Monday, October 28, 2013

Ciao, Quito

On Monday (which I guess is today, but I procrastinated writing this, so let's pretend it's not!) I move to Otavalo, which is about two hours north of Quito! If you have been keeping up on my blog, it is the place we went for the ¡Salud Pública! blog :) I will be starting my 6-week internship here with Jambi Huasi, which means "house of health" in Kichua. It is a health clinic that provides traditional Andean health care as well as western care. Again, if you read the ¡Salud Pública! blog, this is the clinic where I had the Cuy (guinea pig) diagnosis and we got to experience some other Indigenous treatments. Another interesting thing about this clinic that I just found out a couple of days ago... it is a GlobeMed partner organization! They work with the GlobeMed chapter at Loyola, and I found this out when GlobeMed's director of partnerships posted on facebook about her recent visit to Jambi Huasi! I am really excited to talk to both Loyola and Jambi Huasi about their partnership! I was excited to compare interning at two public health organizations in 6 months (HDI in Rwanda and Jambi Huasi) but little did I know they would BOTH be GlobeMed partners! I couldn't be more excited about this discovery :)

So I'll wrap up my last couple weeks in Quito for you before I tell you about my wonderful new home in Otavalo (which I'm not supposed to know about yet in this post because I should've written it this weekend! haha). First, I found a different church to attend for the last couple Sundays. It is a Spanish-speaking church, and I'm pretty sure I was the only non-Ecuadorian there, except my first visit when Chaneen came with me. It is called Iglesia de la Republica and is a really cool-looking building, as you can see below! From what I understood they had a sound message, but everything, including the music and the pastor, was miked REALLY loud, so the pain in my ears was a little distracting. After the first visit, Chaneen and I walked through Parque Carolina on our way home and discovered just how busy it is on weekends.

La Iglesia de la Republica 
Some sort of dance/workout class thing going on in the main park. Everyone was super into it, and the entire park (which is huge) was absolutely packed! It's like this every weekend!
Snail playground equipment :)
Last weekend, Jessica and I used our free Saturday to explore el centro histórico a little more. This is where we had that bus tour the first week, but it was way cooler to be able to walk around! We started off in the park the bus dropped us at, found the basilica, climbed around in the towers, then took a tour of the astronomical museum back in the park! Exploring the basilica was my favorite part, and overall it was a really nice day!

Statue of Simón Bolívar in the park
The Basilica of the National Vow (Basílica del Voto Nacional), which we got to climb around in for a bit!




Climbing up one of the towers! I'll admit - those steep, narrow staircases outside were a little scary. 

A café inside one of the bell towers.
The astronomy center!
Our last field trip of public health was a day-trip to a private hospital in Quito. I thought it was going to be pretty boring, but when we arrived, the gynecologist we were supposed to talk to was like, "The surgeons are starting a C-section right now if you want to watch that instead!" So we were given full scrubs and led into the operating room where we saw the coolest thing ever! It was so weird to see them cutting into a woman and then all of a sudden grab a head and out comes a baby. The surgeon also thought we were all medical school students so he was pulling out organs like the uterus, ovaries and pancreas to show us. Honestly, none of them look anything like textbook drawings. It's really just a bunch of red squishy stuff. All of this happened while the woman was awake, just numbed up. I felt bad for her, and I sure hope the surgeons asked her before we came in. She didn't seem bothered at all though! She just had a beautiful baby girl named Bianca, so I'm sure that was enough to keep her mood up :)

On our last Friday night all together, nearly everyone (plus some Ecadorians) rented a Chiva, which is an open-air party bus! It was a lot of fun, with music, dancing and Canelazo, which is an Ecuadorian drink. It was really fun to spend this last night together with almost everyone before some of us left Quito, and luckily the Canelazo wasn't very strong, so there was no drama as there sometimes is on nights out.
Meeting up at Marias' friend Juanse's house!
Chiva!
I think this is all the americans but one who went on the chiva, and two of the Ecuadorian friends that joined us!
So much going on here...
On Sunday I got to spend a nice day out with my host family and some other relatives that I am unsure how they are related. We went a ways north to Jerúsalen Bosque which is a dry forest reserve. It looks like a condensed desert, with cacti and short trees all squished together in forest form. It was great to be able to spend the day with them before I moved! Luckily, I'll get to live with them for my last week when I return to Quito to write my final paper.

In a tree with Daniel! He is the cousin of my nephew that I posted a picture of a while back... but I'm not sure exactly what to call him relative to me.
My mamá picking the moss for her nativity scene.
All of us! Daniel in the tree, my brother Jonathan, Mamá, me, Papá, and Daniel's parents, whose names I still don't know even though they have been to our house plenty of times! Oops.
The 1-minute horse ride. It was part of our entry, and we had no idea how comically short it would be :) 
Tourist train, another part of our entry to the park. We drove around the forest reserve a bit, and were told a little about the plants and about how this is the only dry forest in the Andes (in Ecuador, at least).
Dry forest
I'm really going to miss Quito and all of the everyday parts of living here! Those are the parts that make one feel less like a foreigner and more like there's a chance of belonging (though I might want to dye my hair if I ever come back and don't want to stand out...) Here are just a few of the random things that make me feel like I know Quito better! And I am excited to become familiar with Otavalo too!

My $5 haircut!
The Ecovia, which is the larger bus system that connects Quito North-South. I'm getting the hang of it and the smaller buses... just when I have to leave!
"Pride and Prejudice" so I can read something fun in Spanish for once :)
Finn McCool's let us in hours after close Sunday night to watch Packers vs. Vikings. Perfect, considering I am studying through Minnesota :P Go Pack!

2 comments:

  1. I can completely identify with the satisfaction of feeling like you belong instead of feeling like a tourist! I think it's really awesome that you went to church in Spanish!

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  2. Nice to know you can come back to Quito for a week so you weren't too, too sad saying goodbye. Seems your new experience will be equally as fun and interesting and I'm sure you are making some AWESOME forever memories!

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