Outside of the clinic

I'm only in the hospital or clinic for 4 hours in the morning and in Spanish class just three in the afternoon, plus with no homework, I have lots of free time! I had great intentions to read a lot here (I even bought a cheap kindle on eBay and loaded it with books from the library...I've read half of one). The day fills up so quickly with other fun, more social, and cultural activities, leaving little time to read (or blog). Here are some of the ways I have kept busy over the past week:

-Both today and last Monday a group of us went to dance class - salsa and merengue (and a little reggaeton today too)! So fun, and such a great workout. I'm starting to get the hang of the steps and movements, however I feel I will never move with the same smoothness and beauty as a Latina. Also, we've barely done any partner dancing, which will be a whole new adventure of turns and avoiding stepping on toes.

-On Tuesday, one other friend and I tried a pole dancing class. In Spanish, "el pole dance," naturally. Did you read that with a Spanish accent? We figured why not; "when in Rome," if you will. Plus, such a class in the US would cost $15-20 or more, and we payed $7.50. We also heard it was a great workout, and indeed it was. Wow! So hard. I hearby give much credit to all pole dancers around the world. We learned to walk around the pole with nice pointed toes, and we attempted two different spins around the pole. It requires more strength and grace, and less banging my shins on the pole than I was able to produce. I'll need to pick a different back up career, and we're going to stick with just salsa and merengue in the future, which are hard enough.

-On wednesday, I got a manicure ($5) and pedicure ($10). After dinner, I met up with an American girl, whom I had met during my interview in January at UCSF. During the interview day we realized we were both traveling to Ecuador, with an overlap of about 1.5weeks. We met up that night at Quito's only craft beer pub. The craft beer trend has not really made it to Quito, so the beer selection was limited, quite mediocre, and expensive, especially since I very much enjoy the cheap, national beer, Pilsener (usually $1). Regardless, we had a great evening comparing experiences, swapping travel tips, and just enjoying what a small world it is!!

- A huge and enjoyable part of my day is dinner, which lasts anywhere from 45min- 1.5 hours, depending on how long we linger to chat. I love family style dinner! She is a very good cook, but serves a lot of simple carbs, my one complaint. Soup is very popular here (I'm not sure why, they eat it at lunch, too, when it's hot out, in addition to the cool evenings...probably because they're do soup very well here), and we continue to have soup every night, with great variety, all of which I liked. Soup is just the first course. One night we had "chocho," which I think is an up and coming trend, given its health benefits like protein and fiber. It's either a grain or a legume, I'm not sure. Or we'll have beans or lentils most nights, plus rice or potatoes, and sometimes chicken, beef, shrimp, or fish. We had a delicious trout ("la troncha") tonight, it was pink like salmon. Is anyone out there familiar with pink trout, or any pink fish that isn't salmon? Regardless, it was delicious. 

-On Thursday, I went out with Ecuadorian (!!!!) friends. First I got dinner with one of the 'internos' whom I met last week in the maternity emergency room. Then his friend (who is a cardiology resident) picked us up, and we picked up two more (one I knew, a student from the maternity emergency room, the other, her friend) and we went to the resident's apartment and just hung out. Just like they would have done any other Thursday night. It was great - so much Spanish! So 'authentic.' It also has been quite an experience texting back and forth with them. My Spanish is of course just okay, but to then have to interpret their texting abbreviations is quite an adventure. On Saturday, for example, 4 of us Americans sat around trying to interpret the short hand of all the texts I had received. It was quite hilarious, moderately successful. Today in class, we had our teacher review some of the common abbreviations. Despites its challenge, I love texting with them; it's fun, it helps me learn (by being able to read how they talk), and it improves my spelling. Logistically, I try to text as much as I can while at home on wifi. I use an app on my iPhone called "whatsapp," and I set the iPhone keyboard to Spanish (helps with spelling corrections and accent use). Everyone here uses whatsapp amongst themselves anyway, because it's free texting (they don't have unlimited plans, and phone us is expensive), and it also allows free interntional texting! I actually already had the app, it's how I text with my college-friend Helaina, who currently lives in Nigeria. Anyway, that's how I text them when at home, but once I leave the house (almost always without my iphone), I have the laborious and painful task of texting on my ecua-cell circa the year 2000. Ecua-cell, get it? Ecuadorian cell phone. 

