listo!! (ready!!)

Lately I am feeling restless, thinking a lot about my future classroom, future living, future job, & the lack of all these things. I've been having dreams about small cabins in the woods that feel & smell like Jesse's farm house. I never thought I would miss the farm house with its scattered, empty beer cans, mouse traps, & cold nights...but here I am, dreaming about the smell of the fires we would fall asleep listening to, the night I read in front of the fire while Jesse played drums, & when the only sound outside weas the cows mooing & coyotes howling. I miss my country mountains that haven't been plastered with houses & buildings...

jesse & miss lisa at the farm house

In other news...
On Saturday Kat, Carol, Juan Francisco (Carol's host bro) & I went to Otavalo & then a volcano (Cuicocha) that collapsed over 2,000 years ago & is now filled with melted glacier ice creating a beautiful, cold, crystal lake with two earth formations in the middle.

On our way here we stopped in Cayambe for breakfast at a famous little breakfast joint that had a swing zip-line on the playground. Super peligroso y super divertido! (really dangerous & really fun). They were famous for their milk. The restaurant was named "El Cafe de la Vaca" after all (vaca=cow).

We loaded up in a small boat to get to the middle of the body of water (& by loaded, I mean the top of the boat was easily sinking closer & closer to the water. I was pretty scared until we turned around because an entire family was crying, freaking out...when they got out, I quit freaking...at least until the "captain" let another family on so we sunk down again. It's the Ecuadorian way, money first, safety second).

The Village of Cuicocha is small, clean, & not crowded. In other words, it is completely different from ever other Ecuadorian town. There are two volcanic rock islands in the middle of the lake where a hotel & a few restaurants used to sit. Fortunately, the National Parks in Ecuador made them leave & now there are only remnants of the buildings. The abondoned buildings are hidden from the rim of the volcano & they are creepy & lonely in the middle of the water way that goes over the connected volcanoes, but as soon as you get through the water way there is an even more ominous man-made object sitting on the mountain: the virgen. The statues/dolls are everywhere in Ecuador, but I found this very strange. There she was, in a small cave dug-out for her to precide over this volcano with a bench in front of her for anyone who wanted to get off the boat in the freezing glacier water to go pray. This confuses me for several reasons, mainly because I don't understand WHY?







Cuicocha- On the right island you can see a small, crak circle; that is the cave with the virgen in it.

Catholicism is a mystery to me, the way everything is done in huge building that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to build. The traditions, the customs, & goodness gracious all the virgens. A few weeks ago when we went to centro to look at some of the historic buildings & churches we saw stores with baby Jesus dolls in them. They also had different outfits for the dolls. You could have cowboy Jesus, or baseball player Jesus, or hippie Jesus...all in baby doll form. People will bring these baby dolls to church or the alternative type of doll, the virgen. I get it, people need something to hold sometimes, something tangible to project their feelings or beliefs, right? But what about the things that are already here? I mean a glacier lake in the middle of a volcano that still has volcanic gas escaping it's core in the form of bubbles...that seems like a tangible enough thing to pray to if that's your style, why add a concrete virgen in a cave to the mix? Oh well, just another thing I don't understand.

Cowboy baby Jesus

Either way it was a nice day in Otavalo & Cuicocha. I bout some alpaca yarn for $2/ball, some wool/cotton leggings, & some night shoe/socks. So yeah, all grandma stuff.

The Market in Otavalo. It's huge, covers many blocks in the middle of the town, & most everything is made/from Otavalo. 

The next day we went to a Liga soccer game in Casa Blanca. Liga (one of 5-6 small Ecuadorian pro fútbol teams) won 5-0 & it was pretty crazy in the "Muerte Blanca" section on the south side. You know when you watch soccer games on TV & you wonder if they ever stop singing or blowing horns or bangin' on their drums or blowing whistles or jumping...well the answer is no, they don't. It was so cool to watch & I wanted to be in the "student section" version of Liga, but it did say Muerte Blanca which means "dead white" so I was a little nervous. So Kat, Carol, Brittany, & I sat with the families//kids section & enjoyed out $2 40 oz. cervezas & $5 Liga jerseys. After the game we had a great meal at Carol's house (grilled chicken with this homemade creamy  hot sauce, so good I got the recipe, rice of course, ensalada, & her mom made us a wonderful apple pie with almonds in it- yes, I got the recipe for that, too). I also learned how to make empanadas this week so I'll have to give that a try when I get state-side.

all for now.

la