No orientation at USFQ on Friday, which meant there wasn't anything I had to do. I spent most of the day working on my Galapagos paper. I fear how long it's going to get. I'm only on day two and it's already four pages double spaced. Only nine more days to write about!
In the evening, another couple visited my family. I was invited to have some tea with them which turned out to be tea and coffee plus lots of food. After they left, we went to a concert in Old Quito in the San Francisco Plaza. It was a traditional folkband from Chile playing. There were tons of people there. The music was pretty good. It was really neat when all the people started singing along to some of songs.
Saturday morning I explored two of the markets in town. So much fun stuff to buy! I manage to only make off with two pairs of earrings, a necklace, a coin purse/keychain and a sweater. It sounds like a lot but together it only cost $16.
When I got back to the house, one of Myriam´s sisters was here. So I had tea and a snack with them. Ecuadorians also serve tea and snacks when they have guests. Myriam and Patricia had just gone to the fruit market this morning and brought back all sorts of fun fruit. You know the jackalantern flowers Grandma always has a ton of in her garden? They eat those here, well the little berry in the middle not the dried up brown part. I was a little surprised when they put a plate full of dried jackalanterns in front of me and told me to try one. They taste ok but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to eat one especially since I think of them more as decoration than food. They're called uvitas (little grapes) here. By the way, they're supposed to be good for menopausal women. Then I got to try granadina. It's a very interesting fruit. The outside is orange and hard like a shell. Then you break it open to eat it. The inside looks a lot like frog eggs in white spongy stuff that lines the inside of the shell. You have to eat it with a spoon. It actually tastes pretty good. I was told that you drink it more than you chew after they heard me crunching on the seeds. The family keeps telling me that everything is good for the stomach. I just worry about too much of a good thing...
In the afternoon, I went to Old Quito with Pati. I learned how to get to the Trole station by bus. We went to the Centro Cultural Metropolitano where there is an exhibit on the over throwing of the president from last April. Pati wanted to go because she was in Germany at the time studying for her masters. I wanted to go just to see how it was all presented. It was very interesting especially since I had already seen a lot of the exhibit in the papers or on the news. We wandered around Old Quito for a while. We stopped at La Iglesia de la Merced. It’s one of the churches I hadn’t been in before. It’s just crazy how ornate the old churches are. Everything is covered in gold. It just makes me wonder exactly to whose glory were these churches built. It’s sad to think how many indigenous people were enslaved and killed to build the churches. I personally like the little tin roof churches in the pueblos better. On our way back to find the Trole or the Ecovia, we stopped in a little shopping area. It was shops aimed more at tourists. One had really pretty jewelry from all over Ecuador and the other had wood carvings. The wood carving store had very pretty Nativity sets. I’ll have to go back there and buy one (or more for gifts) later in the year. Although I suspect that the Nativity sets will start appearing in the markets as it gets closer to Christmas. We got back to the house just in time for supper. The aunt had made fritada which is basically fried pork skin. Yuck! The smell was so horrible I almost couldn’t eat not to mention there was chicken fat in my soup! But I survived.
Sunday we went shopping at QuiCentro, the big shopping mall near the house. Veronica needed new sunglasses. She just had eye surgery on Thursday to correct her vision and is still very sensitive to light. I couldn’t believe it: sunglasses in a department store were only $6! (Well $6.72 with tax) I’ll have to bring back an extra pair or two for when I lose or break my other ones which inevitably will happen as history tends to repeat itself. We looked in some of the clothes store. Pati found a jacket that she just loves. She wants it for when she moves to Boston in October. It was a nice jacket but she doesn’t seem to understand that it won’t do much good if she has an inch of skin showing at the bottom. We hit the jewelry department at De Pratti. Go cheap fun jewelry. They had beautiful beaded bracelet sets for only $1.50. I have one now too. I feel kind of bad spending so much money the first couple days here but it’s all things that I will use (and am using) while I’m here.
I helped Myriam make pizza for supper tonight. My favorite: chopping up veggies! It was fun plus I got to talk to her a bunch. I told her how I used to work at Papa Murphy’s and when I came home, the dogs would lick my shoes clean. She loved that story! The pizza was yummy too.
Classes start today. I’m looking forward to starting school, just not the work…
