Centro Historico!

So yesterday a few of us went to Centro Historico. This is the oldest part of Quito and has 173 churches! There are millions of Catholics here, literally. Anyways, Centro Historico is beautiful! It's very colonial. (looks nothing like the actual city, do not fooled). Pictures:

Funny story about the two pictures below. The first picture shows a statue giving the middle finger to the statue across the street. In response, the statue across the street has a penis sticking out back at the other statute. I didn't understand the full story, but there was some sort of fight between the buildings across the street, so in response, they created these statues haha. REAL MATURE ECUADOR, lol.

More pictures:

After walking around a while, we came across a free concert! The music was really energetic and fun. I am going to upload a video on my facebook later.

Off to do tons of homework. We have a planned trip for next weekend, to Banos, so will blog after then!

Britney Spears Karaoke and an ER trip later....

I wonder if Britney Spears karaoke has ever sent someone to the ER before or if it's just me lol. Explanations:

Remember how Montanita tried to kill me with it's waves and I nearly drowned? Well, turns out the waves were so powerful they gave me a concussion. I had appointments in the hospital Monday-Thursday because I had been experiencing headaches ever since the incident (literally, I had a headache from Sunday to Thursdays). Two times, my headache became so severe, all I could do was lie down and cry. And I am not a crier. It was that intense.

On Monday my neurologist looked into my eyes and said I needed a CT scan. Getting a CT scan here was quite an adventure. My neurologist spoke English, but the nurses who were setting up my IV and such, did not. We had a lot of communication problems since I don't know medical terms in Spanish haha. After many failed attempts at trying to understand what was going on, they pumped this fluid into my body which was INSANE. My whole body turned burning hot and for a second, I thought I may have peed my pants because the burning sensation began in my legs haha.

Tuesday and the days to follow, my family and I learned the inefficiency of Ecuador the hard way as many of my appointments were pushed back, nearly 12 hours at a time. It was Thursday night, and I STILL had not received my results, which was frightening because I still had a headache and by that time, had one "headache attack" that my couzin Melissa helped talk me through. After a day full of classes, my friends and I went out to dinner then decided to do karaoke (karaoke is pretty big here). It was finally our turn to sing Britney Spears- Hit Me Baby One More Time. We were dancing, singing/belting into the microphone, having a great time, until I literally fell back into my seat because I was in such immense pain. I felt a slight pain in my head as I was singing, but it immediately exploded and I could not function. My friend Kyle helped take me outside, since walking was even a struggle, and I laid down in the disgusting sidewalk crying because my head hurt so bad. My friends all got me tons of water and tried to help, but it was obvious I needed to go to the ER. My friend Jessica took me home, we woke up my host parents, called the student supervisor and headed on the the ER (by then, my pain had been going strong for nearly an hour. It was terrible)

In the ER they checked all my vitals, took blood samples ect.. I asked the internal doctor to please check my CT scan (SINCE IT HAD YET TO BE LOOKED AT. Rude Ecuador, rude.) and give the neurologist a call.  The neurologist told him to hook me up to an oxygen tank so I had to be WHEEL CHAIRED to the room directly next to us. I despise wheelchairs. Anyways, as he was checking my CT scans, the oxygen being pumped into my nose quickly got rid of my pain. It was amazing. One of the doctors came in and put a blanket over me and turned off the lights, but I told him to turn back on the lights because I didn't want to sleep despite it being 2 am since sleeping on a bad head injury is obviously bad. He was confused and probably thought I was rude, but whatever. I didn't want to go into a coma haha. A little later, the internal doctor came in and told me my CT scan was good and there's nothing wrong with me. Again, I confused a doctor and told him something is actually wrong with me or I wouldn't be in so much pain. I don't think the ER doctors there like me very much, but oh well lol. Finally got home around 3:30 am, had some pain meds, and crashed out until it was time to wake up and see my neurologist the next day.

My neurologist confirmed that my CT scan showed my brain to be healthy (no tumors, internal bleeding ect..) but she said my concussion triggered "cluster headaches." Anytime a large amount of pressure is applied to my head, I basically get an explosive headache attack which is even worse here because of the extremely high altitude (so my brain is lacking much more oxygen than normal). Anytime I sneeze, cough or laugh I have a slight headache, but nothing painful. I guess belting out to Britney Spears was too much for my head to handle. Anyways, for my personality, I have the WORST TREATMENT EVER. "Don't laugh too hard, don't jump, try not to be hyper because you have a lot of energy, don't cough or sneeze too much, don't dance quickly, absolutely no belting out to songs, no energy drinks or alcohol. You can walk, rest and be calm." WHAT. I am not a calm person. I do not like resting. My host family all the time says I am hyper active because I am constantly on the go. This is going to be really rough. My stupid cluster headaches will last anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months (hopefully 3 weeks). I am on preventative medication and pain killers. I also have emergency pills to take in case an "attack" occurs. My doctor said if I have another attack (which is pretty likely to happen honestly) and my emergency medicine doesn't work, I need to go to the ER again for oxygen. She said if I have to go to the ER one or two more times, she is going to send me to the coast for 10 days. She believes that the altitude has a lot to do with it and wants to see what will happen if I am at sea level for 10 days (I have work and classes....so I don't exactly know how spending 10 days in the coats will work). If I still get severe headache attacks at sea level, then we will have to explore other options. Hopefully this does not occur. I feel so much better after only one day of medication! For the first time in 6 mornings, I woke up without a headache! Great success.

Well I am off to go explore the old part of Quito today called the Centro Historico. There are 163 churches built there! One made out of gold which I have already seen, but you're not allowed to take pictures. On Saturdays there is usually music and free entrances to museums and such so it should be a nice "relaxing day." Tomorrow we plan on leaving Quito and going to a special zoo so I will probably post pictures of that tomorrow! Unfortunately yesterday I was in the hospital all day and missed the trip to the equator. Pretty bummed about that, but hopefully I can gather people to go for a second time.

Anyways, just wanted to send an update about my health! Tomorrow I will post a nice happy blog with pictures. Yay. Chau!

So, I nearly drowned. But it is okay.

Hola! Okay so before I get into the gritty details of my almost-drowning experience, I am going to talk about the good things first! My group and I decided to embark on our second beach trip to a city called Montanita. It is a beautiful beach, with clear blue water! As usual we left Thursday night and arrived early Friday. We had to take two different buses to arrive, totaling about 12 hours. It was a long ride haha. But the bus station where we changed buses is actually the largest bus station in all of South America! Que chevere.

Anyways, Friday we napped and hung out at the beach all day. I tried to catch crabs, but failed because those little things are so fast. We didn't hang out in the water much because although the water was beautiful, the waves were much larger and stronger than most of us were accustomed too. Friday night we went out dancing and just had a great time.

Saturday quite the adventure. We bought tickets to an excursion that began super early in the morning. After a short bus ride to another city, we hopped on a boat and set out to the open sea. The first part of the excursion was whale watching, which was absolutely phenomenal. It was awesome seeing whales and more exciting than I expected since the whales were so plentiful. But what made the whale watching experience worth it was when a whale jumped out of the water, twice. It was beautiful...although the whale nearly landed on a boat nearby haha. After whale watching we went snorkeling. It was my first time snorkeling so it took a while for me to get used to the whole breathing under water concept haha. After finally getting a hang of it, my friends and I would sometimes dive under to where the fish were and hang out with them as they actually weren't extremely shy and it was easy to be close to them. After eating some fruit and sun bathing on the boat, a few of us went kayaking, which also was a first for me. Overall Saturday was a great, but exhausting day. Most of us came back to the room and passed out until 9 p.m. at night. After all that sleep though we stayed up pretty late, until nearly 4 am. Montanita is a crazy little town. The clubs were playing music until 8 am in the morning haha. Don't know how these coastal people do it, but they dance all night long, literally.

