Crazy Times in Quito

It's fiestas for the founding of Quito this week and tonight's the craziest night. To add to this, Liga, Quito's football (soccer) team is the champion of the country so things are even more wild. I'm sitting only a block from my hotel and one of the party busses passes every few minutes or so with lots of people on board. Things are going to be loud tonight. I plan to finish watching a movie, Cinema Paradiso, and then just hanging out in the hotel becuase I'm still exhausted from everything that's been going on in the past month.

Riobamba continuned to be interesting, working in the hospital and hanging out with my family. I think I like the family in Riobamba the best out of all of them. For my birthday they took me to Volcán Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador. We drove up to the first refuge and were going to hike to the second but the altitude was getting to me-it was about 5500 m above sea level. But I did get to play in snow with my host neice for my birthday which was great. I can't wait to get home and see snow. They took me out for lunch later and that night, they surprised me with a really good ice cream cake. It was a pretty good birthday.

Tungurahua really started erupting the last week of my time there and I learned a few days ago that the majority of the ash goes to Riobamba. It was cool seeing it smoking but not so cool breathing in more ash.

The last day with my family was another day with an interesting meal. They made me something special that everyone kept telling me how rico it was. It turns out that it was this soup made out of broth and the blood of what I later learned was a sheep with three different parts of sheep intestines in it and optional blood on the side. It was not that great-the intestines are really chewy, they don't have a great taste, and they smell pretty gross, but I managed to eat it all once again. It didn't make me ill so all was fine.

I successfully finished my project. I have a 33-page paper about Andean medicine and the public health system in Ecuador which is an accomplishment, not to mention that it's all in spanish and I used almost all primary sources like observation and interviews. I turned it in and did my presentation right away so that I could finish with everything as soon as possible. Now all I have left is my ACTFL test tomorrow to see how much I have improved with my spanish. We are back in Quito for the last four days and I can't believe the program has come to an end. I have enjoyed all of my time here and the group has been really great. I know I'm going to miss everyone when I leave and I hope we have a reunion sometime soon. I also know that I'm going to miss this country, the mountains especially. It has been nice seeing them everyday. Well, it's getting really dark out and the people continue to be crazy so I should probably get back to the hotel. More reactions on the trip in general later.