Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!

Sunday I got up kind of early to meet up with Cari, Lauren and Danielle to discuss our upcoming presentation for Andean Anthropology. At breakfast Guadalupe gave me my new glasses and I was excited to see that they weren’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined! Anyway, we met at the Esquina mall at the Juan Valdez Café to discuss strategy for this presentation. Our topic was Incan religion but we needed to present it in a creative way- so we decided to make a powerpoint. We divided up our tasks over coffee and then I forced Danielle to invite me over to her house. I kept saying that I didn’t want to go home and have to go to mass until she invited me over.

We walked to Danielle’s house and only her host brother was there but he promptly left. She gave me a tour then we started our Cine homework. We had this packet we had to do with a bunch of different activities and since I was falling asleep that first day of the movie Danielle helped me fill in the gaps. Once we finished that we had empanadas, chatted for a bit then decided to watch a movie. Danielle had recently bought the Life Aquatic and neither of us had seen it so that’s what we chose. It was pretty funny.

After the movie I walked home because it was going to get dark soon and I didn’t want to have to call a cab. At home I had dinner with Guadalupe and we watched the end of Spiderman on the tiny tv set in the dining room. She told me that she didn’t like violence in films and I made note not to ever let her see Dexter. I’m sure she’d think I was completely deranged if she saw it.

Monday, after Translation class I went to lunch with Emily and Omar. I was going to go straight home since I had so much homework that night but Emily called when I got out of class to see if we could work on the Cine packet together. So I joined her and Omar by the laguna, worked on homework a little and then we went to Vegetarian Restaurant by the university. That’s what it’s called, just Vegetarian Restaurant. It’s a sort of generically Asian place but it was pretty good. I had some noodle dish that was tasty. The portions were huge though so Emily and I couldn’t eat all of ours. Omar and his friend Bernardo, who showed up a little later, took care of that problem for us. At lunch we decided we were going to see Harry Potter together, and even though it’s in November I’m excited. Haha.

At lunch Bernardo told us that at one point in his life he trained under Chriss Angel and learned some Mindfreak magic or something. We asked him to show us something but he said he wasn’t prepared so I didn’t believe him. He told us that he could eat a coin and then cut it out of his arm or something weird like that. Obviously if he was a real mindfreak he could do it without preparation, since it is magic after all. After lunch I went home and worked on homework forever, ate dinner and then worked on homework some more.

Tuesday I was the first to get to Cine class and the door was still locked. I wasn’t that early so I was pretty confused. Pretty soon all the Cumbaya girls were there too and the cleaning woman let us in. We waited around until Lauren came in and she told us that there was a big accident on the way to Cumbaya and all the buses were really delayed. She had left an hour early to work on homework but ended up getting to class 10-15 minutes late. Some other students began to trickle in but since the teacher was a ½ hour late we made a signup sheet and left. That morning some of us had this meeting with the international student counselor. There were supposed to be 50 of us and there were 7.

After the meeting our presentation group met at the fountain to do a final run-through. All the girls had printed out exactly what they wanted to say but all I had were the notes I made for the powerpoint. Apparently I was going to wing it. I didn’t think about it before but that was probably not the best idea for presenting in Spanish. In class we gave our presentation and I think it went well. The teacher didn’t correct us or anything so that’s good I guess.

My last two classes were fine. Dance was fun as always and Soc was ok. After Soc Chris, Danielle and I went back to the Quito market so Danielle could finally buy her rings she was having sized. We took a taxi since Danielle had her laptop with her- and since her phone was stolen last time on the bus she wasn’t taking any chances. Once we got there though we couldn’t find the booth with the rings. Eventually we figured out that she wasn’t there that day, even though she said she’d be there every day but Sunday.

Then we looked at the crazy shoes Danielle had bought before because she wanted another pair and I was thinking of getting some for Rachael. They really wouldn’t budge on the price, even when we wanted to buy 3 pair, and I didn’t have enough money so we left empty handed. We walked back out to the main road and tried to flag down a cab but they were all being big dicks. The first driver said he wouldn’t go because we were on the wrong side of the road. Then we crossed the street and flagged another guy down who wanted to charge us $12! So we said no and waited for another one. Finally we got a guy who wanted $7- deal!

The driver asked us if we wanted to take the tunnel or go a different way so Chris just told him to go the easiest way. Since the tunnel route had so much traffic he took this backroads way that we had never taken before. We basically drove down into this river valley on all windy cobblestone streets through several little tiny towns. It seemed pretty sketchy but it was daytime, there were three of us, and there were cars and people around the whole time so I wasn’t too nervous. If we had pulled off onto a road where there were no other cars then I’d be nervous, but we were fine. It actually ended up being pretty fast. Probably faster than waiting in traffic in the tunnel.

Then I went with Danielle to buy a new phone since hers was stolen. It ended up costing less than her original phone which she bought with the group in Quicentro. At least $20 less, actually. I think the group was kind of ripped off. Then we walked back home and I had dinner with Guadalupe. I topped the night off with the usual episode of Dexter.

Hasta luego,
Caitlin