¡Papa chango!

I thought I should write a little about some of the differences between the Spanish I grew up with (both of my parents are Mexican) and Ecuadorian Spanish. For the most part it's easy for me to understand, however my host family is originally from "la costa" where Spanish is spoken a lot faster. I still get a little lost when my host brothers speak because its fast and they use a lot of slang words that I am still trying to get used to. Here are some words/ phrases:

pana(s)--> amigo(a)(s)
estar chiro(a)--> I am broke
el/la man, los/las manes --> man/woman or men/women
¡Que bestia!--> ¡Tremendo(a)! o ¡increible!
¡Que chevere¡--> ¡Que bien!/ cool!
plata--> money
farear--> to go out
chuchaqui (Quechua word) --> hangover

Some surprising things:
-una torta is not a torta, its a cake!
-to get on a metrobus, trolley, and/or bus its only 25 cents!
-don't try and buy minutes after 6pm when there is a "promocion"...it will take you forever

Okay, well now onto what I did yesterday :)  Sarvie and I had decided to go to the botanic gardens located inside of parque carolina, and we were walking through the park when all of a sudden we stubbled across a concert! It was so cool, and of course I have some pics to share:

This band was the first we saw, and as you can tell we were pretty close to the stage (even closer with a little thing called zoom).

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The concert was for the youth promoting the message of living with a zero tolerance for drinking and smoking, these were some of the bands that played.

 This band was called Chaucha kings and their lead singer's style reminded us of Sting a little, do you see it?

Me and Sarvie

We took a break to go eat, and when we came back we were greeted by some other friends, and the coolest band ever called Papa Chango, who we later learned a pretty famous here are pics and a video:

Friends from Kalamazoo that we met while at the concert.

Papa Chango! They were so hype on stage, I loved it!!

I thought this guy was soo cool and talented.

 At one point the sound system died, and instead of the crowd getting mad they started to sing the song, it was incredible, everyone was singing and luckily the crew was able to get everything working again.

Mi adventura en el teleferiqo

Wow its been awhile, I will not bore you with details but I do have a good story about this past Sunday when I went on "el teleferio". So the "teleferiqo" (lift) up Pichincha (this mountain) which was something I have been hoping my host family would take me, and I got my wish but its true what they say, be careful of what you wish for. "El teleferico" was pretty cool, as a tourist I had to pay twice as much ($8.50) but the views were pretty cool, here are a couple:

Us getting on the lift, (L-R) my host bro Jonathan, cousins, me, and a friend.

Yup that's Quito behind me, so cool!

 As you can see everything was peachy, until we went down. I started to feel dizzy but after I had "te de coca" which is NOT drugs (used for altitude sickness) I felt better. Long story short, I started to feel bad once I got home, but instead of taking it easy I agreed to go to a friend's birthday party. It was fun, but I started to feel bad, and I had only eaten breakfast because every time my host mom offered me food I was not the least bit interested. However, I was a guest so I ate some "torta" (aka pastel or cake) and felt like I had just eaten a whole pig...well I felt a little home sick and skyping with my family back in the states didn't really help. All in all, I went to sleep feeling sick, missing my mom, dad, sister, and bro. but telling myself that "tomorrow will be a better day", and it was :) I am glad I went on the teleferico, but as my host mom's friend said, I should wait until my body gets used to the 2,800 meter (or about 9,186 ft) above sea level that we are in Quito BEFORE I decide to go another 1,500 meters (more or less) higher....lesson learned.

La mitad del mundo!

Hey everyone!! Since I will be in Quito for 6 months I know some people really want to know what I am doing, hence I have decided to blog. I will try and write as often as I can, and upload as many pictures of course. For those that don't know me, but still want to follow me all I have to say is, I am flattered. So heres a little recap of what I have done since I have arrived, which was four days ago (August 14, 2010).

I know everyone should research a little about where ever you are planning on going, but I didn't really do that. On top of everything I never recieved information concerning my host family, which was fine but needless to say that when my flight landed in Quito I was surprised to be cold (it was 60 degrees F) and I was nervous to go out and not see a host family waiting for me. So as soon as i got through customs, got my luggage, changed into pants, and went through security, a man takes my luggage and buts it into a chart, I was so worried that I totally passed my host mom. However, we still managed to find each other. My host mother, Jackeline, is super cool and my dad, Jorge, has been really welcoming. They have three children, Katherin, Jonathan y Cristian. I live really close to the airport, but really far from school(as I am beinging to see, it took me 1hr and 35 mins to get home from school today).


Sunday was so much fun, my host mom took me to see "la mitad del mundo" which was so cool. The place I went is the actual place where the GPS was used to locate the zero latitude, which is in a museum. We paid $3 to go on the tour, which was so worth it, and got to do all these cool "tests" that you can do because of the physics of being on the equator. Here are some pictures:

This is one of the activites we did at the equator, as you can see the water swirls (north of the equator its counter clockwise and south of the equator its clockwise) but in "la mitad del mundo" the water goes straight down (I didnt get a picture, sorry). 

The red line is "la mitad del mundo" and it was definetly harder to walk in a straight line then when I tried to off the line because we have less gravity when on the equator.

Here I am trying to put an egg ontop of a nail, the guide did it in about 15 seconds....I failed.

Aqui estoy con mi host mom, en la mitad del mundo.