This past week was pretty uneventful in that I had class every day from atleast 8 to 1, and two days I had class from 8 to 4. We ended the week with a much needed field trip. Between the 6 hour days, snack times, and field trips, I feel like I am back in elementary school. I'm not quite sure how I made it through all those years of school 5 days a week, 6 hours a day, and 8 am start times because its near impossible for me to get through it here. For our field strip, we went as a class to explore the city of Sangolqui. It's a city in Los Chillos Valley only a few kilometres from my house. First, we hit up "El Mercado del Turismo," which was essentially a huge outdoor market with crazy fruits and vegetables. There were stands set up all over the place, and mountains of yucca, bananas (both yellow and green), papayas, and pineapples were piled high up and down the length of the streets. Inside, there was enough meat to feed an army. Chickens and cows and pigs were hanging in pieces everywhere. It was enough to make any meatlover turn veg (needless to say I didn't have much of an appetite when I found out we were having pork for lunch). From there we stopped at a small vendor that was filled with all types of herbs from Ecuador. Natural medicine is very popular here, often preferred over what we would think of as traditional medicine and doctors visits. Instead of taking tylenol for a small ache or pain, people here drink tea made with certain herbs and spices. There were herbs for stomach aches, headaches, nervousness, split ends, better circulation, infertility, and broken hearts. Some I had seen of before- oregano, rosemary, lavender, cinnamon, while others I had never even heard of. After buying enough herbs to make quite a few pots of tea, we went to a small church in the center of town. The large, well known church in Sangolqui, La Iglesia Matriz del Sangolqui was under construction, but we went into a smaller one right next door. Our last stop of the day was to the "municipio" which is about the same as city hall. Looking like true tourists, we walked out of there with all sorts of pictures, posters, and post cards of the famous parts of the city. There are a bunch of pictures below of just about everything I saw (except for the meat section of the market). There will be more pictures to come shortly- I'm heading to the cloud forest (a rainforest so high up you are literally in the clouds) for the weekend, and have my cameras packed up and ready to go.  |
Good morning Jilli! I can't wait to hear all about the rain forest.... Hope you had an amazing weekend up in the clouds! The market looks like so much fun and I would die for some fresh veggies! Feel like I could use a few herbal plants for my allergies this week! Nothing too much to report on from home, now that summer is over I feel like I haven't seen anyone in weeks... I miss the Sunday pool parties! Love you, Jack
ReplyDelete