Field Trips!

This week classes were really interesting as we actually started lectures and readings about the material instead of the pretty broad introductions at the beginning of the semester. I really like the opportunity to take more liberal arts classes. For example in my film seminar we watched a French documentary on the American military in Iraq that would have been extremely controversial in the US. It was a pretty disturbing movie and I’m really looking forward to our discussion next Tuesday. We’ve also been reading some very “loaded” stories in my lit class.

On Friday I went to the Museo de Arte Moderno a la Casa Cultural for my art history class to check out the art on display from the 19th and 20th century. The art was great and it was cool to see the artists’ portrayal of the social and political atmosphere at that time. But the thing I’ll remember most about the visit the museum was the lighting…so all over Quito they are taking measures to cut back on electricity since we are in a major drought and most of the power is hydroelectric. So the museum’s way to conserve is through motion sensor lighting which makes sense since they just stay off unless someone is actually looking at a specific exhibit. What this means though is that every time you stopped in front of a piece of art to take a closer look, the lights went out, so you had to kind of dance around to avoid looking at a painting in the complete dark.

After the museum I went to meet some friends in Parque Carolina, the huge park near my apartment, and on our way back home, my friend Kristin and I got caught in a big protest on one of the major streets. A bunch of students were protesting the exportation of petroleum with signs, whistles, bullhorns, etc, and they were actually stopping traffic on both sides of the street. It was neat to see students involved in controversial issues here just like they are at home but it also made me hope that the political uprising they’re predicting relatively soon here holds off until I can read about it in the news at home!

Saturday and Sunday we had 2 day-long field trips for my volcano class. The professor Theo is awesome, so enthusiastic and incredibly energetic so we learned a lot from first hand experience, and the trips were also a good way to meet people since we were on busses for a while. On Saturday we went to a bunch of different places to collect different types of volcanic rocks (which was admittedly kind of dry…), but we drove through really scenic landscape and on the way back to Quito, made a stop in the thermal baths of Papallacta. In that town there are a bunch of resorts with pools filled with water volcanically heated hot springs. All in all it was a pretty relaxing way to learn about geothermal energy…

Sunday we drove to Cuicocha, about 2 hours north of Quito to Ecuador’s 5th most active volcano. In the shadow of the volcano was a crystal clear crater lake that formed when a volcano collapsed in on itself thousands of years ago. It was a warm and sunny day so it was great to sit by the lake and take a boat ride around the volcanic islands that had formed in the middle. Can’t say I’ve done anything this cool in a class back home

Also, I’ve put up some pictures using picasa, but I’m still trying to figure it out. Check them out though:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kate.s.dickson/