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| At Usman's house with my yummy cakes! (Made mostly by Maddie) |
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Lukas, Liliann, me, Sonja and Sigrid on my birthday. |
I've started my dance classes, they are on Mondays and Wednesdays after school. Now, I am in NO WAY a hip hop dancer, but I'm learning and having a lot of fun in the process. We are doing a dance show in December and in March we have a big competition in Quito against other dance troups. I've also started volunteering at a foundation here in the valley that deals with disabled children (most of them have down's syndrom). I go Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 3 to 4:30 after school. A few weeks ago I went to my first pro soccer game, Ecuador vs Venezuela.. it was so much fun! Although the huge ammount of police officers there were unfortunately necessary. 
Since the last time I wrote, I've been on two different rotary trips, to Mompiche and Manabi. The first one (Mompiche) was with over 50 of the exchange students at a five star beach resort. We spent our time there having spanish classes, seeing shows, swimming, having impromptu dance lessons by the pool and eating.. A LOT. AND.... climbing the increadible amount of stairs they had between our rooms and the beach, my legs actually got sore from all the stairs! Thank goodness for the stairs though.... I would have gotten VERY large considering all the food I ate :-p. Have I mentioned the food here is amazing? Especially ceviche.... it's a cold soup and it usually has seafood in it. the first time I had it I didn't really like it, but now.. YUMMM! We barely slept at all that week... I went to bed at about 2am every night and that was early compared to some people. We didn't learn a lot of spanish while there... what they were teaching us we had already learned in our first few weeks here, but it was fun anyway. I came out of it with a lot of new friends and my skin, a darker shade of pale. I thought that nothing could be better than a week at a beautiful beach resort with over 50 other exchange students... turns out I was wrong.
The Mompiche trip was great, but nothing can beat the time we spent in Manabi. The hotel wasn't half as nice as the one in Mompiche.. but this time there were over 130 exchange students, and because the hotel was smaller, we were together all the time. For this trip, we didn't have spanish classes only organised activities. We spent a lot of time dancing (as usual), playing games, having camp fires, enjoying the beach and riding on tubes through the huge waves *(COUSINS: the tube we had was the same one as at the cottage!! But the waves were 3 times bigger... my arms were sore the next day from holding on so tight). We got to be in a military parade and we also got to ride around Portoviejo (a town) in chivas! Chivas... are hard to explain.. basically, they are two story party buses, ours had live bands on the top.
Benedicte (Denmark), and Rachel (USA)
One of my favorite nights was probably when we all ended up in the pool. It started with a talent show, afterward we had dancing (have I mentioned that people dance ALL THE TIME here?) Anyway, it was warm out, so some of the boys started jumping into them pool, then coming back out and getting everyone wet. More and more people began jumping into the water. It didn't take long for Lukas and Valdemar to find me, drag me to the pool, kindly allow me to remove my shoes then push me into the water... fully clothed.*(Cousin David: Valdemar is the one who reminds me of you.... this is just one example). ANYWAY, it turned into a huge late night pool party. Everyone was in the water, having a really good time all together. I made a friend from Belgium so I got to practice my french a lot. We had a good time laughing about the differences between Canada french and Belgium french. I also learned about a.. well about a little... tension, or rivalry between France and Belgium. Since I was with the Belgian..and I speak Canada french, I was aparently an entertaining target for the France guys. As an example... I was talking with Theophile when Alex (from France) came up and was like "hey! The two countries who stoles our language!" It was all for fun though.With the exchange students it's kind if like a huge family reunion, since we all have a huge part of our lives in common, we tend to click pretty easily.
me, Otis (Ger.), Theophile (Bel.), Gerrit (Ger.) and Rachel (USA)
I'm really starting to feel comfortable now. I love my family, my school, and all my friends. The other day I went out for lunch (typical food from the amazon) with Michelle, Monica and Jose from my class. Last week-end me and the other girls from my rotary club went to a lodge/camp thing with our councellors and last night I went out to a halloween/ birthday party with Andrea and Sebastian. We dressed up as a spoon, fork and knife, it was hilarious. I've been learning and experiencing so much! I do miss home... but I know it's going to be very hard to leave at the end of the year. I think Ecuador has already stolen some of my heart!
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