HEY!

Do you know what I realized? I’m terrible at updating this… I’m sure that’s obvious. But I’ll continue my attempt.

I’m been back in Ecuador for three weeks after spending two wonderful weeks in Minnesota! It was great to see friends and family, eat lots of good food, and enjoy the snow (although I can’t say that I miss the cold).

Since I’ve been back, I have very much been enjoying the lovely sunny days here.

I love the mountains and palm trees.

When I got back, I was telling one of my fourth grade classes about Minnesota and how it was really cold and snowy, and one little girl very seriously asked me, “Why didn’t you bring some snow back for us; I’ve never seen snow.” Haha, how cute.

Here are some interesting bits from December in Ecuador:

Fiestas de Quito! This is a week-long festival in the beginning of December, and it celebrates Quito’s independence. There were concerts throughout the city as well as parades and other festivities. My favorite part was the parade on the last night. It was very exciting! There were lots of bands and dancing.

Making Swedish Christmas treats with Cami, and our Swedish friend, Sabina. We made some bread, caramels, and a mint chocolate candy. It was a bit tricky finding the right ingredients here, but we made it work.

Last weekend, I went to the Botanical Garden with Jonatan. It was a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day, perfect to wander around the garden and Quito’s parks. Here are some pictures:

Let me share some of my recent culinary adventures with you. Cami and I are becoming more like Ecuadorians; we’ve been eating almuerzos (lunch), almost every day. This is a super cheap way to eat. There are many little restaurants that serve almuerzos for about $1.50; this includes juice with ground up oats in it (sounds weird, but is actually pretty good), soup, and a meat with rice and beans or potatoes. It’s always more than we can eat, next time we might share one. And this is sometimes an interesting experience. A couple days ago, we got potatoes with pig skin. It looked slimy and yucky; I just ate the potatoes. And yesterday I was happily enjoying my soup (they usually have bits of bone with meat on them), and I pulled up a spoonful with what I initially thought was a bone, only to realize it was a chicken foot….a chicken foot, in my soup. With the toes and the bumps and everything. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat my soup after that. But Cami on the other hand (she’s been in Ecuador much longer than I have), said, oh yeah, I have one in my soup too, and continued to eat it. Maybe by the time I come home, I will be able to eat soup with chicken foot in it too.

This brings me to some things we discovered at the grocery store. Now usually we just stop by the meat section briefly to get ground beef and chicken, but today we decided to investigate (this meat section was very large by the way) and found the following: stomach, liver, chicken heart, and the very best one, a cow tongue, a big, black cow tongue. And around the corner, a whole pig, just sitting there, in a tray.