-For those wondering, Ecuadorians definitely do valentines day (el día de la amistad, or el día del San Valentin), perhaps even more fervently than we do. I actually shouldn't have been surprised by that, since Latinos are stereotypically more affectionate than us cold-hearted Americans. Pink, red, flowers (especially roses), candy, and other valentine's paraphernalia were everywhere!  They were giving roses out like they were nothing! I got two free roses, one while I was wandering around one of the malls on Friday (they were giving one out to all mall visitors) and one in the street as a token for some political campaign. Just handing them out for free! I received a third from my "secret friend," an acitivity we did through school, where we gave little valentines gift in secret each day last week to our secret friend. On the last day I both gave and received a single rose. It cost only $1, which seems cheap, but I haven no prior experience buying roses 

Here they are in their elegant vase:

-Over the weekend most of the students traveled. I stuck around to do the volunteering thing I described in the last post. I was joined by a few others including two other students who were just returning from a 10 day rural experience and wanted to stick around Quito. Three of us went to an event for singles, "solteros", on Valentines day. Supposedly it was just about friendship, not trying to find a mate. We arrived at a big function hall, and the participants (mostly in their 20s, some 30s), were divided up into about 10 groups of about 20 people - a huge turnout! We did some ice breakers, which were a lot of fun. And again, it was great to spend a night speaking Spanish. Turns out the event was sponsored by a church group, so when ice breakers turned to Jesus gospel, we took our leave. Such is the life  in a 90%+ Catholic/Christian country. 

-Sunday was awesome day. I wanted to go to a soccer (excuse me, fútbol) game, Quito vs. Guayaquil (the second biggest city in Ecuador), but I was incorrectly advised on the necessity of buying tickets in advance. :-(. However, it was fun to see all the crowds and and pre-game atmosphere at the stadium, which is just a 15min walk from where I live. I actually met up with a friend (Ecuadorian) that I met Friday night! We strolled through the big and beautiful park that is near the stadium. It was bustling with acitivity: families relaxing, pick-up and organized fútbol games, an outdoors group aerobics class, and marching band and baton twirling practice. There were also some artisan and farmers markets! I loved (as I do in America) talking to the vendors about the origins and merits of their products, and learning more food vocab. Lots of samples, too! Items included handmade goat cheese, various whole grain breads and pastries, crafts, produce, and more. I showed great restraint and only bought one thing: local Ecuadorian chocolate (yes, some for you, Dad). The park is enormous so we walked for a while end to end, and then we took the trolé (trolly, or bus, really) into Old Town (centro historicó) and met up with another American student friend of mine. We wandered through some beautiful and decadent churches in Centro Historicó. When it started to rain we popped into a little cafe (here, cafetería). We had tea and a pastry and ordered a specialty drink off the house called Ponche. They had translated their menu into English, but the drink was still writen as Ponche. Finally, about halfway through the glass, we realized we were drinking eggnog! What a good laugh we had.  We then had delicious and typical Ecuadorian dinner at one of the many restaurants off a beautiful pedestrian street called Calle La Ronda. A truly delightful day!! And all in Spanish, thanks to my Ecuadorian friend! But boy were my legs (from walking) and brain (from Spanish) tired. 

-other notes: wifi is only here in the living room and dining room - not my bedroom - and quite spotty. Major bummer. It will be a while before I upload more pictures.  On a brighter note, I've been keeping up with my mango-a-day goal. They are just soooo good and so cheap. I've also continued to try many other exotic fruits - a fun adventure!

That's all for now. Please email me with updates of your life!