I love christmas, but goodness it was too short. Only a week and then I came back. New year's was good here. They burn human size manican's that represent all the bad from the previous year. Kinda feels like home since my brother's are piros and there were a bunch of fire works. Oh I got my first midnight new year's kiss, wasn't as cool as I though it would be since I can kiss my boyfriend whenever, but it' s a check on the list of the things I've wanted to do my whole life.

So I'm finishing up finals at the university and I get a month of till the next cycle, but I still teach in the afternoons. Hopefully I get to go to the beach for the weekend to hang out in a couple weeks. There is a thing called Carnival here where they just eat and throw water baloons at poor unsuspecting streetwalkers. It doesn't start till first week of February, but yes they like to get a jump on the baloon throwing early! ugh. yes I've been hit in the leg! I was so mad, but what can you do when they drive away in a car? Any way here's a picture or two of christmas and me and roli! Hope to write more when something exciting happens.

Oh I did go to the hotsprings again, still gross,but cute little town and great french fries after!

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.