Visiting the Mariscal

The Mariscal is the downtown party district of Quito and the best place to go dancing. Andres and I like to walk around there and people watch/eat ice cream. Today we went out to lunch at "Crepes y Waffles" and then had a beer in the main plaza. Here's a little snippet of us amusing ourselves. Clearly I should be a TV personality because I am so dynamic on camera...

Andrés playing the guitar

This is a video that Andres was going to send to me a while ago but couldn't get the computer to cooperate, so I've decided to put it on here in order to brag about him. It's called "Capricho Arabe."

http://xkcd.com/181/

Cooking in Quito

Tonight Andres and I continued on our saga of cooking adventures. Neither one of us cooks very much (him less than me if you can believe it) so pretty much every time we turn on the stove it's a gamble. Tonight we tried to make chicken burritos, which doesn't sound very hard, but you'd be surprised. Cooking in a strange kitchen is a difficult task in its self, but add to that that it's a foreign country with unexpected ingredients and you have me cooking in an Ecuadorian kitchen. The chicken was in big frozen chunks with bones etc, so we defrosted it in the microwave and attempted to cook it on the stovetop. After cooking for a while we took it off to see if it was done (it wasn't) and to cut some of the bones out. What we ended up with was a tiny pile of chicken meat and a huge pile of bones. So on to round two. This worked out better because by the we had lots of teeny tiny pieces of mostly cooked chicken (we'd also cooked up some less boney chicken at this point) and proceeded to double-cook all of our chicken. We ended up with a great many dishes due to all the chicken fandangos, but thankfully we also managed to make some very tasty burritos, huzzah!

I like to think we are getting better at cooking, but seeing as we cook the same three things every time, its hard to say. I will keep you updated on further cooking fandangos which will surely prove to be silly, frustrating, and hopefully at least some times delicious.

http://xkcd.com/148/

more about blagging

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I've arrived!! The plane flight was long and grueling. My observations are as follows: TACA is nice because they still show free movies and give out pillows and blankets and food. El Salvador is pretty and green at least what I could see while landing. The Lima airport big and impersonal. Andres is awesome and I can't say how happy I was to see him after such a long day of travel. Now I am recuperating from travel and caffeine withdrawal (drinking coffee isn't something most Ecuadorians do everyday so I've decided to quit to make it easier, but in the shortrun, did anyone else know caffeine withdrawal can make you nauseous? the internet knew.) I am settling in well and all of my stuff fit into the drawers! Which, I admit, I was a bit anxious about. Hurray and tata for now!

Returning to Quito!

My visa is here, my ticket is purchased, my bags are all packed (not really, you know me) and I am off in 3 days! I will be moving to Quito on Sunday to live with Andrés and teach English for a year! I'm terribly excited and a little bit nervous (at this point I'm just hoping I don't get stuck in El Salvador on the way there). I have vowed to keep up my blog while I am away, mostly because it's fun and partly to avoid being killed by my mother for not keeping in touch.

So anyhoo I will be posting! And I will try to include pictures. chau chau and nos vemos pronto