"People would never believe the life I live..."

"People would never believe the life I live" has jokingly become my mantra this year, thanks in large part to one of my lovely roommates, Jamie, and her boyfriend, Pat. I feel I have to start out with this, since they are currently having some sort of strange tickle fight involving sitting on each other's feet and holes in socks and I don't know what all. They generally provide 60% of the amusement in my life, and I always threaten that they're going to end up in my novel someday.

But anyway, it's thanks largely to them and all my other friends that I have ridiculous adventures to write about...which I'm not sure other people would believe if I didn't explain them thoroughly. And one of my main reasons for starting this blog is that in approximately six and a half months, I'm going to embark on my coolest adventure to date: ten weeks studying in Ecuador!! Study abroad blogs seem to be the thing to do these days, so I might as well do one too...but I figured I'd better get into the habit now.

I actually have no idea how often I'll be able to post for a while, since school keeps me pretty darn busy, but I'll do my best. I'm sure my posting frequency will have a direct correlation to how badly I'm trying to procrastinate my papers...lol. (I should probably doing some kind of work right now, but I get to see two wonderful old friends in a few hours whom I haven't seen in over a year, so my brain is in no condition to work!!)

We had our first official meeting about Ecuador today, and I was sitting there thinking, "I can't believe I'm actually going to be doing all these things!!" We leave October 2, 2009, and fly into Guyaquil. From there we travel to Cuenca, the third largest city, and meet the families with whom we're going to be staying whenever we're not off climbing mountains or swimming in the Amazon or whatever. We're going to visit the Intag cloud forest, the Amazonian rainforest, the Incan ruins at Ingapirca, travel down el avenida de los volcanes (the avenue of the volcanoes -- I'll do my best to translate everything, but I have this habit of breaking into Spanish without realizing it!!), and best of all, spend a week in the Galapagos Islands!! When we are in Cuenca (for a few weeks at a time), we'll be taking classes at a language institute. Hopefully we can get it worked out so the other Spanish majors and I can take appropriate levels, because most students on the trip will get credits for SPN-110 or -210 (here at B-W), and we're taking -310 this semester.

The only thing I'm really not excited about: shots. I HATE shots, and I'll have to get four or seven of them, depending on whether or not the pre-exposure rabies vaccine becomes available before we leave. (There's apparently a shortage of it in the US right now, but it may become available this summer.) I'll also need an oral vaccine (pills) for typhoid, and I'll have to take a weekly pill for malaria before, during, and after the time we're in the Amazon basin. But I suppose I can deal. Oh, the rough life of a world traveler...;)