Sabrina's Postcards

Keep your fingers crossed!

2009-04-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Please excuse my absence, it’s that time of year. By that time of year, I mean the 9 ½ months in which I put school in the middle of me and everything else- including my blog.
SO, what’s new? Well, for starters, tomorrow I hear back about the OL job. I’ve been literally praying for this job, thinking and rethinking and giving and then second-guessing interview responses, and planning my summer with the job as a main component, which even I know is foolish and likely to jynx me in the long run. Whenever it occurs to me that I might not get the job, after all the excitement, my stomach falls to my heels and I feel nauseous. I can’t recall where I left off, so I guess I’ll start with Group process day, which can not be explained without my ulcer (?). Two weeks ago, I woke up around 11 on Wednesday morning. I went and had breakfast and walked to my 12:15 class. In the middle of the first half, I started feeling this stabbing pain in my abdomen. I figured it would just go away; it didn’t. It progressed to adull sort of ache all over my abdomen, and I ended up leaving the class during our break at 1:30 and going back to my room, where, aside from a few spurts of getting up and walking around, I slept for about 21 hours. The next day, Thursday, I walked over to the health center, and they urged me to go to the hospital, concerned it was a gallstone. Dad came and picked me up, and we went to St. Peter’s to the ER, where they did blood tests and tested my urine and determined that the problem was between a gastritis in my stomach and the fact that since laying down the day before, I had become very severely dehydrated. They prescribed Nexium and lots of rest and fluids. Well, we got the Nexium, and I drank the fluids, but Friday I had to be back in New Paltz for Group Process day. (Picture, if you will, yours truly hauling a wheelie suitcase, half-walking, half-jogging, half-limping all the way across campus from the bus (which arrived at 3:!8) to Group Process day, whose sign-in ended at 3:30.)
Anyway, long story short, I was sluggish and weak during the roleplay games, the heated debates, and the short skit that was required of us. So imagine my surprise when I get a call the following Monday congratulating me on getting through to the second interview! Hooray!
The second interview went well—as good as, if not better than, the first interview. I made the points I wanted to make and had only a teeny brain fart: when they asked me what activities I was involved in on campus, I FORGOT ALL OF THEM. AHH!!!!! But I felt good about it, dressed appropriately, smiled a lot, arrived early, and made them all laugh. Despite all that, I know that the ratio of second-round interviewees to OL positions is 2:!. That’s nervewrecking. Some of the other applicants were multilingual, one of them mentioning the fact that he was actually fluent in 4 languages and near-fluent in a fifth. Others were involved in other leadership activities on campus, which always conflicted with my class schedule.
Anyway. No use dwelling over it now. I’ll have a definitive answer tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I just have to wait.

So, what else is new? It’s still cold off and on, which makes me physically ache for spring. I want to wear short sleeves and do my homework outside. I want to put my winter coats in my closet and forget about them. And it’s about time!
Classes are going okay. I have some projects coming up in Comp an in Intro to Painting that I’m really excited about; I’ll be creating a soundtrack to a short passage of a book that I love, responding to one of my new favorite movies, and painting an abstract portrait of Aileen Wuornos, who is my new favorite famous criminal. And, if you can believe it, I have 3 classes left in my Microeconomics class. Where on earth did this semester go?
Well, I guess this is more than enough for now. I’ll let you know tomorrow what the letter says!

2009-03-26T22:38:00.001-07:00

Hi, all! It's been a while.

Let's see... What's new here?

Last week was Spring Break. It was awesome! I got to go with Dave to visit Tom in Arizona, and we got to do some really fun stuff. I got to go swimming in March- the punchline is that, even in Phoenix, the water was freeeeezing. It was a great week, and I got about 12 hours of sleep every night to boot. I came back to school feeling refreshed!

My classes are going okay. I'm getting stretched pretty thin between school and work but I'm readjusting my focus and working less and studying more and creating an 8-semester plan to graduate ON TIME!!

I applied to be an Orientation Leader- I don't know if I've mentioned this before? Well, every first-year or Fall transfer student signs up to come to New Paltz for 3 days in the summer, and there are 5 sessions to choose from. They come to campus and get a tour of all the academic buildings and tie-dye T-shirts and meet professors and choreograph a lip sync and walk all over the place and meet tons of new people. It's a hectic 3 days but it gets everyone totally pumped for the fall. At orientation, the students are pur in groups of about 15-20, and I would be a leader for one of the groups, which means I have to :

Love New Paltz (Check!)
Have lots of energy (Check!)
Have the stamina to walk miles and miles and spend all night organizing a lip sync (Uh... Check?)

So, I applied, and I interviewed for the position, and I got two letters of recommendation, and now I'm just waiting for next Friday for Group Process day, where the put all the candidates in a room and give them games to play and they watch us interact to see who's outgoing, who's shy, who's a natural leader, who's more laid-back, etc.

After Group Process Day, there's another interview. I'll know if I got the job in about 3 weeks. Keep your fingers crossed for me! It would mean that after 3 days a week for all of July, I would have enough money saved up to pay for the fall semester in cash. WHAT A RELIEF! That would be ideal. Again, keep your fingers crossed! heh.

So, that's about it for me right now. A lot of the same stuff. Tonight I walked home from work without a coat for the first time all year. There was a thick fog over campus, the grass was wet and everything smelled clean. It's FINALLY spring! Time to rejoice!

What's new, what's new, what's new...

2009-01-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I said that campus is stunningly beautiful and to expect pictures. Well, one, it's no longer beautiful, and two, I am so sick of the icy weather that even if it was a work of art, I would probably not take pictures of it. But, alas! out my window is a courtyyard, and I see a patch of grass! Can it be? Hooray! Hoorah! Spring is on its way!

In other completely unrelated news, I'll be going home this weekend for my root canal- yuck!- and spending time with Allison for V-day. I'm actually very excited because I'm feeling under the weather and, thus, am looking forward to resting and sleeping in my own bed for 12 hours at a time.

I'm sure the big question is "How are classes?" And the answer is great. Especially Freshman Comp, Women Images, and Intro to Painting. History of Jazz is pretty much a study hall and Microeconomics is exhausting, but I'm getting by. I'm learning so much, especially in the first 3, because the subject matter fascinates me. In Comp, we're reading The Handmaid's Tale and I am absolutely riveted, trying to keep myself from reading TOO far ahead. Women Images, as I said to Mom on the phone the other day, has given me "goggles" through which I see TV commercials, music videos, magazine covers, my friends, even my textbooks in a whole new way. It gets to be annoying when I'm watching TV with my suitemates, though, and all I can think is why is the woman ALWAYS the one using the paper towels in commercials? Are men incapable? Would the paper towels sell less? And so on and so forth. Painting is cool because it's exhausting and frustrating and fun and is totally changing me as a painter.

Anyway, I've gotta go, or I'll be late for class. Back soon.

I'm Back!

2009-01-20T17:42:00.001-08:00

Hello all!
I'm back in my dorm! And I'm so happy about it. I'm still in the process of unpacking but I'm not in a big rush. I know where everything is, which is the most important part.

Today, obviously, was the inauguration! I watched it with my friends in the Lecture Center, and when people were asked to stand to honor the president elect and vice president elect, people stood up! When people finished with their speeches/poems/songs, people clapped! We were stunned by the amount of people in DC right now. Today will be one of the most hope-filled days in Obama's presidency. I loved it.

Also, I cut my hair! It's now just shy of shoulder length. I've been struggling with it but I like it, I guess.

We got a white box in the mail the other day, and in it was one of the coolest gifts I've gotten in many years: My Keurig coffee pot, which is currently sitting next to my monitor! It works like a charm and I'm the envy of our residence hall. Thanks, Grandpa!

Anyway. That's all for now. Campus is stunningly beautiful, so expect pictures in the next couple days! Bye!

HO HO HO!!!

2008-12-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!!

I hope all is well with all of you! School is over until January 19th, when I will be back in class at 8 AM, raring to go for a new semester, just one day before Obama is inaugurated!

The last few weeks have really been lovely. Finals came and went, and I did well on all of them, or so I can assume. I ended up with a 3.66 GPA and recommendations from two professors who suggested furthering my studies in their areas- Creative Writing and Spanish.

Then I did some work with my dad and came home, and I've hardly left the house ever since! I've been working, wrapping presents, cleaning, making a mess and cleaning up again! But now the tornado has died down and the house is calm and quiet and the wrapping paper is all in bags, so I thought I'd check in! Hope everyone is wonderful, full of eggnog and in bed by nine!

More soon!

Hello

2008-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

It's finals time. I am absurdly busy. I will see you all, and this blog, again when classes and testing is all over.

Gobble Gobble

2008-12-01T13:16:00.000-08:00

Happy thanksgiving! hope all your weekends were restful and loaded with turkey and mashed potatoes. Mine was, for the most part. Aside from working, I hung out, slept a ton, and went to get our christmas tree! Now there are two weeks left of classes and a week of finals, and then i'll be packing and moving home for the winter break. Where, oh where does the time go?

Also, happy birthday Alice! Today was lots of fun!

Ick!

2008-11-24T20:25:00.000-08:00

What a yucky day! Shakespeare quiz in Intro to Theatre, nothing good at hasbrouck, and sleety icy rain all afternoon! But, on the up side, I have two more classes before Thanksgiving break.

I'm so ready to go home. I promised my boss I would take a shift on Wednesday, so I won't be home until late Wednesday night. I wish it was now!

Hope everyone is experiencing some nicer weather and is spending the weekend with their families!

Bouncing Around

2008-11-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

There's so many things to touch on in this blog post.
Starting with the passing of Jack Galloway on Tuesday night. Hard to believe, hard to accept, hard to hear. Jack was a great man and as important to my childhood as anyone else in my family. He will be missed.

Also, in far lighter news, I got my dear Charile, the bike, a tune-up. He's as good as new, with full tires, an adjusted derailer and a replaced screw in the fender. Hooray!!

Apart from Charlie the bike and planning my trip home for the funeral, my days as of late have been so obsessively focused on scheduling for next year! It's SO frustrating to have SO many Gen Ed classes. But, alas, I am chipping away, and hopefully by the end of the fall semester next year, I will be DONE with them!!

So, I hemmed and hawed, and as I went, I discovered that many interesting classes (Intro to Animal Life, Beginner Sign Language, American Civil Rights Movements, Human Evolution, etc.) were full, required a previous lower-level class, or were only for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It's a rough time for freshman trying to make schedules because we are the LAST to go. Alice's registration doesn't even open until 12:30 today, while some students were able to register three days ago.
My research started with my required classes, moved to the available classes, and ended with RateMyProfessor.com, a truly useful tool, albeit gosippy. I have arrived at the following schedule:
Looks sort of fuzzy, but basically, I'm taking Intro to Painting, History of Jazz, Women's Images and Realities, Comp II, and Microeconomics. Two cool things about this: One, my Women's Images class is two parts, one from 12:15-1:05, and one from 1:40-2:30. The first part is this enormous lecture with all the professors and all the students who are taking Women's Images. Then, for the secon part, we break up into groups and discuss the lecture more in-depth. Another cool thing about my schedule is my Comp II class, my basic required Freshman English course. We were given a list of themes, ranging from Juvenile Fantasy Literature to Mystery and Mayhem, and I am taking "The Madwoman in Literature"! How cool is that?

Aaaanyway. This is longer than I'd planned. Have a good weekend!

