CARNAVAL!

It’s been a week, and a lot of really important stuff has happened. At least, I think it has. I don’t know exactly what these things were, though, because I’ve been completely cut off from everything else in the world since Saturday morning. Since it’s really hard to comb the archives of MSNBC, the Plain Dealer or the Akron Beacon Journal (or ESPN, Sports Illustrated or MLB.com) for news that’s 4 or 5 days old, here’s the deal: you tell me what I missed since Friday evening, and I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing since last Wednesday. Deal?

For the record, I have less than a month left here in la Republica del Ecuador.

Salsa lessons last Thursday were a blast. Lisa and I were partners, and I feel it’s safe to say we quickly mastered the salsa… or at least what we were taught, which wasn’t much. But we can do the same moves over and over like PROFESSIONALS, baby. After the lesson was over, the instructor said that if anyone was interested in taking some more salsa lessons, she would love to try to work us into her schedule. About twelve of us (including Lisa and me—you can’t break up such good dance partners) took her up on her offer and signed up for a Tuesday slot. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty excited.

Last Friday, I received my grade for my final presentation in Spanish 302 and my final grade in the class. Despite my worrying about whether I even had close to 15 minutes of material (that was the minimum), I was able to talk for 20... and to my surprise, I got a perfect score! Of course, this feat was matched by—who else?—Lisa Brown, but that’s only fitting. We’ve been in tight competition for Spanish grades since our junior year of high school, so why would we stop now? Spanish 395 started Thursday, but due to the trip to the Amazon, I’ve only had three days of classes so far, so I’m still trying to get a feel for the class. It will be interesting; we will get to take some trips as a class to talk to people about current Ecuadorian issues (we took a trip to a rose plantation today), and we’ll get to watch some movies that also deal with issues affecting Latin America today (we already watched Maria Full of Grace, about drug trafficking and migration). It may get hard with writing assignments, but it shouldn’t be too bad.

Now for the Amazon. To be honest, it was not quite what I was expecting--there were no incredibly huge trees, no canopy, no diverse ecosystem of all sorts of exotic animals (at least, not that we could see). We were in the Amazon, but towards the edge; the “rainforest” as we think of it (or at least as I think of it) does not extend as far west into Ecuador as where we were staying. Regardless, the Amazon Rainforest is the Amazon Rainforest, and I’ll always be able to say I was there, even if I wasn’t as far in as I would have liked.

From Saturday afternoon until Tuesday afternoon, we were staying in a resort called La Casa del Suizo, built on the banks of the Napo River, surrounded by our part of the Amazon. It was a nice resort, but the activities they led for us were better. Sunday afternoon we took large motorized canoes about 25 minutes downriver (and up another one) to get to the nature preserve/animal sanctuary, where we saw all sorts of beautiful birds, small jungle cats, reptiles.... and, most importantly, monkeys. Cooler than the monkeys in the cages, though, was the one truly wild monkey we saw from the boat going to the preserve, and the two loose formerly domestic monkeys that live at the preserve. Once we finished our tour of the animal sanctuary, these two monkeys slowly came down from the trees towards our group, until they were both clowning around on the ground amongst us, and one started climbing on one of the guys in our group and hanging from his arm. Since they’re not allowed to touch humans, he got pulled off and scolded by one of the staff members, and then promptly proceeded to curl up on a bench and pout. There’s no doubt in my mind that this monkey was actually pouting. His friend, meanwhile, was acting up for the camera. Hundreds of close range monkey pictures later (twenty-five of which are mine)...

We left for the boats, which took us even further upriver, to a small beach where we got out and unloaded innertubes. We got to tube down this river, which was about half calm, half “rapids” (meaning slightly faster and choppy), and it was SWEET. Monday we boated up the river to an isolated little shore, which was the access point to a long trail through the woods.... No, rainforest sounds cooler. It was the access point to a trail through the rainforest. This trail was everything you could ask for in a rainforest trail except for the exotic animals; it had weird plants, ants that tasted like like sugar, a zip line across a 50-foot deep gorge, a vine swing with a 50-foot drop, shaky rope bridges, good views, and mosquitoes. When we were done with the trail, our guides had built three rafts out of balsa tree trunks, and our group split up and (without too much effort) raced back to the resort. My raft dominated, but that may have had something to do with the fact that no one else had two oars. Hey, whatever. Also, I figure that since the Napo is one of the largest tributaries to the Amazon River, for all practical purposes, we actually tubed and raft-raced on the Amazon. How many people can say that? We also got to sample an indigenous alcohol called chicha, made out of some sort of root (I didnt like it, it had an aftertaste of smoked sausage), and we got to try shooting poison darts out of a blowgun, after getting our faces painted with berries like hunters. But possibly the coolest, most important thing that happened at la Casa del Suizo is that I learned two awesome card games, Spades and Six-Card Euchre. Give a man a rainforest and he'll take pictures for a day, but teach a man some card games and he'll be entertained for a lifetime.


