i'm melting!

Hello all! I have not written in a couple of days. And it has been a weird couple of days. Exciting, but in a boring kind of way.
I didn’t have school last Thursday, and then I didn’t go on Friday because I never bought the right kind of shoes, and all that was really happening was this presentation thing for the flag of Ecuador. Friday night I went out for pizza with two other girls to celebrate my friend’s 16th birthday! It was fun, but BY FAR the weirdest part was that we were allowed to walk BY OURSELVES AT NIGHT. I hadn’t walked anywhere before that, let alone by myself when it was dark. It was really weird, and I learned that living here has made me paranoid. Wahoo.
Yesterday afternoon, I went running with three other exchange students, and then afterwards, two of us went to my host aunt’s house for dinner. And it was a strange dinner. It was almost entirely made out of plantains and bananas. There were fried green plantains, baked green plantains, these round things made out of ripe plantains and cheese, and bananas cooked in this sweet orangey sauce. The only thing that we ate that didn’t have a plantain or a banana in it was the hard boiled eggs. Everything was really good, it was just kind of weird.
On Monday and Tuesday, I went to school again. I’ve been feeling really discouraged at school. The oldest kids there are only 16- the other exchange student and I were by far the two oldest students- and it was really hard for me to make friends that I actually wanted to spend time with outside of school. Anyway, on Tuesday, about 20 minutes into my first class, I started BAWLING. I threw all of my stuff into my backpack and just got up and left. I feel kind of bad about that now, because we were in English class, and the teacher there is really nice, but I couldn’t have stayed. Anyway, I went and sat in a corner and cried for a while, and then I called my host mom. There has been a pretty intense strike at the university that the high school is inside of, so she told me that when I called her crying, she was really scared that I was crying because the protesters were attacking the high school- making fires and throwing rocks there too! Eventually, one of the secretaries who works in the school and who is a former student of my host mom came and found me and brought me to the office. I sat down and she gave me some water and waited with me until my host dad came to pick me up. When he came, he took me to the school that my host mom works at. It is quite different from the other school I was going to- it is a lot bigger, and it is also a public girls school, whereas the other one was a private, coed one. She knew that I hadn’t been enjoying school at all, so she asked me if I would like to go to her school for a couple of weeks. So that’s what I will be doing next week! Overall, my morning was terrible, but at least something good came out of it. I am excited to start at the new school- I am hopeful that it will be better. After we left school, we went with one of my host mom’s friends to the grocery store. I think my host mom was feeling sorry for me- we ended up buying a ton of weird fruits and some peanut butter too. :) So far I’ve tried one of the fruits- it’s yellow and kind of spiky and it’s sort of like a kiwi inside. It’s kind of weird- I’ll take a picture next time I eat one. It was quite tasty though!
Yesterday I started feeling a bit sick- my throat was bothering me and my ears felt stuffed up. When I woke up this morning, I felt TERRIBLE. I ended up not going to school again today! I slept late, ate oranges and peanut butter and crackers for breakfast, and then went to the school that my host mom works at, because there is a doctor there! I don’t really know what she decided is wrong with me, but she gave me a whole bunch of medicines to take. I started taking them today at lunch, so hopefully I will start to feel better soon.
This afternoon, I decided to take a nap, since that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick, and I was tired. Which would have been great, except it was SO HOT. And naps are not enjoyable when you are sweating. I finally fell asleep, and then woke up when the sun went down. It has been SO HOT here for the past couple of days. And it’s not even the hot season yet! I do not know what I am going to do when it gets hotter and more humid here. Possibly melt.
LOVE, Kirsty

WHAT did i eat?

