What you need after a week of tests is HOT POT!! Lucia, a Chinese girl in Sarah’s class, invited Sarah and her boyfriend (me), and her Korean classmate, Adriana, and her husband J.C. to dinner on Friday night.

While I was expecting a bit of alienation and awkwardness as a result of not being in the Asian train of thought, what I got was quite the opposite. It was an evening of wonders. Firstly, the company was great and the atmosphere was relaxed and humorous. Second were the amazing discoveries we made.

The first was Hot Pot. Hot Pot is a Chinese meal, where plates of raw food cover the table on which you are about to eat. Then there is a crock-pot of spicy, boiling soup in the center of the table. When everyone sits down to eat, we all start putting that we want, such as bacon, sausages, lettuce, different mushrooms, vegetables, and whatever else you can imagine, into the pot to be cooked. Meanwhile you mix up a peanut sauce in your personal bowl, which you add a little soup to, to make it spicy and thin. Then, after a few minutes when the food is cooked, you start chop-sticking the boiling soup for bacon and broccoli and wild mushrooms, which you then put into your bowl. The food, now covered with sauce is ready to go, so you eat it. This process of adding and subtracting food to the soup goes on for two or three hours, at which point we started talking about techniques competitive eaters use to stretch their stomachs so they can eat more.

The Second wonder of the night was brought on by a little bit of YouTube.ing. Looking at strings of videos on YouTube can easily ruin a night, but not that night. That night Sarah and I were introduced to a Russian singer named Vitas. Vitas is famous for having an incredibly high voice when he wants to. During the song his voice is more or less normal but when the chorus comes you see just how high he can go, and its not a joke. The first video we watched of Vitas was a video in which he was dressed in a fine suit and backed by an orchestra. I thought he must be well respected in the music community for his talent, and respected by others for his good looks as well. This idea was instantly thrown into confusion in the next video. The next video showed standing on platform shoes a foot high, wearing a glittering, white, bell-bottomed jumpsuit which covered his shoes, and singing one of his odd songs in the midst of a bunch of alien characters, straight from a disturbing children’s show. I wont bother describing his body language and facial expressions, I only recommend that you go and watch one of his videos immediately. Its funny, but I’m not trying to make fun of him. I really like the two songs but it is very, very odd.

Ok that was just Friday, our weekend was great too. We headed down to Mindo again. Its not that I don’t like Quito but living in a big city get stressful for me and it relieves the stress if I can get out of town for a weekend. Mindo is the perfect place to go. It’s a really small tropical town where you can hang out and explore the cloud forest. I like it because its warm, its small, and its crowded with birds, orchids and other life. Luckily we didn’t have to watch Yeti or some other terrible movie on the way down the windy road. On the other hand we didn’t get a little plastic cup full of coke so it goes both ways.

Oh another bummer of the weekend is that upon leaving I found that I had lost my binoculars, which were given to me years ago buy Dale Zimmerman, and which had never failed me in three trips to South America. I had thought about buying a new pair since that pair was about fifty years old, but upon loosing them I found that I was attached to them in a way that I’m not usually attached to a possession. I didn’t dwell on it for long but it did make me quite sad.

The day we got there Sarah wanted to canopying, which is zipping down a cable stretched between two mountains high above the forest. In all about ten bucks gets you a tour of 12 cables. The fear of the first cable quickly wore off, and we were soon more thrilled by the view that being suspended high above the forest. I spotted a few orchids along the way and we got some amazing views of Toucanets which are fairly common in the area. Hanging in my harness I managed to get some great photos, which are hopefully on this page.

We had also heard about a bird watching guide, who runs a hostel in Mindo. We stayed at the hostel for the night to feel out what the guided trips were like and how much they cost. It turned out to be 25 dollars for both of us, which at the time seemed quite reasonable. It turned out to be more than reasonable, when our Guide, Irman, knew every single bird by sight, sound, and was able to call in many kinds. Additionally, he helped in the making of the bird book in which I marked all the birds he pointed out, and he is a good friend of the authors. An early morning five-hour walk provided views, of about 45 species, including two types of toucan (photo is a Crimson Rumped Toucanet,) a Quetzal, a Potoo (don’t ask me how he spotted such a well camouflaged bird, and sleeping no less), two species of Barbet (the photo is a Toucan Barbet), a Motmot (photo), and a Cock-of-the-Rock. Another plus of the trip is that we met a couple from Sweden, who had never been birding before and were very exited about it. We hung out with them after the trip and exchanged emails hoping to see them next time they were in Quito.

Action Shot