Quick Recap and a few additional pictures

Dear Chris Kwon,

This week has been interesting. I returned to school on Wednesday and heard of everyone's weekends. There were three landslides blocking the road home from the beach, so the majority of my classmates had great stories about their return-trip-struggles. My culture class teacher asked us to evaluate the class. We all agreed that the readings were really boring. She agreed, but said we have to read them, because UW provided it. She suggested we take more excursions, which we all thought was a wonderful idea. We have two excursions planned: for the first one, we are going to a museum on Tuesday.

On Thursday, I went to service learning (I got there late, of course). Neither one of my fellow volunteers came, so I was on my own. I HATE being there. A man who has been there a while came and entertained me. By entertain, I mean he held my hand and told me how beautiful I am. Ugh. After 5 minutes of this, I took my hand away from him. I felt utterly creeped out. I reminded him that he had a wife- who has cancer. He backed off and we had a good conversation about culture differences between Ecuador and the U.S. In class, we watched the Mexican movie Amarte Duele. It reminded me a lot of Crazy Beautiful, because it deals with an interclass relationship. I guess that's sort of like many other love stories.

This morning, I woke up and worked on homework. For some reason, I had a ton of work to do. I worked on some, then put on my only clean athletic clothes, which were some non-flattering shorts and an oversized shirt that has been permanently stained by the amazon. I ran to and through the park. I got more whistles in that outfit than I have ever received. I feel like people were mocking me. Oh machismo. A while ago, I saw this dog truck. It reminded me of one of those dog-catcher's trucks in a Disney movie. I saw it again today in the park and realized that this was the dog-walker's vehicle. Here, people pay someone to pick up their dog, take it to the park, and tie it to a tree. They probably eventually walk it, but it seemed strange. There is a dirtbike course on the edge of the park that I discovered today. I think it would be interesting to see a race.

I hate this country, because everything is so private. I just found out today that there is a train that leaves from Quito and goes to Cotopaxi, a huge mountain. I also learned that there is a wax museum in the city. None of the guidebooks bother to mention these things. Fortunately, Monica, our culture teacher, always suggests things for us to do. There are oodles of soccer games each week, but there is no posted schedule. I hope I find sweet things to do this weekend. Tonight, I'm off to La Calle Ronda, which is in the old town.