Aventuras en Ecuador: My homestay!

I didn't really do a good job of blogging about my homestay in Quito, although the people and the house were both really nice, and I feel a little bit bad about that. But instead, I'm going to blog about my homestay in the Galapagos, because it's more relevant currently.

Anyway, as I've mentioned about a gazillion times, my house is on the main street in town, in the central neighborhood (Barrio Central), and almost directly across from the Galapagos headquarters of the CNE (National Election Committee). It's also a block away from the now-abandoned Avanza headquarters and "La Concha", a half-dome ampitheatre with a large flat concrete area that alternates between dance floor, volleyball court, and fireworks launch site. A few weeks ago was the anniversary of the Galapagos becoming a province and there was a big party with several bands, dancing until the morning, and food/beer vendors all over the place. There were also fireworks being set off just to the side of the crowd. They exploded maybe 50 feet above our head and there was an area of soggy firework casing carcasses that people had to step around. (It had been raining, causing some of the fireworks to misfire.) Yay Galapagos safety standards!

Here's La Concha during an Avanza rally, which also had beer and fireworks:

So to the actual house: It, like all houses here, is made entirely of concrete with various mesh insets to allow airflow. Sitting on the front porch to chat with neighbors and family passing by is a nightly activity for my host parents, who aren't big on amenities like the TV, although they do have one.

You can't see the front door in that photo, because it's perpendicular to the street, but it is to the right of the window. The lower porch and window belong to our unit, while the upstairs is another unit that my host parents are currently renting to some Long Islanders. They're leaving next week, though, and I'm not sure who's going to be up there after them. No word yet what the garage door on the right functions for, but it opens into the living room.

The front porch is also the site of a daily sale of fish caught by my host parents' fisherman son:

The house itself is comprised of a total of five units, all of which are sort of jumbled together. There are two in the front and three more in the back. From the side, the house looks like this:

To get to the back three units, you have to go into this back patio sort of area, where the staircases to the upper units, our back door, and the laundry area are. This is the view from the third floor patio:

Our back door is to the right, under the staircase. (The door at the corner of the stairs goes to the Long Islanders' apartment.) The back door is made of chickenwire with a hole in it to reach in and grab the doorframe so it can be opened, and it's never locked. There's an actual door, too, but it's never closed. The family swears up and down that no crime happens in the Galapagos, so let's hope that's true! Our front door actually has a "lock" --that is, there's a piece of string that can be used to tie it to the wall so that it can't be opened from outside.

The inside of the house is pretty standard. Sorry the photos are a little dark.

Here's my room. It used to belong to one or both of their own daughters, so there's a lot of stuff.

Here's some bootleg DVDs I found in the closet. There are several bootleg DVD stores in town and there are actually a lot of relatively new, interesting titles available, and for only a few bucks! So far, I've only watched District 9, but it played with no problems on my computer, so hopefully I'll be able to get some of my own DVDs here for cheaps.

My bed is really this cement block built out of the floor, and underneath, there's this weird crawlspace. (It might be tough to see in this photo.) It freaks me out a little bit, so I haven't gathered the guts to actually shine a flashlight inside and see what all is back there, but it looks like mostly rubbish. The only things I could really see with just the ceiling light are a used q-tip and a rusty pair of pliers...

There's two more bedrooms in the house besides mine: one for my host parents and one more guest bedroom that is currently housing a Venezuelan guy who's here on vacation. He's leaving next Tuesday, so I might try to take over that room since it has the amenity of its own bathroom, but I suspect they will want to keep that one as the one they rent out. The other bathroom is really disgusting, though, so I really want to get out of using it if I can. The shower is interesting, though... It's on its own 30 amp breaker, because the shower head creates hot water using some kind of electric coil. (Or it did until it broke last week, sadly enough...) The Long Islanders have a similar setup and apparently they've gotten shocked on theirs a couple times.

Anyway, here's the laundry machine out back:

Here's part of the gutter system. Inside that hole in the ground is some kind of underground lake which may or may not be the sewers. It smells okay, but I think it's kind of suspicious. Maybe some kind of greywater system?

Anyway, here's some views of the surrounding area from the third floor patio. You can just see La Concha and the Avanza headquarters in the background of this one: