Mis dias de vacacion antes de escuela



As I wrote before, I luckily got to stay with Ruby Garces's family while my host family was at the coast until Sunday. At their house was Ruby's mom and dad, her niece and nephew and their dad. Marifer, the niece, with her friends was my tour guide for Quito taking me to some of the tourist places. She was able to do this because she was on summer break. David, the nephew, could not show me around too much since his leg was healing from a break; however, he and Marifer helped me so much with so many things from food to the billion questions I had, especially from not understanding since my listening of Spanish is weak.

On Thursday, Marifer, David, and his friend took me a market downtown. I dont have any pictures because it really was not safe to have anything like that there. The market was pretty much all clothes, pieces of art, and other hand-crafted items. That evening, all the family sat down for a nice lasagna meal with the wine I brought. Every evening we ate together and it was good, but this night was just extra nice. That night, I went out to the movies; the movie was all in English with Spanish subtitles.

Friday, I went with Marifer and her friends up a mountain surrounding Quito. The view was beautiful. That night, I went out for a family birthday party of Vane's cousin at a very small bar with dancing. Luckily I had some salsa lessons though I still think I spent much of the time trying to dance. It was pretty strange to be at the bar since I was clearly the only American out of the 30 people there, was so tired I could barely understand anything spoken to me, and did not know any of the songs that they were playing. Also there I had my first Ecuadorian beer, Pilsener.





Above is one of the active volcanoes near the city. The actual city itself is not in danger of lava flows like those living around it because of the terrain, but the city could receive a lot of ash if the mountain erupted. We could have rode the horses even higher, but someone got to them before us.



A little restaurant on top of the mountain.





Above is a close up of where I will be living with my host family. To find approximantly where I will be living, find the triangle-shaped mall on the left. Above it is El Parque de Carolina. Above that is a brighter orange building which is really close to where I will be.


El Virgen de Quito


Here you can see how on the other side of the mountain, the clouds are rising almost all the way to the top of the ridge and then dissipating. In the background is the bigger but dormant volcano next to the active volcano