october update
so i haven´t written in here for a while. again. so i´ve got some things to catch everyone up on.
school´s going well, it´s kind of a joke actually. frankly when i get back to madison, i´m going to die because it´s going to be a. cold and b. hard. it´s not going to fly and i might just move to USFQ to get my degree cuz it´ll be too hard to start and madison again. for example, in my two literature classes, the hardest thing to do is the reading. in each class i have one, count it, one presentation. let me tell you about the presentations here, it´ll take me 5 min to write it. here´s what they consist of: an outline of the story for the class, a list of characters, a brief description of how it is narrated, and a list of what you think are themes. that´s it. oh, in one of the classes i have to write a 3-5 page paper about the book i present. it can be about whatever i want. and if it´s not 3 pages, it doesn´t matter as long as i got across what i wanted to. it´s rough here.
however, i´m PISSED right now with my volcanology professor, whom i usually really like as a professor. allow me to tell you about my midterm last week. it was on thursday and on tuesday he told our class that he wanted to try something new and do the test in groups of four. hell yeah, does it get any easier than that??? no. it doesn´t. so we´re all pumped, thinkin this test is going to be a breeze. he gave us last semester´s midterm to study with and said it would be about the same. so we get to class, and SURPRISE!!, it´s not a joke. in fact, it´s really hard and NOTHING like last semester´s normal midterm test that tested you on things you´ve learned. here´s what it was, it was 3 sections and the first was an interview with a scientist and here were the directions: every answer this scientist gave is wrong, go through question by question and explain why. wow. we had NO IDEAS. it was a very scientific article and at no point did he incorrectly name the four types of basaltic lava, something we could have pointed out. no it was some interview about the ring of fire, which we´ve never studied, and some mineral beds, which we´ve never studied. so great, failed part A. maybe we´ll do better on part B. no. part B was a really long (-15 pages) article about some volcano. great. now we have to answer questions about the article, but the answers aren´t in the article. so we´re screwed on that one too. here´s my favorite question from part B: (there is a diagram of all the volcanoes in ecuador that we´re looking at, there are a LOT of volcanoes in ecuador) to the west of the northermost volcano on the graph, there is a volcano missing, which volcano is it? sorry, what? i think i misread the question, because i would have to know EVERY SINGLE VOLCANO IN ECUADOR TO ANSWER IT. again, not in the article. failed part B. maybe part C will save us?? don´t hold your breath, we couldn´t do that one either. part C was a newspaper article and the directions were as follows: find 8 errors in the text and 2 in the diagram. fine, we found 4 errors in the article, and then we had to make up some answers about half-truthes and misrepresentations that weren´t technically untrue. hopefully that´s what he wanted. we didn´t find any on the graph. so that was an interesting hour and a half of struggling as a team. we´ll see what we get for a grade. i´m guessing every group failed and the professor´s going to say to himself, damn.
my other classes are going well and i got a really high a on a midterm in one of my lit classes. (i didn´t finish the second essay...)
salinas
so last weekend we had monday off of school because it was the fiestas de guayaquil, which is the biggest city in ecuador and the main port. think of it as a few days of an entire city being shut down for river city days, but fun. anyway, we took a night bus to guayaquil thursday night and arrived friday morning. at the bus terminal we hired a camioneta instead of a taxi to take us to our hotel. a camioneta is a truck and you sit in the back with all your stuff, like a taxi, but more exposed. so we hopped in and went to the HOTEL CALIFORNIA where we had made reservations for the weekend. we don´t usually make reservations, but since the city was going to be busy we thought it´d be a good idea. well, we got to the CALIFORNIA HOTEL (a little disappointing that the name was in reverse) and they of course had no record of our reservtion. and i know what you´re thinking, maybe there was a real HOTEL CALIFORNIA with rooms set aside for us somewhere? no, the hotel was at the correct address given to us by lonely planet, which recommend the hotel... anyway, they decide to give the 8 of us one room, with cold water, one full size bed and three singles, for 40 bucks a night. wow, we were almost thinking about it untill we saw a cockroach. needless to say, we left. but it´s ok, cuz one of the girls we were with had a host aunt who´s a night club owner in guayaquil and has an apartment in salinas (beach town 2 hrs away) that she said we could use. so we hung out in guayaquil for the day, i had the BIGGEST bowl of ceviche i´ve ever seen and discovered that i really like octopus, then we hopped on a bus in the afternoon and went to salinas. salinas is a gorgeous city on the beach. very modern, very clean, great night clubs. the apartment was unreal and a block from the beach. very cool. amazing beach with battle ships and submarines parked out in the water. however, we couldn´t relax in salinas because we were CONSTANTLY harrassed by street vendors. the entire time we were like a big colective broken record player, ¨no gracias, WE DON´T WANT YOUR CRAP!¨ i have to admit, i did buy some sun glasses. and the girls each bought like 10 pair of earings. but as soon as you buy something, ALL THE OTHER vendor rush up to you, they must think, ¨hey, we´d better get to these gringos while they´re still buying...¨ anyway, we had fun. ooooooh, another interesting thing... there was no running water in our neighborhood for 36 hrs. yeah. that means no flushing toilettes, sinks, or showers for a group of 8... yuck. but así es el ecuador. always an adventure. something had happened with the city pipes and they were fixing it. but we couldn´t just use the bathroom in a restaurant, cuz they didn´t have water either. but it was a good time overall. did some karoke with some ecuadorians, very cool. i think my favorite was when we sang ï just died in your arms tonight¨ AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and then didn´t know any of the verses, choosing instead to just speak the verses in the most dramatic voices possible. good times. i got tan.