Okay so this has nothing to do with anything, but I just realized that I never wrote about it, and it’s kind of funny. And I have nothing better to do now, so I will write it to all of you!
The other day, I went out to lunch with some of Noralma’s brothers and sisters, and a whole bunch of people. (I wrote about that part already). Anyway, we all ordered food, and the VERY LAST two dishes to come out were mine and Ricardo’s. They seriously took like an hour and a half. I had ordered breaded fish and he had ordered breaded shrimp. Someone that I think is my host uncle or someone made a joke- had I ordered ‘pescado apAnado’ (breaded fish), or ‘pescado apEnado’ (sad fish, because it had taken so long to cook)?
Okay yeah, so this probably wasn’t worthy of a real post. But I remembered it and it made me laugh. :)
Love you all! Kirsty

partyin' in ecuador (well sort of)

Hola!
So last night, after I wrote the last post, I went to my friend Amina’s house, because her host mom had planned a little get-together since her birthday is Friday. There were six of us total- Amina, Leslie, and I, who are all exchange students, and three of Amina’s friends from school. It was a lot of fun! Since Amina’s friends from school don’t speak English, we all spoke in Spanish the whole time, which was good for us, since we’re learning, and it was also really impressive! I didn’t really know that I could do that until last night! :) Anyway, it was a lot of fun.
Today was the holiday for the patron saint of Portoviejo, so there were no classes, and I think that there was a parade and a fair as well. I didn’t go to the fair OR the parade, but I definitely enjoyed the no-school part. Today was also Ricardo’s birthday- he turned 5, and we had a party here at our house for him. I’ve been to four birthday parties in the month that I’ve been here (three out of four of them have been for kids under the age of 10), and I think I’ve learned quite a bit about birthday parties. First of all, if you don’t have a piñata, it doesn’t count as a birthday party. Second, you MUST have ridiculous amounts of food, and everyone MUST eat. I am about to pop.
If I survive, I will post again soon!
LOVE, Kirsty

what's a cheetah?

Hello everyone! I just realized that I haven’t updated in a couple of days. Life has been good here. This Sunday I went with my host mom, Noralma, and a whole bunch of her sisters and brothers (because she has a lot) to some restaurant in the countryside to eat lunch. Afterwards, we went to someone else’s house to spend the afternoon there. The house was GORGEOUS. It has a huge courtyard and two little houses, so people can throw big parties there- there is a stage thing for live music and a large dance-floor thing, and also have a place to spend the night. It was cool. The family that lived there also owns a four-wheeler, so all of the kids (all of my host-cousins and I) spent the afternoon riding around on that. By the end of the day, I was COVERED in dust. It was gross, but definitely worth it.
School so far this week has been okay. Today I was at school all day (7 am to 1:30 pm), and we only had one 40 minute class. The class was math, too, which is undoubtedly the easiest class in the world. Saturday is ‘Flag Day’ in Ecuador, so the whole school was practicing for some presentation that we will do on Friday. As far as I know, all I have to do is walk behind someone and do whatever they do. Tomorrow I don’t have classes because it is the Patron Saint of Portoviejo’s special day. And then I only have to go to school on Friday from 7 to 10:30 for the presentation thingy, so that will be good.
Today during school the class I am in and one other class randomly got on a bus and went to another high school to watch plays in English. It was weird- I had no idea that we were going anywhere until the other exchange student in my school, Lizzie, told me what we were doing. It was fun though! It was really hard to hear anything, so Lizzie and I mostly just sat there and talked, but we could understand the play from our school since we saw it the day before as well. I ALSO wore the wrong thing to school today- apparently we were allowed to wear our pants, and I wore the ugly skirt. :(

Yesterday at school, someone came up to me and asked me what a 'cheetah' was. I wasn't exactly thinking straight, and I absolutely COULD NOT remember what it was. So I told her that that wasn't a word in English. As soon as I got into the car, my neighbors (who speak little English) reminded me that a cheetah is a big cat that is really fast. I felt a bit dumb. :)
I have good news! I have found a place where I can run! There is another exchange student who lives VERY close to a sport-complex thing, so I take a taxi to his house every day at 5:15, and then my taxi picks me up from his house again at 6:45. It has been working out really well so far- there have been other exchange students coming with us, and it’s been a lot of fun! It has also been great to be able to run again. The place we go running is HUGE. There is a pool, a gymnastics center, a baseball field, a weight-lifting center, a rock-climbing center that is being built, and probably a whole lot more too that I just haven’t seen yet. There are also kids that live there who are from other countries who come here to train! So I guess they have good trainers or something. I thought that was kind of neat. We see them running every day, and there are also some who high jump. There’s a cat there too who is really cute.
Tomorrow is Ricardo’s birthday, and we are having a birthday party for him at our house sometime in the afternoon. I will let you all know how that goes tomorrow!
LOVE, Kirsty
I just uploaded more pictures to my Flickr page, so you are welcome to check those out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/estoyenecuador/sets/72157622121121932/

