(typed this in notepad, I'm hoping the font will copy and paste with more ease to blogger.. we shall see!) By the way, I uploaded photos from the weekend to the same facebook album, you can see them here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=597178&id=774675412&l=0973787482
Friday night before getting ready for my trip I ate dinner with my host family (typical), Genesis started crying (also typical). She had been a little sick, so I account the random crying to delusional sickness. Then I realized that she was saying she wanted to go to Banos with me. My host mom kept telling her that she couldn't go, which was only more upsetting. Eventually her dad told her that we would see how she feels in the morning, and then we will ask if she can go to Banos with me. I definitely felt loved. Apparently, Saturday night she asked her parents if "La Joy" was coming back, and they had to tell her I wouldn't be back until Sunday. Cute right? Genesis was sick this weekend along with my host mom and brother. I think everyone is recovering nicely. It was a good weekend to be gone, since Lumbisi's water was not working... (it's working again now! I take back my complaint on water pressure and temperature)
So the trip itself:
I left Lumbisi a little after 7a.m. on Saturday morning to meet everyone in Cumbaya. We took a small bus to la Hacienda Pachamama (Pachamama means Mother Nature) in Machachi. It's in the province of Cotopaxi near the Cotopaxi volcano (the one I can see from my window). I was asleep for most of the bus ride.
The Hacienda was beautfiul, it is privately owned by a Vaquero (can't remember his name =/) and his family. He was wearing a pancho and a cowboy hat! There's a lot of Spanish influence mixed in with indigenous aspects. We ate breakfast there: homemade taxo yogurt, strawberries, bananas, warm bread, ham, cheese and hot chocolate. After we walked around the Hacienda, it's basically like a large farm. We fed chickens and turkeys. Highlight: El Vaquero was giving us a tour and he introduced us to Milagros the cow. We all started to follow him into a different area, and he said we were missing Milagros. Since I had talked to him during breakfast he knew my name so he asked me to get the cow. Honestly, cows make me a little nervous. They're very large animals. So I turned to Milagros, and said "Come here!" in Spanish, also I faintly waved in my direction. She turned around and actually took a step. By then everyone was laughing so I just kind of walked away...
After that, we did a little sack racing, tug-of-war and vaccinated some cows. We also learned how to use a lasso. The boys in our program actually got some of the cows. Then we walked around the property. This involved climbing under/over/jumping across barbed wire with electric currents. Some people got shocked on accident, some people got shocked on purpose. At one point I opted to army crawl under one of the fences (it actually didn't have an electric current because I failed at army crawling and touched the fence).
We walked a lot, but the views were breathtaking. If the sky was clear, I think we could have seen at least 3 volcanoes if not more. Then we ate corn and then lunch. We spent some time with horses. I fed a goat. And back onto the bus we went at 4pm, tired and muddy.
We drove about 2 hours to Huasalata an indigenous community. We spent the night there in the Hostel. We had a large dinner, served with cuy! I tried it, it was interesting, I'm not sure I can say I like it mostly because I couldn't get to a lot of the meat. I think I was eating wrong. (tangent: I told my host family I tried cuy, they were so excited for me. Also when I told them some people have cuy as pets in the U.S. they laughed) After dinner El Grupo Cultural Samay, musical group, came and played live music. There were some Andean dances going on. I danced with a 40 year old man then a little girl about 4 years old. The 4 year old did not look happy about it. After everyone had stopped dancing the same man wanted to dance again. So off I went. Dancing consisted of stomping around in beat to the music. We were about 5 feet away from each other, no eye contact. Slightly awkward!
In the morning we had breakfast before going on a walk on a mountainous trail. The whole thing made me want to exercise more on a regular basis, I was so tired afterwards. We walked down to the river to cut grass to feed cows/donkeys. Then we carried the grass back up the mountain. I carried it for a very small distance before trading off with someone else. I saw some people in the community carrying the grass, they looked like moving bushes.
Back on the bus and off to Banos. We walked around, had some sugar cane (reminds me of Taiwan!) and water taffy. We also visited a church made from volcanic rock. Then we went to a the Waterfall of the Virgin. It was pretty. I was disappointed by the thermal pools, they looked like regular pools but super crowded. We actually didn't go swimming. I did drink half a sip of "holy water."
Lunch. Zoo. There were lots of monkeys and birds. There was a parrot who would say "Hola" and then laugh. Around 5:30 p.m. we got back on the bus to go home. On the bus we saw Tungurahua, the active volcano that everyone is worried about in Banos. It's very large. If it erupted I would not be able to dodge the ash, as awesome as I am. I got back to Lumbisi around 8:30 p.m.
Font works! Epic long post.
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