Second day- lost.

5:38 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

I woke up to sounds of construction. I was pleasantly surprised about the fact that I could even get up at 9 in the morning considering I went to bed so late last night. I went downstairs and talked with people for a while until Bri and I decided to go check out the roof. The view was fantasmic, breathtaking..I couldn't believe where I was.
As we ate food, played cards, and of course colored pages from my coloring book, I felt like a child in the midst of a crazy place. Another thing that made me feel like I was in a crazy place? The amount of attention that "gringos" get in this country! What a ridiciulous amount of staring, smirking, and of course, the voices of little kids screaming "gringos!"
Besides noticing the racial uniformity of Ecuador, I also had the pleasure of experiencing the hectic chaos of public transportation. Getting onto the trolleys/buses was just half the trouble [as people push and shove in order to make it in the vehicle before the drivers lose patience and close the doors]; the cramming of a billion human bodies into a small amount of space seemed quite an achievement. Holding onto handles and bars in a jerky bus as a small girl? Also proved to be a challenge. Even so, the trip to plaza de teatro proved to be an interesting one. Somehow, all 12 people in the group seemed directionally challenged and it took us quite a while to make it to our destination...where we witnessed a fist fight between two aggravated men, the fist of one of the men almost landing in my face. It was an experience.
Again at our destination we were granted beautiful views. The bright colored buildings on steep hills reminded me a lot of San Francisco. We walked around, looked around markets, ate ice cream, saw a cathedral, and all was swell. It's only about 7:30 here, so who knows what the rest of the day will bring?

First day- excitement.

8:42 AM flashesofgold 0 Comments

So here I am, in Ecuador. In the middle of this nature-city hybrid environment. And I've made a promise to myself, to try my bestest hardest to post a blog everyday and maybe even a picture to show some of the events of my day.Yesterday was, you know, airport day. I had a weird feeling in my stomach as I waited for Bri to pick me up from my house, a kind of mixture of excitement and nervousness. And I felt nauseous as well. Which did not do anything to help my nervousness. But after medication and some good healing words from my mother [or more like twenty calls to make sure I had everything I needed], I was all set to travel. And guess what? My suitcase? It was 49 pounds. Heart-stopping. But it was all good. The day was super long. It seemed like I had been up for days. We had to travel first to Atlanta then to Quito and we had two hours in between our flight.
Then it was the usual when we got there, me, excited, Bri calming me down. I just couldn't believe I was in a different country! Bri and I got the free room to stay in with Henry and decided we were going to decorate and have a tradition of saying our "roses and thorns" or "rosas y espinas" for the day. Excitement all over the place! So not the funnest most exciting blog post, but it will get better as more events come up! And here's a picture of us allll happy [or rather super tired] in the living room area.