Playas!

Well sadly its the end of the weekend... Its been the most relaxing weekend here yet. Most of the other international students headed back to Montañita, the beach town we all went to two weeks ago, but I stayed here to explore Guayaquil a little bit. And Im glad I did! Friday night I went to the movies with my host mom, Rafaela, and Leonor the housekeeper. We were supposed to go to the movies at six, but the movie Rafaela wanted to see didnt start until eight so we ended up hanging out at the mall until the movie started. My host mom insisted on buying me coffee and pan de yuca... which are these kind of round home made bread balls. Yuca is a common vegatable here thats pretty much like a potato. Cecelia, my host mom, loves spoiling me and Rafaela when we go out. She walks around referring to both of us as "mi hijitas" (my little girls) or "mi corazon " (my heart) or "mi amor"  (my love) and then sending Leonor off

to buy us some sort of treat or something. Its all very strange and a little uncomfortable for me, but I suppose thats just their life style. Anyway, after the movies I met up with some friends and went downtown to Las Peñas on the Malecón. Its an area of bars right on the riverfront. There are these steps that go all the way up a huge hill and each step is numbered and there are all sorts of little neighborhood bars on the side as you walk up. Most people refer to the bar by the step number that its on... I think theres something around three hundred and some odd steps total... we only made it to seventy. But I thought that was even pretty good considering I was wearing heels. The best part of the night is to sit outside around three after the bars have closed and watch everyone try to stumble back down the steps...

Anyway, today was my big day at the beach with my family. I woke up and had breakfast with my host mom. We had fresh ceviche and hot patacones (fried plantains)... and popcorn. Ceviche is a really good mixture of lime, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, and then your choice of seafood and its always served with some sort of plantains in Ecuador. People here have this weird thing about eating seafood for breakfast. They eat ceviche a lot and also this fish soup that youre supposed to eat in the mornings when youre hung over.

After breakfast and a monster of a temper tantrum from Rafaela over not being able to find her favorite bathing suit we finally took off for the beach. I felt slightly like a five year old the whole way there as my host mom repeatedly kept telling the cab driver to slow down because her "hijitas" were in the car. Although I think she also might have been trying to hit on him.. She likes to flirt a lot. We got to the beach and my host mom immediately rented chairs for her and I and had Leonor running back and forth to the ocean filling up a little pool for Rafaela since she doesnt know how to swim. I kept trying to get up and give my chair to Leonor since I like to lay on my towel anyway but my host mom wasnt having it...

Here is Rafaela burying herself in the sand. She insisted that I take a picture of her. This also ended up in me having to carry her to the water so that she could rinse off... which means she tries to run in to the ocean even though she knows she cant swim and then I end up having to chase after her and carry her every time theres a wave coming... which turned in to her new favorite game and ultimately resulted in another huge temper tantrum when I told her was time to leave the water...

This is the full beach of Playas. The entire thing was packed with people. Even though its technically winter here right now, this is the time of year when all their schools are out for vacation, so a lot of families head to the beach. There were vendors that walk up and down the beach selling everything from jewlery to hats to classic ecuadorian food like tortillas, chifles, and pollo de seco. At this point in the day my host mom was sitting in her chair like a queen, with a towel draped over her head and only moving to wave over a street vendor for a cigarette or ask Leonor to do something. The whole thing was pretty comical and made me feel like I was in a movie.

 Here is Rafaela and I again. At this point she was refusing to speak to me or take a picture with me because I went swimming without inviting her to come with me.  

This statue was on the main street. My host mom (in the long dress) thought it was funny to take a picture of us four girls with the big man statue... So we stopped the cab and did just that. I ended the day pretty sunburnt... Ive already had to start putting on aloe. Well, thats been my day at the beach.                                                                          I have my fist midterms of the bimester tomorrow in Spanish... should be grand fun. Sometimes I forget that I have to do normal things here too, like take tests. I really dont think tests should exist when studying abroad... I mean my head already hurts from spending the entire day speaking in spanish and nodding and smiling when I only understand about sixty percent of whats going on. Well to be perfectly honest thats only half the reason my head hurts... It also hurts because I ran in to a doorway the other night... If you cant tell from the above picture let me just inform you that Im a lot taller than most people here... and they make their doorway shorter... combine that with a pair of high heels and what do you think you get? You get me not paying attentioni and wacking the crap out of my head against the top of the door frame because I was too tall to fit through it. So now Im left with a big bump on the top of my head... Not to mention I already lost the back cover to my phone... and I dropped it in the toilet yesterday. But dont worry theres never a shortage of rice around here so I managed to get it nice and dried out and back in working order... Im still on the hunt for some duct tape to cover the back of it though .... some things just never change :)

For the most part this has been a pretty uneventful week. Im still getting used to a lot of little things around here... like the grocery stores are called Megamaxi here... and I was just getting used to saying Bilo instead of Kroger. And the dish soap here comes in a strange little round tub and is this akward semisolid flourescent green mass... And Im still not used to not being able to drink tap water...