It's Monday, November 17

2008-11-17T10:31:00.001-08:00

I'm big on the visuals lately, I guess.
This photo is on the cover of the NY times today, and the caption reads "Iraqi policemen danced with a United States Army soldier in Baghdad on Sunday, the day Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact." I found the paper on my way back from a prticularly stinky Comp class, and it made me smile all the way up to the third floor! It's just a happy kind of day.

Things here are good. The weather's getting colder but we still make it out, all bundled up in winter coats and woolen gloves.

This Sunday I'm going to see Measure for Measure with Sam. I get paid on Friday, which will be nice. I'm making my list of what EVERYONE ELSE wants for Christmas now. I've got a few that I'm really excited about! :)

Clearing Up Financial Aid

2008-11-16T20:58:00.001-08:00

Just days before early registration opens. I feel more or less like this:

That is all.

Hello All.

2008-11-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

Not much of news, except that I cleaned my room, every nook and cranny. Our trash room is in the basement and we're on the third floor. So I haul this huge bag of garbage all the way down three flights of stairs and down the hallway, just 3 feet from the door of the trash room, and my garbage bag tears straight across the seam along the bottom. Apples I never bothered to eat, wrappers from countless Halloween fun-sized candies, and at least a hundred crumpled sticky notes splay themselves across the hallway. A stranger, doing her good deed of the day, helped me clean it up.

Bottles of water at Stop and Shop are actually cheaper than they are at Stewart's after my discount. Can you believe that? I feel so gypped.

My drawings have been getting better because I doodle so much in class. I haven't had any time to paint because a few of my teachers, namely Comp Pol, Comp, and Spanish, have been looooooooooading on the homework. But all my paints are finally here and awaiting the creation of a MASTERPIECE!!

This gloomy fall weather gets me thinking a lot, so if you can't get ahold of me and are wondering where I am, I'm probably inside my own head. :)

Hope everyone's well. Until next time! Hopefully I'll have more to report.

Lady sing the blues so well

2008-11-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard of Regina Spektor, you are missing out!! Her musical diversity, soulful voice, and lyrical creativity is consistently above and beyond any other femal artist I've ever heard of.
So check her out!!

In other news, school is going well. I've been trying really hard to understand my Comparative Politics class, and it's starting to congeal, if you will. Right now, we're talking about things like civil disobedience and comparing it in its effectiveness to political violence, and pontificating why osme groups would choose one over the other. Stuff like that. We watched a video on the WTO riots in Seattle, and a group called OTPOR that overthrew the government in Serbia. I guess it's interesting to me now, which makes it easier not to nod off...

Psychology has likewise taken a turn towards big intrigue. We're starting a unit on social psychology, and today we watched a video on mob mentality and conformity. One of the experiments was a subject sitting at a panel with buttons that induced different amounts of electric shock onto the other participant. [There was no one actually receiving the shock, but the subject didn't know that.] The subject would use an intercom system to ask a question to the other participant, and if they answered incorrectly, the subject owuld have to give them a shock of increasing voltage as a punishment. Each button was labeled with the voltage and how severe of a shock it would induce. The study showed that, when a scientist was in the room monitoring the behavior, 65% of people would continue to ask the questions and give the shock up to a known lethal level of 450 volts. 65%! And the quesitons were things like "Cat is to kitten as dog is to _________". I can't imagine it, but there is footage of these experiments. It's real!

Spanish is more of the same, learning the correct way to form commands. Zzzz... We've started readin Hemingway short stories in my Comp class, and we're beginning to talk about writing plays and musicals in Intro to Theatre. I'm going next Sunday with Sam to see Measure for Measure, a Shakespeare production put on by the theatre majors.

I've been going to the conversation group for Spanish, and a new boy joined us yesterday. He's a senior and he's preparing to do 4 months abroad in Guayaquil! I'm so excited for him. I know I'm a dork, but it's just about the most exciting time of your young adult life. He's going to have a blast :)
I've also been going to the Drawing Party on Wednesdays. I'm trying to get better at drawing consecutive straight lines, like |||||||, without my hand shaking too much. Instead of -, I have a lot of ~. It's relaxing, though, and I think I'm improving... We'll see how my hard work pays off on Wednesday.

The POINT of this post was to announce that I have made my Christmas list. Or, parts of it.
Paints are off the list, because I just ordered some right after my last post, but I can always use more!

Really, anything made for acrylic painting that can be found on dickblick.com would probably be useful.
Hane's V-neck undershirts. These are comfy, a good fit, and look nice under any shirt. I don't know exactly what size mine is because the tag rubbed off, but I'm guessing it's a Medium.
Skullcandy head phones. These are the best on the market for your money. In my wildest dreams, Santa would bring me those amazing Bose noise-canceling headphones, but all I really need right now is a pair that work so I can listen to music in peace. The reviews on these headphones are all stellar, and both Skullcandy and Best Buy have great return policies.
Drawing pens [.5mm tip], again from dickblick because they're so darn cheap, and a pack of printer paper. I could draw for days!

Okay, there may be more to come, but I am starving! and it's time for lunch. See ya!

2008-11-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

I don't wanna talk politics! I wanna talk democracy!
I wanna talk about the first election in how many years? where the winner of the popular vote was the president elect. Where people voted for change when we need it the most! Where voter turnout was 64%, the highest it's been since 1908. 100 years. That's stunning! That's the voice of the people! 136.6 million voices of the people, to be exact.
And last night, at exactly 11:00, I was slouching on our sofa, with Sam resting her head on my legs, as I watched them announce Barack Obama the next president of the United States. By 11:30, I was receiving word that New Paltz was rioting, for lack of a more all-encompassing term. People were dancing, screaming, running around with torches, running around naked. This is HISTORY. and I was there! Well, I was here.

Next step is to get to D.C. for the inauguration. This is unprecedented on so many levels. I'm proud of us! Hooray democracy! Obamanos!

EDIT
I also wanna talk paint!
My acrylics came today!
And they are MASSIVE. tubes as long as my forearm.

shown here: royal blue, yellow, orange the color of my t-shirt, "raw sienna"-roughly the color of clay, and of course BLACK. which means I still need green, red, white, and maybe silver.

so, that leads me to item number one on my christmas list: MORE PAINT! any color you do not see here- especially LOTS of WHITE!!

The same paints, in smaller tubes, are about $7 apiece at Manny's Art Supplies in town.
The whole 5 tubes, including shipping, was around $30. Thank you, dickblick.com !

First in November

2008-11-03T14:42:00.000-08:00

Hello all! How was your halloween?

Mine was wonderful! I went to work in costume, and I pass a couple of frat houses on my way home from work, so when I hears the thudding of what I assumed was a bassline, I didn't think much of it, until I got to Front Street... I had assumed it was TKE, which had a notoriously huge halloween party, but the sound just continued to get louder, until... As I passed TKE, though, and rounded the corner, I could feel the dum--dum--dum--dum pulsing and the people chattering, and THEN I saw the half-moon of people playing bongo-esque drums. COOL! Of course, in classic New Paltz style, all performers were in costume. I stayed for just a moment before heading up to my dorm, and then got changed and went to a party on Mohonk Ave... Not the most elegant of gatherings, but we danced and danced and laughed at the HILARIOUS costumes... At least four Sarah Palins. Oh, it was good.
We got back to the dorms around midnight and after an episode of Desperate housewives, I was out like a light! I worked again on Saturday and then went to church yesterday. Hum-drum weekend, but this week Sarah's coming to visit me from home! YAY!! I can't wait to show her around and induct her into independent living -- breakfast for dinner, high internet usage, the merits of clean socks vs. not having to do laundry...

I should be studying for a psychology test right now but I wanted to check in and make absolutely certain that EVERYBODY VOTES TOMORROW. Vote however you want, but don't relinquish your one [loose] grip on the government.

Tomorrow's itinerary is as follows:
Psychology 8-915: TEST!
Spanish 925-1040: QUIZ!
HOME by 5:15 :D and watching history in the making. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

Bye!

Yuck!

2008-10-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Terrible, awful weather all day long! The kind of day where you feel drained of energy just from looking at the sky. Last night, the forecast said high of 39 degrees. And it was wrong- it got all the way up to 44. So, I went to my classes and ran to hasbrouck before the rain started up again, ate, and came back to my dorm. I've been here ever since, a good 3 or 4 hours now, watching movies and showeiring and resting. Tonight, there's a movie being shown in the library on democracy in latin america, and the filmmakers will be there. Extra credit for spanish class!

My paintings are coming along okay. There are currently two on my wall: one of a flower in a bush with a red-orange-yellow background, and one of a woman in a red dress dancing in a blue-green room. It's just been fun to be able to play around with the paint. :)

I saw Hard Candy last week. So good! I was so into it, and the ending was good, which is saying a lot-endings rarely satisfy me. I recommend it; a little scary but great acting and a good plot.

Music reccomendation is Joanna Newsom, a solo artist who sings and plays the harp. Her voice is an acquired taste, but really addictive once you learn to like it.

One teeny-tiny week remains until my generation makes history, one way or another. As my spanish teacher says, Obamanos!

2008-10-22T07:53:00.001-07:00

Exciting days are upon us! Yesterday marked just two months since I was a nervous high school graduate, shredding my cocoon and becoming a college student! Hard to believe it was only two months. It feels like years.

Last night, we went to see W at the movie theatre in town. It was okay. I was kind of unimpressed, but oh well. Today I got my voter registration card in the mail, hooray! I can't wait for election day. It should be a very cool experience.

Anyway... Fall is beautiful here, I have not seen trees this color in a really long time. The reds are like stop signs and the oranges are like reflective vests, and there are leaves everywhere! The weather's been murky the last couple days, and it's actually freezing in the mornings, but still so worth every minute of it.

Today we listened to a song in my spanish class HERE that our teacher gave us on our last day of spanish classes IN ECUADOR. Ah, the song gave me the chills, and totally brought me back to us cramped in the little classroom with the tiny foldup chairs, singing and dancing and laughing as Thimo took the solo... What a ridiculous boy. It seems like so long ago but it's been less than a year! Where has the time gone?

The Boys

2008-10-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

So the boys just left, and they deserve some mention in here! Sam, Giuliano, and Cameron are three boys from Minerva (My roommate Alice's brother, exchange student, and neighbor, respectively) who came to stay for the weekend! We had fun!! We walked the rail trail, shopped at the Salvation Army, ate ice cream at Stewart's, painted, saw our friend Chelsea's band play, and the three of them went with Emma, our soccer captain and fellow Minervian, to se Huguenot Street, the oldest continuously lived-on street in America. They were kind and funny and unobtrusive, hardly even making their mark, except when our suitemate walked in on Sam changing... The only debacle of the whole weekend! Sam came back to our room looking like he wanted to laugh or hide and couldn't decide which to act on. Very nice kids! They left a note on my whiteboard this morning, and now they're gone and all that's left of them is the empty bag of Sour Patch Kids in the garbage.

