Livin' the dream

Hello everyone!

Time is FLYING! I am officially half-way through with my study abroad in Ecuador and I can't believe it. Although some days I feel like my life is at a standstill, with the monotonous routine of going to class and doing homework, I then look at the calendar and can't understand where the days have gone!

I have some exciting news to share... I'm officially going to the Galapagos Islands October 29 - November 5!!! I'll be visiting four islands - San Cristobal, Floreana, Santa Cruz, and Isabela. I'll also be snorkeling at Kicker Rock (one of the best snorkeling spots in the world), visiting the Charles Darwin station, and seeing the giant tortoises! I'm beyond pumped for this! Talk about a GREAT fall break!

Have a great weekend,
Kelley

La Amazonia

I am so sorry for the major delay in writing this post! I got back from Tiputini last Monday night and had SO MUCH HOMEWORK and STUDYING to do! I was able to post my pictures to facebook and I hope you all enjoyed those! I am going to go through a day-by-day of my time at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station and try to explain the extreme beauty that I was able to experience during my time in the Amazon!

Friday was a lot of traveling! The seven of us, 6 students and one advisor, left the Quito airport around 7:00am and arrived in Coca, Ecuador at 7:30. Short flight! From there we took a boat, a chiva (trolley bus), and another boat to our final destination at Tiputini around 4:00pm! It was everything I hoped for! We walked up quite a few stairs from the boat to the "comedor" which was the outside dining hall, and then took a five minute walk along a path through the rainforest to our cabanas to put our things away and rest for a bit. Later we had dinner and hit the hay pretty early! Our cabanas had screened windows (no glass) and it was SO AMAZING to hear all the sounds of the jungle.

Saturday - First we went on a 3-4 hour hike through the rainforest, seeing LOTS of wildlife, especially birds! We went back for lunch and then hiked to a canopy tower and from the top I was able to see so many trees. They went on for forever and it was a great feeling; to be such a speck in the vastly expansive Amazon. [Side note: SO MANY INSECTS in the canopy!] Saturday night we took the boat out to look for nocturnal animals and look at what we found! Caimans! And we were actually able to hold a baby! One of the highlights of the trip for sure!




Sunday morning we hiked to the canopy tower/walkways and traveled by rope bridge to four different towers and got more breathtaking views of la Amazonia! In the afternoon we were able to float down the Tiputini River. Yes, the same river that we saw Caimans in the night before. It was SO WONDERFUL! And then we did a night hike! This was easily my favorite part of the trip. You could hear all of the animals around you and you just realized how many of them were actually out there. At one point we turned off our flashlights and just listened. It was the most peaceful thing. And it really helped me become more aware; when you're in a situation like that it's hard not to realize how much bigger the world is, and how small of a role you play in it. Crazy!

Monday - We headed out around 7:00am for our long journey back to Quito. While we were on our first boat we were able to see Tapirs, Pink River dolphins, and Capibaras! A great way to end a great trip!

And my friend Lisa, who also went on the trip, made this wonderful list of everything we saw in Tiputini (and I added some thoughts) ::
Birds
Friday, 9-30-11

1. Brown-chested martin
2. White-winged swallow
3. Bat falcon
4. Black vulture
5. Southern rough-winged swallow
6. Osprey
7. Cattle egret
8. Yellow-rumped cacique
9. Lesser kiskadee
10. Blue-gray tanager
11. Yellow-browed sparrow
12. Sungrebe
13. Ringed kingfisher
14. Tropical kingbird
15. Blue and yellow macaw
16. Amazon kingfisher
17. Cocoi heron
18. Slate-colored hawk
19. White-banded swallow
20. tinamou (species?)

Saturday, 10-1-11

1. Common piping guan
2. Russet-backed oropendola
3. Speckled chachalaca
4. Scarlet macaw
5. Hoatzin
6. Black caracara
7. Greater kiskadee
8. Greater ani
9. Lineated woodpecker
10. Red-capped cardinal
11. Crimson masked tanager
12. Rufescent tiger heron
13. Orange-winged parrots
14. Scale-backed antbird
15. White-fronted nun bird
16. White-browed purpletuft
17. Blue dacnis
18. Yellow-bellied tanager
19. White-lored euphonia
20. gilded barbet
21. Bare-necked fruit crow
22. White-throated toucan
23. Ladder-tailed nightjar
24. Rufous-bellied euphonia
25. Red-bellied macaw
26. Black-fronted nunbird
27. Buff-throated woodcreeper
28. Olive-faced flatbill
29. Eastern wood-pewee

