With arms outstretched!

Hola hola! I'm a little behind on blogging. Discúpleme!

This past weekend was Carnaval and, as I mentioned, we had a 5 day weekend. Rough life :) Laurita y yo went to the coastal city of Esmeraldas where we met up with a group of couch surfers including a bunch of Ecuadorian kids living in Guayaquil, one guy from Colombia, two Austrians and Juan Carlos, who grew up in Esmeraldas but is going to school in Guayaquil, and let us all use his grandmother's house as a homebase/ meeting point. We stayed in a hostel a couple blocks from the house and basically just followed the others around to a bunch of different beaches in the area. The first night we went to Atacames, a hopping little beach town about 20 minutes from Esmeraldas. We got there around 7 or so, just as the sun was beginning to set, and a few of us decided to go swimming in the Ocean. It was by far THE most incredible sunset I have seen in my entire life! The entire sky was a brilliant orange/gold and the reflection on the ocean made it seem like we were swimming in the sunset. I took about 6 rolls of mental pictures, but unfortunately blogger doesn't support this sort of upload, so I'll just have to paint a picture or something :) It was truly an incredible sight to behold, and I wish that I could share it with you guys. After that we danced and partied on the beach with what seemed to be just about everyone else in the entire country and more until the wee hours of the morning and then returned to Esmeraldas to sleep and recover. The next day we went to another beach called Sua, where we did beachy things including sunbathing, reading, boating and more swimming. That night Laurita and I decided to lay low and found a cute little pizzeria to camp out and talk and drink wine (for the first time since being in Ecuador) . The next day we went to yet another beach and bummed around some more. All in all it was a delightfully relaxing, inexpensive and really fun weekend. We made tons of new friends that we can stay with when we go to visit Guayaquil and who are really excited to host us and show us around.

And after two whole days of school, here we are again at the weekend! Yesterday after school the kids in my Spanish class and I had a MASSIVE potluck at Laura's house, which included spaghetti, a delicious quinoa dish, a ridiculous amount of homemade guacamole and salsa (made by yours truly :) ) some fruit, cookies, wine... mmmmm. As nice as it is to have our meals provided for us by our families, I think we're all getting to the point where another meal of potatoes, white rice and corn seems a little unbearable. So we've started eating out more and cooking more food on our own... and boy oh boy is it a nice change. After our feast, we retreated to the roof where we sat for hours in the sunshine playing music, singing and talking. And taking pictures :)










And if you want to pretend like you were there too, this is what we were listening to for a good portion of the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdDLxA-Avek

And as if our day was not indulgent and lazy enough at that point, we met up later for yummy veggie Sushi and coffee and live music at the Mariscal.

I decided very last minute to go with another group of CIMAS kids to the Rainforest this weekend. We're leaving tonight (I still have to buy my ticket) and apparently are going to get a tour of the places that have been affected most by the Texaco- Petroecuador oil-related disaster.

So here we go! Just another day in the life... be back next week hopefully with some information, cool stories and pictures.

Chau!

Oh! Sidenote... I was at a coffeeshop the other day and this guy walks in wearing an Oregon State shirt, so I more or less RAN up to him and we started talking. He apparently lived in Hillsboro for a bunch of years and went to grad school at OSU back in the day and now lives in Kentucky. BUT! His wife's cousin is an accountant in Silverton... and guess who it is? Bethany Mitchell's dad! Jajajjajjajaja smallllllllllllllll world.