Exhausted.

(Note: The pic to the left is the spider that accompanied me to the restroom).
Right now I’m sitting in the kitchen of my host family, listening to Ecuadorian radio. The light keeps flickering and the radio is going in and out, so I anticipate another power failure in the next few minutes. It’s day 3 here in Machala, and by now I’ve grown accustomed to the thousands (maybe millions) of tiny bugs crawling over everything—in the kitchen, on my skin, in my bed. I saw my first Ecuadorian cockroach yesterday and let me tell you, those things are not messin’ around. For those of you who don’t know, I have a massive, unrelenting fear of cockroaches. The Fulbright people neglected to tell me some of the most important things about living in the tropics. For example, not only do the cockroaches crawl, but they fly! Yup, you heard me right--giant, flying cockroaches. And they are not shy. They will come at you in full force. I hope to never see one again, but I’m told by my host family that once December comes, all bets are off (The rainy season starts in December and all the cockroaches and ants come out from their hiding places searching for dryer lands). Oh! I just heard on the radio about the big Banana Fair coming up on Sept. 23. We’ll talk bananas a bit later.

Breakfast was good—the host mother made yucca, which I had never had before. I thought I was digging into a plateful of refined carbs, but to my surprise there was a very thick layer of quite tasty cheese in the middle…….
(note to reader: I was interrupted by my host father when writing the above blog entry. I’ll describe what happens next, even tho’ it’s from recall a few days later.)

It’s day 5. I’ll write more later or tomorrow about my crazy banana experiences. We just got back from a trip to San Isabel (which is an hour from Cuenca) and it was absolutely exhausting. Granted, it was beautiful and wonderful until about 10pm when people started to get rowdy. Most of you know I don’t drink and I’m anti-social on a good day (read: Dork), so this was an exhausting process for me. However, most of the night was really great. Picture a white Jewish girl from the Midwest salsa dancing with Ecuadorian folk. Hey, I improvised. I took a ton of pictures that I will somehow try to upload even tho’ I don’t have the cord to my stinkin’ computer and there are no card readers within a 1,000 ft radius.

Oh, and the driving. Um, that may be a whole other blog entirely. Picture 6 people in a 5 person car speeding down endless super curvy roads at 80 MPH with nothing separating us from the 3,000 ft drop below. At first I was scared out of my mind but 20 minutes into the ride I figured my only salvation (no seatbelts) would be a death grip on the ‘Oh Sh*t’ handle, so that’s what I did for the entire 2 hours in the pig (coche). Just kidding, we weren’t driving in a pig, we were driving in a car (carro). The end.

Well, it’s hot here, and I was attempting to blog but it’s just not happening tonight. Ciao, folks!

PS: I added in some photos of the party we went to