La Casa del Suizo


View from our porch


WILD MONKEY!




Hanging on Josh.


Pouting after getting scolded.


Loving the camera


Zip lining across the 50 foot gorge. Notice the white knuckles.


Classic shot of Mario (my teacher) and Sarah (one of our directors).

We stayed at la Casa del Suizo until early Tuesday afternoon, when we left for a small town called Papallacta with oodles of hot springs. We were there for well under 24 hours, but the hot springs were incredible, and so were some of the bikinis... or rather, one bikini. No, I wasn't checking out the chicas--but there may or may not have been an OSU student cross-dressing at the pool, and the reactions from the other guests may or may not have been priceless. Also, for the first time since I've been in Ecuador, I got to see STARS, and I got to see them like I've never seen them before. There was virtually zero light pollution in Papallacta, so from 9:30 to 11:30 we were laying out in the hot springs in front of our cabins looking up at the Milky Way. There were at least 6 large shooting stars... awesome.








One of these things is not like the other....

This weekend also was Carnaval in the Catholic world, and in Latin America, that means launching water, water balloons, fruit and flour bombs at women and tourists, especially women and especially tourists. Traveling to Papallacta, we were warned to close all of our windows, because there was danger in the road ahead.... but some people were sleeping or didn't hear, and as a result, water and fruit hit several targets inside the rear of our bus. Also at la Casa del Suizo, some of our girls experienced Carnaval firsthand:



The best (or worst) thing is, all of this is not only excused, but encouraged, and all you need to say is "CARNAVAL!"

While this coming weekend is officially a free weekend, most of our group is traveling to different parts of the country, either Guayaquil (the largest city in Ecuador), Cuenca (ancient colonial city with some Incan ruins), or beaches in the south of the country. As for me, Abuela Joven is planning on taking me and my Ecua-siblings trout fishing sometime Saturday, and I plan on attending a soccer game between Liga and Deportiva Quito on Sunday afternoon. Liga is not only based in Quito and the most popular team in Ecuador, but they finished as the second best club team in the world last year, behind Manchester United. The fans are the epitome of passion. I'm pretty pumped.

Cultural Note of the Day: The flowers here are BEAUTIFUL. They have flowers here that I've never seen before, and they're all exotic and vibrant and really cool. Instead of talking more about it, I figure I'll just include pictures.





SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: Sara Beth (I hope you can settle for pictures of monkeys, I couldn’t get the real thing), and, of course, Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy

This is a Big One

I had an awesome weekend.

In this case, I'm counting the weekend as starting on Thursday evening, because although there was class from 8:00 to 10:00 Friday morning, everyone's minds were already on the beach.

So starting with the new beginning of the weekend, Thursday night: Thursday was one of our classmates' birthdays, and so someone decided that to celebrate, we needed to order a Chiva. Chivas are, simply put, Latin American party buses. They are always colorful, always loud, they always offer alcohol (canelazo--a warm, cinnamony, slightly fruity liquor), they always drive around the city for as long as you pay them to, and they always make their occupants look like complete fools.

What a great way to celebrate a birthday.