please don't hurt yourself laughing

I have survived my first week of Ecuadorian high school. Hip hip hooray!
So far I’m not too impressed with school. The people are nice, but there are some days when it is absolutely for them to let me forget that they’re all the same age as my younger brother, and a WHOLE LOT more immature. Like today.
I hope that when my Spanish is better and I can understand everything, school will be more interesting. I’m not sure though- then the teachers might expect me to do homework and such, and I don’t really know how I feel about that… :)
I also managed to survive my first week of wearing a uniform to school. That part was terrible. We have three different uniforms: one for Mondays, one for Fridays, and one for the rest of the days of the week. The Friday one is the best, because it’s just sweatpants and a t-shirt, but the other two are pretty terrible. Here’s a picture of the Monday one. I am not EVER going to take a picture of the one I have to wear on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays because it is that bad. Go ahead and picture it for yourself: long ugly denim skirt, tall ugly white socks, ugly black shoes, and an ugly polo shirt. It is horrid. Here is a picture of the one i have to wear every Monday. Hopefully you are all in good health- I would feel kind of bad if you hurt yourself while laughing at this photo... :) Also, keep in mind that this picture was taken at like 6:30 AM, before my host mom left for work. Maybe that's why I look so tired... :)
That’s all for now. I hope that everyone enjoys their weekend! Love you!

school school school

Hello there! Today was my third official day of school and I have decided that I don’t like it. It would be alright if it weren’t so boring and if I was actually learning something. Unfortunately, everything (except chemistry) is REALLY EASY. Today in my math class, we were doing something with number patterns. I actually had to explain the pattern for: 2,4,6 and 5,7,9. Yes. It was ridiculous.
The school that I go to is actually inside of a pretty big university, which is nice, because it definitely feels like a school and is very safe. It is quite small- there are about 40 students in my ‘grade’- about 25 are in ‘sciencias’ (where I am), and the rest are in ‘technica’. The other exchange student is in ‘technica’, which is good because I am forced to speak Spanish almost all day long. The building we are in is also new, which is good because it has air conditioning, which is apparently pretty rare here. I am lucky. Monday I had the same classes as last week- homeroom, physics, a computer class, ‘development of thinking’, English, and chemistry, BUT we had a presentation about HIV, so we didn’t go to English, our computer class, or ‘development of thinking’, which is just fine with me. We have two breaks everyday, which most people spend eating and talking with friends. Most schools here don’t have cafeterias, and since we don’t finish classes until 1:35, there is a snack bar that everyone gets something to eat from. I have mostly avoided it so far, since I’m kind of scared of buying something for myself- Ecuadorians don’t believe in lines, so you sort of just have to push yourself to the front of the crowd and shove your money towards an employee and hope that they get you what you want.
Today I had English, math, investigation, literature, physics, and ‘administration’. English was boring- everything moves SO SLOW. I don’t really know what we did in ‘investigation’, but I copied something down and sat there while the people around me talked about something. I think that my class was performing little skit things in our literature class, but no one was paying attention and it mostly just seemed like everyone was fooling around all class long, so I’m not really sure. Physics was okay because I know what to do as long as I copy the problem down right, but it’s hard because the teacher reads out the problem and actually knowing all of the words is sometimes a challenge. I don’t understand ‘administration’ at all. There was a teacher there who is also our homeroom teacher, and she was talking about a lot of things, but I don’t know if they are related or not. There was definitely something about a trip next year, a party (maybe this weekend?), lots of food, and money, but I don’t know if that all ties together or not. I also think we are going to a church tomorrow sometime during school. I don’t know when or why or how, but I think we’re going. I guess I will find out tomorrow! The great thing about being an exchange student is learning to do whatever, whenever. I NEVER know what is going on, or where I am going, or what I need to bring or why. I just get in the car. I am getting quite good at it.
School today was terribly boring, but this afternoon was a lot of fun! When I got home from school, my exchange student friend Leslie was at my house. We had made plans earlier to go to the mall today, and apparently her host dad was leaving to go somewhere so he dropped her off before I got home. Anyway, I changed out of my beautiful uniform and ate lunch and then we went and picked up Amina (another exchange student, from Switzerland), and went to the mall! When we were at the camp last week, food came up quite often in the conversations, so we were basically talking about all of the food that we miss all week long. SO, we went grocery shopping. :) And now I have a pretty large stockpile of junk food. Which is good. We wandered around the grocery store for at least an hour- we had nothing better to do than buy ridiculous amounts of junk food and look at all of the weird stuff. OH and then we were just walking around when some random employee came up to us and invited us to some party somewhere tomorrow afternoon. And he didn’t seem to think that it was weird either. Whatever. The three of us thought it was pretty hilarious. After spending more money than we should have on sweets, we decided to go get some ice cream to eat and then watch a movie! When we were eating ice cream, we also met up with two other exchange students that go to the same school as Leslie. It was nice to meet more exchange students. There are TONS here in Portoviejo. Then Leslie, Amina, and I went to see ‘The Ugly Truth’, which was good. Movies here come out a LOT later than they do in the US. They also leave a lot of them in English and just put Spanish subtitles in, which is nice for us English-speakers. Now I am just rambling.
I hope everything in the States is going well, and I love and miss you all!
LOVE, Kirsty

