Termas de Papallacta

Last thursday we took a wonderful trip to nearby (1 1/2 hour trip) Papallacta. Because Ecuador is basically one big volcano, there are a lot of places that have these thermal pools heated by the volcanos. We visited some of the more popular ones near Quito. We will visit more later in the town of Banos... This happened to be our first trip out of Quito and we were very grateful for the excursion! At 3300 meters it is entering into the beautiful cloud forest of Ecuador. Some of the following pictures are from the bus or at the pools themselves. IT was beautiful!

These three pictures are from the bus as we were driving to Papallacta...

Here we are at the pools with other friends from our language school...

One of our fantastic views from the pools...

To the left is a pool (hot) right next to the creek (cold). Going from hot to cold is great for your circulation!


And, of course, the pensive look after soaking in the eternal pools of soothing water! They free the mind from the body to allow one to ponder...

Random updates, facts, pictures, etc.

There´s flower stands EVERYWHERE, and the flowers are soooo cheap, like a dozen roses for 2 dolars, and they´re pretty roses too!!

This picture is for Brooke.
This is a guanabana fruit and I am holding a cup of FRESH guanabana juice. The lady with me is Nancy. Whe owns the juice shop, it´s all sooo good and fresh!! The blend it, squeeze it, juice it right before your eyes. And a cup only costs 50 cents. I´ll be back for more!

Ana and Jon had two girls staying with them for a few days. The six of us went out to dinner, they also went with is to the Mitad del Mundo.. At dinner, Jesse bought us all flowers. What a romantic!!

Brian Happ, we totally chose Pepsi over Coke. You know I realized I really do like it better. Jesse went for the big bottle, it was only 10 cents more (total of 62 cents). He couldn´t resist.

Okay, this picture looks really random, but there is a point I promise. This is a piture of Jesse´s forearm with two stamps on it. On Wednesday we went to the women´s prison here in Quito. You had to get your forearm stamped upon enty. We were gonna take pitures of both of our arms, but I forgot and washed it off, woops. Cameras weren´t alowed in so this is the only proof we have. . .
So the prison experience was pretty neat. There were many Ecuadorian women there but also a few English speaking ones too. I guess about a month ago there were alot more foreigners but the Presedent here recently passed a law that said if you were caught with under 2 kg of drugs and you had served half of your sentence you were free to go (or something like that). One of the girls we taked to was leaving that night for home (Germany) another was leaving in a week (home to Italy). The other english speaking girl that we talked the most with was from South Africa and had been there a year, but had not been actually sentanced yet, so she doesn´t know how long she´ll be there. Oh, her Mom is there with her too. It sounded like most of the women, especially the foreigners, were convicted for drug trafficing.
So this one girl from South Africa that we talked to the most told us that she had just recently become a Christian. She said that some missionaries had come to the prison not long ago and told her about Jesus. I wasn´t sure if she knew really what Christianity and Jesus were all about, but we didn´t have long to talk. If you think of her please pray for her to really know the love and freedom that comes with being a child of Jesus. Jesse and I are thinking about visitying again next Wednesday. Maybe we can talk with her more then. (Wednesdays are visiting days).

Okay well that´s all for now, more to come soon.

Shrunken Heads Anyone...

The Land of the shrunken heads. There really are tribes that used to shrink heads! The following is not for the weak at heart as I will demonstrate the process from start to finish...

First:

You must choose your hunting partners carefully as they will not only watch your back, but must also be a good shot with a blow dart!

Next:

(I decided to delete the pictures demonstrating the process from start to finish but if you are interested make sure you ask us about it. It is actually quite interesting.)

So...

Here is the final product of a shrunken head. It has hair and large earrings, but it is the real deal. Dad, if I remember right, recieved one of these early on in your carrer right?!

Nothing But Love

La Mitad del Mundo

Kissing from two seperate hemispheres...

Yes, We have been to the middle of the world! Ecuador´s biggest claim to fame (and its name) is its location right on the equator. La Mitad del Mundo is the place where Charles-Marie de La Condamine made the measurements in 1736 showing that this was indeed the equatorial line. In the center of La Mitad del Mundo stands a 30m-high stone trapezoidal monument topped by a brass globe. There are all kinds of touristy gift shops and such.
There is also a different museum next door where they say is the true equatorial line. With G.P.S they have determined that 250meters from this huge monument an tourist attraction is the true line. Well, we paid to see them both! We did not want to be left out of the loop, or should I say, left off the line!

