I stubbed my toe

In Ecuador.

We are off gaining our Independence

But our host mother won´t let us do our own laundry.

We tried.

Yoni bought detergent, and we gathered our dirty socks and underwear into the washing machine and started it, but halfway through the load, Violete pulled our clothes out and re-did them. Poo

Yoni Went Hiking

On sunday, Yoni, Pablo, Gissela, and Gabriel when off to climb a mountain, but Hanne did not come, becuase Hanne does not want to DIE from exhaustion and lack of oxygen due to the ridiculous altitude=).
The mountain is called Uncuy (I have no idea if that is spelled right), and we (this is Yoni talking) walked right up it, starting from our house. It is about 3500m tall (thats about 1000ft shorter than Mt. Ranier, if my bad spanish got the hight right) and was a rather interesting hike, once even climbing right up the slope of the mountain without a trail (the expression in spanish translates to: to climb like a spider). But we made it, and the veiw was (obviously) incredible. Oh, and it was cold up there, for some reason.

Puablo and Gissela with Ecuadorian bananas. Carried by Yoni to the top of the mountain. (Although Paublo had the oranges)


For some reasons there was a cross at the top of the mountain, that Gabriel felt the need to climb.



All of us, by the cross.



All of us again, minus the cross. Still reveling in our glory



Here´s a picture of our house. It´s the orange one, about five blocks to the left of the big green shopping center. Can´t you see it?


Yoni, Paublo and Gissela become gorillas and join the FARC. Didn´t you wonder what we were really doing in Ecuador?


Walking down. Mira, a trail. (I was too tired to take these pictures on the way up)




Yoni´s attempt at an artistic photo. Note the pigs and the taxi


Gabriel walking in the street, which is really what half of the trail to the mountain was, though this one was paved at this point.

Mitad del Mundo

EQUATOR!

Yay, roasted ginuea pigs (called cuy pronounced gui in the native language). Yum yum

Don´t they look deilicious?

Walking around the plaza.

This hemisphere is not big enough for the both of us.

Yoni looking at something obviously internesting.

Monument

Micheal, our personal "tour guide"

Hanne and Yoni no longer eating ice cream (although we were...)


Traditional Equadorian dancers


Demon masks

The Virgin

Woo.

In the far right bottom corner are Gissela our host sister and her boyfriend Gabriel.



It is Quito´s 200th anniversity this year, therefore the large neon sign.

Beautiful Quito con los luzes.

FINALLY SOME PICTURES

Since I have been saving up all my pictures due to the internet being down at our host families house, I now (FINALLY) plan to share them all with you. First are some pictres of Quito that I took to give you an idea of how the city actual feels.

NOTICE the massive amount of telephone and electrical wires EVERYWHERE.





Just a normal stop light of course.


Now a couple photos from our daily lives here with the host family.
Here is Paublo (our host brother), Gabriel (doing dishes, the host sister´s boyfriend) and Paublo´s friend.

Here we have Yoni chopping some vegetables.

Yoni translating a English recipe into Spanish with help from the ever handy electronic translator.

They play LOTS of pingpong...

More Food

For those to whom food is important, I am posting another recipe. For those for whom it is not, I am procrastinating the task of uploading photos. Take your pick.

Ecuadorian food has proven a little odd, in the starchy, fried sort of way. Today for breakfast, for example, we ate banana chips (fried) that had be squashed. The were served with queso de la mesa (table cheese) which is realy just cream cheese in a butter dish.
Today, Hanne and I did discover a Panaria for lunch, which is a delicious bread store where none of the food is labled, and you walk in, point to somthing you don´t know what is (if you happen to be a clueless gringo) and say ¨uno de esos, porfavor.¨ Then they hand you the item (which turns out to be some sort of delicious bread product, for example a cadomen role (imagen a cinnimon role with cardomon and candied fruit)) and charge you some ludicrisly small amount for it. As there are almost as many panarias as people here, I think we will try anotherone tomorrow...

Anyway: I got to help with dinner again today, and so here is a recipe for yuka pancakes with cheese (if you happen to be a member of my dads side of the family, you will remeber these as being the yummy ¨potato¨ pancakes we ate last time we were here. Boy were we wronge...

1) Cook a bunch of yuka, then mash it. Go for a mixing bowl full, if you are planning to feed several people. If you happen to be in the US, make a bunch of mashed potatos. If you happen to be in Ecuador, do not even think of comparing the yuka to a potato. Even though I think they tast the same, I have been informed that this is sacralige.
2) Melt some butter, and pour it in your mashed yuka/potatos. (thats what they did, though since we will later fry this stuff, I don´t quite see the point of this step.
3) Grate some special type of Ecudorian cheese. I think it tasts like feta and that feta would work just fine (in fact I sugest you use it, since the majority of people reading this are not in Ecuador). Grate some onion(s), too, and put it in with the cheese.
4) Make the potato (opps, I mean yuka) mixture into balls (1-2 inch diametro, creo) and then flaten the balls so that they form things that look like small pancakes. Take a bit of the cheese onion mixture, and put in in the middle. Now role it into a ball again, so that the cheese in the middle, completly, then flaten the thing into a patty.
5) Pan fry the pattys, like pancakes. They should be lightly browned on both sides.
6) Eat, and say ¨que rico¨(rember that this is very important).

I think I managed to explane to my family that I like to cook, so maybe they will let me help more, and thus learn more. Hope you enjoy,

Yoni

Volunteering

Since many of you have been asking about the volunteering (the real reason we are here) I thought I might as well post a bit about it, although it seems like we do so many exciting things that that is one of the lesser.

