Today, we got to spend the morning going to Mitad del Mundo. The reason for going is that Cindy had some shopping she wanted to do, and there's a paila shop there I wanted to visit again. It was a win-win situation in my book. I was really only tagging along for the paila, but I figured that it would be fun to look around in some of the stores I hadn't gone to on my last visit. One store had a really great winter hat that's ridiculously long. I thought it was pretty fantastic, and the shop owner came down to $4.00 so I figured it was worth it. We looked around in several other shops and the only thing that really caught my eye was a three foot tall llama made out of real llama. It was really soft and awesome. I figured that it might fit in my suitcase and I could name it Rowdy. Then I realized that it had to be at least $200, or probably more. That nixed that idea.
We then stopped at a restaurant there to get really fantastic empanadas as a snack. The bonus is that there's a music store next door to it so I popped in there while we were waiting on our food. I realize that I have very little willpower in a music store, but I did want to see what they had. I was thrilled to see that there was nothing there that I really wanted. The reason is that I already own most of the instruments they were selling. It also made me realize just how many I've purchased on previous trips.
After empanadas, Karen and Cindy went to try to find blankets in the size Cindy really wanted. Jon and I went over to the monument to get my picture in front of it "holding" the ball that's on top. We kept hoping that Elvira and her husband would open up their shop before we left. As luck would have it, they were just opening their shop when we headed over to the paila shop. We went in and thankfully they had blankets in the size Cindy had wanted. As it turns out, they are the only shop there who still carries the smaller ones. I realized at this point how little willpower I really have. They offered the blankets at such a good price that I got one. Then Jon pointed out the really cool ponchos that they are now selling. They’re made out of llama fur and are really soft. I ended up having to get one too. Then Karen found another awesome hat that they offered to sell me for a mere $2.50. You can't say no to a deal like that. At least I can't… Thankfully I got out of there without too much damage to my wallet.
Me at the Mitad del Mundo monumentWe grabbed some paila and then headed to the house to chill for a little bit before seminary later in the day. There was even enough time for me to take a short nap before heading off to teach.
I planned to spend the next two days talking about Islam. This is not something I had planned to teach on, but Jon said that Islam is starting to be talked about some in Ecuador and it would be helpful for the students to be aware of the basic beliefs and practices of Islam. I had planned to spend the lecture talking about the history of Islam saving the major beliefs and the 5 Pillars for tomorrow. I once again underestimated how quickly we could go through several pages of notes.
After talking about the history of Islam, we still had 20 minutes left. Yikes! I was still finishing up my material for tomorrow, but I had already had my notes for the 5 pillars of Islam. We spent the rest of the time talking about those. As we were talking about the daily prayers and the Hajj, it occurred to me that most of the students have never seen any pictures or videos of either of these. I asked them if they'd like me to try to find a video for tomorrow of Muslims praying. They said the would, so I hunted down a video clip later in the evening. Hopefully it will go over well.
Instead of sitting in on Cindy's class, I spent the rest of the evening in the library working on my material for the rest of the week. While I had a good idea of what I was going to talk about for the basic beliefs in Islam, I hadn't finished putting it together yet. Before I'm called a slacker, which I know I am at times, I didn't know I would be teaching on it until I'd been here several days. So really, I'd only been procrastinating for a few days. I prefer to call it ruminating…
After classes were done for the day, we headed back to the house to eat supper, prepare for the next day, and most importantly go to bed. Seminary week is much more tiring than I had expected. On the plus side, we'll get to sleep in tomorrow because we can't go anywhere until at least 9:30 because of Pico y Placa. This is something that has been started by the government in the past few months. One day a week, you cannot drive into the city 7:30-9:30AM and 4:30-7:30PM. This is based upon the last digit of your license, and serves to reduce the number of personal vehicles driving in Quito during rush hour by 20%. While annoying at times, it really does make traffic lighter during rush hour. The worse thing about it is that the paila shop near the house closes at 7:30, which means no paila on Wednesdays. As it would so happen, the day I most want paila on seems to be Wednesdays. At least I got some at Mitad today!
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