Thanksgiving in the Equator, el zoologico y el censo.

November 25th:

Hannah, one of the planners of this incredible
dinner, moi, and Jamie in the background
doing something crazy as usual.

There is no denying that I was sorta dreading Thanksgiving becuase I was not going be spending it with my family in the States, but thanks to all of the wonderful people that organized and assigned everyone something to cook, bake, or buy this was one of the most memorable Thanksgivings I've ever had...I even baked!! Granted it was hard to be focused in class becuase I was thinking about all the amazing food I was going to have, and when people asked why I wasn't eating lunch I had to explain that it was a strategdy to make room for dinner :) No worries though, I did have snacks throughout the day. I baked the pastel de tres leches the night before with Sarvie and my host mom. I am going to be real though, she did most of the doing, but Sarvie and I did help (whenever she let us that is). I had a big group project that day so I was running from one place to the other; left school around 16h15 and then got to my house around 17h15, and then started to get ready. We had instructions to come with our dish, $5 for wine, towel and swim suits (there was an option to get into the pool) and to come dressed up. Before I go on I would like to give a shout-out to Alana and her amazing family for hosting us and letting us all come over and enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Seeing as this was a special event I decided to go all out, I curled my hair, but on my boots and nice skirt and I was ready for this dinner. The food was great! I have to give it up to Hannah and Nick for thier wonderful job with the turkey...or should I say turkeies, that they cooked. However, what really did it for me was the fact that we were all together, our little K- family totally made me feel nice and at home as soon as I walked into the room.



 Friends + Food + Dancing = Unforgettable night!

 November 27th:

Due to the census that occurred Nov. 28th we had to be in the house all of Sunday so we decided to not travel and attempt to do homework. However, I've been wanting to go to the zoo so Hannah, Sarvie, and I went to the Zoologico on Saturday, which ended up being a greater mission to get to than I had anticipated. At the end we got there, only after taking a taxi, 3 buses, and then getting on a taxi-truck.

This is the biggest turtle I've ever seen!

   

Oso de anteojos.

November 28th:

The next day I was home all day due to the immobilization decree what was in effect from 7h00 to 17h00, airplanes didn't take off, public transportation wasn't operating, and there was also a Dry Act all weekend that prohibited the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages. If you violated any of these you were taken to jail and fined, the military was everywhere making sure people were not drinking, I was actually out with some friends having dinner when a policeman came in with a camera crew and asked us if we were drinking and then and we told him we were not, but he looked around the table and then when he saw our table clear of any sort of drinks left, but not without telling us (in English) "Don't drink". My host sister and I decided to make it a Harry Potter marathon, but we only got to see two of them due to the fact that my host dad wanted to see his novelas. We were finally surveyed around 15h00 by two middle schoolers. There was one question that sparked some controversey, the question asked what culture the individual associate with, and the options were white, indigenous, mestizo, black, or other. People understood this to be a question about your race and although most Eucadorians are mestizos many of them shun their indigenous or black roots so there were many who said that they were white. This has been an ongoing problem in Ecuador everytime that they do the census. Another problem is the fact that there are people that live in very remote areas of the country, and in order to get an accuarate count of the population the president was sending officials to these remote areas where sometimes they had to go by boat to these communities. Something that the upper class and top-middle class feared was saying the real number of rooms they had because they fear that Correa might want to do something like Chavez has done in Venezuela and that is to put squatters into homes that have guest rooms, or rooms that are not being used. Here is a link if you want to read a little more about what Hugo Chavez is doing in Venezuela: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101108/ap_on_bi_ge/lt_venezuela_expropriation.