Las Islas Galápagos, part 2

ISLA BALTRA: AN INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE

Our first day in the Galapagos consisted of an adventure I could never even dream of, and it only got better throughout the week. After getting settled on our lovely boat, we took a walk with our Guide around Isla Baltra, a small island located directly north of Santa Cruz. Expecting to see a couple birds and one or two sea lions, I was not expecting my camera to nearly fill up during the first couple hours spent on the islands. Words can't exactly do Isla Baltra justice, so here come quite a few photographic supplements of our first adventure in the Galapagos:

Swallow-tailed gulls showing some love

Who says lava lizards can't be sassy?

This land iguana was wondering what 

we were doing in his personal bubble.

A male frigate bird showing off his gular sac for us. 

Or maybe for the lady birds.

A juvenile frigate bird, not quite ready to leave the nest.

Just chomping on a snack.

This guy was a pro at posing for the camera.

A blue footed booby, known as the unofficial mascot of the Galapagos

A lava gull joined us in admiring the scenery.

I like to think these marine iguanas were best friends.

Galapagos sea lions seemed to be quite the experienced models.

Too cute for words

Las Islas Galápagos, part 1

I can guarantee that describing my experience at the Galapagos Islands is going to be a challenge without showing a video of my entire week stay there, but I'll try my best. Cruising around the Galapagos in an amazing boat, snorkeling and hiking every day, and seeing the most fantastic creatures can only make me want to do anything to go back. Also, I'm losing my ridiculous tan at an unflattering rate, and would like to keep looking at least semi-Ecuadorean.

I don't think I've ever been so tan.

To start our adventure, we flew directly from Quito to Isla Baltra, also known as North Seymour Island (all the islands have at least one Spanish name and one English name, which isn't confusing at all). We soon arrived at the Santa Cruz, our home in the water for 5 days. It was a gorgeous cruise with more old people than we would have preferred, but it seems it's the thing to do when you're 65 years old and retired. The food was amazing for the most part, minus the weird vegetarian mush at dinner, and I had my fair share of pan de yuca every morning at the breakfast buffet. Also, fresh cheese was provided at every meal, and who am I to turn down delicious cheese?

M/V Santa Cruz, the only boat I've ever been on

that came with chocolates on my pillow every night.

Anyway, along with our cruise we had a guide assigned to our group, who always had to be with us on the islands, by law. Our guide, Edison, was from Santa Cruz and was really knowledgable about all the ecology of the Galapagos. He brought us to all the best snorkeling places, and he seemed to be relieved to be with a group of college students rather than another group of elderly tourists.

Edison and our group in one of the Santa Cruz's pangas.

We visited five of the islands in the archipelago: Santa Cruz, Baltra, Isabela, Fernandina, and Floreana. All the islands had something different to offer, from lush highlands to underwater caves to awesome lava tunnels. My descriptions of all these amazing places only go so far, so I shall try my best to supplement with some of the hundreds of photos I took. There will definitely be more posts to come with more details, but for now, here are some teasers:

 I don't think it's possible for baby sea lions to get any cuter.

We got to go snorkeling inside this awesome cave. 

Just one of the tons of amazing beaches we got to stop by. 

Also, there are tons of sea turtle nests right behind the photographer of this picture!

Carnaval!

So between all of our incessant traveling around Ecuador (so annoying, I know), my group and I figured we should do something for Carnaval. Mardi Gras is really only big in New Orleans in the US, and in other random parts of the world, like Rio de Janeiro. Here in Ecuador, I thought Quito would be teeming with life the week before Lent, but we soon found out everyone deserts the city to head to the coast. Unfortunately, we had just arrived back in Quito from our ten day trip to different parts of the coast, and the long journey was not one we wanted to make right away again just for a day or two. We asked around, and with some advice from our host families, wound up staying Sunday night before Fat Tuesday in Ambato, a small city about 3 hours away from Quito.

