I swear Ecuador just keeps getting better and better. At first I had to work pretty hard to get my host family to talk to me, but since attending two different family birthday parties they've seemed to open up quite a bit. And boy are families gigantic here! My host mom is the grandma of the family with 10 children, all whom have spouses and 2-3 children each! It was fun to talk to some locals my age though...I made good friends with my cousins, and was grilled by my aunts and uncles about what my family thinks about my being here, and my thoughts on Obama :) I do have to say that my head was ridiculously overloaded with spanish afterwards, but it was a great learning experience. On Sunday after one of the parties I headed to a Sports bar at the local mall to watch the Superbowl with some friends. We had tons of fun with the 3 liter tubes of beer and good food they had, not to mention the exciting game even though the Cards lost :(
Saturday we had a group field trip to Cajas National Park where we had a nice hike through the park and learned about all the different types of trees, plants, and flowers. Of course I can't remember any of them, but they were pretty. There was even a eucalyptus tree forest! After returning to Cuenca and resting at our homes for a few hours we met up at a Sushi restaurant to celebrate Emily's birthday and go out together.
Midterms came and went in a flash since we have just one week left here. Our professor split the group into 2 for a conversation/debate of the cultural differences between Ecuador and the U.S. We all rocked it, although some definitely did more than their fair share of talking. Our final projects are due on Tuesday, so we are all trying to get a large majority of it done today so we can enjoy our weekend trip to the beach starting tomorrow. A 5-pg paper completely in Spanish accompanied by a 30 minute presentation to the class, ugh! My partner and I are focusing on Ecuador immigration to the U.S. which is pretty interesting as the majority of the immigrants are from the province of Azuay which is where we are.
Ciao mis amigos!
