No me digas!

So this is officially the end of my first incredible week in Ecuador. We took a city tour on Saturday (with a strikingly handsome tour guide I might add...) and explored the streets of Quito's colonial Old Town. We had this incredible lunch at a famous restaurant and tried their traditional mora juice (raspberries!). After seeing all the incredible cathedrals and taking a look inside the President's Palace, we went to this one street in the Old Town called La Ronda. This street is what my guidebook calls "the most romantic slice of colonial Quito." The buildings that line the street have balconies on the second story that are covered in flowers. La Ronda is home to some amazing candle vendors and and cafes, but the resident our group loved the most was a piano player named J. Hunerto Torres. This man is the son of the most famous Ecuadorian pianist. He was so full of energy when we met him, and even though he didn't speak a word of English we could sense his incredible passion for piano. He played us two songs...one of which was an old Inca tune that described the sadness at the fall of their empire and another song that he wrote for his daughter. Honestly, its now my goal in life to find something that will make me as happy as he was.

After lunch we left Quito for the "official" Mitad del Mundo (or middle of the world). Here they showed us "proof" that water does flow the opposite direction on either side of the equator. I had a feeling they rigged the models so they would be different, but hey it might be true. We completely lucked out with the weather for that day though! It was absolutely perfect...just a few clouds and a wonderful breeze. Even though weather.com constantly says its going to rain here, it has only rained maybe 3 out of the last 7 days. And when it does rain, its at night for like 2 hours. I'm almost starting to loose track of the days! Each one feels just as perfect as the last one.

Lets see, what else have I been up to. My host mom took me to the movie theater on Sunday! I saw The Tourist (she loves Angelina Jolie) with spanish subtitles...it was confusing at parts when characters were speaking in Italian on the screen and the subtitles were in Spanish, but luckily it wasn't an immensely complicated plot. My classes began on Monday...and I have so much free time now I don't even know what to do with myself. At Denison I feel like every minute of my life is programed into meetings and classes and schoolwork and extracurriculars. I can't even imagine life without all of that stress. And now I'm officially living it! My classes go from 1-about 3:30 every afternoon. I meet up with the other students from my program for lunch at noon. After classes we either soak up the sun on campus or go get drinks at one of the local bars. I completely love the Ecuadorian beers! They are so cheap and taste great...one called Crown tastes just like Heineken and Pilsner reminds me of Corona. Another day after class we went to this incredible crepe restaurant on campus. I had this amazinggg  crepe with kiwis and strawberries and nutella. It completely changed my life.

I am also happy to report that my friends in the program appear to be enjoying all of my stories! While I know many of you may be rolling your eyes right now and thinking, "Well Colleen, they haven't been hearing these for as long as we have," I have great hope that my storytelling talents will only grow as a result of this experience. On Wednesday two of the local Ecuadorians in our program (Matteo and Paula) took us to this amazing "salsatecca" in La Mariscal district of Quito. We all climbed into Matteo's 1960s-esque Volkswagen van and drove from La Universidad to the most amazing dance club I have ever seen! The music was absolutely intoxicating...by the end of the night everyone in our group was learning to dance. Matteo and Paula are also fabulous teachers! It was incredible to think that salsa dancing is such an important part of the local culture that everyone learns it. There were some people who must have been professionals because the way they moved was unreal. I cannot wait to take that class in the Galapagos!

The food I have been eating here is also incredible. Every meal at my host family's house has a food I have never tried before. Tonight I had platano verde empanadas. Platano verde is a type of banana here...there are actually 5 different kinds of bananas in Ecuador! Only one of these vaguely resembles bananas found in the U.S. The other day I had another version of these bananas fried for dinner. It actually tasted a bit like sweet potatoes and was absolutely delicious. Another thing I love about my Ecuadorian meals is the fresh juice. I haven't had a glass of milk in the last week (because its totally gross here), but  with every meal I have either fresh tomato juice (again not like U.S. tomatoes...its really sweet!), orange juice, lemonade (from our tree outside), peach juice, mango juice, pear juice...you name it. Danielle and I just agreed to invest in a juicer for our apartment next year! It will be wonderful.

My new favorite Spanish phrase is "no me digas!" which means "you don't say!" I've noticed that a lot of the language in Ecuador is based off of reactions to other people's stories. This is obviously perfect for me because I like stories so much :)  Its become somewhat of a joke between my host mom and I because I say it whenever she says anything relatively shocking. For instance, today for desert we had roasted apples filled with homemade cinnamon apple sauce and vanilla whipped cream. When she was telling me how much work went into making it I chimed in with a "no me digas!!!" and she started laughing so hard she knocked the apple over. She then had to explain to the housekeeper (who also doesn't speak English)  that the new gringita just learned the phrase "no me digas." I think our housekeeper was very happy for me.

So tomorrow we head out to Paluguillo, which is a paramo ecosystem high up in the Andes. We will go on this awesome hike, starting out at about 4,300 meters (which translates to about 14,107 feet for you non metric folk) and ending at about 3,300 meters. today in class they gave us a preview of some of the amazing endemic species we are going to see while we are there. My favorites were definitely the "ground rosettes." These hardy flowers deal with the intense cold at the top of these mountains by having their stems underground. Stuff like this just blows my mind! Its so incredible that these little flowers have such an ingenious lifesaving mechanism built into their genetic code! I'm so excited to see all of these things. Ohhh and did I mention the hot springs at the end of the hike? Yup. Best study abroad program ever.