Today was a Good Day

Today was a good day! Lots of good stuff happened. Right now I´m really stressed out packing for my trip tomorrow, and I´m eating trail mix, and vaguely afraid that a serial rapist is going to get me ( I just read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and pretty cranky. But it was still a great day.

The day started early, at like 6 am. My mom made me grilled cheese and this really excellent juice. Sometimes I hate papaya juice, but today it was papaya-maracuya-orito juice and that was so good! I took a shower and felt really clean. I put on my favorite shirt and shoes. I got on the bus to Cumbayá, and then I got on another bus to a further suburb called Puembo. I went there to get my volunteering project figured out. The bus ride was about an hour, very relaxing. Got to the sub-centro de salud, met my mentor, Dra. Veronica Espinoza, who is about 30 and really friendly and overworked. She was organizing a mission of volunteer doctors who were going door to door asking all the people of Puembo if they had disabilities and what care they were getting.

I watched her orient about 50 doctors for an hour or so, and I chatted with this awesome lady named Dina who may have been a prostitute. She was dressed like one, at any rate. Anyway, she was showing the doctors around, and being like the local guide. She was just really nice and chatty when I didn´t know anyone, and she said she´ll bring me some avacados next week because its avacado season. Cool! Dina left to go lead people around her neighborhood, and I talked to the head nurse in the sub-center. I do not know her name, but she is determined, proud, capable, and excellent. She is going to teach me alot. There is another nurse, and they both showed me around, the file room, the vaccine center, the baby room, the doctor´s room, the kicthen/pharmaceutical storage area. Its very very bare bones, their main job is distributing birth control, vaccines, and preventing malnutricion. Perfect. That´s what I´m looking for. I´m going to work there on Thursdays from 830- 11, and all of January. So excited to learn how a poor rural clinic functions!

Around 1130 I took the bus back to Cumbayá. I ate some mediocre pasta with Jamie and Aracely, and Jamie (look at me with my friends and their blogs) and talked about our rap album. We are both so jazzed, its so fun to be with someone so enthusiastic. Then I went to Improv class. Improv class just rules. We aren´t producing anything to sneeze at, but we are all learning a ton of theory, games, cooperacion, all that good stuff. The class is really starting to bond and work to gether well. We are all comfortable, like, rolling on to each other. We worked our way up to Freeze! today, and that was a thrill. I celebrated by using the phrase ¨give me dome¨immeditely. Classay. My class is having a preformance on Saturday in the Plaza del Teatro Sucre, the main theater in Old Town, and I really wish I could go, but I have to go to Esmeraldas! boo!

On Tuesdays after Improv I have my Exchange student/ICRP class, but I dont on thursdays, so I hung out with some people from my improv class. Really. All by myself. Without Hannah or my brother or anybody. Granted, two of them were gringos, and we spoke english a lot of the time, but I´m pretty aspergers-ly proud about this. Its been so hard to make friends and put yourself out there, but here I was talking honestly, being goofy, telling about the time I got drunk at Passover when I was nine. (but let´s face it, who hasn´t?). We even went to the burger restaurant near school and I got a milkshake, and Maria Jose gave me half of her sanduche (that´´s how you spell sandwich in Ecuador), and I didn´t even care that the main ingredients were American Cheese, ground beef, and potatoes. I was hanging with friends!

But then, I had to go to class. Its art class at4. At 420, the teacher hadn´t show up, so I went home. He might have shown up just as I was leaving campus, but we´ll never know. Took the bus to abuela´s house. Chatted with the approx. 17 people that were there, including: Abuela, the guard Javier, my madre, the guard dog, some new turtles they just got, two gardener people, Diego my uncle, the two kids Diego was toutoring in calculus, my uncle Carlos, my uncle Carlos´patient, Jimmy´s three friends waiting outside for Jimmy to finish working on another friend, Malcolm, and my cousin Moni-Pati. Then I read an article about high schoolers´perception of thier racial identity in Brazil. Yeah.

Malcolm and I had ¨sopito¨which refers to any food you eat after 5 pm. It can also be refered to as ¨cafecito¨or ¨merienda¨which means snack. sopito today was a large bowl of vegetable soup, some cold mashed potatoes with pieces of scrambled egg in them (bad), pieces of chicken, and some cake. Ok, whatever. I had my sopito, and my papaito, and my polloito and my tortito. I went to Jimmy´s office, and he worked on my neck/ jaw for a while. Feels better, he´s good at what he does. He put this adhesive tape on my jaw that is supposed to de-stress my muscle. Its on my face and bright blue and I´m supposed to leave it on for a week. We´ll see.

After that, Madre and I walked a few blocks to this GIANT slightly stalinist church to see the symphony. Admittedly, they are not fantastic, but its the Quito Symphony Orchestra no matter what. We got there early and chatted with my madre´s friend, her exchange student, and the exchange student´s friends, who all spoke horrible spanish, were extremely nice, and probably much much smarter than me. I had a 25 minute crush on the overly aryan boy, we discussed our favorite vegetables. The music was nice, but went on too long as it always does. I fell asleep for a while, even on the uncomfortable church pews. I gave up trying to look cool in front of mr. blond hair.

Took a taxi home and that jerk tried to charge me 2 dollars when it was clearly a 125 ride and he drove badly. I gave him 150 and got out. Yeah.

Now I´m here in my pjs, ready to sleep, but needing to pack some long sleeves and deet first. Excited to see some manglares in real life, not excited to get covered in black fly bites, which itch and hurt and give you malaria. Whoops. Have a good weekend everyone!