near death-by-gas-leak and blood soup

note: this entry written on 9/9
this week was the last week of orientation language and culture classes. i think i’m going to miss our good little discussions in them. but it does feel nice to have final exams and papers out of the way. i wrote my final papers on graffiti here and on the effects of plan colombia on ecuador. if you’d like to discuss, just ask :)

after class on friday, i received the best haircut of my life, and all for the low, low price of only $8.50, which included wash, my-hair-is-real-dry-but-especially-here-in-these-mountains leave-in treatment, and semi-style. i pretty much let the haircutter have his way, which i appreciate because i don’t like making those type of hair decisions (and plus i couldn’t understand most of his questions anyway!) but it turned out nicely.

then we had a “cocktail de bienvenida” at the university with our families to celebrate the end of classes. drinks, appetizers, and three hours of dancing. and i actually enjoyed it! and we went out clubbing later, and i actually enjoyed that too! (though i could’ve done without the strobe light and frequent reggaeton).
yesterday marked the first day that i tried an authentic ecuadorian dish and hated it. caldo de pata (cow foot soup) was greasy and included actual cows feet with hair and hoof still attached. i hope that i didn’t offend my family, but i really just couldn’t do it… (and since then i’ve also tried caldo de sangre...thats right, blood soup... same gross texture of gross meats, same greasiness, just this time with the raw flavor of blood mixed in!)

yesterday also marked perhaps my nearest brush with death while here, and in a way no one would have expected. my sis and i were cooking eggplant parmesan for the family with the help of their gas oven. at one point, i began to smell gas, but thought “oh, its probably just the way their oven is…” and by the time that i began to feel dizzy and sleepy, my sis was like “omg” (or the spanish equivalent) “do you smell gas?” the light had gone out in the oven and had probably been escaping for about 20 mins. which was especially dangerous because we had a fire going on the stove. thank God we didn’t explode!

hanging out with my sis and her ecuadorian friends is interesting. the guys are so laid back. i feel like i’m in a latin american film while with them (apologies if that sounded terribly cheesy). and they like to drive around aimlessly a lot, which made me slightly nostalgic for high school… (ha! but seriously, its kind of fun)
last night i saw “que tan lejos,” a new ecuadorian film, with them. it was so typical ecuadorian. all the ecuadorians were laughing at tons of “dichos” that i only partially understood. but i really hope it comes to the u.s. so i can watch it with you, friends, and show you a bit of typical ecuador.

and today brings a fiesta with family friends in which we will eat barbequed sheep. mmmmm. more later, have a good one, friends!