Day 2 Afternoon - By Dante and Kaitlin

We started off the afternoon by going to the Museum of the Equator – which as you can guess is dedicated to educating tourists about the equator. We met our tour guides and split into two groups. We learned about how the forces are different on the equator, and how instead of draining counterclockwise or clockwise based on the hemisphere they were in, water drained straight down. We also learned about how you can balance and egg on a nail because the centripetal forces cancel out on the equator. (Though Mr McClellan debunked their demonstrations before we even left the museum…  leave it to the GeoScience teacher….)

We were asked to walk on the equator with our eyes closed and arms outstretched. It was very difficult to maintain balance, in fact, no one was able to do it. We then tried to balance a egg on a nail….. something else no one was able to do!  Then we learned how some of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon made “shrunken heads” (not through practice, thankfully).

After that, we walked to a wool spinning shop with traditional tapestries hanging along the wall. While we waited, we saw what we think was a dance about cattle? We are still not sure what it was BUT some of our group participated in the fun…. (looking at you Papa G). The dancer was clothed in the traditional garments of the dance.

Then we did a little shopping and went back to the bus. When we were safely ensconced in the bus, it began to pour with rain, ruining our plans to walk through the Old Town, so we headed back to the hotel.

There we played card games, socialized, and caught up on work and sleep until dinner. For dinner, we walked 15 minutes to a local restaurant, but another EF group was eating there when we arrived so we sat in the lounge area downstairs and waited for the junior high school group from Hobooken to finish!

Here is some street art we saw along the way!

 When we sat down to eat we enjoyed an Ecuadorian meal of rice, chicken, and plantains. The meal was delicious and we had chocolate cake for dessert. On the way back some of our group wanted to try the Ecuadorian delicacies of KFC and McDonalds.  Now to pack and get ready to head over to our service project!