Puppies and Pedicures

Since a good portion of my Ecuador pictures are of dogs that I have encountered here, I decided to dedicate a blog to them. There are so many dogs here that live on the streets. It is sad and disgusting. In the recent years the government has started to put them in shelters to take care of this problem so there are less homeless dogs than past years. Other than that, the rest of the dogs that people have as pets are clean and super cute! That means I get to play with them :) Here are the dogs I have fallen in love with so far.

 

This was the first dog I could actually hold here! It looks like a coyote. It was at the welcome party for the international students in December. 

 This is a ONE month old puppy that someone brought to the university one day! So cute and relaxed! 

Here is a dog named Coco that we encountered in Baños. 

I think this is the most beautiful puppy I have ever seen. Her name is "Tormenta" which means storm in Spanish. Absolutely beautiful dog. 

These are my friend's two German Shepherds 

(Pastor Aleman). He has three in total!

The other part of this post is about pedicures. You can get a pedicure for 5 bucks here! I am totally going to miss that when I go home :( I have only gotten 2 since being here. I plan on getting a Christmas inspired pedicure right before heading back to the USA.

Los Bancos

On Friday, September 21st the students from my school in Michigan (MSU) took our first trip together for the weekend. The initial plan was to go to Mindo which has waterfalls and ziplining. Therefore, that is where we thought we were going. However, we ended up going 20 minutes past Mindo and into Los Bancos. Our director had planned the trip and did not communicate well with us. We still had a fun weekend and did some cool activities.

La Liga

On Wednesday September 19th, I went to a soccer game with a friend from MSU named Mike. The game was La Liga versus Macará. 

Centro Histórico de Quito

On Sunday September 16th I went to Centro Histórico with my friend Juan Fernando (Juan Fer). Centro Histórico is the oldest part of town and it is in the center. Quito has grown so much since then. There is the President's (Rafael Correra) House there, a few churches, and museums, lots of plazas, stores, and restaurants.

Here is the President's House.

 Here is a theatrical show in the middle of the main plaza.

This is a church called San Francisco (the name of my university) . It was all gold inside but we were not allowed to take pictures :( 

There are so many types of pigeons here! 

The Spanish word for pigeons is "palomas". 

Seeing them here reminded me of 

St. Mark's Square in Italy. 

Here is one of the most famous views in Quito. This is the statue of the Virgin and it's called "El Panecillo" which means small piece of bread. 

Another part of the Centro Histórico is called La Ronda. 

 It is a long, old street with restaurants, bars, and traditional children's games such as hop-skotch and ring toss.

La Ronda reminds me of the streets of Italy. 

Here are some kids playing Foosball in the street.

The architecture reminds me of Europe, specifically a few buildings in France.

¡Viva Ecuador!

On Friday, September 7th a big group of us went to the Ecuador vs. Bolivia game. These games are to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014. There are three main teams here in Quito. There is the national team (yellow jerseys), La Liga (white jerseys), and Deportivo Quito (blue). Pretty much everyone in Ecuador is a fan of the national team so game day is very exciting since everyone in town is wearing their jerseys that day.

We all met up outside the mall to enjoy a few beers before the 4pm start of the game. Then we headed into the stadium. Our seats were right behind the goal which was awesome, but not so awesome for pictures because there was a fence. However, in the second half we scored the game-winning goal off of a penalty kick, and the shot was taken on the net right in front of us!

As soon as we scored everyone went crazy and started throwing beer.

There was also a lot of colored smoke (red, blue, yellow for the national colors). The atmosphere of the game was awesome! The next game we are going to is Ecuador vs. Chile on October 12th.

El TeleferiQo

      Ecuador is surrounded by mountains since it has part of the Andes Mountain range. On Sunday, September 2nd I went up in a cable car to the top of one of the near by mountains named Pichincha Rucu. At the top you could hike around and explore.

 There was a spot where tourists could take pictures with llamas/ alpacas. The Ecuatorians have a huge obsession with these animals. They have pictures of them on all of their clothes and other handmade things.

You could also put your bike on the cable car with you and then bike back all the way down the mountain!  The picture below is of the bike trail and there are two bikers on it but they are hard to see.  Another activity at the top was horseback riding.

The view was incredible up there! 

Fiesta Para Los Estudiantes Internacionales

      On September 1st the university had a huge party for all of the international students and our Ecuabuddies.  An Ecuabuddie is an Ecuadorian student at USFQ that is assigned to about 4 or 5 international students to guide them through their semester. The party was at the farm house of one of the friends from the university. The house was so beautiful!

