Until yesterday I had not taken any real exercise in almost two weeks. A lot of walking, and the occasional sprint for a bus, but I wouldn't consider that exercise. I so decided to swim after school in the pool at Benalcazar, my school, and in doing so I accidentally found the high school swim team. All of who members are about two years younger than me, but whatever. It had to be the most tiring practice I have ever been too. I underestimated the effects of the altitude completely, the air is so thin I was absolutely exhausted after about 15 minutes. So I am going to try and swim every day in the hope that when I return to sea level I will be able to hold my breath underwater for days.
When I got back to the house, Sharon asked if I wanted to go to a basketball game, it was the college championships and Quito was playing some other team from Ecuador. If Quito lost, then it was all over, but if they won there was one more game the next day. The stadium was in the sketchiest part of town imaginable, there was huge crowd of people outside the stadium, most carrying some kind of alcohol or another. My uncle made us leave most of our stuff in the car, which was definitely a good idea.
The game was really fun, not as good as the football game last weekend but still entertaining. Quito won, just barely, so they went on to play again last night, I don't know how that game went though.
The drive home was an interesting experience in itself, as are most night-time drives here. Red lights mean nothing more than, "honk the horn and glance left and right". It is a little scary but I guess all one can do is have faith in the drivers here. Someone told me that if you get in a serious accident here, all the people involved go to jail!? I don't know if it is true but I think it would certainly give people more motivation to drive safely.
Yesterday I had school in the morning, from 8 to 10, which seems pretty pointless to me, but anyway I had to be somewhere at 9:30 and I was going to be late, so I didn't go. Instead I killed an hour walking around the main park in Quito, La Carolina. It is enormous. There tons of basketball courts, football pitches, bike paths and playgrounds, all paced with people because it was a beautiful Saturday morning.
I met my exchange group in the mall next to the park and we et off for the Teleferico, which is basically a gondola that takes you most of the way up the mountain. Being underneath the gondola I felt like I should have had my snowboard and winter clothes with me, it was quite strange. The ride up was really cool, but nothing compared to the views from the top. There is a big glass building at the top with some cafes and things. Then there are paths that go further up the mountain. So some us went all the way until we had to rent horses to get to the top, sadly there was no time for that. From the mountain you can literally see all of Quito and the rest of the valley the city was built in. It really is something. I took about 130 photos which I have figured out how to share with you! I can post a public link to the album on facebook, then you can see them without having an account. The links are at the bottom. There are three albums, one from the park and two from the mountain. The sun is really strong here, I think because we are 9200 feet closer to it, Im not entirely sure. But needless to say I underestimated that too and got a lovely sunburn.
I lent my phone to a woman who we were standing in line with to go down and she ended up in the same gondola as us. It turned out that she was from Boston and was a journalist for WGBH, it was her first day in country and she was going to write stories out in the jungle and work for an organic cocoa farm. This was really interesting to me because I also love to write and want to study journalism.
The rest of saturday was pretty uneventful, Sharon and I hunted around the mall for some aloe vera, which was almost impossible to find, but find it we did, eventually. On the way back we decided that we had to redeem ourselves from our first mountain ascent which was nothing short of an abysmal failure. This time we in a different car, one much better suited for the job. It is pretty much an engine, some wheels, some seats and a roll cage, all surrounded by thin sheets of metal. Oh, and beefy off-road tires. We made it past the place where we got stuck last time with ease, it soon got to the point where even the dirt road ended and we were essentially driving through he forest, on the side of a cliff. Then it all came to an abrupt halt, and we were victorious. On the way down Sharon told me that the people who lived on the mountain hate when non residents drive around on it, like we had just done, and had probably called the cops. Therefore we had to hurry down and get back to he paved streets were we could somewhat blend in with the other cars. Sure enough, not seconds after we were on the main road, several cop pickup trucks went by heading up the mountain with lights flashing. A close call indeed.
Today was very relaxed, we went to church (concert) again this morning, then out to lunch at a seafood kitchen. They have a certain type of cooking, mostly found on the coast, which uses lots of good seafood. As we were waiting in line to sit down I saw these plates going off to the dining room with whole fish on them. They were about a foot long each, maybe a little more, and the looked like they had simply been battered and fried whole. I ordered some kind of shrimp dish but instead got friend rice with conch in it! It was still really good.
After lunch we went and played cards for the rest of the afternoon at Aunt Susy's apartment. I finally got the hang of this game "40" they have been trying to teach me since I arrived, and we played more "31" too. I can't tell if abuelita (grandma) really has that bad of a memory or if she is quite a cheater, every time I play cards with her I tend to think the latter, but I say nothing haha.
School tomorrow. I get up at 5:30. Every morning I have to do battle with the shower, in my sub-zero bathroom, in order to get it to surrender it's precious hot water. I am getting the used to it I think, but maybe it has a new trick up its sleeve for tomorrow morning, who knows.
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