October

2008-10-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in a week or two... Hard to believe it's been that long! Things have been good, but really busy. I've got tons of work to do for classes, plus my job, plus my friends, boyfriend, family, and peers, plus my room's magnetic pull on clutter, plus the beauty of seeing fall come to be! I'm constantly running- sometimes even literally. This past saturday was a really fun day: I slept in a little, did some reading and hung out, then went and played in the intramural soccer game at 2! It was so much fun! I ran hard, played a mean defense, and even though we lost to the most rotten fraternity on campus, we still had a great time. Plus, the weather was picture perfect; a sunny, breezy 65 degrees. I brought clothes to the game, changed after, and went on to work 3:30-12. I came back to my room and talked to Andrew and Alice for a little bit and proceeded to fall fast asleep. Yesterday was nice, too; I went to mass with Andrew, got tea at The Muddy Cup, and walked back to the dorm. I was laying down for a nap when two of my friends from Colonie sent me a text message saying they were in New Paltz! So I showed them my dorm and intoduced them to some of my friends, and when they left, I had lunch and walked to Manny's Art Supplies and bought string to weave bracelets and a masquerade-esque black eye cover mask for our autumn-themed eveing, and Alice bought paints, Marc bought a fake mustache, etc. We came back to my dorm and went to the kitchen and baked pumpkin pie! While it cooked, Marc read his new book, Alice painted a huge picture, I wove bracelets, Sam and Kevin ran the music, and Emma sewed her quilt. We were all feeling pretty crafty and very fall, and when the pie was done we all took spoons and ate it without plates.

Today is a typical monday. I feel like I don't know where 6 weeks has gone, and already teachers are talking about midterms... I'm feeling competent, though, and had a very productive day today in which I cleaned my room from top to bottom and inside-out. Tomorrow Alice and I are going to see a $4 movie, and Thursday all classes are cancelled for Yom Kippur. It should be a nice week! Hope everyone is well and as warmed as I am by the changing leaves. I missed this color palette last year!

Hello Again!

2008-09-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

A fabulous thing happened tonight.

I got de-tripled!

Imagine, if you will, our dorm room- a small room with one loft bed, one bunk bed, three desks, three dressers, two closets, clothes, junk, shoes, books, lamps, a fan, and general chaos.

Then subtract the loft bed, one of the desks, one of the dressers, and a lot of the chaos. Take apart the bunk bed.

This is the reality of the last couple hours for Alice and I. Sara has moved to another room in our suite so that we don't get a ninth girl to share one shower with.
It is glorious. The whole room feels less sardine-like, more homey. Alice has been 50/50 with climbing into her bed and leaping on it, just to leap.
The whole atmosphere of our room has changed. There is just more space. A thousand things are easier now. There is less filth because we cleaned as we went. It is actually feasable to sit on our beds and read because it is actually feasable to sit upright on them. It just feels like there's room! It is the difference between a towncar and a stretch limousine. Air to breathe. It allows for people to hang out in our room. It leaves wall space for posters. It leaves less crap in the upper half of our rooms so the whole thing just looks brighter.

Oh, it is wonderful! I wish every freshman got to live like this.
Alice says "We could do aerobics!" And she is a fabulous roommate.

In other news, I went to my first protest today!! It was organizerd by a group called NORML, which is pretty much known as the druggie club because their main goal is legalizing marijuana. But they've teamed up with the public interest group on campus for a student whose rights were violated in what they consider an unlawful search and seizure. So we assembled! With clever signs like "Stop weeding out your students" [har, har] and "Hottest small state school throwing out its biggest class". A New Paltz alum gave a speech that really got me. I have never been motivated to get involved in the push to legalize marijuana, I don't smoke it and never will, but this young man stood in front of us and told us that if we are ever confronted on our beliefs, all that needs to be said is [indicaing towards his head/body] "This is mine." That's all. And it became that simple. Most of the kids there were all about the fact that marijuana was involved, but it's beyond that. It's an issue about human rights. We are losing our liberties little by little. My friend Marc was saying that if a man is wearing a diabetic ID bracelet and you see him with crumbs around his mouth, you don't push him around and search him for cookies. It's his right, whether it's responsible or not, to do what he chooses with his body. So when they see people wearing a dancing bear tie-dye t-shirt and immediately suspect they're smoking pot and bully them into signing warrants for no real reason, it's really not their call.

Like I said, I've never been a big player in the legalization scene, but today got me fired up. I want to stand up for my rights. I feel like it's my duty as a citizen, and maybe that's extreme, but it's like that saying about how first they take this minority, then they take this group, and no one says a word, then they take the gays, then the jews, and no one stands up for them, and there's no one left to notice when they come for us. I think that's from the bible? What I mean is, I am making a karmic investment by standing up for underrepresented people, so there will be someone shouting and holding signs when it's my turn to be prosecuted.

Exhausting day. Also rode my bike up the hill without stopping for the first time since I got here- I had a doctor's appointment for a vaccination. Ouch :(

That's all for tonight. I'll update again soon! TTYL!

2008-09-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today was very much a New Me kind of day.

I say that for a few reasons... mainly, though, because it shows how much I've changed in the last year or so. I went for a long walk and loved it, a healthy choice I would have dreaded just a couple years ago. I went to a meeting for the comittee that runs Latino Week- I had to represent the M&Ms, the honorary latinas-maybe it doesn't look like chocolatey goodness on the outside, but it's what's inside that counts! Back at my dorm, I listened to a lot of reggaeton and talked to some friends from Ecuador. I am missing it a lot today. It's sometimes hard to believe I was really there.
And for that, I think it's important to say, for my benefit and for anyone reading, that this blog serves an evolving purpose; it was, for a long time, my Ecuador blog. But this is my blog, first and foremost, and it will be my college blog wholly and truly after just a few entries. And in light of that, there is no longer a difference between the life I led in Ecuador and the way I think today. It was the last year of my life. It is hat I do, it is what I know. This blog carries over just as much of the past as I do!

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College is going the same, more or less, as it was last week. I've been trying to call home and/or call around in general more often, especially when I have built-in 10 minute walks across campus with which to make these calls. We've been invited to twenty frat parties but haven't been to one. A song written specifically about New Paltz says it best: "You'll never see the smart girls rollin' with the frat guys"; that is to say, if you're smart about frat parties, you won't attend them. And so we don't; we join a whole other flock of people, listening to acoustic musicians at 60 Main, watching movies in one of our residence halls, washing laundry, singing on the lawn, staying up until bizarre hours talking about anything that comes across our minds, tiring ourselves of dining hall food, cleaning, napping, and studying, of course- all of which I have done in the last 3 or 4 days.

I was sick for Monday and Tuesday of last week, but I'm better now. I was lucky enough to see three different doctors, not one of which ever came to any conclusion. The two most likely theories are 1) a burst cyst on my ovary being reabsorbed into my system, or 2) a nasty reaction to the dining hall. Either way, I was in wincing, bent-over discomfort that came and went in waves for about 48 hours. I feel better now, but, come ON!- three doctors? no results? What is this world coming to?

An excellent addition to my college life in the last week would have to be the family portraits I finally framed and propped up on my desk! Smiling faces that I miss all the time- a real gift. Thanks, Dad and Kim!

My music choice of the week is a woman named Tender Forever- if you're into hippie-esque music by middle-age lesbian folk singers, TF will be right up your alley. Her music is sweet and sexless and romantic and above all, fun!

(Oh, and note to self; be wary, if you're ever trying to get a taxi again on a Saturday in the pouring rain. You'll probably be late for work!)

PHASE TWO

2008-08-28T17:53:00.001-07:00

It's august of 2008 now. Three months ago, I was packing for our final trip to Quito. Now, here I sit, in a dorm room with a flag of Ecuador and a map of the world, and I am on a whole new adventure now.

On August 21, I moved into my dorm room and met Alice and Sara, my roommates. Alice is a former exchange student who went to Spain through Rotary, with an undeclared major and a biting wit. Sara is a second-degree blackbelt, a pre-med grocery store cashier who dreams of Eastern Europe and her boyfriend, Vjeko. Together, since that day one week ago, we have set out to make friends, and make friends we did;
Kevin and Mark, childhood friends from Farmingdale,
Anthony, with an accent as thick and obtrusive as steel wool, [we get a kick out of making him say dawluhz and dawg and cleassy]
Brian, with a whining voice and supreme height,
Andrew, who requested we call him Beast,
Alex, Ryan, and Cody who play keyboard, guitar, and harmonica, respectively,
Steve, a horseback rider who came over to watch a movie after class,
Madeline, a darling girl from Sweden,
Shaun, the quntessential young "gay guy" of the group [and proudly so],
Stacy, who hardly makes a peep,
Sam, our favorite, from Staten Island,
Ashley, whose upperclassman suitemate tried to scare her and the other freshman into switching out,
Andre and Oliver, who we sat with through an acoustic "jam session" on move-in day,
Will, who warns us against the frathouse evils [like we didn't already hear it a hundred times],
Pamela, the Ecuador-born girl form our Spanish class,
and a thousand more.

On monday we started classes; we set our blaring alarms, shoved new notebooks into old bags, and trudged down to Humanities, or Coykendall, or Wooster, or the Lecture Center, or wherever our schedules directed us to go. My first class was Introduction to Comparative Politics, with a teacher who requests we call him Robert. We went around and introduced ourselves and talked a little, and before i knew it, I'd done it! I'd survived the class! it was time to go!
Then, I proceeded to survive other classes. Freshman Composition, a general ed. requirement taught by a twentysomething dork. Then Intro to Theatre, with professor Kitsakos- I had to write out kit-SOCK-os, who kept us riveted and begging for more. Tuesday, Psychology with a professor who asks for what we want to learn and any music recommendations we have, followed by Spanish with a thoroughly latina teacher- Patricia Fitzpatrick. Har, har.
Tuesday night is $4 movie night and we finally all see The Dark Knight, in a theatre that maybe seats 50 or 60 moviegoers. We are 10 of oly 20 or 25 in the audience, though, and it is quaint and personal- I get up to go to the bathroom, and the man at the concession stand says HEYhowyadoin' before I have the theatre door all the way open. I fele like they were expecting us, putting the show on only for us.

Wednesday I start to get a little claustrophobic, so Alice, Sara, Sam, Kevin, and I walk to the nearest Stewart's-about a mile each way. I have some quality conversations, we get our necessaries- mouthwash, a pint of ice cream, bubblegum... We walk back, I finish my reading, and we go to bed.

Now, getting into my loft bed is very strategic. You can squeeze between the bed and the window and climb up the planks as if they're a ladder. You can do the chair-hop-to-the-bed acrobatic manoeuver, or you can do my personal favorite; the foot-on chair, foot-on-desk, knee-on-bed, pull-body-up move. It's pretty foolproof.... until I tried it last night in the dark, and stepped on my laptop. It never even occured to me that maybe my computer would be on my desk when I tried to climb up until- CRACK!- and at 7 the next morning, assessing the damage, I realize the CRACK was my entire body weight cracking my laptop screen. It's still functioning [obviously], but it's like I was racing Gravity to see who could break it faster. I've only been here a week! I've only taken it out to the bench by the door to study! How can I have already broken it?!

There are a few fixes to this kind of problem, but all of them mean I have to fix it. That's what really gets me. It's BROKEN! I am stunned. It feels so unreal that in one teeny tiny week, I've already done what few college students can manage in 4 years. Some days, the cards are stacked against you.

On the upside, I started work tonight- Wait... That IS an upside, right?

Sorry I'm so awful at answering or returning calls. Pick some names off the list, and they are probably the people I'm traipsing across New Paltz with. Oh, the glory of youth!

Final four

2008-06-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

It's the other end of this long and crazy journey. I am home and unpacked from the last trip. I am looking at every valuable and wondering if it is worth its space in my suitcase. I am writing letters and taking pictures and mending loose ends, and I am going full-speed ahead towards June 14th; my return to Colonie.

The trip was amazing. We started in Quito and snaked our way down through Ambato, Riobamba, Banos, Cuenca, and finally arrived in Guayaquil on Friday. I have literally over 1,000 photos, some of which will find their way on the internet later this week.

For the time being, I am not waiting for upload bars. I am not napping. I am drinking coffee and working through my droopy eyelids the best I can. I have only a few days left to enjoy all this country has to offer.

