neck pains/awkward parties/accomplisments and a "how to"

seeing as though i haven't blogged in a long time i'll try to remember what's happened but considering that i do a billion things every single day, you might not get every single detail.

i should probably tell you why my title is the way it is...

a few days ago i randomly had this EXTREME neck pain. it felt internally swollen and sore. i really had no idea what it would have come from. all i knew is there was a party that night that i really wanted to go to. when the pain first started i was at my host grandma's house and my host sister (my old host sister's friend) i laid down for a little while and when i woke up it was gone so i figured it was over...which apparently was not the case because it got worse.

when we got back to her house i took some benedryl, watched a movie, drank some tea..and the benedrly hadn't even made me sleepy...i even took 2! my host sister had told me that i should try to get ready for the party and i decided that since my time here was coming to an end i should probably toughen up and go.

my host sister is extremely good at doing my hair and makeup. she did my hair and then told me to go lay down and wait for her to finish doing her hair..then she would do my makeup.

i laid down alright...and the second i laid down i felt myself falling into a deep sleep. 20 minutes later i heard her saying "okay! makeup!" the only thing i could think was "okay! sleep!" my host sister knew very well that there was no way i was going to that party. i climbed into my bed and the second my head hit the pillow i was out like a light.

for the next couple days my stupid neck pain kept hurting me...i missed a party the next night too that i was also planning on attending. i have never had a pain like that before. i dont know what it was or what it came from but i never want it again.

i now live with my old host sister's friend...maria cecilia. she is 17 and has 2 younger sisters. Sofi, who is 14 and Carolina...who goes by "caro" and she is 5. so i have always wanted an older sister..and a younger one...and now, i get both. and the best part is that my older sister shares all of her clothes and stuff with me so i basically feel like we're actually sisters. which is going to make it super hard to leave.

last night i went to a party and it was probably the most awkward party ever...hardly anyone was dancing which was weird because everyone here dances...i was super tired i hardly got any sleep before and EVERYONE wanted to talk to me and ask me questions.

one of the guys i had met at my old host sister's birthday party was there and he introduced me to a guy who lived in texas for awhile so he spoke english. he started to dance with me which was fine and then he said "im kind of a bad dancer" all of the guys here are super good at dancing so i just pulled the whole "haha its okay" ...but it wasn't. he. was. bad. he was so extremely awkward! i dont even think he was dancing to the beat of the music it was like he was playing one of those dance-dance revolution games. he also was holding me like we were doing some sort of walz....i think now is a good time for me to "go to the bathroom"

which is now where i present to you....

HOW TO AVOID DANCING WITH GUYS THAT ARE AWKWARD!:
1. Try this..."Do you want to dance?" "No, I think I'm gonna go eat." Avoid him for the rest of the party.
2. Pretend you don't know what he's saying. He's speaking a foreign language so it's expected that you won't always understand.
3. Dancing is against your religion...
4. Randomly stop dancing with him and hug the girl next to you acting like you haven't seen her in ages.
5. If he starts smoking...start coughing (this one works)
6. "Do you want to drink?" "If it'll make you leave me alone." (Take the drink but don't drink it.
7. "Do you have a boyfriend?" "I'm actually engaged."

and if none of those work you should probably leave the party.

and now...

my accomplishments since i've been here

1. i can understand what people are saying when theyre having a conversation...sort of.
2. i can get in a car and not wear my seatbelt...and not worry about it.
3. i can identify something clearly...color...shapes...designs.
4. i can dance like they do here.
5. i can quickly answer basic questions: how old are you, where are you from, what do you do for fun, do you have a boyfriend, do you drink, do you smoke...etc.
6. i can tell someone when i'm hungry or thirsty and what i want.
7. i can tell someone when something hurts me and what i need to make it better.
8. i can explain to someone why i have to take malaria pills.
9. i can speak spanish quickly and not speak EXTREMELY slow.
10. i can ask someone where we are going, what time we will be home...why we are going there.
11. i can ask someone how they slept.
12. i can tell someone i need to shower.
13. i can tell someone my clothes are dirty.
14. i can eat just about anything...i am pretty sure i've had about 3420394823094 different soups while here.
15. i can tell someone to give me something.
16. i can tell someone when i need something and what i need
17. i can tell someone how a party was, who was there, what it was like and what music was played.
18. i can deal with altitudes of 10,000ft AND live there for a month. BOOYA
19. i can leave my friends, family, dog...and guitar for a month.
20. i can fly abroad alone.
21. i walk on rocks in the mountains by a river and not die...OR break my camera.
22. i can responsibly handle excessive amounts of money and saving it (this is a huge accomplishment for me)
23. i can say no to drinking even when everyone else around me is doing it.

