Ecuador: Day 3 and 4

Day 3:
Unlike the first day in Ecuador, when I awoke it was cold and cloudy. It looked as though it might rain and in fact it did drizzle a bit. For the first portion of the day we stayed at home in the hotel. I drew and listened to my book on tape while Greg worked on his presentation. At around 3:00 we met Eduardo and his wife, Maria. We drove across the city to eat lunch at this nice restaurant. The restaurant was on top of a hill with a nice view of the city. I quite enjoyed looking out the windows while we were eating, seeing the building and the tree covered hills. The clouds here are quite amazing. I think I’ve seen all three types of clouds in the same day, which is very very rare in California. For lunch I got the “Ensalada Camilla” which was a salad of tomato, cheese and pesto and the Locro Soup, which is a traditional potato soup from Ecuador severed with avocado and cheese. They were both very good but I especially enjoyed the soup. We also got a juice called Guanabana with blackberry. Guanabana is a fruit from Ecuador which I haven’t found the translation for yet. Its quite good; sweet and white. After lunch we decided to go see the statue of the Virgin of Quito which is on the top of one of the big hills. Maria and Eduardo didn’t know how to get there so we drove threw many winding cobblestone streets asking people for diresctions. Even though it was really bumpy, I actually found it quite fun!
We reached the top after maybe half an hour of looking for the right way. The statue is really big and made of metal, though it looks rather like concrete. It’s is like the statue of liberty in the way that you can climb a staircase inside her. It was odd because the outside was quite grand yet the inside was painted a pale blue with painted flowers and odd almost cheesy little dioramas. It was rather incongruent. The furthest up you could go was a balcony by her feet. It was very very cold and rather windy as well. One of the most interesting things there were a bunch of old pictures showing when it was being built. They were in black and white and were really quite nice. The statue was built by a priest who had dreamed of building it for many years. The sad thing is, it was build over an ancient ruin.
We drove home and it was nice to be in the warmth of the hotel since it was so cold outside. I wrote some poetry and went to sleep.


Day 4:
Today was sunny in the early part of the morning. As the day progressed the wind grew and the clouds began to cover the sky once more, The weather here is odd because one moment it is sunny the next it is cold and cloudy. Greg needed to work on his presentation so we stayed home in the morning. I didn’t do much, just relaxed and worked on my computer. I finished up my poem from the night before, which I actually quite like, and tried to pick a picture I’m submitting to a contest. We ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, I had a penne pasta, which was supposed to have garden vegetables with it but it didn’t, and this mix of tropical fruit juices which I love and have every-time we go there. We had to hurry to pack everything before we met Sebastian, Eduardo’s friend from the collage who was to drive us. The drive was really nice. It was much more jungly and the had some interesting buildings. It also had my favorite, cobblestones which meant it was really bumpy. We arrived the collage, met Eduardo headed over to the presentation room. The collage has a nice campus. I especially liked the inner courtyard. There was this building across the way that was covered in ivy and I really liked. The presentation room is rather odd but also sort of cool. Its painted red and blue with golden Fleur de Lis print all over. Eduardo said it makes him think of Disneyland but it makes me think of like a magician’s room or something. Greg set up for a couple hours while I worked on my computer.
Greg’s talk went really well, except sometimes the translation broke his flow. There were some funny people at the talk as well. It was fun observing them and seeing their odd mannerisms. We got back to the hotel at around 9:30 and went up to the restaurant to eat (I wasn’t very hungry). We returned to our rooms to finish up some things before going to sleep. I am very tired myself and my whole body feels like its craving sleep.