On the mend...:)

To say that this week has been a long one would be an understatement. What started out as laryngitis on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morphed into a giant headcold and cough as of Wednesday and has persisted until now. The worst part of it has been that, as a result of first not being able to breath because my lungs were inflamed and then not being able to breath because my nose was sufficiently plugged up has been not sleeping. I would say that, before last night, I had not really slept deeply or for more than 30 minutes at a time in over a week. However, last night, thanks to a brief phone conversation with my mother to ensure that I would not do myself any serious harm, I took two CapsiFlu (the closest equivalent to NyQuil here and does not work NEARLY as well...I would have KILLED for some NyQuil this week!) AND a Benadryl and fell right off to sleep. And, for the first time in over a week, I woke up to the sound of my alarm, rahter than lying awake for hours and then turning it off before it even had a chance to go off. It was heaven. One more such night of blissful slumber and I think I will be good to go, which is a good thing, since we leave bright and early tomorrow morning for four days in the Cloud Forest!

My experience with illness has been educational, to say the least. In addition to my experience with Ecuadorean doctors and their preferred method of treating illness here, I learned that Ecuadorean tissues are incredible things. I went through easily four little packets of tissues in a day, but don´t let this reflect on their quality (but rather on the amazing rate at which my nose was running), because they are, in fact, far superior to the ones in the US. Whereas the little packs of tissues that you can buy and fit in your pocket in the US, the ones I got here, I discovered upon pulling one out of its package, are like actual handkerchiefs! Super thick and HUGE and soft...not like the little sheets of rough toilet paper-like travel tissues in the US....What can I say, when your nose has been a faucet for three days straight, you take pleasure in such things as this. :)

I have also discovered, through my bout with illness, that whereas before being sick my Spanish had been improving to the point where I was largely understandable most of the time and could likewise understand other people fairly well, once my head was fogged my congestion, lack of sleep, and cold medication, I was completely incapable of making any sense (in any language). For example, when I stumbled upstairs on Monday morning and collapsed on the couch after mumbling to my mother, "Necesito...medico...por favor..." my mother asked me where my cell phone was so she could get the numbers of my academic directors from it. I gave a perfectly reasonable answer, "In my room...uuuuggghhh..." My mother responded, "¿Que?" so I repeated what I had just said, to which she asked again, "¿Que?" Only then did I realize I had been speaking English, without realizing, and while I had been looking at her like she was crazy for not understanding me, she was looking at me like I was crazy because, quite rightly, she couldn´t. I managed to make it through the rest of the week pretending like I understand what my mother was saying to me, though most of the time the words she was saying were not coming close to penetrating my congestion-fogged brain. And most of the time, when I attempted to respond, it was in some form of Spanglish...Spanglish: the language of the infirm.

ANYWAY, enough of illness: despite being sick, I did not allow that to prevent me from missing our class field trip to Saquisili yesterday, which was awesome. Saquisili is a little town with a HUGE outdoor market where you can buy...almost anything. The assignment was this: each student was assigned an ingredient of some sort and we had to buy that ingredient at the market and then make a typical Ecuadorean food with it and bring it to class to share with everyone today. I was assigned harina de trigo (flour), which was fairly easy to find. I bought two pounds for $0.70 and then walked around the rest of the market with some friends to help them find their ingredients and just explore.

Part of the assignment was that were supposed to try to barter and lower the price, but I didn´t since I felt like trying to get a lower price than $0.70 for two pounds of flour would be kind of a, well, kind of an jerky thing to do. It was the same with my friend--she bought ten tomatoes for a dollar and didn´t attempt to barter, since lower than $0.10 per tomato seemed unneccesary. Once our foods were purchased, we walked around the rest of the market. There were fruits we did not recognize, every vegetable you could imagine, different types of grain, rice, and ANIMALS! You want a chicken to cook for dinner tonight? You can buy two for $5 and of the freshest kind, too (as in, still clucking!). Rabbit? Fish? Sheep? Llama? Guinea pig (and nope, these ones WERE NOT being sold as pets!)? You can get them all, nice and fresh and still breathing (well, except the fish) at the market in Saquisili!

Now, the bargaining did come into play when get got to the artesans´market. Here, there were lots of really cool crafts, clothes, artwork, the price of which all depended on how hard you bargained. I got some artwork, originally $18 but bargained down to $13, an alpaca scarf (from $15 for one to two scarves for $15), and a little doll dressed as the indigenous women who work at the market for $2 (I did not bargain too hard about that one). All in all, a very fun, very busy, very exhausting day!

I was exhausted on the bus ride home, but did stay awake long enough to get my first glimpse of the volcano Cotopaxi from my window. It was very majestic and it was obvious, even though it was surrounded by mountains and hills all around, that this was Cotopaxi, because it rose up far above the others and the clouds hid the top. It was also very cool, because though it was raining where we were in the valley driving home, we could see where snow was falling on the highest mountain peaks around us.

This morning, I got up SUPER early to make my dish with my flour for class. I had gone over to a friend´s house last week and made empanadas, so, since I was familiar with them and it is a fairly simple recipe, that is what I made (though with my host mom´s help!). It was really funny, though, because, after we had finished folding the queso into the empanadas and my mother was frying them, she kept saying, "Oh, these are going to be so good...so much better than Blancy´s..." Blancy was the mother of my friend that we had made empanadas with the week before. Blancy and my mother are relations (not exactly sure how, though) and apparently, there is a bit of a rivalry when it comes to cooking. I just stood next to her, catching the empanadas in a basket as they finished frying, and nodded my head.

Our feast at school was very fun and a welcome break from the grueling hours of Spanish class that we normally have every day. Everyone made pretty amazing food (all except, perhaps, for one of the guys, whose ingredient was some sort of bean and which he cooked to an impenetrable, tooth-shattering hardness). After school, I made a quick trip to the ferreteria (hardware store) to buy some rubber boots for our excursion into the rainforest this weekend and then went over to some friends´houses for lunch. I had never really been to their houses before and all I can say is, WOW! I thought I had it good--their houses are nicer than many I have seen in the US, including my own! Internet, TVs in every bedroom, polished wood and marble everywhere! And my friends´rooms--WOW. Just, WOW. However, even though I would be lying if I said I did not feel any jealousy, I think it is for the best that I don´t have a TV in my room or Internet access in my house here. I will be the first to admit that I was addicted to my technology back home: my iPod, my laptop, my TV, all of it. But here, without those things, I have been forced to do, for the first time, something I have not done in a while: read for fun. Instead of surfing on my computer for hours every night, I go to my room and read (though it is really going to suck once I finish my book, since I have no others and English books or bookstores of any kind, really, are in short supply here). In the end, it is for the best, I think, that things are the way they are...though I will definitely be happy to have my iPod back when I get back to the States!

Well, tomorrow is the Cloud Forest! I will take tons of pictures and let you all know how to goes after I return next Tuesday! Take care and I love and miss you all!

-Alex