so basically i'm pretty awesome and i'm gonna be flying home in 5 days! see y'all soooon!!

she moves in her own way

last night i spent the night at my friend maria cecilia's house and we had a ton of fun. her house is right next to the river so you can hear it from her room. when you look out the window you can see it! so last night i got to fall asleep to the sounds of a river and it was sooooo amazing.

anyway..

i now don't really HAVE a host family...
i guess my first host family wasn't getting along with me or something weird like that...who knows.
apparently i was too shy.
ha...ashley...shy...hahahahah
to those of you who truly know me, you know that i am everything but shy.
you will never hear the words "ashley is" and "shy" in a sentence together unless the word "not" is in between.

alright. lets stop talking about how i'm not shy.

so i live with my host sister's (not host sister anymore) aunt. and she is a photographer with 3 younger kids.
all of them are super fun to be around and they make learning spanish really fun and exciting and it's also fun because i get to teach them english!

tomorrow i leave for camping in the mountains until sunday with my friend maria cecilia and after i return i come back to my host aunts house...i'm not sure if i should now just title her my host mom? orrrrrr????? i'll open the doors to suggestions so y'all can help me choose.

today my host aunt (mom?) took me shopping at some of the markets here. i only spent $20 and i got a TON of little things. everything i bought was no more than $3 except for a scarf i bought which was $13. i would say i made some really good purchases and my momma would be proud because i was verrryyyy good about saving my money. (hey mom, glad to see you found my blog on your own this time...or maybe not..we'll have to see)

i have only two weeks left here in this country and i have learned SOOOO much over the past 3 weeks. i have even made a note on my ipod of all of the new words and phrases i have learned. my host aunt's (mom's?) little kids all laugh at me because to them those words and phrases are just so simple.

the neighborhood i live in has security guards and a couple weeks ago i asked my friend maria cecilia why i hear them blowing their whistles at night..she wasn't able to translate but i just figured it was because someone was doing something they weren't supposed to so they blew their whistles. apparently i was wrong because today i asked my host aunt (mom?) and she said the guard blows his whistle so the people know that he is awake and doing his job since he works all night. i now find hearing that whistle rather comforting, actually.

this paragraph of my blog is probably going to make some of you really jealous and want to move to ecuador..but i'm gonna tell ya anyway that gas here is only $1.08 and the most expensive gas is $2. :)

i titled this post what i did because i feel like my first host family didn't understand that it was going to take me time to adjust to a new culture and language. i also don't like to try every new food i see right away all at once. i want to be introduced to things slowly so i know what i (and my stomach) like and don't like. i was also super overwhelmed with the language when i got here. to those of you who have never traveled abroad before i am here to tell you it is CRAZY. EVERYTHING is in spanish. maybe a little english here or there but you don't pick up on what people are talking about for awhile and you feel super left out!

now that i have been here awhile the spanish is getting sooooooooo much easier, it's much easier to process what people are saying and you start to pick up on the popular phrases people use to start conversation. i also have a translator on my ipod and let me tell you, it is my favorite app EVER...whenever i hear something over and over that i don't understand i translate it. my little host cousin (now little host sister?) has taught me a lot of spanish. she likes to point at things as she says them so it helps me put two and two together and all of her phrases she helps me understand. and it's even more rewarding when i get to USE the phrases.

i feel like i haven't really talked about the culture here...so i might as well tell you what i have learned..which is quite a bit. brace yourself.

when you greet someone and leave someone you kiss them on the cheek. you don't actually kiss their cheek though, you just touch cheeks and make the kissing sound. which me coming from united states was super awkward at first..but kinda cool when i get an almost kiss on the cheek from cute guys here...just sayin. though when guys greet and leave each other they shake hands or high five or something guyish.

most people assume "adios" is how people here say goodbye...but it actually isn't used. they say "ciao" pronounced like "chow" and when i said adios people were a little thrown off guard. i think its a more formal way of goodbye. like we say goodbye...or just bye. and i think adios is goodbye and ciao is bye...but dont quote me on that one.

