Our ISP period is halfway done! It's hard to believe that I'll have to leave this beautiful town in two short weeks. My research is continuing to go well, and I've finished my 52 interviews for the project. I can't say that analyzing all that data was the most enjoyable part of my time in Ecuador so far, but now that it's done, all I have to do is finish up the last few sections of my paper. After that, we'll have a week of hanging out on the beach and drinking coconut smoothies!

I'm sad that I won't be celebrating Thanksgiving with my family this year, but the other students and I are planning on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner together this week. My friend Abby and I are going to make blackberry pies to thank our home-stay families for all that they have done for us - and 4 cups of blackberries only costs $1 here!

One of the things I love most about South America is the abundance of fresh food. My host moms in Quito and in Puerto López make freshly blended juice at least once a day with meals. There are the normal juices that we have in the states, like orange juice (but no apple juice for some reason), but the majority are juices made from watermelons, papaya, strawberries, blackberries, bananas, and tomates de árbol (tree tomatoes - a kind of sweet fruit). They also blend these fruits with milk to make drinks called 'batidos' - fruit smoothies.
When you walk into the grocery store, you rarely see prepackaged/prepared foods like spaghetti sauces or ravioli. If you want to eat chicken cordon bleu or pizza or even things like tortillas and tomato sauce, you have to make them from scratch. Which really isn't a huge problem, because the people here have an abundance of time to do things like that, as a generalization. The pace of life is much slower than in the US, where we often don't have time to cook elaborate 3 course meals for lunch and squeeze 10 oranges by hand to make juice (yes, I once had to do that in Quito while I was helping my mom make lunch).
One thing that I find slightly frustrating though is the lack of variety of basic food items, such as cheese. Since cheese is a staple food item for me in the states, it would be nice to be able to eat more than two types of cheese - mozzarella and queso fresco (a cheese that is terrible, frankly, and has no taste whatsoever).

This lack of choice that is evident in markets seems to be a common theme in other aspects of life in Ecuador as well. It's striking to me that families seem so similar here in terms of how they raise their children, what food they make, moral values, choice of clothes, and what they value as important. It must be interesting growing up as a child here, because your role models act in a similar fashion.
In the states, I've had many diverse examples to look up to, and the ability to choose what I want to adopt into my life and what I don't. I'm definitely realizing how thankful I am for things I have taken for granted my entire life.

Last week, I didn't have time to post photos from Puerto López, so I'll post some now.

The street going into the center from my house

The beach!

 Abby, her host mom and aunt and sister, and I

My host-sisters and I in my bed - they LOVE to wake me up in the morning and have 'cuddle-time'.

At the hot-springs in Agua Blanca

Sulfuric mud!

Swimming time!

My 4-year old sister, Mia. 

I've realized that in my blog posts about Ecuador, I haven't written as much about the culture as I would like. But my blogs would be pages and pages long if I wrote about everything I wanted to. If you would like me to write about anything in particular or have a question you want me to answer, just leave a comment on my post and I'll make sure to answer it the next time!