The hunt continues...

Hmm, I feel as though lots of stuff has been going on lately though of course when it´s time to put fingers to keyboard it all sort of turns into a blur.

I am still living in my hostel, though as its a total rip-off and not a great place to live anyway, I´m trying to mardest to find a place to move into. Last night I went to go check out my Ecuadorian friend Tamy´s apartment, who is a girl I met on a bus last time I was here (see e-mail from two months ago.) She´s renting a room in a place that has an extra bedroom, so I think thats a pretty good option, though last night her and her sister and I were talking about trying to find a place of our own, minus the landlady who also lives in the apartment and another girl who nobody ever seesm to see. It´s harder to find a place then it seems though, so i assume that won´t happen for a litte whil.e Its great though, even her apartment, which is a lot nice than most of the other places I´ve seen, is way cheaper, solely because she is Ecuadorian and not a gringa.

It´s funny, her apartment -- it´s safe, there´s a guard, its right by all the fancy Quito shopping malls, and inside its decorated with chandeliers and faux victorian-themed furniture. Part of me is asthetically repulsed by it, the other part of me thinks its hilarious and can´t wait to live in an apartment with a chandelier. So, she´s going to talk to the landlady and see how much the extra bedroom will be, and we´ll see.

Other than that, let´s see: I´ve been given a cellphone in the office here that belonged to Paul, who used to work here but left it when he went home, but its missing a SIM card, and i´ve already been into 5 cellphone stores and watched as they put in a card, the phone doesnt work, they look confused, they fidget with the phone, they open it up and find some phone number inside, make a call, and then turn to me and tell me "Your phone doesnt work because it has been tagged internationally as stolen property." Then I go through my shpiel of "no, you don´t understand, its my friends phone, theres a box for it and everything." they shrug, I leave. This happened to me this morning for the fifth time, so today at lunch I´m caving and buying a new phone. Either Paul partook in some very shady afterwork activities (waiting for people to pass buy with new phones in their boxes before pouncing!) or the cellphone people are full of shit. Either way I can´t win.

It´s an election weekend here, for a 130-person constituent assembly. As there are literally hundreds of people to choose from, this is Ecuador´s most complex election to date. Apparently no political experience is required to enter into the race. The drinking of alcoholic beverages is prohibitted all weekend, and its required by law that everyone votes. All day long at work for the past week camionetas have been passing by, which are trucks filled with people, blasting loud music, sometimes people are dancing in the truck, holding up signs for their candidate or party of choice.

That might be all I can report from the front lines for now.