First Week and Zuleta

It’s been a whirlwind amazing first week here in Ecuador.  I won’t bore the reader with too much “school stuff”, but so far I really like my job. We had new teacher orientation Wed-Fri.  The staff is very friendly and seems to be on the ball about pretty much everything.  We had a little “incident” on Thursday when we went to get our Visas finished up though.  When we got the place, one of the teachers (she will go unnamed), accidentally grabbed one of my needed documents and put it with her stuff.  Of course I couldn’t find it, and was freaking out.  I took a taxi quickly back to my studio to look for it, and even called the school to see if it was there.  So that day ended with Rob not in a good mood.  Yes, I went all 3^rdperson on you.  Thankfully that night, I got a FB message from the teacher and hopefully tomorrow I can go back and get it done.

The school paid for the new teachers to go on a little overnight excursion this weekend.  It’s a place called Zuleta, about 2 hours north of Quito.  It was overnight stay, and a hike was planned.  We left early Saturday morning on an uncomfortable bus.  About an hour in, we stopped at a market town called Otavalo.  It has a huge market that’s sales all kinds of crazy items.  We were pretty sure that many of these items were shipped from China, but were relieved to see some of the vendors were actually making stuff right there in their stalls.  I mostly window shopped, thinking that I’d bring Alanna here when she comes so we can buy some stuff we might actually use.  I did sample some of the local cuisine while there.  Let’s see… I had sugarcane, some kind of bread thing… and boiled quail eggs.  They’re smaller than chicken eggs of course, but taste about the same.  You could buy 10 for a $1.00.  No, I didn’t eat them all.  I made my colleagues eat them with me since I bought the eggs.  We also saw what we thought was a child serial killer, a man playing 3 instruments at one time, whole stacks of dead chickens complete with the heads, and some other weird things I can’t remember.

We then got to Zuleta in the late afternoon, checked into our little rustic (but nice and clean) cabins, and then headed on a short jaunt to a Condor preservation they have here.  It was cool I suppose.  They were in cages and you really didn’t get a very close up look, but hey… it’s a condor, right?  We had the choice to ride the bus back to where we were staying or walk, so most of us chose to hoof it on foot.  Well, some of us got lost.  I would say about 7 of us straggled behind, and then took a wrong turn.  Well, 2 hours and 5 extra miles later, we finally found our way back in the dark.  They served us dinner and then we headed to a local festival – something or other about the Virgin Mary sleeping.  I dunno.  Anyway, it was a neat little time.  There was a DJ, dancing, a guy dressed as a bull trying to gore children, a huge bonfire, and also a little boy lighting a tree on fire for some symbolic reason. And fireworks.  Sort of like you see on Fourth of July, only 20 feet away from us shot out of cans.  We finished the night off with some board games and then off to bed.  Speaking of my bed… when I sat down on it the first time, I broke it.  I mean really broke it.  I literally snapped one of the sideboards into two pieces.  I need to lose some weight or the beds in Ecuador aren’t made well.  Probably both.

This morning we got up, were served a breakfast of scrambled eggs, along with a grilled ham and cheese.  Tasty.  We then went on our “hike”.  I’m used to nice hikes through the woods, at low altitudes. This, however, was a hike up a mountain, starting at 10,000 feet.  I knew as soon as we started that this wasn’t going to be pleasant. The altitude already has me not being able to get a full breath and then today I combined that with a vigorous mountain hike.  About an hour into the hike, with about 30 more minutes left to get to the summit, I began to see spots in front of my eyes, and felt like I was either going to immediately pass out or throw up.  This was about 12,000 feet.  I sat down, drank some water and one of the peeps with me said I had altitude sickness.  He said I probably shouldn’t continue to the top.  Trust me, I was done.  Thankfully, there were quite a few, about half, of us that didn’t make it to the top, so I didn’t feel like too big of a wuss.  After relaxing for a bit, I started the hike down and once I got to 11,000 feet, I felt perfectly fine again.  So I guess 12,000 feet is my limit at the moment before I become a walking disaster. 

After the near puking/passing out experience, we made it back to our lodging. They served us trout for lunch, as they have a local trout farm nearby.  I’m used to fish with no heads when I eat them.  My trout had a head, as did the rest of them.  Even the eyes were still there.  One of the teachers asked me if I was going to eat the head.  I figured she was joking and told her only if she did.  Well it turns out, that’s what they do here.  They eat heads and all.  So I did… eat head and all, including the eyes, and it tasted just fine.  After lunch, we piled on the bus, stopped in a small town for some Ecuadorian bread thing and cheese, and got back to Quito tonight just after dark.  I’m sore, extremely tired, and would absolutely love to kiss Alanna and the kids right now, but all in all it was a good first week here in South America.

Adios!

And now some pics…