And on that note, I'm off to have dinner with my friend Michaela and plan for the coming days.

SEE YOU SOON!

Standard update

2008-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

It has been a really hectic couple of weeks! The details are hard to appreciate if you're not here, so here's the reader's digest version:

School is back in session! It's been good to see my friends again but I'm taking some really boring classes, like Social Bioethics and Technology and Philosophy and Research Methodology-mostly practical, but whoa, not exciting. We have an unprecedented amount of class hours in English now, something like 15 to 18 out of the 45 hours in a week are things like "Business", "Critical Thinking" and "Level 3 Grammar". On Wednesdays, we have 5 English classes. They hate it, but for me it feels like justice. It's MY turn to talk in class!

Got in a few more trips to the beach, one with my friends and another with my host family. It was great, the latter was one of the nicest weekends with this family so far. We played about 100 games of Crazy 8s, we watched Twister [dubbed, of course], we made HUGE banana milkshakes, and of course, we spent the majority of the time in the hammock or in the sand. The weather has changed, though. It's cloudy more, and the ocean is terribly cold- like pins and needles all over. Either way, we had a lot of fun, and I of course got a sunburn... SPF 45 protecting MY skin on the equator is like an inflatable chair keeping you afloat in whitewater rapids... Good luck.

The OTHER countdown is on-remember in July when the countdown to Ecuador began? I'm now in the countdown to Albany-less than 5 weeks and I will be home, sweet home. I'm terrified, sort of digging in my heels, don't want to say goodbye, but there is another side of me that is SINGING! I can't wait to hug my little brothers. I can't wait to drink vitamin water and walk the streets after sundown. I can't wait to see my house, with new siding and an extended deck and the yearly landscaping overhaul. Not to mention going back to my job, graduating high school, seeing my best friend!, and a thousand other things that feel long overdue.

Galapagos!

2008-04-12T11:44:00.001-07:00

I think the Galapagos could only really be explained with photos. It was: Early mornings, long walks, completely kicking the crap out of my sneakers, the most refreshing showers at the end of the day, white beaches, HUGE TURTLES, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, 3'-tall pelicans, sea lions, rooming with Kourtney as per our usual routine, snorkeling, cliff jumping, blue blue skies and blue blue water, lazy afternoons, bike rentals, high prices!, tons of americans, dancing, singing, swimming, and a big adventure.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this trip possible! Grandma, Grandpa, Grandma Sanger, Dave, Tom, Mom, Aunt Shelley, Aunt Sis, and of course Dad and Kim, you are amazing. You can't imagine how good it was for me. THANK YOU!!!!

Part of the Family...

2008-04-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Alicia Holzapfel and I with my birthday cake!

Last night was my sixth and final celebration of my 18th birthday... the second one in the form of a Rotary meeting! I went last week as well, but our club was meeting with the original Rotary Club Guayaquil and weren't meeting in our usual restaurant. They sang and were very nice, but this week was the real celebration.

It was the best and worst Rotary meeting I've ever attended. Aside from celebrating my birthday, there was the dinner, of course, and we were offered 2 dishes: Chicken and a vegetable medley, or something they just told me was "traditional Ecuadorean food." So, being my exchange student self, not wanting to say no to their culture, I said "I'd like the traditional Ecuadorean food." Well, about 25 minutes later, the plates were brought in. The chicken and vegetables looked really good, but the other plates smelled and looked even better: meat in a peanut sauce, fried banana, avocado halves, and rice. So I tried it. The meat, which I knew off the bat wasn't chicken, was very salty and almost too gummy to chew. I tried a few bites but didn't really like the texture, so I just enjoyed the rest of the dish and left the rest of the meat there.

After dinner, they told me what the dish was. AFTER dinner. The dish is called "Mondongo", and it's typical of Ecuador. It is, like I'd guessed, prepared in a peanut sauce, and has to be cooked very carefully, or the texture of the meat is almost unchewable. Oh, and the meat? Cow stomach. I excused myself to the bathroom and cleaned my mouth out. My stomach still churns at the thought of it.

After the meal talk, the president of the club stood up with a gift bag in his hand. "It seems we have a birthday girl among us..." he said. He handed the bag to Alicia, my counselor, and she handed the bag to me. Presents? Really?

Inside the bag was an offical Rotary polo shirt, an offical Rotary baseball cap, and a teddy bear, holding a heart pinned with the flag of Guayaquil.

After the presents we had cake: Chocolate cake with chocolate and whipped-cream frosting, covered with a hard chocolate shell! Between picking me out a dreamy all-chocolate cake, and embroidering my name into the hat and shirt so I wouldn't lose them, I'm starting to feel like I have yet aNOTHER set of parents looking out for me! I really feel like a loved part of the Rotary family.

Quito, et cetera.

2008-03-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

The links lead to pictures! You can choose them as you wish.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Quito with my host family.

Quito is: info thanks to Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

-The capital of Ecuador, with 2.1 million inhabitants
-Located 2800 meters above sea level
-Cold! The average annual temperature is 12 degrees Celsius, or 54 degrees Fahrenheit.
-Minutes' drive from the equator, thus subject to hundreds upon hundreds of tourists.
-Relatively well off for an Ecuadorean city, with 7% unemployment and $387 avg. monthly wages.

-Beautiful. Quito is one of those cities whose beauty makes you take a deep breath. While it is a bustling city, the atmosphere is really enjoyable. There are street performers and tons of majestic cathedrals with huge stained-glass windows and clock towers that take a real effort to climb. But we did it! And the view was incredible.

While in Quito, we were really busy visiting with family and seeing the sights, but just as I was feeling homesick for my Easter basket, we took a special trip to try our hands [or ankles?] at ice skating. It was for sure a challenge but we loved it, except Pamela who couldn't quite get the hang of it.

In short, Quito is great. A city not to be missed!

70%

2008-03-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Two crazy weeks! First, the day after my last post, we packed up and headed for Manta, a few hours up the coastline of Ecuador. We drove all day, sopped a few times along the way to see where the National Assembly is held, things like that. We stayed overnight and the next morning, picked up Cecile's family from the airport. Cecile is from Belgium, and her parents hosted Maria Jose, my host family's daughter. Cecile lives in Quito so, naturally, when the family wanted to come see the coast, my host family offered to show them around. It was fascinating. We went from Manta to Puerto Lopez to Salinas to Guayaquil, all the while working through the language barrier- a silly-sounding mix of Spanish, French, and English. We went deep-sea fishing, kayaking, drove a lot, slept a little, and played a lot of ping-pong, a universal test of brains and braun.

The day after we came back to Guayaquil was my eighteenth birthday [3/6], and what better gift is there than my family coming to visit? Their flight was scheduled to land around 5, and I spent the whole day thinking of things I needed to tell them- Traffic is crazy, don't flush the toilet paper, haggle with the taxi drivers, etc. etc. etc. I think it was partly just because I couldn'tbelieve they were really coming, couldn't imagine being with them, and then there they were. The airport was an intense moment, running and hugging Allison before I even got in the door, seeing how tall Christopher had gotten, hugging, crying, etc.

We spent the first couple days in Guayaquil, got to see the boardwalk and climb the Santa Ana hill and have some traditional Ecuadorean food, and Saturday we bounced around; had breakfast with my current host family, stopped in to visit with the Leivas, and had lunch with my friends from school and Exchange. My dad loved that part. I did too.

We spent Saturday night until Friday morning in Salinas, which was freaking fantastic. We ate ceviche and road jet-skis, kayaked and suntanned and bought at least 40 or 50 DVDs. It, of course, went way too fast, but was so great, so fun, and I felt so lucky to be laying in a hammock, having a "Heavy-Deep-and-Real" conversation with my dad until the middle of the night, sometimes later, like I'd never been gone at all.

Yesterday marked 7 months down. I offically feel pressure, like there's just not enough time left. The next 3 months are already filling up with activities, trips and school and birthdays and at the end of May, our little exchange family starts breaking up when Kourtney goes back to Ohio to graduate. Then Rose and Karlijn, then me, then Eden, Ayla, Nils, Thimo, Michaela, in succession, broken up by a week or two in between. I feel a little dread, like I would slow it down if I could. I don't want to leave this comfortable little home I've made myself, but then again, I felt the same way leaving in August. Just gotta keep looking forward...

My Nightmare: Rotary Edition

2008-02-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

When I think back to the spring and summer of 2007, the time I now refer to as "when this whole thing started" in respect to my exchange, a few things stick out to me: The night we wikipedia'd Ecuador for the first time, the exchange conference in May, my first email from my first host family, and my first Rotary meeting, when I met the exchange students our club was hosting and saw them give their Big Presentations.
For those of you who are not so familiar with the exchange rules, each exchange student, at some point in their exchange year, is asked to present to the Rotary club that hosts them about their home town, home state, home country, etc. We saw three different presentations, from Marie about her town in France, from Ciro about his city in Bolivia, and from Olga about her town in Germany. I brought a red spiral-bound notebook and a pen and took notes on the presentation styles, ALREADY sweating the day when it would be my turn to get up and say "Aaaalllbaaaanyyyyy" and flash through slides of Washington Park, New York City, my high school, my house, etc.

Well, a few nights ago, my host mother Cecilia called me into their bedroom and said "Sabrina, have you been to a Rotary meeting yet in February?" [Spinning through my mental datebook....] "Uh, no, I haven't," I said, so she offered to call my counselor and get me in for the meeting the night of Feb. 26th. I knew I'd have to do my presentation when I went, because I'd been scheduled to do it in January but there was a conflict on my night, and so we'd postponed it but never set a new date.

The following morning, I brought out that notebook and flipped to my notes and got to work, starting with Googling pictures of those Oneonta snowbanks that were in the Times Union last year, the 22' tall ones. My goal was to show the differences; the climate, the population [Guayaquil has more than 30 times as many inhabitants as Albany], the demographics, etc.; but also do it in a blatant, sort of funny way: I wasn't going to put in pictures of my house in August, I'd show it under 2' of snow. I wasn't going to show our mall vs. their mall, but instead represented their population with 15 stick figures and ours with half of one.

I worked for a couple hours without stopping, also including the Tulip Festival, the Egg, stuff that would keep them awake but would show them what we're about at the same time. I changed the backgrounds of the slides, put together animation, and when I was happy with it all, I burned it to a CD and wrote my name on the label, slipped it into a case, and saved a copy on the computer. I put together a cheat sheet and scanned it every few hours throughout the days remaining between me and my big night.

On Feb. 25th, I got a call from my counselor, Alicia. "Hola, Sabrina," she says, and she asks me what I'll need for my presentation. I tell her I need a computer and an InFocus [to project the slideshow] and a screen or some sort of backdrop to make it visible. She tells me no problem, asks me how my presentation is going, and says she'll see me the following night at 8:30.

The big night started out bad, which I guess I should have taken as an omen. I had to change my outfit 3 times and my banner from the Colonie-Guilderland club, even though I'd kept it rolled up for the last 8 months, was all wrinkled, and I couldn't think of a way to flatten it without ruining it. I took a deep breath, went over my notes, practiced what I was going to say, got myself some juice, and calmed down to a hand-jitter-less state.

Then, my host parents got home from their volunteer work at 8:31, leaving us negative 1 minute to get to the meeting on time. I sat in the back seat, sweating, rolling and unrolling the banner, muttering my presentation to myself.

