I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

I just love singing Christmas Carols, but what´s funnier is when you can´t remember how they start in English anymore because you´ve sung the Spanish ones so much. Qúe ridículo ¿verdad? I get to go home in 10 days, but it will take me like 2 to get there! Sick! Oh well hopefully I will be supplied with enough pirated DVD´s to make everything alright just chilling in the airport. It´s possible I will have someone to pick me up in Columbia and show me around the capital, but if it doesn´t work out I´m getting cosy on the plastic chairs baby!
Update on Baños. WEll, they are hot springs, and the water from the volcano flows into cement pools, but goodness gracious they are not the cleanest pools I´ve ever seen. And I would like to add, there is a reason speedos are restricted to only professional swimmers that need them to race. There needs to be a label ¨Not for recreational purposes!¨Sick, anyway pools were dirty full of people. But still fun, I just pretended I was at Fern Ridge, the lake in Oregon where we always go and people say is dirty. The water was perfect temperature despite the cleanliness factor. I kicked everyone´s butt when we had races though. Finally all those years of swim team come in handy! I even tried the butterfly, although I hesitated to submerge my head in the murky water. In the end, good experience but I would like to stick to the wonderful hotsprings of Utah that, at least the ones I´ve been to, are clean and not crowded with people.
I also had a chance to go to the hippie market, I even bought a cute belt made of seeds from fruits. Super cute! I actually discovered another market while walking around, so that will have to be our next trip. OOH! and for those of you who have read Anne of Green Gables and know how many times she was proposed to? Yeah I kinda feel like her, not that so many people have proposed to me, but still it´s fun when someone wants to marry you! NOT THAT I WANT TO MARRY HIM, just fun little comparison between my life and literature. Don´t worry I´m coming home without a ring, I still have adventures to go on! Anyway TTFN.(Ta ta for now, winnie the pooh)

SO 20 days until Christmas if you weren't counting now you know! Wahoo. Plus this Saturday promises to be an exciting one. I have finals in the Abe Lincoln afternoon classes this week, Saturday I teach till 12:30pm then some of the friends and I are going to the hippie area of the city for compras!(to buy jewelry!) sweet, then I'm going to Banos the hotsprings with tons of people, it's at the base of a mountain. Makes me think of the beginning of the movie Volcano when the couple gets boiled by lava when they are swimming. Yuck, but still excited to go. Then hopefully some sort of baile or activity at night. OH and thursday a whole lot of fun playing basketball! We'll see if it turns out to be as fun as it should be, don't worry there will be pictures! These new pictures are of me after the Cuenca futbol game when we tied, I was just excited about my new shirt. This is a picture of my friend monica and me, we're tight! yo

Okay so, I can kill bugs if they are a normal size and I recognize what type of bug. Well here where the lovely Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle ooze has gotten to the bugs and ginormasized them to abnormal proportions I can´t seem to kill those ones. So last night after a wonderful wet game of basketball and soccer outside in the rain I came home excited and hoping for hotwater for a great shower, to sleep well for the lovely 7 o´clock class I get to teach on Friday´s. Well little did I know I had a friend who wanted to join me. So I just give a little scream so not to wake the neighborhood, but there is something crawling around trying to escape the shower and come after me. I throw my clothes back on and run out. Guiermo is just arriving home so I solicited his help in eliminating this really a lot of legs thing. Just imagine if it has a lot of legs it has to be huge. Well maybe the size of a big person´s thumb but still with all those legs moving around yuck! Anyway turns out he´s just as scared of them as me! So we asked his mom and she got the broom and killed it. I didn´t watch but I did hear repetitive hits, meaning not just one try to kill it but many. A formidable foe indeed! Turns out is was a centipede! Aren´t those poisonous? Good thing I ran away right? Anyway you know that feeling! Afterwards I thought I saw something crawling all over the place or something trying to get me. Yuck, makes you do one of those full body shivers! Anyway that´s the adventure from last night, let´s see how today goes. Can´t wait to go home to the US and shower with simple bugs like spiders! Can´t believe I´m saying that!

FRIENDS

EXCITEMENT! So I love the TV show friends, and thanks to the copyright thieves of Ecuador I am able to purchase the whole series if I want to. Well yesterday, strolling down the cobblestone streets of historic Cuenca, with my boyfriend, I bought one season of Friends for 5 bucks! Sweet. So worth it cause I was cracking up by myself in my room. I´m sure the family thought I was nuts, but most people do. Anyway, I was excited about my exploits, I also acquired 2 new sets of earings that are very native like. I´m a fan. It´s been nice weather lately, no rain for 2 whole days crazy I tell you! I get to play basketball for a couple hours tomorrow night, Christmas and New Year´s are coming, "can life get better? I submit that it cannot!" (Brian Regan, if you haven´t heard him get on it!)