foods here are very different. the fruits are all aaaaamaaaazzzziiiiinnnnngggg and the juices are all hand made with fruits and they are SUPER good. i love the juices and i am going to miss them a lot. they eat soup for lunch usually. i am almost pretty sure they make soup out of everything. today i had soup with egg in it and it was really good. you'd think it wouldn't be but it was!!

most of the families here have maids.. i think i might have already said this. but they clean and cook for you. and do your laundry. which is super magic. you just put your clothes in a bin and when you wake up they're gone and when you come back in your room they're folded on your bed! when i told my host aunt (mom?) that in wisconsin it isn't common she said that it's common here because it is so cheap. it's only $200 a month for them to work everyday all week for you.

here they also have doors where you press a button and then someone inside answers a phone type thing...they'll ask who it is and you say who you are and then the door electronically opens when they press a button. that i also find pretty magic.

they do not have basements here. because storms here are never severe. which for me is AWESOME! no tornadoes or any massive storm would ever make it over the andes mountains so i have nothing to worry about. it does rain here a lot. but when it rains it is only for 15 minutes tops. the problem is that sometimes it rains and then stops...and then 10 minutes later starts again.

you can also drive an hour and a half south of a city and it will be a totally different climate. yungilla, where i stayed this past weekend was warmer than here in cuenca. these people here think that 50s is "cold"...i think it's totally fine...then again, i am from a state where "cold" is below 32.

tomorrow i am leaving with my friend maria cecilia to go camping in the mountains until sunday, and then i come back to live with my host aunt (mom?) for the rest of my time here.

i miss my friends and family but i am glad that i have finally found a place where i can stay and be happy and comfortable. :) i will write as soon as i can!!

ciao!
ashley

stepping stones (literally)

so before i tell you today's main story..i might as well back up and tell you what's gone on since i've last written.

i helped photograph a bride for some bridal portraits which was super super fun and really good for me since i want to be a photographer.

and i took a bus tour around cuenca. which was pretty cool.

so, today...actually all weekend i stayed in yunguilla at my host grandparents huge house thing. i keep telling everyone it's a resort because it practically is. they have an underground pool (if that's what you call pools that are built into the ground?? and they also have a porch which over looks the mountains and you can pretty much see everything. i went there once before when i photographed the peacock..and the first time i wasn't feeling so hot because this place is a little higher up than cuenca. and i was still battling that stupid altitude sickness.

anyway, today my host cousins who are all fairly younger than me..invited me to go with them to the river. my host aunt told me that i should go and that it's really cool. she said "its just like a little creek!" which i figured out later on was a understatement.

my host cousin who had to have been 12 or 13 had helped me the whole entire trip to this little waterfall. i was accompanied by 5 kids... when i asked her how far it would be when we first left she said "ohh about 5 minutes" and later on she said "only a few hours" (HOURS??!!!!!) i figured since they were all pretty young, we probably weren't going anywhere too dangerous, and when i grabbed my camera they all looked at me and said i'd get wet. my host aunt told me i'd be fine and that i just need to be careful. (another understatement/lie)

we went on our way and started walking down the driveway. i followed my host cousins down a little trail..which then got very steep and my host brother took my camera so he could hold on to it for me...which was good because shortly after i took a little slide down that dirt hill. we walked (well, they walked, i slid on my butt) down this steep hill for a few minutes. finally, we reached flat ground, we walked past a beat up shed..that looked like it was once a house...super creepy, i didn't look inside. in my head i was thinking "just keep walking, just keep walking" my host cousin, ariana, the one who helped me the whole time then said "as we get closer it is going to get more difficult." ughhh..can we just go back to the house already!? my nice pair of american eagle jeans that had been hand me downs were covered in dirt on the butt and my cute DC shoes that were not cheap looked like i had walked in poop. awesome.

after walking past the shed and following my little leaders around for a good 20 minutes, i found myself at a huge drop where i could see the river. YES! WE'RE HERE! ...nope. just kidding. after being ordered to jump a good 3 feet down i realized that what they wanted was to walk up the river (on the rocks/boulders on the side) to a very high point with a waterfall. they wanted to swim there. i didn't bring my swimming suit because i figured it'd just a be a little creek and i could take pictures.

i really regret not wearing my swimming suit and even more so i regret wearing jeans and a thick t-shirt. i was SO HOT. the scariest part for me was having to jump from rock to rock across the river. being a little city girl this was super difficult for me. where i come from a "creek" has just about no current at all and you can pretty much cross it by barely stretching your leg out. then again, my city, or state, or country is nothing like where i am at right now.

