Journey to the Center of the Earth!

Went on an adventure to the center of the earth on Tuesday. Middle of the earth. The EQUATOR! Learned many facts today at the equator.

1. Water in a drain goes straight down at the equator (no swirling). BUT just a few feet north of the equator, the water spins clockwise…a few feet south and the water goes counterclockwise. MIND BLOWING!
2. You weigh less on the equator because the force of gravity is actually less.
3. It is impossible to balance and egg on a nail in any part of the earth besides the equator because of the centrifugal forces on the yolk make it too difficult.
4. Um…some other stuff that I can’t remember.

After our “Mitad del Mundo” visit, we visited an old Cathedral in the old city of Quito. That was my first time in a Cathedral that big, but it was overwhelming how huge it was! I have no idea how they built that…or even fathomed it. One thing interesting about the Basilica was that it had gargoyles...but they were like iguanas, turtles, monkeys, and dolphin gargoyles in honor of the Galapagos Islands.

We also got a tour in the Presidential Palace, so it’s like the white house of Quito. We found a latin love for my good friend Sarah at the presidential palace…a latin love tour guide. He may or may not be the only man we’ve met taller than her. I think things will work out for them really well.

Guinea Pigs and Swine Flu

Monday we spent most of the day in Otavalo touring with the Benson Institute. It was set up in 1982, and they teach able families how to farm and use their land well. Ezra Taft Benson was the president of the LDS church and was also the Secretary of Agriculture for the U.S. So the Benson Institute was formed through BYU as a way to see how to improve agriculture in developing countries where the death rates were high. The people from the institute go and teach the people about how to use their land. We visited 4 homes, and they all seemed to have chickens, and cuy(guinea pig) and grow corn, herbs, and other vegetables. Yep, these cute little guinea pigs are some sort of delicacy here. (We tried one later, but there was hardly any meat on it. Pretty sick...all organs and teeth intact. But you could guess that yep, it still tasted like chicken..like everything else!)


We also met an 89-year-old midwife up in the farmlands who had been delivering babies since she was 20! She was pretty funny. We asked her a lot about her techniques, and she just sat on a stump for a half an hour talking...although not many of the fluent speakers understood her too well. I think she was combining 2 languages. But one thing I did understand was that she buried the placentas in the field behind her...so this is the midwife and the placenta field! She also had a pig that I obviously wanted to pet. Then we were told to leave him alone or we might get swine flu...bring it on.

The last great thing we did yesterday was take a little boat ride in a lake by a volcano called Cuicocha. A dormant volcano, that is. One crazy thing about the lake was that you can see gas emissions bubbling up from the bottom of the lake! Wished I would have seen some T Rexs or Brontosauruses because it felt like Jurassic Park. It was so beautiful though. Everything yesterday actually. There's just so much up and down when we drive...SO MANY mountains. We said bye to Otavalo and then headed back to Quito where we'll be until we go home.

Karate Chop a Llama

Sunday we went to church in Otavalo. I guess there are like 20% members there, which seems like kind of a lot! The people there are so welcoming. In sacrament meeting, some of the songs were sung a capella and some played on the LDS hymn cds. Tricia and I went to Primary with all the little kids, and the girls in there were asking us all sorts of questions. Some 10 year olds were asking if we had any swine flu in Utah. Hah...funny that it's such a big thing that kids are even concerned about it. The other day in Guayaquil one guy came up to our van window trying to sell medical masks for swine flu protection.

After church we spent a lot of time outside reading on our little porch, talking, and walking around. Some of us decided to take pictures around the lake and the llamas in the little grassy area behind our cabin. Thus the karate kicking a llama. No harm done though...I was too afraid to get closer than a mile away.

We had devotional, as usual, and then we tried to build a fire in our fireplace because it get pretty cold at night. Didn't work so well. :/ Who knew we'd be wanting a fire in Ecuador?!

Otavalo

Welcome to our humble abode. We are now in Otavalo, Ecuador, and this is our quaint little cabin on Puertolago. We had an early flight yesterday, but it was only 35 minutes long. The best part of the flight was our eSnack time. I'm really obsessed with these Nestle Coco cracker/cookie things, and it was our lucky day!

