Final Score

Scoring works this way: If you are the first to try a new food, you get 3 points. If, after the person has tried it, you also try it, you get 1 point. If everyone tries it at the same time (all order it at a restaurant, for example), EVERYONE gets 3 points. And the final scores are:

Brendan: 54
Chloe: 45
Sara: 40
Tom: 37
Quinn: 66

Quinn was probably helped out by the simple fact that he was around me 24 hours a day, and so lobbied for points every time he tried something new, while the students may not even have told me about some of their culinary adventures. Hey, it pays to have connections. The foods we tried on the trip:

Chaulafan
Milanesa
Jugo de mora
Sopa de pollo
Tallarin con camaron
Aji
Chocolate con queso
Uvillas
Jugo de tomate de arbol
Sopa de esparrago
Choclo andino
Jugo de guanavana
Pro Fit Manzana
Nectar de mora
Galleta de chocolate
Ceviche mixto marabita
Platano frito
Patacones
Jugo de pina
Humitas
Empanadas verdes
Chifles
Dulce de guayaba
Empanadas de pollo
Cafe con leche
Jugo de papaya
Pitajuaya
Pepino dulce
Chirimoya
Tuna
Ochotillo
Guanavana
"Fruta roja con pelo"
Dulce de leche
Tostado
Trucja campesina
Habas
Sopa de papas
Pollo apanado
Jugo de zanahoria
Bunuelitos

Misty Mountains and Malls

Tom cartwheeled down the stairs this morning, belting out "I Feel Pretty" in his rich baritone, and when he came to a stop at our breakfast table, he pulled out the iron bar supporting its parasol and bent it into the shape of a heart for us. Well, perhaps not quite that big an improvement, but he is definitely back. Sara was still droopy this morning, and stayed in and rested rather than join the rest of us on our Quest for Pichincha.

We took the Trole out to its maximum northern extension, and then got a taxi cab to take us to the Teleférico, the cable car that runs to the top of Pichincha. We payed $7 a head instead of $4, which allowed us to jump right to the front of the line and step aboard - and this was a line of easily a hundred people. All of whom would rather spend over an hour in line than spend $3 more. The relative importance of $3 was extremely well illustrated for us at that moment. The gondola ride itself is a spectacular experience; this was really the first thing we have doen where there have been considerable numbers of Gringos around us, apart from staying at the hotel. the views from the top are breathtaking, even if it wasnt a perfectly clear day and we couldnt see the snowcaps to the north and south. (I know they´re there, Ive seen them all before.) Took some pictures, had lunch at a VERY reasonable and well-run Ecuadorian restaurant, hiked (Brendan, Tom and I did, anyway) a ways up the very cold and damp - hailing, actually - mountaintop, before descending in a very swing-prone gondola, probably due the wind. There is no way to get out of the complex without walking through their gigantic video game parlor, where Quinn, predictably, asked to play a few. The students obliged, and actually played some themselves. Chloe didn´t actually play anyting, but rather fell in love with a new kind of candybar. We´ll have to find it at the supermarket before we go so she can bring some home.

Back to the hotel around 2:45 - though Chloe asked permission to stay behind in the Plaza Grande and read her book, which was granted. The rest of us rested until 4:00, when we all met up to head into the tourist section, which circumstances of the Day That Shall Not Be Named had prevented us from really exploring. But when we got there, the entire district was shuttered - 4:45 on a Saturday. It was puzzling to all of us. Tourists don´t care if it´s Saturday or Tuesday - they´re on vacation. But the Ecuadorian shopkeepers do, apparently, because all that was missing on Amazonas, the big strip, were tumbleweeds. We hit the ATM and then decided to head north to a mall where a Latin American movie was going to be showing - and where Quinn would also be able to see "Las tortugas ninja". We split up for mall exploration and meals (remember the Ecuadorian woman who told Sara on the plane ride down here that Ecuadorian malls were better than American ones? I think I would have to agree...), then met at 6:30 to discuss strategy. "Las tortugas ninja" starts at 7:25, and their movie is at 8:25, so I told them Quinn and I would be upstairs at the Internet cafe (where we are now) until our showtime, and that we would meet them at the door to the theater when their movie lets out at 10:00. It will be a late night, but thats appropriate for our last night in Quito.

