My Bucket List

I love those days when you get to check a bunch of things off your bucket list. I think I might just have to expand mine since I'm getting so much of it done here! Since yesterday, i got to cross off:

 1. driving in the back of a pick-up truck on the freeway. The picture: 3 people in the cab of the small truck, four in the truck bed on top of two beds, probably 10 full sized blankets, everyone's suitcases, pillows, the dishes/pots/pans/silverware for the new house. oh! and don't forget the stove we threw in at the last minute. heaven forbid we forget the stove! Then tie it all down with a black tarp so that the cops don't see you. Then add 2 hours. perfect! i think you've got the mental picture.

 2. sweeping the roof of a rather large chicken house/coup thing. We were cleaning it out to start fresh. Why do you sweep the roof? I still have yet to understand this.

3. climbing the equivalent of a cherry tree to pick/eat the fruit. Delicious! mmmmm capuli!

4. sleeping in a double bed with 3 other people. Not as fun as you would think. I might have taken 2 naps today to make up for it...

5. eating guinea pig. tastes like chicken. but doesn't every exotic animal taste that way? It was only slightly disturbing to think that I had one as a pet when i was a child. Though it could have been more economical to eat Snow White than to give her to the guinea pig rescue lady when i decided i didn't want one anymore...

The cuy cooking...

 Me with the head

head --> mouth

And a picture of the crab soup we made the other day just for kicks and giggles!

Yeah, i'd say my fin de semana was a diverse one! But i think all of them are for me. And about my bucket list... I actually don't have one. Generally I just do cool things and pretend that i'm crossing them off of a list. At least it gives me a sense of accomplishment, right?

That moment when...

Yes, apparently my life has enough funny moments to write this entry another time... :)

THAT MOMENT WHEN...

Your mom picks up the telephone downstairs to see if you brother is talking on the phone with his girlfriend and proceeds to listen to part of it. I thought listening in on conversations only happened in the movies...

Your cousin tells you that your brother is not actually in a rugby class at school. He just tells everyone that so he can spend more time with his girlfriend...

You have gotten so tan that your brother calls you negrita. On multiple occasions. (This by the way is completely politically correct here and a term of endearment, like gordita, or flacita which probably sound like insults as well to you. But just believe me on this one and be amazed that i'm getting tan here... hahaha :)

After telling you that your family is not going to eat meat for a week, your sister proceeds to serve tuna with the dinner. So maybe you misunderstood and she meant just not red meat. But then every day you eat some sort of meat like chicken or carne. I think she's confused on the concept...

As you walk between bus stops you see a fire on the lawn across the street. But nobody seems to notice or care. Interesting...

You see a taxi that is missing its front bumper and decide that there is no way you are going to get in that taxi. unless its a really really good deal.

You realize you always try to say hello and goodbye first because you only have a limited number of ways to greet people and if they steal yours accidentally you are screwed. And here it is always the case that someone will say hello/goodbye with 3 or more phrases, so there is a very good chance you will not have a response that's different than theirs

After 2 months here of riding the bus almost every single day you realize you are the only white person on the bus. 99% of the time. plus one for assertiveness.

You spend all of your Friday night out with friends and have a trip with your program on Sunday, so you plan on spending Saturday studying for mid-terms. But many things happen. First, at 8:30am (early because you were up way past 2am) your sister comes into your room to tell you they are going to the market to buy crab. She says "duerme no mas," which here means continue sleeping (i know right? seems like a contradiction, but "no mas" means continue, not stop). But because you are really tired, you misinterpret her words and think she is telling you to stop sleeping. So you get up, and you end up going to the market (only later do you realize your mistake and understand why she was surprised when you woke up to come). Well, you are told the trip will take 40 mins. 3 hours later you arrive back in your house, but with live crab! So you assume you now have time to study and later we'll have crab. perfect. Wrong again mate! It is time to kill and wash all the crabs (pictures soon to come). And then unbeknownst to you, all the family of your bro-in-law comes over for almuerzo. a few hours later you finish. bueno, its 4pm. you still have time to study. Wrong again my friend! after five minutes of studying, your family drags you (literally, physically) out of your room to play the Ecuadorian version of the board game Sorry!. And when you protest, they lock you out of your room. Yes, literally. Keys and everything. So you think, okay, i'll play one game for an hour, and then i'll work. Wrong once more! The Ecuadorian version of Sorry! also is on Ecuadorian time. After 4.5 hours, you quit because the game is nowhere near ending and are allowed back in your room only because your brother takes your place int he game. I don't think i have ever had anyone lock me out of my room to stop me from studying before. But then again, almost everything here is a first for me...

