Last night, I had a nightmare about being stuck in a third world country, with street scenes quite reminiscent of Ecuador. And it lasted, all night long. So this morning I thought to myself, "Self."
"Yes, self?"
"I think we need to bring closure to our equatorial meses."
All right, apologies for the inner monologue. I didn't actually do that, but I had a Latin teacher in high school who did, every single class.
For example:
"Self?"
"Yes, Mr. Hearty."
"Um, self, I think today we should visit noun-town and verb-burg."
"Why, I think that's a great idea, self!"
Then our lesson on nouns and verbs would commence. You can imagine how something like this daily might become seared into, well, your "self."
With the help of Anita and Fabiola we settled our departure with the landlord. We also spent an epic day scrubbing the entire household, including the windows, only for the landlord to hardly glance at anything. We gifted Fabiola with numerous half-used food items, including the remaining chocolate chips. She was more concerned that we didn't leave the half-empty roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. She was also appalled when she crossed paths with Andy on his way to the dumpster to toss our mop and broom. She then joked with me about how he was going to throw them away, implying, with a head shake and a laugh, an exasperation for the silly men who would throw away cleaning materials. I didn't tell her I was the one who told him to toss them. We spent Monday night at her house. She made fried bananas, chicken, green beans, and rice for dinner, a nice traditional Ecuadorian meal. For breakfast we had scrambled eggs with cut up hot dog, salted until you questioned whether you weren't eating yellow tinted salt curds, and arepas, a favorite of "Dr. Jay," as he is known.
Tuesday, 2/16 Guillermo drove us into Quito. It was nice to not struggle with our 200+ pounds of luggage, relentless, overcharging taxi-drivers, and the bus system, a system Guillermo and Monica deemed so unsafe that he drove us himself. Although we simply anticipated a direct hostal drop-off, Guillermo had it in his mind to spend the day touring Quito. For a sense of how epic (-ically long, enduring, guided) the tour was, let me point out that the first stop was a solid forty minutes before we ever reached Quito's boundaries, the Church of God Seminary, which somehow Guillermo thought Andy would be attending, you know, after medical school (also after a car-ride conversation about Lutheranism). It was an enclosed area next to a cemetery and perhaps the most serene site we've seen in Ecuador thanks to its landscaping. Guillermo explained that the man who they bought the property from had planned to sell it to the person who already owned the cemetery next door for quite a bit more money than the Church of God folks could offer. A little charismatic bargaining ensued from the church representative. He told the property owner the following, "It all comes down to this. In God's eyes, do you want to grow life or death?" The man sold the land to the Church of God.
Oh, we met the President of the Seminary, the librarians, a few professors, a couple students. We had a private, guided tour of the Bible Museum, which did contain one of four, Oso Bibles, the first Bible published in Spanish in 1569. Guillermo complained that the seminary had just as many if not more books than any university in the country, yet is considered a university. How many books is that? 21,000. We did our best to look impressed though it looked like Andy had nearly as many books in his bedroom. For another comparison, Dartmouth has roughly 2,000,000 books. Also, the students cannot enter the library. They can simply request a book through the online catalog.
After leaving the seminary, Guillermo asked if we were hungry, then if we wanted to eat in the food court of a nearby mall. We replied in the negative, only to be met with the following information after we had passed the turn-off. Guillermo bemoaned, "There was a hamburger place in that mall owned by an American, called Rusty's. The only place in Ecuador that has root beer." Root beer, along with Velveeta cheese, being his two favorite food items from the States. Well, we did feel sort of guilty but not too much so considering the method in which it was extracted.
At last we arrived at our hostal. We had a private room with two double beds. We slept in one and arranged our luggage on the other. As Andy checked if our room was locked, I found myself alone with Guillermo who asked what we wanted to do next and suggested quite a few tourist sites as possibilities. Trying to gently say I wanted no part in any tourist activities in Quito, I told him I would actually like to take a nap. Which only served to generate a lecture from Guillermo on how I am a bad traveler, sleep too much, and need to take more risks. I didn't tell him the thought that immediately came to mind, "I drove here with you, didn't I?" I also didn't point out the inherent risk of us spending time in the country of Ecuador. Andy arrived in time to save Guillermo from my quips. We offered to take him out to lunch, anywhere he wanted to go. He chose a different mall food-court. We ate ropa vieja, translated old clothes, at a Cuban spot. It was basically pulled beef with peppers and onions served with white rice mixed with some black beans. Naturally, we topped it off with orange Fanta, our go-to soda in the country.
After lunch, Guillermo wanted to shop. The mall was the ritziest in the country—with Armani and other high-end stores. Guillermo was appalled we hadn't bought presents for everyone. He stood us in front of a tourist shop filled with purses and tee-shirts emblazoned with Ecuador. A few items were marked with 15% and 20% off signs. He declared that discounts are unheard of in the country. He declared that people would think the store was crazy for having discounts of that amount. The majority of stores we passed all had discounts of 50% and 70%. I suggested, "No discounts? I'm pretty sure all we've seen are discounts." After shopping we visited Ecuador's version of the Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Our conversation on the way:
Andy: "Oh the angel?"
Guillermo: "No, the virgin of Ecuador."
Karli: "I'm pretty sure she'd have to be an angel to be the virgin of Ecuador."
When Guillermo left, Andy and I capped off our day with Pizza Hut and hot chocolate, then did our final luggage re-packing.
