Ecuador day 5: Never miss a chance to do some STEM outreach!

So first things first, I have to set a couple of things straight. Quito is ~2850 meters (9000 feet) above sea level, not 4000. So when Quilotoa is at 3910 meters (almost 13000 feet), it makes a lot of sense that it gets pretty cold at night. It was nice, I like a good bundling up.

We started the morning with some laundry. The washing machine was available, which was lucky since apparently it's often being used by other people in the building. We took Patrice's cat to the vet and then came back and hung or clothes out to dry. Fun fact, pretty much no one in Ecuador uses a clothes dryer; I really like this idea except that it rains a lot so most of our clothes are still wet.

Another fun fact: only about 50% of homes have an oven because baking isn't as important here as in the US

Today we stayed in Guaranda because Patrice had to work at least a little bit this week.  I got to help out, which was pretty fun. I talked to the students about being an engineer, although since they don't speak much English and I speak essentially 0 Spanish, it was mostly a Q&A session, and they mostly asked me if I had a boyfriend. Relationships and marriage and children are a much bigger deal in Ecuador than they are in Oregon. I did get some questions about engineering, though, so that was nice. There were a couple kids who want to be engineers, yay!

After school we stopped at a supermarket for some groceries. It was surprisingly homey; it looked and felt and smelled like a Freddy's. We had planned to hit the outdoor market for some cool tropical fruits, but they were closed so we'll hit that tomorrow morning before we go to Salinas (a town full of different little cooperatives, including cheese, chocolate, and wool: Patrice is going to have to drag me out of there).

Guaranda is a lovely city. It feels a lot like Corvallis, although the hills are much steeper and taller. It's called the City of the Seven Hills and pretty much every street is straight up or down unless it's parallel to the slope. I really like it, it's small and quiet and clean (it's my favorite city in Ecuador, although that's only out of two so far).

Like Corvallis, but equatorial!

It's also got some great views of Chimborazo, the world's tallest mountain (if measured from the Earth's center instead of sea level) and also a volcano (inactive, luckily). It's been pretty cloudy so I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but hopefully it'll be clear at some point while I'm here!