Here is a street in Montanita. This was early because in the afternoon and night the streets are all lit up and filled with people as well as street vendors.

They had signs like this all over. I found it kind of comical and took a picture. I did too love Montanita, until Sunday.

My friend running into the beach. It wasn't extremely sunny so you cant tell how blue and pretty the water actually is.

Whale fin! (Picture from my friends camera because I didn't bring mine in the excursion. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the whale actually jumping)

So, Sunday was interesting to say the least. Our bus didn't leave until four so a few of us decided to go boogie boarding before we left. The waves here are much larger and powerful than I am used to (I go boogie boarding a lot in Galveston), but it wasn't too terrible in the beginning. After a while it was just my friend Kyle and I boogie boarding. We noticed this man who was screaming and was really far out, but the beach was pretty busy so we thought he was telling his friends to come hang out. A few minutes later Kyle decided to check out to see if the man was okay and I continued to boogie board. Well, a few things went down. As Kyle ventured far out, past where the waves break, to check on the man, I nearly drowned. All of a sudden the waves became much larger and powerful than they already were. I was stuck in a rip tide. The first wave crashed over me, which I had have happened before, but was much stronger and held me underwater longer than the others. Whenever I tried to go up for air, my boogie board held me down since it was stuck in the currently and I was attached to it. When I was finally able to come up for air, I took a big gasp which turned to be terrible since at that moment, a second wave crashed over me and I drank a lot of seawater without getting oxygen. This wave was just as powerful as the first and kept me under the water a very very long time. I was panicking, unable to go anywhere because the tide was so strong, and legitimately thought I wasn't going to make it since I had ran out of oxygen before the second wave even hit. When I pushed myself up to the surface, a third wave crashed on me, once again, without me being able to get much oxygen, also causing me to swallow a lot of water. I blacked out, and don't remember being underwater for this. It could have been because I had drank water, had lack of oxygen or straight up had a panic attack. Either way, somehow, I managed to make it to the surface and my first memory is gasping for air. I must have been under that third wave for a while because rather than the wave just pushing me underwater, it sent me really far from shore, past where the waves break. I found myself near Kyle and the man who was yelling earlier. I was very light headed, dizzy and started seeing stars. I told Kyle I was about to pass out and nearly drowned. He somehow was patient and talked me through it, probably because the man he ended up helping was way worse than me. This man had no boogie board, couldn't swim and had blood coming from his mouth. Kyle gave him his boogie board but the man was a dead weight, going in and out of consciousness. We were out so far that the waves were not breaking, so I floated on my boogie board for a long time, regaining my breath, so I could hopefully paddle to shore and get help for the man and Kyle (It was really hard for Kyle to bring the man back to shore since he was a dead weight and the current was so strong). After a while I tried to paddle to shore, but completely failed. THANKFULLY three life guards quickly appeared and helped us. Never in my life have I had to be helped by a lifeguard, but I am so thankful they came. With me on the verge of passing out and the other man, literally drowning, we were in a terrible situation. It took a very long time to get back to shore, especially with the current being so strong, but we all made it back alive. Kyle literally saved that mans life, which is absolutely amazing. He also stopped me from passing out so he gets hero of the week award haha. 

So that was just about the scariest thing to ever happen to me. I really didn't think I was going to live through that while I was stuck under the second wave. I also was beat pretty badly by my board or the sea bottom. My stomach, thighs and the back of my legs are scratched up. Also my head was throbbing for a solid twenty hours. Either my board hit me in the head when I was blacked out, or it was extremely deprived of oxygen. BUT, now everything is well. I slept for 15 hours today, FIFTEEN! Completely revived. 

I am off to do homework, but next blog should be pretty cool (and will have more pictures) as we are planning on doing a Quito weekend where we will visit the equator, go to the Quito market and go to a soccer game! Should be a safe/injury free weekend. Yay for being alive. Chau!