I got to the meeting at 8:40, and the sliding doors were shut. I opened them with a horrible CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK and walked into the silent room, scanning it for my counselor... who wasn't there. The minute I sat down, a Rotarian called me out of the room to tell me the man who was going to bring the InFocus [the projector] couldn't make it. I let out a sigh of relief for another postponement until I realize he's still talking, telling me to wing it. "Good luck!" he says and walks back into the meeting.

I go back in and sit down. My chest feels tight. I sit staring at my disc and my cheat sheet and feel like I might cry, but I take a deep breath and wait my turn, thinking about the bits of information from the slideshow that wll still be worth sharing without the pictures. I don't have a pen and I can feel ideas coming to my mind and flying back out. I wait for what feels like an hour and then I am introduced as the exchange student "Sabrina.. Add-a-kiss" who will be telling them... about how my exchange year has been going so far. Huh?

I walk up and stand in front of the room and the words just seem to flow. I tell them Hello, my name is Sabrina, and I come from the United States, the state of New York but not the city. I tell them my father is a Rotary club president and I come from a big family, and then I tell them about working with the blind children and visiting impoverished families at Christmastime. I tell them about the Amazon and Quito and I tell them, not because I'd planned to but because I mean it, that my ear as an exchange student has been the most important year of my life, and that it has been an opportunity to grow and learn and see things, and I appreciate the opportunity so much. I say thank you and ask for questions. One rotarian asks me how I like the food and I tell him I love it, he asks me how I like the boys and we all laugh and he says "I mean, not me, of course, sorry, I'm married." I look around and realize they're all smiling at me, and it feels really good to be able to tell them how cool my year's been. I guess that means there was a happy ending!

Ooh ee, ooh ahh ahh....

2008-02-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

.... ting, tang, walla walla bing bang!

Home from the amazon, and I will be the first to say it was the trip of a lifetime!

The trip started out thursday night at 8:00, when we [Kourtney, Rose, Karlijn, and I] boarded the bus to Quito. We rode all night which, in the rainy season, is not exactly a walk in the park; every time we finally nodded off, the bus rode over a gigantic pothole and we were back where we started from. We finally arrived in Quito around 5:30 or 6:00, freezing, feeling grimy, and ready for a nice warm breakfast. We stopped in Le Petit Cafe and got hot cocoa, grilled cheese, eggs, croissants, the works!

From there we boarded our little puddle-jumper plane with the other 12 exchange students en route to Coca. We stopped in Coca long enough to use the bathrooms and canoodle with the domesticated monkeys and birds, then got in the canoe for the 3 hour ride to Yachana, which in the native Quichua means "Learning". Upon arrival we wer informed by the head guide for our group, Juan, all the need-to-know basics about the trip: what hours we'd have electricity, powered by solar panels and biomass; meal times; towel and sheet rotations, etc. etc. We were also assigned our boots: Black rubber rain boots that we would be wearing daily for the duration of the trip.

The lodge itself was nothing like I'd expected. The other students said they were "cabins", so I expected candlelight and splintering floorboards and a hose in the shower, haha. I was reeealllly pleasantly surprised when we got to our room: 2 REALLY comfortable twin beds, a hot shower, ceiling fan, cubbies to hang and organize our clothes, and a small porch with a table and a hammock. The food was above my expectations, as well: Hot coffee and teas, granola with warm milk, fruit upon fruit, fresh juice, eggs and bacon and pancakes for breakfast, hot soups, rice, meat, and veggies for lunch, fruit cocktails for dessert, and heaping plates [with themes] for dinner: one night was what we believe was American Night, because we had chicken with barbecue sauce, potato salad, a garden salad with ranch dressing, and lemonade- YUM!

Much of the trip is a blur, a fun and fast paced and amazing blur. We hiked, long and hard, for a minimum of two hours a day and a maximum of five. We visited the nearby highschool, where the students learned not only english, math, and sciences, but also handcrafts, agriculture, and worked at the lodge, building steps on tricky parts of the trail, interning as tour guides and assistant cooks, screen-printed souvenir tshirts, you name it-they learned it. We watched a couple pan for gold; a backbreaking, low-tech job that earns $20 a gram... and the couple has 12 children. We ate bugs!, both living and roasted. We had a great balance of busy activities and downtime, which we spent swinging in the hammocks, playing carcds, doing our nails [of the 16 of us, 14 were girls], and relaxing in our beds. We made baskets and sang songs and taught the guides cardgames like Bullshit and Spit and got to know the other students a lot better at the same time. By the time we came home on Tuesday, we were begging to stay!

The canoe ride on Tuesday morning was shorter because we were going downstream. We arrived in Coca about an hour before our flight, puddle-jumped back to Quito, had lunch at Pizza Hut, and were on our way back to Guayaquil by 4:30. Unfortunately, because of the weather, the trip back was longer than it had been the last time we went, and we arrived at the Guayaquil terminal at 2 in the morning, exhausted and grimy all over again!

I'm glad to be back in Guayaquil, but glad at the same time to have had such a wonderful opportunity. It was definitely a highlight of the year!

1/2 = 50%

2008-01-28T07:29:00.000-08:00

All the little markers have pointed to its passing... 2007 transitioning into 2008, marking off 152 out of 304 days, and now, this week, changing host families: My exchange is halfway over!

It amazes me, if I stop and think about it. I can hardly believe that this is what I was so nervous about back in August- the passing of 10 months just seemed so.... painstakingly... slow...
Now that I'm in it, now that half of it has gone by, I wish I'd done some things differently! I wish I hadn't worried so much about it, and I wish I had made the very most of my first months. Even though I was really busy, I still have this feeling like I wish I'd done more. Mayb I would have had this feeling regardless. Who knows.

The first months were really a blast. I got to spend a TON of time at the beach; I counted it up last night and between mid-November and now, I spent about 20 days at the beach. I also spent a ton of time at school, of course. As an exchange student, school feels like a blessing instead of a burden. For me, it was an opportunity to meet people I could go out with instead of sitting home. It was also a perfect environment to practice Spanish, both speaking it with classmates and working on my ear for it while teachers gave lectures. Plus, I learned a thing or two- actually, I learned a lot, not just in classes like Ethics, National Reality, and Psychology, but also in English: rules on grammar and word order and even spelling that they learned as basic steps to speaking that, because I grew up speaking it, I was never formally taught.

I also got in with a fantastic host family, one that took me in truly as a member of the family. I'll be sad to be leaving them soon! My next family is very different; for one, the host siblings are younger than me, instead of older. The house is inside a gated community called Stella Mar, and it has a pool and a gym that are accessible to residents, so I can busy myself during this long break from school. It should be really interesting. I just hope it all goes well.

The next 5 months supposedly go really fast. That worries me! But I'm pretty sure that when I leave here in June, it will not be forever. I'd love to come back and visit when I get older, maybe even get a house here. It just has a peaceful, slow pace. Especially on the beach. I guess you'd have to see it for yourself!

The next few weeks are going to be busy for sure. I have my family change, then I have to give my presentation to Rotary, and then we have the option of going to the Amazon for a few days in February. Exciting stuff...!

It's good to be on vacation...

2008-01-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

A short background note: because Guayaquil is just south of the equator, and because we're on the coast, the summertime is relatively cold, meaning low 70's, and the wintertime is a little warmer, up to around 95.
Due to these two factors, the school schedule is different here than it is in the United States-Even different than in the mountainous regions that don't have the same type of rainy season.
So... Today was my last day of school! I'm on winter vacation until April, when I will go back as a senior [ FINALLY going to rule the school :) ] until my return home in June!

Aside from that, we [the exchange students] are starting to settle into a fairly normal rhythm; that is, Spanish classes are over, we've done our sightseeing, our Spanish is much improved, and we've been here for- wow!- 5 months. This settling-in has been gradual since we got here, but now that it's more or less over, now that we know our way around the city and have memorized important phone numbers and know when a cabbie is ripping us off, I, for one, am starting to feel boredom- Not in the sense that I'm bored, per se, but more that I'm not so easily thrilled anymore. It's a good thing, for sure! But it's important in this period to keep busy [which makes summer vacation a mixed blessing], because homesickness is also a lot more likely when we're vegetating with our iPods or our telenovelas on TV.

The saddest even we've had as of late is Liz's departure: Liz is an Australian exchange student who, since she's also from south of the equator, was on a January-January year as opposed to an August-July year, like many of us are. Her going away party was Tuesday, and she will be greatly missed. She's been a great influence on us all: Never broke the rules, bonded deep-down with her host family, stayed involved in school, and really enjoyed speaking Spanish. I remember meeting her in August and thinking that she was the kind of exchange student I'd hoped to be. We wish her the best down undah!

That's about it. I'm happy, healthy, and about halfway back to Albany- Tuesday marks 5 months down, less than 5 to go!

2008....

2008-01-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

2008is here and we've hit the ground running. My host family and I spent midnight on the beach in Salinas with thousands of people throwing confetti, popping champagne and lighting fireworks and all that. We made a short video to send to Diego in Germany and then one to send home to my dad. It was nice to have everyone put in like that. We burned a "viejo", a papier-mache doll that represents the year that's passing and all the regrets or unhappy events of the year before. From there I went out with my friends and we had an absolute blast on the boardwalk until 5 AM. New Year's night was only part of a perfect beach weekend, relaxing, sunning, riding on one of those banana boats until it flipped and we all got soaked, drinking banana smoothies, and doing typical girly teenage things.

Since I got home I've been paying my post-beach dues, picking at a bad sunburn and trying to catch up on laundry. I checked in on school today, talked with my teachers whose final exams I was worried about and even took the first final of the weeklong testing-got a 95% in history. If only I could get credit for it back home...

Other than that, time is moving along as usual. I'm so close to halfway done, I can smell it. School ends in a week, and at the end of the month, I change to my new host family, the Stacy family, with a mom, dad, brother [13] and sister [8] in a gated community further into the city, but still on the outskirts. Their current exchange daughter, Karlijn, will come to my house. I'm going to miss my family but I'll also be glad to change.

61 days until I turn 18... The excitement is building...

[EDIT] PS: Here's some photos!

Karlijn, me, Nils, and Eden on the equator!
Trip to Quito, 15/12/2007

Nia and I shopping for Viejo dolls on a street named "March 6th"- My birthday!
25/12/007

Nia and I during the gift exchange, around midnight
25/12/2007

Christmas dinner: Nia, Marco, Abuela, Marco Antonio way in the back, me, and Mirta

That's it for now. More soon!

We'll face unafraid the plans that we've made, walking in a....

2007-12-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

As I'm letting sabrinasdad.blogspot.com take up all my bandwidth, loading the video from home for Christmas, blogging in WordPad seems a logical way to pass the time.

As expected, the last 72 hours have been terrible homesickness. It's just hard to dodge all the mental cues of home, the trees and the lights and the carols and the mass and the parties and chocolates wrapped in red, gold, and green foil. It hit me like a brick, though, and a friend of my host sister's birthday party on the 23rd. I was looking at the tree and admiring the ornaments and it all flodded in, little things; like porcelain decorations my grandmother has put in the same spot in her house every year since my infancy, maybe before. Like hanging my stocking, and Christmases when things weren't so easy, and the past couple years when the boys cheer as Allison and I groan at 6:30 in the freaking morning...

I thought about what Christmas tradition really is, how in the movies they always have the same exact schedule, same plan, same routine, every year, but I don't. When I was little we always had Christmas Eve to celebrate my grandfather's birthday and come together with him at his house, but then he got old and eventually passed away and that tradition ended. For many years we went to cut down a tree as a big kickoff, then one year we got a pre-cut, then one year we had an artificial, and soon, it didn't seem right to say we had that tradition. Some years we drank cocoa, some years it was spiced cider. Some years I had the red and white candy canes, but others, around the time I was 11 or 12, I loved the neon tutti frutti ones.

