Category Archives: Ecuador

Most of the gyms in Quito are primarily for weight lifting. They have a mix of free weights and Nautilus, or whatever those damn machines are called, and I don’t know what it is – perhaps the overabundance of mirrors, or the poor lighting, or the wall-to-wall rubber flooring, or the late 80s look of the equipment – but these gyms seem lifted straight out of New Jersey. It really wouldn’t surprise me to see a couple of Lenny and Squiggy look-alikes come walking out of one of these places.

This past week, Eileen and I were searching for an acceptable gym. After peaking through the doors of a few of them, we caught on to the fact that aerobic workout machines are hard to come by. I checked out the Hilton Colon earlier this week to see what sort of facilities a fancy-schmancy hotel would have. They’re definitely better (membership includes unlimited access to hot tub, Turkish baths, and other such extravagances), but they’re also pretty spendy, as they say. I had pretty much ruled out high-class establishments until someone recommended we look at the Hotel Quito, a high society place with one of the best views in Quito. There’s an L-shaped pool out back and a huge chess board with toddler-sized pieces. The gym is small, but pretty classy, and membership is only about $35 per month. Not bad. But they didn’t have any good stationary bikes; and of course, there were no elliptical machines and no rowing machine (the holy grail of this whole quest). But it gave us hope that other such spendy sites might have affordable gyms.

So I ventured to the Plaza de las Americas, whose high speed wireless internet and Cinnabon restaurant are indications of its upper crust clientele. Excellent gym; cheapest membership option: $165 for three months. Oh, and no rowing machine.

We had one more overpriced institution to check out: the Swisshotel, a conveniently located place with a wonderful bakery we had just discovered – they have 30-cent chocolate croissants that are one of the best pastries we’ve had yet in Quito (not a tough competition to win, but these things are seriously good). Anyhow, we looked at the Swisshotel’s facilities today. They’re stunning. Membership includes weightroom, aerobic equipment, Jacuzzi, Turkish baths, sauna, pool, massage waterfalls, relaxation rooms, racquetball courts, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. But of course, the price is over $100 a month. Ouch! The worst part: they have a rowing machine!

We bought our tickets home for Christmas yesterday. We´ll be back from December 18th to January 1st. Tickets during the holiday season stink for prices, but we´re excited to see all of you again in a few months. Not much new here.

A few weeks ago Tim was walking down the street and saw a guy riding a motorcycle. No big deal, except that sitting in front of him with his legs hanging over the seat and arms resting casually on the handle bars was a yellow labordor. It seemed to say “this is easy. I´ve done this before.” I wish I had been there with a camera. I also wish that the motorcycle dog was owned by our landlords instead of the little yippy poodle they have. It had puppies about a month ago and they were cute and all, but nothing like Tember. And sadly two days ago our landlords sold the puppies. So Bella, the dog, cried (barked) all night for her lost babies. It was sad, but we were more sad that we couldn´t sleep. I hope she forgets soon.

Hi all, we posted more pics in the coppermine.

Well, last week I told you all about how my brief vomiting session invoked self-pity within me. I recovered, went to Banos and had a lot of fun, and then this past weekend came down with a 17-hour fever. It was a “fun” sandwich with two moldy pieces of bread. (Good grief, am I for real?)

Anyhow, on Saturday night, I was caught in this never-ending, abstract, fevered dream in four dimensions. Quito is truly a three dimensional city in that it’s not flat. When I’m lost on busses, I think “I need to get up there” or “I need to get down there” as often as I think, “I need to get over there.” In my dream, I think I extended this then-subconsciously observed detail about Quito; thus, my dream presented me with this 3D grid of all of Ecuador — really just a plain old grid that I understood to be Ecuador. The dimension of time was thrown in there somewhere too, though not really visually accounted for. And here’s how things functioned: if you wanted to meet someone, or maybe catch a bus, or do anything that involved you being in a specific place at a specific time, you did it and you were a little dot — or a sphere, rather– within one of the little cubes within the larger cubic grid. Get it? But the problem was that other people and events were other spheres in other cubes, and so you could never meet them.

The whole thing kinda turned into this existential nightmare-literally- cuz it turned out you could never actually meet anyone, or arrive at a store when it was open. People were always in some other cube, making interaction impossible and all appointments and goals futile. What was the point of even trying?

Anyhow, sorry about this; I find it pretty funny now.

Here’s a better story:

I went to the doctor on Monday and he looked me up and down and was worried that because I was jaundiced and my right side hurt more than the left, I might have hepatitis. I had to go to a lab to get my blood drawn and provide urine and fecal samples. (Eileen wrote a hilarious little journal entry while I was working on obtaining the fecal sample, but she won’t let me post it.) Anyhow, it turns out I just had parasites, and yeah, this isn’t a better story at all. But I’m happy I don’t have hepatitis.

Please send Dove Dark Chocolates and/or Chocolate Peanut Butter Clif Bars to us at:
Tim Storm
c/o WorldTeach
Casilla 17-17-1960
Quito
Ecuador

(I figured that I might as well put all the shamelessness into one entry.)

Ok, that’s enough.

I just thought I´d let you guys know that Tim is healthy again. The Doc put him on some medication to get rid of his parasites and he´s back to normal.

Yesterday was our first full day cooking ALL of our meals. We were thrilled to discover a market called Santa Clara close to our apartment and so we stocked up on lots of fruits and veggies. We had pancakes for breakfast, pita sandwhiches for lunch, and pesto pizza for dinner (Chifles, which are fried plantains for desert). Considering our past cooking failures here (I made some unbelievably bad pasta, I don´t know why the pasta here is so bad but it just isn´t the same) we were pretty happy with ourseleves.