So our tour was from 8 to 10 in the evening, cruising around Quito in this ridiculous looking bus (I didn't bring my camera, but I'll jack some pictures from some other people and put them up soon). Disco lights were flashing, there was a live band in the back and a DJ in the front, the fog machine was going, the canelazo was being passed around, and since the seats were around the walls of the Chiva, the middle was left open for a dance floor type thing. This was basically our evening, having a blast making fools of ourselves in front of all of Quito, until we pulled into the Centro Histórico, where we stopped in front of the Plaza de San Francisco, and the band unloaded... and told us to dance. There were not many people in the Plaza at 9:20 in the evening, but there was a really short, homeless, nearly-toothless, drunk old man who LOVED the impromptu party. For all the ridiculous dancing we did on the Chiva, we did just as much awkward standing around in the Plaza, until this old man walked over to us shaking his hands (and his hips) to the music. He approached Courtney, doing his little drunken old man dance, and she decided to humor him... and that's when Courtney and the short, drunk old man began dancing around the Plaza. As if this wasn't good enough, when Courtney had finished, the man got to dance around the Plaza again with one of the Jessicas. There's no way that suddenly getting to dance around the Plaza de San Francisco with a couple of beautiful young gringas who appeared out of nowhere wasn't an answer to this man's prayers.


That's right. Amor Imposible: Impossible Love. (Photo from Kirsten)


No drunken indigenous Ecuadorian man has ever had a better dance. (Photo from Kirsten)

Friday after class, we left for the beach, and it was absolutely incredible. The beauty of our time on the beach (as with all good times on the beach) wasn’t in the things that were planned, but with all the things that weren’t planned: we were on a beach, on the Pacific, on the equator, in the middle of February, and we DIDN’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. And yeah, we’re getting credit for this, too. The weather was beautiful the whole time, so we had a good time hanging out, getting some sun, playing in the waves, boogie boarding, playing strip euchre… you know, beachy things. The memorable quote from the weekend came thanks to Adam Luzio who, wanting to know if there were many crabs on the beach, asked one of our teachers at dinner Friday night, “Hey Mario, hay muchos conejos en esta playa?” The problem is that this sentence translates to “Hey Mario, are there a lot of rabbits on this beach?” This was good enough to elicit an incredulous “What the f***?” out of one of our normally conservative directors, which only made it better.

We left Esmeraldas around 1:00 on Sunday afternoon for our seven hour drive back to Quito. With only about two and a half hours left to go, we came to a section of the road that had previously washed out and all cars in both directions were forced to share a one lane dirt detour. We had passed this going to Esmeraldas and had only spent 20 to 30 minutes waiting for our turn to go, so we didn’t figure it was a big deal. Three hours and more than one whole movie later, we finally got to pass… and as we would later learn, a mere five minutes after we passed through, the detour washed out. That meant that both roads between Esmeraldas and Quito were impassible, which wouldn’t have mattered to us, except two of our classmates who had gone to a different part of Esmeraldas on their own for the weekend had not yet left Esmeraldas. Their bus left around midnight Sunday, and they got stopped around the same place we had been due to traffic… but they ended up spending FIFTEEN HOURS in the same spot without moving an inch. That’s from 5:00 AM until 8:00 PM in the same spot in the middle of nowhere, with no bathroom, and their only food and water coming from sugarcane they cut down from the side of the road. Eventually, their bus returned to Esmeraldas, and I am completely serious that they are still there, trying to find a way back to Quito. Allegedly, they managed to get a flight for 4:00 this afternoon… we’ll see.

Sounds cool, right?

Other random stuff: Thursday night when I got home, there was a beautiful bouquet of blue roses on my desk with a note signed by my whole Ecuafamilia. Abuela Joven said they were for Valentine’s Day, but since it was my last night here before the 14th, I was just getting them early. She also said she got them to match my eyes, but I’m pretty sure it’s just because everyone in this house loves blue. Also, today was my last day of Spanish 302. Spanish 395 starts tomorrow, and it will be my class until March 24. I think I did well in 302, but we’ll see. In any case, I’m now officially done with 2 of the 3 classes I’m taking down here. Craziness. Also, our every-Thursday exploration of the city of Quito this week is a 2 hour salsa lesson. That's right.... I will honestly attempt to learn at least basic salsa dancing tomorrow. I will probably not be willing to demonstrate this for you when I get back, so don't ask.

This weekend and into next week is our next excursion, and this time we get to go to the AMAZON RAINFOREST. We leave at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday, and we will return to Quito around 2:30 Wednesday afternoon. I’m honestly not sure exactly what we’ll be doing, but I know that there will hikes, some swimming, a nature preserve and animal sanctuary, and one hot tub per room. And of course, we’ll be in the Amazon, and again, I’ll be receiving credit for this. Yeah, I’m sold. So just a reminder, I will not have internet access from Saturday until Wednesday afternoon.