But anyway the last few days were full of classes and such. I have mid terms coming up this week already for my first bimester! I have to do an oral presentation for my spanish class, so my friend Eryka and I are acting out our very own dialogue that we have named "La gringa blanca a y la bruja negra" which is "The white gringa and the black witch." Its sort of a play off of Snow White except I eat a poisoned plantain rather than an apple and I wake up from my slumber thanks to the help of a crazy shaman rather than a charming princes. I think we definitely improved the story...

This morning I went to Parque Histórico with some members of the International Club. It has a bunch of UEES students who are Ecuadorian trying to practice their English as well as new exchange students. Parque Histórico is a combination of a zoo, garden, and historic houses. I went a few weeks ago but didnt get a chance to bring my camera.

This little guy was licking our hands... Even though right after I took this picture we got yelled at by the tour guide for touching the animals...

This is our group on top of the bird tower. If you look in the uppermost left hand corner you can see a birds nest. These birds are some of the largest in all of South America.

This guy was my favorite. Hes a tapir and he had some crazy teeth. He didnt move the whole time we were there...

This is a church that was taken from the Malecón (a historic part of downtown right off the coast that has recently been completely renovated). It is from the 1800s and is painted in all blue and yellow which are the colors of Guayaquil.

This is another of the historic buildings that was transported from the Malecon and preserved at Parque Historico. You can walk around the insides of them as well.

This is the middle of the park where we all stopped to rest. The entire tour took almost three hours. They had fresh fruit stands serving all sorts of Ecuadorian food and fresh juices. I got fresh coconut juice which was delicious. They were also serving tortilla de verde which is made of plantain and filled with cheese, as well as madero, which is sweet plantains stuffed with cheese, empanadas and a bunch of other Ecuadorian street foods.

The guy in the picture was our tour guide of the day, Fabriscio. I forgot how much we stand out here when walking around until we got to the park again and almost every worker and tour guide recognized Eryka and I from our trip a few weeks ago. They kept pointing us and saying that we had already seen this, even though I had no clue who they were...

These are just some crazy local fruits and crops of Ecuador. Theres a type of banana in the top corner. The large round green fruit is called mate and is supposed to taste terrible... it is most common to cut it in half, hollow out the insides, dry it out, and use the gord for bowls and cups... or chamber pots! There is also some sugar cane, cocoa, and achote, which is just used to dye things red.

This is the group at the end of the tour looking over the river!!

Im resting up now and then heading to the movies with Rafaela (the demon of a five year old that lives in my house) and my host Mom. I woke up this morning to Rafaela hysterically crying... well more like yelling... because the dvd player wasnt working so she couldnt watch her disney princess movie... so now we are taking her to the movies this afternoon. Im not sure she doesnt need to be put in time out instead, but oh well, I just follow along. After the movie I am headed down town with some friends to go to the newly restored Malecón which is now a really nice area with live music and small bars!!

No Pasa Nada...

While I havent practiced my Spanish nearly as much as I was expecting to (people at school see Im a gringa and automatically talk to me in English since theyre practically all bilingual... its a little dissapointing), I have coined a few new phrases. My favorite of which is "No pasa nada." Its a great phrase that can be used in practically any situation. Although it directly translates in to "Nothing happens" it really means more of "dont worry about it" and is kind of a general way of life around here. If you miss the bus... "No pasa nada" When youre 10 Ecuadorian minutes late to class (which is really more like 30 American minutes) well... you just shrug because "No pasa nada." When the cab driver, or cell phone vendor, or waiter charges you an extra $10 because hes a jerk and can tell youre not Ecuadorian... well still "No pasa nada."
This is the same phrase that I heard all over the streets today after I witnessed my FIRST ECUADORIAN STREET PROTEST!! It lasted all of about 20 minutes but was very exciting!
But I have to rewind and start with the begining. This afternoon I took my first trip to la bahía, which is the black market in downtown Guayaquil. Its called the black market because there are no taxes applied to any purchases (not to mention a lot of the goods are fake or stolen). On top of a lot of the goods being of questionable origin,it is also prety common to get robbed while youre shopping. Since I knew this before going I didnt bring my camera with me so I dont have any actual real pictures to show you guys... but I did find this one on google images, and its pretty accurate.