And it's an expression as old as time itself, but it occurred to me that the ONLY thing I remember at every single Christmas, without fail, and never artificial, is family. Even when times were hard, when we were decorating a tree in a duplex, or an apartment, with Big Lots ornaments and a fake tree, it was us, Dad, Mom, Kim, my brothers, Allison, Grandma, Pat and Frank, Shelly and Sissy and all the little girls, and Christian too, whatever pets we had then, whatever girlfriends the boys brought home, and it made it Christmas. There is an image every year in my mind of a small room, or a large room, filled with people either way, and a tree, and the chatter and buzz of Christmastime. There is Christmas mass which, of course, I have never attended alone. I can remember a mass so far back I fell asleep in my mom's arms, while she unfortunately got stuck with me in one hand and a lit candle in the other... sorry Mom...

It always has seemed to me that older people had secrets, like how Christmas is about family, or how nice it is to have money saved, or how knowing what a surprise is makes it no fun at all, those secrets that even when the raisins tell the grapes, the young ones never understand. Some things you just have to learn yourself. You learn to save money once you've got $250 in babysitting cash and the video iPod goes on sale. You learn to let surprises wait when you don't see one coming and it wakes you right up, and you learn that Christmas is about family when you're playing house 3,100 miles away, and you see a picture someone snaps of you handing over a gift-a wallet, to your host dad, wrapped up tight, that makes him say "Ahh, a small present for your miniature dad!" [he stands around 5’5, Dad around 6’2 or 6’3 depending on his mood]- and in the picture he's laughing and you're laughing and the present is there between, symbolic of so much more.

This Christmas was not many things. It was not what I was used to, it was no white, and it was English-subtitle free. It WAS, however, eye-opening, heartwarming, and rejuvenating, seeing how Ecuador really could easily be my home. It has all the proper components: A loving family –TWO loving families, one right up close and one a little farther away –A warm bed –And room to grow, which I’m trying to fill “poco a poco”…

I’m literally praying this video will load further! It loaded to about two minutes and stopped and now every time I try to load more, it stops shorter and shorter, now at about 4 seconds… The ease and speed of the modern age…

Thank you Dad, thank you Kim, thank you Christopher and Father Noone and Sue and anyone who comes later in the video I’ve yet to see. I love you all and miss you very much. Merry Christmas---the merriest!

Christmas In America

2007-12-21T10:46:00.001-08:00

The mood is right,
The spirit's up,
We're here tonight,
And that's enough
Simply having a wonderful christmastime

The funny thing about Christmas is the electricity in the air, that buzzing feeling, the excitement over racking your brain for hours until you think of the perfect gift, and then stretching 80 cents into a dollar to go out and buy it.

Last night, I finally was hit by the Christmas spirit in full force. It was the secret santa big-gift party for all the girls in my class. In true ecuadorean fashion, I arrived over an hour late and was still the first one there. While I waited with Janne, a fellow exchanger from Hamburg, Germany, we listened to Paul McCartney as he had a wonderful christmastime, compared past christmas stories, and worried about whether or not our secret santas would like our gifts, and if we would like theirs. It was just one of those giving and getting moments, in more ways than one, that Christmas always seemed to be about.

I love my gift. It's a mug that says Guayaquil on it. Even with no snow to love/hate, no carols on the radio, and exotic plants draped in lights, it still felt like pure Christmas.

Upon receiving the mug, the very first thought in my mind was where I would use it... maybe some place like the State University of New York at New Paltz...

...to which I was accepted December 19th, 2007!!!!!

I got the news through the true and thoughtful genius of my father's web design, almost as good as opening the envelope, if not better-because I didn't see it coming. The two of them, my dad and Kim, could be Hollywood actors. My dad, on the phone, was 100% business like he was testing a new graphic design. Kim sounded like she was ready to take a nap. Dad says "I'm filling out some forms and I need you to check out this website for me... Go to gardencenternews.com/sabrina and tell me what you think."

I got to the page and thought to myself Is this it? No, it couldn't be. They'd be way more excited. This is just some site... I saw the quote in New Paltz colors all about the beauty and charm of the campus and the programs, the quote from my tour guide, and I still am not putting 2 and 2 together.... And then I opened it. It could have been a movie. The page loaded, I saw my address, then "Dear Sabrina,", and when I got to "Congratulations!" I screamed louder than I think I ever have, exited out of the page, ran outside, and started yelling and jumping.

I could not have been happier, and I don't think the two of them could have been more proud. Eventually, around 11:00 that night, I realized Kim sounded so dreary because she'd been crying. Beyond college and Ecuador and everything else, I think it goes without saying that what makes me so lucky is being blessed with such an amazing family.

It would be hard to explain to people how exciting the prospect of New Paltz is for me;
how the campus felt like it fit just right,
how the giant Wal-Mart, 2.00 theatre, and farmland in the town were so reminiscent of Cobleskill where I spent a huge chunk of my childhood,
how it's the second most competitive SUNY to get into,
how the job I love and miss could help me get the same job there,
how it's close to home-but not too close,
and so on and so forth. I've thought about little else for months.

This includes my recent trip to QUITO!, one of the most important destinations in all of Ecuador. It was an awesome trip, full of firsts. I got to drive in a cloud, straddle the equator, dance to indigenous music, share a hotel room with people I literally met when I walked into it, stand in the crater of a volcano, plant trees, walk in altitudes only goats seem to enjoy, learned a song in German, shopped and shopped and shopped. Within that shopping, again thinking about college, back when I still didn't know, the search went something like this:

"This is a cuuuuuuuute tote! I love the colors. This would be really cool and fun to use... at New Paltz!"
"I've always wanted a hat like this... and it has a matching scarf! Perfect for cold days... at New Paltz!"
"Is this really Alpacha wool? It's so soft and warm. The blankets are perfect for a dorm... at New Paltz!"

Which was usually followed by the panic-stricken "OH GOD, what if I don't get in? How long are they going to make me wait?" and then "This bag would just look dumb at a community college" or "If I go to SCCC, I won't HAVE a dorm!" and then making the purchase on my now-flimsy hope.

So, now I have a tote bag, a hat, a scarf, some clothes, and a mug to use in and out of my New Paltz dorm!

That's about all the blogging I can muster for now. Sorry the posts are so few and far between, we're working on limiting my internet usage to keep me in the moment and help me use spanish, not english... Miss and love you all!

A wonderful christmastime

2007-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

I am one of the luckier exchange students in that my hosts have taken me in as part of their family. My host sister brings me to mass, my host father tells me interesting facts about wherever we go and buys the type of cereal I like, and my host mother, most of all, has taken me as her replacement-youngest while Diego is in Germany. Every day, she reminds me to have fruits and vegetables, checks up on my plans and schedules, asks me about school, and warns me about the dangers of this city.

For the most part, my host mother is a very serious woman. She is the one in the front row of aerobics, sweating to the oldies. She is a dentist and doesn't laugh much. She's practical and focused and often worried, especially about me.

However, this serious, focused, ho-hum image of her has been shattered in my mind. She has gone Christmas nutty, and I, personally, love it.

Our house is much like Mirta. There are some pretty colors, sure, but the floors are a dull white-grey stone, the curtains are white, the paintings are of fruit and religious things. It's mellow. However, she has spent probably 4 straight days decorating for the holidays. We have an artificial tree that she decorated and hung with lights. Every table that's not glass, and even a couple that are, have red tablecloths. The kitchen tablecloth is green with bright red place mats. There are wreaths, mistletoe, figurines, and miles of lights. At night, we turn off all the lamps and track lighting and things like that and plug in the decorative ones, and it's really bright, there's not much difference between the two. Our nativity scene is at least 20-25 figurines and 2 ft. squared.

Of course, this got me thinking about the holidays back home. Thanksgiving passed quietly, we reserved 20 minutes of Spanish class for a thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday and got Thursday free. We made plans to go out thursday to our favorite burger place, El Capi, and I'd forgotten it was thanksgiving until about 8:00 that night. We prayed thanks for the blessings we have and petitioned for help of the massive poor population here.

However, something makes me think maybe Christmas will be harder to miss...

In other news, I sat down a few days ago and did the math: My exchange year is exactly 300 days long! Today is day 105, 35.3% down, 64.7% to go. Spanish classes will be finished in just over a week, and then we have our trip to Quito, the capital in the highlands. It's really cold there! I'm going to have to bring my coat, sneakers, jeans, etc.

Speaking of weather... today we have a high of 84, low of 73. Have some hot cocoa for me!

"Be the change you want to see in the world" -Ghandi

2007-10-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

The news in Ecuador is full of reports from Barcelona. The word "xenophobe" is prominent in every editorial, and the most talked-about teenager has no displayed face and no name. There are demonstrations at our capital and discussions in our National Reality class over one ignorant man who made a grave error.

On October 7th, Sergi Martín, a 21 year old Barcelonian, had a beer at a local bar and left for the train home shortly after. The security videos show him on the train, talking on his cell phone and standing in the aisle, calmly leaning against a pole. However, not long after this shot is one of him yelling at a fellow passenger, a 16 year old ecuadorean girl whose identity is being kept private. Just seconds later, there is clear footage of Sergi kicking the girl in the face. I'm not positive of all the details as of yet, but I believe he continued to attack her after this. She didn't do anything to protect herself.

There has been a speedy hearing. Sergi is not getting any jail time because of a mental illness and some sympathy because he was supposedly inebriated, and across the world, Ecuadoreans, Spaniards, and any sympathetic to the girl are in an uproar.

I personally have been lucky enough to sit in a classroom full of 16 year old ecuadoreans. I cannot imagine being drunk enough and angry enough and confsed enough to kick anyone in the face, much less a young girl I hardly knew. There are of course accusations, because the girl was not Spanish, that the attack had to do with her ethnicity, and as the tape doesn't show them talking about anything in particular before the blow, I can't imagine what she could have done to instigate an argument like that.

I believe that people like that are why I am 3100 miles away from everyone I know, all my creature comforts and my family. I believe that ignorance like that, cold, angry ignorance, is why people need to see how small the world is. During spare time in classes, I have conversations with my classmates here that mimic conversations I've had before in Colonie. In two months of being here, I've met no less than 5 people who have lived in New York in their lifetime and come here. It sounds so simple, but the world is a tiny, tiny thing. Hugs here are as warm and comforting as any hug above the equator, and latitude has no affect on the joy of being nice.

It is unfair that a girl being kicked in the face calls to attention people's ignorance. Every time the "N" word is uttered, there should be demonstrations like this. If every person just sat and thought about it, it would be blatantly clear that we are no different from each other. Honestly, what does a bigot think the people he hates are like? Does Sergi think ecuadoreans wear loincloths and paint our faces? Do they honestly believe that we don't shop in the same stores, eat the same food, drink the same Pepsi, wear the same Nikes, talk on the same Motorola flip phones about the same badly dressed celebrities? Because, news flash, front page, above the fold: We're all exactly equal.

Two years ago, I heard a quote that has stuck with me and become a part of me. Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." It does not take demonstrations, it does not take flag-waving and picket signs, it doesn't really take much at all; just a conscious decision to give everyone a chance. It starts with us.

