One and a half weeks left at my school. Four weeks until I leave Ecuador. Two and a half months until I go to college. Ahh! It's so surreal. Even after 5 months I continue to think, "I'm in ECUADOR! I can't believe it!!" And now, I find myself thinking, "Oh wow, I'm in Ecuador, and I'm only here for one month more! I still can't believe it!!" So I'm trying to make the most of my time left here--finishing up all the traveling I want to do, getting the kids ready for their exams, and even starting to think about how I'm going to pack all of my stuff back into those very small suitcases to come back home. I'm ready for home but at the same time I can't bear to think about leaving. It's just gone by too fast! But I'm excited about what's to come (summer at home, college, work, hopefully more travel) and Ecuador has just provided the spring board to jump into all of it.
I crossed two more places off my list of "Places to See," marking an end to my travels until my two weeks of vacation at the end. Cuenca, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its colonial-style streets and myriad of grand churches, was beautiful, and we managed to catch it on a gorgeously sunny weekend. Mostly we marveled at the churches, enjoyed feeling the wind in our hair as we walked along the river, browsed through an oddly assorted museum (which included a whole exhibit of shrunken heads), and were wowed by the biggest Incan ruins in Ecuador.
The other place: Mindo. I went last week with my school on a fieldtrip. There was lots of goofy singing on the bus which gave it a summer camp-like atmosphere, and my little devils turned into angels when they all fell asleep on the way back. We saw butterflies and hummingbirds and even took a dip in the river. That was definitely the best part: an entire school of kids stripped down to just their underpants splashing around in the river and screaming happily under the uncomfortable looks of their parents. (Did I really send my kid to this school??)
I also went this past weekend to two of Quito's best museums, Museo Nacional del Banco Central and Museo de Guayasamin. The former offered a large assortment of pots, jewelry, tools, and art from the first peoples of Ecuador and followed their evolution from native hunter-gatherers to being conquered by the Incan to then being conquered by the Spanish. The latter featured the works of the most famous painter in Ecuador, Oswaldo Guayasamin, who is a contemporary painter (dying only about 10 years ago in 1999) known for his attention given to the oppressed people in Latin America. The museum itself was quite grim, displaying only Guayasmin's most macabre pieces--paintings of crying women, dead children, skeletons, and death--but his style, despite being depressing, is amazing. I even bought two of his prints to hang in my dorm room next year =)
Other than those small trips, it's mostly just been a lot of last minute shopping, filling out forms and evaluations to wrap up my work and experience here, and getting ready for my upcoming two weeks of vacation! My awesome friend Ellen is coming to visit during those two weeks so I'm playing a fantastic trip to the beach for us and then a trip to the Amazon for myself. I'm so ready to be done with work--I can't wait for vacation!