The mall has been a good experience for them, I think - we are again the ONLY gringos for a kilometer in any direction. And the place is just as snappy and bright and economically active as anywhere in the US. That´s Latin America for you - just read Márquez. The fifteenth century is three blocks away from the 21st.

Thank goodness for Cyberchase.com. $1.00 an hour for the use of the computer, and Quinn doesn´t mind waiting for me to write the blog at all.

UPDATE: Quinn and I got out of the movie to find our 4 intrepid students yawning on the bench in front of the movie theater - their movie had been sold out. Qué pena, because that would have been a great experience, but they seemed pleased anyway with the evening. (By the way: Las tortugas ninja get a big thumbs up from both of us.) Took taxis home, and Tom, who shared a ride with me and Quinn and listened in on my conversation with the drive about Correa, the vote, and Ecuador´s political history, said after we got out: "EVERYBODY here is so SMART!" And it is true, we have had a very, very well-informed sample of taxi drivers in Quito. Smart, savvy bunch of people.

Good night!

Black Friday

Well, maybe it´s not SO bad. But a few things went awry today - I´ll run them down for you to get them out of the way:

Tom woke up feeling pretty bad, and had to go to the doctor, an American-educated, English-speaking doctor in the tourist section of town. He has strep, and was prescribed antibiotics and told to stay in bed for 24 hours. He feels a lot better and is counting the hours down.

Sara is feeling a bit sick and spent the afternoon in bed, but self-medicated, and then felt good enough to come out for supper and the first half of a concert before calling it a day. She went to bed in a pretty good mood.

I either lost my wallet or had it pickpocketed, hard to tell which. I´ve canceled the credit card and the ATM card, but I´ll have to improvise the money situation somewhat.


Heavy sigh. Here´s the rest of our day:

We transfered hotels and they´re very happy to be back at the Hotel San Francisco. Because I was going to the doctor with Tom this morning, the students´scheduled visit to the University San Francisco de Quito in Cumbaya followed by lunch at my former student Melissa´s house in Tumbaco had to be put off, and Brendan and Chloe spent the late morning and early afternoon reading in the Plaza Grande, Quito´s most majestic sqwuare, right in front of the Presidential Palace as Tom and I were off at the doctor. They actually wound up meeting and conversing for a while with a student of USFQ, in a weird coincidence.

Around 2:00, the students who weren´t ill, Quinn, and I went to Cumbaya on public transportation and had the university tour after all. (Quinn and I actually bowed out partway through to play foosball in the student union area. Quinn won, 14-10.) The students were impressed with the place, which was only built in 1994. Our guide was very energetic and knew a lot about the institution.

Riding the trole back to the hotel, we were sitting kind of far from the door on a VERY crowded car, and I knew our stop was coming up soon, so I made my way toward the door and signaled the students to do the same. There were a couple of stops to go yet, but I figured it was better to be prepared. Of course, the students read my body language as "Get off at the next stop", which they did, unable to see me in the crowd. They were looking around expecting me to get off when we caught sight of each other through the closing doors. I signaled that I´d get off at the next stop, thinking they´d probably get on the next train and meet me there, but as we pulled away I saw them getting off the platform to walk to the next stop. Quinn and I met them halfway. Wow, this trole is really troublesome. Good for slapstick, though.

We were back at the hotel to check on Tom and Sara by 6:00, and both were feeling much better. All but Tom went to eat supper in the chicken restaurant downstairs in the hotel, and then walked three blocks form the hotel into the UNBELIEVABLY gorgeouos, recently restored neighborhood called La Ronda, Quito´s most famous colonial street, for a concert in which Jeff Eckels, husband of Melissa, played bass for some modern renditions of the pasillo, a traditional song format from Ecuador. We had an introduction to the Ecuadorian rules regarding concert-going, namely: Constant conversation is fine; standing up and walking across the view of everyone in the middle of a song is fine; picking up your back-row seat and carrying it to the front to magically turn it into a front row seat for youself and your family of three is fine; bringing a dog is fine. Surprisingly, there were no cell phones going off. It made for some very fun debriefing after the concert. The music was good, though, and the venue was gorgeous, so everyone had a good time.