The worst part of the trip was when we got SCAMMED at the airport. As we were loading our stuff onto the big tourism bus at the airport in Quito, some guys were acting like they were hired help, offering to load our stuff. I was still waiting for my luggage inside the airport when this all happened, so I missed it. But my friend got her backpack stolen with her money, passport, laptop, camera, scriptures...pretty much her whole life in there! It was so sad, and I felt sick that it all happened. She had such a good attitude about it and realized there wasn't anything to do about it besides report it to the police. It was a good wakeup call for all of us; I think we'll all be a lot more cautious.

We drove a few hours to Otovalo to do some shopping in the big open market place. TONS of stuff. Everyone kept getting lost in how big it was. It's the center for shopping in Ecuador because everyone brings in their crafts, jewelry, blankets, fruit, etc. This part of the country is very different than Guayaquil...more indigenous, more farming, weather is cooler, lots of mountains. It's so pretty! On our drive here we listened to some Andean Beatles, Phil Collins, and Frank Sinatra. Andean as in like pan flutes...so funny, but I actually like it!

These pictures are really messed up on my blog, but the picture in the middle is of a guy packing up his tent after the market thing. SO BIG! Those are so heavy and little old ladies carry them around too!

Bye Bye Guayaquil!

Last day in Guayaquil. We met with the Hogar de Cristo people and presented the information we gathered from the kids' health screenings. We got it done in time, and it all went well! On our way back to the hotel, we had a perma-smile contest for 33 minutes. Yep, 33 straight minutes of smiling. Other ways to keep us occupied during our times of waiting this week was MASH. Yeah, from like 3rd grade. What could be better than the possibility of living in a shack, marrying Billy Ray Cyrus, and working as a lotto ticket saleswoman on the street? Maybe a Gigapet. But none of those are currently available in Guayaquil.

For lunch we went to a restaurant on the Malecon because the Junta wanted to take us to lunch before we left. They gave us a bunch of appetizers, but we weren't really sure what they all were. There was fried Yucca, which is like a potato but starchier. Empanadas and humitas (a corn mush thing cooked in oil) were the only things we really knew, but it was interesting to try a little bit of everything. The Junta has been so great to us. They have driven us EVERYWHERE everyday and helped set up a lot we've done here.

This afternoon we had some time to go to the market and do a few last minute things before we leave Guayaquil...like go to Fragola and get our last ice cream! Tricia, Sarah, and I went to get the ice cream covered in chocolate, their specialty. Our good friend and loyal ice cream patron, Andres, was geared up with his swine flu mask to serve up a wonderful coconut ice cream cone covered in chocolate. How wonderful it was. (P.S. This one was a small!)

Funny 6th Graders

Today was our last day in the community doing health screenings. We went to a nicer school; I think it may have been private. The boy in this top picture was just so cute today. He started crying before he even got his finger poked...he started crying as soon as his vision was getting checked. So sad! Nothing a little candy couldn't help though. After we did some screenings, we went to a 6th grade classroom for kids to write down everything they had eaten in the past 24 hours and then circle the things they thought were healthy. The kids in the classroom didn't know where their teacher was. So after we collected the papers from them, one of the students came up to us with her notebook seeing if we would write our names on the paper. Then she asked if she could have our signatures. In about 2 seconds that turned into all 30 6th grades throwing their notebooks in our faces for us to sign. Hah, it was so funny. Like INSANE. We couldn't make our way through the crowd to leave even! Finally, Sarah got them to settle down and SIT down. The other two girls left the room, and just as I was walking out the door I took a picture of the kids nicely sitting down. But not at all really, cause they started CHARGING the door. (This picture of all the kids is just a glimpse of what was about to happen.) I booked it out of there, and the 3 of us ran out of there and down the stairs laughing so hard. That might have been my first time getting mobbed.

The rest of the day was free of any attacks. We went to the University of Guayaquil's nursing school to tour it. We got to talk with some of the students there, and I realized that I carried on a pretty long, normal conversation with a couple of the girls there (in Spanish). So that felt good! Then, tonight we sang at the church "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" and "I Need Thee Every Hour." After us, the missionary choir sang. It was pretty short, but we ended up waiting for our ride twice as long as we were actually there.

Ciudad de Israel

Went into the community today to the Ciudad de Israel school. It's just a really little school with dirt floors and old, broken desks. We didn't have a table to set our stuff up on at all, so we just used a broken desk. We were going to do the health screenings outside, but the volunteers we were working with thought it'd be better inside. That turned out to be like 10 degrees hotter since the building was concrete. We survived though! And some of the children only barely survived the screenings...lots of screaming with the finger pokes. Kids are really good at clenching their fists!

It's late...so not much time to write things. The kids are cute.