Papallacta

This past weekend was a blast!

So, my weekends here begin at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. Honestly, I have been starting to miss America a lot. My friend Kyle and I then decided to have AMERICA NIGHT! We found an American bar, ate a bunch of wings, had a pitcher of beer (I am legal here therefore it is okay. I just want that to be known lol.) and watched a game of football! Seriously, it felt like a holiday. There are so many American things I miss, but I know once I return to the U.S., there will be just as many Ecuadorian things I'll miss haha. 

Friday was a good day as well. We had a conference we had to go to at the graduate university here. Afterwards our political science professor took us out... but seriously. We partied with our professor. Sometimes I question if laws are enforced here. 

Saturday, after a wonderful night of sleep, a few of us decided to go to Papallacta! This was the most beautiful town I have ever seen. It was about an hour and half drive from Quito, but the drive was wonderful. My friend here drove us all through the mountains, high to where the air was the freshest air I have ever breathed. I'm not one of those people that are usually deep and appreciative of art ect.... but for some reason, I appreciated this town more than anything in the world. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND I AM SO SAD I DIDNT BRING MY CAMERA! Anyways, we drove down to where the thermal baths were. The town is located next to a volcano so I am assuming that is how the water is so warm, but I never asked. There were many different baths located in this one area, all varying in temperature and such. It was such a pretty sight since outside was a tad chilly and the thermal baths were warm thereby creating a line of steam all over. After soaking in a pool as warm as a hot tub, surrounded by green mountains and hills, my friend Erinn and I decided to get massages! It was the most relaxing day of my life. I love how the things I can do here cost about 1/10th of what they would cost in America. In the U.S. there is no way I would ever be able to afford a relaxing day like that haha.

Well off to see a movie with a friend, then maybe I'll do some homework haha. Next blog I will post pictures because blogs with just words are pretty lame. Mi culpa. Chau!

Canoa, Ecuador!

Buenas tardes! Finally, I have time to update this about our beach trip to Canoa, Ecuador.

Thursday night at 9:45 p.m. we began our adventure! We arrived at the somewhat sketchy bus station to take the night bus to Conoa (btw I ate a whole box of pizza in the cab headed to the bus station. I am proud of that.) Honestly, the bus ride there was an adventure in itself. Remember me mentioning that cars don't follow rules in Ecuador? Well that is exemplified in the night and seems scarier when driving down 10,000 feet. I am pretty sure half of the drive to Conoa we were on the wrong side of the road lol. After nine hours of a bumpy car ride, extreme ear popping (went from mountain altitude to sea level) and a little bit of sleep (the bus had Spanish music blaring, and also turned into a sauna) WE MADE IT TO THE BEACH! My friends and I walked around a little bit and stumbled upon the most wonderful hotel/hostel, Bambu!

So gorgeous! The place had a delicious restaurant, hot showers, hammocks and was super cheap too. Although it was only 7:30 am when we arrived, we wasted no time and immediately jumped out into the ocean! My friends and I decided to rent surf boards for the day. I've only boogie boarded before, but surfing didn't pose too much of a challenge! Most of the time I surfed on my knees like a wimp, but I did stand up a few times. It was a blast, just hanging out by the beach all day relaxing. This local there, named Manuel, also gave my friends free surf lessons so that was nice (I was all surfed out by this point). Day one- great success! 

The next morning I woke up really early and walked around to take some photos. 

Street of Canoa

The photo above is another example of Ecuador's randomness. That man/woman was selling sex pills along the beach. He/she was FURIOUS when I wouldn't buy any after taking a picture of him/her. Ooops. Another random story: In the buses here, there are always people coming in and out selling goods (I absolutely hate seeing small children, traveling the city alone, selling random things on random buses. It's not right.) But aside from that, the other day on my way to school, CLOWNS entered the bus and put on a show. The randomness here never fails. I love it.

