Okay I am finally caught back up with the weeks and so this “last week” is actually what happened last week. We didn’t have class since our professor went back to Quito so instead I studied or worked on the paper every day. Since I didn’t have a super active week, I am going to share some of some of the things about our daily life so far on the island.
One of my favorite things is how close everything is. It only takes me 10 minutes to walk from my house to the university. And from the university it only takes 30 seconds to get to the closest beach. Or 5 minutes to another beach. Or 15 minutes to a different beach. I also feel more safe walking around the island than I do back on campus!
Of course I love how many animals there are everywhere. You can’t walk 5 feet without about running into a lava lizard or hearing a sea lion. There are so many different types of birds. One of the most interesting is the night heron. It only comes out at night and hunts mice. They are really cute and it’s so funny because as soon as the sun goes down you’re likely to turn a corner and see the little buddy walking around or standing hunched over.
(Thanks Julianne for the picture!)
One of the other really interesting things is how much different things cost. I was expecting for everything to be super expensive compared to back home but most food is cheaper here than in Chapel Hill, especially considering most of it has to be imported I was surprised by this. Every day for lunch my friends and I go to find the places that have $4 almuerzos. Most restaurants have this as an option and so far the prices have ranged from $3.50-$5 for the soup, entrée of the day, and juice. The soup is usually some sort of cheese or fish or beef soup, sometimes they give us popcorn or avocado to put in the soup as well. The main dish almost always includes rice, some sort of little salad, and then fish, chicken, or beef. The juice tends to be freshly squeezed orange juice or some mystery fruit that when we first got here we would try and determine what we were drinking but now just enjoy the different juices. I don’t think I have had a bad almuerzo yet, they have all been delicious. There are also a few bakeries that have fresh bread. It so so dangerous to go by the building because it smells so good and you can get a chocolate croissant for $0.60. One of my first days here I went with Gabriel to get some bread for the family and it cost $3 to get a whole bag full of croissants and rolls. The same thing would probably cost $8-$10 in the U.S. and it wouldn’t even be fresh bread. I have noticed that the more touristy places are more expensive and that clothes and shoes are more expensive here than at home and in Quito.
Outside of “class” this week I still did some fun stuff. On Monday, I helped out with the English class that I was planning to volunteer with throughout the semester. It was an afterschool program for some of the kids (8-11 year olds) and I was just there to try to help the teacher. I had joined this because when I talked with the coordinator she said it would be a good way to practice Spanish (?) but then one of the first things the teacher in class told me was that she doesn’t like to speak Spanish with the kids since this is one of the only places they hear English. I helped with the class and I then decided this wasn’t the best volunteer opportunity for me and that it would be better suited for one of my friends who is looking to become a teacher so she took over my spot. I spent the rest of that day studying for the test Tuesday. The test was incredibly hard. I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was and felt pretty prepared so thankfully many of my classmates felt the same way.
On Tuesday, before the test, I went with my host mom to the twins’ high school for a flag day presentation. It was very interesting, especially since we don’t do anything for flag day back home. They started out with the national anthem and some mini speeches before the senior class, my sisters and their classmates, came out along with the flag bearers. There were a number of students who received awards. I was struggling to concentrate on what was going on since they were talking very fast and if I missed an important clue in the speech, I was lost for the rest of the time.
On Wednesday, I started working on the paper that was due Saturday. This paper was a research paper on the work we had done in the field but it was so difficult. We had to present the data of someone else since we didn’t have enough data in our work. This made it harder since we didn’t collect the data ourselves so we didn’t completely understand what was going on. We also had to try to use the statistical program R to create graphs and run statistical analysis. After our 4-hour crash course in R, none of us felt really confident using it. I spent the rest of the week attempting to create a good paper but still took until 10 minutes before I needed to submit on Saturday to completely finish the report.
A few of my friends and I started watching Game of Thrones this week which was a very bad decision because we 1) are super behind 2) have to try to plan out an hour to watch together and 3) should really be spending time outside rather than watching TV but are now too addicted to stop. Thankfully we aren’t binge watching too bad.
On Sunday, we met up at the university to relax some since we were all done with work and had no work starting until the next day. We went to lunch at a really cute vegetarian restaurant near the school and used some of their WiFi to listen to the first half of the Panthers – Patriots game! 
My friend is from Massachusetts so that was fun to listen together. (And I was more happy with the result than she was!!)
We spent some time working on things for back home like figuring out registration times and housing deadlines. Then we went out to the beach which was incredibly gorgeous. The water was perfect, unlike the other days when it was freezing cold, this time we could go out and actually swim without feeling like we would soon turn purple. It was amazing. We then sat out on the beach for 15 minutes before my friend started to burn. Surprisingly my hair dried in that amount of time, some sort of miracle!
We walked back across the street and relaxed in the common area of the university before heading to the shack by the school to get ice cream and eventually going back home for dinner.
Solaventuras 