Tomorrow, we are going to go up in the teleferico (cable car) to the top of Pichincha, the mountain that overlooks Quito. Yes, it is a volcano; no, it isn´t active. And the possibility of clouds ruining the view is pretty high - but, after today, our luck is bound to turn.

Tom just came down! Feeling good! Things are looking up!

Mr Johnson

Taxis, taxis, taxis

Revelie was at 8:00 this morning, and we immediately piled into cabs for the bus station, where we took the first outbound bus to Quito. Made amazing time, got here around 11:00, and checked into our hotel, which I’d stayed in as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. Once we were ready to go to lunch, though, the students made it know they weren’t pleased with the cleanliness of the place, and so after lunch I dropped them off at the Museo del Banco Central, where we were given a guide, and Quinn and I rode out to our previous Quito hotel to see if we could arrange to stay there. We could, so tomorrow morning we’re changing hotels.

The afternoon was spent at the museum and then resting a bit at the current hotel. I had asked the students to look at 3 local newspapers for options for this evening’s entertainment, and the options were a concert at the Casa de Cultura Ecuatoriana, advertised in 2 different newspapers but completely un recognized by the staff at the CCE (same building as the Museo del Banco Central). Another option was a concert in Cumbaya, but it’s a bit of a trek for a concert that (A) might happen, (B) might be free or might cost $30, and (C) might be sold out already. No way to find out. Another option was a live performance of a play, but the play in question is 3 hours long, and that seemed a bit much. Another option was a piece of puppet theater about a famous dead Argentine tango singer and the search for an unrequited love across Buenos Aires.

Naturally, we went with the puppets. Piled into cabs to go over to the Humboldt Center, where the production took place in a tiny little basement theater. The students seemed intrigued – Tom said (in Spanish), “I wish I had been able to understand more.” I think all were sufficiently entertained and had their minds expanded even as they soaked in some Argentine Spanish and got thoroughly weirded out. All good and healthy. Cabs back to the hotel, and the evening ended.

I should also mention that we had cebiche for supper, and those of us who had it really, really liked it. I could eat that every day. Great Manabita place right up the street from us here. This tourist district is such a rabbit warren – I get turned around very easily. But we managed not to lose anyone.

Tomorrow: Tour of the USFQ, lunch in Tumbaco with my friend Melissa and her family, and the an evening concert of Ecuadorian pasillos with Melissa’s husband, Jeff, in the south of Quito, right near our old / new hotel.

G’night!

Otavalo On My Mind

Awoke in Otavalo and headed north on the train tracks (now defunct) toward Peguche, a little town that´s about 100% indigenous. Most of the way there we met up with an Ecuadorian couple, whom I flagged down to ask if they knew how to get to the waterfall we were looking for. They said they were looking for the same place, and that they wouldn´t mind giving us a ride. So we all piled into their Rav4 and trundled down the cobblestone road to where it turned off and then got out to explore the falls. They´re lovely, set in a eucalyptus grove (which is always just about empty of birds, since local insects and birds don´t eat the introduced eucalyptus), and after seeing them, we walked to Peguche itself. There we met a man who had a tiny little store in the bottom floor of his house, an Indian, who, after selling us some bananas and soft drinks, let slip that his family members were in the back working on their weavings. I asked if we could impose on him to let us in to see, and he said sure. Three were in the back, one slicing up a long strip of woven material for children´s sweaters, another winding yarn ont a spool, and a third upstairs weaving on the hand loom. He talked to us about how a lot of artisans now have automated weaving, and made a somewhat lame argument about how that´s still handicraft. BUt the equipment is a big investment, and it´s all old industrial stuff from defunct factories in Quito so it breaks down a lot and you have to order spare parts made because the machines are out of date...A very informative conversation. We thanked him and left.

Across the street, Chloe went into a store to use a bathroom, and while we waited for her we struck up a conversation with the store´s owner, an Indian who told us that with every generation, they speak Quichua less and less well, and he thinks it will eventually be lost. We compared that with my experience raising Quinn in Spanish...Again, a very interesting conversation, cut short by the arrival of our bus, which took us up through a couple of the mountain Indian towns before taking us back to Otavalo.

