Thanksgiving, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! What a silly couple of days I've had. Before getting into Thanksgiving, lemme just say that Annie, Bess, and I move into our apartment one week from today! Hooray!! Also, next weekend is the Fiestas de Quito, a celebration of the city. The celebration has already started, really, but the official holiday is next weekend. We're going to get a chiva, a party bus, to celebrate.

Wednesday night, the Ecuadorian fútbol team, Liga, won their championship 5-1 in a super epic game that I actually watched and enjoyed. Later, Annie, Keon, Scotty, and I met up with "the Funkers," our Ecuadorian friends who are in a funk band. We went to a bar called Lennon, then we all kind of split up. The United Statesians ended up at Psycho (of course!) where we befriended some dude named Lenin (seriously!). We talked a lot about music, books, and politics. It was excellent.

The next day was Thanksgiving, or for all you hispanohablantes, El Día de Acción de Gracias. Annie came over early and she cooked a salad and I made vegetarian stuffing. I had never made stuffing before, but it turned out awesomely, even at the high altitude. Our empleada, Rosita watched/helped and was fascinated by the whole process (and all the butter we used).

Stuffing success! Two cups of butter!

Annie and I got fancy, then Keon came over and we took a taxi to Martin's apartment. Bess was already there, and we continued the cooking. In addition to stuffing and salad, we had green beans, sweet corn, rolls, mashed potatoes, apple pie, apple crisp, ants on a log, and a lot of Pilsener. And no turkey! In fact, it was a completely vegetarian Thanksgiving. Alright!

Roommates! The Beaver Dam!

One of the coolest parts was that Martin's Ecuadorian roommate and her boyfriend were there, plus, in addition to Martin, there were two more Germans who had dinner with us, Jan and Ezia. It was something completely different for everybody: Thanksgiving not in the States, and a new holiday altogether for the Ecuadorians and Germans.

Scooter feeding pie to Martin, who is obviously enjoying it a lot.

After dinner and drinks, we all packed up and went home. Just kidding! Jan, Ezia, Scooter, Keon, Annie, and I went to a drum&bass/dubstep show at a bar in La Mariscal! Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!

Friday night, Leslie, Dave, Cameron, Scooter, and I went to the Centro Histórico to see the beginnings of the Fiestas de Quito. We drank a lot of canelazo and took a lot of pictures. Then we went to La Mariscal and ran into our Ecuadorian friend Jonathan who took us to a club called Next Level where he works, I guess, and got us in for free. We danced, played pool, got drinks in fishbowls... it was a good time.

Last night, Annie and I planned to go to a big band show that was put on by the music department at la Uni, but on the way there we got a phone call from my long-lost friend, Edgar, who I hadn't seen since we met at the internet café. He said there was some club on Shyris that was free to get into, and we could hang out, etc. Annie and I get there before he does, and the bouncers won't let us in without ID. The thing you have to understand is, in Ecuador, no one cards. Everyone drinks. Everyone goes to clubs and bars. No one cards. And what's more, the age to get into said club was twenty-one, which doesn't make ANY sense because the legal drinking age is eighteen. The dude asks us for cédulas, and we tell him we don't have them because we're foreigners. We do have our censos, but neither of us are twenty-one, so we play the extranjero card. The dude talks on the phone to Edgar (who I have to call for help) and lets us in. Ha!

We get in, they give us two plastic cups, and we go to the bar. And the bartender dude just gives us drinks. No paying. No nothing. He just pours some margaritas into our glasses and walks away. Awesome. We sit down and wait for Edgar. The club is huge! A giant room with a dancefloor and two bar areas and tables and lights and it's like, legit! Like a real club for real people. Crazy.

Edgar eventually gets there, and he's with three friends, Alex, Alejandra, and some girl whose name I never learned. We drink, we talk, we dance. Annie dances with some GIANTMAN, and I bounce between Edgar and some Cuban dude in a shiny Armani shirt. Hahaha. We dance to some normal clubby music, and then a mariachi band comes in! Or something? I don't know. And someone wins some kind of prize? And from then on, it was straight salsa music the whole night. Edgar tried to teach me how to dance--bless his heart, he was so patient--and I was awful, like really awful, but it was fun anyway. The friend whose name I don't know was a dance champion. She was from Esmeraldas, which I guess automatically makes you an amazing dancer.

So that's the story of how we went out four days in a row. I have a hundred million thousand gajillion projects and papers and tests, PLUS we're moving soon, so I suppose I should start doing some work.

Chao!

Gina.

Brasilian metal, Argentinian rap, Mexican ska

Success!!