elections
so elections are tommorow. on a sunday. there are some 15 candidates, but only 4 serious competitors. a kid in my volcanology class´s mom is actually one of the serious candidates for vice president. women are allowed to be president here. there is one serious candidate who´s a woman, cynthia. she´s from guayaquil and very conservative. because of elections it is currently ley seca or dry law. that means starting last thursday and until monday when elections are over, you can not: buy or consume alcohol, put up political propaganda, or discuss politics in public. if you do, you´ll be put in jail until monday. needless to say the gringos are a little upset by this, i can´t vote, why can´t i drink on a friday night??? whatever, we just bought our alcohol wednesday. hahaha! i mean, i don´t drink... seriously, i don´t. back to the elections, it is mandatory to vote in ecuador and you get in REALLY BIG TROUBLE if you don´t. there is an option for no candidate that you can choose, it´s called voting white, but you still have to vote. what else, in about 2 years the president who is elected will be kicked out of office and replaced in another election. terms are technically 4 years. it will be peaceful and no one will get hurt. the president will be more or less forced to step down but that´s it. he´ll just go back to a normal, non-presidential, life and no one will think anything of it. well, i guess that´s all about that. in the debates, they never really say anything, mostly i´m a good person, vote for me. there´s one candidate who actually has a political platform and will openly discuss it, he might not win although he is a serious posibility.
that´s all for now. sorry it got so long. hopefully parts were interesting. if not, haha, you wasted your time reading my blog.
so i haven´t written in here for a while. again. so i´ve got some things to catch everyone up on.
school´s going well, it´s kind of a joke actually. frankly when i get back to madison, i´m going to die because it´s going to be a. cold and b. hard. it´s not going to fly and i might just move to USFQ to get my degree cuz it´ll be too hard to start and madison again. for example, in my two literature classes, the hardest thing to do is the reading. in each class i have one, count it, one presentation. let me tell you about the presentations here, it´ll take me 5 min to write it. here´s what they consist of: an outline of the story for the class, a list of characters, a brief description of how it is narrated, and a list of what you think are themes. that´s it. oh, in one of the classes i have to write a 3-5 page paper about the book i present. it can be about whatever i want. and if it´s not 3 pages, it doesn´t matter as long as i got across what i wanted to. it´s rough here.
however, i´m PISSED right now with my volcanology professor, whom i usually really like as a professor. allow me to tell you about my midterm last week. it was on thursday and on tuesday he told our class that he wanted to try something new and do the test in groups of four. hell yeah, does it get any easier than that??? no. it doesn´t. so we´re all pumped, thinkin this test is going to be a breeze. he gave us last semester´s midterm to study with and said it would be about the same. so we get to class, and SURPRISE!!, it´s not a joke. in fact, it´s really hard and NOTHING like last semester´s normal midterm test that tested you on things you´ve learned. here´s what it was, it was 3 sections and the first was an interview with a scientist and here were the directions: every answer this scientist gave is wrong, go through question by question and explain why. wow. we had NO IDEAS. it was a very scientific article and at no point did he incorrectly name the four types of basaltic lava, something we could have pointed out. no it was some interview about the ring of fire, which we´ve never studied, and some mineral beds, which we´ve never studied. so great, failed part A. maybe we´ll do better on part B. no. part B was a really long (-15 pages) article about some volcano. great. now we have to answer questions about the article, but the answers aren´t in the article. so we´re screwed on that one too. here´s my favorite question from part B: (there is a diagram of all the volcanoes in ecuador that we´re looking at, there are a LOT of volcanoes in ecuador) to the west of the northermost volcano on the graph, there is a volcano missing, which volcano is it? sorry, what? i think i misread the question, because i would have to know EVERY SINGLE VOLCANO IN ECUADOR TO ANSWER IT. again, not in the article. failed part B. maybe part C will save us?? don´t hold your breath, we couldn´t do that one either. part C was a newspaper article and the directions were as follows: find 8 errors in the text and 2 in the diagram. fine, we found 4 errors in the article, and then we had to make up some answers about half-truthes and misrepresentations that weren´t technically untrue. hopefully that´s what he wanted. we didn´t find any on the graph. so that was an interesting hour and a half of struggling as a team. we´ll see what we get for a grade. i´m guessing every group failed and the professor´s going to say to himself, damn.
