Life in Ecuador

It has been a week since my last post which is a long time, i know. I have so much to say but I am not sure how to fit it all into one post. I will try to organize all of my thoughts and ramblings for you ...

First of all, I have been living on a farm for the past week. It is called Hacienda Picalqui and it is up in the mountains near a town called Tabacundo ... if you feel like googling that. Life is so different here. I definitely had a near melt down the first day because I was so overwhelmed, but I have settled in and have been having so much fun.  I live in the volunteer house for now with Ali, a girl from California, and a guy from Italy. Ali and I have gotten to know the other two volunteers pretty well this past week and I love them! I have so much fun with them and we are always laughing together, I love it.  We are actually planning on going to the Amazon with them next week, to a place called Cuyabema. I don't really know anything about what we are going to do there but I'm totally fine with that! I just want to see the river dolphins and all the beauty!

I have been taking Spanish classes the past week and I still feel like I am awful at it. I can understand people pretty well but I am an awful Spanish speaker. At this point the whole language is just a confusing mess in my brain! Hopefully that will change soon. And almost no one speaks English on the farm so I really need to learn. It has been a big struggle for me to not be able to communicate with people in Spanish and has made me really discouraged, but I will keep working on it!

I realized that a lot of you don't really know what the heck I am even doing in Ecuador, so to help you out here is my basic plan: (yeah, that's right, I actually made somewhat of a plan for once in my life!)

One week at the Hacienda learning Spanish and the basics of agriculture and farming.
One and a half months living with a family outside the town of Cayambe. They do agroecology (don't worry I don't really know what that is either) and traditional Andean medicine. The mother is indigenous and speaks the indigenous language of Quechua (I hope I spelled that right?!).
One and a half months living with a different family in the community of Intag, which I know absolutely nothing about except for that it is a bit more tropical (yay malaria) and a lot more rural (how is that possible?! I feel like I'm already in the middle of nowhere!).
One month of traveling aimlessly with Ali ... maybe Galapagos islands, Cotopaxi volcano, travel along the coast, maybe the amazon again, rent motorcycles, swim, hike, anything we want and can afford really!
And then for the grand finale ... NICH COMES TO VISIT!!! He gets here at the very end of October and then will travel with us to Peru for a week where we'll go to Machu Piccu, and then flies home with me on November 8th. He got a seat next to me on the plane and everything. awwww yeeeeeahhhh!!! I can't even wait. And hopefully Alison will be coming to Peru with us too!! It will just all be amazing.

Ali and I are in Quito right now pretending to be staying at this hostel so that we can get our laundry done here, eat their yummy food, and use their internet. About the laundry thing, we attempted to wash our clothes for the first time yesterday in the cement buckets that everyone uses here. However, it went horribly and our clothes were still disgustingly dirty. No one has washers or dryers up where we're living so we have to wash our clothes by hand and hang dry them, which is a lot cooler sounding then it really is. We'll get used to it I'm sure! We hung our clothes on the line last night and then of course the hugest rainstorm hit as soon as we went to bed so they are even more soaked then before! It was pretty funny. The thing that I like about being here with Ali is that she also likes to laugh about unfortunate situations instead of getting angry or upset. Not that this was even CLOSE to our most unfortunate situation here so far, but in every bad or weird circumstance, we always just end up laughing about it.

That's all for now, I will try to post more soon!