Where did we leave off? So last time we talked I was off at the coast and the paramo. Where are we now? That'd be Thanksgiving, and some volcano trips.
First things first, so thanksgiving this year had a different feel obviously. I wasn't stressed out from finals at K, I didn't see leaves falling on the ground or the off chance of snow, I didn't have a 7 week winter break in the waiting, nor lastly did I have my american family. Nobody cooking spaghetti for thanksgiving (i'm looking at your mom amongst the ones that thought it'd be a good idea [emily jack and dad]). No friends from back home. This was weird. Knowing I had to go back to school the following monday. I can't really explain it, but it didn't really feel like thanksgiving til around 5 pm last friday. Last Friday we did the unthinkable. Adam Theo and I didn't mess up thanksgiving. We went shopping with austin last thursday to get all of our supplies and that was atrocious. We had some janked up Ecuadorean turkey recipe that made no sense so with a cart quarterfull we scratched it and went off Adam's mom's recipe. We woke up 'early' aka 10am more or less. I woke up only because I was sleeping on some nice hardwood floor in adam's room. Adam and I had to pull theo's sleeping bag off of him just to get him up. We finally get upstairs and start cooking quite groggily might i add. We argued over the ambiguous recipe but we figured it out. We started just going with whatever sounds good. This includes cutting up onion and garlic and just tossing big pieces on the turkey. We all just kind of did whatever, including cutting up bread and making some realll good stuffing. The only let down on that was that we ran out pretty quickly. We finally get the turkey into the oven at 1130 after stuffing the bird and using chopsticks to keep the legs in place cause we didnt have string. We did whatever it took haha. People start filing in around 2 or so to come hang out and watch the turkey cook. Then one of the pans breaks so we have to dump the bird into the one that is covering it with all the juices and then cover it with tinfoil. This really thanksgiving really couldn't have been sketchier. We all had a good time though and we finally had people get there around 5 or 6, the bird still wasn't done so we sent them downstairs cause adam's house is huge. Our program directors finally show up around 8 or so and the turkey just gets to 180 so it worked out beautiful. We cut up the turkey and get everyone seated and everyone gets food and has a great time. We got compliments for the turkey for the next 2 to three days. It was overall a really successful thanksgiving and a pretty fun time.
Moving onto the saturday. We went to Cotopaxi which is a huge volcano about an hour or so south of here. This was relatively boring. We were all exhausted and were in a bus for like 10 hours of the day cause its too big to walk it. At least for the parts we were examining. So I came home and passed out when I got home.
Then sunday we went to a volcano called pululahua. This was pretty fun but still pointless. We hiked down a huge hill and then up another one just to look at the dome of the potentially active volcano. Then we turned around, went down to eat lunch. Then climbed back up the huge first section again and went home. It was a really good hike, but I'm not sure it was too necessary.
So for now, I'm just going to put up a few pictures from thanksgiving. Nothing too special. I'm sure I'll get to the volcano pictures soon. But for update of me. I've just got some homework to finish up, a few papers and whatnot. No exams during exam week. They all got pushed forward so now I might be going to patagonia from dec. 11 til the 24th which would be so rad. then come here and spend christmas with my familia ecuatoriana and then go get my parents from the airport the next day! I'm also going to banos with the group this weekend for like 3-4 days so that should be pretty fun.
So anyways, I'm going to finish this art history paper and work on some more work so i can relax this weekend. Goodnight all!
What a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner. Good food and good friends.
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