Mitad del Mundo

Was a big day today. The parents and their employee who lives with them and is more like another brother/son to the family, Luis, took me out to the mitad del mundo - the middle of the world - the equator (hence this country being called Ecuador). But first, they drove out to where my medical clinic is because they just wanted to know where it is so they know that I´m all right every day and if I need any help, they know how to come and get me. Man, they´re so nice.

Anyway, after that, we went to the mitad del mundo which is obviously a big tourist attraction, but still cool to see. They´ve built this whole centre around it all and there´s a big tower that sits right on the equator, which I went to the top of and took some nice pics - will try to post them tomorrow, but have limited time today. Anyway, explored the whole place with Luis and had some lunch. He doesn´t speak any english, but somehow we get by sort of. Having a notebook to ask them to write stuff in is really helpful, so that i can see it and then look it up in the diccarionario. There was also this big cultural dancing show thing going on, so we watched that for a bit and then left to go to a nearby volcano. We got to the top of the crater, and it´s a huge thing - you can´t see the other side of it. I´m not sure whether it´s far away - i´m sure it is, but mainly the reason you can´t see anything is because the entire crater is filled with clouds. It´s really cool. So, mi mama (mm for short from now on), luis and i headed down into the crater. I´m sure it´s obviously been long inactive, since people live down at teh bottom of the crater and there´s vegetation everywhere. So, it was a long long way down and we saw there was hostel down the bottom, and then started our ascent. They were teaching my spanish (it´s a never ending spanish class here) and keep correcting my pronunciation becuase in spanish there´s no "v" sound - v = b, so verde is said "berde" and I just have to keep remembering that. And then "d" sound is so soft it doesn´t sound like a d - it´s more like a really soft "th" sound. So fritada is "fritatha", but really softly at the end. Anyway, it was all going fine and then Luis suggested that we run for a bit, so i started to and probably only got about 30 metres or so, and i managed to stutter out "bastante" en espanol (which i just learnt last night and means "enough") and I was trying to say in spanish all i see is black, and then the next thing i remember is opening my eyes and seeing these two faces over me - MM and Luis and I was so confused because it felt like a dream. I didn´t know where I was and I could have been sleeping for a whole night or 1 second for all I knew. And then it finally dawned on me that I had just fainted. So strange! i´ve never done that before - it´s a really weird feeling. MM was so worried and I just had to sit there and get my bearings again, realise that I was in quito, ecuador, in a volcano crater with Mm and Luis - took me a while. It was so bizarre. I think it was all because of the altitude and the fact that all the air in there is basically cloud, so it´s a little harder to breathe. Anyway, i saw i had a gash on my left knee and it actually ripped a hole in my new pants (grr...) so i guess that meant that i fell forward, which is a lucky thing since we were on a slope on a very rocky path. Luis knows all about the local plants and their medicinal uses and stuff, so he ran off to get some leaves he knew would help, and he then just right there on the path, started bashing them with a rock to make it into a paste type thing, and he then applied it to my knee - very useful and it helped. Anyway, so we then just took the rest of the ascent really slowly and took about another 30min, and then got to the car and came home. phew - so bizarre and kind of embarrassing.