my other classes are going well and i got a really high a on a midterm in one of my lit classes. (i didn´t finish the second essay...)
salinas
so last weekend we had monday off of school because it was the fiestas de guayaquil, which is the biggest city in ecuador and the main port. think of it as a few days of an entire city being shut down for river city days, but fun. anyway, we took a night bus to guayaquil thursday night and arrived friday morning. at the bus terminal we hired a camioneta instead of a taxi to take us to our hotel. a camioneta is a truck and you sit in the back with all your stuff, like a taxi, but more exposed. so we hopped in and went to the HOTEL CALIFORNIA where we had made reservations for the weekend. we don´t usually make reservations, but since the city was going to be busy we thought it´d be a good idea. well, we got to the CALIFORNIA HOTEL (a little disappointing that the name was in reverse) and they of course had no record of our reservtion. and i know what you´re thinking, maybe there was a real HOTEL CALIFORNIA with rooms set aside for us somewhere? no, the hotel was at the correct address given to us by lonely planet, which recommend the hotel... anyway, they decide to give the 8 of us one room, with cold water, one full size bed and three singles, for 40 bucks a night. wow, we were almost thinking about it untill we saw a cockroach. needless to say, we left. but it´s ok, cuz one of the girls we were with had a host aunt who´s a night club owner in guayaquil and has an apartment in salinas (beach town 2 hrs away) that she said we could use. so we hung out in guayaquil for the day, i had the BIGGEST bowl of ceviche i´ve ever seen and discovered that i really like octopus, then we hopped on a bus in the afternoon and went to salinas. salinas is a gorgeous city on the beach. very modern, very clean, great night clubs. the apartment was unreal and a block from the beach. very cool. amazing beach with battle ships and submarines parked out in the water. however, we couldn´t relax in salinas because we were CONSTANTLY harrassed by street vendors. the entire time we were like a big colective broken record player, ¨no gracias, WE DON´T WANT YOUR CRAP!¨ i have to admit, i did buy some sun glasses. and the girls each bought like 10 pair of earings. but as soon as you buy something, ALL THE OTHER vendor rush up to you, they must think, ¨hey, we´d better get to these gringos while they´re still buying...¨ anyway, we had fun. ooooooh, another interesting thing... there was no running water in our neighborhood for 36 hrs. yeah. that means no flushing toilettes, sinks, or showers for a group of 8... yuck. but así es el ecuador. always an adventure. something had happened with the city pipes and they were fixing it. but we couldn´t just use the bathroom in a restaurant, cuz they didn´t have water either. but it was a good time overall. did some karoke with some ecuadorians, very cool. i think my favorite was when we sang ï just died in your arms tonight¨ AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and then didn´t know any of the verses, choosing instead to just speak the verses in the most dramatic voices possible. good times. i got tan.
elections
so elections are tommorow. on a sunday. there are some 15 candidates, but only 4 serious competitors. a kid in my volcanology class´s mom is actually one of the serious candidates for vice president. women are allowed to be president here. there is one serious candidate who´s a woman, cynthia. she´s from guayaquil and very conservative. because of elections it is currently ley seca or dry law. that means starting last thursday and until monday when elections are over, you can not: buy or consume alcohol, put up political propaganda, or discuss politics in public. if you do, you´ll be put in jail until monday. needless to say the gringos are a little upset by this, i can´t vote, why can´t i drink on a friday night??? whatever, we just bought our alcohol wednesday. hahaha! i mean, i don´t drink... seriously, i don´t. back to the elections, it is mandatory to vote in ecuador and you get in REALLY BIG TROUBLE if you don´t. there is an option for no candidate that you can choose, it´s called voting white, but you still have to vote. what else, in about 2 years the president who is elected will be kicked out of office and replaced in another election. terms are technically 4 years. it will be peaceful and no one will get hurt. the president will be more or less forced to step down but that´s it. he´ll just go back to a normal, non-presidential, life and no one will think anything of it. well, i guess that´s all about that. in the debates, they never really say anything, mostly i´m a good person, vote for me. there´s one candidate who actually has a political platform and will openly discuss it, he might not win although he is a serious posibility.
that´s all for now. sorry it got so long. hopefully parts were interesting. if not, haha, you wasted your time reading my blog.
posted by Adam (ebby) at 5:12 PM
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