It´s been too long

I hate when this happens. When it´s been too long and the thoughts about what to write just keep piling up. Every day a new story to write. It´s hard to live your life and find the time to write the parts of your life you want to share as well. But tonight seems to be the night for sharing. And then after a while, the one exciting story feels like it needs to become part of list of things that have happened during the past two weeks to catch up and move on. Also, my email inbox is simply overwhelming right now. That is not to say that I don´t love each and every one of the messages. It´s just taking me a while to get through them. Have patience my friends, I will respond.

Anyway, enough of my babbling. Let´s see if I can makes sense of what has happened since we survived our Pico Duarte adventure. . .

After our mountain experience, we headed back to Cabarete (the town where Jen C is volunteering this year) and ended up spending a little over a week there. We set up a deal with the Dream Project that in exchange for some volunteer work ourself, they would put us up at a local hotel. Turned out to be quite a hotel actually, nothing John and I would normally stay at but the air conditioning was a welcome change to what we had been experiencing with the 90 to 100 degree days, so we didn´t complain. We spent the week giving workshops to the Dream Volunteers, most of whom do not have education experience, so while they want to help in the schools, are not really sure where to start. We did a series of workshops for them on setting up the classroom, setting clear behavioral expectations and the basics of teaching reading and writing. I also had the opportunity to go to a number of the schools and do some observing, some modeling, some coaching which I always love doing so the week was work but fun work. Jen even set up a workshop with the Dominican teachers at her school, which was quite an interesting experience, to say the least.

For a little over a week now, we have been in Quito, Ecuador. Quito is an interesting place and about as different of a city than anywhere in the Dominican Republic and I have to say any of the major cities that I have been to in South and Central America. My typical M.O. in a major city when traveling, is quick and dirty. Get in and get out. While there are typically some sights to see, the cities are often crowded, polluted, dirty and somewhat dangerous. Quito, while it does have the polluted and somewhat dangerous rep, is very clean and has tons to offer.

We have been staying at Casa Paxee, a family house in the foothills of the city. Martha, the owner of the "hostal" rents out her upstairs to travellers, provides tons of travel advice and allows them use of the kitchen. So for the last week, for a mere $6 a night, John and I have been in the "penthouse" at Martha´s, a rooftop room with a private bathroom and spectacular views of Cotopaxi (a snow capped Volcano over 19,000 feet tall), the old and the new city and all the other mountains and volcanoes that the eye can see on a clear day. A funny side note is that we had chosen Casa Paxee for the fact that it was small . . .only 5 bedrooms, and as it turned out, the place got even smaller as John and I have been the only tenants all week. Talk about a bargain. $6 a night for our own house! ;)

This week has been about as full as you could imgaine. We decided to stay in Quito for the accessibility to phone and internet as we have been trying to set up a volunteer situation for the next month or so. So we alternated between our "chore days" as we called them where we mostly did internet, phone and business related things and our "fun days," where we got to see all that Quito and the area had to offer.

Since the chore days weren´t that interesting, even for John and me, I will stick to a couple of the other days instead.

The Saturday Market in Otavalo
Otavalo, a city about 2 hours by bus from Quito, should definitely not be missed if you ever come to Ecuador. It is famous for it´s Saturday marked and after visiting it last Saturday, I understand why. John and I headed up in the early morning, following Martha´s advice to walk up, up, up where the cars came down till we came to a foot bridge and then flag down one of the buses bound for Otavalo. We did just that and while we were actually let off about 2 miles past Otavalo (this seems to happen to us quite a bit), we did make it to the market by 10 and by 10:30, were amazed by the colors of the local handicrafts.

From handwoven sweaters, hats, socks and blankets, to brightly colored paintings depicting local scenes to as many types of fruits and vegetables as you could possibly imagine, this was a place to get lost in. Andean men with long braided hair invited us into to look at their shops, "Ven amiga, a tu orden amiga." Short women in brightly colored clothings, babies tied to their backs in shawls, sat weaving, nodding their heads, smiling, inviting us in to see their hardwork, thanking us whether we bought something or not. And of course, there is the bargaining. No price is ever set. For you, there is always a discount, a special price for the first sale of the day, for today only.