This is pretty much what it looks like but times it by at least 100. They sell everything from clothes, to pirated movies, to cell phones, bikes, soccer cletes, you name it and its there. They even fit and make lenses for your glasses if you come at the right time of the day.

Today I was a big fan of the movies! They have movies in every language!! I bought 4 movies in spanish and english, all for $1 each!  The one in the picture above is a collection of Disney Princess movies in Spanish and I also got another collection that included Madagascar and another movie called Penguins that I have never seen but looked perfect for me!!! And then ofcourse I had to get the last Harry Potter!

 I also got a brand new "Adidas" book bag to carry my school books and my gym stuff to class in the morning. All the rich Ecuadorians in my class kept laughing at me because I was carrying all my gym stuff in a plastic bag... jerks...
But anyway, the black market was cool and I escaped without getting robbed, although one of the guys with us found it highly enjoyable to walk around behind me and grab my bag every five minutes to make me think someone was stealing it... I was not amused.
So back to my story about the protest... Another one of the main goals of the Correa government is to stop corruption. One of the main places where Ecuadorian corruption can be seen is in markets such as this. Like I said before, all exchanges are made in cash... cash is more common in Ecuador in general, but its also a way for businesses to get around paying taxes. When they use cash they dont give receipts, which leaves them with no record of any transaction being made... Well ofcourse the government doesnt appreciate the blackmarket robbing them and they have recently started a new wave of attempts to shut down any store that is not paying taxes. While we were in the black market today police men began to randomly walk up to stores and demand that the owners present them with receipts, if they couldnt then all goods were to be confiscated. Well, the stands close to each other form what they refer to as a "circle" each circle is kind of its own little neighborhood inside of the black market and they are very loyal to the other stands inside their circle. So as stands began to be raided by officials the stands around them begin to protest (and miraculously half of them closed down within five minutes, hiding all of their merchandise so that they couldnt be questioned or confiscated). It ended with half of the stand owners in the streets standing on cars and yelling and knocking over trashcans followed by tons of police sirens and huge crowds. The whole things only lasted about 20 minutes before people lost interest or the police brought them under control but it was rather interesting.
I learned how fast things move here today.. by the time we were walking back to our car a half hour later, amid the naueseating aroma of tipped over trash cans, the only thing people were saying on the streets when questioned about the police or the protest was "No pasa nada..."

A Night on the Town

Hola everyone!!! It has been a relatively calm couple of days here. My mosquito bites are slowly healing... and so far I havent had any signs of denge fever... so thats always a plus. I did have one of those ¨holy crap Im in Ecuador¨ moments the other day when I was sitting in my bed and saw some animal scamper across my floor. Being a gringa (the oh so loving term for white foreigner that has become my nickname to everyone on the street here), I immediately thought there was a rat in my room... which kind of grossed me out, until I looked again and realized it was a gecco, to which I immediately breathed a sigh of relief. I mean I chill out with those little buddies in my backyard all the time. Maybe Im getting way too used to life here when lizards in my bedroom dont bother me in the slightest. But on the bright side I think Im starting to get a little tanner and blonder... besides my legs which remain extremely pale due to the poor cultural stigma about wearing shorts... Some things about these people I will never understand.
Anyway, Sunday was an extremely uneventful day. I pretty much had the house to myself. The maid cooks all the food in the morning and then takes off for the day as her day off, and my host mom was off trying to pay taxes or something. But it was relaxing. I met some friends later for coffee in the mall across the street. The coffee shops here are strange... they serve baileys and amaretto and brandy in their little stands in the mall. I feel like it should be colder here to merit that.
Anyway, last night I had my weekly meeting with my program director for my study abroad company. There are only two of us who actually go to the meetings (the other girl told us she had better things to do so we told her we didnt want her there if she didnt want to come. We only accept positive attitudes). Having such a small group turned out to be a pretty cool thing though. Yesterday Claudia (the director) took us to a different mall to show us around. And then we went on a brand new double decker bus that takes you on a guided tour of Guayaquil.