We had lunch, and I set the students free on the market for the afternoon, saying we´d meet back up at the hotel at 5:00.

In the meantime, I called Melissa, my friend in Tumbaco, who said she hasn´t been able to organize a family stay, but would still love to host us for lunch and show us Tumbaco, a rural / suburban town where she lives with her husband, who teaches music at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, which we´ll be visiting Friday. Jeff is giving a concert in Quito on Friday with a pasillo group, pasillos being traditional Ecuadorian songs, so we´re also planning on doing that. But since there will be no home stay, we set an agenda in a group meeting (all present except Quinn, who was watching Sponge Bob in Spanish in the next room) what our agenda for the trip would be.

Having asked the owner of the hotel what was going on in Otavalo this evening, I took the group to another mass just up the street, and they paid very strict attention to a lot of details, picking up on things like a painting depicting three people being thrown from a vehicle in a grisly accident on a curve in the mountains here and being saved by the Virgin Mary, complete with rays to catch them as they fell. The sermon was about evangelicals, and the priest said they have left their faith for another and abandonded Mary, which leaves them as orphans, the poor devils. He said they weren´t true Christians, etc., and the students had understood a very good percentage of it when we left. It dovetailed very nicely with the evangelicals we had seen going door to door on the outskirts of Otavalo earlier this afternoon, Bibles in hand. The struggle for the souls of Ecuador goes on.

So now we´re doing our usual wind-down in the Internet cafe (which, as Tom pointed out, is not a cafe - they don´t bother to serve any drinks), and tomorrow we´re off to Quito again. the students have requested that we stay in La Mariscal, the touristy district where we had supper with Juan and Maria Eugenia. I´ll see what I can do.

Off to Otavalo

The day started easily, with a cab drive through rainy Quito, which is a whole different experience when the cobblestones are wet, to the bus station and an immediate entrance into a north-bound bus,heading for Otavalo, and we would have made great time but for a fender bender that our bus got into. Someone tried to u turn in front of us and the bus clipped the back of her car. They had to stand on the sidewalk and haggle, with a policeman there, about who paid whom how much for a good half hour, in which time I fruitlessly argued for them to open tha door and let us stand on the sidewalk. Oh well. We were off again and arrived in otavalo around lunch time.

Had lunch in a mom and pop little restaurant with no menu, just a set lunch, and a very friendly family. We noticed on the way out that the intricate patterns in the stone and concrete floor were actually made up of rows and rows of cow bones. Hundreds of them, thousands. Pretty nifty. After a post lunch snooze, we headed to the big open air market, and the students seemed to really enjoy it. Che Guevara pendants, woven pants, sweaters, earrings...many purchases were made, and more are on the docket for tomorrow.

I followed the lead of the students for supper, which we just had at a tourist oriented place that served mostly Italian food. I broke down - theyve had plenty of Ecuadorian fare. Our list of new foods people have tried is now deep onto its second page...Been pointing out when people are speaking Quichua = Otavalo is an Indian town, very prosperous, with a long history of trade. Quinn noticed a larger number of bicycles here than in Quito, a combination of the prosperity of the population and the fact hat it is a much smaller town and it is safer to ride a bicycle here.

The evening will hold a stroll to look for any music there might be, and an early start tomorrow, since we probably are going to go on a somewhat lengthy hike to see the waterfall of Peguche. That, after another morning visit to the market - they were happy to find that it opens at 7:00 AM. This, from a group that whimpers like puppies when you set roll call for 8:00.

Tom has gone from eating nothing to engaging in eating contests with Chloe and Sara. And speaking of Tom, he just found online the name of the trio that knocked our socks off at the Teatro Nacional Sucre the other night. Hooray, which I would love to end with an exclamation point, but this keyboard is stumping me. Our hotel here is as nice as our last one, if not nicer, and spirits are high. Commerce will do that.

Until tomorrow

Mr Johnson

Tom is feeling better

Almost fogot to mention this, so far has the issue receded from my mind: Tom has figured out that it was simply a nagging case of motion sickness, and has had a lot of success with easy remedies. Feeling much better now, and looking forward to the rest of the trip! (I once had motion sickness for three days after a 24-hour ferry ride, followed by intermittent train travel. No fun.) Other than that apparently resolved issue, all are happy and healthy! Including Quinn, who ran - the boy RAN - up endless flights of stairs in mountainous Old Quito while the rest of us huffed and heaved in the altitude. To his credit, there was no taunting.

