demasiado, demasaido

*preliminary note*: this post is specifically dedicated to Ashley “pseudostalin” Dow. thank you for kvetching enough that I am writing again. 

WEEEoooo. It certainly has been a while since I have last updated. well, you can’t blame me too much. I dare anyone, ANYONE, who lives in another country for more then four months to regularly update their blog. Impossible!

Much has happened. demasiado, demasiado (too much, too much.)To help you all (and myself) and breaking this all down, I will be writing seperate sections (possibly in different posts.) Here is an outline for those interested…

1. “Ch-ch-changes” – escape from CIMAS, apartment searching, red tape rants, sickness

2.  “Nomads and Beaches” – month of travel…colonial city of Cuenca, travelling south to north up the pacific coast, Christmas/New Year’s Eve adventures 

3. “University Disney” – impressions of Universidad de San Francisco Quito, classes, people, etc. 

4. “¿Que más?” – ruminations on what might come next 

vamos. 

1 . Ch-ch-changes

This will be a short section, mainly for expositional purposes.

I got out of the MSID Ecuador program, run through the CIMAS foundation, due to my disillusionment with the program and my decision that I wanted to return to a university atmosphere. 

My friend Mateo (actually  Matthew, from Minneapolis lo mismo, but like I am Anita, he is Mateo) and I had about one week to finish all the red tape involved in switching programs, finding an alternative program, finish…or start…our 25 page (Spanish) research papers and say goodbye to friends who were leaving back for the states. Oh, and find a place to live. before leaving on our trip (as of yet unplanned but focused on the idea of getting to Macchu Picchu.)

Apartment searching in Quito! oh what fun. there aren’t really classifieds, so what you do is basically walk around and call phone numbers from posters people post up in windows. a pair of binoculars came in particularly handy one afternoon and we successfully secured a place to live. Actually, a very nice place. I will never have an apartment this nice ever again my life probably, or the top-level security, or enough furniture to comfortably seat 17 people. The apartment came with a panini maker for god’s sake, which I quickly christened the “white privilege panini maker.” it does indeed make delicious sandwiches, but especially after coming from the impovrished communities of La Calera and Perroto (in the jungle, where Mateo had his internship) it was painfully obvious that we were making a lifestyle choice, one that we had access to based on our comparative wealth. Keep in mind neither of us are “rich” by any means and instead very much fit the poor college student stereotype. But here? not so much. 

Oh. White privilege! Speak of the devil. finding an alternative program. while the red tape process with the University of Minnesota was most definitely a bitch to slog through…especially from a different country…we basically just waltzed into one of the most elite universities in ecuador and they registered us. Without the “required” entrance exam. Without the “required” Spanish level exam (the meeting was conducted in Spanish, so perhaps they realized we weren’t as completely inadequate in this respect as some other interchange students…more on this later…). Without an official transcript! They obviously had some documentation we weren’t insane, but it was ridiculously easy. 

And then…THE GRIPE CAME!! (the flu)

Mateo, myself and another friend from CIMAS, Emily – the three of us planning to make it to Machu Picchu – all got disastrously ill. Well, not disastrously. but it knocked us out for a good four days (thank god for ridiculously cheap oranges which made the best juice I have ever had…Senorita, would you like to buy these imported Florida oranges? They are from your country! They are much better….Um, hell no! Give me the huge green-yellow globes that are the  nationals (14 for 2 dollars) and I’ll be in vitamin C heaven.) 

During these four days, we realized JUST HOW FAR AWAY CUZCO IS. SO far away. as in, impossible to get there with the time we had and the obligations we had (to pick up Mateo’s friends visiting from Minneapolis in Quito…oh, and go to the beach for New Year’s….very important. unavoidable, even.) it is 24 hours in bus just from Lima to Cuzco…which are both in Southern Peru. It would take us almost 24 hours just to get to border. Needless to say, dreams were juggled and plans were changed. Travel books were flipped through and itineraries left open. 

We decided to head for Cuenca. 

(I promise the next section will not be 2 months in the whole…good things to come.)