i found myself always holding the group up and slowing them down because it always took me two minutes two jump from rock to rock. either that or one of the boys who tagged along had to backtrack to where i was to reach out his hand to help me.

after safely managing to make it some way up the mountain, i eventually did get my feet wet. in shoes. and socks. gross. after awhile of walking with one wet foot, i did get the other one wet. and when that happened i sort of was okay with it. because this meant that instead of slowing the group down by taking forever to jump...i could just walk across the river!! and every time someone would say "jump, ashley!" i could smile and just say, "nope!" everyone seemed to find my tactic quite amusing, i thought it was pretty clever...until i found myself walking in knee high water. now my jeans are not only dirty, but wet.

i found myself on top of a huge boulder that i was supposed to jump off of. everyone in our little group had already done so and now they were all screaming in both spanish and english "jump, ashley!! jump!!" or "vamos! salta!" which is "let's go! jump!!" the only thing that i could think of in my head was "here you are ashley...this is where you are going...to die." i could see it now...the most popular news channel in wisconsin covering a story about a foreign exchange student dying in the mountains. and just when i thought i couldn't scare myself anymore. i jumped.

i landed alright. hard. got a few little rocks jabbed in my hands and my ankles hurt a little. moving on.

eventually, i found myself propped up against another boulder heavily breathing and asking my host cousin how much farther. expecting a simple "2 minutes" i got "about an hour" this is a joke. i want to go back. they all somehow convinced me that where we were going lead us to the house...which i later discovered was 100% bullcrap. (i'll refrain from swearing since i know my mom would be upset.....you're welcome mom.) although, my shoes and pants probably did smell like bull shit. (sorry, mom) my host cousin then said "you have to go faster because if you do not hurry the night will come and it will get dark." that's right!!! here in ecuador it's dark by 7! i had no idea what time it was but once again i got a vision in my head of me dying in the mountains because it was dark out and i would fall in the river and die. yup. that's what it's gonna be. that's how i'm gonna die.

after another hour of slipping and falling and practically dying, and getting more wet and being afraid of water snakes and whatever animals live in the fricking mountains we made it! sort of..my host brother pointed at a huge wall of pure rock and said "we climb." uhhh...we what???? i looked at him and did some sign language for climbing which probably made me look like i was mentally unstable, however, it got the point across and we were indeed climbing up this rock wall. which was just the inside of a mountain. okay, okay...THIS is where i'm gonna die. i'm gonna try climbing up this wall, slip and fall backwards into the river and crack my skull on a rock. yup. that's it. that's how i'm gonna go. peace out, everyone.

nope. with the help of the 4 boys that were with me...all much younger than me..i made it. even though it was awkward because they had to push on my butt. i was just glad to me alive and well. when we reached the waterfall they had all wanted to swim in, i had totally regret not wearing my swimming suit underneath my clothes. they all suggested i just swim in my clothes, but that sounded gross to hike all the way back home in. however, i did my fair share of swimming..without getting my top half wet.

my host brother started splashing me. it was super cold and i started screaming. he then directed me to where the sun was shining. i sat there for quite awhile drying off. my shirt dried off but my pants and shoes...well, they might still be wet right NOW! i felt like i should've been singing "i'm not a girl, not yet a woman" by britney spears...if you haven't seen the music video go look it up.

we of course had to go back to the house, meaning i had to climb down the rocks, and re-do everything i did to get there but backwards. there was a waterfall below the waterfall we swam at..and i had my host brother take a picture of me standing in front of it..i attached it to this post for you all to see! jumping was easier, and so was walking through the water...and then it started to rain. i was more worried about the safety of my camera than i was for myself (typical ashley for ya)

when we reached the entrance of our little trail to go back home i was SO excited. but i had totally forgot how steep it was. since it was wet, it was slippery and i kept falling. i was SO TIRED, HUNGRY, THIRSTY AND FRUSTRATED!! everyone kept laughing at me because i was falling and screaming and cursing. it was insane. we found a little shelter to sit under while the rain passed which only took about 10 minutes. and then we continued home. we did finally make it there. and i was SO hungry. and tired. i still am tired. i'm probably going to sleep like a baby tonight.

who knows what tomorrow will bring. all i know is i was mad at the time that i went to the river but now that it's over i'm sooo glad i went. it was good excersice and an awesome adventure! :)

Peace. and HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!