Today Bess, Annie, and I found a wonderful apartment (although, maybe it's actually a condo, I don't know) that has everything we were looking for. It's mad cheap, close to Estación Río Coca (like a five-minute walk), three (well, threeish) bedrooms, totally furnished, three bathrooms, and in a safe neighborhood. The moment I walked in, I loved it. Plus, it has a bodega, a barbecue, a "service room" (which is where the empleada would live), a front yard, a back patio, and... it's wonderful. It's two stories which is impressive. All the rooms are upstairs (except for the service bedroom, which is next to the bodega, separate from the house), and everything else is downstairs.

I love it.

Last night, Cameron, Brent, Annie, Keon, Xavier, Scott, Bess, and I went bowling. It was ridiculous. Brent, Bess, and I played the first game of bowling while the others played ping pong, and none of us could remember how to keep score. We ended up deciding that a spare would get you +10 and a strike would get you +50. Any points scored in the "beer frame" counted triple. For the last frame, if you knocked down an even number of pins, you got +100, and an odd number got you -100. If you got a strike on the last frame, you got +1000. So Bess and I each ended up with like, 180-something, and Brent, due to his excellent last frame, ended up with over 1000 points. Awesome.

I'm really excited for apartment, I'm really excited to visit the USA and buy things that I desperately need, I'm really excited for everything.

Love,
Gina.

Medium

So. We only have a month left in the semester and that scares the shit out of me. I'm going back to the USA to visit in nearly exactly a month, then returning here, then five more months. Sheeze. For those of you who aren't aware, Bess, Annie, and I are apartment-hunting for next semester. I absolutely adore my family, but it'd be awesome and fun and kind of scary to live in an apartment alone (not alone, but you get it) in South America.

Although I'm not even halfway done, I feel that it's important to note how much I've changed since I've been here. And I'm not just talking being really (really, really) tan. I'm not totally exactly sure of the magnitude or in what capacity I've changed, but I know it's there. I'm more independent. I'm more optimistic. I'm more driven to get what I want. I'm infinitely more confident. I'm more cautious but also more trusting. I'm better at solving problems.

I think--I think--I'm a better person.

The thought of the majority of my friends leaving in December makes me so sad I can't even really think about it (holla-shout-out to SM CW KD BL DP LW etc.) and I know I'm going to cry like a baby-baby when they go. But I'm super excited to meet the new MSU kids, and Annie, Bess, and I are going to be the cool-girls-with-an-apartment/moms/people-who-know-where-everything-is/expert-Spanish speakers.

I have humongous final projects in all of my classes. Ughhh.
Also, Rosita hasn't done my laundry in like a week. One of my pairs of jeans is (presumably) in the washer or something, one pair is newly-ripped (that's what you get for gossiping), and one pair doesn't fit anymore. And I wore my last clean shirt today. I wonder what I'm going to wear tomorrow...

That's all I really have to say.

Love,
Gina.

Oh hey fwiend.

Oh, hey everyone out there in blag-o-land. Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I got my new computer a couple weeks ago or something, and I had to read ALL the Vice Magazine DOs and DON'Ts and all the new XKCD comics and be obsessed with Facebook for a while and tweet excessively.

What has happened?

Bess, Annie, Scarlett, and I went to Mindo for the weekend a couple weeks ago. We stayed in a really cute hostel (La Casa de Cecilia) and went ziplining, waterfall-ing, and tubing. We ended up tubing with this couple from England who had just quit their jobs, sold their house, and was traveling around the world for a year. I think about them often, and I hope they're having a really fun time.

Pre-zipline with my favorites

And then we had a long weekend during Halloween because of Día de los Difuntos, which is basically the Day of the Dead. There's not Halloween here (President Correa outlwed it...) so Annie and I went to Canoa (another beach!!) with Eli. Leslie, Cameron, Dave, Brent, and Cameron's host brother Xavier were there too, and we spent a lot of time with them. The first day was sunny and beautiful, and the next days were cloudy. On the last day there were tons of clouds, but I got super tan anyway. I have never been so tan in my life, it's like I changed races. When I came home, Rita called me "Negrita." Hahaha.

We had our evenings timed out so we hit three consecutive happy hours beginning at 5PM and ending at like 9PM. We hung out with surfers, went to bonfires, played board games and Egyptian Rat Screw (hello, sophomore year at Dondero!), at pizza with bananas on it, drank caña straight (not something I would recommend), and had a generally good time.

Annie, Brent, Xavier, me, and Cameron sitting in a hole at Canoa
[cred: Leslie]

What else? Oh, I'm sick. I HATE BEING SICK. SO MUCH. Annie and I intended to go to a museum of medicine yesterday but we couldn't even find the street it was on. We ended up finding a book sale and she bought Harry Potter III and I bought Twlight. BEFORE YOU JUDGE I wanted to get Twilight because 1) it will be easy to read in Spanish, and 2) I feel like I'm missing out on a whole part of Culture of the Two-Thousandses by not having read it. So although it's angsty and not that great, I'm reading it anyway.

That's it. I'm gonna keep reading my book and Rita is making me tea.

Chao,
Gina.