Jesse holding the world with one hand...

Cass supporting the world and maintaining a graceful pose...

together, as one, in harmoney with trapezoidal monument...

This is also the place where we got our first dose of FOOD POISONING! Yep, we were hungry and needed to eat. We did not want to spend too much money and were delighted to see that several of the places for lunch in this park were cheap. We have adapted a rule/guideline for choosing a location to eat... If we have a choice between several restaurants, we will not pick the one that is empty of patrons even if it looks like it might be better. We have learned that there can be a lot of wisdom in choosing the one with people in it eating their food. So we chose the restaurant that had a lot of people (natives as well) eating at it (or at least compared to the other places). Due to this new experience we have added another rule/guideline: NEVER pay under $2 for a hamburger, fries and a coke! It just might kill you! We paid $1.80 for the above and Cass is now making up for the cost of the meal by paying with pain. She has been sick... it must have been perhaps a raw patty, lettuce or the tons of warm mayo on the fries and burger. We even discussed if we should eat it when we received our delicacies. Hmmm.... next time we will be all the wiser.

We learned/saw some interesting things that we did not know about our Planet. Like it is easier to balance an egg on the head of a nail, the days have roughly the same length of daylight and night time hours (12hrs from +/- 6am to 6pm) and you actually weigh less on the equator. We did a fun demonstration which I was skeptical to at first. Just off the equatorail line we preformed a ¨resistance¨demonstration were our young woman tour guide tried to seperate two pinched fingers and lower our clasped fists from above our head. I´ll be honest, I rolled up my sleeves for the arms demonstration. I fealt like everyone needed to know why she was unable to lower my arms... :) (Just kidding, I did not really do that- just kind of) For the most part, our young aspiring tour guide was unsucesful until... the line... She had us line up on the equatorial line and then preformed the same demonstration. While she was still talking she meandered down the line seperating fingers with ease and lowering our arms with one hand. I fealt bad for the other guys before me so I let her lower mine also. Plus I did not want to strain myself too much. She caught me in the eyes with an apoligetic glance as to say it was not personal and that it had nothing to do with my ¨man-hood.¨ With one hand she pulled down on my resistant arms and gave the que to Cass that if she wanted to try she was welcome to do the same. Cass spared me the trauma. Thanks sweetie!

the equator and it´s line...

The trip to The Middle of the World was in all a great one. We got matching shirts that said, ¨Been there, Balanced that,¨ with a picture of an egg. No, we did not get a shirt, but I am sure I could market it there!

Make sure you answer the trivia question to the right...

31 de julio del 2008

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!! I had a wonderful day! We had school at 8am until 1pm and then we had this big fiesta at our school because it was the director´s husband´s birthday. . and convieniently mine too!! Each class brought a traditional Ecuadorian dish and there was a group of men who played traditional music. They made me and the director´s husband dance in front of everyone. I wasn´t quite as embaressed as I would have thought I would be. It was really fun!! Then we had one more hour of class. The second hour is more student led, so I asked if I could just do my homework with my teacher so that I wouldn´t have to do it later. He, of course, said okay. Then at 4pm Jesse and I went home and relaxed a little. Then at 6pm we went out for dinner at this restaurant called La boca del lobo (mouth of the wolf). It´s this super colorful excentric restaurant in La Mariscal (the gringo land). It was fun and the meal was delicous. I had rosemery swordfish and Jesse had mini bacon wrapped fellet minons. Then we took a taxi to the movies and saw Hancock. I enjoyed it. Then we took a taxi home and went to bed. Oh and Jesse bought me flowers too!!!!

So. . . one of the Ecuadorian delicacies is cuy (guinnie pig). This was one of the dishes at the fiesta. It tasted a lot like chicken!!

The ¨band¨

The director´s husband offering me his hand as an escort out onto the dance floor! Me thinking, you´re not serious right... Oh no, he was!

Part of the crazy restaurant where we had dinner. Those are all glass walls!!

My beautiful birthday flowers from Jesse and our Ecuadorian family, and of course chocolate.