#101: Visit the center of the world.

...if only I had known before I made my list.  Shucks.

It was for sure a whirlwind weekend.  On Saturday, our group went on a tour to an old equatorial monument.  I stood on both hemispheres at the same time.  No big deal. 
Then we went to Otavalo, which is an indigenous village/market a few hours away from Quito.  Bought some cool stuff.  But to be honest, I was about 100% overwhelmed by all the colors and people and animals and llama fur and food and crowds...
The last stop on Saturday was to Parque Condor, where we saw some real Condors and some other cool birds.  Owls were my favorite.  They had some that looked like Hedwig.

Sunday was no less crazy.  We went to the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world).  I still don´t understand how it´s different from the equator, but at this point, I´m just going along with it... This is where we went that day. 

It was pretty cool, though.  When you are perfectly on the equator, it is possible to balance an egg on the head of a nail.  The gravitational pull is perfectly equal, so the egg stays upright instead of falling over.  If you were able to do it at this museum, you got this cool certificate.


I did it.  No big deal.  I´ll show you all my certificate when I get back to the US.


Then, we went to explore cloud forests, which are NOT what you might think they are.  Okay, this is more me.  I honestly thought it would be a hike around a mountain, and you´d see different types of clouds.  Apparently, this is a RIDICULOUS assumption.  Which, admittedly, I guess it is.  So I couldn´t work on #48, learning all the cloud types.  Sad.  But there really is astounding biodiversity and so many different types of birds, bugs, and plants.

My favorite part, though, was when we went to this man´s house (someone who runs one of the service sites took us), and the 13 year old daughter took us on a tour of the property.  They have a pet toucan, who just roams around the forest until it´s time to come in for dinner.  His name is Lorenzo.  So basically, we spent an hour running around these woods yelling "LORENZO! LORENZO!" trying to get the stupid bird to fly down to us.


Just think about it.  Picture it.  And then I bet you´ll laugh out loud, because I´m starting to giggle again...

I start home visits with Cristo today.  Should be interesting.  Today´s only Monday, and I only worked for five hours, but I am 100% exhausted.  I feel like I haven´t really slowed down yet... not since school started in January.  I´m looking forward to going to bed early tonight....