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!