You go with your brother to the pharmacy because your brother-in-law has the flu. The first thing that happens is that you are walking down the street and your brother tells you to walk slower, and you are like why? oh, there's just three (armed according to your brother) robbers on the same street up a bit in the shadows walking as well. Great! Good thing you are smart and go a different route. The story continues...You go to 2 different pharmacies and they won't sell you the drug your bro wants because you need a prescription (which means it must be really strong if you have to have a prescription here in Ecuador because nearly everything is over the counter and self prescribed). So he calls his friend who's a doctor and asks for the name of the drug. Sure enough, the name of the drug is enough, and although your brother tells you its illegal to get it without a prescription, the next pharmacy sells it to you telling you they don't administer the shots here; you have to do it on your own. What medicine is it you might ask? Oh it was just penicillin. nbd. With the needle and the the little bottle thing of medicine just like the doctors procure in the doctors office. (All you doctors out there are probably falling out of your chairs right about now.) So with medicine in hand you walk home, without any robbers this time thankfully. And your brother administers the shot in the butt.  Good thing your brother is in med school. I'm pretty sure you can die if you administer a shot wrong with an air bubble or something. Oh and if it wasn't enough to do it once, you buy more the next night and repeat. wow. yeah...


This is probably my favorite because it came after a long, arduous day and made me chuckle: you jump on a bus and after standing there for a minute, realize that yes, the man 3 feet away from you is actually holding a live chicken in his arms; it is not his bag. nobody else thinks anything of it.

Well, that is all for today folks! Hope you at least smiled a bit. Have a blessed day!!! :))))

Galapagos Part 2!

Clearly i failed at the "i´ll blog a little every day" thing. I mean i tried, really i did. One day i uploaded a bunch of pictures so that should count for something right? hahaha. anyway... here´s some more of my fabulous adventures!

A hatchery for the galapagos...

With even the little babies!!!

And we got to hold an egg. The markings on it indicate the position it was sitting when they removed it from the nest. The x has to stay on top for it to survive. Cool fact: the sex of baby turtles is determined by the temperature during the time they hatch. More guys are born at 28.5 degrees celcius and more girls at 29.5 degrees celcius.

Sadly i had to resort to posting the picture of the galapagos sex instead of the video. it still wont load :(.

At one point, the island isabella was where they sent prisoners from the mainland. To keep them occupied they had them build this huge wall (now called muro de lágrimas "wall of tears") which was an incredible amount of labor. It was supposed to be a foursided containment area, but they never finished. After a year the guy in charge died and it all went down hill from there and eventually the island ceased being a prison. Today there´s only one guy alive who was a prisoner and he still lives on the island.

A view from the top of the wall...

And believe it or not, i fell for the ole "do you want to go on a walk for a better view" trick again. What did we do? hike up the side of the mountain. In rainbows (good thing those flip flops were built to last!). I swore i never would fall for it, but i did. i only have myself to blame. However, the view was totally worth it!

Some shots of the playa... gorgeous sunsets here! Radiant colors! We just sat and watched one night for like an hour. It was like a movie...

One of my favorite parts was the coconuts! SOOOOOO GOOOOD! And you get to eat them after... :)

We went and hiked a volcano on the isabella, a six hour extravaganza. The top pic is me overlooking the lava flow area. The volcano is still active and about 30 years ago was the most recent lava flow.  The bottom picture is of a vein of lava that partially collapsed. It still amazes me that lava flows in veins... not sure why, but i think its really cool.

Well, you wouldn´t believe it by the first two picks, but about 4 miles into the hike we got some tropical weather. Usually the storm passes after dumping for about 5 minutes. Well, it didn´t. It continued for the rest of the trip, all 6 miles of it. And it dumped sooooooo much water. Lets just say that the trail had about a foot of water on it the majority of the time... On the bus ride back i snapped this photo of the road. We pretty much drove through a river the whole way. Our driver rocked!

When we were out snorkeling, i got to drive the boat. Sweet deal. And there weren´t any casualties. Plus one for me!

The beautiful sunrise the day we left the island... you only have to get up at 4:45 to see it. NBD.

Galapagos: Part 1

I´ve decided that since it would take me forever to blog about all that i did and laughed at in the Galapagos, i´ll do a bit each day until its done.

So we arrived in the Galapagos and it was HOT!!!!!! The sun here is already really strong because we´re at the equator but then we added the element of tropical island weather.

We island hopped...

\

To Santa Cruz...

where we saw beautiful forests of scalesias...

and giant craters that had collapsed...

A few of the girls in my group together in front of the crators

We spent the night in this cute little hotel that had a boat. Not sure why, because it honestly didn´t look like it could possibly be used. Maybe they just take decorating to a new level here...