a little excitement!

Hello! Sorry about not posting for a while! I have actually been out of town since Tuesday at a language camp with a whole bunch of other exchange students. The whole idea of ‘language camp’ is to learn more Spanish, but I don’t think many people did. The best part about the week was just getting to meet the other exchange students. We stayed at this resort/farm sort of thing, which was weird, but kind of cool. The worst part about it was that the running water was TOTALLY unpredictable, which is really bad when the water just happens to stop when you have shampoo in your hair and really need to rinse it out. But anyway, it was fun, and I actually have some friends now, which is a change for the better. :)
Spanish camp was great and all, but the most exciting part was definitely the ride home. The trip was about 3 hours total. In the first two and a half hours, we were pulled over TWICE for some unknown reason. THEN, when we were about 5 minutes from home, a van cut off the bus and our bus driver slammed on the brakes and we skidded off of the road! Roads here aren’t exactly in great shape, so we skidded off of the raised part that is the road and into the dirt and piles of bricks that was next to the road. When it was happening, I didn’t even comprehend what was actually happening- I was just sort of watching everything happen around me. The scariest part was the split second after we fell off the side of the road when I wasn’t sure if we were going to keep on moving towards the ground or not. Anyway, everyone on the bus was safe- the van that actually caused the accident just kept on driving. We all got off of the bus and freaked out a bit, and then were rushed back on the bus because someone told us that we had to go before the police arrived, and apparently that’s what you do in Ecuador. :) They ended up finding us anyway, but after we had arrived anyway, so we were able to leave with our host parents.
Tomorrow I will begin my first full week of school, so we’ll see how that goes…
I love you all!
Love, Kirsty