My flowers from mi familia.

























Cultural note of the day: I am going to teach you how to speak like you’re from Quito. It doesn’t matter if you have no prior knowledge whatsoever of the Spanish language, you only need to know three simple words for any situation to blend right in with the natives. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear each of these words at least fifty times. Presenting the Keys to Speaking like a Quiteño:

#1: Tranquilo (tran-KEEL-o), adjective. Uses: It’s all good, be cool, be calm, quiet down, don’t be upset. Personal example: “Wait, you’re angry that you paid for four soccer jerseys and I only gave you three? Tranquilo. Here’s another one.”

#2: Chévere (CHAY-vay-ray), adjective. Uses: Awesome, special, fun, good, neat, cool, or any possible synonym. Personal examples: “You got to talk to your family? How chévere!” “Finished your homework? Chévere!” “You won? Chévere!”

#3: Lindo (LEEN-do), adjective. Uses: In the rest of the Spanish world, this means “pretty” or “beautiful.” Here, it means anything in the world that you want it to. Personal examples: “You have a twin sister? How lindo!” “Your girlfriend aced her test? Lindo!” “I think there’s air in this room! Lindo!” “Your dog just died? How lindo.” …Okay, that last example isn’t true, but the rest of them are.

Yes, this entry was huge, but I probably won’t post again until I’m back from the rainforest late next week. Tranquilo.

SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: My dog, and Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy

Smooth Move, Ex-Lax

For the first half of this entry, I’m taking a break from all things Ecuador to bring you this breaking news: I am not a very Smooth Guy.

You see, Smooth Guys take their girlfriends out for Valentine’s Day. And when Smooth Guys find themselves 3,000 miles away from their girlfriend on February 14, they at least find a way to video-call.

Smooth Guys don’t have a crush on the same girl spanning three Valentine’s Days and still fail to be with her for a single one, because he was 1. really attracted but still afraid to ask her out, 2. broken up with her and kicking himself for it, and 3. crazy for her but living in freaking South America.

Many guys think Valentine’s Day is stupid, and that there’s no reason to have one day devoted to celebrating the love they have with their girl when they should be doing it year round, and I’m inclined to agree; however, Smooth Guys know that that’s simply not the way the female mind works, and that if they’re not taking the opportunity on February 14 to raise the bar, then they’re crashing headfirst into it.

Smooth Guys know that above all, if they have to be separated from their girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, she should not be stranded in Ohio in the winter while he is unable to even make a call because he’s enjoying a beautiful Pacific beach on the equator.

I recognize all this, and they say that owning the problem is the first step to correcting it. Because of this, I have hope that maybe by a year from now, in February 2010, I’ll have been trained in the ways of the Smooth Guy, and maybe, for the first time in four years, I’ll be able to deliver a real Valentine’s Day instead of an I.O.U. Maybe.

As for this year, though, there’s not much I can do. Happy Valentine’s Day, Katherine, and I hope you like your gift. And to all those guys who think it’s stupid and feel like a tool, being used and manipulated by FTD Florists, Harry London Chocolate and Hallmark…. you are. But you do not have an option. I may not be a Smooth Guy, but I know when I’m beat.

Back to your regularly scheduled Ecuablog: This weekend is the group excursion to Esmeraldas, one of the most beautiful beaches in the country on the northern part of the coast. It’s a seven hour drive from Quito—we will leave after school tomorrow at roughly 10:30, and will arrive at roughly 5:30 in the evening. There’s nothing really planned for the weekend—we only have to meet as a group for meals, and a large bonfire on the beach Saturday night—so there will be a lot of time to hang out and relax on the beach. We’ll get back to Quito around 8:00 Sunday evening, and the third and final week of Spanish 302 will start on Monday. This trip to Esmeraldas again means that I will not have internet access starting tomorrow and going until Monday.

This weekend also will roughly mark the halfway point of my time here in la Republica del Ecuador. It’s gone fast, and the rest will go faster….

