My First Tremor!

I was just saying to someone the other day that I really hope I get to feel a tremor while I'm here. Well, my friends, today was my lucky day!
I was sitting in class this morning, and the projector screen started waving back and forth. I looked at the window to see where the breeze was all of a sudden coming from and then I felt my chair start to move. It was like being on a boat. I was so excited! It only lasted for about 15 seconds probably, so we kept going with class. 
Apparently in Ecuador it was stronger, about a 7 on the Richter Scale, (but only felt like about a 5 because the center was so deep in the ground.)


After class I met a friend for lunch. We walked to the Plaza San Miguel and got some sandwiches with gelato for dessert. Then I just hung out until my 6:00 class because my 4-6 one was cancelled. I went to the library for the first time, which was sort of an ordeal. 
They don't just let you on campus here, you have to go to 1 of 2 entrances and show the security guards your student ID because the campus is walled in. You also have to show your ID when going into the library, but apparently the 1st time you go you have to register it or something. So the guy was asking me my phone number and address to put into the computer. He looked at me like an idiot because I didn't know my address. Woops. Good day to not bring my little info card with me. But finally they let me in. 


I had my Quechua class from 6-9. It's a tough one. Quechua morphology is super complicated. They make heavy use of suffixes, so, for example, wasichaykikunas is one word, but it is also a sentence that means "They say that they are your little houses." Here's how that breaks down:
wasi - house
cha - "little" (really it's the diminutive form, like -ito/a in Spanish--casita)
yki - your
kuna - plural
s - They say that they are
To complicate matters more, there are suffixes that have meanings in Quechua that aren't used in English. For example, -qa is added to mean something close to "that's how it is" and is used to emphasize the condition of the subject. In addition, the suffix -m (after vowels) or -mi (after consonants) is added to nouns as a "validator" to confirm what you're saying. 
So when I tell someone my name, I have to say Jamiem because I'm confirming that my name is actually Jamie. 
They sometimes also add -lla to questions with the approximate meaning of "no more/nothing more." That's used a lot when asking "how are you?" like saying "how are you nothing more?" but it's used for affectation.
In other words, I'm not expecting to come back fluent in Quechua. 
(Sorry if that was boring, but I think it's pretty cool.)
http://www.sonicomusica.com/huaynos/magaly-solier/cancion/para-que-/
If you click on the link it will play the Quechua song that we were listing to in class today. It's kind of fun :) It's about the rain (para)


Also, we had a little scare last night because Macy went missing after a thunderstorm, but luckily they found her! She was just hiding in the garage :)