Botany, Botany, I hate you, you stink. Oh wait, you're not as bad as I think.

So I signed up for Botany at the beginning of the semester, not really knowing what I was getting myself into. I was just taking the class because it's required for Biology majors at Bethel. I'm more of an animal person than I am a plant person, but I heard classes at USFQ are easier than most in the states, so I thought it couldn't be that bad. Well. I was wrong. The lecture part of the class isn't bad. Pretty easy to follow and there's a lot of overlap with Virus, Bacteria, and Higher Cells and Ecology, which are both classes that I took last semester. The part that sucked more than a vacuum was the lab portion. Three hours every Monday. And when I say 3 hours, I mean that's how much time the class was scheduled for. How long was I actually there every week? Around 3 and a half hours. Now maybe I've been spoiled because Jon Piper's labs NEVER take all three hours, but I think it's more than that. There is only one other gringa in the class. She's cool, but she's the only one I really know. Also, the lab consists of our professor, Vlastimil (Vlasti), talking super fast for like a hour and a half and showing us fruits, nuts, and leaves. Then we spend like two hours drawing and labeling diagrams of everything he just showed us. Chevere (heavy sarcasm). And the lab homework sucks, too. He asks us to answer really specific and difficult-to-find questions that are even harder to answer because A. I'm searching in Spanish, or B. I have to translate what I find into Spanish. For about a month I hated that lab with a passion and dreaded every minute of it. Then I found out we had a lab field trip and as impossible as it might be to believe, I dreaded that even more. I had heard rumors that we had homework every night, had to write a report, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning doing work, and had to take a test before we left. Not the kind of field trip I want to go on. Plus, we have to pay our own way.
So the date of the trip approaches. Friday, February 18. 1:00 PM. Doomsday. We all payed $50.50 in advance for housing, transportation, and meals. Not too bad, I guess. We meet in Vlasti's office, and I realize I've left my jacket at home. Vlasti says it gets cold where we're going. I know...I'm in the future also. (Mike Birbiglia reference. If you've never heard of him, Youtube him) We get on the bus, and end up sitting there for about 45 minutes, waiting for one of our classmates. Ecuadorian time. Then we head out. I'm sitting next to the other gringa, Beth, and we're both freaking out. This class is hard for both of us. More so for her because (I know this may be hard to fathom) she's more of a perfectionist than I am. We drive for about an hour and a half towards the South and get into the mountains a little bit. Then we get out and Vlasti proceeds to show us plants for an hour. He tells us what family it comes from, what the characteristics of the family are, and what are some examples of plants in that family. We then have time to collect some plants because we have to collect 20 plants by the end of the semester. Get back in the bus, drive 20 minutes, and then have another hour to an hour and a half teaching session. It's actually kind of interesting because of how structured the information is. I feel like I'm actually learning something. But by then it was getting chilly and I was losing patience. It got dark so we headed back to the bus and drove for 2 more bumpy, zig-zaggy hours until we reached our hostal in Guajalito (picture super rustic). There's one huge room that like 24 of us sleep in (boys and girls). The beds don't have sheets, which I wasn't prepared for, but Beth is nice and lets me borrow her blanket (and one of her coats for that matter). She is obviously a better packer than I am. We get our stuff off the bus and take our plants we collected to the patio. Vlasti shows us how to lay them out in newspaper so they dry well and then we get to work. I had to throw some of mine out because they already had enough copies in the herbarium or I didn't have a copy of the plant. You have to have a plant and a copy of the plant in case one herbarium burns down. Haha. Anyway, I had one plant that worked, so I got that done. Then we worked on our "report." When I had heard "report" I thought we were writing a paper. Turns out all we had to do was copy down the family name, the characteristics, and examples. All the information was already given to us by Vlasti. Not too bad. By the time we finished, it was like 10:00 PM and we hadn't eaten supper yet. Went to the kitchen and had a three course meal. Soup, spaghetti, and dessert. And all you can eat. I sat with Beth, Ana (a girl who studied in Texas for a year), and David (a 19-year-old who looks like he's actually the oldest kid in the class). People started clearing out, but since the four of us were the last to get our food, we hung in the kitchen for awhile. Our lab assistant, Pablo, joined our conversation too. He doesn't actually go to USFQ, but goes to a different college in Tumbaco. He just comes to be our lab assistant. We talked a lot about America and Ecuador, similarities and differences. Good times. Finally, around midnight, we headed to bed.
Saturday. Breakfast was sandwiches. Ham and cheese, or cheese and jam, or PEANUT BUTTER and jelly. And scrambled eggs. All you can eat. I probably took advantage of that too much this weekend. Then we packed our lunches and headed out on our hike. Started on the rocky/grassy hill, and ended up hard core in the middle of the cloud forest. Saw a lot of cool plants, but after awhile, everything just started to look green and I couldn't make head or tails of what I was looking at. And I couldn't keep all the families straight. It was still interesting, and dirty, and fun. Stopped at a river on the way back. It was super cold, but I put my feet in anyway. Then it was back to camp to dry our collected plants. Beth and I walked back with Pablo, who doesn't speak any English. He said he wanted to learn, so he asked us how to say things and we would tell him, but pronouncing the words correctly was pretty hard for him. Entertaining for us. Haha. Got back to the hostal where Pablo helped us lay out the rest of our collected plants. Ate supper. Worked on our "report" and headed to bed around 1:30 AM.
Sunday. Breakfast of all-you-can-eat sandwiches again. Freaked out about the test we were about to take. Vlasti set out 20 plants around the hostal grounds. We had 3 minutes at each station to identify the family of the plant with the help of our report. Some of them I knew right away, but it was a really hard test. I think a lot of other people struggled as well, though. The test and the report together were worth 15 points. Vlasti let us decide how much to make each worth. Test: 3. Report: 12. I can handle that. Then we had lunch with our typical mealtime table group: Beth, Ana, David, and Richard (also speaks English. Soft-spoken, but very nice). Packed up the bus. Got home at 5:00 on Sunday. What I thought was going to be the worst weekend of my life ended up being one of the best. Not kidding. I wanted to go back. I had been so focused on how much work the trip was going to be, and I hadn't even considered how much fun it would be to interact with people. It's hard to blog about conversations and interactions with people, so I might not be very convincing when I say this, but I. Made. Ecuadorian. Friends. And it was glorious. Ana, Pablo, David, and kind of Richard. Haha. Let me tell you. Having Ecuadorian friends makes all the difference in the world. I mean, it's not like I have their numbers or we hang out outside of class, but they're still my friends. You come to another country, but until you've made native friends, the trip doesn't have quite the same meaning. All of a sudden, my time here felt more meaningful. Those are the best words I can come up with right now.
I was on a Botany high. The true test was the next day. Lab. Vlasti said it would be an extra long one. I thought he was kidding. He wasn't. I left at 6:30, but you know what? I didn't even care, because I have friends in that class. Yeah, that's right. Friends that help me understand what I'm not getting. Friends like Ana who rode the bus home with me after lab that day and we talked about boys. Haha. Connections like that. With Ecuadorians. Priceless.
Botany. You're not so bad after all.