update

Well things are still going great, I have just been busy and frustrated with the slow slow Internet Ecuador so I have not posted or written any emails in a while. Send me emails people, its nice to hear stories from back home. The weather here is lovely. Its 11am and its 24 degrees Celsius. Also I am missing Arrested Development like crazy. I have found the first season of MacGyver on DVD, but I am still looking for Arrested Development. If anyone feels like mailing me a burnt copy please do. I am going through Withdrawl.

Mi Familia en Ecuador

The family I am living with in Sangolqui is very nice. My host mother Patricia owns a hair salon downtown in the main square. My host father Carlos works at the airport in Quito. I have two sisters, Daniella and Gabriella. Dani is going to the Universidad Central and is studying Psychology Gabriella is married and has a 3 year old son Alex. Alex really likes all of the super heroes, and he has a Spiderman costume that he wears out in public to the mall or downtown at least 2 times a week. There is also a 4 month old puppy named Benny who will never be a good guard dog. When people come to visit he gets excited and jumps around and pees on them. Sometimes in the evening Alex and I pretend to be Spiderman and we tie up Benny with imaginary spider webs. And we all live in this really beautiful house. My room is nice and I even have my own bathroom. Something I have never had before in my life! My host mom bought me some slippers, I am used to walking barefoot but she is concerned that I will catch a cold. I tried to explain that Canada is about 8 times colder than Sangolqui but I like the slippers so everything is good.

School

School is great, though there are so many readings. It seems like I am reading more for these three classes than I read for my entire third year at Saint Mary’s. We have 3 “guard” dogs at school. Norman, Balto, and Mamma. Mamma and Norman are blind, and Balto is crazy. Mostly they spend their days running around, eating and having their belly’s rubbed. Not much guarding going on. The school is about a 15 minute walk from my house which is nice. The computers at the school are just silly. There are six of them and only one of them has a USB hook up. We also have a dot matrix printer. It took me 8 minutes to print one page this morning. Haha.

My work placement

Yes, my work placement is something that I really have to start thinking about. I have about 3 weeks to figure out what I want to do and where I want to go. I kind of what to work with the women in the loofah cooperative since loofahs were a giant part of my life this summer. I have even have another business in Canada that would like to place an order. Ah, its a bit tricky to think about where I want to spend 4 months of my life. Still I am incredibly excited to get back out in the field and actually start doing things again.

Other random things

-I bought myself an adult sized superman costume. I know you are all very jealous.

-I saw my first tarantula about 2 weeks ago. It was dead and being carried away by a gross bug. It was still kind of scary, it was all hairy and gross.

-I cooked dinner for my host family yesterday afternoon. It was the first time I ever made chicken, coming from a girl who was a vegeterian for 10 years I think I did a pretty good job. Still marinating the raw chicken was very gross. I was so scared I was going to give them all salmonella poisioning, luckily I did not.

-I cut all my hair off while I was in Banos last weekend. I like it but I kind of have a rat tail and I feel a bit like Pat Benatar.

-I also bought a soccer uniform for our dog Benny. Viva Ecuador!!

dreamer

I´m at an internet cafe right now listening to Jenn Grant music on cbc.ca radio 3. I don´t know why they call them internet cafes. There´s usually not coffee. maybe some fanta and chocolates for sale but that´s about it. I´m starting to kind of miss aspects of Canada. But for the most part things have been going great.

About 100 pictures that I had taken my first week or so in Ecuador some how got erased from my camera when I was transfering them to my lap top. So as usual I am disliking technology. Hopefully sometime in the next two weeks I will be able to go back to Riobamba and Chimborazo and take more photos.

On Friday we move to Sangolqui and meet the families we will be living with for the next four months. I´ve had a meeting with the program coordinator and she has said that she has a fairly easy going family for me. Which is good, because I must admit that I feel a bit silly that I´m 23 years old and I will be living with a family again. Hopefully it will be a positive learning expierence. Haha.

We visited Sangolqui today. It seems like a nice place about a 35 minute drive to Quito. More trees and less trafic than in the city. It´s kind of like a suburb. The housse which has been transformed into our school looks really nice. A couple of classrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, library, offices and 3 guard dogs. I´m doubting the guarding ability of these dogs. They are German Shepards however they seem happy to play fetch and have their belly´s rubbed.

I have met my three teachers and they all seem very nice. I also met the Canadian Ambassador to Ecuador. He seemed like an interesting guy. Our group bombarded him with questions about mining practices in Ecuador, Canada´s relationship with the new Ecuadorian government, and the Canada´s involvement in Colombia and Haiti amongst other things. He works for the Canadian government and has a fairly well paying awesome job. He defened Canada´s involvement in basically every situation they have ever been in as far as foreign affairs go. He does seem to dislike George Bush´s government which seems like a small plus.

hasta luego amigos.