Our destination was decided the day before, and getting to the bus terminal we needed in South of Quito was an adventure on its own. I had no idea what to expect, and as poorly planning college students, we soon wound up in Ambato with backpacks and no idea where we were going to stay the night. We walked around quite a bit until we found a semi-crowded area somewhat decorated for Carnaval, and tested a few different hostels until we found a cheap one with almost enough beds for all. The shared bathrooms in this hostel were not exactly ideal, and may have been used for the settings of more than one horror movie. Anyway, it was only one night, and we decided to rough it for the sake of Carnaval in Ecuador.

Soon we made our way through a packed-as-sardines street of Ecuadoreans, who often made use of the weapon of choice for Carnaval - foam sprayed out of a can. The first time we were a little confused, then after the 45th time or so, we realized we were specifically targeted because we were the only gringos wandering around Ambato. We fought through the crowd (with the help of a newly purchased foam weapon of my own) and eventually wound up listening to some live music set up in the street. After hearing a surprising amount of 80s classic rock, we moved on and wandered around more of the foam-filled city. The night ended on an unusual note with a street hamburger served on a hot dog bun. I guess hungry pickers can't be choosers.

Foam defeat.

Foam victory!

The next day we saw more of the city that was celebrating Carnaval, and wound up at the Festival of Fruits and Flowers, which is essentially Ambato's only claim to fame. We saw an awesome mural made of fruit, and went to a museum filled with flower displays. Soon we headed home, with an much-needed stop in Salcedo for the most delicious helados known to man. All in all, Ambato was a fun, very impromptu, adventure in Ecuador!

The only mural around that probably tastes as good as it looks!

The Fish Market

When you hear the words “fish market,” images of nicely filleted tuna and pre-cooked shrimp behind a glass case usually come to mind, occasionally accompanied by a tank full of live lobsters nearby. This is what I expected to see at the fish market in Puerto Lopez, a fishing town a little farther north from Los Piqueros. However, our trip there at 6:30am revealed a totally different kind of fish market, located right on the beach.

In Puerto Lopez, the fishing boats of many coastal residents come alongshore, or send smaller boats in between to bring their catches to the vendors waiting on the beach. Organization leaves some to be desired, as this “market” is basically a conglomeration of small boats, stray dogs, tons of men angling their necks to get a good look at what’s coming from the boats, and local women filleting freshly caught fish on makeshift tables in the sand. Frigate birds fly overhead diving at bins of small fish being carried from the boats to the shore, or aiming for forgotten fish scraps in the sand.

Unfortunately, shark fishing is more popular here than should be legally allowed. I was able to see a thresher shark and multiple hammerheads, none old enough to reach full size. Some of the hammerheads were so young they even had their umbilical cords still attached, but were still harvested for their fins. Shark meat is hardly worth harvesting in Ecuador, but the fins are shipped to Asia for the huge consumption there of shark fin soup. It’s pretty sad to see so many dead sharks on the sands of the beach there, and even worse to see them brutally cut up just for their fins. Hopefully we’ll be able to see some live sharks swimming in the Galapagos, where they are hopefully better preserved.

Los Piqueros

Since Ecuador just isn’t awesome enough, I currently have the pleasure of living on a beach for a week and a half at a lovely hostel called “Hosteria Piqueros Patas Azules,” or Los Piqueros for short (the name actually refers to blue-footed boobies). While I’m not entirely sure in what town the hostel is located, or if it even is in a town, I have learned it’s part of the coastal province “Manabí.” Just up the coast to the north is Puerto Lopez, a small fishing town about a 15 minute bus ride away. Further north is Puerto Cayo, a smaller fishing town with a rather dirty beach. About an hour south is Montañita, an awesome surfing town filled with hostels, seafood street vendors, and tons of surfers. Los Piqueros is fairly deserted, with a mile-long path from the road, and is run by a man who very closely resembles Ernest Hemingway.

