This past Saturday evening we had a Thanksgiving dinner and I baked some cornbread as my contribution to the potluck.
Baking cornbread in Quito is not as simple as baking cornbread in Memphis... at least not for me. Even as a fluent Spanish speaker there are some words that just don´t come up too often and it takes living in a Spanish-speaking community to pick them up. So I spent quite a while looking up things like buttermilk and cornmeal.
After the vocabulary comes the issue of conversions. How much is a cup in the metric system? What is 425f in celsius?
Then the issue of how to bake something properly at 10,000 feet altitude. That 10,000 feet changes things. I´ve always baked at sea-level, and recipes are naturally written for sea-level, even high altitude recipes are only written for 3,000-6,000 feet!
I allowed myself enough time to bake two cornbreads, and it was a good thing. The first I overcooked because it still seemed very moist when in retrospect I should have taken it out. I learned my lesson with the second and it received lots of compliments.
I´ve also figured out chocolate chip cookies at 10,000 feet. Lucho (same person as Luis) says I could become rich selling the cookies!

Embarasada does not mean embarassed...

There are a lot of embarassing mistakes that can be easily made in Spanish... I´d like to think that after studying as long as I have I wouldn´t make them, but of course, I´d be wrong. I am far enough along to not use embarasada (pregnant) when trying to say I´m embarassed, but I do still screw things up a bit.

For example, I meant to tell Lucho (a.k.a. Luis) that I don´t have a good sense of smell, so I told him huelo mal (I smell bad). I immediately realized that I´d messed up, partially because I know better, but mostly because he sniffed me and said es cierto (that´s true).

Ecuador photo highlights

The city
The city

The Basilica


The Basilica


The Basilica


One of Ecuador´s biggest exports

Street view

My favorite kids, Eric and Melany

Cotopaxi

and definitely not least, the reason I can kind of dance, the tanguero, Luis

Ecuador highlights

Cotopaxi, the most picturesque mountain


Quito city view


Typical street in Quito


My kids, Eric and Melany


One of Ecuador´s biggest exports


and certainly not least, the reason I can kind of dance, the tanguero, Luis

Fotos

While I can´t upload the new photos from this trip just yet, I thought I´d give you some from previous trips so you could at least see the country. The full link is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/joannakendall/Ecuador

pictures and videos, ugh. And...

I might need to try a different internet café. The videos and pictures don´t want to upload to blogspot or Google pictures.

In other news, Rafael Correa (the presidente of Ecuador) prohibited the celebration of Halloween in public schools. It falls on the same day as the Día del escudo (the shield on the flag). Nobody cares about the escudo when they can dress up as witches and goblins. I´ll leave it for you to decide if it´s good or not.

It sure didn´t feel like Halloween though. I missed the Halloween party because I went to a Quinceñera. That was really fun, and interesting. It´s the 15th birthday celebration for girls, similar in some ways to a sweet 16 in that it´s a huge deal and the traditional idea is that she´s now a lady, to be presented to the public.

The ceremony itself is just like a wedding, though, with groomsmen and bridesmaids (damas y caballeros). I do have pictures which I will upload... at some point. Like I said, they don´t want to upload at the moment.

Otherwise, school is going well and I´m looking for an apartment with a fellow teacher. The place I´m living now is really far from where I work... Wish me luck! I´m going to see what seems like a perfect place in about an hour, I just have to talk her into the dog. Who can protest a 3 kilo, one-eyed, tail-wagging Poodle?

Finally, holidays - Today is Day of the Dead, yesterday was All Saints´Day, the 31st was Day of the Shield, Saturday is Mama Negra in Latacunga... I don´t know anything about Mama Negra at this point except that it´s supposed to be really fun and I´m almost definitely going.

and next weekend is Fiestas de Tena!! That´s right, I´m going back to the jungle. Whitney - buy a flight and come visit already! Davidcito and Jairo miss us. ;)