Algunas fotos :)

I am working on interviewing the kids for a friend's Spanish class unit involving child labor/working children. (I was able to bring my camera to the markets two days in a row!) I snapped a few photos, and if you can understand Spanish, you can watch the first of a few YouTube videos I'm putting together with their interviews! 

Our 3rd Anniversary

Mike and I got married three years ago! It was a very nice anniversary! When I woke up this morning, I noticed something colorful in the distance outside our room. Mike got me this huge vase of flowers, and I had no idea how he got away with it! We do everything together here...except, yesterday afternoon Wilson asked me to translate for him. He asked me to see if Mike could help him with something, because he didn't have anyone else to help him. They were gone for a bit, and I was playing Uno with Josué and Alison (our host siblings), so I really wasn't paying attention to time. As soon as Mike got home I asked him how it was, and he said it was fine, that he just had to help move some furniture at Wilson's parents' house. I totally fell for it! He told me that he really didn't help move furniture, that Wilson took him to the flower shop, then they went grocery shopping. So sweet!

Then after work today, we got ready to go out for a nice dinner at Pim's Panecillo in Quito. We were so excited! It was AMAZING! The atmosphere, food, views, service, and music were top-notch! What a great day to spend with my Love! 

Cotopaxi: We climbed the second tallest active volcano in the world!

We had some good times today climbing Cotopaxi! Our taxi picked us up at 6:15 am, and we headed to meet our tour bus. After a short ride on the tour bus, we stopped for coffee and a roll, and then we were on our way to the national park! Once we made it up some ways to the parking lot before starting our trek up, we realized it was quite cold, and very windy! It was sleeting! We knew we were in for a challenge, and this definitely pushed us! We made it up to the refuge at 15,953 feet (4,854 meters) with frozen hands and feet. They are in the process of remodeling the refuge, so there was not a very good place to warm up sadly...Our guide highly recommended that we did not go any further up to the glacier, because we could have been hit by lightening. :( So, we headed back down, even though we REALLY wanted to go higher! Then, after getting back to the parking lot, we drove down a bit more, and hopped on our bikes to bike down about 700 meters to the lagoon. I've never been biking down a real mountain before, and it was fun to just coast down, though I had to have my brakes on every three seconds! 

Sunday with our family...

Yesterday morning we went with our host family to have a traditional soup dish called encebollado. We ate it at a popular restaurant that Wilson's cousin owns. It was soooo good! It had tuna, yuca, cilantro, tomatoes, onions, and probably a ton of other things to make it taste delicious. Mayra told us that in order to eat it the traditional way, we needed to add everything to it: pepper, salt, ketchup, yellow mustard, chili sauce, and freshly squeezed lime. Then, you can put popcorn and plantain chips (or chifles) on top to give it some crunch. After we finished eating, Mayra and Wilson took us to the Virgen de El Panecillo (or La Virgen de Quito), which has an awesome view of Quito. The Panecillo is the tallest aluminum sculpture in the world, and represents ascension into heaven with her wings, and victory over sin with the snake she's standing on. We went inside, and climbed up a bit to get a better view. Inside, they have a little museum that tells about different Latin American countries and how they celebrate Christmas. Good information to use with my students!

Pizza y Helado!

We went to a pizzeria in the Mariscal today for lunch! We took the trolley most of the way there, and walked through a nice park. It was drizzling a bit, but there were still a lot of people out enjoying their Saturday. Before we headed back home we had to get some ice cream at the mall. I had mora, which is a type of blackberry that is very common here, and Mike had mocaccino flavor. 

Oh, and earlier this week after volunteering, Mike and I also took a salsa lesson with some other volunteers. It was fun! Not sure if we'll ever get it right, but we'll keep practicing! 

Long weekend

We've had a long weekend! Since coming back from the beach early, we've been hanging around Quito. Friday was the Independence day for Guayaquil and so schools were out. Mike and I thought maybe we'd see a movie for the first time since being here. There is a theatre real close to us in the mall, so we looked online to see what movies were playing. The one we wanted to see, Gone Girl, didn't start until 9:20 at night...Kind of a bummer that it was so late, but we still went anyway. We had to find one that was in English and not dubbed into Spanish, since it's still too early for Mike to be able to understand what's going on. So, we got to the theatre, purchased our tickets, and sat down and watched the previews. Then the movie began, and it was in Spanish with no subtitles! :( This was after I had already confirmed with the woman at the ticket booth that it was indeed in English. So, after a bit of a hassle, we got our money back and left the theatre.