Montañita, filled with surfboards and street vendors

Living right on the beach is more than I could ever ask for in Ecuador. Besides working on my tan for a few hours a day, I get to swim, body surf, and explore the tide pools in the rocky outcrop during low tide. The beach rarely has more than a couple other people, and is the perfect place for research and relaxation. We’ve played volleyball almost every day, which I’ve found is a much more suitable sport for me than soccer. The food is also fantastic, and I’ve had tons of delicious seafood, as well as an amazing breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and granola every morning.

My "dorm" for two weeks

Our "classroom" for the time being

Red mangroves located steps away from the shore

At night we usually hang around a bit after dinner to chat or play with the owner’s grandchildren, and we usually indulge in some of the delicious homemade dessert, ranging from milkshakes to pie de maracuyá (the only part of the meal not included in our tuition, but definitely worth the addition to our tabs). One of the best nights here included manhunt on the beach, dodging the blue crabs crawling in the sand, and running between the hammocks hanging on the beach. Afterwards, the owner’s son, who was staying with his family for awhile, built us a bonfire and brought out his guitar. We had a great time singing along to tons of songs, ranging from the Beatles to U2 to our favorite Michel Teló pop song.

Jaime, our assistant professor, took a few of us to a cave near another beach further south. It was pretty difficult getting there, and involved some rock climbing, wading through another cave, and scaling substrate much larger than myself. We eventually wound up at a beach called La Playa Dorada, or “Golden Beach,” aptly named for its beautiful golden sands, flanked by huge orange and gold sedimentary rock on either side. By the time we arrived, the tide was too high to go back the way we came, so we had a nice walk through the coastal dry forest back to Los Piqueros. Despite the thirty or so mosquito bites I accumulated during that stroll, it was really nice to see all the different vegetation and views of the water.

Los Piqueros is amazing, and I wish we could stay here for the rest of the semester. But I suppose I can sacrifice living on the beach for some time in the Galapagos and the rainforest soon to come.

Just a picture of some cows on the beach.

Baños: Not just for Poop

To backtrack a little on my most recent adventures in Ecuador, last weekend I took a trip to Baños with the rest of my crowd. It wasn’t sponsored by the program, so it was a little less organized than usual, considering all the planning was done by a bunch of college kids. As one can imagine, we are a group with short pockets but a deep imagination. Besides the fourteen of us in the BU program, twenty-two of our friends from Wisconsin also joined, and we managed to successfully take over the hostel, and most of Baños itself.

Despite the meaning of the word, Baños is not just a place full of toilets. The name actually refers to the hot springs located there, similar to those in Papallacta, where people flock to enjoy nature’s own hot tubs. In addition to these natural spas, the town has tons of waterfalls, and is located at the base of a fairly large volcano. Nearby is a long river that eventually leads to the Amazon, flanked on either side by gorgeous cloud forests. With all of this located in a fairly small city, there was tons to do, from zip lining to hiking to mountain biking. However, we only had two full days, so we had to make the most of it.

Since we are all broke college kids, money was a bit of an issue. However, Baños is the perfect place for lots of adventure on a tiny budget. For less than $100, I managed:

• A 2 night stay in a hostel, complete with towels and our own bathroom
• A private bus ride for the four hour trip to and from Quito
• An hour and a half white water rafting experience, which included the trip to the river, all the gear we needed, and a delicious lunch in a restaurant on the way back
• About an hour in the hot springs (which was all I needed, especially considering the claustrophobia from so many people there, and how unbearably hot the water was)
• A morning of zip lining, with six different lines through cloud forest mountains, over white water rivers, and whizzing by waterfalls
• 2 delicious meals at the Stray Dog Brew Pub, which had amazing sandwiches and locally made beer; 1 great falafel dinner at Casa Hood, a local restaurant/library with a fun hippie vibe; 2 morning breakfasts of delicious freshly made bread; and finally, 2 fun nights out on the town in the center of Baños with other visitors from all over the world

I would say that’s a pretty good deal for another fantastic weekend of adventure in Ecuador!