So the program is set up so that we travel to three differnt market on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (respectively) and basically we play with the children there and help them color coloring pages with English words on them. I have tired to make the children traslate the words to help learn the connection. On Mondays we work in the volunteer office and on Wednesday we have a meeting about how volunteering has been going. I don´t think the children are orphan´s, but I do think they are forced to work with their parents at the market at a very young age instead of attending school. They are all very cute and they sit in our laps and we read them stories or they run around and destory us in soccor. Yoni and I are incredibly odd looking here because of our height (we tower over most) but more importantly because of our hair color. We are always exciting when we find another blonde, we usually point and stare.

There are also a couple other volunteers as well. On Friday there was five of us and one man from the volunteer agency. It was the last day for two of the volunteers but I think there will be another one coming on Tuesday maybe... anyways we might only be three for a little. But it is all good and fun.

Food

Contrary to what you might think, we are eating here. In fact, it feals like we never stop eating (after a big breakfast, a huge lunch, and then a almost equaly large big dinner) . The food here (meaning in a middle class family in the south part of quito, ecuador, in case you haven´t read the rest of this blog, is good, though very bland (I happen to like spicy things, and they do not apear to have so much as a pepper shaker). It is also all cooked on the stove, since our host family doesn´t use their oven for anything but storage), and is often deap fryed (in fact, the closest you could probably get to ecuadorian food in the united states would be to walk into a mcdonalds, order french fries, and imagen somthing about 100 times better).

So far, neither Hanne or I have encountered anything we couldn´t stand to eat, though they insist on serving us larger portions then we can finish (we are still working on what to do with it without being rude).

The staples here are as follows: eggs (for breakfast at least, and probably apearing at some other time, too), potatos (fried, baked, in soups, ect.), rice (specificly a short grain rice, which is, again, eaten constantly). Manderin oranges, plus whatever other fruit happens to be arouond, are the main snacks. Lunch, most places, is the bigest meal of the day (though with are family, it apears to be equal in size to dinner, which is comprised of leftover´s from lunch).
Befor leaving the US, several thousand people warned us not to eat the raw vegetables. However, our family has some extreamly nasty miracle chemical that they use to make it eatable, and, so far, neither of us has gotten sick.

While Hanne and I have tried very hard to help in the kitchen and, thus, learn the papa-y art of ecuadorian cooking, we have been very unsusessful. However, yesterday, we got to help with dinner, which happened to one of my favorate things we have eaten (probably because it was the first spicy thing, too [note the raw onions]). It was called Cerviche de some found-only-in-ecuador-grain-I-can´t-remeber-how-to-spell-or-pronounce (aka Cerviche de something-that-is,-for-all-practical-purposes,-a-soybean). Here is how to make it:

(note that Cerviche is usualy made with raw fish, but our family was nice enough to make the grane version for the vegitarian gringos)
1. Cook a bunch of soy beans, or other type of bean. You want them lightly done. Sorry, I am not sure how much, but we will say: enough, so that, when cooked, it fills up a little more then half of the bowl you are using.
2. Cut up a red onion or two, depending on how much you are making and how much you like red onion. make the longest, thinist slices you can.
3. Squeeze enough lime juice to marinade the limons, add some salt (this is to taste, but you can add some later if you think it needs more) and marinade the onions for a while (5ish minutes)
4. cut up enough tomatos so that you fills most of the rest of your bowl (we used four, I think). If you happen to be in a place where you can´t eat stuff you can´t peal, then peal the tomatos.
5. Dump out the lime juice, then mix the beans, tomatos, and onions together.
6. eat.
7. say ¨Que Rico¨(literaly ¨how rich¨, but it realy means ¨how delicious¨and is more often aplied to food then the more obvious ¨que delicioso¨.
8. Don´t forget step 7. It is very important to ecuadorian meals, and is usualy said atleat 7 times per meal.

Did you like it? I hope so. I will post more about food and other stuff (like the death-trap of a fair ride I somehow ended up on, our trip to the almost-ecuador, yummy oatmeal drinks, and climbing a mountain almost as tall as mt. Raineir) latter. We even have pictures, but our host families internet is down and we are in an internet café and are going to wait until we have can put up the pictures to write about these things.

Hope every one reading this is having a lovely time on vacation or at school or work or whatever they are doing.

Arrr, This be pleasin´ to me eye.

HAHAHA, I just changed my facebook from Spanish to English(pirate). This is the most hilarious thing in the entire world!! You should do it too, it is very entertaining.

We´ve been to the center of the world... well almost...

Lately we have been going on lots of exciting, and possibly fatal adventures, which has of course been great fun.

On my second day here we went to see the famous virgin, atop a large hill. She was very tall. To indicate height here you do not hold your hand parallel to the ground as you would do in our culture, but perpendicular. We saw her late at night and there was a large neon sign near her celebrating Quito´s 200th anniversity.

Aside from exporing the city, we have also been to visit "Mitad del Mundo", which one would assume is the exact center of the world, where the equator hits. Jaja, well they got us there. I was joking with Yoni that one day they would figure out that the equador was actually like 5 feet to the left of the "equator" line that was drawn in the plaza and they would have to reconfigure the entire monument, however such is near truth! The actual equator is outside of the park, on the other side of a brick wall, but since there was already a road there, the tourist trapper wanted to build a plaza in honor of the equator anyways so they simply built it wrong. Aye los mios.

I have photos of both these invigorating events, but since the host family´s internet is down right now we are at an internet cafe and I didn´t want to bring my camera so that I could upload the pictures, however as soon as things are working properly I will be right on it.

Ciao!

Follow the Rules

I took a taxi, and I swear we did not stop at a single red light. Ecuadorian laws are much more like guidelines, especially at night when you can drive the wrong way on a one way street. Seatbelts are also very optional, instalation included.

Oh, by the way, there are SOO many taxis´ here. And they are CHEAP, you can get from South Quito to North Quito on like 4$.