 

This is the view from the top of the bus. The tour lasted about an hour and a half, but I got to see a lot of the city that I hadnt been to yet. Including the second largest mall in all of South America, Mall del Sol, where I will no doubt be returning on foot one day in the near future. The best thing about the bus ride though was the lack of roof on the top story of the bus... The bus commonly had to drive underneath trees and bushes that it was way too tall for... so it became as much of a tour as it was a mini game of mario brothers while we tried to dodge and duck all the tree branches that were soaring toward our faces. My group came out unscathed but I think one of the ladies on the other side of the bus might have taken a few branches to the face when she was trying to take a picture and not paying attention...

This is a far away picture of the Independence monument in Centennial park. Its a little hard to see since it was so dark out and the bus was moving... but it was very pretty at night.

This is just a picture of a side of the building in the middle of downtown, but I really liked the artwork! And all the gold looks very nice and sparkly in the street lights!

This was the last sight of the tour. Its a little hard to make out in the picture but the letters on the top of the building say La Universidad de Guayaquil. It was the first University established in Guayaquil, sometime in the late 1800s and is still the biggest university in the city although now it has a ton of satelite branches.

By this point we were grumpy and ready to jump off the top of the bus in order to get some dinner since it was almost nine o´clock... We walked down to Malecon, which is the newly renovated river board walk. It was just constructed in 2000. The Correa government has started, (and surprisingly completed) a lot of these types of community based construction projects in an effort to improve the safety of the city as well as provide jobs for as many citizens as possible since unemployment is a really significant problem here. After eating a typical Ecuadorian dinner on the river front (platacones, which are fried smashed platains, ceviche, and rice ofcourse) we went to an Ecuadorian casino since neither of us had ever been to a real casino. I only bet a dollar on the slot machines... but our program director ended up making 35 before we left!

Anyway, today is another day of classes.During my mid day break Im going with the same people from last night to la Bahía to do a little shopping. La Bahía is the black market in town. Its the best place around to get good stuff cheap, but they also have a reputation for stealing things like your phone out of your back pocket and then following you down the road for five minutes and trying to resell it to you... I need a bookbag and a few other things so hopefully I will have some luck. I have to put on my game face and try to bargain.... Keagle Im still on the look out for your poncho!

Well it has been a very busy few days.
Thursday I got to experience the lovely process of registering my Visa in Ecuador.  This allows me to receive an ID to carry while I am here and is also necessary just so the government is aware of my presence in the country. The building reminded me almost  exactly of the DMV in the United States, and the waiting process and inefficiency was about the same as well. Of course, it probably didnt help that there was a group of 25 of us that all came at once, many of which speak virtually no spanish at all!! We got quite a bunch of nasty looks from the disgruntled workers who I dont think appreciated the rush of business. One of the Canadian students didnt have the right paperwork to register his Visa. It was interesting, the government official kept giving off hints that with the certain amount of money he could let it slide... even though I kew it existed it was strange to see corruption like that face to face in a government building. Needless to say these workers are not permitted to handle money. They had to write us a payment notification for the $10 fee it costs to register a Visa, which we then had to bring across the street to the federal bank. The federal bank was surrounded by policemen. The bank worker proceeded to ask me if I spoke Spanish, wink at me, and tell me I was beautiful. I wanted to glare at him and tell him I didnt think it was professional, but I behaved and put on my best foreign diplomat smile and walked away. We then had to take our payment back to the first buliding and wait in line again.... Needless to say by the time all 25 of us were done it had taken almost four or five hours....
Later that day I had my first lessons in salsa dancing! The first half of the class felt a lot more like aerobics than a dance class but it was still a lot of fun! The second half of the class we partnered up and learned a few basic moves! My host Mom told me that they offer more classes down the road for $10 an hour if Im ever interested and have free time so I might look in to that!
Friday we had a cultural seminar (a.k.a. a very unnecessary and early meeting so that we could all meet up and complain about the monster cockraoches and who had ripped us off that week because they could tell we were foreign). 
The area where Im living is right outside of the city of Guayaquil, and is known as Sonborondon, although to the people of Guayaquil it is known as La Burbuja, which is Spanish for the Bubble. They call it that because it is one of the nicer areas, you can barely even tell you are living in a developing country. The actual town of Sonborondon is extremely different and is about 20 minutes down the highway. After having to crawl out of bed early to talk about my feelings at the cultural seminar... we took a field trip to the town of Sonborondon. We visited a local charity and a local potter demonstrated how to make clay pots. Both of these meetings were at least thirty minutes late to start since all of the townspeople run on what is known as Ecuadorian time.
The town was very poor, much more what I expected an Ecuadorian town to look like. They drove these motorized carts around for the most part instead of cars.

