WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIENDS!

In the spirit of attempting to actually keep this blog recent, I thought I´d give another quick update...

I went to the clinic this past week (yet again) to get the results from all my tests that I had submitted. The tests came up negative for typhoid, which is good because by the time I took the test, I had already been taking typhoid medicine. The doctor that had prescribed that medicine had decided all my syptoms pointed in only one direction, and since the typhoid test takes four days to process, she started me on meds right away. I guess we´ll never know whether or not I really had typhoid. On a more hilarious note, I did find out that I have three parasites...E. Coli, another amoeba, and roundworm! So I have a worm thing growing inside of me, which is disgusting, but I must say that having been down here for just two months, even this idea doesn´t make me squirm as much as it used to. We all knew that signing up for a year of volunteering also meant signing up for a year of possible parasites. It´s very normal, and there are two other volunteers taking medicine right now for the same thing. You can get all these parasites from drinking the water or from food not being cooked through well. "Drinking the water" doesn´t mean that you have to drink a whole glass of tap water; I mean I could have not dried off a plate well enough, meaning that even just that drop of water could´ve made me sick. Either way, this stuff is all pretty routine and volunteers in the past have gotten it and volunteers in the future will get it too. I realized when I told Joey over the phone that yeah, it doesn´t sound too routine to have a worm growing in your intestine, but here, it´s pretty normal. I´m on medicine now for it and feeling completely like myself again.

This weekend was hilarious. On Friday night all the volunteers got together to celebrate Beth-A-Palooza, affectionately named after the Birthday Girl. It was really great to just see everyone again, and we all ended up sleeping at AJS so we spent lots of time together. On Saturday, Arbolito minus Tierney and plus Tasha headed into Guayaquil to celebrate el 9 de Octubre, which is a sort of independence day for Guayaquil, complete with an artist show, music, a free concert (hilarious), and a parade. It was really fun. It was a gorgeous day, and even though it felt unbearably hot in Arbolito, being in Guayaquil on the Malecon (basically a boardwalk type thing by the water) was very comfortable. We walked around and looked at the parade, grabbed some lunch, and then went to an artisan´s market and looked at the art tents, which featured lots of very political artwork. We were taking a break and resting where the Malecon intersects with Las Penas when we discovered there was a free concert that night. Definitely had to stick around for that. We ended up getting a free tour of the Armada de Ecuador (looked like a pirate ship but the sailor was less than amused when Tasha asked if there were pirates onboard hahahaha) and had our first taste of Ecua-Chifa, which is Ecuador´s take on Chinese food (think lots of rice with oil, and some chicken thrown in).

This free concert was definitely the highlight of the day. It was hilarious, and there were people everywhere. When we were meeting up with Tierney, we happened to be where the bus with all the singers was pulling in. There were all these screaming girls running after the bus, and we almost got stampeded, except for Tasha and Caitlin who decided to join the running stampede haha. Fireworks were a pleasant surprise starting around eight (um fireworks are awesome), right before the concert started. The actual music for the concert was alright, but the atmosphere was just so funny. There were babies and little kids sleeping everywhere, with their parents basically standing over them so that they wouldn´t get stepped on. And then the host chick for the show was telling people to scream WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS and it was hilarious because obviously, the gringos can scream that but nobody else wanted to because they didn´t understand what she was saying and they didn´t know how to pronounce the words, so it ended up being a group of seven gringos screaming WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIENDS! followed by lots of stares and laughs. Then, they were pulling people on stage to dance and it turned into what Kipp so affectionately labeled, a "pelvic-thrusting competition".

It´s so weird because apart from all the pelvic-thrusting, we really did feel like we could´ve been walking around Quincy Market in Boston or down by the Seaport in New York City. It felt like a world away from Duran and Arbolito, but we were really just a bus and metrovia ride across the river. It was so easy to find ourselves forgetting where we actually were. Caitlin and I both got a mocha frappacino at Sweet & Coffee, which is Ecuador´s version of Starbuck´s (except that there is a securtiy guard in a bullet-proof vest manning the door here). That sounds so ridiculous here, but at home it´s a relatively routine purchase. There was more than one time throughout the day where we stopped ourselves and reminded each other that we were returning to unpaved roads and a neighborhood of cane houses that night. Even though we spent more money than we otherwise would have had we stayed in Arbolito, we still only spent $13 for the day, including transportation. It´s weird to think how far that much money would take you in a day in New York City or Boston. It was a very strange feeling, and I´m sure it´s not the last time I´ll experience it.

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador <3