Hail to the Victors

Congrats to the graduates...

As for Ecuador, I´m trying to do more studying this week, along with see some of Cuenca if I am to be leaving next week. I had a good day on Saturday hanging out with other students - three girls from Ireland and one from California, so I feel like I´ve had a little social time. Sunday I tried to study all day but that isn´t that fun! I ended up walking to one mall, which was pretty small, and then going to the big mall with my host mother. It isn´t that I like malls so much (I don´t) but I do find it interesting to see what an Ecuadorian mall is like. We went to a store very similar to Target or Walmart, and what shocked me the most was the prices - there was a silver tea pot, for the table, not to put on the stove, and it wasn´t fancy, and it was $40! I think it would be cheaper at home, for one thing, and second, for a country with a GDP around $2300, I think, that seems incredibly expensive. Some foods are cheap, as is local alcohol (a liter of rum for $3), but many things must be totally out of reach for most Ecuadorians. But the store was busy (most of the stores in downtown Cuenca are closed on Sunday so it was like a ghost town - everyone must have been at the mall!) so it didn´t seem like no one could afford to shop there. Maybe on this trip I´m just looking at expensive, touristy places (like restaurants in Guatemala) but I´m just surprised that food in restaurants is cheap in Ecuador - cheaper than Guatemala - but things in stores are not. Cuenca doesn´t seem like a city where people can live on $2300, though. But my family keeps talking about how it is so hard to find a job. A lot of stores and restaurants have help wanted signs, but I guess that just like in the US, if you have a bachelor´s degree you don´t want to be a salesclerk.

There´s so much more but again I have spent the afternoon trying to find a good Galapagos cruise for a good price for the right dates...Since I want to go to Lima to see Fernando and then to Cuzco, Machu Pichu and maybe Bolivia, I may not be back in Ecuador until the end of my trip. Funny how at the start, I really wanted to stay in one place for a long time, but the reality is that without much Spanish and it not being the summer (ie there aren´t lots of other students), there isn´t much to tie me to staying here other than it being easy. And there doesn´t seem to be an obvious place for me to teach English, which is the only skill I can really offer (and I have no idea if I would enjoy it anyway). Sometimes it feels like August is so far away, and other times that I don´t have enough time to do everything here I want to do (which I suppose is to both travel and to find a place to stay for a month or so, volunteering).