Sorry about the lack of blog posting about the end of my trip. This annoying thing called school (along with all it's joyous components such as mountains of reading, essays and tests) got in the way. On a happier note, I'm doing really well :) Santiago totally feels like home now (but not too much like home, don't worry Mom). It's kind of funny to see all the new exchange students figuring everything out and remembering that was me just a few short months ago. For the most part, classes are going pretty well, I'm all moved into my new apartment and I'm playing a lot of soccer with the school team which is fun.
One of my favorite things we did in Ecuador (well, really, I loved everything we did in Ecuador) was going to the equator. I just think it's such a cool thing...the middle of the world. (Although I determined that the real middle of the world aka where the equator and prime meridian come together is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Africa).
The whole thing is set up for tourists, but who cares...I got to straddle the two hemispheres! The main thing to do is straddle the big yellow painted line on the ground and walk around the big monument that is in the middle of the park. There are also a lot of shops and couple of really random not-so-great museum. Maya and I enjoyed walking around taking are touristy pictures.
We, of course, took public transportation there because it is the most inexpensive method of transport. Even the buses that go say they are headed for the "middle of the world."
Walking up the monument!!
Latitude: 0. The sign appropriately placed in the two hemispheres :)
Maya and I straddling the line. Half of us in the northern hemisphere and half in the southern. Now here is the question...is winter or summer during this time of the year on the equator? I tried to get an answer but nobody really seemed to know. From what I deduced, they have "summer" vacation the same time as the northern hemisphere (aka June, July, August).
Southern hemisphere on my right, northern hemisphere on my left :) (I'm the tiny little speck straddling the line)
After going to "la Mitad del Mundo" we decided to go see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!! I was pretty excited, I had been waiting for the movie to come out for a while. It had come out in Chile right after I had left, but for some reason we couldn't find it playing anywhere in Peru. So, when we were in Quito and it was in the theatre, I told Maya we had to go. And, it was totally worth it. I thought they good a really job. (Of course, it's not as good as the books, but it is still a REALLY good movie). The place where the movie theatre is in Quito is basically a food patio (like 10 restaurants), a book shop, and apple store, and the theatre. The real mall is down the street a few blocks. One of the shops near the theatre, however, had these delicious chocolate dipped strawberries.
A beautiful giant mask. We got to the theatre about 4 hours before the movie, because we were coming back from Mitad del Mundo and didn't want to go back to the hostel and then go the theatre since the place where the bus dropped us off was pretty close to the theatre anyways. So, we went exploring. There was a park nearby that had a bunch of giant, beautifully painted masks on display, I think in honor of Carnaval.
Toys-R-Us spanish style! It's really kind of sad how United States chains are dominating the world. Damn capitalism. It was quite obvious that this mall was for the upper-class citizens of Quito. All of the shops were either from the United States are Europe. And they were all really expensive.
Quito and La Mitad del Mundo were our last stops in Ecuador before heading out for the last leg of our trip: Colombia and the Caribbean. Our transport from Quito, Ecuador to Cartagena, Colombia was on a plane, a change of pace from what we had been doing since Lima (aka, all buses and colectivos). However, our parents were wary of us busing because of the still semi-unstable status of of some parts of Colombia. And, after talking with some other friends and doing our own research, we decided it was worth the splurge to fly. Although we would have most likely been just fine busing (we met a lot of people who did) we wanted to make sure we were safe and were going to make it back to Chile in one piece.
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