So I forgot to add to my blog that I am in a relationship with a very cute Ecuadorian boy named Rolando. I call him Roli for short like Roli poli oli haha. Anyway today is our anniversary! That was the weirdest thing to write ever. I´ve never had one of those before. We´ve been together for a month! Craziness I tell you what! I need to put better pics of him and me up but there is one of us holding hands already up. Anyway that´s the info.

Pictures!

So I've finally gotten around to adding the pictures! There are a bunch of Cuenca, which makes it look very picturesque which is funny to me cause I 'm so used to seeing the trash on the streets. Life is good and it's almost CHRISTMAS! Yeah for that. I just gave three tests yesterday and now the fun job of correcting all of them! super fun! not. There are also pictures of me getting my package and my pure ecstasy eating candy from the US! Good times all around! Other pictures are of my friends while we were playing sports! I love basketball! Happy Thanksgiving too! Eat lots of turkey and mashed potatoes and yams and pumpkin pie and fudge and whatever else I don't have down here. It's okay we're going to have a type of Thanksgiving lunch on saturday. we'll see how it measures up! haha.

Correos!
Well after two hours of fun! I tell you what, nothing like chilling with a bunch of frustrated Ecuadorians wanting their packages. Luckily after taking a taxi to the postoffice I got there earlier than I thought. I thought it had been 11 o´clock but it was 10 luckily and I was able to work everything out. First you give them your passport, and a copy(don´t forget the copy) and a dollar for who knows what. Then you wait 15-20 minutes, then they decide to send an inspector. When the inspector comes they obligingly open the package for you , how nice so everyone in the room is able to share the moment with you! After seeing what you can´t touch yet, they close the package again, having verified, no there isn´t anything valuabel. Fine says the lady. Alright wait 20 more minutes before they remember you and then the lady takes your information and efficiently hunts and pecks on the keyboard entering your information in record time. She tells you it will cost 10 dollars of taxes, less than I thought it would be so fine. Oh just kidding after another 20 minutes go by, because they have to walk very slowly upstairs to the "other" office (take a break from this hard work they are doing) and then return with a paper, and says oh by the way it will be 20 dollars instead. At this point I just grab the paper and my passport to go to the bank. Oh yes this tale does not end at the lovely post office. We get to go down the street to the bank! So I walk, ask random security guard where the supposed bank is, and he cordially looks me up and down and then tells me where it is. Inside the bank I ask which line to enter, but after entering the line, luckily the security guard says you need to go to the corner to copy that piece of paper. Of course! Why wouldn´t I? so I step graciously out of line and find the little whole in the wall (literally) copy center and copy for 5 cents. Again I return to wait in line and finally am gratified to give them my money and return with excitement to the postoffice. I throw the paper at the HELPFUL gentleman, grab my package and bolt while all the others are still milling around waiting for this great system to process them. I leave and decide against the bus, no sense going through all that and having someone steal it from me so I hail a taxi and lie and say I only have 1.50 and avoid paying the huge amount of 2.00 to take me home. Wheeww! Goodnes what a trip but it was all worth the package and treasures inside. Halloween Candy, that by the way is almost gone! AND Pens, papers, a new journal, and pants! SOmething else to wear oh glorius mail! I´ll get pictures of this scene up later but for now I´m sure you can imagine my pleasure!

Kristina had one so I wanted one too

Well, I´ve been reading Kristina´s blogs and updates and thought they were pretty fun and I could look at all the pictures, so I´m joining the club. I probably won´t be as diligent as her but what can you do? Today is the 7th of November and I have high expectations that I will be able to get my package out of Correos(the post office) today. They are only open Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 10am-12pm. Good luck with those hours. I´ve been waiting to get my package for 2 weeks. I work on mondays in that time, wedensday´s I only have an hour to get there. SO if not today then Friday for sure, unless they plan to have a random national holiday, which seems to occur quite often. The president must be like, ¨hmmm... I feel like a day off, what´s tomorrow, Friday? alright fiesta it is!¨ I swear that´s what it seems like. Anyway we´ll see what happens and you all might see pictures, either of my sad face when I don´t get it or my happy face when I do