A picture of the bay...

And an iguana crossing the street. No big deal. It happens every day.

 

We saw these sealions on a private dock. After reading (and apparently just ignoring) the area restricted sign, our guide ushered us in to take photos.

Taxi´s here are all just boats... we were frequenters on them as we toured around

If you look closely you might notice something that does not appear to belong... no, the bird didn´t step in wet paint. They have this species of birds called blue-footed bubi. As a lover of the color blue, i was impressed.

We went for a short walk to a place where we went cliff jumping. One of the scariest things of my life. You jumped and then the water took forever to come. FOREVER! Fortunately i landed in a perfect pencil dive, but others who landed on their butts or a bit on their backs were not so lucky and had huge purple welts...

Then we headed to some lava tunnels. As lava flows out of a volcano, it does so in veins like these. There´s apparently tons of them on the islands, but you can´t actually tell they exist until part of it collapses and reveals a tunnel, like this one.  We walked aways through it, even had to crawl for part of the way. The guide told us if we had positive attitudes, it wouldn´t collapse while we were inside. I guess we must be optimists or something.

Contrary to popular belief, "Galapagos" is not actually the name of the islands. The real name is the Archipiélago de Colón, though Christopher Colombus never actually visited. Go figure. But anyway, everyone calls it the Galapagos because of its inhabitants: the galapagos (tortoises like the one seen above). For every volcano (natural land barrier entre the , there is a different subspecies, so there´s 15 different kinds, 4 of which are extinct. Sadly, because of introduced species, the tortoises are dying out, so they have different hatcheries on the islands to repopulate them. No one knows exactly how long they live, but some estimate at least 100 years.We visited a ranch that had tons of turtles, and got to witness a rare event: tortoise sex. Let me tell you, it was an interesting experience. Apparently it takes at least 2 hours. But we realized the reason why. After about 20 minutes, the macho looked like he was quitting and dismounted. Then the head of the sembra popped out. Wrong way dude! Other side! I had a video to upload but it wont upload!!! :( i've spent 2 days trying to get it to work, so i'm just going to give up for now and move on with my life.

They had an old turtle shell there and there was a challenge out to walk 150 steps in the shell for the girls and 250 for the guys. After completing the challenge, i completely understand why turtles walk so slow. With a 25kilo (about 55 pound) shell, it was a rough walk in an uncomfortable position. Only two of the girls and one of the guys in our group finished.

Me chillin on the bow of the boat. BEAUTIFUL taxi ride!!!

We then headed out to an island where iguanas are in the middle of their ´´laying egs´´ time. All the females (hundreds of them) are up on the beach and digging holes to lay their eggs. 

Some get lazy and don´t want to dig a hole. So they try and fight another iguana for theirs, as seen in the video above. Once again, the video wouldn't upload... :( maybe i'll figure it out later...

My hole!

A pretty bridge under the mangle trees

Me with a baby sea lion. And no, its not dead. I swear. And yes, in case you were wondering, I did get a bit burnt. (yes mom, i did reapply with the 50 spf) The only person in our group that didn´t burn was the girl who brought 100spf and applied liberally countless times. She stayed the exact same color as when she arrived. Even the one african american and all of the asians got burnt. It was an epic attack by the sun. And I lost. But i do have some more color now. I´m pretty sure that i´m tanner than i usually am in the states. My brother last night called me negrita, which here is a term of endearment like gringita, gordita, flacita (also terms of endearments). I guess there´s a first time for everything. I never thought in a million years i´d be considered negra.

And the flamingos... just because they´re cute.

Mi gatito

You're probably wonder, wait what? Alison has a cat. I'm actually wondering the same exact thing. I came home from school today expecting to find my family. Instead, this is what awaited me:

But seriously, I walked in the door and saw a little bit of white moving around the furniture. I was thinking, wait! my fam got a cat? since when? Maybe i'm imagining things. Then i proceeded to go and use the bathroom and found that my shower had been transformed into a house for the kitten. And there it was, sitting next to its litter box, eating out of one of the glasses that was full of cat food. Go figure! When my sister and brother-in-law came home, they asked me where the cat came from. I honestly thought they had gone out looking for it because they had lost it, so as a joke i said it was mine. Then i realized they weren't kidding. They had no idea either. I guess only time will tell! And until then, I have a lovely study buddy. That happens to enjoy turning off the internet on my computer. And type on my keyboard. 
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Case and point. Probably means something in cat-lingo, but i'm only studying Spanish here, so i wouldn't know :)

Adios! Hasta probablamente miercoles/jueves de la proxima semana. 
ME VOY A LOS GALAPAGOS JUEVES!!!!! :))))))