P.S. Check out the video below for some firsthand zip lining footage

El Gato Diablo

I am not a person that dislikes animals. Bugs, maybe. Animals, no. After all, I am studying Ecology, which involves its fair share of fauna. I also have the pleasure of having the most adorable dog on the planet, despite her occasional viscousness. However, I am convinced my host mom's cat, aptly named Gris, is the spawn of the devil. I'm not usually a fan of cats, and living with this little guy only serves to reinforce my prejudices. The only cats I've really enjoyed having relationships with were the ones that came with funny captions right beneath them.

Who couldn't love that adorable ball of fur?

In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Gris kept his distance, I kept mine. We had a mutual indifference towards each other. However, about a week later, he began to show his dark side (which now I'm thinking may be his only side). Occasionally while my host mom was out, I would hear these weird, other-worldly noises coming from the living room. The first time this occurred, I was rather frightened and ran to see what was going on. I soon found out these are just the normal sounds of a devil cat. Sometimes I think it's calling to a mothership full of terrible alien felines. I've never heard anything like it before, and I hope to God I never have to hear anything like it again.

As time went on, Gris began to make his daunting presence known in my life. I found him perched on the keyboard of my laptop once, happily changing all of my previous computer settings. He would hop onto the table while I was eating, which my host mom never really discouraged. Personally, I found it gross, but I didn't feel the need to object as long as he wasn't bothering me. However, Gris started to strengthen his advances. No matter what meal I was consuming, whether early morning breakfast or my solitary dinner around 7:00, Gris was there. From sniffing at my cereal milk to positioning his little cat butt right in my face, Gris became an omnipresent pest. Just this evening I found him waiting on my usual chair, sitting there and just begging me to push him off. Over and over, I gently lower him off the table onto the floor, but he's quite a persistent devil. As my Spanish teacher says, "Weeds never die," (the translation of which I can't quite remember).

Occasionally his tail will wind up in my dish, or he will knock my notes over while trying to scratch himself on everything I own. Gris has transformed the dinner table into his very own fighting arena, his confrontation coinciding with almost every instance of my hunger. Every meal has turned into a showdown, where I carefully guard my juice and food, simultaneously avoiding clawing, rubbing, and intimidating stares. Hopefully Gris will soon realize that I have no desire to be friends nor enemies, and that my only wish is peaceful indifference.

I'm patiently waiting for Gris to wave his flag.

Did I mention my host my has a mangy yappy dog, too?

Cows, Bats, and Waterfalls

This past weekend, we ventured off to La Hesperia, a dairy farm in the cloud forest of Ecuador, about two hours away from Quito. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much more than a few cows and a lot of clouds (I mean it is called the cloud forest). However, after three days at La Hesperia, I can say it was definitely a weekend full of adventures.

It doesn't get too much greener than this.

After a three hour drive through mountains and traffic, we arrived at the foot of what seemed like an easy climb to the farmhouse. Forty-five minutes later, we arrived at the top, dripping with sweat and rain from the steep hike. Okay, maybe it wasn't that grueling, but I was definitely out of breath when I finally made it. Luckily we had a handy guy with a jeep drive up the hill with our bags so we didn't have to lug those all the way. Once we arrived, we had a bit of free time to explore the farm. We wandered a bit, said hello to some cows, and found a bunch of orange trees. Being the curious ecologists that we are, we decided to take one and share it. By far, it was the sourest orange I have ever tasted in my life, and we all immediately spit it out. We then learned our lesson about eating wild fruit before asking someone about it.

Don't be fooled by it's luscious hue.

Since this past weekend was technically an educational field trip, we spent about an hour roaming around the yard of the farmhouse with Kelly and Jaime, our two lovely professors, and talked about various plant families. This mostly prompted us to scream out "SPORE!" and other fun plant terms when hiking the next day. I did learn quite a few plant families, and can now proudly tell the difference between Asteraceae and Melastomataceae (and even more impressive, I can spell them!). We had a lot of free time Friday night as well, which we utilized by playing Bananagrams and Mafia for hours a time. Mafia clearly brought out the best in our group, between countless accusations and scheming.

One of the million bromeliads we always seem to find.