The next day consisted of more beach time and exploring.

My friends and I tried to do one of those cool jumping beach pictures...but failed. Also, notice the random man in the right hand side of the photo. Yeah, no idea who he is. 

Day three at the beach: Honestly, I didn't expect to have a day three at the beach and missed my bus the day before. One of my friends left, others had stayed so we did more beach bumming and exploring. In our adventure, WE FOUND A SEA TURTLE!!

But turns out it was dead.... :(

So, everyone was supposed to leave the night of the third day. Since I missed my bus, and all the other bus tickets were sold out, we had a problem. A random man from Quito I met at the bar offered to take me home, but that obviously wasn't a good idea. It also wasn't a good idea for me to stay in Canoa by myself another night. Luckily my friend Jessica saved the day. She switched her bus ticket to the next available bus with me! (which didn't arrive in Quito until Tuesday morning, ooops missed work and class on Monday) Everyone was gone, but we were still at the beach, bumming around, enjoying the sun and waves. Since I hadn't expected to stay at the beach for a solid 4 1/2 days, I ran out of money and clothes. We met a guy from Quito who let us use his room for free (he is in the above picture) so that was awesome. He was nice, although the only phrase he knew how to say in English was "I'm so cool!" Haha.

Funny story about my last night/morning there. I woke up...SOAKING WET. I was extremely confused since I went to bed somewhat early and was dry.... When I talked to Jessica about it outside some woman came up to me and asked me if I remembered her from a few hours earlier. I didn't. She then explained to me that I was sleep walking, and slept walk into the shower at 7:00 am with all my clothes on. Hahahaha. I'm weird. This was an awesome story until the hotel basically accused me of wetting the bed or pouring beer on the bed/other ridiculous things. I tried to explain to them that I slept walked and took a shower with my clothes on, but trying to explain that in Spanish is really difficult and the hotel thought I was crazy & proceeded to charge me $10 for a wet bed. Oh well lol.

And then there were two...

So the dog below caused Jessica and I a lot of distress our last day. Stray dogs in Ecuador are everywhere. This particular one took a liking to us so we fed her a bit and gave her water. Afterwards, she followed us everywhere. We thought it was cute, until this dog went into crazy protection mode over us. Jessica and I were just strolling the city, passing time. Well, anytime a man walked by, or anyone was on a bike/had something in their hand, this dog went into attack mode. She would bark very aggressively and scared the crap out of people. Jessica and I were the only ones that could get her to calm down, so she obviously seemed like our dog. I think the town hates us and believes two gringas brought a killer dog to their tranquil home lol. This dog seriously caused a lot of commotion, nearly made kids cry ect... Oh it was an adventure. 

My blog didn't let me choose the order of my photos lol so here is a picture of the sketchy bus station we began our adventure at. Also, note the pizza box I'm holding. Yummm. 

So something I've forgotten to mention in all my blogs is how instead of using alarms and such, the way to keep robbers out is putting broken glass along fences. You can't tell from the picture below too well, but just about every single fence in Ecuador is lined with broken glass. I don't think this works very well though since the place my host sister works at was recently robbed. Aye caramba.

Anyways, life at the beach was fantastic! Although finding a way home and running our of money did create quite some stress, the vacation was wonderful and much needed. Monday-Thursdays are the most stressful days ever. Either working, in class, or doing homework. I live for the three day weekends here haha. 

I am not sure if we are going on a trip or doing something super exciting this weekend, but if we do, I will add more stories and pictures soon! Chau!

I'm alive!

Wow okay, so I was somewhat stranded at the beach 3 days longer than expected BUT IT IS ALL GOOD. I finally arrived in Quito at 3:30 am and have spent the past few hours catching up on homework (missed work and class yesterday...ooops) I have class for a solid 7 hours (and had about 2 hours of sleep, oh boy) but afterwards, I will update this with tons of cool pictures. Chau!