everybody loves ceviche

There is a high school two doors down from our house (which seems like it would be weird, but it’s really not here), and every weekday morning all of the cars driving by and kids talking loudly wake me up. Oh, and classes start at 7, so it starts getting loud at like 6:45. :/ Weekends are nice because I can actually sleep a little later. This morning Mika the dog woke me up. At least she waited until 8:30. :)
Apparently everyone here in Portoviejo eats ceviche at least once every weekend- my family always eats it on Sunday afternoons for lunch. Ceviche is not one of my favorite Ecuadorian foods so far, so I’m not too thrilled about it, but oh well. I actually feel kind of bad about not liking it because everyone here gets SO EXCITED when we have it. :/ Oh well. My host mom is WONDERFUL and she knows that ceviche’s not my favorite, so she gave me some ‘arroz con polllo’, which is totally the same thing as fried rice, except it’s Ecuadorian and not Chinese.
After lunch, my host parents told me that we were going to Manta, which is like 30 minutes away from our house. Manta is COOL. It’s a port town, so there are tons of boats, and there’s a really nice beach too. They also build boats there! Which is really cool because there’s a whole bunch of partly-built boats sitting on the sand and they just look really neat. After Manta, my host dad decided to keep on driving for a while. We ended up going to another beach, called Santa Marianita. It was really cool- it’s not very big, and there’s no town next to it, so it’s a lot more peaceful than the other beaches we’ve been to. There is also a kiteboarding school there! They had a whole bunch of kites laying on the beach and a couple of people went out kiteboarding. The first time I saw kiteboarders, I was with my family in the Dominican Republic, and I don’t know why, but this time, it seemed a lot less dangerous than it did then. Maybe it’s because I’m older, or maybe it’s because it actually IS less dangerous. It looks fun though. :D
Anyway, we stayed at the beach for a while, and I ate the best coconut-flavored ice cream I have ever had. I also managed to get coconut-flavored ice cream all over myself. Way to go Kirsty for being messier than the 4 year old! :)
I start school tomorrow. :( I actually have to wear a TIE with my ridiculous uniform, and since I don’t know how to tie a tie, and neither does anyone in my family, we went to our next door neighbors and asked them to tie it for me! :) It is now tied, but I do not know HOW to tie it, so I am just going to try really hard not to undo it. :) We’ll see how that goes…

happy birthday to you!

Hola! Not too much has been happening around here.
Yesterday I went with Marybel to the fruit market, where we bought a whole bunch of fruits and vegetables. Now there is a huge branch of plantains sitting in our kitchen. Like, there are at least 40. :) The market was really cool though. There are tons of fruits and vegetables, lots of which I’ve never even seen before. There were also a lot of chickens that were going to be someone’s lunch. I didn’t like that part so much.
Today I went to a birthday party for a 7 year old! It’s the second party for someone under the age of 10 I’ve been to in like a week. At least I’m moving up though- the last party was for a 2 year old. Maybe eventually I will get to hang out with kids my age... it might be a while at the rate I’m going right now, though. :) Birthday parties here are ridiculous. Today, there was a mariachi band and like 6 clowns. And they served dinner to everyone there- at least 50 people. OH! And when they sing the birthday song, they sing part of it in English! Except it is not actually English, it is just something that at one point in time sounded like 'happy birthday', and eventually morphed into something a lot closer to 'abby burtay'.
There was an Ecuador soccer game today, against Colombia, so throughout all of Portoviejo, EVERYONE was wearing either soccer jerseys or yellow t-shirts. Also, on all of the busy roads in town, there were millions of people asking if you want to buy a little flag with a suction cup on the end so you can stick it to the inside of your windshield. We said no. Anyway, my host parents took me into town to get a soccer jersey, and I wore it this afternoon. :) It didn’t seem to help the team though- Ecuador lost.
This Monday is my first day of school, and I’m scared. :/

There’s nothing grosser than eating lunch and finding out later that it was a cow foot

I ate cow-foot soup today. Of course, I didn’t know it was cow foot soup until AFTERWARDS, but still. I even liked it, except for the large slimy thing sitting in the middle of the bowl that turned out to be the actual foot. So far, that’s the only really disgusting thing that I’ve eaten so far, but I don’t usually know what I’m eating, so I could be mistaken. :)
Before lunch, I took another trip to my high school to officially sign up, and when we were there, I asked what classes I would be taking. High school here is a lot different from high school in the US. Here, I will stay in one classroom all day long, with all of the same students, and the teachers will change classrooms. So anyway, one of the secretaries gave me a list of subjects I’ll be studying. Some of them will only be once a week, some of them will be more often, and some of them will be less often. Here it is: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Literature, Foreign languages, Computers, Dance and Theatre Workshops (!!!), technical drawing?, Scientific Investigation?, something about thinking, Administration, Homeroom, and Anatomy. I am kind of excited for those dance and theatre workshops- I expect they will be quite hilarious.
Since I don’t have any friends, I have been hanging out with Claudia and Emilio pretty often. We went out with some of Emilio’s friends tonight to eat. My new favorite food: empestada. It’s a frozen banana coated in chocolate, and it is good. :)