GOL!!!!!!!

Not long ago I just got back from a soccer game: Ecuador vs. Peru. Ecuador was not expected to do well because they have been playing pretty badly as of late, but wow, they showed us! They beat Peru 5-1 with some pretty amazing goals! It was a really good time!! VIVA ECUADOR!!!
I have a huge paper due in a week and a half but I have my presentation on it tomorrow! :( I'm not excited for that. It was nice to take a break with the soccer game though.
I'm going to be staying in Quito again this weekend to get everything done before my mom comes. YAY!

Ocupada

I´ve been crazy busy lately with all the things I have to turn in this month. Last weekend I had plans to go on an amazing hiking trip to this place called Quilatoa loop but my plans fell through and I ended up staying in Quito.
I went to this really cool Electrotango show. It´s tango music but electronic, and it´s really good! They also had two dance partners and they were amazing! It was really great. I mostly just bummed around Quito other than that and got a lot of work done.
Today I´m going on a trip to Mindo with my University. Mindo is supposed to be really great, but the trip is ridiculous and I´m actually really angry about it. Included in our tuition for the trip is $100 alloted to a trip with the University. I´ve been trying to get my money for my galapagos trip all year to put it to better use, but I couldn´t get it. I sent a bunch of emails to office of international programs here and in Wisconsin and each party is just blaming the other. Anyways, the money was älready spent and we can´t get reimbursed¨ 2 weeks ago on this trip... and this is all it includes; private transport (2 1-2 hours each way), one night in a hostel, and three meals. I´m sorry, but this does not add up to $100. If I were to go to mindo by myself and stay in a cheap hostel, it would be $20 for all of that... so with a nice hostel and private transportation, I don´t see how that would be an extra $80... anyways, I´ll stop ranting, but I´ve just been really annoyed with a few administrative things here... my galapagos class as well, but that is a different story.
So i´m going to have a positive attitude about this trip and hopefully it will end up being fun.
I don´t think i´ll ever get to go to the quilatoa loop which makes me really sad, but oh well. I´m really excited for my mom to come and later the galapagos, and to be done with school!

Vilcabamba? No, how about Montanita...

We had plans to go to Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador this weekend, but since it was the holiday, everyone wanted to leave Quito. Buses everywhere were full so we decided to go to the beach, to a town called Montanita. It was 8 hours to Guayquil where we bought indirect bus tickets to montanita, so it was 11 hours total. the line for the coast in Guayaquil was insane and everyone was pushing, but I survived the chaos. So, Montanita was 11 hours in bus one way. When we got there it was raining and my first step off of the bus was into mud. Much of the weekend was spent walking barefoot through montanita because when i wore sandals, my shoes would get stuck and i would have to carry them anyway. Despite the weather, the trip was very good. It was a very hippie/surf town and there was a lot of fun jewelry and clothes there. I bought a necklace and bracelet there. The beach was also really nice too, I love the ocean. I didn't really go swimming, just up to my butt. I wasn't in the mood to be cold all day. Montanita is a lot more expensive than other places in Ecuador. You are all probably going to think I'm crazy but I was dissapointed when the hostels were $10. We stayed in a 10 the first night and a $5 with damp beds the next night. The restaraunts were also expensive, $3 for breakfast (tea, eggs, juice, bread, fruit)--usually you can get this for $1.80-2, and dinner about $5 (usually you can find a good $3.50-4. Montanita is definitely not the place to sleep. Music is blasting at all hours, literally until 6 am and stops until 9 am. On sat. night we "went to bed" at 1:30 and woke up at 4:15 to leave town and the music was still going.
My skin is disgustingly dry by the way. It's been dry the whole time I've been here, but now it's really at it's top point. My eyes are extremely dry and my family and friends always ask if i'm sick or tired because of it. I also have had a runny nose the whole time I've been here. i think it's because of the pollution.
I finished 100 years of Solitude and it was awesome!! Now I'm going to start Cuidad y los Perros ( a time of the hero). I have a lot of projects to do this month that i really need to finish before my mom comes.

Tena and whitewater rafting

Last weekend was a blast! On Friday about 7 of us left for Tena which is about6 hours away in the Oriente. Even the bus ride was nice! They say that Ecuador has every climate of the world except 4... I definitely saw like 6 of them on the busride. On Friday night we just relaxed for the most part- we stayed in a $5 hostal. Saturday morning we woke up at 8 am and had breakfast ($1.80 for eggs, bread, cheese, coffee, and juice) and headed to Riverpeople Rafting. We headed out and while they were getting the rafts ready we dove into this beautiful pool of water under a waterfall and then climbed up the mini-waterfall. It was very nice and the perfect temperature. We rafted level 3 rapids which were really fun for my first time rafting. The 2nd rapid we hit we surfed, which means the raft gets stuck in like a whirlpool sort of and you can't get out. I definitely thought I was going to get sucked in or something, but we all jumped out the top of the raft. Then later, my friend Becca and I fell out at a different rapid. It was a lot of fun though and there were a lot of pools to just jump out and sit in. We also swam one of the rapids which was fun although I swallowed a lot of water.
We had lunch in the middle of the river on a beach which was nice... the whole day was about 9 am-4 on the river, for $50!! It was great. The only bad thing was that all the insect repellent we put on got washed off by the water so we all got tons of bug bites and I've been itching ever since! After we got back and showered and everything we were going to go to dinner but there was a huge storm and lightning hit pretty close to our hostal and all the power went off. I was really surprised by how fast they fixed it though- within 30 min, and then we ran through the rain to a really good restaraunt called Tortuga. We were going to go out dancing that night but it turned out we had no energy again.
The next morning we went to a place called monkey island. We hiked a little on the trails they had there and sat by the river a little which was relaxing. Then we went to this little hostal there to look at the view and all these monkeys started appearing all around us! It was really cool and they were very close to us! The people who worked there also brought out a boa constricter and I held it which was absolutely insane! It was really heavy and a little scary but I'm glad I did it!
This week at school was pretty relaxed, we don't have school on Friday so I'm leaving tonight with two other girls to go to Vilcabamba in the south of Ecuador where everyone apparently lives til they are past 100 years old. We were going to fly but it's $155 round trip, so instead we are going to take the 12-15 hour bus ride to Loja and then another 2 hour bus to Vilcabamba.