Contrary to popular belief, this guy is not as

cute and cuddly as he looks.

Possibly the cutest little cow anyone has ever seen

Saturday was our only full day in La Hesperia, and we started it off with a bang by waking up to milk cows at 7am. It was an optional activity, but when else am I going to get to milk a cow on a real dairy farm in Ecuador? The farmers there were really nice and showed us how to milk them, which turned out to be really fun. Recently the farmers have started using a pump to milk the cows instead of doing it by hand, which we saw was a lot more efficient. After a delicious breakfast of eggs, bread, and fresh jam, we spent most of the day on a six hour hike through the cloud forest with Kelly and Jaime, where we learned about some more plants and got to see quite a few up close and personal. Jaime caught a snake at one point, which I got to play with, until it freaked me out by trying to slither up my sleeve.

We soon became pros at seed dispersal. Mostly by

throwing the sticky ones onto each other's shirts.

Kelly had mentioned that we would be "crossing a stream" at one point in our hike, and suggested we wear canvas shoes that would dry easily. Little did we know, we would be crossing that same stream multiple times, and even making our way up and through it for a decent portion of our hike. To say the least, I was soaked and covered in mud, but it was definitely worth it. The cloud forest is beautiful, and we saw so many different types of gorgeous green plants. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to swing on the vines hanging from the canopy like Tarzan.

Heliconiaceae, my new favorite plant family

Saturday night was also really interesting, as we got to watch Jaime study the bats he had caught in nets outside the farmhouse. He caught about eleven, and examined and measured each one. We saw two or three different species, including a couple of pregnant females. Some think bats are the cutest things in the world, but I still think they're kind of creepy looking. They do have cool rhino-esque things on their noses, though. We then ended the night with a couple more rounds of Mafia and card games, as per usual for our group.

Cute, right?

Today was left more or less up to us, as we were given about three hours of the morning to roam around the area. After waiting for the rain to clear by playing cribbage, we decided go hiking in search of the waterfall we had heard existed somewhere nearby. We asked one of the farmhands to lead us, but he would only show us where the trail was, and warned us it wasn't very well maintained. We figured we would be fine, and thought nothing of it. Soon we were sliding down mudslides, waddling on our hands and knees over roots and under branches, and doing our best to avoid dangerous caterpillars and fire ants that lurked below. After one mistaken trail, we headed off in a new direction, and found a lovely pool in the stream, where we splashed around for awhile. We then continued on to where we believed the waterfall to be. Proving to be a much more dangerous path than we had thought, we had to use a found rope to repel down one of the cliffs, then reattach it at another location to use again to avoid falling into the rocky stream from the one-foot-wide ledge of the eroding cliff we were walking on. I have to say it was pretty scary, and probably more than a little dangerous, but it was so worth it once we finally made it down. We headed upstream a bit, and found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a gorgeous cascading waterfall. It was amazing to say the least, and definitely worth the treacherous hike to get there.

Now just imagine a crazy awesome waterfall

a little ways downstream.

(These are the times I need a waterproof camera)

The Hills are Alive...

This past weekend, I couldn't help but sing tunes from The Sound of Music to myself while traveling through different mountains and volcanoes around Quito. The views from our various locales were amazing, from the páramo near Papallacta, to the Otavolo Indian market, to Cotocachi, Cuicachi, and Cotopaxi. Even from parts of Quito you can see for miles, and there's always a different landscape to admire.

The view from Parque Condor in Otovalo

really brought out the Von Trapp in me.

Waaaaaaay up in the páramo

Loving the sunlight on those hills

During our trip to the páramo on Friday we visited the polylepis forest, also known as the "Elfin forest." The trees there are really gnarly and have very flaky bark, and can be hundreds of years old. The polylepis forest is really moist, so we also saw a lot of interesting looking moss and lichen on the trees.

Gnarly.

Who knew moss and lichen could be so lovely?