These are the rice fields that lined the road the entire way up to the village. I eat rice here twice a day almost everyday!!!

They had this chicken tied up to a broken down motorized cart outside of one of the townspeoples houses. The little girls were playing with it... I guess they were never taught not to play with their food.

since this is what the poor chicken was probably going to end up looking like later. I took this in the town market. The market is a huge covered area divided in to sections according to what is being sold. There were all types of dead animals hanging fron different racks... everything from rodent to cow parts to chickens and pigs... it was a quick and sharp reminder as to why I dont eat these things. haha. Especially with the abundance of flies that were whizzing aroud.

This side of the market was more my cup of tea! The variety of fruits and vegatables was amazing! Too bad I dont even know what they all are! But these are the lovely fruits that I get to drink for fresh juice every morning!

After touring the market we went to eat lunch at a local restaurant. I had rice (ofcourse), lentils, and two different kinds of fresh platanos. My plate also came with a huge piece of fried chicken which I cleverly bartered for extra platanos. The guy in the picture is one of the board members of the International club. His name is Christian, and he is one of the Ecuadorian students responsible for helping us get around during the first few weeks. He is also very nice when it comes to helping us with Spanish!

These are some local villagers that were hard at work making little boats. I didnt stay here too long though because it smelled absolutely horrendous. The odor of sweat, manure, and animals multiplies quickly in such hot and wet weather... After this we finally returned home and I got to take a quick nap before doing some homework and eating dinner which had so nicely been prepared for me and left in the fridge! Im getting so spoiled here!

It was on of the international girls birthday so her host family threw her a huge party at her house and invited us all over. It was a lot of fun! In the picture are two of my new friends from New York City who took it upon themselves to dress me up like a city girl for the night!

Today we had another excursion where they pulled me out of bed early again to travel lto Manglares Churute, which is a nature reserve of Mangrove trees.

If you look closely at the tree in the picture you can see a black howler monkey crawling along one of the branches. And boy were they loud! They sounded like someones stomach growling  if they were really really hungry. We also saw a bunch of cool birds and another type of monkey as well. The only bad part was that despite three layers of bug spray the mosquitos were eating us a live. Even my face was victim to a few bites. You could see them flying in swarms in front of you while you were walking.  

These are the mangrove trees. Their bottom roots play hosts to tiny crabs. They also have roots that hang down from the tree which serve to collect oxygen from the air since the bottom roots are often covered in water.

This is the group before heading out on a boat trip.

My friend Megan and I on the canoe. My new friend from Australia decided to jump in the back of the picture with that lovely facial expression.

This was the natural lake that we toured. Its an ecological reserve and is completely surrounded by different types of the mangrove trees.  

After the lake we went to a cocoa plantation where we learned about cocoa cultivation. You can see in the picture that the cocoa pods are pretty big. When you split them open theres a bunch of seeds which are surrounded by a sweet white fruit which is actually very good! By the way the girl in the picture is from Germany... I think Spanish is her fourth language now!! She came here straight from another study abroad in India!

This is our tour guide showing us how the beans are fermented, dried, roasted, and then pressed in to a cocoa paste. Although Ecuador is one of the leading exporter of cocoa beans, they focus almost entirely on growing the primary product and host very little to none of the actual production of chocolate. We did get to try a little of the pressed cocoa that had been mixed with sugar to make natural hot chocolate.

Anyway, that has been my last few days of adventure in Ecuador! I am running on lack of sleep and begining to look polka dotted from mosquito bites, but all is well and stifling hot here!

No Longer An Orphan...