Sunday, 10-2-11

1. Spotted sandpiper
2. Cobalt-winged parakeet
3. Striated heron
4. Amazonian white-tailed trogon
5. Red-throated caracara
6. Roadside hawk
7. White-necked jacobin
8. hummingbird on nest
9. trumpeters

Mammals

1. Pink river dolphin
2. Common woolly monkey
3. Long-nosed bat
4. other kinds of bats
5. Amazon red squirrel
6. Agouti
7. Spider monkey
8. Squirrel monkey
9. Howler monkey (heard)
10. Red-mantled tamarinds
11. nocturnal monkey
12. 2 tapirs
13. capibara with 2 babies

Reptiles/Amphibians

Caimans (held one!!)
Pitt viper
Tree runner (lizard)
Sapo de riñuelo (toad)
Emerald tree boa

Insects
swarms of “confetti”-like butterflies (yellow, white, light green which were so pretty)
Blue morpho butterfly
blue/black/white butterfly, red on outside of wings
green/black/white swallowtail-like butterfly
tarantula
araña loba (wolf spider)
molting grillo
conga ants (bullet ants)
very pretty dangerous centipede
araña tejedora (weaver spider)
araña scorpión
banana spider

Plants
white hollow mushroom called pena de diablo that only lives 1 day
El jardín del Diablo: tree with lemon ants (formic acid clears area- ate some)
arbol de tisa, hueso de muerte (fungus on particular tree)
coca (ate)
curare: poisonous vine, wood used to make poison darts for blowguns (ate)
plant that causes hives/welts (yeah, that hurt.)
plant that turns your tongue blue
palm used to make our bracelets (which are super cool!)
rubber tree

This has been my favorite trip taken so far in Ecuador! I was able to see so many wonderful things that I will never forget!

Have a great week!
Kelley

PS - if you have any questions please feel free to comment!

It's time for my weekend in the AMAZON!

This weekend I will be traveling to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the AMAZON! I leave from the Quito airport at 6am Friday! Yikes! And we will be traveling by plane for a very short 30 minutes, and from there taking a boat, a bus, another boat, and finally arriving to Tiputini around 3:00pm. I'm so excited to spend a few days in the rainforest with all the animals!

The Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) is a biological field station established in Amazonian Ecuador in 1994 by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in collaboration with Boston University. They have about 1500 acres of primary lowland rainforest and it's about 200 miles east of Quito! I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post them on Monday night when I return!

And on another note, tomorrow there is possibly going to be a very large rally to commemorate the police uprising of September 30, 2010 in Quito that caused a lot of problems within the government and the military against the police force of Quito (they pelted the president with tear gas, whoops). These rallies may have over 100,000 people, schools are being released early so that students are not caught in the rallies, and Americans are encouraged to stay away from certain parts of the city (it's illegal for non-Ecuadorians to protest). I've been told that the rally tomorrow is supposed to be non-violent but please remember if something does happen, I'm leaving the city at 6am - so nothing to worry about!

Have a great weekend! 
Kelley  

Puerto Lopez

This weekend I was able to go to Puerto Lopez, a small town on the coast of Ecuador with my friends Becca and Sara. It was absolutely wonderful! We arrived Saturday morning, after a very long bus ride from Quito, to hop in a small buggy and eventually get signed up for a whale-watching tour! It was $20 for a couple hours spent watching the whales and then snorkeling after!

Not the greatest video, but an attempt to capture the Humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean! Our tour was following two males and one female whale for about 2 hours around a smaller island. We were able to go onto the sundeck of the boat and watch, which was a great experience, although I was a little close to falling off once! I not only had a great view of the whales, but I had an excellent view of the coast and the beautiful blue ocean!

After whale watching we decided to go grab a bite at a restaurant on the beach. A girl we met, Emily, joined us for a late lunch and she told us that she had been traveling for two months in South America by herself, and she was finally headed back to the States this week. Way to go Emily! How amazing that she did all of that traveling by herself? After eating Emily went on to the bus station and we went swimming! The water felt AMAZING and I loved every minute of being there. Later on in the evening we met up with our two friends from whale watching, Ky and Ben, to play some hacky sack on the beach. They had been in Ecuador about two weeks, and are taking the year off from college in California to surf and travel around South America. It's really quite inspiring to meet people like this. Whenever I doubt my ability to travel, I look back to all of the other people I've met along my way here and know that if they can do, I can too!