Photos and day´s narrative

Well, I just spent half an hour writing this, only to have it all deleted by the Spanish keyboard´s inability to understand what I thought were pretty basic shortcuts. But, hey, it´s not like the days when I rode a train for half an hour to check my mail weekly. I´m sitting in the common room of our $15-a-night hotel, where, if I´d brought it, I could be using my laptop on their WiFi connection. Much has changed in 15 years.

The photos: Our self-appointed guide to the Museo Metropolitano de Quito, who offered to show us around and then demanded money, a common trick. He got fifty cents and a talking-to. But he did show us his identity card, proof that he had voted in sSunday´s referendum. The Museo was fine, but nothing compared to the Museo San Francisco, housed in the abbey attached to the Iglesia San Francisco, the sparawling complex (biggest religious complex in Latin America) built four years after the Spanish defeated the Inca. (Started then, anyway.) (One photo is of its facade, and another is the group posed on its steps.) It is a world class museum, and our guide was also a volunteer, but of a much nicer sort: a uniformed art history graduate student who spoke very clearly and showed us any number of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century works of art. Excellent tour.

We toured much of colonial Quito today on foot, doing a lot of picture-taking and some shopping, and the stduents were again pretty wiped out in the afternoon. A couple of them were so tired they didn´t hear me knocking on their door, and the other two were so comfortably ensconced in "The English Patient" that they were happy to stay in the hotel a while. (Please try to assign something more trip-specific next time, Mr. Hurley.)

We went into the neon tourist district tonight for supper with some Ecuadorian friends of mine (one of whom, Juan, is the first person we´ve met who voted "no" on Sunday), and on the way home we took the Trole (pronounced "troll-ay"), the subway-like above-ground electrified articulated buses that run norht-south in Quito. We all paid our fare and waited for the trole, which was pretty crowded when it arrived; we all waited patiently for people to get off at our stop, and then Sara got on, followed by the rest of us. Except that between the words "on" and "followed", the doors closed, and we were treated to the site of Sara´s face as she hear the doors close, then turned to look at us through the glass, slowly, her eyes getting bigger and bigger, finally mouthing "No way" as the trole started to pull away. We remarked afterward that she is definitely a born actress: every tiny element of her emotions was evident on her face. Of course, she did as common sense would dictate, and got off at the next stop, to see us pull up on the next trole and step aboard, although there was a somewhat agonizing 5-minute wait between troles. But we were all confident, as we waited, that she´d do the right thing. Still, I found myself peering out the window of the boarding area looking for the next trole pretty often in those 5 minutes.

We are off to Otavalo in the morning, where there is no trole, for better or for worse; revelie is at 8:30. (We got in at about 9:40, and they still had to pack.) Updates as needed!

Mr. Johnson

PHOTOS!!

Satelite phone

Dear "Fellow Travelers!" The Satelite phone may not be working correctly so, if you need to get a hold of Mr. Johnson, e-mail is best for now. The address is jjohnson@lenoxps.org - I am able to check it at least once daily.

Update: Tom the Trooper is feeling queasy still, but doesn´t quite feel it´s doctor-worthy, and had some white rice for lunch while the rest of us ate our huuuuuge portions. We walked the old town today in the morning, and are going to go to the Museo San Francisco in the afternoon. Currently: All are resting back at the hotel! We might have done the cable car to the top of Pichincha today, but we´´re going to wait until Tom feels better. It appears to be a motion sickness-related malady - the bus rides yestrerday and the plane made it come, and rest, without vehicular travel, makes it go away.

DAY 3: A TALE OF TWO BUSES

First, though, I have to write about last night - we waited for an hour and a half in front of the Teatro Nacional Sucre, to see ¨Mestizaje¨, a production of orchestral arrangements of traditional Ecuadorian folk music. We were among the first in line, so there was no doubt we´d get in, but I realized that Tom, Quinn and I were not dressed quite formally enough, so we dashed back to the hotel (Tom and I) and grabbed new clothes. We alternated who would go and grab a bite while the others waited in line. The concert was fantastic - we´re searching for discs by a trio that was featured. Quinn fell asleep just before the end, but the rest of us were very glad we´d waited. Full house, clapping and singing along to Ecuadorian folk standards...I couldn´t have dreamed it up better. And the recently restored theater is an absolute gem. The people workng there positively beam with pride as they open the doors.