Mitad del Mundo
Obviously the equator is in Ecuador. It probably wouldn´t be called Ecuador otherwise. But honestly, before visiting the "middle of the world," last Sunday, I wasn´t really that interested in actually going to see the Equatorial line. I mean what would be there - would there actually be a line? Sounded like a tourist trap to me. But after Martha told us to go and to go on Sunday, we went. You don´t really argue with Martha, she is sort of a cross between a grandmother and a Jewish mother. Honestly, I don´t know what I expected, but the scene we experienced on Sunday was definitely not it.

We got to la mitad del mundo (which is the name of the town, meaning middle of the earth) at around 1 in the afternoon, just in time to catch the Sunday show taking place in their central square. There in the middle of the square were 6 or 7 women in traditional Andean dress, two men and a little girl around 5 years old. We stood at the edge of the square with the rest of the visitors, Ecuadorians and toursits alike, spellbound as the women and men (and little girl) twirled around to the traditional sound of Ecuador, their brilliantly colored shawls, bandanas and skirts flying in the air. Song after song, dance after dance, they invited onlookers into the circle, people danced, sang, laughed all around the equitorial line under the bright sun of the afternoon. There actually was a line painted on the ground, which while cools, was kind of silly when you thought about it.

El Teleferico

Yesterday, we headed up to a Gondola (teleferico in Spanish) which took us up over Quito. Quito, already over 9,000 feet is quite a high city. So heading up another 3,000 feet in what feels like a ski lift, is no small feat. And when we disembarked at 4,100 meters (about 12,500 feet), you can imagine how cold it was. Even from the first overlook down over Quito, the view was amazing, the new city with it´s skyscrapers and busy streets, the old city with it´s colonial style Cathedrals and winding cobblestone roads and off in the distance, layers of clouds and mountains.

Of course, as is our custom, the weather left something to be desired. So while it didn´t rain (wonder of wonders), some of the bigger more impressive mountains were obscured. And clearly, our hike up to the summit ridgeline at over 15,000 feet (4,700ish meters) was done as rapidly as possible with our diminishing oxygen to avoid what looked like a repeat of Pico Duarte. Nevertheless, the days was beautiful, the storm held at bay with dark, menacing clouds as we hiked up and around the volcano, past thistle like orange, purple and yellow flowers, Quito becoming a tiny version of itself in the distance, until it was nothing more than little while dots on the horizon.

The last part of the hike was as always, a scramble, not up rocks, but up slippery volcanic ash that slid from under your feet with every step up. So it went something like, two steps up, two steps back, three steps up, one step back. You get the picture. Not a whole lot of fun in the freezing cold with the threat of rain or hail or worse. But we made it and I 4 minutes behind John, had a view of the fog that had rolled in, my favorite view from every summit. (Actually my typical view is more like it.)

Duped
One bad thing happened today during one of our chore days. . . .we were walking down calle colon so John could do his long run and i could amuse myself around town (I am not running right now for those of you that didn´t know that) John had his camelback and i had my purse and my backpack with a change of clothes for John for later. All of a sudden, I look down and there is what appears to be bird poo on my shoe.

"Ew!" I yell and John stops to get out the toilet paper stored conveniently in his camelback. It´s then that he notices that he too has some on his shirt and his backpack. He takes out the toilet paper, hands me some and begins to clean himself up.

Just then a man comes with some toilet paper and starts to indicated that the bird had been up there. "Alla, alla" he is saying and pointing as I continue to wipe off the yellow stuff off my shoe.

"Hey¨" John muses aloud, "This is mustard, not bird poop." Someone had thrown mustard at us? Hmm. .. that seems weird. And then even as it dawned on us, "Shit! Jen! Where´s my bag?"

Gone! just like that. Down on the sidewalk to wipe off the mustard off his shirt for two seconds, the man indicating where the supossed bird had gone and boom, they had us, hook line and sinker. How stupid are we? Luckily nothing except John´s compass, $3 and the bag itself was worth much. Imagine how disappointed they were when they got around the corner and realized they had just stolen 70 oz of water! he he.

So you live and learn. . .we learned to keep walking when we get sprayed with mustard and we learned to let go of the things that really aren´t all that important. And while, very thirsty, John was still able to do his long run in el Parque Metropolitano (a park even larger than Central Park).

So sorry to have crammed all that into today´s entry. But I wanted you all to be caught up. We head out of Quito tomorrow and I believe I will be able to return to smaller, more manageable and more fun to read, entries in the future.