Cultural note of the day: Cell phone companies employ slightly different strategies here in Quito than we’re used to in the US. I think this is due mainly to the fact that “cell phone plans” hardly exist here, and in their place, EVERYONE uses pay-as-you-go. This means that it’s a common need for people to “recharge” their “chips,” or buy more minutes to be put onto the computer chip that allows their phone to make a call. As a result, the cell phone companies employ people to dress up and stand along busy intersections in the city—capable of putting more money on your chip or selling you a new one—but instead of going the route of the Akron Gorilla, these people look more like they belong with a NASCAR pit crew. Check it out.


A Movistar man, working his territory.


Movistar man #2.


A rare sight, indeed: Not only did I manage to capture a Movistar and an Alegro sharing territory, but also exchanging clothing! Possibly some sort of ritual....

General warning of the day: The American Embassy has sent out emails to all US citizens living in Ecuador that there has recently been a noticeable increase in the number of Americans being victimized by armed robberies, enough to where the Embassy feels they can safely say Americans are being targeted. I would love to be able to say that we haven’t witnessed any of this firsthand, but I can’t: the homes of two of our Ohio State students have been broken into and ransacked in the middle of the day while no one was home, one the day before Otavalo and one yesterday. A third incident, an attempted mugging, happened about two weeks ago to another one of our classmates…. but he was drunk, walking through a dangerous part of town after midnight (which is to say he was more or less inviting it). After flipping one of the guys over his shoulder onto the ground, the attackers ran off and our classmate was unharmed. I’m not saying any of this to scare people, although I’ll admit I’m now a bit nervous myself. Rather, this is to let you know what’s going on, and to ask for some prayer for the safety of me and my classmates, not to mention the host families, who are turning themselves and their property into potential targets just by allowing us to live with them.

SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: Sra. Lutz for giving Lisa and me a better high school Spanish education than any of our classmates have received in high school AND college, and Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy

Don't Worry, There's Caution Tape To Hold Us Back

I had alfalfa juice today. I'll give you until the end of this entry to guess whether or not it was as good as the Quaker juice I wrote about last week.

I had a sweet weekend rolling around Quito, and to quantify the sweetness, there are over 150 pictures on my camera from this Saturday and Sunday alone. I don't know when those will get up, but maybe tonight? We'll see. Check back soon for some sweet pictures.

Saturday morning instead of heading to the Orchid Exposition, Abuela Joven (that means young grandma... she has problems with age) woke me up early and said that it was a cloudless, sunny day, and perfect for the Telefériqo, which is the cable car system that takes you up to the top of Mt. Pichincha. We went and picked up Courtney, a girl from my group also skipping Baños, and headed to the mountain. The views of the city and the mountains both in the car going up and from the top of the mountain were absolutely incredible. It was one of those moments where it was simply impossible to capture the scenery with a camera--of course, I tried, over and over, but for those of you who really want to know how beautiful it is on top of Pichincha, you really just have to do it yourself. For those of you who are interested, but not THAT interested, I'll put up a lot of pictures. In any case, it was incredibly cool to be on top of Pichincha, 4,100 meters up, to overlook the city of Quito with the sun shining, and to be several thousand feet above the planes coming in for landing. And then once we passed the huge sign that said "WARNING--Don't leave this area! If you do, you're responsible for yourself and accept all risks," it was really cool to be on the edge of a cliff overlooking a beautiful valley, separated from certain doom only by a single strand of caution tape. I didn't spend long there, but I had to get some pictures....

Saturday evening, Abuela Joven came home and told me that the 6 1/2 year old daughter of one of her sons has to learn a poem in English for some competition in between her elementary school and some other local schools, and she wondered if I would be willing to go over and make sure her pronunciation was good. It was amusing to me to hear exactly which words she had trouble with. She did great, with a few exceptions. She couldn't say words like "noisy," "it," and "won't" to save her life. Though I guess for a 6 1/2 year old reading an English poem, if those are her only problems, she's doing great. After we got done correcting most of her problems (we never managed to correct "noisy"), they took me out to show me colonial Quito at night. Really cool. The oldest street in Quito, built by the colonial Spaniards, is now a pretty popular place to hang out on Friday and Saturday nights, and it was really cool to see the original colonial-style buildings housing art galleries, discotecas, and coffeeshops.