That was of course after all the walking we did in the park, the mall, and the colonial sector yesterday, so we were all very tired when we hit the hay around 11:00, and the students slept in until about 9:00. After breakfast, we boarded a bus for Papallacta, home of thermal hot springs to soak away the soreness from yesterday´s walk. I remembered the journey being a lot shorter than it turned out to be (2.5 hours, when you factor in the driver stopping for lunch, and gas, at two different places), but when we got there it was worth the long (and GORGEOUS) bus ride. We sank into the interandean valley and up the other side, then started sliding down toward the Amazon before we hit Papallacta. Then we bathed in the pools, a couple of which are big enough to swim in, and Quinn made a friend named Eric, an 8 year old Ecuadorian boy who chased him (Quinn) down before hey left so he could shake his hand and say ¨Hasta luego, Quinn!¨ We then lunched there (Chloe had the potato soup, and took a picture of it; she´s probably the most adventurous eater in the bunch), and hopped another bus back to Quito. But because today was the election, and many people had traveled home to vote n their home towns, the bus was absolutely CRAMMED with people, and we had to stand most of the way. (A very nice pair of young women slid over to make room for Quinn, but the rest of us stood.) It was also interesting to see who populated the bus ' mostly Indians from the Amazon who spoke Quichua, and who now work and live in Quito. We were all pretty tired when we got back to the hotel at 7:00.

Now we´re winding up the day with a short time in the Internet cafe that´s a five-minute walk from our hotel, which Tom, spontaneously, began to sing the praises of today. Out of nowhere, walking, he said,¨¨Me encanta nuestro hotel!¨Brendan said, ¨Me gustan los hoteles en Ecuador porque son unicos¨(I like Ecuadorian hotels becuse they´re unique). I have to say, I heard them laughing and speaking Spanish and enjoying themselves on that crowded bus ride more than I think I had the whole trip.

Tomorrow we´ll wind up this leg in Quito with, I hope, a guided church visit and the cable car to the top of Pichincha. I´ll have to ask about that in the hotel tonight. They absolutely bend over backwards for us there - I asked if it would be OK to bring the hotel´s towels to Papallacta, and they said no, because they were yesterday´s towels, which were probably dirty - and proceeded to go get us clean ones to take with us.

The Vote: Unofficial results: Yes, 78%, No, 12%.

Pictures tomorrow, I SWEAR!

Mr. Johnson

DAY 2: STILL NO CASUALTIES

4:46 PM, we´re all in the internet cafe, decompressing after a day that started out late - our exhausted travelers slept in, and all reported sleeping well. Tom´s feeling much better, though he still doesn´t have much of an appetite. We had breakfast at the hotel (it´s included), follwed by a trip on the Trole to the market (the same one where Janneke and I used to do our grocery shopping every week) and I sent the students out in groups of 2, to meet back at the assigned spot in 45 minutes, with two assignments: Find weird, new kinds of fruit, and ask as many folks as they could about their thoughts on tomorrow´s vote (whether or not to scrap the current constitution and start over). THey were unable to find anyone against the idea of a new constitution, and came back with six or eight new kinds of fruit, some of them new to me as well. We sat on a park bench and sampled them - Tom had a somewhat violent reaction to them, judging by the sounds he made. But they seem not to have actually made him sick. Then we were off to Parque Carolina, where their assignment was similar - no fruit ths time, though. And some of them saw a brawl in a soccer match! Very exciting. But they didn´t let it interrupt their interview tih a man who´d alread emigrated and then decided to come home. Very impressive and interesting man, they said, with deep knowledge about seemingly everything.

Wrapped up the afternoon at the mall Ël Jardin, which was an enormous contrast to the working-class Ecuadorians we saw recreating in the park. Lunch there, and then I had the students find our way home, which they did admirably, and with no help from me at all.