Overall, great weekend trip!

-Kelley

Oh and a word of advice -

If you go snorkeling and don't put sunscreen on your back, it will get burnt.

Mariposa Traicionera

Here is a very popular song in Quito! Enjoy!
Ven Conmigo


This weekend I am going to the beach in Puerto Lopez, one of the best places for whale watching in South America. Can't wait to feel my toes in the sand and hopefully see a Humpback whale!




Interesting facts from this week:
1.) I found out that my entire host family is left-handed!
2.) I started "Conversation Club" this week and really enjoyed it! The native student I am meeting with doesn't know much English, which works well for me. This provides me with a greater opportunity to speak Spanish and to see how I like teaching ESL!
3.) I got a personal pan pepperoni pizza and a chocolate milkshake for $3.00 at a restaurant across the street from school!
4.) I really enjoy my Spanish class. There are students from Sweden, Switzerland, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, and the US in one room trying to improve our Spanish and learn more about the country we're living in for the next three months. Our teacher is fantastic and we always leave class laughing about something! This week we listened to a lovely song called, "Mariposa Traicionera." That translates as "unfaithful butterfly." Classic.
5.) I brought a few different colors of nail polish with me, thinking it would give me something to do when I got bored. My host mom is always so surprised every week when I tell her I did them myself. I'm thinking I could open a "USA NAILS" here and it would be authentic!
6.) There are lots of traffic problems in Quito. They have attempted to solve this problem by only allowing certain cars into sections of the city during assigned days. Each car is given a bumper sticker with a number on it. You are only allowed to be in these heavily traveled areas of the city if you have the number on your car that corresponds to the allowed day and time of the week! And if you are in the city when you aren't supposed to be, you get an $80 ticket! Crazy, right? Too bad many families have more than one car, and can just take a different car with another number. For example, my host family has four cars and a motorcycle. If they needed to get to that part of the city by car, they could most likely do it.
7.) I really miss milk.
8.) Everyone here that you see, whether it be in your building, on the bus, or in the store, always says "Buenos dias/tardes/noches." They're so nice!
9.) I have orientation on Monday for my trip to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon! And we leave for the trip on Friday morning!

Have a great weekend!
Kelley

Mitad del Mundo

This weekend I was able to go to "Mitad del Mundo" which means "Middle of the World" in Spanish - aka, I went to the Equator! We first went to the Mitad del Mundo monument and learned that in the mid-1700's a French expedition came to Ecuador to mark the exact location of the middle of the Earth.

Turns out they were about 300m off but for having zero technology, they were really close! Rebecca and I then went to the REAL equator, a short walk down the road! They also had a museum and lots of interesting activities. The guides showed us water going down a sink in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as in the middle! Que chevere! (Middle, Northern, Southern)

Neat, right?

P.S.

1.) You weigh a kilogram less while standing on the equator.

2.) Even though I was at the Equator, I still couldn't manage to balance an egg on a nail.

3.) Getting anywhere by bus will always take you at least an hour longer.

4.) When traveling by bus, make sure you ALAWYS note what stop you start at; this makes getting off later much easier (:

5.)  It seems as though the "rainy season" is now in full force. We were introduced on Friday when I walked home in the rain for twenty minutes. When I finally got home Gina said, "Why didn't you take a jacket?" I hadn't thought of that!

6.) I find lots of humor in the things some guys say here. Friday I got, "Taxi, mi amor?" from a man who was not in a taxi at all. I think I'll pass, mi amor.

7.) This week starts "Conversation Club!" That's right, I'm joining a club! (Too bad they don't have something like BAC here!) Twice a week I'll be meeting with a native Spanish speaker at USFQ; Rigoberto will be practicing his English while I work on Spanish!

Love you all,

Kelley

Oh no... Ceviche

Every night at dinner we have a soup with our meal. I've had no problems so far with the types of soups, and I've actually started looking forward to them! Tonight was - Ceviche.

Ceviche is a seafood dish that is very popular in South America. We had ceviche made with shrimp (camarones), peppers, and lime. It is served cold.

I've really been trying to eat everything that my host family serves me, but tonight I definitely failed them. I ate about half of my soup before telling my host mother that I didn't like it. And besides... how many times do I have to tell her that I don't like shrimp?

Fingers crossed for a better tomorrow in the world of my Ecua-soups!