Dia 100!!

Yet another landmark in my life. I'm a landmark person, what can I say. I remember being in 1st grade and celebrating the 100th day and everyone brought in 100 things of food like cheerios, goldfish, mochi crunch, or something like that. It was good. Alas, I did not have any fun trail mix today, although Lolo and I did manage to create a pretty kick-ass trail mix a few weeks ago, if I do say so myself.

It's started raining again, which is good, except that it only rains on days when I look at my raincoat and decide to leave it at home. Today I got lucky and stayed dry, last week I looked like I had decided to take a shower with my clothes on. Oh goody. But things are still dry and still lacking luz. I saw on the news tonight that apparently Hugo Chavez just told the people of Venezuela that 3 min is sufficient time to bathe (1 min for soap, 1 min for shampoo, 1 min for rinse). I'm sure he's very popular right now.

Only 3 weeks of classes left and Nene comes in 2.5!! Very excited, although I have tons of work to do between now and then. Certainly the next half of this study abroad adventure is going to go SUPER fast since I'll be traveling during most of it. Still, 100 cheerios might be nice too :)

Sin electricidad

35% of Ecuador´s energy comes from hydroelectric energy (the rest is mostly petróleo) from one energy station in the south by Cuenca. It is now the rainy season, usually starting in Octubre, and despite my original posts about crazy Quito storms, it hasn´t really rained since. Due to this lack off rainfall, the country is cutting back on its energy usages until it rains again. Hence, scheduled regional power cuts have begun. They usually tell you ahead of time and they only last for a few hours in each area, although these cuttings are nation-wide. This isn´t a new thing, apparently it´s been going on for the past 15 years or so. In any case, I woke up to no electricity (had fried bread for breakfast, which was interesting, because we couldn´t use our toaster) and now there´s no energy on campus (although they have generators to keep most of the university running). It´s not really that much of a problem, just sort of a hassle. The biggest problem, however, are the roads. In case you didn´t know, Ecuadorians only follow road rules when it´s convenient. Now imagine this semi-anarchist system lacking traffic lights. Yeah, things just got a bit crazier. Oh well, it´s just another one of those "sooo Ecua" moments.

Yay Political Unrest?

So classes canceled tmrw because our university (and apparently a bunch of others) are protesting the government. For those who don't know, the new government led by Rafael Correa is relatively new, and certainly shaking things up. At the moment, he's trying to socialize a lot of the country, which makes some people happy, others not. This time, the government is trying to take control of the private education system (ie USFQ) and make tons of changes and everything. Hence, my university is protesting and has cancelled classes until 6pm tmrw. As internationals, we aren't allowed to participate in the march planned for tmrw, so it's basically a mildly tension-filled holiday.
It's ironic, but political unrest kind of feels like DOGL.