My personal favorite, due to its resemblance to a cow

This weekend we have a three day adventure into the cloud forest of La Hesperia, where we'll do a lot of hiking and looking at plants. So far our educational trips have involved walking a few meters, talk about a plant, walk a couple more meters, talk about another plant, and so on. Our professor, Kelly, gives us a lot of good background information during lecture at the university, and I'm quickly learning a lot of different plant families. Soon we'll finish studying tropical montane ecology, and then we'll be off to the coast!

¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

Unfortunately, "¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!" isn't the sound I usually hear while playing fútbol during breaks at the university. Since the only organized sport I've played since eighth grade is Quidditch, I would say my hand-eye, or rather foot-eye, coordination is severely lacking. Regardless of the fact that the last time I played on an actual soccer team I was más o menos six years old, I've had a lot of fun playing fútbol for nearly three hours a day, four days a week.

During a typical day at USFQ, our break from noon to three typically consists of one part lunch, two parts soccer. The physical exercise is great, and it's also been a fun way to get to know other people on campus. Since I only have two classes a day with the same group of people, it's been a bit of a challenge meeting other people at the university, even the other gringos that are studying here. Each day, we have a different group of people that come to play, from exchange students from Wisconsin, to local Ecuadorean construction workers and painters working at the school, to other Ecuadorean students from Quito. We even scrimmaged with one of USFQ's women's teams, which was pretty tough. I'm pretty terrible at soccer, but I have a lot of fun so I don't mind making a fool out of myself once in awhile. Well, maybe a bit more often than once in awhile.

I usually miss the ball when

I try to kick like that.

Hopefully my soccer skills will improve at least slightly, so I can go back to America and actually show that I did South American things for some amount of time. I even had my first header during one of our games! (Although I mistakenly referred to the move as a "headbutt," which prompted some laughs from my team. Oops.)

Hot 'n' Cold

My life has become alarmingly like the infamous Katy Perry song, "Hot 'n' Cold." Not that I particularly enjoy associating random pop songs with various areas in my life, but I can't help think how the song relates to life in Quito. No matter which shower I use in the morning (one runs on a hot water tank, the other on electricity), I wind up stuck in some cycle of freezing, cool, lukewarm, and scalding water. I've gotten somewhat used to the timing of the electric shower, and I attempt to coincide my hair rinsing with the lukewarm time slot. I must say this can be quite the challenge at 7 o'clock in the morning.

Cotopaxi's glacier was a bit more cold than hot.

I think there's a good chance Katy Perry had Quito's climate in mind when writing her hit. In the mornings I'm sure to throw a sweatshirt or rain jacket on to walk to the bus stop, shed some layers on the stifling bus, put a sweatshirt back on for the frigid classroom in Cumbayá, and revert back to short sleeves to walk to lunch in the hot midday sun. Then I load up on sunscreen and athletic clothes so I don't get scorched while playing fútbol for two hours every day, followed by running into the classroom around 3 o'clock to avoid the daily afternoon downpour. The evening is a little less predictable, and can either be cool and overcast or torrential downpour, prompting me once again to throw on my rain gear for the long trek home (or sneak in a little more fútbol first if I can). Nights are pretty chilly, and I'm usually thankful for the three heavy blankets my host mom supplied with my bed. Then the next morning, the cycle commences once again.

Just in case the song just got stuck in your head...

Foreign Fun

Living in Ecuador, I should probably be speaking Spanish, reading Spanish, and eating Spanish foods. Yes, yes, I do get my fair share of empanadas, so the third category is probably covered (minus the shawarma I had for lunch and the pasta my host mom made for dinner, of course). My two hour Spanish class that I have four days a week, combined with the challenge of communicating with my host mom, definitely helps me brush up on my vocab and verb skills. Believe me, within the first few days I was already an expert on Spanish words regarding showering, brushing my teeth, and other household necessities, such as "Can you ask your dog to stop yapping at me every time I walk in the door?!?!" That last bit may have been a slight exaggeration, but the feeling isn't too far off.

