It is the glory of Quito the discovery of the Amazon River.

First, I must apologize for the glaring gap in time between my last post and now. To make a short story short, I finished my time at Notre Dame, turned in all of my work, witnessed the marriage of my good friends Andy and Quinn, spent some time in Chicago, and caught a flight to South America. When we arrived in Quito, one of our group was help back at security in the Quito airport because of a small tear in his passport and is now back in Chicago waiting on the creation of a new one with which he should be able to enter the country and reunite with our group. Ciaran, we miss you and we all wish you could be here with us. It's notthe same without you.

Today we visited the old colonial center. There we found the the cathedral of Quito. With our entrance fee of $1.50 (yes, the currency of Ecuador is the United States Dollar) we received a guided tour which we elected to hear in Spanish. David managed to translate for Emily, who is still in the beginning stages of learning Spanish. Only slightly more advanced is where I found myself. I had to focus really hard to understand. There were definitely parts that I missed, but overall, it was worth it to give myself the challenge, even if I don't know everything about the cathedral of Quito. I did learn that there was once a bishop in Quito that discovered that the Eucharistic wine had been poisoned. It had already been consecrated when he discovered this, and because it would be wrong to disrespect the blood of Jesus, he drank it anyway and died on the altar. That is certainly the toughest priest I've ever heard of.

After the tour, we went for lunch. I had a dish called "salchipapas." This dish is comprised of a sausage "salchicha" resting atop a pile of french fries "papas fritas" accompanied by a small salad. In class, we have been learning about all of the unique fruits here. Bananas are an especially big business. The richest man in Ecuador is a Banana Baron. I believe this title comes complete with a cape and a monkey side-kick. Guanábana is another popular fruit. It is like a large cousin of the guava (guayaba en español) that is used in juices, deserts, and ice-creams. Speaking of juices, compared to the apple juice I drank this morning for breakfast, the juices in the U.S. would be better titled "sugar water with essence of apple" because juice here puts everything else I've had to shame. Apple juice is thick like a smoothy, as is the mango juice. Ecuadorians do their juice right.

One last thing. I bought a bottle of water today for 15 cents. Chew on that for a while.