Been working hard for the past week trying to take advantage of my last few weeks here the best that I can! The first half of the week was full of homework, which is still really inconveniencing my vacation.

It’s been interesting being an American here for the past week with all the drama going on with the Ambassador. Correa pretty much decided to kick her out because Wikileaks released information where she accused the Ecuador police of being corrupt. This of course is a completely absurd reason to kick someone out of the country because it is a widely known and admitted fact that the police here are corrupt. Almost everything government or state related can be accomplished through bribes and connections. According to friends the going rate to get out of a speeding ticket is about 30 or 40 dollars that you slip the cop when he pulls you over… a DUI or possession charge is supposed to be more costly… around 100 or 300 accordingly. It costs around 20 to 50 for them to not check Visa papers, etc… Anyway the point is that corruption is accepted here and Correas reaction was completely unnecessary. In my opinion exiling the Ambassador from the country was more a symbolic action showing his opinion and position toward the US than anything else. According to a lot of Ecuadorians the “coup” that occurred in September last year was completely instigated and carried out by the American CIA. We are generally considered to be a big exploiting bully down here, which Correa likes to encourage. But that’s a complicated issue that I could discuss for hours so I digress for now. Although I must say that my Ecuadorian culture teacher and I are heading down a fast track towards a full out brawl during class one of these days. But at least he aggravates me enough to keep me more or less awake at 10 at night.

My Spanish teacher is a little crazy, kind of like the Guayaquil form of a hippy. She doesn’t really like tests and she thinks classrooms are stifling to brain flow. She blames the white walls and chalkboards for our reluctance to talk during class. However this worked to our benefit this week. We were tired of doing work so we convinced her (without a lot of effort) to take us on a tour of downtown Guayaquil instead of having class. So we left at three on Thursday on a University bus and headed towards el Centro. She showed us some old neighborhoods and we passed the historic downtown and the main Cathedral. Then she took us to the main market in the city center where they sell everything from fruits and vegetables to flowers to meat to herbs and incense that are believed to have healing powers. They also sell these braided cords that resemble switches that my Spanish teacher swears are still sold to whip children.

From the market we went to a really cool museum called el Museo Principal where they had a bunch of artifacts from the historic cultures that used to live in Guayaquil. There was an old Indian tribe in Guayaquil called Huancavilcas that lived in the area of Guayaquil that fought off the Incas for more than 50 years before the Spanish conquest. The rock behind Josh and I in the picture is an old stone that was used for human sacrifice. One side of the rock is the in the shape of a crocodile with a hole to place the person head… then you cut their neck and there is a little canal for the blood to drain out… pretty gross. The other side of the rock is in the shape of a chameleon but has the same purpose.

Upstairs in the museum they had some crazy shrunken heads from a culture in the selva (Rain forest).

They are real heads that the Indians put through a process of skinning, cooking, filling, shaping, and stitching. The heads were then either worn around the belt as prizes or displayed around the city to inspire fear in its inhabitants to cross the man of power.

They also had portraits of all the different presidents who have served Ecuador. I find it rather amusing since many of them barely even served a year. It seems engrained in the culture of a lot of South American countries to kick out or kill any President that isn’t pleasing them rather than wait until a new election. This is how Ecuador had nine different Presidents in 10 years.

There was a girl who was President for a total of three days but then peacefully removed from power to be replaced by a man. I found it interesting that they conveniently forgot to put up her picture in the museum as well. She should be between these two men.

After the museum we jumped back on the bus and went to the Iguana park, which is the principal park in Guayaquil. Our teacher brought a huge bag of bananas to food the Iguanas. As I learned that day Iguanas love bananas, they eat the whole thing including the skins which seem to be their favorite part. By the way in case anyone didn’t know Ecuador is the number one exporter of bananas in the world and after corn rice and one other product that I can’t remember right now, the bananas are the fourth most commonly eaten food product in the world. Over 25% of the bananas consumed in the US come from Ecuador. I think we were more of a spectacle in the Iguana park than the Iguanas were though.

A couple of the girls were afraid the Iguanas were going to mistake their toes for bananas and proceeded to scream and jump on top of benches to avoid the stampeding herds of Iguanas that began to follow us around the park. It was quite funny to see an Iguana run. But we also looked ridiculous because they were running from the Iguanas screaming while the Ecuadorians were petting them like puppies. Overall it was a much better day than normal class.

Friday I went to the artisan market downtown which was completely overwhelming but very cool. It had more crafts, clothes, and miscellaneous objects than I could have ever imagined. To celebrate one of the international kids birthday we all went back out on the pirate ship that we went on a few weeks ago. It functions pretty much as a floating dance party during the night so that was a lot of fun. Saturday we volunteered with a Foundation called Hogar del Cristo that works to help provide housing the homeless and extreme poor in Ecuador. That was one of the most interesting experiences that I have had so far in Ecuador but I will write more about that next blog as I don’t have all the pictures yet.

Later that night we climbed up the four hundred and some odd steps in Las Peñas to reach the top of the light house in Guayaquil. The view of the city was amazing!

If you look at the spot of light in the water on the left side, you can see the lights of the pirate boat that we went on Fridayt sailing along the Malecon.

Today Leonor took Alberto and I to the main market of Guayaquil. This market lies a little outside of the city. It is the market that where the vendors in the other market go to buy the goods to take them to the middle of the city to sell. It was really cool and huge! They sold everything there! And every type of vegetable and fruit you could imagine. I still haven’t managed to know all the names. I tried two new ones today as we were walking around the market. They also had cows hanging from stalls, octopus, and monstrous fish. Leonors birthday is tomorrow so Alberto is coming over to help cook fish tacos to give her the day off from cooking lunch. We bought all the ingredients at the market for less probably around 7 dollars and its going to be enough for lunch for four people! It should be a lot of fun!