Its official! My host Mom has arrived back from New York! I went to the beach this weekend with some friends and when I got back I had a Mom! She is very nice but definitely has a very strong character to her... The first thing she did when I got home was order the maid to make me dinner and then sat down and went over all the house rules with me.. But she seems pretty interested in my life and pretty laid back and open minded, especially for conservative Ecuador. Even though she did glare at me slightly when she found out that I spend most of the year living in my own apartment in South Carolina and not with my parent. I dont think she found that very appropriate at all. Haha. But that wasnt nearly as bad as the glaring look I got when she found out I wasnt a strict Roman Catholic. Ah well... we seem to get along alright besides those minor details.
Right now Im taking two classes. We go to each class every day so when March rolls around Ill switch and take three different classes until the end of the semester. Im taking a Spanish Language class which is full of other international students and then Im also taking an International Marketing class, which is all Ecuadorian students. My teacher for that class is an extremely hippy American with a long pony tail who likes to pick on me a lot. Hes pretty cool though and I think his class will be easy. Guayaquil just had its first Hooters open up down town and the teacher is infuriated that 'Ecuador would let such American trash in to the city' So naturally, were taking a field trip in a few weeks to go to Hooters and see if we think it can survive the Ecuador market... haha
I will report that Ecuador has the craziest population of insects ever. There are these monstrosities of bugs around that look like a mutated mix between a grass hopper and a cricket. I keep finding dead ones everywhere... its quite disturbing.
I took a weekend trip to a beach town this weekend with some friends. Its called Montañita and its absolutely gorgeous! Its the main place for college kids to go when they want to get away for the weekend. We stayed in a very cheap hotel where the beds were full of sand and the bathrooms lacked doors.. but it was a blast. Not to mention they had the best cocktails ever. They take fresh fruit and blend home made daquiries,coladas, mojitos, etc, all right in front of you! It was delicious!
But now its back to another normal week of classes...We have a few more field trips this weekend to some nearby rural villages which should be pretty cool And I have a salsa class on Thursday!!

Montañita at sunset! And you people have to deal with it being January and cold...

My crazy friend from Peru that we met at the beach. He was telling us all about South America and where to visit. I had to take the picture because his hair was so crazy.

The fresh fruit cocktail stands

My new friend Josh and I at the beach!

This is Rafaela, shes the five year old girl that lives in the house. Her new favorite thing to do is get her picture taken with my camera and watch cartoons in my room.

Off to class for now..

First impressions of Guayaquil!

Its been an intersting week so far trying to get settled in to life in Guayaquil! Its been slightly chaotic trying to figure out the bus system, where everything is on campus, how much youre expected to be home for meals, ect. But its been good all the same! So far my classes are really easy. Im only taking two! We go to each class every day here so we only take them for half a semester. I will sign up for three next bimester in order to end up with five credits for the whole time Im here. Its been extremely hot here! Some friends and I have been taking advantage of the pool on campus!
So far the food has been amazing! The lady that owns the house Im living in is still in New York somewhere.... so its just me and the housekeeper. There is another lady in her 20s that lives with us but she owns a restaurant and is at work a lot so Ive only ever seen her once. She has a five year old daughter who Ive seen a few times. The five year old girl is crazy, she came in my room the other day because she wanted to color and she got very mad at me because I was American and I didnt know how to draw Snow White just right! But everyone should know that Im starting to eat sea food while Im here! Guayaquil has some of the freshest seafood in the world. I told my maid that I hadnt tried seafood since I was a little kid so now she is cooking little sample sized portions of all sorts of different types for lunch every day! So far I have had two different types of fish and even shrimp! Breakfast in Guayaquil consists of lots of fresh fruit, like pineapple, papaya, banana, apple, etc., with some type of fresh squeezed juice, coffee, and usually some sort of starch and cheese, like bread or cereal. Lunch is practically a five course gourmet affair. When I get home from class the maid usually has home made soup ready followed by some sort of protein or vegatables with rice and a side salad. And most of the time there is some kind of fruit dessert and fresh squeezed juice again as well!
We went on a tour of the city of Guayaquil when we first got here and it was HUGE! I still have so much to see down there I feel like I cant even begin to start to describe it yet! All any of the locals talk about is how much the city has improved in the last ten years... Here are a few pictures!

This is the whole group in front of Las Peñas in downtow in Guayaquil! Its one of the areas of the city that has been recently renovated and transformed from a not so good area to a great tourist attraction! 

This was taken at a park in the middle of downtown. Its known to people from Guayaquil as park of the Iguanas. These iguanas just chill out in the park all day long. In reality, these iguanas are all over the city though, we have a few in our backyard sometimes, just not as big.

This is my kitchen and the bar where I eat breakfast and dinner!

This is the backyard of my house and where I usually eat my lunch!!!

 

This is the living room where Ive never actually sat... but its pretty!

This is the marble stair case you see as soon as you walk in the door to my house!

This is the up stairs living room, outside of the door to my room! I have my own bathroom and study area in my area of the house!!

This is a bunch of us sitting on the balcony last night before going downtown!