USFQ

Hey everyone,

Sorry I am not very good at keeping up my blog, I will try to get better as the year progresses :) Well, two weekends ago we had a long weekend and so I went with 5 other wonderful people to the Jungle for 4 days. However, I am not going to talk about that trip right now. First of all, I just want to talk about where I spend most of my time: the university. The university is turning 20 years old this year, so it's just a fetus (as my friend Ali would say). It is a very beautiful campus, with a laguna on campus that I sit by for many hours chatting with various people. I have very mixed feelings about the university. I am not a huge fan of the majority of the students who attend this university (there are good people there, it's just that the majority of them are really rich and think they are better than people of lesser status, and are really hard to make friends with), but I do like to spend time at the university (when i don't have class). One friend that I do have at the university is Jamie, I met her through a Linfield student (Lily) who was here last semester. Jamie is SUPER nice. At first glance you would think she is a gringa (her mom is American), but she was born and raised in Ecuador, and she is fluent in english and spanish, but prefers english. So, many times our conversations start out in spanish and then switch to english.

As most of you know, I LOVE my clubs at Linfield and that is what I devote a lot of my time to. So, when I came here and found out that clubs and campus life in general was almost non-existent, that was kind of hard. I found out about a human rights club on campus and joined, but the club wasn't doing anything and I found that really disappointing. I kept trying to stay in contact with the President of the club so we could do something and finally one day I got an email from her and she was talking about how she heard about a Hunger Banquet, but didn't know what it was. I told her that I had helped plan Hunger Banquets at Linfield and so we met to talk about organzing a Hunger Banquet and now we are getting ready to put on the first ever Hunger Banquet at USFQ! I am SO excited for it! :) The President of the club is a girl named Carolina and she is really nice and not the typical USFQ student, which is why I really like hanging out with her and she is always inviting me to do different things with her whenever I see her. Yesterday, I was leaving the university and ran into her and she convinced me to go to a theater class performance in a supermarket called "Megamaxi". Someone from the university offered us a ride to Quito in the back of a truck, so we hopped in the back and had a pretty windy, but fun ride back to Quito. I really had no idea what I was going to, but it turned out to be that the 15-20 students in the class were given different roles to act out while they were in the supermarket. There were two guys who were supposed to be a gay couple, so they were walking around the supermarket holding hands, and in a predominately catholic country, this is not acceptable and very odd to see, so they got there fair share of looks and comments. There was also a girl who was "pregnant" and had her husband with her and they got into an argument (remember they are all acting, so as I was walking around the store with Carolina pointing out all the actors to me, I was trying not to laugh hysterically at how funny these situations were) and the wife said something like "well at least I can get pregnant" and then the husband says, as the gay couple walks by, "well at least I can appeal them" and Carolina and I were about to start laughing so we turned a corner and ran into some other student actors. There was a girl with a cart full of dog food/toys and she started to run down the aisle with her cart yelling something that I didnt understand. There was another married couple that was arguing and the husband went up and asked another women for her phone number...that marriage isn't too promising :) The funniest thing though occured near the end. One student was pretending to be a famous Argentine singer and one of the other student actors made this "discovery" and started telling everyone. Soon enough, ALL the student actors were asking this guy for his autograph and were taking pictures with him. Two security guards came over to see what was going on and started telling people to back away, so some of the students who were just observing walked over and asked what was going on, one of the actors started complaining about how they weren't allowed to take photos and so everyone started pleaing with the security guards, who eventually left. Meanwhile, everyone in the store is looking over trying to figure out what is going on, including all the employees, then word starts getting around that there is a famous argentine singer here who wrote the song "Sin Banderas" and people who are in line to pay start leaving the line to go ask this guy (remember student actor!) for his autograph and take pictures with him! It was SOOOO funny, I couldn't believe how much people believed it. When the student left, the guards started saying bye to him and wishing him well. After that, the "pregnant" lady started feeling some abdominal pain and one of the student actors went running to get some help and came back with a glass of water and with a real employee of the store with a rolling chair for her to sit in, but the pregnant lady had walked away, so the employee went searching for her with the chair. Crazy right? It was SO funny and I am so glad I let her convince me to go.
Anyway, that was a bit off topic...but yay another friend! haha :)

So, I spend a lot of time at the university, classes of course, but then on mondays, wednesdays and fridays i also go and hang out around la laguna with various friends. Generally I just sit with Ali and Eli for about 5 hrs outside and during that time a ton of different people just stop by and talk with us for a while, I call it the Dillin of the USFQ....a bit different :)

Homework in classes is really starting to build up right now and has been keeping me really busy, and will be busy until the semester ends, so I probably wont be doing anymore traveling this semester. Well, I am actually really tired right now and meant to go to sleep an hour ago...I am not even sure if I said what I wanted to say in this blog. I will do a blog sometime soon for my trip to el Oriente that was AMAZING.

I have pictures up for a futbol game that I went to a couple of weeks ago and also for my beach trip a few weeks ago that you can check out! :)

Mompiche (beach)- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025689&l=95b5e&id=65202295
Futbol game- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025692&l=0a37e&id=65202295

Peace!
-Nadia