We met at 8am to leave on a bus from Quito. It was a good hour or hour and a half bus ride to the place.  We made some super disorganized teams and played a few relay games such as sack races and an obstacle course.

We also had some drinks and ate lunch there. We stayed until about 6pm and then took the bus back to Quito.

The party was a great way to make new friends and to get the foreigners to interact with the Ecuadorians.

Vamos a La Playa :)

On Friday, August 24th, I went to La Playa Almendro with a group of 8 friends. Four were Ecuatorianos and 4 were Americans. We stayed in a resort/hotel/apartment place that had 2 bedrooms with lots of bunk beds. All of the palm trees there looked like this! Here is a picture of our pool.

It was cool to go to the beach because the environment there is totally different from our industrial city of Quito. The beach is about a 4 or 5 hour car drive and it's a 9 hour bus ride. Thankfully we have Ecuadorian friends with cars! I was so happy to be able to wear shorts at the beach because no one wears shorts in Quito. Ecuador is usually a pretty conservative and Catholic country so people do not wear revealing clothing. 

Here is a picture of our group in our place at dinnertime:

and here is LA PLAYA :) 

Riding The Bus

Since Quito (the capital of Ecuador) is such a huge city like Chicago or New York, most people rely on public transportation. It only costs 25 cents (centavos) which is way better than 60 cents at MSU! and you can actually go places...instead of going 1/4 of a mile on a campus. The buses can be pretty scary when they are packed because people will run into you and that is the perfect opportunity to steal your money or your phone. Here is a picture of mi amiga Emily on a super crowded bus and she is using the two-hand stance to keep her body in place. Oh yeah, did I mention that the bus drivers are crazy? I swear sometimes it feels like a monkey took over the wheel. 

I take two buses to school in the morning, but on the way home I take one bus and then walk home from the station. The bus station is called "Ecovia" and red and blue buses go there. The other station right next to it has the green buses for Tumbaco and Cumbaya. Here is a picture outside the bus station walking on my way home. 

Mis Clases

Our first day of school was August 20th. I am taking four classes, which will transfer to MSU as 12 credits. Two of my classes have all Ecuadorians in them and the other two have gringos (foreign exchange students like myself). As you might have guessed, the gringo classes are WAY easier than the classes with Ecuadorians in them. Here is my schedule. I have classes everyday....so much for "party abroad".

SIC means psychology and "arte" is my art appreciation class which is more like are philosophy. The Spanish class is a 300 level and the last class is about the Ecuadorian culture so it is very interesting and very useful in regards to explaining why things are the way they are here. 

As you can see, my very first class on August 20, 2012 was psychology. My teacher is a young female with dirty blonde hair. On the first day she asked us to one at a time tell the class our name, our major, our year, and what we think makes a good teacher. Oh, and by the way, don't forget that this is all in Spanish! Talk about nerve-racking...I was super nervous about having to speak in front of all of these Ecuatorianos because I did not want them to notice right away that I was not from Ecuador. I mean, my blonde hair probably gave it away immediately, but hey, I have seen a few blonde Ecuatorianos. Thankfully, there was one other English speaker in my class. Her name is Elyse and she was about 10 people in front of my turn in line so she had to break the ice for us Americans. Her response was "Pienso que un buen profesor es una persona simpactico", which means that a good teacher is someone who is nice. That was all she said and the whole class laughed (including her) because she knew that she was speaking Spanish that you learn on your very first day of school. I was so happy that she went first. When it came time for my turn, I tried to express myself, but did so briefly. I was relieved when my turn was over. That was my experience of my first class on my very first day at my new school.

First Week of Escuela :)

 My school here in Ecuador is called La Universidad de San Franscisco Quito (USFQ). The school mascot is a dragon and our colors are red and black. I love my school and the campus is absolutely breathtaking. The university is in a region called Cumbaya. There are around 200 international students attending the university this semester and 90% of them are American. There are 4,500 undergraduate students here.

Below is a picture of the "Lagoon" that has a waterfall and there are always lots of 

        students hanging out here and napping all throughout the school day.

 At first, I was scared to take my camera on the bus because I did not want it to get stolen. However, later in the week I took the chance to snap some beautiful photos on my way into campus. I take 2 buses to get to school. The first bus I catch on the next street over from my house and ride it 3 minutes to the bus station. Then I get on a green bus that takes me to Cumbaya. All of the buses that go to school are green. This is helpful because it prevented me from getting too lost during my first week.

There is a river down there....can you see it??