Cartas y la mitad del mundo

Well I´m finally feeling better after depleting my Sudafed stash and sleeping a good 10 hours every night. I can´t believe I've been here 20 days already!

Last week, work at the clinic did not pick up due to the World Cup ending like we thought it might. A few exciting things happened though: the giant boa in Borja is sick so I gave it some injections of vitamins and antibiotics; someone found a tiny hummingbird and brought it in; and Leo took us to the zoo, which has all Ecuadorian animals.

On our down time, Katie, Donna, Diego, and I have started playing cards. Diego taught us the Ecuadorian card game "Cuarenta" and we taught him a few of our games. It was a challenge at first to explain games in Spanish, but my vocab now includes the words for shuffle, deal, flip over, and "you´re a cheater."

This weekend I was a tourist. Saturday, Donna and I tried to sleep in, but that's impossible here with the sun rising before 6 am and the buses outside and the juice mixer going in the kitchen. So we went early to go explore la Ciudad Vieja, or Old Town, which was the first World Heritage site in the world. We hit the basilica (HUGE), Plaza Grande, and then the Panecillo, a hill right in the middle of Quito which has a giant Virgin Mary statue and a 360 view of the city. It was overwhelming how many churches and historic buildings there were, but I'm sure I'll be back.


the basilica


on top of the panecillo

Sunday I went with Donna and Trisha (the girl who just moved into my house here who is from-get this-Grand Rapids) to la Mitad del Mundo aka the equator. We saw some traditional Ecuadorian dances there, went to the Planetarium, and took pictures.


hey, i´m in two hemispheres

It was a nice, laid-back weekend and Quito finally gave me some decent weather.
Coming up this week: is the giant boa still alive? and a trip to the Cloud Forest in Mindo this weekend.