Been sick off and on all week. I guess being in a foreign country with all sorts of new germs, parisites, and food chemicals finally caught up with me. Ive been teetering in between a stomach bug and gripe (which is pretty much the equivalent of a cold here) since last Saturday. I think Im finally going to have to break down and do the thing I hate and go to the doctors tomorrow at school... I have to make sure Im ready to go for Friday when my Spring break adventure begins!!!
But sick or not, I dont sit at home quietly very well so I still went out and did some cool stuff this weekend. Thursday we had a cooking class at school. It was run by the gastronomía department on campus, so we got to cook with the chefs at UEES. We made some of the more traditional Ecuadorian dishes, such as ceviche and patacones which I keep talking about as well as Maduro and seco de pollo, which is a really famous chicken, tomato, and rice dish in Ecuador. The class was cool but it took forever. We started at 1230 and didnt actually get to eat until 4. Which none of us were pleased about.
But on the plus side I learned how to properly peel verde platains (which is actually quite a pain in the rear end) and I got to show off my superb chopping skills when it comes to green peppers and onions. If only I had been wearing my old Ruby Tuesday salad bar hat instead of a hair net... then I could have really had it going. I think I broke the poor chefs heart though when he tried to feed me seco de pollo and I had to explain to him that I dont eat meat (which he responded with... but you eat chicken right?) He then looked at me as if I was from Jupiter, shook his head, and gave me yet another massive spoon full of rice instead. But I dont think my vegetarianism was nearly as much of a shock as when my friend Eryka started singing and dancing while she stir fried the onions and peppers. The picture above was taken just before her concert started. I think it was the first time the poor chef had ever seen his spatulas used as a microphone... I guess thats what happens when you let gringas in the kitchen. Thursday night was pretty quiet. I took some cold medicine when I got home and ended up passing out before I even made it out to do anything fun. We had an extra cultural class on Friday morning since we didnt get to have our regular seminar due to the cooking class. It sucked that it was at 930 on a Friday, but it actually turned out to be pretty interesting regardless. We talked about emigration and immigration from the United States to Ecuador and vice versa and the complex and corrupt system of coyotes that hustle them all across borders for money. We actually had a guy come in and talk to us that had lived in the US illegally for eight years as a manager at Whole Foods before getting caught and coming back to Ecuador in 2008. And then we had a second person lecture on the oil companies polluting the rain forest and we watched a documentary called "Trinkets and Beads" that was filmed in Ecuador a few years back. There is an ecological reserve in Ecuador called Yasuni National Park that is believed to be one of the few places on the planet that was not effected by the last Ice Age. All the species of plants have not been thoroughly explored yet but many people are holding out hope that there may be some form of a plant that could hold the cure for some medical diseases. However, they have also found several hundreds of billions of dollars of oil beneath the ground in the reserve. According to the Ecuador constitution the reserve owns the rights to everything above the surface of the Earth while the Ecuadorian government owns the right to any goods found below the surfacee. Which means that the Ecuadorian goverment, as a poor and developing country, is faced with the choice between exploiting the land and ruining the naturaleza above the surface to increase the countrys wealth... or continuing to fight off the oil companies and not take advantage of the wealth opportunity. They have proposed an innovative new political idea to try and solve the problem. The Ecuadorian politicians have drafted a document promising not to exploit the oil for the next thirty years, therefore saving the plants and reserve for the better good of the globe, if countries around the world come together and pay Ecuador a compensation fund. A few countries such as Germany agreed to do so, but then problems arose as to how the money would be administered and how the whole thing would be monitored to make sure that Ecuador doesnt just take the money and go back on its promise. So the debate still sits. Here is a link with more about the issue:
Anyway, on to a different subject. It was Sangwoo´s birthday. Sangwoo is my friend from Korea that speaks no english or spanish and walks around in a continual haze of confusion. We bought him his first ever birthday cake and he told us this was the first time he has every had a real birthday. This was then followed by a very long discussion trying to figure out if he was really 26 or 27 since in Korea they apparently count the 9 months in the mothers stomach as 1 year. So as far as hes concerned he was born when he was 1 year old. 
After that we didn’t know what else to do so we went to Mall del Sol, which is the second biggest mall in all of South America, second only to a mall in Brazil. We only saw a few parts of it but it was pretty incredible. I was proud of myself for managing to escape with only buying a cup of coffee.
We then went to Tony Romas because it was happy hour and they had two for one drinks. So we sat around and each had a mango piña swirl or a strawberry piña swirl (pictured) which was delicious and came with lots of fresh fruit and free chips!
Saturday we helped out at an orphanage for abused or neglected boys and then I helped throw a cookout for all the internationals and our Ecuadorian friends that night. But I will have to write more about that later because my lovely host sister is standing over me waiting to go to the mall.
Fun Fact of the day #1: The president of my University is an ex-president of Ecuador.
Fun Fact of the day #2: USC is the #1 International Business program in the US this year as well, as well as #2 in the entire world! Go Cocks!
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