Taking it day by day

2007-10-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Today si a very important day in Guayaquil, it's the celebration of their independence, and it's a holiday for the city so my whole family is here and home from work. My whole family, that is, except my host father. Marco works about an hour and a half away with a naval base, so he's here for one week and then stays in a city on the coast called Salinas for the following two. Right now, there's a strike in Salinas because they, like us, are in the providence of Guayas. Since the electon on the 30th, there's been an uprising in the city because they want to branch off of Guayas and be their own providence. It's a very sticky situation, the roads are blocked off by the locals with rocks and anyone in a car trying to get in or out gets rocks thrown at their cars. So, my host father's staying there.

Aside from that, things have continued to move along smoothly. Spanish classes have continued to progress well, and from the outside, it amazes me the amount of progress some of my friends have made. My friend Michaela, in particular, came to Ecuador not knowing anything in Spanish except "Hola, como estas?" and can now carry on conversations and speak in the past, present, and future tenses at a basic level. Last night the group, minus Karlijn who's in Quito, had a debate on biotechlonogy, cloning, modifying foods, etc. in Spanish! It went really well, we hardly stuck to the topic, but then, that wasn't really the point. We had a real, full, english-less conversation for at least half an hour, expressing our ideas and showing off our vocabularies. It was really wonderful to be a part of it, I'm so proud of our progress.

One of the hardest days of our exchange time, I've been told, is Thanksgiving, and I had been worried about it as if fast approaches. Luckily, the students from the US and Canada have been given permission to make Thanksgiving dinner for the students from Germany, Belgium, etc. as well as for our Ecuadorean teachers. It should be really fun, and of course, it means mroe pictures! Keep checking back, things are really getting fun and part of why it's so great is being able to share it with all of you.

It's been a while!

2007-10-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

It's been way too long since my last post, I know... But we've been really busy! Spanish classes are rolling right along and all of the exchange students have bonded really wonderfully. This weekend, all of us except 3 traveled to a city called Quevedo in a neighboring providence, about 3 hours away. I was really happy about it because it meant I got to leave the coastal area and see more of the greenery, plus the homes of the people who lived there. It's easier to appreciate them if you can picture looking out your own window and seeing them.

We arrived in Quevedo on Saturday at around 2:30, got some really yummy chinese food, and rigged up our flags for the Quevedo Festival parade. The rotary there asked us to march with them in the parade because this year is their first exchange year and while they had outbounds, they didn't have any inbounds. We had a blast!

After the parade the 6 girls stayed in a vacation house of one of the rotarians while the 2 boys stayed with another rotarian. We were lucky to have a pool and plenty of room and I an two other girls had a slumber party on the balcony. A really fun evening!

The following morning we went to a restaurant for breakfast and watched out the window as the school parade passed outside. Once we were on our way we got the chance to check out a hospital owned and operated by the Quevedo rotary club. It services about 2,000 patients every month, averaging out to 100 patients a day.

One of the nicest things I've found about being in Ecuador is that there's always something lying ahead, a new place to see or new people to meet, something to keep the future bright and exciting. It'd be hard to put in to words how much I appreciate being here and seeing all of this firsthand. THANK YOU to everyone who helped me and everyone who checks this blog, you're all really important to my success here and I'm grateful.

Very very very long post time!

2007-09-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Before you begin, make sure you're in comfortable clothes.. maybe even slippers... grab a soda and take the phone off the hook... this is what nearly 2 weeks as an exchange student looks like, all at once:

So, the last time I was here was just after the parillada:

The candidates for Reina de Guayaquil

A few exchangers and Mariuxi, Ayla's host sister

By the river!

This is such a cute picture :]
From left to right: Karlijn from Belgium; Michaela from British Columbia, CA; Rose from Belgium; Thimo from Deutschland; Nils from Deutschland; Yours Truly; and Liz the Aussie. Ayla had already gone home by now.

School this week was pretty plain, nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes it still shocks me that this foreign place is starting to feel so familiar. Spanish classes are coming along but mostly, like in school, the socializing is the most enjoyable aspect. The other students here this year are just beautiful, all-around wonderful kids.

Then, this past Sunday, we went to the big futbol game: Barcelona, who we support, vs. the rival Emelec. You think the Yankees and the Red Sox have devoted fans... It was electric. Barcelona is yellow, red, and blue and Emelec is blue and white. For miles before the game the traffic was horrendously dense, and literally every car except a few of them had either a passenger wearing yellow or a passenger wearing blue. The game itself was not so wonderful, we lost 1-0, but watching the spectators was very entertaining. There were colored smoke bombs, fireworks, banners, and a sea of colored jerseys. We bought eggnog-flavored popsicles and bottles of water and sat in the [supposedly very dangerous] mixed section. Since it was Barcelona stadium, though, mixed simply meant that there was a ratio of about 10:1 Barcelona to Emelec supporters. An added bonus: Barcelona's goalie lives across the street!

Left to right: Emelec section, another mixed section, Barcelona section.

Again, the contestants for Queen of Guayaquil taking advantage of a sponsored photo-op.

The one in the red is my neighbor!

The seats were metal and the steps were concrete so the rowdier fans startd fires on either ends of the stadium

Today the exchange students got the distinct priviledge of helping out at a field day for blind children. It was truly awe-inspiring to watch these children work around their problem, the same way you find new ways to hold a hairbrush, tie your shoes, open bottles, etc. when you have a bad cut on your hand. You wouldn't say "I have to go barefoot, I have a cut on my hand and can't tie my shoes" but, by the same token, that's what some people expect from disabled children. Sometimes we expect them to say, "I can't play soccer because I can't see the ball." But what about soccer balls with jingle bells inside? What about friendly volunteers who guide the ball back when it goes off the wrong way? It was so amazing. I have never felt a drive to help children with disabilities, they've always made me nervous more than anything else, and I'm amazed at how much fun I had with them today.

Local rotarians and some awesome exchange students, front row from left to right: Michaela from BC, CA; Karlijn from Belgium; Thimo from Germany; Kourtney from Piqua, OH; Yours Truly; Ayla from Germany; Ayla's host sister Mariuxi [from Ecuador...]; and a boy I don't know!

I just think this is a great picture of us :]. Our cheeks were sore so we were tickling each other, hence Karlijn's flamingo stance. Oh, and on the end is Julio, he's our counselor here and usually does our amazing photography.

More soon! Being so busy, it's hard to spend much time in fornt of a computer, but there's more excitement in the works, and more pictures, too! Stay tuned!

Pah-ree-ya-duh?

2007-09-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

It's true what they say, the more you occupy your time, the happier you'll be. And I have been highly occupied! School is pretty fun, very very different but in some very good ways. I remain with the same group of studets all day except for English and French classes, where we're divided up by our capabilities. I'm also learning a lot; in my National Reality class [I love the name!], we talked about the classes in Ecuador. 51% of the population is what's known as sub-employed. These are the kids who beg for money on the street, the men with the Squeegies and windex, the women with bags of strawberries that wait at stoplights and pray for someone to roll down their window. There are also some mothers who rent their children out to beg for money, and the person who rents them collects every coin they make, so we are strongly discouraged from giving them anything.

Yesterday was a big Rotary shindig, called a Parillada, which means BBQ. I arrived in the neighborhood of 11:00, and Ayla, Kourtney, and I waited by the front door and gave new arrivals the rundown: where to buy food, what's available for purchase, where the bathrooms are, etc. Around 2, we sat down and ate, and after that we sold raffle tickets to the guests, $1 a piece for a drawing for a gold bracelet. I very proudly sold nearly 30 tickets!

We also had some special guests at the parillada: the cadidates for Queen of Guayaquil! They came up onstage and did their catwalks and then just hung out in the VIP room a lot but it felt like seeing famous people! Later there was live music and all the exchange students were in the middle dancing together when someone decided we should go dance with the little kids onstage. We agreed on one condition: Julio, our counselor, had to come up with us! We nudged each other into shaking, rattling, and rolling our way through a few songs, including Aretha Franklin's "I Will Survive". Lots of pictures, which I'll upload tomorrow, since my camera is charging.

That's pretty much all for now, so I guess I'll close this off with a HUGE congratulations to my oldest brother Justin and the lovely Jamie on their engagement today! Best of luck!

back again!

2007-09-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

So last night was spanish class #1. What a motley crew we are! Some of us are nearly fluent, some of us can't string together a sentence. Last night we learned some background about Ecuador, made a video of our starting point to show our progress, and got our first lesson in Spanish: the alphabet! Tonight we're going to work on nationalities and numbers. It's pretty tiring but worth it.

And today was the casa abierta! Lots to do and plenty of visitors, including an elderly man all the way from Queens! It's a small world, after all. The highlight, and the end of the day, was the talent show. What diversity! All the songs were in English, of course, but so many groups from every grade performed, PLUS one teacher they called the "Latin American Idol" who sang "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra. I was so excited to hear it! The entire third year baccalaureate, aka "Seniors", did a musical montage performance as the finale. And, since the set included two different songs from Grease, of course we had an Ecuadorean John Travolta and an Ecuadorean Olivia Newton John. It was wildly entertaining and, while I don't have pictures, I instead have two videos which I will upload to YouTube, one of which is the dance the Seniors did. Stay tuned, as they say!

busy busy busy!

2007-09-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

So, school started yesterday. I can honestly say that I love it! Everyone is really really nice and welcoming. Everyone wants to know, what's my name? where am I from? New York, like the city? do I speak Spanish? do I have an account on MSN messenger? do I have a cell phone? do I think the boys here are cute? do I like Ecuador? do I like the school? do I like the teachers? And on and on and on! It's so sweet, they're so intrigued. School is really easy, there's a lot of down time and a lot of stuff I've already studied. My Spanish is continuing to improve, and tonight is our first Spanish class; tuesday-thursday from 7-9 every week until around mid-December. Should be an ENORMOUS help.

Tomorrow is an open house at my school, and the theme is... English! Debates in english, dances to American hip-hop, a spelling bee, games, food, and english, english, english. I'm not allowed to speak spanish all day... what a shame. I'll bring my camera tomorow for sure and take plenty of pictures, but for now, Ciao!

We wear uniforms?

2007-08-30T08:44:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I went with my host mother, Mirta, and bought my school uniform. School uniforms! I can hardly believe it. I look so hilarious in it, like a duck. If I can will myself the strength I may post pictures of it. It's so strange!

I've decided that, since everyone wants to know basically the same questions, I'm going to compile a FAQ. Hope it helps!

1. Why Ecuador?
I chose Ecuador because it best fit what I wanted in my exchange experience. It at first was not my top choice, but the more I've gotten acquainted with it, the more I think it should have been. It's a great combination of industry and nature, old and new. Although I live in a city with taxi cabs and shopping malls and streetlights, all it takes is about a 5 minute drive to sprawling fields, primitive-esque houses, and a short trip out to the Galapagos Islands and the Amazon rainforest.

2. What are the people like?
They're very friendly. They, in general, talk fast and move slowly. In the time I've been here, I have seen very little of the hustle and tension that's common in America, always having something to do and somewhere to be and always hurrying to get thigns done. Family is very important and of course, so is Futbol.

3. What surprised you the most upon arriving?
Traffic! Back home, I had a hard time driving because I was scared to death of fender-benders. Here, people are generally more offensive drivers, as opposed to defensive. Two-lane roads don't necessarily mean two cars, a third car easily, and often, squeezes in and just like that, you've got a three-lane road.
Also, McDonald's. Not only are they here, and in large numbers, but they have McCafes here, which are more or less starbucks, but run by McDonald's. I've read that this tactic of making McDonald's more upscale in appearance is being put into place in Europe, too-maybe we'll be next! Look out for McCafes popping up near you!