Since we were already out, we decided to go to La Ronda to walk around the shops and restaurants a bit. We had a slice of apple pie and canelazo de mora. It started to drizzle, so I put my hood up. Then we heard "Hello! Hi!" coming from behind us. This is kind of a normal experience for us at La Ronda because everyone wants you to come into their restaurant, and, seeing that we're Americans they try and speak English. So we kept walking, and the guy continued, so we looked at him and then recognized him from the bus stop at Los Frailes beach. At the bus stop we had had a brief conversation with him and his girlfriend, and they invited us to spend some time with them in Montañita (beach town) that day, but we declined. He mentioned at that time that he and his mom owned a pizzeria in Quito, but we didn't realize that it was that close to La Ronda. It was strange, because while we were eating our pie, I was trying to remember the name of the pizzeria, and then we said, we'll have to look for it during the day sometime! Well, we didn't have to look, we just happened upon it! So we met his mom and tried some mini veggie pizzas. Good stuff! I would like to visit them more often, because I feel like there is a bigger reason we came across them that night. His mother told us that she has gone through a lot of hard times, and that she doesn't believe in God.

On Saturday, my cousin Carissa got married in New Jersey. We were so sad to miss it, and wished we could be there! My mom sent me some pictures and videos, and it looked beautiful! Congratulations Carissa and Tim!

Yesterday we decided to go to the mall in the north called CCI, which has an iceskating rink and a movie theatre that plays more movies in English than the one by our place in the south. We were planning on iceskating before the movie that showed later, but they were out of skates to rent. So we ended up walking the mall and then decided to watch two movies because it was too far away (and too much of a hassle) to go back home and then head back to see the movie later. I've never seen two movies at the theatre in a row before! Some things that are different at the theatre here: you pay less to see a movie ($5.50 all the time), they give you trays for your "food," you pre-select your seats, and they have someone check your ticket before you go into the movie room.

Overall it's been quite a relaxing weekend, and we are ready to go back to work tomorrow! I'm pretty sure I've never heard myself say "Is the weekend over yet?" hehe! We're ready to see the kiddos again tomorrow!

Cho-co-la-te...

We made our chocolate this morning, and it was just as yummy as it was on the coast! We bought the milk yesterday at the Megamaxi store in the mall. It was on the shelf in small cartons or bags, and we opted for the bag option. Lots of products come in plastic bags here...jam, mayonnaise, yogurt, mustard, ketchup, etc. Since we were going to use the whole liter bag, we went for it! So different than in Wisconsin, where most of the milk is sold in the refrigerated section and in plastic gallon or half gallon jugs. On a side note, did you know that the eggs here are not refrigerated either? They're sold off the shelf. 

So the process was simple: boil a liter of milk with nine squares of natural unsweetened chocolate and 300 grams of raw brown sugar until it thickens. It tastes like a pure dark hot fudge. We'll see how long this batch lasts! I'm thinking it will taste really good on bananas!

Beach time!

Mike and I headed for the coast of Ecuador on Friday night to stay in Puerto López. We left at 7 pm on a bus and arrived just before 5 am the next day! We were planning on staying through this coming Monday, but I ended up getting a fever (bummer!), so we skipped our Isla de la Plata tour and headed back to Quito last night. We will probably go back for a weekend in December when there are turtles on the beach and lots of sun we've heard! After one and a half nights in the most sketchy hostel we've stayed in, we moved in to this cute little cabin, where they had hammocks all around, great breakfast, beautiful flowers, lots of kitties to pet, and a great view of the beach. They made their own chocolate at the cabin hostel, which we bought and asked how to make as sort of a Nutella spread. Delicious!

Los Frailes beach was beautiful as usual, and the water was very warm, despite the breeziness in the air! The beach is situated in a national park reserve, so it's very clean and peaceful. You can't stay in Los Frailes past 4 pm, so we would just take a short 10 minute bus ride back to the bus station in Puerto López. From the bus station we would take a mototaxi back to our hostel. We swam for hours at Los Frailes, and went there everyday! Every night we went out to dinner at this awesome restaurant called Carmitas in Puerto López; they had some amazing shrimp ceviche with patacones, and grilled wahoo fish. Ceviche is amazing! Mike and I have also developed a slight addiction to Pinguino ice-cream sandwiches, so our diet for the week pretty much consisted of ice-cream, fish, and patacones. 

Towards the end of our trip, we met some girls from Germany and played Uno with them at this Spanish restaurant. They ordered seafood paella, which we tried, and it tasted just like we were in Spain again. The owner was actually from Spain and his girlfriend was from Italy; they set up the restaurant just over a year ago. Mike and I had some yummy Tinto de Verano and Crema Catalana, which is like crème brûlée. It's very much a different culture on the coast. Lots of relaxing, which was a great escape from the city!