QUITO

Quito is off the chain, neigh, off the richter! After a slow start (and some gigantic casino losses, which I keep in one of the forbidden rooms of my mind), Quito took a sharp turn in the direction of awesomeness. We spent all morning walking through Old Town, which is the historical district preserved from colonial times. Aside from a few amazing sites, namely a beautiful statue of Mary on a hill overlooking a stone place between three churches, the experience paralleled one that you could get by walking through Old Town, Alexandria. As we walked passed the President´s house; however, something totally sweet happened. The President came out to speak to a group of people in front of his house who were praising him with signs that say ¨Gracias Sr. President¨. He talked about adding a new province, which he did for the people even though he was against it. It was amazing; Scott and I were 40 feet from him.
Scott and I ate at a terrible resaurant, where we came up with a term that we call ¨Peru Scraps¨. This term refers to the pieces of food in every plate you get that you refuse to eat. After half of the meals here, we have a tiny bile of bony chicken, weird colored fish, and... lets just not talk about it (this is a continent where they put chicken feet and fish heads in the soup for flavoring). Anyway, after this particular lunch, our ¨Peru Scraps¨ were bigger than our original plates. There were only five bites between our appetizer, entree, and dessert, and our lemonade tasted so bland that I wanted to throw a chicken foot into it.
We then went to Equador´s museum, which was pretty awesome, but nowhere near as cool as the CHAPEL OF MAN, which was a chapel filled with Guayasamin´s art after he took a trip to Europe, America, and Asia. He captures human suffering in all his paintings, and it was very powerful to experience them. Our guide was very informative, and he spoke decent English. I ended up buying a copy of one of his paintings which is an adaptation a previous painting of Jesus´ body with Mary and two other women praying over it. He adapted this painting in a very interesting way by taking away all religious symbols from the first painting and making Jesus naked, without a halo, and the women aren´t praying; they are crying. This painting really expressed a Jesus who I wish the world tried to know better, without religion cluttering up his actual holiness. All the religious relics of the first painting look cheap and stupid next to the power of the simple human form of Jesus, laying there, cut up and suffering.
Scott´s roommate for law school happened to be in Quito, so they met there for the first time (I know... ridiculously small world). His name was Chris, and we met up with him and his friend, Eric, for drinks and dinner at this awesome, dollar cocktail, Mongolian restaurant, which was full of HBs. (Hot babes or head bands depending on context). What started as dinner quickly became a pregame for what ended up being the greatest party ever. We went around the bars meeting some very interesting people, and we ended the night at a dance club called NO BAR (even though it did have a bar... an awesome bar). Eric and Chris stayed back at the bar for an hour hitting on some girls (who both had boyfriends), so Scott and I spent our first hour there as the dynamic duo. We didn´t know how to approach the girls there, so we decided to just get up on an elevated, stage-like portion of the dance floor and start dancing, hoping to Tom Sawyer everyone into joining in. We busted out some of our greatest moves, the Sprinkler, the Charleston, the Surfer, the Shark, even my patented hands in the air spin move which I adapted from nSync´s video for Bye Bye Bye... we gave it everything we had. The minutes rolled by and all hope seemed to fade. Nobody was joining. During our greatest hour of despair; however, a volcano of hope erupted as about 20 people suddenly jumped up onto the floor, making fun of us for being such goofy gringoes. Soonafter, Chris and Eric arrived to join in with the dancing. Scott left a little bit after that, but the three of us danced until 3 AM, and I made out with a super hot 28 year old Equadorian girl. (My mom reads this blog but I can´t let that compromise my honesty). It was a great night, and I even learned a bunch of salsa moves. Seriously... it was a ton of fun. I was always apprehensive about going out to a club in a big foreign city, but, to be honest, it was way better than any club in America. I am also glad that Chris is so cool. I can tell that he and Scott are going to get along very well next year in law school. That is about it. PEACE