The one part of the aforementioned list I haven't really covered yet is reading Spanish. Reading a language may be more important when you're just working for a decent grade in a 4-credit class at school, but living in Ecuador shuffles my priorities a bit, and puts a lot more weight on the speaking part of Spanish. Anyway, that's my excuse for reading books in English I enjoy instead of attempting selections from the local biblioteca.

I knew living alone in a homestay would give me

much more free time than living in a dorm, so I came equipped with the best: an Amazon Kindle. Besides my teddy bear and my alarm clock, it's probably the most useful thing I managed to squeeze into my suitcase. After finishing the one physical book I brought along (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), I eagerly downloaded Vaclav & Lena, a book I started during the summer and never got the chance to finish. I finished it in about two days, with the help of a couple long bus rides into different parts of Ecuador. It's a story of two Russian immigrant children growing up in Brooklyn, and their lives both together and apart, until the time they are seventeen. The boy's ambition to be a magician makes it fun, and the ties they have to each other, to Russia, and to America, makes it especially appealing.

Maybe it was my college essay entitled "A Date with Dostoevsky," or maybe it was reading Chekhov in high school AP English, but for some reason I can't get away from Russian literature. Vaclav & Lena may have taken place in Brooklyn, but it definitely contained it's fair share of borscht and memories of Moscow. My next inescapable venture into Russia is Anna Karenina, the most recent download on my Kindle. If I'm really going to make this a year of adventure, why not invite Tolstoy along for the ride? The incredibly slowly moving "percent completed" on the Kindle may be intimidating, but I think the long bus rides and hours in the rainforest will give me the time and interest needed to power through.

Besides reading foreign books, I also can't seem to help listening to foreign music. I don't just mean the usual Beatles and Kooks songs that are always on my iPod, but the one song I haven't be able to avoid lately: "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" by Michel Teló.

Don't be fooled by this track's #1 placement on Ecuador's current top 40 - this winner is 100% Brazilian. I suppose it's still South American, but the Portuguese lyrics are less than simple to understand. However, the translation assures me that Michel Teló isn't exactly attempting any deeper meaning to the catchy tune. From the bus to the bar to the cell phone of a random person walking down the street, "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" is always playing somewhere, and therefore always stuck in my head. Next step: the dance.

La Vida en Quito

Quito is a pretty hectic place. Everyone is constantly running, pushing, driving, shopping, eating, working, and speaking Spanish (duh, I know). Looking out the double windows from my corner room in my home stay apartment, I can watch pedestrians miraculously avoid getting hit by cars and buses, time and time again; I can hear the street performer play "La Cucaracha" and the Pink Panther theme on his trombone; I can struggle to see the lights of all the cars going through "optional" red stoplights through the incredibly thick fog. Getting on the bus is a nightmare, and I've missed my stop more than once attempting to push through the crowds of people in the doors. Small change is hard to come by, which can be a challenge when each bus ride is only 25¢. Safety is always a priority, and I've have a list tacked in my brain of which side of the street to walk on, who to ask for directions, what to always carry with me, when to take a taxi, when to take the bus, and a thousand other helpful tips.

Just imagine how much traffic is

weaving through all those streets.

Quito is also a beautiful place. The way the lights shine through the fog at night is scary, but peaceful, and the view of the mountains from nearly every street is breathtaking. La Parque Carolina is two blocks from my house, and is a hotspot for fútbol, volleyball, skateboarding, biking, running, and with the help of us gringos, Frisbee! The amount of delicious tropical fruits here are astounding, and I don't think I've ever been so excited to try so many different juices (my current favorite is guanábana juice).

Centro Quito screams the influence of the Spanish conquistadors, and the churches offer an artful display of the dominance of Catholicism here. La Ronda is home to "Old Quito," with narrow cobblestone streets, nightly street performances, and tons of restaurants offering empanadas, fresas con chocolate (sticks of chocolate covered strawberries, only $1!), and multiple variations of my new favorite beverage, canelazo.

Wrought-iron and pastel beauty.

I definitely miss Boston, but I'm loving the life in Quito.