We´ll rest at the hotel for a while before trying to get in line for a free concert of Ecuadorian music to be held tonight at the Teatro Nacional Sucre, newly restored - hopefully my freinds Elena and Maria Eugenia will be able to join us. Got to go call them - Photos soon, I promise!

Mr Johnson

DAY 1: NO CASUALTIES

Howdy, all! After a looooooong day of travel (limo was 30 minutes late in NJ), we arrived without incident in Quito, took a taxi to our hotel, and relaxed for an hour before taking a walk in the city. (Hard lesson learned, unfortunately - Brendan lost a camera he had secured only very loosely in his cargo pants pocket.) We´ve met up with my friends Elenita and Maria Eugenia in a wondeful new mall-type complex in the colonial part of the city for supper, 5 mintes from the hotel. Tom did get sick - he felt bad before ever ingesting anything in ecuador, so it wasn´t the food or the water, probably just the loooooong day of travel. He left supper early to go to the hotel and rest (I walked him back). But at supper, a group of dancers came whirling in and swirled around the tables and swept up the students to take them to an informal gathering of musicians, where probably 500 well-dressed Quitenos were watching a traditional dance troupe perform in an enclosed ampitheater. It was sublime. Photos tomorrow!

Back to supper ' there´s an internet cafe 50 feet from where we were eating just now, all under the same roof as the restaurant and the ampitheater. This city ROCKS.

More tomorrow!

Mr. Johnson

Special Message from Quinn: "Hola Mami , me gust ael hotel mucho¨!"

News, as of 4-9-07

Hello families of students heading to Ecuador! (We have got to come up with a better name for ourselves.) Here's all the news:

The sattelite phone has arrived, and the number will be sent home with students tomorrow, Wednesday, 4-11-07. (I don't want to post it here - even crank calls will cost $1.50 a minute). It has a voice mail feature, so that several times a day I will be able to see if anyone has called us. It only works outside, so you'll have to wait until morning if you call us at night, though I'll try to go check in every night before bed.

I'll also be sending home some copies of contact information for people we'll be seeing in Ecuador, the hotels where we'll be staying, our flight information, and some other odds and ends. I call it my "Big Book of Ecua-info", but you can feel free to call it anything you like.

I talked with Elena Carrera, a former colleague of mine at the Universidad Catolica in Quito, last night, and she has a number of suggestions for museums and daytrips around Quito - I've invited her to join us for supper Friday night. She said that she was happy to hear where we were planning to stay in Quito, as it's in the colonial center, which has been transformed in the last ten years and is becoming the most sought-after spot in the city for condominiums. She says there are cafes and live music there all the time, and that it's absolutely crawling with chapas (policemen).

Please get the "traveling with a minor" forms notarized before Thursday - this is an important step; as I know from personal experience, whether you get through customs in any given direction, or are even allowed on the plane, can depend on who's working the line that day. Thank you to Caitlin Nash for pointing out the added importance of having it notarized! We had the parents sign the version that was not to be notarized, but after talking with Caitlin and some others I think the notarized version is the way to go. (Sara's 18, so it isn't necessary for her.) Post offices, banks, colleges, and legal firms are great places to find notaries, but the Town Hall in Lenox has one as well. Sorry for the last-minute rush!

As you pack your clothes, keep in mind that day-to-day people in Quito are quite conservatively dressed. There's an excellent video on Youtube with this title:

Noticia Dia - Opinion Ciudadana a una Semana de Consulta

It has some shots of people walking down the street in the capital, and I've watched it probably 10 times without seeing anyone in shorts. (Not that I expected it to be different from one time to the next...) It's also a good video to watch because it has ordinary Quitenos talking about what they think regarding the vote coming up on the 15th. Have your kids translate!

On the subject of the possible homestay, I've had some good news from Melissa Knitter, my former student: she's lined up one family who would love to host, and has a number of others in mind, but hasn't been able to reach them because of the yearly Holy Week vacation exodus. I plan on calling her this evening to see if there's another family lined up. It would be probably for just one day toward the end of our time in Ecuador, but if a different timeline would make it possible, we're flexible enough to move it forward some. I'll let you know!

That's all for now, please try to make it to town hall to have the form notarized! Thank you,

Mr. Johnson