It's hooooot

I don't really remember all that's happened since I last updated this... Well, last week I spent Sunday to Thursday at a Spanish Orientation Camp, at the Decameron resort in Mompiche (7 hour drive by bus from Portoviejo). We took 6 hours of Spanish classes each day but the learning and Spanish parts were sort of over shadowed by being at an all-inclusive resort on a gooorgeous beach with 24 hour buffets and 5 pools and shows every night and a discotequa that's open until 2 am. So it was fun and a good refresher for my struggling Spanish. A picture is below (not taken by me though!) of the resort and one of the ocean (taken by me!). My friend and I watched the sun go down over the beach from our room's balcony (that's what the picture's of) and maybe I'm just a novice sunset watcher but I swear it took max 80 seconds to fully set... mind-blowing.

Anyway, speaking of Spanish (that's a pun!) my Spanish speaking is improving sort of unevenly. I can communicate a little better, just by course of knowing more everyday words and local abbreviations/etc. but I understand a TON more than I did even just a week ago. I don't really think it was the camp even -- I realized a few days ago that I suddenly don't need every single sentence repeated 19 times in slow mo, so even though I have a looooong way to go it was sort of reassuring that I'm not still the completely  illiterate gringa I was 5 weeks ago (so weird that it's been that long).

After I got back last Thursday, my host mom let me/basically forced me to skip school to "descansar y ir a la piscina conmigo" so I went to the pool with her in the morning! It was nice, although kind of sad to see how far I've slipped out of swimming shape. Maybe through the year I'll try to get back into it (Ha!). Then at night me, my mom and Pamela went to the Manta airport and waited 2 hours for our flight to Quito, only to find out that due to a plane crash and snow (unrelated but probably each enough to shut down an airport alone) the Quito airport was closed. But do Ecuadorians let snow or crashed planes stop them? Of course not! So we took an overnight bus to Quito and got there 8 am the next morning. Gotta admire that. We spent the weekend visiting with my host mom, Eulalia's side of the family, who there is a.) a lot of, and b.) all living in Quito. I absolutely loved Quito -- it's the capital of Ecuador, and about 2 million people big, and is literally nestled in a mountain range, so it's COLD. It was such a nice change for a few days, mainly because I've been missing New York fall weather. There are also a fair amount of parks, so I liked being able to walk around outside -- you really can't do much of that here, because of safety reasons -- and with tons of vendors and artists doing portraits and displaying their work and stuff like that, so with both that and the weather it reminded me of NYC, which may be why I liked it so much.

The only other notable thing this week was Monday night I slept over at a friend from school's house with another girl from school, and we got up at 4:30 am to go to the "Caminata." It's this thing that's once a year, where for a stretch of fifteen days, at 5 am each day, a ton of people walk around the streets of Portoviejo in a processional and say the rosary and sing prayers and things like that, and people carry crosses too. It's from 5 to 6, so it's still dark the good majority of  the time; when I went Tuesday there were minimum 800 people doing it -- it was actually really incredible how many there were. So I'm glad I went to that even if I'm still SO tired (although I'm basically tired 98% of the time).

Oh, also, today I sprayed myself in the face with 98% deet bugspray... cool. Hurt SO bad in my left eye. I'll probably have mutilated retinas by the time I get home. You know that useless deet free bugspray that's advertised as "family style", I think I may have to invest in a bottle.

So that's my life! It's boiling hot right now... Can't wait for summer in 3 months?!

Gringa intercambios

Mompiche

Gorgeous gorgeous sunset.

Quito!

...and from above

I love this view so much.

I'm here!

View from the road somewhere between San Vincente and Canoa

Well, I don’t have internet right now for whatever reason, so I figured it’d be a good time to start this! I’ve been here for three weeks, this Friday. I flew into Guayaquil August 19th, spent the night there, and have been in Portoviejo since the 20th with my host family: Eulalia, my host mom, and Pamela, my 16 year old host sister. Oh, and Martina the dog. She’s precious.
I was going to go to Colegio Cruz del Norte, but my host mom wanted to send me to the same school as my sister, so she talked to the headmaster of her high school, Cristo Rey, and he said I couldn’t go there… But then she told him I was going to Georgetown next year, and, since Cristo Rey is Jesuit/very religious, he liked that I was going to a Jesuit university, so… I get to go there now! The week I started was the “Olympiadas,” meaning we only had three classes in the morning and the rest of the day, all the grades played team sports against each other -- volleyball, basketball, soccer, some version of soccer on pavement. I played volleyball; we lost by a loooot. Anyway, I’ve been in regular classes for two weeks now. I’m in class Sexto Fima, meaning grade 6 (the 12th grade equivalent here) and in the Physics-Math specialty class. There’s about 35 other students in it, and we have all of the same classes together; although I think that would bother me in the US (wait… sounds oddly reminiscent of IB…) it’s at least nice because I get to know the same group of people better. I don’t need grades, which is good, because I would probably only pass English otherwise (I’m in the advanced class...). Above is me rockin' the uniform! My friends at school are good about trying to only use Spanish with me, although sometimes the conversations I have go something like this:
Friend says something in rapidfire Spanish
I repeat one word that I don’t know with a question inflection at the end
Friend nods vigorously
Me: “No entiendo.”
Friend attempts to translate the word into English
Me: “Oooooh. Ok. Si.” fail to mention that I still don't understand the other 10 words in the sentence

Two weeks ago, my host mom’s sister and her family visited; we went to the beach both days at Canoa, a coastal town. Portoviejo is only about a 20 mile drive from the ocean which is WONDERFUL. It’s gorgeous here, with a great view of the mountains right along the beach. The water’s also about 35 degrees warmer than the Massachusetts Atlantic. I also went to a quinceneara for one of Pamela’s cousins; it reminded me more of a wedding than a Sweet 16. This past weekend, a bunch of students from Cristo Rey went to the hospital dressed as clowns and visited sick kids (really young ones, about 2 and 3), which was nice, and they were adorable. Then in the evening I went to a barbeque at one of my classmate’s houses, with the rest of the girls in my class. I ate way too much, which seems to happen a lot here! The food is delicious, speaking of which; I like it because there is fish involved in almost every dish. Ceviche, the signature food of Portoviejo, is like a cold soup with raw (is it raw? I’m not sure actually) fish, or you can get it with shrimp. You add lemon and herbs and tomatoes, and mustard. Oh and the other thing everyone eats here is chifles! They’re basically banana chips, or you can get the madura version. They. Are. Everywhere. So back to this past Saturday… after the barbeque, I went to a formal party for Friends of Rotary, hosted by the Rotary Club (self-explanatory), around 10. I stayed until 3 am, and spent the better part of it being exhausted and wishing I could sleep. It was pretty fun though, all of the other exchange students in my district were there, some of which I hadn’t seen since the plane ride over from Atlanta.

Today I went to basketball practice at my school (last week I went to volleyball twice). I was pretty bad…but it was fun! I also swim a fair amount with my host mom, at the University pool. Tonight at 9 I have a Rotary Meeting; they’re every Wednesday from 9 to midnight, and all the rotary exchange students in my club (there’s 3 clubs in Portoviejo, making up the district) go to them (there’s 10 of us in this one). I’m surprisingly not too tired... horraahh!