¡Dios Mio!

I've been neglecting this... A lot (well, kind of) has happened since I got to Los Chillos. It's hard to explain, though. It's not like I've done a lot of awesome, exciting story-worthy things, but I've just been busy trying to adjust to life in a different country with a whole new family.

I'll start with today and try to work my way backwards... I've been feeling pretty sicky all week. Such is the joy of studying abroad in a third world country. I'm hoping to get over it soon, but it's been a huge pain trying to keep up with classes and the family when all I can manage to eat is a little bit of bread and rice each day... I hope this passes before this weekend because we get to go on our first excursion! We're heading out Saturday morning to a farm/commune/campground/nature reserve place called La Florida in the cloud forest. It's supposed to be a really lovely relaxing weekend where we basically just hike and swim in rivers and eat good food (fingers crossed that I can) and speak English and take a break from the stress of classes and host families. Plus I get to wear rubber boots and my new pantalones de Otavalo (essentially, brightly colored, striped, flowy Ecuadorian hippy pants). So stoked.

Why are classes and host families stressful, you might ask... Classes are going really well, actually. I feel like my Spanish is drastically improving and that I'm learning way more than I have in any Spanish class in the US. But they're exhausting. Five hours each day of Spanish, and then we often have other seminars (at least these are in English for the time being) until 4 or so. At which point I return to my gigantic host family and immediately am listening to and trying to respond to tons of people in a language that I'm still not completely familiar with. It's great, but tiring. I can't remember the last time I was so tired all the time...

The weekends are especially intense. Although we don't have classes, that means we have to spend pretty much 100% of the time with our host families (or some combination of other students and their families), which means lots and lots of Spanish. Last weekend we went on a hike to a waterfall on Saturday. It was gorgeous after we finally left the house hours late, got lost a few times, and followed a machete armed guide down a crazy trail for a while. Sunday, as usual, completely revolved around lunch. My host mom and aunt cooked up an entire goat to serve to about 15 people. It wasn't ready until around 4 or 5, but until then we entertained ourselves by drinking beer and watching the baby dance (that seems to be my family's greatest hobby). Quite the afternoon... By mondays I'm always ready for classes to start again so we can all exchange stories about how weird our lives are.

I should get home before my mom worries too much. I'm really not used to the general lack of independence I have here... I spent the day in Quito with my class, where we went to an extremely strange wax museum illustrating the revolution against Spain and the presidential palace, where we were all given masks to protect ourselves or perhaps the president against la gripe porcina (Ecuador is all sorts of freaked out about the swine flu). One more day until cloud forest relaxation!