Rainy days, salsa dancing, and Galapagos prep!

Hola mis amigos,

My weekend was really fun, and also really relaxing, which was a nice change after the stressful week I had. On Friday after lunch I met up with 4 of my program mates (Miriam, Sam, Tim, and Elliot) to go to an artisan market near one of the parks (called El Ejido) in Quito. There were only about 8 stalls, which was a lot smaller than we were expecting, but it was fun to shop around and look at everything. The things being sold were basically the same as what we saw in Otavalo, but we did find some new things, like knitted slippers. I bought an alpaca sweater and a present for my mom, Miriam got headbands, Sam got a sweater, and Elliot bought some of the slippers. Once we were done shopping we met up with another girl, Rachel, who told us that her taxi driver had told her about a different market nearby, which she led us to. It turns out we went to the wrong market, the other one was indoors and much bigger, but by that time we were all pretty much done shopping, so it didn't really matter. After that we went and had dinner at a restaurant that we all enjoyed eating at when we were living at the hostel during orientation week, which was really fun.

On Saturday morning after breakfast I went for a walk with my mom and comadre around Parque la Carolina, in the center of Quito. It was a really nice morning and it was fun to walk with them because the entire time they were either gossiping or telling me stories. The walk around the entire perimeter of the park is 4 km (I think that's about 2.5 miles, but I'm not sure) which made it pretty good exercise too. When we got home I took a shower and then called Miriam, because we had plans to go to the Vivarium, which is like a museum with live reptiles and amphibians in it, that afternoon. It started pouring rain a little bit before we were going to go, though, so we decided to go to the movies instead. We met up at a random mall and our plan was to just pick the movie that started closest to the time when we got there. We got pretty lucky because we ended up with 3 choices, two of which were English movies with Spanish subtitles. We saw I love you, man (Te amo, brother in Spanish) which was really really funny. Miriam and I were definitely the only people who spoke English in the audience, and whenever there would be a funny joke in English that didn't translate to Spanish we would both be cracking up, while everyone else would be completely silent.

It was really fun to go see the movie, but it was very disorienting, especially when we were leaving the theater. It felt like such a normal thing to do and as we were walking out we both felt like we had been magically transported back to the U.S. It was kind of a shock to walk out and realize that everyone outside was going to speak to you in Spanish, not English. After that we both went home, ate dinner, and then later on that night went out salsa dancing with Sam and her German host sister. We went to a small Cuban salsa club, and it was really fun to get to practice the moves we'd learned during orientation week!

Sunday was a pretty low-key day for me, I spent most of it doing work and watching Grey's Anatomy. I also went to the local supermarket (called Supermaxi) with my sister to get some snacks for the Galapagos trip. We leave tomorrow at 6am, and I'm super excited! Our group is going to be split in half the entire week, and half of the time we'll spend in homestays on Isabela island, and the other half will be on a ship going between different islands. We are the only study abroad group that does homestays in the Galapagos, so I'm really excited to get to have that unique experience. My bag is almost packed with all the essentials I'll need for the week: sunscreen, flippers, mask, snorkel, and lots and lots of snacks. I'll be sure to take LOTS of pictures and post them as soon as I get home!

Hasta luego!
Caroline