4. What do you miss the most?
I miss my friends and family, of course, but as far as "creature comforts", I miss my bed, and I miss Stewart's food, and I miss TV in English! It's tough adjusting to new beds, new food, new TV. I enjoy it, absolutely, but that's what I miss.

Whew! I think that's enough for now. Check back soon for more about those lovely uniforms, and more FAQ

More to see, more to do...

2007-08-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

It's hard to update fully on what's been going on because not very much has happened. I'm starting to settle in with the family more, I'm more comfortable joining in on their activities than I was a week or so ago. The other night we watched an Ecuadorian, Jefferson Perez, win the world racewalk championship in Osaka by a good 12 seconds, then collapse on the other side of the finish line. We've spent a lot of time at the Malecon 2000, which I think I mentioned before. It's not as beautiful in the daytime, but in many respects it's better because you can see what's aroudn you, the Guayas river and the handsome government buildings and all the Ecuadorians, too.

And, because no city is free from American culture, we had lunch at McDonald's two days ago!

My spanish is making leaps and bounds of progress. It's not so much that I'm learning new vocabulary, or even necessarily improving my speech, but I have a lot easier time comprehending what others say to me. I still hit some snags, though: On Thursday, my host mother Mirta came home from the store and told me something in spanish, but I didn't understand her, so I said "Que?" ["What?"] and she said "I need... help... you." And I told her I was fine, and she shook her head and said "I need helping you" So I said again, more clearly, that I was alright. Then she tried again, and said "I need you help"... and the lightbulb went on! She wanted help bringing in the groceries. I am so grateful for their patience and willingness to speak slowly, try english, use simpler vocabulary, enunciate. It is an enormous help for me.

Saturday, we were supposed to have a meeting of all the Guayaquil inbound exchange students, but it was postponed until this coming weekend because there was no place to have it. No Rotarians were able to offer their homes, and the restaurant where Rotary meetings usually are was already booked.

Diego is getting ready for his big departure to Deutschland on the 4th, buying gifts for his families and pins for his blazer. I don't ask him if he's nervous, excited, scared, because I know how it is. I was just in his position 3 weeks ago!

So, I've got a lot of Ecuador now under my belt, lots of cultural learning and making myself at home, but also tons more to see and do. More soon; ciao!

closing in on one full week...

2007-08-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a hectic couple of days! The last time I wrote was friday, so I guess I'll start from there. Friday night was Diego's friend Mauricio's going away party. Mauricio is also doing "intercambio", exchange, and he's moving to Pennsylvania. Diego told his sister he thinks Mauricio might turn into a vampire, to which she replied, "No, that's Trannsylvania."

All of their friends are very nice. I'm still timid to start conversations, which is so unlike how I've been most of my life, because now I'm afraid I'll open up a can of worms and not understand a single word spoken to me. But everyone speaks slowly, asks basic questions, and tosses in what they know of English. I come home around 1:30 and crash, because even though most people stay out much later here, I'm wiped by then.

Saturday, we go to Salinas, which they call "Little Miami", and it is, more or less. The skies are cloudy and the water is cold but nevertheless, Estefania and I go for a walk down the shore, and on our way home, we take a different route and check out some of the local vendors.

Sunday morning, we get up and have breakfast and do some sightseeing. Marco, my host father, tells me we're going to La Chocolatera, which I'm thrilled about, because who doesn't love chocolate? But when we get there, it's not Willy Wonka's; It's the westernmost point of South America. The ground is rocky and the water crashes against the walls in big gusts and splashes. It's absolutely beautiful. We drive up on a hill and get out and you can see for what feels like miles.

From there, we go to a naval antique shop and I get some history lessons. There's also a chest that says "Liberty New York" on the side! I point it out and everyone nods. I guess it takes a true New Yorker to appreciate it.

We head home after that, and Sunday Night we go to church. I catch bits and pieces but it's nice to go through familiar motions.

Monday is spent at home, and that evening Marco, Diego, and I run some errands. We take his blazer to the seamstress and he gets a haircut, and then we visit the Malecon, the Guayaquil government attempt to beautify a bad neighborhood. And it does! The Malecon is mroe or less a boardwalk along the river, but it's about 2 or 3 kilometers long, all laid with bricks. There's a fountain, a performing center, discotecas, shops, and at night the whole thing is lit up. It's really beautiful.

Tuesday we visit Julio, my Ecuador Bob Mohr, and bring him my emergency fund, passport, and visa. Later on, Diego and I go to the Rotary meeting, where a boy from Germany gives his presentation. Everyone is friendly, of course, and very patient. We hve patacones with dinner, which have quickly become one of my favorite foods. They're made with verde, meaning green, which are in the same family as bananas, but they're much harder and their peel is hard and green, like the difference between a peach and an apple. You cut the peel off the verde, cut the inside into horizontal slices, fry it, flatten it, and top it with salt. They're a lot like french fries, or tater tots.

That brings us up to today, Wednesday. Tomorrow is thursday, and it will offically be one weeks ince my arrival. Ciao!

Aqui estoy!

2007-08-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

WOWOWOWOWOWOW.

So, I'm sure you've aready come to the conclusion that I'm in Ecuador. And I am! Finally! Of course it's not much like I expected, but in many ways it's so much better. The food thrils me to no end. The family is so dear and the view out my window... I can see this hill in the distance with all these houses on it, it looks identical to a picture I found of Guayaquil when this was all just beginning.

I'm so physically exhausted, and time passes so strangely. I woke up this morning and checked my clock on my iPod, which I think is the cause of the confusion. The clock said it was around noon. I was embarassed about sleeping the whole morning, but when I got downstairs, I checked the TV and the clock and it wasn't even 9:00 yet. I changed the time zone on the iPod, trying to synchronize it with the actual time, but when i took a nap later, it said 3:00, I think, and it was only 1. Or something like that. Either way, I'm entirely discombobulated!

I can't believe how lax the laws are here. Leaving the airport, a group of no less than 10 or 12 people squeezed in the back of a pickup truck next to Nia's car. I told her that that's illegal in America, and she said it's legal to ride around like that as long as it's short trips within a city. There aren't any apparent speed limits and customs didn't even check my bag, which was a relief, seeing as how I "snuck" Swedsh Fish over the border. :)

I'm concurrently keeping two journals-one in english and one in spanish. I'm hoping to utilize the two to practice my spanish, but still be able to hash complicated things out if my vocabulary is too limited. The family is so patient with me, and they use what they know of English, short phrases or words, to fill in any blanks. I nod a lot, and say "Que?" ("What?") all the time. I know the language barrier is temporary, but it's intimidating nonetheless.

Last night we ate Shawarma, which is a lot like most of the tex-mex I've had over the years. Still delicious though. They have a big chicken rotisserie, from which they scrape pieces of meat and wrap it in a tortilla with fresh onion and tomatoes. Breakfast was a hard-boiled egg and instant coffee, and lunch was soup, fish filet, fried banana with cheese, and vegetables. We have a housekeeper who cooked for us and did the dishes, aside from her other duties, and she doesn't sit with us at the table. Instead, she sits at the counter, and when Diego runs out of cheese for his banana, she gets up from her lunch to bring it to him. My guilty conscience at this is what the Exchange Student Survival Guide calls a red flag-it stimulates a response in me, of alarm or disapproval, but it's a clear indicator of a cultural dfference. In america, first of all, I doubt there are many like Marilu, but I'm sure I would invite her to eat with us. It's hard to remember that that doesn't mean the Leivas are wrong. It just means that we have different values. I can learn from it.

That's all for now. Ciao!

2007-08-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

We are now in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and Thursday is the big D-day: Departure! This week is already completely booked. Today, my friends and I made the drive to a theme park, and then I had my LAST shift at Stewart's before 10 months of leave. Then, tomorrow is College Application day and dinner with my extended family at night. Wednesday, I plan on sleeping in! I'll need it, haha. Then a final Rotary lunch, Saratoga racecourse in the afternoon, and a Last Supper, so to speak.

Thursday will be completely consumed by traveling, unfortunately. I depart from Albany at 6:50 AM, then we have a 2 hour and 40 minute layover in Chicago and a 3 hour and 20 minute layover in Miami. We fly into Guayaquil, my home city, at 9:25 at night. Exhausting! Luckily, Guayaquil is in the same time zone as New York so I won't get jet lagged.

My schedule has been PACKED for weeks now! I've been working an average of 30-40 hours a week, getting out around 11 and staying up until 1 AM or so when I can finally run out of steam. I sleep for more of the morning than I should, and occasionally I'll ride a bike or take a bus to shop or get lunch. Yesterday, in fact, I took my bike to go buy my official Rotary Blue Blazer. Then I work a shift, come home, and start the cycle all over again.

I've been taking tons of pictures! My flickr account is pretty empty at the moment, but I'll upload my photos before I leave and post a link for my devoted fans! Hahaha

I've had a fair amount of contact with my host family in Guayaquil. The sister, Nia, and I have been exchanging emails more than ever, now that I have an itinerary-and tons of questions! The emails give her a chance to practice her English. I write back and practice my Spanish. She says I'm pretty good and just need to work on defining feminine and masculine verbs. Her English is pretty accurate, because of her time in the States and her usage in her career. I hope I can be like that someday, too!

I am sitting home right now with my sister, Allison. I am coming to grips with how soon I will be leaving my family, and I must say, I will miss her very very very very much, along with the rest of my family.

Anyway... It's nearing 12:30, and I need to catch up on sleep for the busy week ahead of me. Hasta luego!

Summertime!

2007-06-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today it was SO hot in Albany, something like 96 degrees I think. Something to get used to, I guess, since it's only going to get hotter!

The past few weeks have been VERY busy, with the end of school, starting my job at Stewart's, my grandfather's visit, and working on my visa paperwork. Tomorrow, I'm going to finish it, hopefully, for the deadline this weekend. If it goes through on time without any snags, I'll be leaving this summer for Ecuador!

Camera

2007-06-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today I got a digital camera and LOTS of memory. My dad explained that I have more memory in my camera than I do in my computer with all of it combined! Wow!

School is almost over, 3 days of classes and finals or state tests and then summer!

Dad thought I should have some pictures off my new camera, so here's two, resized so it's not so big:

More posts will be coming. Check back soon!

What a busy week!

2007-05-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

The last week has been so exciting and busy!

Last week I went to my first ever meeting with Rotary International at the Colonie-Guilderland club. Lunch was wonderful, as were the individuals I sat with, and while I'm not wonderful with names, I do remember discussing the life and times of a chirporactor with Amy and learning about Ray's grandchildren. We got to watch two presentations, one from Marie on France and one from Ciro on Bolivia. I also got to meet and take pictures with Wayne, the president elect for 2007-2008.

The following Friday, I left school around noon and made my way over to the Italian American Community Center to meet up with the rest of the students and Rotarians commuting to the Turning Stone resort in Verona, New York for the tri-district conference. What a weekend! After a busy ride up with my friend Wayne, we had a flag ceremony and two amazing dinners and a talent show and a dance party, and by far one of the most amazing weekends of my life. I met so many different people from truly all walks of life, a boy from the Czech Republic introduced himself as Zbynek Zajic- talk about a culture shock! It seems that everyone I've met has told me the same thing-that they are, for the most part, much too busy to really be homesick. What a relief!
The ride home was quiet, Doug Hinkle, our trusty Rotarian, drove us all in sleepy silence for the most part. When the activities run until 1:00 in the morning, with breakfast the next day begginning at 7:30, it's nice to have some down time to recouperate!