Pichincha

Hi all, it's been close to a week since my last post, but that doesn't mean nothing's been going on. Last Saturday I went with my friends up the mountain Pichincha, on a cable car called El TeleferiQo. Pichincha is roughly four and a half thousand meters above sea level and is an inactive volcano. When you get off the TeleferiQo, there's a safe space for you to walk around in with an unbelievable view. All of Quito and so much more is just sprawled out in front of you. From way up there, you not only look down on clouds, but airplanes as well. The air is noticibly thinner, and you can notice a difference in temperature as well. The boundaries of the safe zone on top of the mountain are pretty well labled. You have to be careful about how far you wander away from the safe zone. There are plenty of people on Pichincha who want your money, and they'll even go so far as to make their own hiking trails that lead right to them. Several Kalamazoo kids last year got robbed because they went too far. All of these stories made some of us cautious, and others of us flat out paranoid. Several unnamed members of our party were even too scared to get off the TeleferiQo for fear that we would be robbed right there at the top. As soon as we got to the top though, we saw that there was a very clear safe spot, and we all had fun walking around and taking pictures. To our surprise, one of the first people to wander outside of the safe zone limits was one of the ones who hadn't wanted to get off the TeleferiQo in the first place, but after we followed them, we saw that it was for good reason: there was yet another breath taking view just on the other side of a big sign warning us to go no further. We all had a fantastic (and safe) day atop Pichincha.

This week has been full of classes. Some more fun than others. Everyone's still getting settled into their classes, and changing schedules little by little to get just the right set of classes. This Friday's the last day to change, so I hope I've made the right decisions!

Tidbit: Home security is a very big deal here in Ecuador. Most houses have a wall between them and the street. These walls are topped with some form of robber-stopper. The three most popular types of robber-stoppers are (1) Metal Spikes (2) Electric Fence and (3) Shards of glass pointing straight up, cemented into the wall. I have yet to see a combination of all three, so just one method is sufficient apparently. Occaisionally you'll see barbed wire, but that's more for buisnesses. In addition to painful things on walls, many Ecuadorians also employ guards. Some guards protect whole neighborhoods that are gated, while other guards live in little houses on the sidewalk and protect a certain number of houses in the close vicinity. This is what my host family has. Apparently there has been talk recently of increasing (possibly even doubling) the amount of money it costs to have a guard. This is a big problem because many families won't be able to afford the increased cost of protection. I also heard a rumor that soon neighborhood guards might not be allowed to carry serious weapons. Where's the safety in that? Some Ecuadorians are worried that if this happens, the guards won't be able to sufficiently scare off bad guys.

At least I live in a relatively safe neighborhood. Not too much crime that I know of, just screaming cats and car alarms.


Allie asked if there was anything that I buy in the US that I can't find here, and the answer is yes: regular notebook paper. You walk into a school supply store and 80% of the notebooks will have graph paper. The remaining 20 have lined paper, but it's all funky and a lot more stylized than the lined paper I know and love. Apparently everyone writes on graph paper here, which I guess makes sense in a way. You also can't find "normal" loose-leaf lined paper to put in a binder. It's all either graph paper or the funky stuff. I personally use small loose-leaf graph paper in a small binder. It's working pretty well so far. Another note on paper: the "regular" size of paper here is not 8.5x11. My guess is more like 8x12, but then again it's probably in metric, so I don't know the exact dimensions. All I know is it's thinner and taller than what I'm used to in the States.

Take care everyone!
~Joey

P.S. It'd be nice if you could leave a comment so I could see who's keeping up with my blog. Thanks!

P.P.S. There are Pichincha pictures up on my Picasa page, check 'em out!