Sunday morning after church, Abuela Joven, Mateo, Courtney and I again decided to forgo the Orchid Exposition based on reports of 500 people already waiting in line outside to get in. Instead, we drove to the Mitad del Mundo--the Equator monument. It's referred to as Mitad del Mundo (middle of the earth) because referring to it as el Ecuador in a country called Ecuador would be unnecessarily confusing. So we went to Mitad del Mundo to see the huge monument erected in 1936 by the Spanish and French and get our photos taken on the Equator. Fortunately, we had already been tipped that this huge monument to the Equator, and the amusement-park type village that surrounds it, is actually..... not in the right spot. I believe another French team came here in the mid-1980s with GPS systems, and realized that the huge, celebrated, built-up-for-tourism monument-village dedicated to the Mitad del Mundo is actually about 200 yards south of the real Equator. We got our pictures taken at both the fake, touristy, classic photo-op monument, and also the smaller, real one. Just to prove the authenticity of the second smaller place, they did demonstrations.... a tub of water drained right on the line went straight down without any swirling, but 10 feet south of their line it swirled clockwise and 10 feet north of their line it swirled counterclockwise. Yeah, I took videos. It was sweet. I also got my passport stamped from the Equator. You know you're jealous.


In the Telefériqo car, looking back at the station








Courtney is very safe here. After all, there's caution tape.






From the top of Pichincha... note the tiny little chapel in the bottom left.


The Church of San Francisco


La Virgen de Quito seen from the plaza in front of the Church of San Francisco


Imploded caldera of Mt. Pululahua




This sign is completely incorrect.


Straddling the REAL Equator.


The sunset over Quito Sunday night.... perfect ending to the weekend.

And I know you're probably sick of all the pictures featuring the dadgum mountains. You are definitely just gonna have to deal.

In other news, I forgot to mention that a large group of us went to the park to play some soccer last week. It was pretty fun, but it was torture.... because we got there, and a large group of Ecuadorians were trying to play baseball. I wanted soooo badly to play with them, to go over and show them how it's done. It wouldn't have been hard either, because they were about as good at baseball as we were at soccer. The irony of the gringos playing soccer and the Ecuadorians playing baseball was huge.

Also, to whom did I promise I would smuggle back some hot Latino chicas? Even if you didn't mention to that to me before, just let me know if you're interested and I'll see what I can do.

Alfalfa juice is disgusting.

SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: My parents, and Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy

Guinea Pig Lagoon

So the rest of the group left about an hour ago for the weekend excursion to Baños, a little town that apparently has extreme-type sports (canyoning, whitewater rafting, bungee jumping) and wild nightlife. What somehow inexplicably escaped all of them is that Baños means "bathrooms," and frankly after last weekend that's not something that I'm that interested in exploring. This is actually the one excursion I chose not to go on, and it's at a good time. I'm looking forward to taking this weekend and relaxing.... and besides, Abuela's super excited to take me and Omar to this huge Orchid Exposition that's here in Quito this weekend. It should be almost as good as the Greater Cleveland International Auto Show that I'll be missing.... almost.

I've got pictures from last weekend at Otavalo. I forgot to mention last Sunday afternoon, when we stopped to hike and take a boat ride around Laguna Cuicocha, which literally means "Guinea Pig Lagoon." The island in the middle of this lake are home to incredible numbers of wild guinea pigs, which are considered a delicacy here. Also, the lagoon is on top of the imploded dome of a volcano, which 3,000 years ago was one of the largest in the world. As proof that the volcano is still active, there are bubbles constantly floating to the surface of the water, and the water temperature is a balmy 45 degrees Fahrenheit, instead of the near-freezing temperatures a lake at that elevation should have.



























So I found another activity/event that has been added to my list of things to do while I'm here in Quito: drunk bullfighting. The Quito Plaza de Toros is fairly close to my house, and I just recently asked if there would be any bullfights I could attend while I'm here. While the official answer is "no," apparently there are some semi-organized drunken parties that happen every once in a while in Quito where the locals get wasted and jump in a ring with the bulls. I will consider my time in Quito a failure if I don't manage to witness some drunken bullfighting before I leave.

Cultural note of the day: The car alarms here are INSANE. It takes nothing to set them off, they go off for no reason, and it happens any time of the day. I've gotten woken up at 3:00 AM several times because of someone's freaking car. I hate South American car alarms.

SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: Swenson's, BW3, Flying Pizza, Mirror Lake, Mary Coyle's, Donato's, Insomnia Cookies, Potbelly's, and all the other food I'm completely craving right now. And on a non-food note, Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy