got into another bus to another massive station, and then took a third bus which finally got us there. You think there might be a single bus to get you from the main city to what I would think would be a main attraction. . .but nah this is Ecuador, where buses do whatever the hell they want.

Anyways we get to the main site, which is more or less this HUGE plaza full of small restaurants, shops, and a huge tower where the main line is supposed to be.

Being a tourist

Here´s a picture to give you an idea of the huge tower which has all the directions on it. . .and here´s the sign that tells you exactly where you are. . .

Except this sign is a big fat LIAR.

So they built this massive monument and planted all these shops because back in the day, they thought this was the actual ecuator. But thanks to the marvel of Garmin and GSP units, this is actually NOT TRUE AT ALL. The actual ecuator is at another site maybe a football field away, at a much smaller venue that featured a museum of different activities you could do on the actual ecuator line.

With real G.P.S.! That´s more like it

 

So on the Ecuator, there are a few neat things you can do, such as balance an egg on a nail (due to opposing polarity forces acting upon each other). Water also flows straight down, not counter clockwise as in the Nothern Hemisphere or clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Finally, the force of gravity is apparently stronger on the ecuator. . .so walking the line with your eyes closed and thumbs out is extremely hard to do aka don´t ever get pulled over for a sobriety test on the ecuator. All in all, it was a fun experience. . .something you like to do once to say ¨Yea I´ve been to the ecuator before¨ because that comes up a lot in conversation. Also, this next picture has nothing to do with the ecuator or anything, but I love it because it shows you the typical height of an Ecuadorian in comparison to Garrett, a 5´11 American born in Montana:

This probably explains why we were asked to play semi-pro bball

And that my friends, was my ¨standard weekend.¨ Ok I was lying when I said that, but hopefully you enjoyed a lil of what you read and saw. Coming up, a day in the life!

barrio ballinnnnn

So some of you may have seen my facebook status that I played with a semi-pro ecuadorian team last night in basketball. That is SLIGHTLY true. Let me fill you in on the whole story. . .

So I wake up yesterday around 10, because we have afternoon classes all this week. Which means later this week will be a bull rush of going out at night and living our lives. By the way, saying ¨we´re just living our lives¨doesn´t translate at all over here. Nor does ¨I am balling (estoy pelotando).¨ Ok, maybe I took the word for ball, turned it into a verb, and conjugated it but honestly Ecuadorians should get that. But I digress. . .I wake up and go on the internet to check my emails. Garrett hits me up and gives me the run down. . .here´s more or less what he said:

Garrett: So I told my host brother that I play basketball at the Carolina park. Apparently my host brother took that to mean that basketball is my life, that I love to play, and eventually I´d want to play professionally. So he contacts one of his basketball buddies, asks if I can try out for the team, even with the possibility of getting paid. He then proceeds to tell me in english, ¨You had a dream and I made it come true in two hours!!¨ He then goes into about 6 motivational speeches, saying ¨I believe in you. You have to trust in yourself that you can do it!¨

Uh, yeah. So Garrett invites me to play. . .and of course I´m down. When else would you get an opportunity to play in a setting like this?

So we go to class from 1 to 5, and then Garrett and I get sandwiches which made us feel like absolute ASS because the dude smeared waaaaaaaaay too much mayo on them. I don´t even like mayo, so I was dying. After getting to Garrett´s house, eating some soup, and watching maybe a good hour of auto-tune the news (youtube it if you haven´t heard of it because it is HILAROUS), Garrett´s brother comes to pick us up at 8:15. Oh but wait, he was supposed to meet us at the stadium at 7 and this other dude was supposed to pick us up (who by the way, didn´t show up at all or call to say he couldn´t). Typical Ecuadorian time.

So we get in a cab which looks like something out of Tokyo Drift, almost kill a grandma and ourselves twice on the way over to what we are told is a colluseum, and also get told about 55 people are going to be there to watch us play. We also were told by the host brother it might be a good idea to get some pills in order to open up our respiratory system (or at least thats what I think he said) because the game might get tough. So obviously Garrett and I were looking at each other like WTF.

We arrive a good hour and a half late, walk into the gym, and see. . .maybe 8 people. 3 of them being girlfriends or female relatives sitting in the stands. Down below there is ONE semi-pro ecuadorian player, his uncle, his buddy, and this guy who kinda looks like a cross being Cheech and Chong. Apparently this was just to see if garrett and I could play on a legit semi-pro team, and needless to say we made the cut haha. I was insane tired by the second game, but was still draining shots because people here play with a girls ball. Not tryin to put ya´ll down ladies, but since the ball was way smaller it was so much easier to toss it up. Garrett was told that he was ¨very strong and had good form¨and I was ¨had very good technique and could create.¨ YEAH AMERICA.

We walk back to the semi-pro players (whose name is Miguel) house, where we have some water, talk about sports and his wife, get mauled lovingly by his dog, and listen to him play spanish songs on his acoustic while him and cheech-and-chong sang to us. It was just a really neat experience being surrounded by Ecuadorians (and Garrett) and just LIVING and being wrapped up in it all. I dont know how many opportunities one can get to do what I did last night (or other days / nights as well), so I just feel like I´ve been really blessed to do what I´m doing. Of course, I spend the time too wishing I could have certain people around to share it with me, but one day. . .

anyways I´m getting told I don´t post enough pics, so here is sort of near where we played at last night I think. . .It´s by the University of San Francisco, and this is the Plaza of San Francisco. So I assume it´s nearby. The churches in the colonial part of town here light up at night, some with vivid purple, blue, or rose colors. . .it´s gorgeous.

I´ll be doing a ¨day in the life¨ post soon, since some of you have been asking what a typical day is like. I guess I really haven´t done that yet haha, so I´ll get on it! Until next time. . .

walkin on cloud 9

So today, Eamon Greg and I decided that we would go on the Teleferico, which is this cable car system that takes you to Mt. Pichinca, one of the tallest mountains around Quito. As some of you might know, Quito is already stupid high in the air, so going up Pichinca is no small matter. We figured we´d go up, take some sweet pics, and hang out. Little did we know we were gettin ourselves into one of our coolest experiences so far.

To start off, in true Ecuadorian fashion we didn´t meet in the same place. Our taxis took us to two completely different locations and luckily we were able to meet up. . .30 minutes after we said we would. We get into the cable car with a daughter and her mother who were from NORTHERN VIRGINIA . .such a small world. Anyways, we get to the top where they have this large center for food, drinks, and small trinkets.

We decide we want to take the small path up to where we can get a better view. After about 10 minutes of walking, we were all dying because the elevation is ridiculous. I think we were 4,300 meters above sea level. . .no big deal. We get to the end of the path, and we see that it curls around more upward into more of the mountain. So whatever, we get up on it and climb.

From up top, we see the view that I´m showing you pictures of right here. It was incredible. Such a clear day. . .and the mountains had these bright purple flowers along the way too. Coming from the city, which is loud, crowded and polluted, to a place where there is absolute silence, crisp clean air, and breathtaking views really puts things into perspective. Greg, Eamon, and I were all just stunned.

And to make things even cooler, as we were takin it all in, a cloud starting flouting directly into our direction. We took some video of it coming at us (I´ll post it next), and soon enough we were engulfed by a massive cloud that just overtook our sights. It was sooooo cool. . .but then it started to drizzle. So we started to walk back. . .and then a bit more legit rain. Still walking. Then it started to hail and rain harder. Before we knew it, the rain was coming down hardcore. . .which maybe would tick some people off, but I was just thinking of how cool it was to be experiencing HAIL IN ECUADOR. That crap never happens.

We got some hot chocolate and grub and headed back down. I´ll load up the pictures eventually when I have internet that isn´t so freakin slow. But I hope you liked the pictures, and more are comin your way!

pick up ball with a side of robbery

So on tuesdays and thursdays (well, just this past tuesday and thursday but we will in the future), we all go and play a lil pick up ball at this massive park, La Carolina. Its about a 15 minute walk from my place, whereas the others have to bus it over. Thank God theres an advantage to where I live. The park itself is MASSIVE, its a place where one can run (because if you did it around the city, people would look at you like hey look at this massive toolbag), play soccer, play basketball, or vollyball.

I have to tell you a lil about soccer and vollyball here. They are BY FAR the two biggest sports. Soccer, as you could imagine, is something every south american loves. Kids are kickin around soccer balls along with 80 year old men. When I first went, I saw what appeared to be a whole team dressed in blue uniforms training hardcore. At first I thought, whoa this must be a serious bunch of guys my age ready to kick ass, because they were running around really hard and pushin it to the limit. But NO, these dudes upon closer look were around 40 - 50 years of age just truckin it. Man, I hope to be doin that when Im that age.

Vollyball is also a huge deal. They play a lil different, with 3 guys on each side and with a higher set net. When you think about it, the higher net makes absolutely no sense because Ecuadorians, for the most part, are really tiny. Im a BEAST here in this country if this gives you any idea. Anyways, people love this sport for two reasons: 1. its fun and easy to play, and 2. people looooove to gamble on who is goin to win. I saw one game where there must have been 40 to 50 people standing around watching, eating, drinking, and yelling at what they were seeing. Its kind of funny to think of dudes really kickin their own butts into gear, while other dudes are pounding beers, eating sausage, and throwin cash money down. But c'est la vie, asi es la vida, thats how it goes, etc.

Ok, back to BALLIN. So we go the first day (last tuesday) to see if we can get a pickup game. Fortunately, there are ecuadorians ballin. . .so we jump in, play for about an hour and a half, and dip out. It was fantastic. They actually arent half bad, I thought we were going to be literally like the Harlem Globetrotters but they had some semblance of a game. The second time we went (last thursday), it was a lil different. There were a few more dudes, including this one guy in black who thought he was a cross between Chris Paul and Allen Iverson. Except. . . . . .he wasnt. He kept tryin to do moves and drivin the lane through about 3-4 people and always got STUFFED. It was kind of funny to watch him struggle. What wasnt funny was near the end of the game, when my buddy Greg got his bag stolen from right under the basket. In retrospect, we didnt play it smart and put it near right in front of the court where it would have been incredibly obvious that someone was walking away with it. . .but still. 5 days in ecuador and already someone has their belongings jacked. NOT COOL.

All right, well that should do it for this entry. Until next time. . .

¨we are so lucky to be here. . .¨

Well, I saw that picture this weekend in real life. We went to the coast on friday night in a bus which was a story in itself. So we get on the bus, and more or less it is a tad bit cramped. Not too bad, I guess. But then the bus conductor puts on a movie. . .and little do we know that we are about to be shown 2 of the worst movies in the entire world, 12 rounds and the general (I think). If you dont know what these movies are, thank god because 1. John Cena is in them (if you dont know who that is, google him and laugh) and 2. they played the movies at a RIDICULOUS volume. I couldnt even really go to sleep in the second one because I heard no talking, just stuff blowing up and machine guns shooting. It was funny for the 1st 15 minutes but then youre like ok really this is stupid. When the movies were over, it started to go into an interview of how John Cena grew up. As if ecuadorians really care. So the bus ride to Puerto Lopez, which was 11 hours, kind of sucked. We got into the sleepy town around 7 in the morning on Saturday. The hostal didnt have room for us until 9 and served breakfast at 8, so they put out mattresses in the main patio for us to sit on. Imagine ecuadorians waking up and looking out their windows to see 15 white people, me, and our guide. AWESOME. We eat breakfast, put our things in our rooms, and head out to the beach in Puerto Lopez for a bit. The beach there wasnt too bad, a little dirty considering we saw a kid drop trou, go in the water, and proceeded to go to the bathroom. . .hussalin. We got in a bus and drove to Los Frailes, the badass beach I was talkin about before. Now this beach was absurd. Beautiful views, almost white sand, great water. . .I was in heaven. Until they packed us after about 2 hours and we dipped out. We then go to a museum to learn about the indigenous tribe around the area, with what was found in various archeological sites around the area. It was neat, but I was a little down about being away from the beach. Until they took us to a SULFER POOL. Now if you havent been in one, which im gonna go ahead and assume you havent, it smells like absolute ass for one. . .but apparently it does wonders to your skin. ESPECIALLY if you take the mud from the bottom and smear it all over your body, which is exactly what we all did. I looked like an extra from that movie apacolipto. Pretty cool, and it did actually feel pretty nice. So we get back to our hostal, shower up, and head out to eat dinner. I proceed to pound 2 big brewskis and a huge plate of seafood which came out to a whopping 8 bucks. We took our party to the beach, where we drank more and played the animal game. Finally, we went to a karoake bar where Garrett and Eamon became instant celebrities with their singing. All the ecuadorians were buyin em beers and askin em over and over and over what we thought of their city. After all of us busting out hotel california, we dipped out for sunday. . . which by far was the best day. After waking up early, we ate breakfast, got on a boat, and headed to La Isla de La Plata (which is considered the poor mans galapagos). We walked along incredible trails along the island offering views of the ocean, where we saw whales doing what essentially was a mating dance in the water. We also saw blue footed boobies, including one male tryin to get on a female, getting pecked at, attracting and getting another female close by, and getting hammered by the 1st female again. Finally, we ended on the island by seeing an albatros, a big ass bird which is gorgeous, endangered, and only found in la isla and in the galapagos. All throughout, we were just muttering how lucky we are to be given this opportunity. It really is amazing to see such sights and notice how blessed we are to be where were we are. We got back on the boat and went snorkling near a cave. It was my first time, and Ill be honest, I sucked hard at it. I gulped a huge amount of salt water at first, and that kind of just did it for me. I saw some neat fish, but I think I need to do more snorkling in the future to get used to it because I sure wasnt. Immediately afterward, we went whale watching. Now this was INSANE. Our boat driver got up SUPER CLOSE to the whales, where we saw them jump out of the water and crash back into it. That picture was taken by my friend Tobias, who I just met on this trip. Ill probably pepper my blog with his pictures, considering his camera is high quality badassness. Greg even got a 2 minute video, where you see the whales jump in and out 3 times. It might be the coolest thing Ive ever seen in my entire life. Afterward, we got back, ate sandwiches of peanut butter for dinner, and got on the bus back which was luckily way more spacious and didnt play atrocious movies. I know this post was insane long, but this weekend was just out of control. I think we might be going to climb a mountain this coming weekend, along with going to an indigenous market. . .we will see. Until next time. . .

Just a day in the life. . .