Ignorance is Bliss.

At some point last week, I was waiting at my bus stop when the the fire department's alarm went off. I looked into the garage and the firemen were barely moving at all. I had the urge to go in there and yell at them to hurry the (expletive) up. The firetruck had not left the station when I got on my bus at least 5 minutes later. Well, this morning when I was at that same bus stop, I saw an ambulance making its way out of there. It was barely moving, though! So I'm going to go ahead and pretend that the alarm that went off last week was merely a drill that all the firemen tested foully on. And that ambulance this morning was only going out for a maintenance check. In fact, that was why it was moving so slowly: there was something wrong with it.

I like pretending that some things are better than they actually are.

You can call it ignorance, but sometimes not being aware of something can make life easier and a lot less stressful. Volcano Tungurahua is currently erupting. My roommates and I were made aware of this fact by someone in the States. In. the. States!! We're here, in Ecuador, about an hour and a half away from the volcano, and even we didn't know about it until we were told. We went through a whole day of eruption before we knew that we were living by an angry volcano. That said, today has been a lot more stressful than yesterday. Whenever I look out the window to the place where there's usually a perfectly cone-shaped landform, there are just clouds. Only, they're not just clouds…it's smoke and/or water vapor and/or volcanic ashes. My head is very creative, let me tell you, and it always thinks of the worst-case scenarios. Meaning that when the lava spurts out from it, I'm going to die. I know that I'm overreacting (especially because I was told by several people that Ambato is not in any sort of danger), but volcanic eruptions are things that I'm not at all used to. And as cool as it might be to see lava spewing from the volcano, I'm more scared than curious.

Just FYI, I wrote the above sometime in late November…I wrote it when I had no internet access and I had completely forgotten about it, oops.

This is what an angry volcano looks like.
Photo credit: Mr. Google Images…I didn't take it.

P.S. That is what Volcano Tungurahua supposedly looked like 3 days ago (as in, 12/8/11)...

P.P.S. Don't worry…I'm not in any danger.

Loveeeee!

Steph