Well, I'm afraid I have nothing of interest to tell you...at 10:30 on Saturday night me and 6 or 7 other hostal folks (Helen, Tom, Casey, Keith, cute English guy, cute Swiss girl, and others) went out into the night with the plans of dancing and getting pissed. Quite basically.
We hopped to an Irish pub, had a drink and some very overpriced and undercooked pizza, then moved to a place called Strawberry Fields Forever, had a drink and chatted (joined by some very drunk Ecuadorians for a few moments), went to a younger-crowd-oriented Reggaeton club for a drink and a dance, and finally ended at the nameless place I went to last weekend. At four in the morning, we discovered bar/club/pub in Quito is now closed so we returned, with some hesitation, to the hostel after sharing conversation and a joint with some more Ecuadorian teens in the street.
Yesterday was a stay-inside day- it's raining, and everyone is hungover and sleep-deprived due to sleeping in noisy dorm rooms where each person has a different schedule and makes no real attempt to avoid waking the others. Yesterday consisted of going to the market for a little while, then watching movies all day :P Rodrigo picked me up in his dad's car, though, and took me to this park that has a SPECTACULAR view of Quito, but all the pictures I took can't even bring you close to what it was like :( I have this incurable need to convince everyone how awesome it is here but no story, blog or photo will ever be enough.
Today I told my Spanish teacher that I'm going to Mindo on Wednesday (maybe even tomorrow afternoon) and we'll have to cut off our last lesson. So tomorrow I have a test. Oh crap. Lots of studying today, it seems! Mindo, if you don't want to look it up, is a beautiful little village about 3 hours from here by bus. It's in the cloudforest-slash-rainforest and has a butterfly garden, guides you can hire for $25/day, inner-tubing down the river next to waterfalls, hiking, hammocks...basically anything I could want. Needless to say I'm very excited to leave! I love the city and am definitely coming back, but I feel like I'm ready to go somewhere else now. Plus the weather's been rainy and cold the last few days, and I, um, misplaced my sweater on Saturday at some point and now I just have this one really light jacket that does not do a good job when it's cold and humid out. It is not pleasant. But everything else is great, and I was looking for an excuse to spend my money on one of those lovely sweaters from the market! And the art...oh the art! Ecuadorians are the most talented painters!
The plan: Mindo tomorrow or the next day, stay for 2-3 nights, head South to Cuenca and Vilcabamba for 1-2 nights each, then I'm in Peru!
xoxoxo
Paz y amor
